The Age of Ra

desert wilderness, tenacious outposts of humanity, like limpets on a rock.

The moment the jeep pulled up in the main square, a horde of children appeared from nowhere and surrounded the vehicle.

''Al Ashraqa! Al Ashraqa!''

Along with the clamour of their voices came begging hands thrusting in from all directions. Steven stood up on the driving seat and dug out handfuls of boiled sweets from his pockets. He hurled them around, and the children went diving and scurrying to retrieve them. One little girl with a club foot wasn't agile enough to compete, and as the other children hurried off with their cheeks bulging, she was left prizeless. Steven strode over to her, ruffled her hair, and dropped three of the sweets into her cupped palms. He'd saved them specially for her.

''Shokran,'' the girl said with a dainty bob of her head, and hobbled off.

''Steven Westwynter the great philanthropist,'' said David wryly. ''Who'd have thought?''

''Ah shut up, Dave.''

''But you've never liked kids.''

''These ones I do. They're not just any old kids, anyway. They're my people. You could even call them my employees.''

''Child labour, eh?''

''You'll see. Oh, and by the way. While we're in public, I'm the Lightbringer, OK? Not Steven. Not brother. Lightbringer.''

''I see. OK.''

''Don't take it personally. I'm not embarrassed that we're related or anything. It's just, like I said, Steven Westwynter doesn't really exist any more. No one knows me by that name, not even Zafirah. I am what I am now. The mighty, mysterious leader. The man with no face, no past, no ties. You understand?''

Funnily enough, David thought he did.

They walked through the town. A passing pick-up truck honked its horn. Steven waved in response and called out, ''Assalaamu aleikum!'' A pair of plump women sitting in the shade of a shop awning smiled at him. He nodded back graciously. David noted an ease and comfort to his brother's movements. Steven was right at home here. He was known and liked, and liked it.

Choosing a house apparently at random, Steven went up and knocked on the door. A old man with a lazy left eye invited him in, all smiles and obsequies. Inside, a just-as-old woman, the man's wife, was peeling onions at a small table with a worn Formica top. She greeted Steven with a cry of delight and a hug, then chatted to him for several minutes while her husband plonked himself down in front of the TV set that was blaring at top volume in the corner. The news was on, and every other item, as far as David could tell, was a piece from a war correspondent, much like the news back home. There was a report from the Bering Sea, where Horusite and Setic naval divisions were clashing among the floes of springtime brash ice. Another from the Indian subcontinent, where tensions in Kashmir were rising. Another from the suburbs of divided Warsaw, where Osirisiac forces were skirmishing with Setic forces along the fortified banks of the river Vistula. Freegypt wasn't involved in the global conflict, but the global conflict still impinged on Freegypt. People here wanted to know what was going on outside their borders, perhaps if only to remind themselves how lucky they were that it didn't directly affect them. For now.

The old man asked David a question, pointing at the TV screen.

''Kareem thinks you're a journalist,'' Steven said. ''He wants to know if you've come to do a report on me. Not a bad idea if you play along, just for now. Nod and look interested in me.''

David tried to do as instructed.

The old man grinned and spoke triumphantly, grinning at Steven.

''He's saying I'm a hero,'' Steven said. ''I brought peace to Freegypt, and I'm going to bring peace to the whole world. He's saying you should tell people that.''

''You tell Kareem not to worry. I may be very new to this journalism lark but I'm sure I already have a clear picture of what the Lightbringer's like.''

Steven relayed this to the old man, though probably not giving an exact translation of David's words.

Shortly, just as David was beginning to wonder what the point of this visit was, the old woman stood up and produced a key from around her neck. She and Steven invited David through a bead-curtained doorway and along to a back room.

David was expecting a bedroom, a pantry, something like that. He was not expecting the old woman to unlock a door and usher him into an armoury.

There were guns everywhere. Rifles in open crates. Machine guns and sub-machine guns racked on the walls. Pistols piled high. Ammunition of every calibre lying around singly or belted or in boxes. The air reeked of gunmetal and grease.

There were grenades too, and landmines, and antipersonnel devices, and bundles of high explosive. Everywhere he looked, David saw weaponry and more weaponry. There were even ba lances — Setic, Horusite, Nephthysian, Osirisiac, Anubian, the whole gamut.

''Holy shit,'' he breathed.

''Yeah,'' said Steven. ''Kareem and Fatima seem such a sweet, ordinary old couple, don't they? Who'd suspect they're hoarding a mini-arsenal on the premises? And that's not all. This way.''

He led David through the house and outside. At the back there was an enclosure, walled on the right and left, the rear opening out onto the desert. Laundry flapped on a line, root vegetables grew in a well-tended kitchen garden… and occupying more than half of the available space, swathed in a large pegged-down tarpaulin, was a Scarab tank.

Steven dragged the tarpaulin off to expose the tank in all its fearsome glory. It was parked with its drive sphere butting up against the rear of the house and its quartet of blaster nozzles aiming out towards the horizon. Its smooth, rounded contours contrasted with the four-square regularity of its surroundings. The photovoltaic plates that covered its back, like a carapace, gleamed a soft, faintly iridescent blue.

''Captured from the Nephs by the Red Sea Fellahin,'' Steven said, ''then passed on to us. The ba cell's at about half capacity, which isn't bad. The Fellahin didn't squander it. And all that's needed is a day's charging in the sunshine to get the thing rolling again. The radiance of Ra is free ba for everyone. You don't have to pray for it.''

David ignored the tinge of sarcasm in his brother's voice. He was recalling the first time he ever saw Scarab tanks in action at first hand, during exercises on Salisbury Plain. They'd moved so lightly, that was what had surprised him. For such large vehicles they scrambled and bounced like dune buggies. That was thanks to their relatively thin armour and their drive spheres which, mounted on dual-axis gimbals, gave them turn-on-a-sixpence manoeuvrability. The downside, as he learned from one tank commander later, was that they were a pig of a ride. If you wanted to know how it felt to be the beads in maracas, spend some time in a Scarab.

''We have eighteen of them including this one,'' Steven went on. ''All solar powered, naturally. Round here you don't get any other kind, and anyway they're cheaper and easier to run than your North European diesel models. Some say they're inferior to the diesels but I disagree. They don't need refuelling every couple of hours, for one thing, and the power to weight ratio's roughly the same — solar cells have a lower b.h.p. output than an engine but aren't nearly as heavy, so it evens out. The only drawback with the solar version is that it's useless past midnight if you've run it too hard during the daytime. But that's not the end of the world, especially if you're up against other solar Scarabs. Then everyone's in the same boat, or rather tank.''

''Eighteen,'' said David. It seemed like a lot, and yet not nearly enough for what Steven apparently had in mind.

''We've some armoured personnel carriers as well, and a couple of half-tracks which are pretty much antiques but still going strong. I think they date back to the Belgian Congo campaign. Mid-1950s at any rate, but they built things to last in those days.''

''All embedded around the town.''

''Correct. Along with a good twenty or so weapons dumps, each as big as Kareem and Fatima's, some of them bigger. The fruits of three years of diligent stockpiling. As you've seen we've got some ba tech but most of the guns are conventional. Imported from South America, where else? The South Americans love their bullets and cordite, don't they? Have to, I suppose, given how thrifty with their ba the children of Horus are. Minor gods, less divine essence to spare — stands to reason. If the gods won't provide, there's always human ingenuity to fall back on, and Brazilian and Peruvian