E. Godz by Robert Asprin, Esther Friesner Page A

thigh.
    But he saved himself. Every single time. How did he do it? Think, Peez, think! What
did he always do to pull his worthless butt out of the meat grinder?
    And she remembered. It was such a straightforward ploy, so basic, and yet proven so
very effective almost every time Dov had applied it.
    Peez gazed at Gary, gave him a smile, and said, "Oh my, did I say that? I don't know
what I was thinking. I certainly didn't mean any disrespect for the ancient ways, it's just
that— Gosh, this is so embarrassing, but you see, I always get sooo nervous when I have
to talk to handsome men."
    "Whuh—?" said Gary, and nearly ran the Volvo up the tailpipe of the car ahead of it.
    By the time they reached Ray Rah's self-styled Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore, Peez
was amazed yet gratified to find that her brother's simple stratagem had earned her the
utter devotion of Gary, the bloodthirsty penguin.
    So Dov has his uses after all, she thought as her newly smitten escort raced ahead of
her, carrying her suitcase, to hold the temple door open and await her pleasure.
    The Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore was housed in an old mansion with absolutely no
view of Lake Michigan whatsoever. It was by-the-Shore the way Minneapolis was by-
the-Sea, yet the house and its master were both so undeniably rich that no one was going
to argue semantics as long as the bills got paid. Ray Rah had a bank account fat enough
for him to call his self-created house of worship the Temple of Seshat-on-the-Moon if he
felt like it.
    As soon as Peez stepped over the threshold, she knew that she was in the presence of
old money and lots of it. Behind that turn-of-the-previous-century facade was the
Egyptian temple of Cecil B. DeMille's dreams, or perhaps his nightmares. The entire first
floor and most of the second had been gutted to accommodate a row of lotus-crowned
pillars, painted red and gold, blue and green. These led from the former vestibule into
what had once been the parlor, only now it was transformed into the sanctuary of the
gods. Peez walked between two rows of twelve different images as Gary led her deeper
into the temple. Ibis-headed Thoth stared down jackal-headed Anubis. Set the kin-slayer
snarled his eternal defiance at Horus the avenger. Ptah and Amon, Osiris and Isis, the
cobra goddess Renenutet and the cow-horned goddess Hathor, all these and more besides
watched over Peez's passage.
    Ray Rah was waiting for her at the end of the alleyway of images, standing before a
gauzy painted curtain depicting Osiris in the Underworld, sitting in judgment of the dead.
The head of the Chicago group was wearing the same sort of pleated linen kilt that Gary
had sported at the airport, only his was fringed with scarlet and gold. If he wore a wig, it
was not visible beneath his striped Pharaonic headdress surmounted by the cobra-and-
vulture uraeus. The bejeweled gold pectoral covering his shoulders and chest was so
heavy that Peez wondered how much longer Ray Rah was going to be able to stay
standing. He had the look of a failed high school basketball star, all stringy sinews and
long bones but not a heck of a lot of useful muscle.
    "Hail, Peez, whose coming is most beautiful," he intoned from atop the low flight of
shallow marble steps before the curtain. He stretched out the blue and silver flail he
carried in his right hand, his left being occupied by a glittering ankh rather than the
pharaoh's traditional shepherd's crook. He kept shifting his grip on it, as if uncertain of
exactly how he could display it to best advantage. "Behold thy coming is welcome to us.
When we do rise up and when we do lie down, we bid thee—"
    At that point, the knobbly fake beard attached to his chin fell off, hit the floor,
bounced down the steps, and rolled almost to Peez's feet before one of the temple's
ubiquitous cats pounced on it with happy murfing sounds. When Gary tried to recapture
the errant beard, the cat clawed his hand and he gave