Blood Lines

the Royal Ontario Museum, already an internationally respected institution, on the scientific map and everyone in the room knew it. "As much as I'd like to believe that all this excitement is directed at my return, I know damned well it isn't." No one bothered to protest. "And as you can now see there's nothing to see, why don't the lot of you head back up to the workroom where we can all jump about and enthuse in the privacy of our own department?"
    Behind him, Dr. Shane added her own silent but emphatic endorsement to that suggestion.
    It took more than a few last, lingering looks at the crate, but, finally, Receiving emptied.
    'I suppose the whole building knows what we've got?" Dr. Rax asked as he and Dr. Shane followed the crate and the preparators onto the freight elevator.
    Dr. Shane shook her head. "Surprisingly enough, considering the way gossip usually travels in this rabbit warren, no.
    All of our people have been very closemouthed." Dark brows drew down. "Just in case." Just in case it does turn out to be empty, the less people know, the less our professional reputations will suffer. There hasn't been a new mummy uncovered in decades .
    Dr. Rax chose to ignore the subtext. "So Von Thorne doesn't know?" While the Department of Egyptology didn't really resent the Far East's beautiful new temple wing, they did resent its curator's more-antiquarian-than-thou attitude concerning it.
    'If he does," Dr. Shane said emphatically, "he hasn't heard about it from us."
    As one, the two Egyptologists turned to the preparators who worked, not just for them, but for the museum at large.
    One hand resting lightly on the top of the crate, Karen Lahey drew herself up to her full height. "Well he hasn't heard about it from us. Not after accusing us of creating a nonexistent crack in that porcelain Buddha."
    Her companion grunted agreement.
    The freight elevator stopped on five, the doors opened, and Dr. Van Thorne beamed genially in at them.
    'So, you're back from your shopping trip, Elias. Pick up anything interesting?"
    Dr. Rax managed a not very polite smile. "Just the usual sorts of things, Alex."
    Stepping nimbly out of the way as the preparators rolled the crate from the elevator, Dr. Von Thorne patted the wood as it passed; a kind of careless benediction. "Ah," he said. "More broken bits of pottery, eh?"
    'Something like that." Dr. Rax's smile had begun to show more teeth. Dr. Shane grabbed his arm and propelled him down the hall.
    'We've just received a new Buddha," the curator of the Far East Department called after them. "Second century BC. A beautiful little thing in alabaster and jade without a mark on it. You must come and see it soon."
    'Soon," Dr. Shane agreed, her hand still firmly holding her superior's arm. Not until they were almost at the workroom did she let go.
    'A new Buddha," he muttered, flexing his arm and watching the preparators maneuver the crate through the double doors of the workroom. "Of what historical significance is that? People are still worshiping Buddha. Just wait, just wait until we get this sarcophagus open and we'll wipe that smug temple-dog smile off his face."
    As the doors of the workroom swung closed behind him, the weight of responsibility for the sarcophagus lifted off his shoulders. There was still a lot to do, and any number of things that could yet go wrong, but the journey at least had been safely completed. He felt like a modern day Anubis, escorting the dead to eternal life in the Underworld, and wondered how the ancient god had managed to bear such an exhausting burden.
    He rested both hands on the crate, aware through the wood and the packing and the stone and whatever interior coffin the stone concealed, of the body that lay at its heart. "We're here," he told it softly. "Welcome home."
    The ka that had been so constant was now joined by others. He could feel them outside the binding, calling, being, driving him into a frenzy with their nearness and their inaccessibility. If he could only remember…
    And then, suddenly, the surrounding ka began to fade. Near panic, he reached for the one he knew and felt it moving away. He hung onto it as long as he could, then he hung onto the sense of it, then the memory.
    Not alone. Please, not alone again.
    When it returned, he would have wept if he'd remembered how.
    Refreshed by a shower and a good night's sleep plagued by nothing more than a vague sense of loss, Dr. Rax stared down at the sarcophagus. It had been