The Age of Ra

by James Lovegrove

  ''We start training our men, together. We instil them with discipline. We forge them into a unit, a single army. And we gather weapons. As much as we can. Every type that we can.''

  That was three years ago. And here we are now.

  13. Cache

  ''Here we are now,'' echoed David, as the jeep they were riding in plunged into and out of a pothole the size of a small crater. Steven crunched gears and cursed. He was driving at least fifteen miles an hour faster than was wise on a road this badly made, but seemed of the opinion that it was the road that should mend its ways, not him.

  ''So what do you make of it?'' Steven asked, or rather the Lightbringer asked. For the past half an hour David had been listening to this masked man in the seat beside him talking in Steven's voice, using Steven's intonation and turn of phrase, sounding exactly like Steven... Cognitively he knew it was his brother under that mask. He had no doubts on that score. Who else could it be? Nobody but Steven could have told that anecdote about throwing up all over Mrs Plomley, or conjured up the speech-impedimented shade of Mr Perkins quite so accurately.

  For all that, David could not shake off the impression that he was sitting next to an impostor, or perhaps a psychic channelling Steven's dead spirit. He longed for a peek beneath the mask, for final irrefutable confirmation of what he knew to be true, but he'd decided to let Steven choose to show him his face in his own time. He would do it when he wanted to, if he wanted to.

  ''What do I make of it?'' David said. ''Well, it's quite a tale.''

  ''I know! I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't lived through it. But actually what I meant was, what do you make of us meeting up again like this?''

  ''Fluke. Happy coincidence.''

  ''Me, I think it was meant to be. I mean, my own brother pitching up here in Freegypt - what are the odds? Astronomical. But as soon as I heard from Zafirah that she'd picked up this British soldier in the desert and his name was David Westwynter, I felt this click inside. Like, of course Dave's here. Why shouldn't he be? You didn't get the same feeling, though.''

  ''No.''

  ''Well, you always were the hard-headed, practical one, weren't you?''

  ''Perhaps our meeting would have had more significance for me if you hadn't spent all that time arsing around, stringing me along, pretending you didn't know me. Was it really necessary, that whole charade?''

  ''To start with, yes. I'm the Lightbringer, remember.''

  ''So?''

  ''Well, I couldn't just walk up to you and say, 'Hi, Dave, how's it going? Long time no see, big brother.' I'd no idea how you'd react. You might have punched me in the face, and that wouldn't have looked good in front of all those people. Instead, I thought it'd be better if I got you on your own, then did the big reveal.''

  ''Except you didn't. You made me play senet with you first.''

  ''Yes, that, I admit, was for a laugh. I was waiting to see how long it'd take for the penny to drop. Your face, Dave!'' Steven chuckled and slapped the steering wheel. ''What a sight. Haven't seen you look so shocked since the time we found that polished mahogany Osiris Special in Mum's bedside cabinet.''

  ''Glad it amused you.''

  ''Look, I'm sorry, all right?'' It was one of those apologies that didn't sound very apologetic. ''You know me. If there's temptation, I always give in to it.''

  David frowned sternly at him, but couldn't maintain the expression for long. Right now he felt he could forgive his brother almost anything. Besides, it had been a harmless little deception, Steven just being his typical, slippery, prankish self. If the roles had been reversed, David might well have done the same. No, who was he kidding? That was the difference between them. He seldom, if ever, gave in to temptation.

  ''And I know what you're going to say next,'' Steven said, holding up a warding-off finger.

  ''Yes?''

  ''Yes. You're going to ask why didn't I get word home that I wasn't dead, as soon as I could.''

  ''I wasn't going to-''

  ''You were. Come on.''

  ''OK. Maybe I was. Well?''

  ''It's not that easy to explain. The thing is, by the time I got off that island, I knew you and Mum and Dad would have already given me up for lost and mourned me. Then I sort of fell into a life of crime with Iannis and realised it suited me to be officially an ex-person. And now that I'm the Lightbringer, Steven Westwynter might as well not exist any more. That's just the way my life has gone - my afterlife, my second life, whatever you want to call it. That's how it's had to be.''

  ''But a letter, a phone call home, even an anonymous one...''

  ''... might have been the right thing to do but it would have brought complications. Which isn't to say I didn't think about it. I thought about it a lot. But the longer I left it, the more unhelpful it became to me. It was something I kept putting off until, all of a sudden, it was too late. Can you imagine what would have happened anyway? Dad gets wind that I haven't gone down with the Immortal after all. Knowing him, he'd alert the authorities, have them hunt me down and haul me home to face a naval tribunal for desertion or dereliction of duty or whatever. Wouldn't he? Am I right?''

  Reluctantly David nodded.

  ''I know I am. I'd pissed him off by signing up. It'd have pissed him off even more if it turned out I'd publicly screwed up being in the navy. He'd want to see me doing time in a military prison and getting farmed out with a dishonourable discharge. 'Teach the lad a lesson.' Whereas this way, posthumously, Jack Westwynter has got the best son he could hope for: a war hero. The black sheep who came good. Died fighting for his country, and so on. Something to brag about at the country club. Again, am I right?''

  David could not deny it. Once their father had got over the shock of bereavement, he'd come to terms with Steven's death by accommodating it into his personal understanding of how the world should be. Jack Westwynter was not a man who accepted failure or disgrace. He'd never had to. So, by listening to his peers when they told him how proud he should be of Steven, and by carefully recalibrating his memories of his wayward disappointment of a son, he was able to present himself as the grieving parent of a young man whose life had not been wasted but rather sacrificed in a good cause. This attitude made him absurdly happy and served him longer than any black armband.

  ''And Mum...'' Steven began, then shrugged. ''Well, tough on her, but there you go. Same with you too. I'm sorry about it, Dave.'' Unlike the last apology, this one sounded more or less sincere. ''But to be brutally honest, I'm a grown-up and shouldn't have to worry about what anyone else thinks, my parents least of all. More than that, I'm a man with a mission now, and men with missions need to be free from all other responsibilities, all encumbrances.''

  ''Family isn't an encumbrance.''

  ''Unless your surname's Westwynter.''

  David didn't have an answer to that.

  ''Anyway,'' Steven went on, ''from what I hear, you've not exactly been in a hurry to return to the bosom of home and country, have you? You've gone rogue yourself.''

  ''Circumstances.''

  ''Yeah, yeah. You're enjoying it, aren't you? Come on; admit it. Nearly thirty years old, and this is the first time in your life you've ever known anything like real independence, and you're having a ball. It's exciting. Scary too, but mainly exciting. No?''

  David shook his head, but the jeep jolted heavily over a bump and the shake somehow turned into a nod.

  ''Free agent, Dave.'' Steven clapped him on the knee. ''That's you. Me too. We're free agents, and the past is a big door shut behind us and the future is a million doors waiting to be opened. And now we can open them together. Side by side. You and me. How brilliant is that?''

  David half smiled, remembering how his brother had never lacked for enthusiasm. He himself, born cautious and dutiful, had always found it hard to come by, so had resented Steven for having so much of it. Envied him, too.

  Now he saw that enthusiasm was something that could be shared. Like champagne in a champagne tower, it spilled over from the top
glass and could be caught in the glasses below.

  He looked sidelong at his brother, five years dead, only not so after all. The Lightbringer's body language was Steven's, definitely. The profile, though softened by the mask, was Steven's too.

  David ached with joy, and also regret.

  Regret because, although he believed Steven's account of how he had spent the past five years, he believed it only up to a point. He knew his brother. He knew when he was hiding something or lying. Steven's story had been the truth, but far from the whole truth.

  Whether or not it mattered, though - that was something David couldn't decide.

  Thirty-odd miles south-west of Luxor they came to a small town. It looked like an ordinary enough place: wide, dusty streets, low whitewashed houses with flat roofs and painted doors and shutters, high-kerbed concrete pavements, a cat's cradle of power lines threading from building to building, a communal well, here and there a stand of palms, all of it parched and pounded by an oven-hot wind. Hundreds of towns like this one dotted the 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 rough
ly 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 gunsmithery is second to none.''

  ''So this whole town...''

  ''... is one big arms cache, yes,'' said Steven. ''Our own quartermaster's stores, based in a tiny little flyspeck in the middle of nowhere. The last place anyone would think to look, if they were looking.''

  ''I'm impressed.''

  ''Thought you might be.''

  ''But...''

  ''But what?'' Steven said sharply, a flint-spark of irritation in his voice. ''What's the problem, Dave?''