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The Thing, whole no. 2, Summer 1946
Page 13
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MUMMY of MAKARA Ba, Guardian of the Dead BURTON CRANE THE MUMMY sat bolt upright on the operating table and cursed bitterly in ancient Coptic. "Damn your blundering fingers!" he snarled. "By Thoth! Rats shall gnaw your vitals while your loved ones watch and weep!" Marsden stepped back, the syringe in his hand. Jean screamed, a half-choked, frantic little sound. I laughed, nervously. I sounded to myself as if I were scared to death. I was. Unless you've been in the old workshop of our museum's Egyptian wing,I'm afraid I can't give you a decent picture of the scene, but try to visualize the three of us in a sharp cone of light over a regulation hospital operating table,gathered to unwrap a mummy. We had been curious because this mummy, newly arrived from Egypt, had seemed unusually heavy. Michael Marsden is our curator,a big rough-hewn guy who looks more like a retired pugilist than an authority on archaeology. Huge hands and feet, a rat's nest of yellow hair, a bent nose, souvenir of a vicious battle with an Arab thief at the Tell Nebireh excavation. I'd say he was about 35. I'm only the assistant curator, a bit younger. Joan is our No. 3, a tall, long-legged female with a tawny mane, a spring-steel body and an incurable drunkard's thirst for life. For a time, while Marsden was still in Yucatan at the Mayan diggings, she was mine. There's a couch in the corner of the workshop, despite the building code, for those who have to work late. Joan and I worked late. Then Marsden came back and she wasn't mine anymore. Marsden did the late working. One thing about Joan: Her dad, and Egyptologist, held nobody could actually learn a dead language. He taught her ancient Ceptic,which is absurdly simple, a sort of stylized baby talk, as if it were a living tongue. Handy for the work she was in. For a full minute the mummy sat there, cursing. I didn't get much of it, merely an occasional reference to tortures which sounded as if they might be painful. Marsden's voice was shaky but he tried to put a laugh into it. "Calm down, baby," he said. "We're doing the best we can." Joan spoke in Coptic, soothingly. The cursing stopped. We worked with blunt scissors, cutting away the crisp wrappings.What we uncovered was obviously a woman, crusted with dead skin and unkempt, straggly black hair, with a silk dress hanging to her in rotten strips. Only her eyes seemed alive. She didn't move. "Rub her arms and legs," said Marsden. "Get her circulating going." The mummy groaned and I heard her gritting her teeth as the blood pumped back into
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MUMMY of MAKARA Ba, Guardian of the Dead BURTON CRANE THE MUMMY sat bolt upright on the operating table and cursed bitterly in ancient Coptic. "Damn your blundering fingers!" he snarled. "By Thoth! Rats shall gnaw your vitals while your loved ones watch and weep!" Marsden stepped back, the syringe in his hand. Jean screamed, a half-choked, frantic little sound. I laughed, nervously. I sounded to myself as if I were scared to death. I was. Unless you've been in the old workshop of our museum's Egyptian wing,I'm afraid I can't give you a decent picture of the scene, but try to visualize the three of us in a sharp cone of light over a regulation hospital operating table,gathered to unwrap a mummy. We had been curious because this mummy, newly arrived from Egypt, had seemed unusually heavy. Michael Marsden is our curator,a big rough-hewn guy who looks more like a retired pugilist than an authority on archaeology. Huge hands and feet, a rat's nest of yellow hair, a bent nose, souvenir of a vicious battle with an Arab thief at the Tell Nebireh excavation. I'd say he was about 35. I'm only the assistant curator, a bit younger. Joan is our No. 3, a tall, long-legged female with a tawny mane, a spring-steel body and an incurable drunkard's thirst for life. For a time, while Marsden was still in Yucatan at the Mayan diggings, she was mine. There's a couch in the corner of the workshop, despite the building code, for those who have to work late. Joan and I worked late. Then Marsden came back and she wasn't mine anymore. Marsden did the late working. One thing about Joan: Her dad, and Egyptologist, held nobody could actually learn a dead language. He taught her ancient Ceptic,which is absurdly simple, a sort of stylized baby talk, as if it were a living tongue. Handy for the work she was in. For a full minute the mummy sat there, cursing. I didn't get much of it, merely an occasional reference to tortures which sounded as if they might be painful. Marsden's voice was shaky but he tried to put a laugh into it. "Calm down, baby," he said. "We're doing the best we can." Joan spoke in Coptic, soothingly. The cursing stopped. We worked with blunt scissors, cutting away the crisp wrappings.What we uncovered was obviously a woman, crusted with dead skin and unkempt, straggly black hair, with a silk dress hanging to her in rotten strips. Only her eyes seemed alive. She didn't move. "Rub her arms and legs," said Marsden. "Get her circulating going." The mummy groaned and I heard her gritting her teeth as the blood pumped back into
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