Daddy weren't pleased about that.''
''Furious.''
''One son killed in action, now the other looking like he wanted to go the same way…''
''My father tried to pay them to de-enlist me. Offered them who knows how much. They wouldn't take it. They didn't need the money. They needed the warm bodies.''
''But were you being selfless or selfish?''
''Honestly?'' David frowned. ''I don't know. A bit of both, probably. What I do know is, I make a decent soldier. The army certainly thought so, packing me off to Sandhurst straight away for six months to earn my commission. That shows confidence in me, and I deserve it. This is one job I can do with almost no doubts about my motives or capabilities. I enjoy it — the comradeship, the regimented life, the sense of purpose, all of it. This is, I think, what I'm meant for, and I'll do it for as long as I can. I'm content with that.''
''Even though, as you point out, the war is unlikely to end?'' Zafirah said. ''Even though taking part in it has come close to killing you?''
David pondered this. ''Better to do what you want to do and be happy than do what you don't and be unhappy. That's what Steven showed me. And hey…''
He raised his beer bottle.
''I'm still here, aren't I?''
Later, there was a moment. Just a moment. Zafirah had scored them accommodation in a fleapit hotel opposite the Medinat Habu temple. Her Liberators of Luxor staggered drunkenly to bed. She and David were the last two left standing. The time came for them to say goodnight and go off to their separate rooms. Or perhaps not.
They had exchanged truths about themselves over the meal. They'd reached out to each other, tendering painful reminiscences like olive branches. There was, now, something established between them, although David could not say for sure what it was. Not quite intimacy but almost.
They faced each other in the flickeringly lit corridor. Zafirah looked up at him. He noticed a stippling of downy hair across her upper lip, a moustache so thin and faint it could only be seen at this proximity. It wasn't a turn-off. If anything, the opposite. He almost put out a hand to touch her. He almost lowered his face to kiss her. He sensed it would be OK if he did. It would be the most natural thing in the world.
A moment.
Zafirah shied away.
''Big day tomorrow,'' she said, heading across creaking floorboards to her room. ''We need our sleep.''
The door closed behind her.
David felt the temptation to go over and knock on it.
But the temptation wasn't strong enough. It was a seed that needed deeper soil.
He went to bed. Mosquitoes whined around him infuriatingly all night long.
There are worlds within worlds within worlds. A god may be in any of them and all of them. A god may, to take an example, be voyaging aboard his Solar Barque, that aspect of him fully present there, conversing, laughing, brooding. He may at the same time be elsewhere, in another aspect. To be a god is not to be limited to one specific location or moment. Even the least among the Pantheon may manifest in two or more places at once, and Ra is anything but the least among the Pantheon.
Ra is at the palace of Osiris and Isis. He stands in a courtyard that is both as large as might be imagined and as large as can be imagined. Colonnades surround him in a rectangle, leading to halls, which lead to countless other halls. The columns are topped with palm-leaf capitals. Their sides are plated with electrum. Garlands of white jasmine are wreathed around them.
At the centre of the courtyard a fountain plays, and in its crystal-clear arcs and jets of water can be seen glimpses of life on earth. Images of humans appear and disappear, shimmering within this limpid liquid screen. A baby being born. A child at school. A pair of young lovers, coupling. A man and woman getting married. A worker receiving a promotion. A mother paying tribute at a temple. A grandfather on his deathbed. Fleeting moments, there then gone. Like human lives. Over in a blink.
Osiris and Isis enter the courtyard hand in hand. At home they prefer to go naked, apart from their headdresses, which are things of golden light that float above them rather than things that are worn, more halo than hat. Osiris bears the Atef crown, a double-plumed mitre with a small solar disc at the tip. Isis's headdress shifts between a throne and a vulture, depending on which angle it is viewed from.
The couple kneel in obeisance to their great-great-uncle.
''You honour us with your presence, O Giver of Life,'' says Osiris.
Isis claps her hands. ''Mead!'' she commands. ''Olives! Dates! Figs! Okra!''
The victuals are brought in immediately on salvers, which are carried by childlike creatures, darting, nebulous beings, sibilant-footed and with something of the bird of prey about them.
The three gods sit, eat and drink.
''You are heavy-hearted, Great-Great-Uncle,'' Isis says at last, once the obligations of both host and guest have been discharged — stomachs are full, cups are empty. ''Tell us what is on your mind.''
Ra heaves a sigh. ''In truth I do not know where to begin.''
''So many sorrows?''
''Just one, but it is formless and seems to have neither head nor tail nor middle. I cannot fathom the shape of it.''
''Is it us, All-Father?'' asks Osiris. ''Your family? That would be my guess.'' Across Osiris's bare skin can be seen a series of fierce red scars. One encircles his arm, just below the shoulder. Another rings his neck. Several criss-cross his torso. His body was torn asunder, split into fourteen pieces, and those pieces flung to different locations across what was once called Egypt. They were eventually reunited, the flesh fused together again, but the imprint of the ghastly dismemberment remains. Osiris possesses a perfect physique, gorgeous in itself. The scars add a strange, savage beauty of their own.
''Our disagreements have always pained you, Ra,'' Isis says, taking up her brother-husband's theme. ''I see it in both of your eyes when you watch us. Your sun eye dims. Your moon eye wanes. You wish we could learn to set aside our differences and live in harmony.''
''That may be it,'' says Ra. ''I had thought myself resigned to your endless grudges and enmities, but perhaps, in my dotage, I am finding them more upsetting than I used to.''
The word dotage sparks a flurry of polite protest from the married siblings: no, no, you are not old, your mind is as sharp as ever, you have many an eon left in you.
Ra swats the supportive comments aside. ''It aggrieves me that the very act which was intended to beget unity has merely exacerbated the divisions between you. When the First Family handed control of the earth to all of you, it was meant to bring you together, a shared responsibility. Instead, it seems to have had the opposite effect, providing you with yet another bone of contention.''
''It is early days still,'' Isis points out. ''Barely a century has passed since the First Family finally destroyed the last of the other gods. A hundred years — you might say that our reign is only in its infancy. Perhaps in another hundred years things will have settled down.''
Osiris looks unconvinced. ''I would never wish to contradict my beloved bride, She At Whose Teat Every Newborn Suckles,'' he says. ''However, I, for one, cannot foresee a time when I shall not hold my brother Set in utter contempt. How can I contemplate forgiving what he did to me, let alone forgetting? That son of a hyena tried to overthrow me. He tricked me into a coffin he'd had made for me. He told me it was a gift, built to fit only me. I climbed in, he slammed the lid and nailed it down, and then he threw the coffin into the Nile and left me to drown. And that was just the start of it.''
Isis pats her husband's knee. She has heard this tirade of his a thousand thousand times. Osiris
