The Age of Ra aog-1

by James Lovegrove

  David could see why. It was the same reason he liked watching her so much. Zafirah had long sleek black hair, a figure made for the tight khaki shirts and chinos she liked to wear, and squarish features which offset one another nicely, the straight nose complementing the full lips, the full lips complementing the firm chin, and so on. Above all she had those eyes, the green starring the brown of their irises, jade on topaz. She didn't surround them thickly with kohl, as all the fashionable women in England did. She left them bare, unframed, open, and their paleness contrasted hauntingly with the dark tawniness of her complexion.

  No, he didn't feel like her captive. Not in the conventional sense.

  But in another sense he did.

  She caught him one afternoon studying the strongboxes which the Liberators had stolen from the Bedouin. It was five days since the raid on the camp, and the strongboxes hadn't yet been broached. They were stacked in the back of one of the cars, padlocks still in place.

  ''Curious?''

  David jumped. He wasn't a nervy sort but she could move stealthily, could Zafirah.

  ''You lost men to get hold of these,'' he said. ''Whatever's in them is clearly worth a great deal. I hope it is, at any rate.''

  She pointed to the markings. ''Do you not read hieroglyph? Or did you stare out of the window all the time you were supposed to be learning it at school?''

  ''Mine's pretty rusty. I see the ideograms for 'god' and 'servant' joined together, meaning 'priest', so I'm assuming there's something ba-blessed inside. But as for the rest of it… Those are the names of the gods, aren't they? And the sign of a necklace can stand for any number of things — strength, happiness, gold. I can't put it all together in a way that makes sense.''

  ''It's a puzzle for you, then. A challenge. You strike me as a man who likes challenges.''

  You're a challenge and I like you, David thought.

  Then, to his shock, he realised he had actually said it out loud.

  Zafirah blinked slowly, a deprivation of treasures.

  ''I don't think that's…'' she began.

  ''Appropriate? Relevant? Proper? You're right, you're so right, absolutely. I didn't say it. It never happened.''

  Stupid, stupid, stupid…

  David hated how easily embarrassed he could sometimes be. He knew he didn't lack courage, but in certain awkward situations he would always retreat in a hurry, taking refuge behind a barricade of diffidence or dry humour. Better to do that than press on with an attack that might leave him exposed, vulnerable.

  ''Well,'' said Zafirah. ''Yes, then. Good.''

  To her relief, and David's, one of her men shouted for her attention.

  ''I must go,'' she said, turning away. ''Something about the weather.''

  She paused, then turned back.

  ''You ran into that Bedouin camp, under heavy fire, to save people,'' she said. ''People who'd been going to sell you to the Nephthysians.''

  ''Yes. And?''

  ''Nothing. But as we're talking about challenges — why?''

  ''Seemed like the right thing to do. Seemed worth it.''

  She gazed at him. ''Most challenges are,'' she said finally, and walked away.

  ''Something about the weather'' turned out to be a sandstorm blowing in from the east. But rather than batten down the hatches and stay put, the Liberators leapt into their cars and hared off in convoy.

  The sky dimmed in an eerie twilight, the air browning as though burnt. David peeked through the rear flap of the ZT's awning to see a wall of dust approaching, like hills on the move. It filled the horizon, rising higher as it swept closer. It was coming fast, faster than the cars could go, and it gave off a monstrous moan, which David could hear even above the off-roader's roar.

  The sandstorm engulfed the tail end of the convoy. One after another, vehicles were swallowed into its billowing mass, disappearing from sight. When it reached the ZT there was a whump that rocked the car on its shock absorbers. The awning clenched like a startled heart. Ahead and behind, visibility was reduced to a few yards. Sand swarmed and scratched all around, hissing like a million emery boards. The wind slammed itself in from every side, knocking the off-roader about. David clung onto the roll bars for support, while the driver and passenger up front, securely seatbelted, chortled and whooped. Their radio transceiver jabbered constantly, members of the group keeping one another updated on their whereabouts and making wild jokes about the driving conditions. As long as each car remained in view of the next in line, nobody would get lost.

  They pressed on for hours through the seething storm. The ZT's windscreen wipers worked tirelessly, clumping the sand at the edges of the glass, until all at once they were no longer needed. The sky, like a miracle, cleared. The sandstorm had blown itself out.

  The Liberators regrouped. Zafirah came over to the ZT just as a jolted and dazed David climbed out.

  ''Bet you didn't sleep through that,'' she said.

  David clapped dust off his hair and clothing. The awning had been anything but airtight. ''You lot have a strange sense of fun.''

  ''Fun? You think that's why we did what we just did?''

  ''Looked that way to me.''

  ''The sandstorm was cover. We travel at night for the same reason. So we won't be seen.''

  ''By who? The Nephs? The Setics? Us? But Freegypt's a no-fly zone. There are no spotter planes here, no Saqqara Birds, none of that. It's not allowed.''

  ''That's where you're wrong. We believe the Nephthysians are keeping an eye on us all the time. And not only them. We have to be incredibly careful.''

  ''Paranoia. This is the only place on earth the major powers aren't interested in. The gods couldn't agree among themselves who should own the land where their worship first sprang up, so they decided it was best if none of them had it. Meaning none of the divine power blocs can lay claim to it. Even spying on Freegypt is against international law. Not just that, it's tantamount to heresy.''

  ''Freegypt, the Unholy Land,'' said Zafirah with a trace of sarcasm. ''The world's blind spot.''

  ''Yes!'' said David. He looked at her. ''Or… no?''

  She shook her head. ''Not any more.''

  ''What's happened?''

  ''More like what's happening. Have you not heard of Al Ashraqa? The Lightbringer?''

  ''The who?''

  ''Evidently not. I suspect the Hegemony governments know about him, even if they haven't shared that knowledge with the public. The Nephthysians have certainly heard of him, the Setics too. They've heard of him and they're very, very scared of him.''

  ''The Lightbringer. Who is he?''

  ''A man.''

  ''Does he have another name? A proper one?''

  ''He does, but very few people know it.''

  ''What is he then, some local warlord with ambitions? He wants to take over all of Freegypt, and the Nephs are scared he'll destabilise the country even further and trouble will spill over the borders into their territory?''

  ''No.''

  ''Could you be any more enigmatic?''

  ''Does it annoy you?''

  ''Frankly, yes.''

  ''Then I will try to be as enigmatic as I can possibly be,'' Zafirah said, and for the very first time he heard her laugh. It was taunting laughter but he liked it nonetheless.

  ''So you've massaged my curiosity and now you're going to leave me dangling, so to speak,'' David said.

  ''Yes.''

  ''You could at least give me some clue about him.''

  ''Why? You'll find out all you need to know soon enough.''

  ''Eh?''

  ''Where do you think we are headed, David Westweenter? We are headed for the Valley of the Kings, and there we are going to meet the Lightbringer.''

  8. Luxor

  In a restaurant on Luxor's Corniche, which ran alongside the Nile, they ate shish kebab and pigeon stuffed with rice and washed it down with ice-cold Alexandrian beer. Feluccas plied the river, their lateen-rigged sails spread to catch the syrupy evening breeze. Mopeds farted up and
down the street, swerving around donkey carts and battered old Mercedes Lotus taxis and filling the air with their two-stroke tang.

  Luxor, the village-with-aspirations city, teemed. According to Zafirah it had never been so busy, not even during its heyday, back when Freegypt was more stable and tourists used to flood in from all over to view the temples and monuments and breathe in the dusty atmosphere of the cradle of the world's religion. Nowadays only a trickle of visitors came. You hardly saw a sunburned white face any more, and chances were it belonged to a journalist, down here to write some tone-piece on the Upper Freegypt ''crisis''. Either that or an executive from a holiday company on a jaunt sponsored by the national tourist board. The difference was easy to spot. The journalist came alone and looked intrepid. The holiday company exec came with an armed escort and looked scared.

  ''Visit Freegypt,'' David said. ''You probably won't get caught in the crossfire.''

  Zafirah nodded as though not seeing the flippancy behind his deadpan tone. ''It must be said, things have got a lot better. There are still territorial skirmishes between the militias now and then, but for the past three years we have known something close to peace. The south and the north are trading along the Nile again, and Cairo is supplying us with essentials such as medicine and baby milk, which it withheld during the worst of the fighting.''

  ''You think one day this country will be whole again?'' David asked, swatting away one of the many flies that were buzzing around his meal.

  ''I don't think it. I know it.''

  ''Why?''

  ''Same reason Luxor is full right now.''

  ''The bloke we've all come to see. Your mystery man, the Lightbringer. About whom you're not prepared to tell me any more. Or are you?''

  Zafirah turned her gaze across the river, looking over towards the west bank, the place of tombs and dead pharaohs. Several of her men were clustered around a nearby table, two of them playing senet, the others looking on and offering advice on moves. One of the spectators made a coarse remark and everyone guffawed. Amid the general hilarity the tabletop was nudged and the game pieces were scattered across the board, much to the players' annoyance.

  By the way Zafirah smiled, David had the feeling the remark had had nothing to do with the game and a lot to do with him and her.

  ''OK,'' he said, sensing a change of subject was in order. ''Let me ask you this then. How does a nice girl like you end up in charge of a band of paramilitaries?''

  ''Am I a nice girl?''

  ''Educated, thoughtful, brave…''

  ''I could turn it around. How does a nice boy like you end up as a paratrooper, fighting on behalf of god, goddess, pharaoh, and country?''

  ''Because I enlisted,'' David said. ''Because I felt I had to. Because… of other reasons.''

  ''Personal reasons.''

  ''More or less.''

  ''So a sense of duty, coupled with a private need. Two motivations, inner and outer, converging.''

  ''Yes.''

  ''Same here,'' said Zafirah. ''For one thing, I come from these parts, so signing up with a force that stands against outside aggression seemed a sensible thing to do. When I was a girl there were times when Luxor was under attack from three sides at once — the Red Sea Fellahin from the east, the Aswan Ulama from the south, and the Integrationist Army from the west. The Fellahin wanted to embrace us with their communist utopia, the Ulama wanted to convert us to their vestigial, politicised version of Islam, and the Integrationists, funded by Libya, wanted to incorporate us into a segment of the country they consider belongs to the Nephthysian states. Luxor didn't want to be any of these things. It just wanted to be Luxor. You've seen the price it paid for that.''

  On the way into the city David had passed countless buildings that were either husks pocked with shell holes or just plain ruins. They were still inhabited, many of them, stretched tarpaulins doing the job that missing roofs used to, corrugated iron for doors, sheets of polythene for windows.

  ''To preserve itself, to resist these attacks,'' Zafirah went on, ''Luxor had to form its own guerrilla army.''

  ''The Liberators.''

  ''Yes. They had nothing, to begin with. No weapons, no vehicles, nothing except manpower and a will to survive. But with guile and subterfuge they captured enemy equipment and little by little gathered together the resources they needed. Whichever direction an assault came from, they were ready to meet and repel it. I grew up with the sound of gunfire and shelling. Year upon year, some faction or other would make a play for Luxor, usually around harvest time. I'd go to school watching raw recruits doing drill in the public parks, knowing many of them would be dead by the autumn. Boys and girls only slightly older than me were learning how to strip and clean a rifle, how to manufacture a roadside bomb, how to disable an enemy vehicle using only breezeblocks and barbed wire. This all seemed normal to me, commonplace, a way of life. Of course it did. I was a child, and as a child you take everything in your stride. I knew that Luxor had to be protected. I expected that one day I would be doing the protecting myself.''

  David caught the waiter's eye and ordered another round of beers. Zafirah was distantly related to the restaurant owner — a second cousin? — and as far as David could tell everything was on the house.

  ''My father, however, was keen for me to be a teacher,'' she continued. ''He was determined that I should go to university, most likely in Cairo. I had a flair for languages. He saw me as an English teacher, perhaps after spending a couple of years in your country perfecting my syntax and grammar. He had high hopes for me, his only child. That was why he named me Zafirah. It means victorious, successful. That was also why he fought with the Liberators of Luxor, to keep me safe and give me the future he dreamed I would have. He was a Liberator commander, in fact. He was there at Karnak, nine years ago, seeing off a major offensive by the Fellahin…''

  Zafirah's eyes glistened.

  ''Karnak,'' she said. ''Its ancient name was Ipet-Isut: 'The most perfect of places'. Not any more.''

  David recalled seeing the temple at Karnak, on Luxor's outskirts. It had been devastated, its pylons and obelisks toppled, its hypostyle halls reduced to fields of shattered columns.

  The fresh beers arrived and Zafirah took a swig. ''The Fellahin nearly overwhelmed us that time. We won. We lost Karnak itself and hundreds of our soldiers, but we won.''

  ''Your father…?'' David asked, knowing the answer.

  ''The Fellahin had a Scarab tank. They'd captured it off the Integrationist Army, along with a priest who was being forced to perform the rites to keep recharging its ba cells. The tank was cutting a swathe through our ranks, scything them down with its blaster nozzles. Long-range conventional weapons couldn't pierce its armour, and it wasn't letting anyone get close enough to do anything at short range. My father found himself a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and a horse. He rode at the tank, screaming at the top of his lungs. The tank took out the horse from under him. Took off my father's legs as well. But he'd got within a stone's throw of it, and that was all he needed. Somehow he managed to sit up. Somehow he managed to fire the rocket. The tank went up in a great ball of ba energy, vaporising everything within a two hundred foot radius, including a large number of Fellahin… and my father.''

  ''A hero.''

  ''Undoubtedly. But to me, also, a coward. Because he was my father. He should not have sacrificed himself. He should have lived so that he could continue to be my father and love me and my mother and look after us. He was a coward to throw away his life, when the heroic thing to do would have been come home alive.''

  ''There are causes that matter more than individuals.''

  ''You believe that,'' Zafirah said with a caustic laugh. ''I suppose I believe it too. But not when I was eighteen.''

  ''Your father saved the city, and you. He was giving you the future he promised he would.''

  ''Not like that, though. I didn't want it like that.'' She sighed. ''Anyway, it was impossible now. University? England? How could I even consider
it when I had a new goal in life? One future had replaced another. I couldn't become a teacher. I had shoes to fill. The Liberators were down by hundreds of troops and one great, inspirational leader. How could I do anything else but volunteer my services and help make up the numbers that had been lost?''

  ''You make it sound like it wasn't a choice.''

  ''It wasn't. The instant my father died, it was a calling.''

  With a wince, Zafirah finished her beer. David had the impression she hadn't revealed this much about her past to anyone in a long time. Alcohol was a factor, but it helped, too, that he was a foreigner and still something of a stranger. Often it was easier to unburden yourself to someone you didn't know too well. Christians in the old days would pour their hearts out to their priests, telling them things they wouldn't have dared admit to their nearest and dearest.

  David decided to make it a two-way street. ''Five years ago I was helping to run a company with a multimillion-europound turnover,'' he said. ''I was chauffeured to work every morning in a Rolls Royce Silver Ka. I entertained clients at five-star restaurants. I lived in a townhouse in Kensington, just around the corner from the Harrods Pyramid. All this by the age of twenty-five.''

  ''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.''