“Because she’d fall apart?”
“Well, yes. That, for sure. She’s falling apart as it is.”
“Now we’ll just apply a little bronzer,” Karen murmured.
“Do we—?”
“Yes,” they said in unison, and I subsided.
“Go on,” Fraser ordered me.
“Basically, I’m going to measure her, superficially examine her wrappings and the emblems and inscriptions on the sarcophagus, and take a bunch of snapshots and notes.”
Fraser rubbed his bearded chin. “Okay. Can you make it visual?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Don’t look so nervous. We’ll roll the cameras and follow you, just make sure you narrate everything you do. And don’t block the camera with your body. You see what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“It’s not complicated. Mostly we’ll be filming the mummy itself. We’ll only use a fraction of the frames we shoot, anyway.”
“Then why—?”
“Because we don’t know what will work and what won’t till we’ve got it all. We don’t have time to script this. We’ll have to fix it all in post.” He said to Karen, “He’s very shiny.”
“I know.” She reached for the big brush and dusted my nose once more. “You’re scaring him.”
“Nothing to be scared of.” Fraser delivered another of those light, bracing punches to my arm. “This is going to be great. We’ll get you examining the mummy and then afterwards I’ll interview you.”
“What are you going to ask?” I closed my eyes as Karen held up a weird bent tool that looked like it would be good for extracting an eyeball.
“Relax, Dr. Hackenbacker. I won’t question you about anything that will embarrass you at your faculty tea party. It’ll just be some general questions about what first interested you in the princess, maybe some stuff about Egypt in the Sixth Dynasty.”
I was surprised he knew Merneith was Sixth Dynasty, but maybe that wasn’t fair. Fraser’s show might be stupid, but he was far from it. I scrutinized him with new interest. He was stocky but not fat. Not a hard body, but not soft either. A lived-in body. I hadn’t taken him seriously earlier, but seeing him in his own milieu, definitely in charge and clearly capable, gave me a different perspective. He had an air of authority. Despite the joking around, his crew respected him.
He was saying, “Frankly, we don’t really have a lot for this segment, so you coming along when you did is serendipity.”
“So happy to oblige.”
He tilted his head to one side and contemplated me. “No offense, but you’re wound about as tight as anyone I’ve ever met.”
“None taken. I come from a long line of Slinkys.”
He laughed. Reluctantly, I laughed too.
I finished with makeup and stood to the side watching as The Mysterious team finished setting up their set.
“Quick and dirty,” Karen informed me.
“Who?”
She laughed. “Us. The crew. The shoot. We’re squeezing this one in. The show, I mean. Fraser got a letter from the museum curator, and he was so excited he drummed up financing for one more show this season. He’s a genius.”
“I bet.”
She nodded. “He’s got a real instinct for this kind of thing. A special sense.”
Oh brother. “Like a sixth sense?”
“That’s probably it, yeah.”
“Okay, Dr. Lawson,” Fraser suddenly yelled from across the room. “Show time.”
My stomach began to gurgle in alarm. Or maybe it was the fact I hadn’t eaten all day. Which was probably a good thing, come to think of it. I picked my way through the stands and lines and oddball exhibits. The mummy case was bathed in surprisingly hot, blinding light.
“We can still see you with your eyes closed,” Fraser remarked.
“You should do comedy,” I told him, opening my eyes a fraction against the irradiation.
“I do, depending on which critic you ask. Here. Look at the birdie.”
I risked a look. Fraser was grinning at me. He pointed.
“That thing over your head is a boom microphone. Phil is our audio guy. Say hi to Doctor Lawson, Phil.”
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I returned in a voice I didn’t recognize.
Fraser said, “We’re not going to try to mic you because I can foresee the problems already. So don’t worry about that. Just talk. Describe what you’re doing in a normal, clear voice like you’re giving a lecture in your classroom. Phil will take care of the rest.”
“I got it,” Phil agreed.
Fraser said, “We’re only using two cameras for this. Okay? Here’s the main camera. It’s stationary. Then Arturo, to your left, is using a handheld. He’s going to be moving around. Just ignore him. Don’t talk to the camera, but don’t freak out if you happen to look directly at it or something. It’s not a big deal.”
I nodded. My mouth was so dry I wasn’t sure I could unstick my tongue to make words. So this was what stage fright felt like. Like your first day at school. Attending or teaching.
I must have looked as petrified as I felt because Fraser’s tone changed. He said kindly, “Just do what you would normally do, only talk to yourself as you’re doing it.”
I nodded.
“Try and forget we’re here.”
I nodded again.
“You already got the part, Drew, so relax.”
I threw him a deadly look and everyone, including Fraser, laughed. “That’s the spirit. Okay, ready? Jeannie has the clapperboard, so don’t jump…”
I did jump, but after that it all seemed to run pretty smoothly. In fact, my fifteen minutes of fame turned out to be a lot easier than I thought.
After all, I did know how to talk, and there was nothing I liked to talk about more than history and Egypt and archeology.
“Her approximate measurements are…height through nose…eight times width of shoulders…so twenty times length…sixty-two inches. I’ve never actually seen a mummy taller than about five and a half feet. Generally when a body is excavated, the archeologist will record all the important details. The condition, the measurements, the other items found in the grave or tomb. But things were less systematic back when Merneith was discovered. In fact, archeology was sometimes not much more than a free-for-all treasure hunt. So, unfortunately, we don’t have anything but legend as far as her mummy’s provenance.”
I moved around the display case, aware of Fraser a few feet across from me and of Arturo hovering to my left with his camera which seemed to be unnervingly directed at my profile. I tried to think only of the fragile wrappings in the large glass case. Merneith’s teeth were actually in remarkably good shape, all things considered. Her hair, not so much.
“Now days everything gets x-rayed, which means we don’t have to damage the mummy to study it. Back in the nineteenth century, mummies were literally torn to pieces in order to examine them. In fact, unwrapping a mummy was often turned into a social event, and pieces were sometimes given as souvenirs. There were lots of weird theories. Some people believed the mummies had magical powers or that crushed mummy powder could be used in medicine. Mummies have been used for making paint and paper and for railway fuel, though some scholars argue over whether that last is true or whether we got that from Mark Twain exaggerating in The Innocents Abroad.”
I turned my attention to the sarcophagus, which was in suspiciously beautiful shape. It seemed likely to me that some restoration had probably taken place. I knelt for a better look.
“Cut!”
I looked up over the edge of the case, surprised.
“Where’d you go?” Fraser asked.
I gestured. “I was just…”
He shook his head, but he was laughing. “You can get on your hands and knees and crawl around the case to your heart’s content later, okay? For now, stay topside so we can follow you.”
“Right. Sorry.”
He seemed inordinately amused as we resumed shooting.
I bent over the case again. There was an inscription in ink-black hieratic. Hieratic was a cursive style of writing, predating the more elaborate and better-known hieroglyphics or the hieroglyphic script which it closely resembled. In movies it’s almost always hieroglyphics used as they’re more visually striking. That’s because the symbols in hieratic were simplified for speed and clarity. By the Sixth Dynasty, hieratic was used almost exclusively in religious texts such as the Book of the Dead.