The Age of Ra

the army because you were out of other options? Either way, that makes you a fool.''

''Harsh.''

''Although in one case slightly less of a fool than the other.''

''Which one?''

''Which did you do?''

''Gave it up, voluntarily.''

''That's the one. Because…?''

''Because, in the first place, none of it was my achievement,'' David said, smarting somewhat. ''I inherited my position on the board of directors. I didn't have to work for it and earn it. The company was founded by my great- grandfather and the job of running it has been passed on through the generations like a hand-me-down suit.''

''And what was this job? What did you actually do?''

He gestured at the nearby game of senet. ''That.''

She frowned exaggeratedly. ''Play board games?''

''Make them. Specifically, senet boards and pieces and casting sticks. AW Games? Heard of them? That's us. Named after my great-grandfather, Archibald Westwynter, who took out the first and only worldwide patent on senet. This was back at the turn of the last century, during the Divine Diaspora, just when Carter, Carnavon and all the other evangelising archaeologists were busy bringing the gods of Old Egypt to the rest of the world. My great- grandfather was swept up in the fervour just like everyone else. He was mad keen on board games so he set about trying to fathom the rules of senet. There seem to be as many versions of the game as there are papyrus records mentioning it. Old Archibald read them all, synthesised them into one, and copyrighted that version, taking the game out of the public domain and firmly into his own hands. Then he started manufacturing copies and selling them, and in next to no time he was a millionaire. My family's been in the business of flogging senet ever since.''

''I'd have thought that was a fun way to make a living.''

''Hardly. The company's so big now it virtually runs itself. Junior executives make sure the suppliers keep supplying the raw materials we need as cheaply as possible and the factories keep turning out the required number of units per month. All the person at the top has to do is oversee the junior executives and count the profits and check the balance sheets to see that no one's ripping us off. That and mount the occasional intellectual property lawsuit against copycats and rivals. A trained monkey could do it, let alone a graduate with a degree in Economics and Business Studies.''

''So you hated it.''

''Hated's too strong. I got tired of it. At the start there was a feeling of heritage, of family responsibility, but it palled pretty quickly. After that, it was just drudgery. I suppose I could have stuck it out. Grinned and bore it. After all, if it was good enough for my dad, and his dad, it ought to have been good enough for me. But then…''

David paused, waiting to be prompted. This was the hard part of his story, mirroring the part about Zafirah's father in her story. He wanted to be sure she didn't fail to notice the equivalence.

''Then?'' she said.

''My brother died,'' he said. ''Younger brother by four years. Steven. He was a midshipman aboard HPMS Immortal. A dreadnought. She went down with all hands during the Battle of the Aegean. Torpedoed by a Setic Crocodile-class hunter-killer sub that had sailed down through the Bosporus to help out the Neph fleet. She sank in three minutes flat, according to eyewitnesses. Holed below the waterline. No one aboard stood a chance. A nine-hundred-strong crew, all gone. And the Immortal was just one of eighteen Osirisiac ships that were lost that day.''

''Yet the Hegemony still won the battle.''

''A Pyrrhic victory, like your Liberators at Karnak. Gained at such a price, you wonder if it was worth it. There was talk in government of approaching the Nephs and Setics with a peace plan after that. Pressure groups waged campaigns, saying we couldn't afford too many more Aegeans. The Nephs seemed amenable to the idea. They made the right noises, anyway. But of course it all came to nothing. All the high priests and holy royal advisors in Europe were counselling against peace, saying it was contrary to the will of Isis and Osiris. The Horusites were dead set against it, too. Jeb Wilkins threatened sanctions and trade embargos and the like. Good ol' Pastor- President Wilkins. Called a peace plan 'selling the cow to buy five magic beans'. And as for the Setics, the Commissariat of Holy Affairs forbade the Afro-Arabian Synodical Council even from considering the idea, so the Nephs, of course, bent the knee and complied, because that's the Bi-Continental Pact for you.''

''An opportunity lost,'' said Zafirah.

David made a wry face. ''It's out of our hands, isn't it? Whether or not we humans want war, the gods always do. It's their will, and if we didn't do their bidding we'd lose their favour, and that's unthinkable. They fight among themselves; therefore we have to too. Osiris and Isis will never forgive Set for what he did, so Europe will always be at loggerheads with Russia and China, and with Africa and the Middle East as well, because of Nephthys's love for Set. And the United States will always back Europe up because Horus is a good son, loyal to his parents, and loathes Set. Anubis isn't that fond of Set either, so Japan and South-East Asia are forever snapping at China's rear, while South America's gone to hell because Horus's kids can't see eye to eye on anything. The situation's never going to improve. We've had non-stop war for a century and we'll probably never not have war. So…'' He shrugged. ''So one naval battle, however disastrous, is hardly likely to be the start of a sea change in global affairs. You can applaud people for mentioning suing for peace, for even thinking the idea, but you know it's never going to happen.''

''Very fatalistic,'' said Zafirah.

''Just realistic. Geopolitics is theopolitics, and there's nothing we can do about it.''

''You don't think humankind has any say in its own destiny?''

''Collectively. None at all. Individually? I'm not so sure. Look at me. I changed my course, didn't I? Joined the army. Felt I had to do something more practical with my life, something that served a higher purpose, something that would actually count. Steven's death…''

A bitter time. A dark patch in David's memory, like an ink-stained page in a book, or a long, cloudy season. His mother withdrawn, uncommunicative, often heavily sedated. Spending far too much of the day in Steven's empty bedroom, which was pristine, just as he'd left it the morning he drove off to Dartmouth to volunteer. A shrine to him. Either that or she was visiting an actual shrine, the local temple to Isis, where she'd offer sacrifices of milk and bread and pray to the Protector of Children for strength and guidance. Jack Westwynter, meanwhile, going through the motions of his life, walking as though in a dream. Drinking. Drinking slowly, steadily, stalwartly, from breakfast through till midnight. Each of them, husband and wife, struggling to fathom why Steven's death had happened and what either of them could have done to prevent it happening. Each, with hooded, accusing stares, blaming the other, and at the same time accepting the other's blame, feeling it might be merited. And David staying at the periphery of it all, leaving his parents to deal with their grief in their way while he dealt with his in his. Resenting Steven. Steven, for being such a wayward, rebellious sod. Steven, for turning his back on the golden opportunities he'd been presented with and going off to fight a war that would have no end. Steven, for being so…

So…

So right.

''I saw it,'' he said to Zafirah. ''I saw it in a flash on the way to work one morning. This was maybe a month after we got the letter of notification from the Admiralty, along with Steven's posthumous medal, a Golden Bee for, I don't know, Bravery While Drowning or whatever. I saw that Steven had had the right idea after all. Up till then I'd spent my life thinking he was a born pain in the arse, always doing the opposite of what he should, always going against the grain. Why be such a troublemaker? Why rock the boat? But then it struck me. He hadn't joined the navy to get away from his family and shirk his responsibilities. He'd done it so that he could be himself, not what someone else wanted him to be.''

''And you felt you needed that too,'' said Zafirah.

''That's it. That's pretty much it. Nail on the head. All my life, everyone else had been making choices for me. Now it was my turn to choose. So I tapped on the glass partition in the Roller. I told the chauffeur we weren't going to the office. I had him take a right turn at the Howard Carter Memorial instead of a left. Pretty soon we were outside a recruitment bureau. And that was that.''

''The poor little rich boy signed up with the army and started jumping out of aeroplanes. I bet Mummy and