The Age of Ra

10. Lightbringer

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…''

Jack Westwynter: ''I have no son. Do you hear me, David? As of now, unless you recant this ridiculous decision of yours, I have no son. Go off and get yourself killed. See if I care.''

''I haven't spoken to them in five years,'' David told her. ''If I called them now, my dad would be too drunk to pick up the phone and my mum would be too away with the sedative fairies even to hear it ringing.''

''Sad.''

''Yeah, the cord of the Westwynter dynasty has pretty much unravelled.'' His laugh was eggshell-brittle. ''I'm the last frayed, loose end of it.''

''It's never too late, David Westwynter. You'd be surprised. Nothing is beyond repair.''

''Where does this boundless optimism of yours come from, Zafirah?''

''From experience. From faith in people. From having met despair and seeing it to be the enemy of life.''

''And from the revered Lightbringer as well?''

''Oh yes,'' Zafirah said earnestly. ''Him most of all.''

''Then I can't wait to hear what he has to say,'' said David.

And he didn't have to wait long. Within twenty minutes the sky was dark, the area in front of the temple was thronged, and the show began.

First, with a fusillade of clunks, the floodlights came on. A few thousand voices hushed. Then recorded music emerged from the huge banks of speakers — the supple skirl of an arghul, long reedy notes rising and falling with flickering trills in between. David couldn't help think of a snake charmer enticing a cobra from a basket. The arghul was joined by the shiver of a sistrum rattle and the shimmer of a tambourine, which together created an understated but insistent rhythm.

There was no crescendo. Slowly the volume was turned down, the music faded away, and then a man stepped out from within the temple and strode casually up to the podium. A few among the crowd whistled and cheered, but for the most part people were quiet. Rather than come out with a bang, as David had been anticipating, the Lightbringer had made a subdued entrance. This wasn't just some rabble-rousing demagogue, he realised. This was something different, subtler — perhaps even more potent.

He peered at the Lightbringer. From a distance of a hundred feet or so he could make out a reasonably tall man. He was wearing a plain green jumpsuit that revealed a trim figure. His posture was relaxed and self-assured. As for the face…

It was no face.

The Lightbringer's entire head was sheathed tightly by some kind of thin white material, muslin or gauze. His features were mere indentations. No protrusions. No hair, no ears. There was just a pale, oblate sphere above the collar of the jumpsuit, somewhat like a moon. The Lightbringer's hands were leather-gloved. None of his skin was exposed. Nothing distinguished him. He could have been anyone. No one. Everyone. And David could tell that that was the point. The Lightbringer was anonymous. He was universal. He was a Freegyptian Everyman.

When he spoke his voice was warm and mellifluous, reminiscent of the arghul in its sinuous ebb and flow. There was a depth to it, a resonance, that made it very easy on the ear.

Zafirah translated.

''My friends,'' the Lightbringer said, ''my fellow Freegyptians. I thank you all for coming. You have travelled here from all four corners of our beautiful, independent nation, from desert and town and coast and mountain, to share in a glorious moment.''

The amplified boom of his oratory rolled across the crowd, echoing afar.

''Many of you have until not so long ago been implacable enemies. Now you come here as allies, in a spirit of togetherness, willing to set aside hostility in the name of a greater good. The infighting which has plagued Freegypt for years and prevented her from becoming the mighty state we know she can be, is at an end. Your presence here proves it. Foes are now as brothers. Factions are no more. I have brokered truces among you. I have brought warlord face to face with warlord and established common ground. I have worked hard and tirelessly to show you all that the greatest threat facing us is not ourselves, it's the world beyond our borders. Man should not struggle endlessly against man. Man, instead, should be standing up against his common foe — the gods.''

David felt a frisson of shock as Zafirah relayed these words. He glanced at the sky, half expecting a bolt of lightning to descend from the heavens and fry the Lightbringer on the spot.

''Infidels they call us,'' the Lightbringer went on, unfried. ''They mean it as an insult, but to me it is a badge of honour. Do we toil under the yoke of divine domination? No, we do not. Do we pander to deities, cravenly begging for their blessing and sacrificing to them in the hope that our crops will grow and our children will be healthy and we may be granted ba to power our weapons? No, we do not. Do we live in constant fear of offending these aloof, supreme rulers, to the point where we send off generations of young men and women to fight and die in wars waged unceasingly in their names? No, we do not. Are we victims of their whims and caprices? No! We are Freegyptians and we thrive without assistance from above and we are nobody's slaves!''

This brought ragged hoots of assent from the crowd. The Lightbringer made a calming gesture, keen to show that he wanted things to remain low-key. It was almost as though he was chatting to a roomful of people, not addressing a rally of thousands. Yet still he was able to hold everyone's attention. That, thought David, took some doing. No doubt about it: the man had charisma.

''So listen. Listen well. The time is coming. Our forces are gathering. We are an army and soon we will make our move. We are going to provoke the gods. We are going to thrust a stick into the hornets' nest that is the Pantheon, and we are going to rouse their anger. It will not be easy and it will not be safe. There will be consequences, dangerous ones. But it must be done. And why must it be done? Because the gods are destroying the world. Their feuds ravage every continent. Their wars murder millions. This has been going on for a hundred years and it cannot continue. Someone must rise against them and dethrone them, and that someone is — and can only be — us. And I tell you this, my friends: when it is all over, when our crusade is done, when we are victorious, the entire human race will thank us for it. Better yet, they will remember us for it, for all time.''

He spread his arms.

''Look around you. This temple and all the others nearby, these tombs, these resting places of ancient kings and queens, were built with just one aim, to ensure immortality for the people they contain. Seti, Hatshepsut, Tuthmosis, Ramses after Ramses, they raised these mausoleums so that after they died we would always know their names and their deeds. But time passed. Statues crumbled. Inscriptions were defaced. Treasures were robbed. Wind and rain eroded. Sand drifted and buried. Most of these monuments ended up lost and forgotten. The vanity of pharaohs' dreams.''

He lowered his arms.

''You, Freegyptians. I promise you. Unlike them, you will never be forgotten. Once you have helped rid the world of the pestilential Pantheon, your fame will be celebrated down through the centuries. You will be known forever as peacemakers, creators of harmony, builders of utopia, of paradise on earth. You will be the ones who ended a dark age of violence and servitude. You, I, all of us… will be Lightbringers!''

Applause came. It rippled through the crowd like rain, and up on the podium the Lightbringer acknowledged it modestly, standing back from the microphone with his head slightly bowed. David studied the faces around him, looking for manic fervour. All he saw was stolid conviction, a belief that was neither wide-eyed nor narrow-minded. The Lightbringer's speech hadn't been intended to whip up emotions. He wasn't here to make converts or gain new recruits. He had won these people over already, and the aim of the rally was simply to remind them of their purpose and stiffen their resolve.

Soon he withdrew into the temple, and the crowd broke up.

On the way back to Luxor, Zafirah asked David what he'd made of it all.

''Frankly?''

''All right.''

''I think the man's mad, and so are you. Provoking the gods? Ever heard of the word hubris?''

Anger flashed in her eyes. ''Tell me, do you really think the gods care about you? Isis, Osiris, they want nothing from you except worship and obedience. Your faith in them gives them power, and they pay it back in dribs and drabs, a bit of ba here, a prayer answered there, that's all. It isn't even a relationship. It's a dictatorship.''

''It works.''

''It could work without them too. Man, for the first time in history, could rule himself. He could be master of his own destiny.''

''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?