''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.