never tires of it, nor of the righteous indignation it allows him to feel.
''You have to admit, my husband, it was partly your own fault,'' she says, in a tone of gentle wifely mockery. ''It was rather obvious that our brother was setting you up for something. Do you not know Set? Deceit is second nature to him.''
''Pardon me for being so trusting!'' Osiris snaps. ''You might have seen a trap. All I saw was a gesture of fraternal kindness.''
''But you knew how jealous Set was of you. You knew how he resented the way the people of Egypt loved and worshipped you. Anyway, you weren't stuck in that coffin for long. I came and found you at Byblos, on the Lebanese shore. The moment I heard about a mystical, miraculous tree growing there, I knew it was you. I took the coffin back to Egypt and was preparing to give you a proper burial…''
''When Set turned up again,'' says Osiris, ''and snatched the coffin and cut me up into pieces.'' Reliving the memory brings a hardness to his face and voice. ''Do you know what that feels like? Trust me, you don't want to.''
''But then we found you again, dear. Nephthys and I. We searched high and low and we gathered all the bits of you together and we made you whole once more.''
''Nearly whole.'' Osiris peers sullenly down at his lap, where used to reside the one piece of his body that the two goddesses failed to recover. A fish had devoured his penis. Now in its place a wooden phallus has been fitted. Handsomely proportioned, a fine specimen of polished cedar, but not, of course, the real thing. A fully functioning substitute but not the same.
''And I,'' says Ra, ''breathed life back into you, so that you and Isis might lie together again, an event from which issued a son. The tale has a happy ending, Osiris. Harm was done but not, I feel, irreparable harm.''
''Not irreparable!?'' scoffs his great-great-nephew. ''I have a fake cock that might argue otherwise.''
''Well, I have no complaints in that department,'' says Isis with a sly smile. ''None at all.''
The comment soothes her husband. ''Thank you, my love,'' says the ever-uxorious Osiris. ''I live to please you. But even so, were it not for Set I would be intact, a whole person.''
''And Set is doing his best to atone for it,'' says Ra. ''It and many other crimes. Can you not be content with that? Can you not simply let the matter lie now?''
Osiris considers the suggestion — for all of a second.
''By killing me Set condemned me to be ruler of the dead,'' he says. ''It's a position I am honoured to hold and I discharge my duties gladly.''
What duties? Ra thinks to himself. Anubis does all the work. You are nominally in charge but it's your nephew who actually supervises the labourers in the Field of Reeds.
''But,'' Osiris goes on, ''it's something I'd rather have accepted by choice than had thrust upon me. Given that and Set's other offences against me, am I willing to let bygones be bygones with the so-called Lord of the Desert? No.'' He thumps his fist on the bench. ''No I am not.''
''And in the meantime,'' says Ra, ''down on earth, humankind is engulfed in a maelstrom of conflict, largely because you and Set cannot sort things out between you.''
''So be it,'' says Osiris. ''The mortals worship us, hence they must act in accordance with our wishes and desires. That is the way it is and must be.''
Spoken with finality. No room for compromise.
Ra stands and takes his leave. Osiris and Isis escort him off the premises with every courtesy and good wish.
Ra is back on the Solar Barque. Ra is a single being in a single place. He always has been.
Maat, at the tiller, says, ''My lord? All is well?''
Sombrely Ra nods. ''I now know what I have to do. It is a hard undertaking, perhaps an impossible one, but I must attempt it anyway. Somehow I must end my descendants' warring. It has all gone far enough. I must unite them in peace.''
Maat smiles to herself, a calm, wise smile. Ra has decreed it. So will it come to pass.
Ra rubs his face.
''Peace?'' he says to himself. ''I must be mad.''
It was early evening, and people crossed the river like pilgrims. Passenger ferries groaned with the weight of them. Feluccas zigzagged back and forth, riding low in the water on the outbound journey, packed to the gunwales with human cargo. It seemed as if the entire population of Luxor was making the trip from one side of the Nile to the other, a mass migration. Everyone shouted, everyone looked eager, even the children too small to understand what was going on. There was an atmosphere of festival, and an undertow of solemn urgency.
Having reached the east bank, David walked with Zafirah and the Liberators and the crowd, through the bottleneck that was the bridge over the El Fadiyah Canal, then across the plain towards the Ramesseum, through the Valley of the Nobles and on to the Temple of Hatshepsut. This was where the pilgrimage ended, where people stopped and congregated, in the flat causeway in front of that huge mortuary edifice, which rose in a series of terraces against the face of a sheer limestone cliff.
A broad ramp led up to the temple's second tier. David saw floodlights arrayed around the temple, and a sound system was in place, all centred on the podium which stood at the head of the ramp between a pair of stone lions. He looked around him. The crowd already numbered around a thousand, and more and more were arriving, swarming in from all directions, with still half an hour to go before the event was due to begin. The sun was setting over the Theban Mountain. The babble of excited voices was deafening.
''Taking mental notes?'' asked Zafirah. ''Compiling a report for your superiors?''
David started, a little guiltily. ''Just observing. You make it sound like I'm a spy or something. Don't you remember? You invited me along. You wanted me to see all this.''
''I'm only teasing. You look full of curiosity, that's all.''
''Well, I am curious. Who wouldn't be? This is interesting.''
''Is that why you haven't checked in with headquarters?''
''What do you mean?''
''You've had all of today to yourself. There are payphones all over Luxor. There's one in the lobby of our hotel. Yet you haven't tried to contact anyone to tell them you're alive.''
''How do you know that? Maybe you're the one who's been spying.''
''Isn't it true?''
''So what if it is?''
''Then I'm intrigued,'' Zafirah said. ''Surely the good little soldier's first duty, if he's missing believed dead, is to let his commanding officers know he's alive. Unless, of course, he doesn't want them to know he's gone AWOL.''
''I'm not AWOL. As far as the army's aware, I'm KIA.''
''As of today,'' said Zafirah, ''I'd say you were AWOL.''
David thought briefly. ''Put it this way. Everyone thinks I'm dead. For the top brass, that's a desirable outcome. Awkward for them otherwise. So for the time being I might as well remain dead. It's not doing anyone any harm, and it's strangely invigorating.''
She looked wry. ''Being dead — invigorating?''
''Yes, I know.''
''What about your parents? Don't they deserve to know you're all right?''
''My parents…''
