The Age of Ra Read online

  ''And you gave it up for an officer's commission and paltry pay,'' Zafirah said. ''Or did you lose it all and join the army because you were out of other options? Either way, that makes you a fool.''

  ''Harsh.''

  ''Although in one case slightly less of a fool than the other.''

  ''Which one?''

  ''Which did you do?''

  ''Gave it up, voluntarily.''

  ''That's the one. Because...?''

  ''Because, in the first place, none of it was my achievement,'' David said, smarting somewhat. ''I inherited my position on the board of directors. I didn't have to work for it and earn it. The company was founded by my great-grandfather and the job of running it has been passed on through the generations like a hand-me-down suit.''

  ''And what was this job? What did you actually do?''

  He gestured at the nearby game of senet. ''That.''

  She frowned exaggeratedly. ''Play board games?''

  ''Make them. Specifically, senet boards and pieces and casting sticks. AW Games? Heard of them? That's us. Named after my great-grandfather, Archibald Westwynter, who took out the first and only worldwide patent on senet. This was back at the turn of the last century, during the Divine Diaspora, just when Carter, Carnavon and all the other evangelising archaeologists were busy bringing the gods of Old Egypt to the rest of the world. My great-grandfather was swept up in the fervour just like everyone else. He was mad keen on board games so he set about trying to fathom the rules of senet. There seem to be as many versions of the game as there are papyrus records mentioning it. Old Archibald read them all, synthesised them into one, and copyrighted that version, taking the game out of the public domain and firmly into his own hands. Then he started manufacturing copies and selling them, and in next to no time he was a millionaire. My family's been in the business of flogging senet ever since.''

  ''I'd have thought that was a fun way to make a living.''

  ''Hardly. The company's so big now it virtually runs itself. Junior executives make sure the suppliers keep supplying the raw materials we need as cheaply as possible and the factories keep turning out the required number of units per month. All the person at the top has to do is oversee the junior executives and count the profits and check the balance sheets to see that no one's ripping us off. That and mount the occasional intellectual property lawsuit against copycats and rivals. A trained monkey could do it, let alone a graduate with a degree in Economics and Business Studies.''

  ''So you hated it.''

  ''Hated's too strong. I got tired of it. At the start there was a feeling of heritage, of family responsibility, but it palled pretty quickly. After that, it was just drudgery. I suppose I could have stuck it out. Grinned and bore it. After all, if it was good enough for my dad, and his dad, it ought to have been good enough for me. But then...''

  David paused, waiting to be prompted. This was the hard part of his story, mirroring the part about Zafirah's father in her story. He wanted to be sure she didn't fail to notice the equivalence.

  ''Then?'' she said.

  ''My brother died,'' he said. ''Younger brother by four years. Steven. He was a midshipman aboard HPMS Immortal. A dreadnought. She went down with all hands during the Battle of the Aegean. Torpedoed by a Setic Crocodile-class hunter-killer sub that had sailed down through the Bosporus to help out the Neph fleet. She sank in three minutes flat, according to eyewitnesses. Holed below the waterline. No one aboard stood a chance. A nine-hundred-strong crew, all gone. And the Immortal was just one of eighteen Osirisiac ships that were lost that day.''

  ''Yet the Hegemony still won the battle.''

  ''A Pyrrhic victory, like your Liberators at Karnak. Gained at such a price, you wonder if it was worth it. There was talk in government of approaching the Nephs and Setics with a peace plan after that. Pressure groups waged campaigns, saying we couldn't afford too many more Aegeans. The Nephs seemed amenable to the idea. They made the right noises, anyway. But of course it all came to nothing. All the high priests and holy royal advisors in Europe were counselling against peace, saying it was contrary to the will of Isis and Osiris. The Horusites were dead set against it, too. Jeb Wilkins threatened sanctions and trade embargos and the like. Good ol' Pastor-President Wilkins. Called a peace plan 'selling the cow to buy five magic beans'. And as for the Setics, the Commissariat of Holy Affairs forbade the Afro-Arabian Synodical Council even from considering the idea, so the Nephs, of course, bent the knee and complied, because that's the Bi-Continental Pact for you.''

  ''An opportunity lost,'' said Zafirah.

  David made a wry face. ''It's out of our hands, isn't it? Whether or not we humans want war, the gods always do. It's their will, and if we didn't do their bidding we'd lose their favour, and that's unthinkable. They fight among themselves; therefore we have to too. Osiris and Isis will never forgive Set for what he did, so Europe will always be at loggerheads with Russia and China, and with Africa and the Middle East as well, because of Nephthys's love for Set. And the United States will always back Europe up because Horus is a good son, loyal to his parents, and loathes Set. Anubis isn't that fond of Set either, so Japan and South-East Asia are forever snapping at China's rear, while South America's gone to hell because Horus's kids can't see eye to eye on anything. The situation's never going to improve. We've had non-stop war for a century and we'll probably never not have war. So...'' He shrugged. ''So one naval battle, however disastrous, is hardly likely to be the start of a sea change in global affairs. You can applaud people for mentioning suing for peace, for even thinking the idea, but you know it's never going to happen.''

  ''Very fatalistic,'' said Zafirah.

  ''Just realistic. Geopolitics is theopolitics, and there's nothing we can do about it.''

  ''You don't think humankind has any say in its own destiny?''

  ''Collectively. None at all. Individually? I'm not so sure. Look at me. I changed my course, didn't I? Joined the army. Felt I had to do something more practical with my life, something that served a higher purpose, something that would actually count. Steven's death...''

  A bitter time. A dark patch in David's memory, like an ink-stained page in a book, or a long, cloudy season. His mother withdrawn, uncommunicative, often heavily sedated. Spending far too much of the day in Steven's empty bedroom, which was pristine, just as he'd left it the morning he drove off to Dartmouth to volunteer. A shrine to him. Either that or she was visiting an actual shrine, the local temple to Isis, where she'd offer sacrifices of milk and bread and pray to the Protector of Children for strength and guidance. Jack Westwynter, meanwhile, going through the motions of his life, walking as though in a dream. Drinking. Drinking slowly, steadily, stalwartly, from breakfast through till midnight. Each of them, husband and wife, struggling to fathom why Steven's death had happened and what either of them could have done to prevent it happening. Each, with hooded, accusing stares, blaming the other, and at the same time accepting the other's blame, feeling it might be merited. And David staying at the periphery of it all, leaving his parents to deal with their grief in their way while he dealt with his in his. Resenting Steven. Steven, for being such a wayward, rebellious sod. Steven, for turning his back on the golden opportunities he'd been presented with and going off to fight a war that would have no end. Steven, for being so...

  So...

  So right.

  ''I saw it,'' he said to Zafirah. ''I saw it in a flash on the way to work one morning. This was maybe a month after we got the letter of notification from the Admiralty, along with Steven's posthumous medal, a Golden Bee for, I don't know, Bravery While Drowning or whatever. I saw that Steven had had the right idea after all. Up till then I'd spent my life thinking he was a born pain in the arse, always doing the opposite of what he should, always going against the grain. Why be such a troublemaker? Why rock the boat? But then it struck me. He hadn't joined the navy to get away from his family and shirk his responsibilities. He'd done it so that he could be himself, not what someone else wa
nted him to be.''

  ''And you felt you needed that too,'' said Zafirah.

  ''That's it. That's pretty much it. Nail on the head. All my life, everyone else had been making choices for me. Now it was my turn to choose. So I tapped on the glass partition in the Roller. I told the chauffeur we weren't going to the office. I had him take a right turn at the Howard Carter Memorial instead of a left. Pretty soon we were outside a recruitment bureau. And that was that.''

  ''The poor little rich boy signed up with the army and started jumping out of aeroplanes. I bet Mummy and 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.

  9. Palace

  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 na
iled 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 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.