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.