The Age of Ra

''But even assuming that were possible, do you reckon it would usher in a golden age? No war, no suffering, no inequality? Do you really, truly think we humans could do a better job of running things?''

''I don't know,'' said Zafirah. ''But we could at least try.''

She didn't talk to him for the rest of that evening, and he didn't see her for any of the next morning. He spent the time making enquiries, figuring out the best way of leaving Luxor and going north. An English-speaking felucca pilot offered him passage to Cairo but the price was steep and David had no money. A train ticket was marginally less costly but the problem, lack of funds, remained.

To remedy this, he went in search of somewhere where senet was played competitively for cash. He found a small square near a souk, filled with old, rickety trestle tables and old, rickety men. He had nothing to stake except the phial of myrrh around his neck, but someone took pity on him and agreed to a best of three. The Luxorian clearly felt this Osirisiac outsider was going to be a pushover and a few fluid ounces of myrrh wouldn't be a bad return on a few minutes' playing time.

So as not to hurt the man's feelings, David let him win the first game. Then he trounced him comprehensively on the next two. The Luxorian was horrified but he paid up without quibble.

David took his small winnings and, over the course of the next few hours, parlayed it into a considerable sum. A buzz built up around the square as he took on all comers and beat them. Soon the locals were queuing up to challenge him, and others stood around his table betting on the outcome of the games or simply enjoying the novelty. Senet was, after all, Ancient Egyptian in origin, and a traditional local pastime. How could this Englishman be so unvanquishably good at it?

None of them could have known that senet was in David's blood. It was the family game. At his father's knee he had learned tactics and strategies, and Jack Westwynter would always, of course, play for money, never for matchsticks or other tokens or even for fun, so David had had to become proficient at the game pretty quickly or else he would see his weekly allowance get wiped out in a matter of moments.

Again and again David threw the six casting sticks, chose a counter, moved it the appropriate number of squares, and bumped back one of his opponent's counters or else built up an unassailable three-counters-in-a-row formation. Again and again he reached the last squares on the board first and occupied four of the five Houses marked there, making sure to leave the House of Humiliation open so that his opponent kept being forced to land on it and have his counter sent back to the nearest unoccupied square. Again and again he cleared all five of his counters off the board first while the other man managed to remove, at most, two of his own. For David it was almost a mechanical skill, senet, a process governed by logic and statistics, with the casting sticks providing an element of randomness but not a significant one. There wasn't a variable the sticks could bring to the game that David couldn't adapt to his advantage through sheer familiarity with the workings of the board. Luck was scarcely a factor if you had a potential move in mind for each of the six possible outcomes of a throw. He was never without permutations.

David left the square a couple of hundred guinay to the better, plenty to cover the cost of his trip to Cairo. Once in the capital he planned on presenting himself at the Hegemony consulate and asking their advice on what to do. If the army wanted him back, no questions asked, that was fine. But there might be difficulties. Zafirah had been right. He was on the verge of being Absent Without Leave, if indeed he hadn't crossed that line already. The question was, did he owe the army his loyalty any more, given that they had deliberately dropped a fusion bomb on him? For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, he was feeling rudderless, unsure of his place in the scheme of things. Hierarchy and discipline gave shape to the world; that was what he had always believed. Life was made easy by adherence to a rigid structure. But maybe that only really worked when you were at the top of the ladder, when you were doing well. The further down the rungs you went, the more of a victim of circumstances you became and the less it mattered whether or not you were in control.

Not that that was necessarily terrible. There was something to be said for being without responsibilities, for not having to answer to the army or his family or anyone except himself. David had a weird, free-floating sense of possibility — infinite possibility. As he'd said to Zafirah, being ''dead'' was strangely invigorating. He could do as he chose, especially now that he had a fat wad of local currency in his back pocket. He could go home or not go home. He could be Lieutenant David Westwynter again or, if he liked, if he dared, something completely different.

He stopped for a coffee at a cafe on the Sharia al Mahattit. The coffee turned into a fresh orange juice and the orange juice into a couple of bottles of beer, and it was as he was halfway through the second of those that Zafirah and two of her Liberators found him. The two Liberators, called Saeed and Salim, looked like twins but were in fact cousins.

''Where have you been?'' she snapped. ''We've been looking all over. Come on. There's no time to waste.''

''What? What's going on?''

''The Lightbringer. He wishes to meet you.''

''Me? Why?''

''He just does. Now come with us.''

David glanced at Saeed and Salim, both large men, both wearing impenetrably dark sunglasses. He had a feeling Zafirah hadn't brought them along just for company.

He picked up his beer bottle, drained it, set it down again.

He wasn't really in the mood for trouble.

Besides, infinite possibility…

Why the hell not?

11. Amulets

They went in procession up the ramp to the Temple of Hatshepsut, Zafirah leading the way, David following close behind, Saeed and Salim at the rear.

The terrace at the top of the ramp led to a second ramp, which in turn led to a courtyard. Everywhere, there were brightly coloured reliefs depicting birds and trees and gods and goddesses and a great deal else that David didn't have time to take in. Across the courtyard lay a pink granite doorway, hewn out from the rockface. Passing through this they entered a long subterranean chamber, gloomily lit, blessedly cool.

The Lightbringer was seated at the far end, in heavy shadow, his masked head ghostly in the darkness. Zafirah strode up to him and the two of them spoke for a while in low tones, the Lightbringer casting frequent glances over Zafirah's shoulder at David. It was impossible to tell what the glances meant. That all-white oval of a face was utterly indecipherable, a blank sheet of paper.

While they were talking, David spotted the six Bedouin strongboxes stacked in a corner of the chamber. One of them lay open, its padlock having been prised off with a crowbar.

He craned his neck. His eyes widened.

Inside were amulets, dozens of them. They were the sort of trinkets you could buy at any shop or temple, made of die-cut steel, machine tooled, the sort that factories in Formosa and the Crimea churned out by the million. Each was slung on a cord of knotted leather and was designed to be worn around the neck as a fashion accessory or a symbol of faith or both. David saw an ankh, a scarab, a crown, a hand, an eye, a representation of cow-headed Hathor, and countless others, all jumbled together. They were the most ordinary-looking objects imaginable.

Except, these ones weren't ordinary. You could tell. These amulets had ba. They were infused with it. Together, en masse, they pulsated with it. It radiated out of the strongbox like an aura. Somewhere deep in his head, deeper than his ears, David could hear a throbbing. At the back of his throat, he could taste the power.

The Lightbringer noticed him staring and let out a small, mask-muffled laugh. He said something to Zafirah, which she translated into English.

''The Lightbringer wishes to know what you think of our gift to him.''

''Well, since he asks,'' David said, ''those things are completely illegal.''

As Zafirah relayed the answer, the Lightbringer shrugged and laughed. His reply, via her, was: ''Illegal they