The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [27]
“What if I’d gone north?” she asked.
“Then my brother would be enjoying the pleasure of your company rather than my humble self,” answered Omar. Suddenly he made a face. “I sincerely hope his ship’s kitchen was cleaner than mine.”
“So you deduced that I’d eventually make my way to the Amenhotep or its sister ship.”
“If you were smart enough to elude the Mahdists, then you were smart enough to choose the right ship. And we couldn’t help you until you did. We are badly outnumbered in Egypt.” He grimaced. “Actually, we are badly outnumbered everywhere.”
“How encouraging,” remarked Lara dryly.
“We will prevail,” concluded Omar. “Inshallah.” He glanced at her, a mischievous glint in his eye. “No offense, Lara Croft.”
She laughed. “If Allah would like to lend a hand, that will be all right with me.”
Omar smiled. “I speak to Him five times a day. I will transmit your message.”
She returned his smile, then began searching through her camel’s equipment.
“What are you looking for?” asked Gaafar.
“A canteen,” said Lara.
“Hassam has them all.”
“May I have mine, please?”
“We must make our water last,” replied Gaafar. “We will not reach the first oasis for two days.”
“Let her drink,” said Omar. Gaafar looked at him questioningly. “Our agents have told us that she was in a hospital just two days ago. Any other woman, or even a strong man, could not do what she has done in the last two days. Most could not even get out of their hospital beds. Despite everything she has accomplished, she is in a weakened condition, and since she is our best chance of recovering the Amulet and is under our protection, she can have all the water she wants. If necessary, she can drink ours as well. We are men of the desert; we will survive until we reach the oasis.”
“As you say,” said Hassam. He urged his camel forward until he was next to Lara, then handed her a canteen.
She stared at it without opening it. “Now I feel guilty,” she said.
“Would you rather feel guilty and thirsty or guilty and sated?” asked Omar.
“A telling argument,” she said, unscrewing the cap and taking a single swallow. She carefully put the cap back on and tried to hand it back to Hassam, but he pulled his camel out of reach.
“It is yours,” he said. “When it is empty, tell me and I will bring you another.”
She realized that it was useless to argue, so she simply thanked him, then turned back to Omar. “How long can a man of the desert go without water?”
“Not as long as we would like you to think,” he replied with a smile. “Two days, perhaps three if we protect ourselves from the sun.”
“What about a camel?”
He considered the question. “It depends on the individual animal and the conditions, but I think any camel, if he is allowed to drink until he is sated, can go at least sixteen or seventeen days. I would guess that twenty-two is the outside limit of all but a tiny handful of them.”
“So before the advent of the motorcar, you could never travel more than a twenty-two-day march from the Nile unless you already knew the locations of various wells and oases,” said Lara.
“No camel could travel more than twenty-two days from the Nile,” said Omar.
“Is there some animal that could?” she asked.
“Certainly.”
“Which animal is that?”
“Man,” said Omar.
She frowned. “Could a camel carry more than a twenty-two-day supply of water while he was carrying a rider as well?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I don’t understand how a man could last longer in the desert than his camel.”
“The explanation is, shall we say, indelicate?”
“I’ve got a strong stomach, and I’m curious,” said Lara.
“A camel weighs five or six times as much as a large man,” began Omar. “It therefore requires considerably more water to power a camel than a man. So that after, say, twenty days in the desert, a camel may live for only two more days, but he still carries enough water within him for a man to live for a week or more. When early travelers realized that their camels were on the verge of death and that they could not reach a well in time to save them, they would take a riding