Mr. Scarab

There are few people as anonymous as those who work at night in nursing homes. At 10:12 pm most people were sleeping through the furious rain storm sweeping off the river. The sallow, silent people gazing into the storm from the lighted windows of the late night bus might have had the heads of animals or no heads at all, for all the difference it would have made. No one looked at them, no one saw them if they did look.
The bus pulled to a splashing stop in front of the Elderwood Nursing Home of Memphis, Tennessee. Of the humble people who stepped past the tired driver, the humblest was the wizened old Mr. Scarab. No one knew how old he was, but he was apparently in his sixties. He had been apparently in his sixties for as long as anyone had known him. Mr. Scarab plodded toward the lighted portico of the Elderwood through the driving black rain. He made no attempt to run; he ignored the storm as he ignored almost everything around him. Destiny would bring him face to face with an unignorable Mr. Finney tonight, however. Unaware, Mr. Scarab plodded on.
Inside the Elderwood an almost nightly drama was being played out between middle aged Mr. Finney, the night supervisor, and his colleague, the evening supervisor. He liked to be there every night to meet the oncoming night shift. He arrived an hour early most nights, to the resigned annoyance of the 3-11 supervisor, an otherwise cheerful young woman named Bernice.
When he had arrived this evening, in his ostentatious lab coat and purely decorative stethoscope, he went, as he always did, straight to the report book.
"You haven't written out your report yet!" he barked disapprovingly. Two aides piling dirty linen into a hamper rolled their eyes at each other, but continued working on silently. "It's only 10:25, Mr. Finney." Bernice said with a sigh. She heard the same complaint, and gave much the same answer, every night that Mr. Finney followed her at the Elderwood Nursing Home. She was a very nice young woman, and had never hated anyone before. She didn't like the feeling, but there it was. She looked yearningly at the clock, but it was still 10:25 pm.
"Still, you might have written something." he grumbled on. "I would be writing it now if you were not sitting at the desk." she answered, but then, because she was such a nice young woman, she tried to take the sting out of her words. "Why don't you go to the kitchen, I made a pot of coffee for the night shift. It should be ready."
With no more acknowledgment of her kindness than a sniff, he took his wet coat from her chair, leaving a small pool for her to wipe up before she could sit, and walked off to the rear of the home.
At some point during the time she had spent wiping off her chair and putting the towel in the hamper, Mr. Scarab had come in from the bus stop, and stood dripping unobtrusively in the shadows, waiting to receive his assignment for the night.
"Oh, Mr. Scarab!" Bernice cried in surprise. "You were so quiet I didn't notice you." This quite common complaint brought forth no more than the unconvincing grin Mr. Scarab displayed when someone told a joke of any kind. "You are on 2 West tonight, Mr. Scarab." she said, giving up once again trying to penetrate Mr. Scarab's armor of implacable politeness.
With another hopeless look at the clock, 10:28, Bernice the evening supervisor pulled the report book to her and began writing. She was finishing her report on the last patient, Mr. Osiran in room 234, when she heard the steps of Mr. Finney's overlarge shoes stop behind her chair. "Still not finished, Miss Brown?" he asked. He loved to ask these kinds of questions. He felt this kind of constant harassment was his job, and would have been genuinely surprised at the amount of dislike, bordering at times on hatred, that it generated.
Bernice said nothing, however, and finished, dated, and signed her report. Without a word, she stood and went to the small closet for her raincoat and bag. As she stepped to the door he said in his cutting, nasal, somehow Yankee voice, "You realize leaving early," It was 10:50, she worked until 11:00, and they both knew the last bus came at 10:55 pm., "Leaving early is a bad example to the staff."
The staff in question were non-existent, most having left at 10:20, and they both knew this as well. She could stand no more. "Tell you what, Mr. Finney, you can write up your complaint and stuff it up your" and because she was a nice young woman, she said no more, but went out into the rain so angry she forgot her hat and couldn't bear to go back for it. Streaming and furious, she got in the bus as it pulled up, and was driven discontentedly off.
Inside the alcove of the Elderwood, looking out into the storm, the shocked and angry face of Mr. Finney reflected back at him from the window. He turned to it and noticed another figure in the reflection. He whirled around and found Mr. Scarab standing next to the elevator door pushing an empty hamper. The oldfigure was turned away, and seemed very interested in the elevator's slow progress from the second floor. Mr. Finney was sure he had heard Miss Brown's incredible rudeness.
"Mr. Scarab!" Finney saw the old man flinch, and felt a feeling of satisfaction begin to replace his rage at Miss Brown's treatment of him. "Mr. Scarab! Come here at once." The old man slowly turned, still pushing the hamper, and looked a little hopelessly at the figure of the angry Mr. Finney.
"Leave that hamper and come here at once!" Mr. Finney's momentary satisfaction was fading, and being replaced with anger again, this time at the old nurse's aide's slowness. The elevator door opened just as Mr. Finney had repeated his command to old Mr. Scarab. A tall black woman in an immaculate green nurse's aide's uniform stood within next to a full hamper of rather aromatic linen. She watched with concern as Mr. Scarab walked slowly over to Mr. Finney. When the old man was just halfway there Mr. Finney suddenly walked to his desk and sat, waiting for the elderly worker to adjust to this sudden change and walk over, to stand uncertainly before the seated supervisor.
Finney looked up at the seamed face before him. It might have been made of a kind of yellowed leather, full of lines, some deep enough to be called cracks. None of the lines seemed to be from laughing. Strange that a face so expressionless should have so many lines, thought Mr. Finney. The strangeness of his own thought surprised him, and he shook it off by barking, "What did you hear while you were standing there, Mr. Scarab?"
Mr. Scarab mutely shook his head, apparently denying everything, denying existence itself if it would help his case. It would not. "I know you heard Miss Brown, and I insist you write a statement!" At this the old face looked scared, and the small mouth came slightly opened, revealing stained teeth and emitting a shrill, "I didn't hear nothing!" Then the poor Mr. Scarab looked even more frightened, for speaking so loudly to the supervisor. "I didn't hear nothing." he repeated in a low, hopeless tone.
The woman in the elevator now stepped forward. "Mr. Scarab wouldn't lie to you, Mr. Finney." She was trying to think of a way to tell Mr. Finney in a way that wouldn't hurt Mr. Scarab's feelings that Mr. Scarab couldn't write a lick, at least not in English. But before she could speak again Mr. Finney stood angrily. "No one asked you for your opinion, Berta Spoon, and you have no way of knowing what Mr. Scarab heard or did not hear. If you have business here on this floor I suggest you get on with it, and don't interfere in things that do not concern you!" Her dark face flushing, Berta looked once more at the miserable Mr. Scarab, standing before the little twerp, as she privately thought of Mr. Finney. With an elegant sniff that Mr. Finney heard but did not acknowledge, she wheeled her cart down the hall to the laundry.
"I will ask you once more, Mr. Scarab. Will you write a statement, or will you not?" At this point the unfortunate Mr. Scarab could do nothing more than grin his helpless little smile. He couldn't stop even when he saw it just made Mr. Finney angrier. "Well then, let's say we give you a little time to think about it. I am suspending you starting" Mr. Finney noted with annoyance that the last bus had gone by ten minutes ago. "I'm suspending you for tomorrow night's shift."
He looked back at Mr. Scarab and for a moment he was a little frightened. He had thought Mr. Scarab had seemed scared before, but now the old face before him was almost twisted in terror. "NO!" cried out the old man, then seemed suddenly to shrink and the old face closed again to its more usual lack of expression. The old eyes which had opened very wide a moment before now looked down and avoided Mr. Finney's somewhat astonished gaze. "Please, Mr. Finney. I have to work. I have to work."
"Well, you won't be working tomorrow night. That is final. Now return to your floor unless you wish to have more trouble. We will say no more about this tonight." Mr. Finney was uneasy now, and wanted to put all this behind him as quickly as possible. Mr. Scarab just stood there, his mouth moving helplessly, as though mouthing over and over his need to work.
Mr. Finney raised his eyebrows and Mr. Scarab finally gave his strange little bob of acceptance, and slowly moved to retrieve his hamper and wait once more for the elevator. As the door opened Berta Spoon returned and got in with Mr. Scarab, one hand consolingly on his shoulder. Her accusing glance was the last thing Mr. Finney saw as the elevator door closed. With a discomfited adjustment of his lab coat, Mr. Finney sat at his little desk to begin his shift.
Mr. Scarab did not come to work the next night. The administrator was not really satisfied with Mr. Finney's explanation for the suspension, but he did not like to interfere too much with the nursing department. He contented himself with muttering, "Mr. Scarab has been with us very many years
indeed. I find it hard to understand why you felt this to be necessary, but leave it as is for now, leave it as it is."
Mr. Finney felt that this justified his decision. He had had a few moments of uncharacteristic doubt about the incident, but he had convinced himself that he was right, and had worked himself into a fine resentment of Mr. Scarab by the time he left work the next morning after the night of Mr. Scarab's suspension. Why, the old man had brought the trouble on himself, first by eavesdropping on his conversation with the horrible Miss Brown, and then by his unconvincing denial, and then finally his out and out refusal to write a simple statement!
He was still in this mood when the bus stopped a few minutes later and who should get on, wearing his uniform and the weary look of a night worker returning home, but the infamous Mr. Scarab himself! Mr. Finney said nothing of course, but his narrowed eyes took in the faade of the Blue Ridge Nursing Home as the bus passed it. He knew the administrator of the Blue Ridge. He would make a call when he got home. The next night Mr. Scarab showed up for work at the usual time, on his usual bus. Mr. Finney was waiting for him. "Well, Mr. Scarab. Did you enjoy your night off?" Mr. Scarab grinned his nervous grin, and then wiped it off hoping not to offend. In vain. Mr. Finney stood and walked to face the resigned old man.
"You weren't off, were you, Mr. Scarab. In fact, I've done a little checking. You never are off, are you Mr. Scarab?" Old Mr. Scarab began to shake very slightly. He looked at Mr. Finney and tried to understand what was going on. He was still trying when the supervisor turned and went back to his desk and picked up a piece of notepaper.
"Apparently, according to the directors of nursing in these nursing homes, you work several nights a week in each of them. An absurd number of nights in fact. Too many, Mr. Scarab, by which I mean you are apparently working in two or three places at once on some of these nights. Since this is obviously impossible, you must be working some kind of scam. And I want to know what it is, and how you work it. If you do not tell me, I will call the administrators of these homes and you will not work again until this is explained." Mr. Scarab stopped shaking, and said, "You shouldn't interfere, Mr. Finney, you should not try to make me tell you." This was unexpected, and the supervisor paused for a moment. "You cannot get away with it, Mr. Scarab, I must insist." After a long silence, the room seemed to darken slightly. The old man, impossibly, began to change before the astonished Mr. Finney. He seemed to bulk out his old set of scrubs, he seemed a little taller too. But his face startled the immobilized man before him even more than these things. The ancient seams were smoothing as the face grew larger and larger. Larger and much less human.
Now Mr. Finney was the one who was terrified. Speechless before this impossible transformation, he was afraid to move. Afraid the terrible face would turn and look at him with its horrible dark eyes. Still he found he could not look away when the eyes did turn his way.
The voice of Mr. Scarab was deeper now, but mixed with a sibilance like the buzzing of a cicada magnified a hundred times. He was sure someone on the upper floors would hear and come to investigate. He hoped so anyway. The great immobile face with the deep set insect like eyes rasped out, "You nosy little busybody! You must know, must you! Then see! But understand quickly, human, or all is lost."
The booming, buzzing voice suddenly gave him a headache, and Mr. Finney closed his eyes and held his head. A hot dry cinnamon wind seemed to blow through the hallway. The light seen through his closed eyes seemed to become brighter and brighter, until he opened his eyes with a gasp!
The largest, brightest sun he had ever seen beat down on a scene which he could not accept as real for several moments. It ceased to be a scene when he turned to speak to Mr. Scarab and found himself alone. Not only alone, but not at Elderwood either, not by a very long shot indeed.
An impossible desert burned almost white for as far as his suddenly squinting eyes could see in all directions save the one he was facing. He finished his wild glancing around and looked down on a sight which made him feel giddy with unreality.
A wide blue river flowed right through a desert valley before him, just a narrow rim of green with tall rushes and a few low trees here and there dividing it from the white sands on either bank.
All this aside, and that is saying a lot, the really unbelievable part for Mr. Finney was the group of tall figures standing just his side of the nearer tree lined bank. They were nine in number, and three were obviously women, or at least female, for the group wore only short apron like affairs of colorful cloth. The heads, though. The heads were the heads of animals and birds. Mr. Finney wiped the sweat from his brow, just a small movement, but although the figures were several hundred feet below where he stood, the one with the head of a hawk turned and pointed at him.
The others also turned and looked, and Mr. Finney felt the incredible weight of that collective gaze. He found himself stumbling down the hill, pulled or pushed it seemed, but by what he could not see. In breathless moments he found himself flung down before the huge feet, eighteen of them, nine pairs, his mind gibbered. He found it quite impossible to look up
"This is that one that Scarab sent. Is it worth it?" Finney could not decide which of the gods spoke. He realized that he, a confirmed atheist, had just thought of them as gods. His mind could suggest no other name. He felt it's certainty down to his bones. He listened helplessly.
"Who are you to ask its worth? You, the idiot god who let them pass out of the realm of Nut just because they pleased him with worship?" The last word pronounced with derision. "What weak minded ninny let a few carvings buy his permission to pass into the great world?" Several of the feet shifted and there was a rising godlike hubbub. Suddenly a hawk screech, if a sound made by a half-ton bird could be called a screech, cut through the noise and there was sudden quiet.
"Please be quiet, all of you. I, Horus, will speak to the worm of a human, and we can return him to his world and, more importantly, return to our game." At the word game, a field across the river became visible to the human.
Where he had seen a shimmering white desert, now there was a lovely cool green field, with other godlike figures standing about. Some had animal and bird heads, some had several arms and seemed to be wearing jewelry shaped like skulls. At least Mr. Finney hoped it was jewelry shaped like skulls. From the various items they held, and the small stakes in the ground, it appeared the gods were playing cricket.
The tall dark-visaged god on the celestial pitch tossing the ball impatiently in his hand called out in a voice like echoing thunder, or rather, in a voice that thunder is an echo of. The hawk headed god who had called himself Horus nodded and answered in some godlike tongue that no human could hear without exquisite pain, and Mr. Finney cried out. A voice said "Silence." and Mr. Finney found the world to fall immensely quiet.
It wasn't exactly like deafness, he could hear the small noises his own body made, but the rest of the universe seemed to be completely silent. It reminded him of being home one winter night in Boston, when he had stepped outside during a heavy snowstorm and had been impressed with the hush.
A hush often called unnatural, but really the most natural of silences, with just a hint of crisp silvery sound as the snow fell. The gods continued to gesture and move about, but he no longer heard anything. Oddly, he still felt he understood their silent conversation.
It was as if their meaning had a force that drove understanding into his brain with no effort on his part. Or perhaps it was that he knew without understanding, as if what they spoke was a long remembered conversation he had never really thought through. It was really quite indescribable, Mr. Finney finally decided, and gave it up.
In the end it was a great relief when the cricket match faded away. He noted that there was now only one pair of feet left in front of him, and he could no longer lift his eyes. Slowly a feather drifted down from above and settled before him. It must be the one called Horus, the one with the head of a hawk, he thought.
The silence came to an end. Mr. Finney could hear the river sounds now, even the calls of a few normal sized birds, or birds who were at least not god sized, even though they were quite large in their own right. Some kind of water bird, he thought, gleaming white bodies and light blue heads with long sharp bills on the end of graceful curving necks.
"Ahem." Finney realized he had been ignoring the god, probably not a wise thing to do. "No, it isn't." Horus said, although Finney had not spoken. "You are as easy to read as a book, human. About as interesting, too, taking in to account the state of modern literature." Mr. Finney didn't know if this was a joke, or if he was supposed to laugh. "Don't bother." Horus added. "We don't have much time. Which come to think of it, is a good introduction to the subject of our little talk, human worm."
Mr. Finney found himself able to look up, in fact, he realized he could sit down as well, and sank down to the hot sand and stretched out his suddenly very weary legs. Horus walked off a short distance and seemed to be looking up at the sun for inspiration. After a few minutes he turned and fixed Mr. Finney with a singularly piercing gaze.
"What do you know of time? Do you even know something as basic as the span of your own brief life? What does any moth of a human know of time? But could you leave well enough alone? No. You never do." A god's anger is hard to bear, a god's bitterness wasn't very pleasant either, Mr. Finney found. He also found himself wanting very much to apologize, but he wasn't sure what he should apologize for.
"Human, your name is trouble. Trouble that began with some admittedly bad decisions by some gods who shall remain nameless. The formless gods that serve well enough for monkeys and apes, the very minor spirits required by the other feeling creatures of the earth, these are happy beings, and how I envy them." The envy of the gods was right up there with anger and bitterness, Mr. Finney discovered. His headache had returned and he closed his eyes against the relentless brightness of the desert.
Suddenly the light dimmed and the heat cut off as though a switch had been closed. Mr. Finney found he was becoming very tired of things he could not explain. Until today, nothing had happened to Mr. Finney that could be considered inexplicable. He liked to explain things. He might have been an irritating twerp to his coworkers, but he believed in rules and regulations. Laws and guidelines were the stuff of life to him. Today was a severe test of everything he believed in. He desired an explanation, he found, with a unprecedented hunger.
"Good." said Horus. Mr. Finney opened his eyes and saw resignedly that he was sitting in a deep upholstered chair made of rich smelling leather. A desk of polished ebony with its surface empty except for some carvings and a nameplate spelling out Horus in gold was before him. Behind its impressive expanse sat the aforementioned god , leaning back in an expensive office chair apparently made of some kind of light, gleaming wood that had a sheen like mother of pearl. The god stirred the figures on the desk. One of them seemed half human and half ape. "Oh no,this hairy one you see before you is very human indeed. I have even bothered to commit his name to memory. He is Purusinalapem of the Clever People, as they called themselves. He was the conceiver of both writing and number. A genius, and quite an original thinker, Curse Him." Mr. Finney felt this was more than just a pleasantry. The Bird's wintry smile confirmed this.
"I used to release him from time to time to speak with my, hrrmm, visitors. It has been long since anyone understood him, however, and now I just keep him frozen at that moment we first met."
The Bird's chuckle was quite horrible. Horus sobered then, and continued in a less amused tone. "But enough. You hunger for an explanation, and I hunger to return to the game. The Eldest Side must not be deprived of their keenest eyed player. The Test hangs in the balance. Your interference could not have been more ill-timed."
"Time. Once the gods had all the time in the world. All the time out of it as well. Heaven was a vast, leisurely hall where pleasant amusements could take eons or afternoons, at the pleasurer's whim. I once slept for over a thousand years, and I ate the cock that dared to crow with great pleasure."
"Then, one awful day, this one had his bright idea." Horus removed the statue of the horrified Purusinalapem of the Clever People from in front of Mr. Finney and replaced it with a small model of a clepsydra. A tiny clockwork figure of a vaguely Middle Eastern looking man endlessly lifted the water chamber from the lower part of the mechanism when full and poured it back into the top. It wearily replaced the chamber below and stood looking hopelessly at the small regular drips counting off the hours.
"Behold the Cursed Pawonis of the City of Artificers. He first counted the hitherto nameless hours of the night. The last refuge of the gods, whose hours and moments could be stretched and compressed at our whim. With him began the fall of the gods of the two rivers."
Horus placed the unfortunate Pawonis back on the desk with some other figures whose only common element was a kind of weary terror on each face. The hawk head nodded over them in distant satisfaction before going on. "It comes down to this one point, interfering slug of a human." Mr. Finney was becoming resigned to this form of address, and waited patiently for the promised point. He found himself growing tremendously weary.
He felt it might be fatal to fall asleep, however, and struggled straighter in the chair. "Wise." remarked the god. "We
were deceived at first as man spread through the wide world. We put up with the increasing demands on us, because mankind was creating gods at a tremendous rate. Also, you were just so damned fascinating to watch!"
Horus pierced Mr. Finney with another gaze. "It may seem to you that the gods are all powerful, and indeed we are in almost all ways. Yet there is this one secret. Knowing it means you will be bound as we are bound. Because of rules of which I do not approve, I am forced to ask your permission to tell you." The last sentence had been rather hissed than spoken, but Mr. Finney found his curiosity overpowering the small voice of his good sense. Also, he felt that it might be quite extraordinarily dangerous to say no. "Wise." the god repeated.
Horus sat back for a moment and seemed to consider Mr. Finney as if really seeing him for the first time. "Scarab tells me that you have stumbled on to his littleerror in judgment, as I will somewhat charitably call it." Mr. Finney gulped, and sat, if possible, a little straighter. "Fear not, human. During the explanation phase, under the Agreement of Olympus, no god may harm or threaten a human. Haven't read the agreement? Check it out, I believe it is olympus.org/agreement, I could be wrong about that."
"I could be wrong because I am not a particularly omniscient god, but," he paused and gave a rather terrifying glance at Mr. Finney, "I am quite powerful and awe inspiring." He swiveled slightly and picked up the figure of a man in an antique naval uniform. "The inventor of the naval chronometer, the most accurate and closely observed and checked instrument ever made by man, at least at the time of its invention. This meddling human was the first to wake us to our terrible mistake. In the blink of a god's eye, omniscient or not, one man invented the machine which denied us our last godly freedoms." Mr. Finney hoped there would be more to the explanation' which so far had seemed just slightly disjointed and rather confusing.
Without warning, Horus threw back his head and screeched. The sudden movement and the quite devastating explosion of sound completely unnerved his guest, and Mr. Finney slipped to the floor, gibbering slightly and then calming as he slid out of sight of the apparently angry, or perhaps just insane, god.
A new voice suddenly spoke, and Mr. Finney crouched and peered over the edge of the desk. "That is more than enough, Horry." The speaker was one of the gods he had glimpsed during his view of the heavenly cricket match earlier. The god, or goddess perhaps, Mr. Finney wasn't sure of his etiquette here, stood slightly less tall than Horus the Hawk Headed, she was perhaps a very statuesque eight feet tall.
Her skin was very dark, and she had a human face with beautiful, deeply carved features. She wore nothing but her necklace of skulls and a very low slung affair made from strings of beads across her wide hips. Her teeth were incredibly bright as she smiled at the bird. His beak snapped in annoyance at her familiarity in front of the human worm, but he did not answer.
She turned towards Mr. Finney and he dropped his eyes, until he realized he was staring at her naked breasts. Confused, he looked a little higher and suddenly noticed the rows of skulls she wore. "Are those real?" He asked in a trembling voice. He realized to his horror that he was becoming aroused.
The room seemed filled with an incense that reminded him of a dream he had had and forgotten until this moment. A dream of incense, darkness, and musk. A dream mostly of sensations but with the promise of a woman, an erotic dream which Mr. Finney's waking brain had never allowed to surface.
"I suppose you are referring to my skulls?" she asked, with a smile that teased and terrified Mr. Finney. The goddess moved her hands together and he realized that he had not noticed she had eight arms, although how he could have missed this little detail he could not understand. "You were distracted," she smiled and said in that annoying godlike way of picking his brain and replying. "Perhaps it would help if I told you that after sex, I always devour my partners, starting with the most delicate parts." Mr. Finney found that this did help, and his rampancy subsided, as it were.
"Oh, how sad." she commented looking downward and slinging one dark and bounteous hip on the edge of the desk. The light sole of her gently swinging and very shapely foot seemed to wink at the mesmerized Mr. Finney. "And I was feeling peckish."
Horus glanced at the goddess on the edge of his desk and made an annoyed grimace. "Really, Kali, I don't need any help from you or any other collaborator." "I think that you do, Horus. You old gods never explored the humans as a source, you were dead long before the chronometer, and you know it." Horus hissed angrily, but made no other reply.
She turned suddenly and jumped down, her skulls and other things bouncing distractingly, and came around the desk to where Finney stood. Four left arms wrapped around him and she turned him to face Horus across the desk. Her nearness and the warm rich smell of her skin brought him near to fainting, and he struggled to comprehend what came next.
"Our only hope is to reveal ourselves and try to turn the humans away from science. The only other way out is the way of the gods of the Mayans. Reduce our godlike selves to mere number. They became less than they were to keep that small part of their godhood. Do you feel that we can go that way? I do not."
She released Mr. Finney at this point. Not, however, before her lowest left hand had given him an affectionate and exploratory squeeze. He bent over somewhat uncomfortably and sat back on the chair. His face was reddened, and he realized he hadn't been this locked up in lust since he had been a teenager. She winked at him and said this with regrettable smugness, and the bird god, who had calmed down and listened carefully to this point, suddenly drew himself up again. "Your people!" he cried angrily. "Your people are a crowd so overburdened with gods and ceremonies of worship that they had to invent the calendar. What is more, they have produced countless numbers of those devilishly clever mathematicians!"
"We don't have time for this." Kali said with a smile. Horus hissed again. "Mr. Finney. I will put it quite simply for you. The gods are powerful, indeed, they are power. But it is the imagination of mankind that makes the rules, odd as that may seem." She stood straighter and stretched out her arms like the rays of the sun. Mr. Finney found that the beauty of the gods was quite as hard to bear as their anger, bitterness, insanity, etc.
"We are bound to use our power to drive the world onward, but we have been driven underground ourselves by the sheer mass of humanity and its conflicting needs." She lowered her arms and went on. "Once we could place our friends and lovers in the skies as constellations, and it violated no law of science', it was accepted by the people of the world, indeed, celebrated in story and song. But no longer. Once we could make the days longer or shorter at need to accomplish our tasks in joy and pleasure. No inexorable ticking clockwork device ruled the division of the very seconds themselves. We were free. But no longer."
Her tears dripped and splashed on her row of skulls, they traced fascinating rivulets which Mr. Finney followed helplessly. "Really, Mr. Finney, you are quite insatiable." She said smiling through her tears. "But I think I see a solution to our immediate problem. Yes. It has been long but it has been done before. Horus." She turned and spoke to the Bird Headed One but her words were no longer audible.
When she was done she turned once more to Mr. Finney. "Because of the Agreement, you will remember nothing of this Dream. You will forget even the beauteous Kali. But if you truly agree to what I will ask of you, in the other world it may come to pass. Scarab must work, Mr. Finney, or quite frankly, the world will end. You must agree not to reveal his secret. For this, your reward will be," and she smiled devastatingly, "me." "But you said," He gulped, "that after sex you always devour your partners, starting with the most tender part." She laughed, and her laughter was terrible and beautiful. "True, but then, none have ever complained." He knew what he wanted. He wanted her and he could not help himself, but neither could he bring himself to say it. "It isn't necessary to say it." she said. "Just to agree." "I do." he said.
Mr. Finney lifted his head from the desk where it lay. He rubbed at the red spot on his forehead where it had pressed for hours on the hard surface. He glanced somewhat guiltily at the clock. It was 3 am. He must have dozed off, but at least he hadn't missed morning rounds. With luck no one would have noticed his lapse.
On the second floor he found Mr. Scarab. The elderly man looked at him briefly and with his usual lack of expression, and then turned back to the new aide he was orienting that night to her duties. Mr. Finney remembered then seeing the new name on the staffing sheet. A Miss K. Promise.
An unusual name, and now that he saw her, an unusual person to go with the name. He introduced himself. "Miss Promise, my name is Mr. Finney, I am the night supervisor." "I know, Mr. Finney. Please call me by my first name. My name is Kali."
Mr. Finney and Miss Kali Promise were married that June. She looked extremely lovely in her white wedding dress. The staff of the nursing home were all invited, and what is more, they all attended. Mr. Finney in love was a changed man. Not only did he not come in early, some nights he was actually late. Bernice had laughed out loud at his appearance one night in a misbuttoned lab coat with lipstick on the collar. He had smiled sheepishly rather than barking out at her, and she found herself liking him, much to her surprise.
Mr. Scarab worked and worked. He wasn't exactly happy about it, but at least the sun came up every day. On time.