On the Oceans of Eternity

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

September, 10 A.E.-Pi-Ramses, Kingdom of Egypt

The Horus," the silver-voiced herald called, half chant and half song. "The God is among us!"

The Vizier of the North sank to his knees and then bent forward to symbolically kiss dirt. Beside him Mek-Andrus, Commander of Chariots, did likewise, pressing his face to the colorful glazed tile of the floor. It was cool and smooth beneath his lips, and a breath of greenery and flowers touched the skin of his back, wafting in from the pools and gardens outside into the hot gloom.

"He of the Two Goddesses: Protector of Egypt Who Subdues the Foreign Lands; The Golden Horus: Rich in Years, Great in Victories."

Spearmen in kilts, banded linen cuirasses and beehive-shaped helmets marched through the doorway and faced outward, weapons grounded and big rectangular oval-topped shields braced.

"The King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Strong in Right is Ra-User-Ma 'at-Ra."

The herald's voice grew to a shout: "Son of Ra, Ramses, beloved of Amun! The God is among us!"

Mek-Andrus-who had been George McAndrews in Memphis, Tennessee-saw the gilt sandals stride into view. More feet came in the background, mostly bare; fan-bearers with brightly dyed ostrich feathers on the ends of gilded poles, scribes, attendants, a couple of musicians… just the minimal attendants for an ordinary day's work. The hem of Pharaoh's translucent-thin pleated robe rustled across his ankles, and the sandals settled on a footstool carved with bound, kneeling Asiatics and Nubians-literally being trampled underfoot by Pharaoh.

The fan-bearers began fanning and the scribes sank into their cross-legged posture, pens poised over the scrolls of papyrus that spanned their laps.

"Rise," a clear tenor voice said.

He and the vizier came upright on their knees, raising their hands palm-forward in the gesture of worship common to most of this part of the ancient world.

"Hail to Setep-en-Ra, the Chosen of Ra!" McAndrews cried in unison with the official beside him.

His Egyptian was very good now. He'd been practicing hard all the years since Walker came to the Middle Sea, and he'd acquired an Egyptian servant to achieve full fluency years ago. He even had a Delta accent. His court etiquette was pretty good, too. You couldn't go far wrong here if you kissed ass upward and kicked it down.

"Rise," the Pharaoh said again. "Seat yourselves, my servants."

He did.

And with a lot less puffing and grunting than our esteemed Vizier of Lower Egypt, he thought, as the pudgy bureaucrat settled on a stool beside his. At this range, even in midmorning, he got a whiff to remind him that while upper-class Egyptians bathed twice daily, they also rubbed themselves all over with perfumed hippopotamus fat to prevent wrinkles from the dry air.

McAndrews was a big man, two inches over six feet, and at thirty biological years still in the shape he'd had as a running back at the Coast Guard Academy before the Event; broad-shouldered, with thick muscular arms, flat stomach, and long legs. That showed to advantage, since he was wearing a simple knee-length linen military wraparound kilt, vividly white against his natural dark-brown skin and cinched by a heavy belt.

By a stroke of luck, the Egyptians were among the peoples here who admired a trim figure, at least in a soldier; other men of substance were expected to have a substantial belly.

He'd shaved his head as well-fairly common, though compulsory only for priests-and wore a sphinx-type linen khat-headdress and high-strapped sandals with silver studs. On his upper arms were snake-shaped gold bracelets; on his chest the Gold of Valor, Egypt's equivalent of the Medal of Honor and rather more, a massive thing, rows of gold disks strung into necklaces and a spray of gold braids and flowers across his broad chest.

No sword at the belt, of course, not in Pharaoh's presence here in the capital of Pi-Ramses. He raised his eyes to Ramses's face, feeling again the echo of the shock he'd undergone that first time.

All right, Pharaoh is not a brother, he admitted.

Today the ruler wore-informally, as a mark of honor, and probably because the daily morning meetings with the vizier were just too frequent for the full treatment-his own short hair with no wig, under a cloth-of-gold skullcap. That hair was a grizzled dark auburn-brown, in this the thirty-ninth year of his reign and sixtieth of his life; Pharaoh's eyes were hazel, his chin knobby, his nose a scimitar beak… and all in all he reminded McAndrews of a guy who'd run a really good Italian restaurant in Memphis.

That's Memphis, Tennessee, not the place up the Nile…

Although Mario DeCiccio hadn't used kohl eyeshadow or rouge on his cheeks, or gold and carnelian earrings, or a broad collar of lapis and silver…

He fought down a brief, bitter stab of homesickness. All right, most Egyptians aren't brothers. Not until well north of Thebes; skin color darkened to a rye-toast-brown like McAndrews's in Upper Egypt just before you got to Elephantine-Aswan, where the first rapids interrupted the Nile.

In the stretch upstream of the First Cataract lived the Nubians, who were unambiguously black, blacker than McAndrews, and so were Kushites south of them-but those were exploited colonies of the Egyptian kingdom, held down by forts and garrisons. Power here lay in the lower Nile valley. Ramses was only the second of his line to be born Pharaoh; his grandfather had been a lucky soldier, and his family were pretty typical of the northeastern Delta area.

Pharaoh flashed him a smile. "Still no pain, Mek-Andrus!" he exclaimed, flicking a finger against one of his teeth. "For the first time in twenty inundations, no pain!"

"Pharaoh is generous," McAndrews said. "Generous beyond my worth."

And the second part of that is a lie, mutha', he thought at the official beside him, who was radiating wholehearted agreement with the polite falsehood.

"I eat like a young man again," Pharaoh said happily, as a man might who'd had abscesses and eight teeth worn down to the nerve pulp. "I tear at meat like a lion!"

That had been another shock. He just hadn't expected these people to be so fucking backward about something so simple. Egyptians had what passed for advanced medical skills in this era; their doctors were much in demand, or had been before the rise of Great Achaea. What they didn't have was the slightest knowledge of dentistry. Plus their bread was full of grit.

A dentist trained by Walker's man, some bridgework and caps, ether to make it painless…

That was the smartest thing I ever did, the black man thought. It had won him the gratitude of Pharaoh, and a dozen other great men. Maybe it makes up for being stupid enough to let Walker con me in the first place.

Pharaoh leaned back on his throne. It was supported on either side by golden lions, and the back was a great golden falcon with lapis eyes, whose wings were raised protectively over User-Ma'at-Ra. The wall behind him had a mud-brick core-all secular buildings here did, stone was for tombs, temples, and the Gods. But every inch of its two-story height was covered in tilework, whose glazing shimmered like thin-sliced sapphires and rubies and emeralds in the light that streamed from the small high clerestory windows.

So were the flanking walls; the huge faience murals showed one of Ramses's favorite stories, his victory at Kadesh more than thirty years before. Bow drawn to his ear, bedizened stallions prancing before his chariot, the Pharaoh charged to victory over tumbled, fleeing Hittites. It was all busy and gaudy beyond words, like a fifties Hollywood Technicolor costume drama, and about as truthful.

Our Son of Ra got his semi-divine ass kicked at Kadesh, McAndrews knew; the city was still part of the Hittite Empire and Ramses had barely gotten out alive. You didn't mention it, if you wanted to remain healthy.

And God-my mother's God, not the God-damned things with goat's heads here-but I am so sick of living in places where I could be taken out and killed on one man's whim.

"So," Ramses went on cheerfully. "The reports speak well of your armory."

"Truly Pharaoh sees with the eye of Horus," McAndrews said. "The iron furnaces, the waterwheels, the rolling and slitting mill and boring machines, all the things necessary to equip the armies of Pharaoh with rifles continue. Ships are building in Thebes as fast as timber can be procured and shipwrights trained in the new methods. The cannon-foundry here in your city of Pi-Ramses makes more of the great guns, and will make still more if the bronze can be found."

He cast a sidelong glance at the vizier, whose responsibility it was to find the metal.

The bureaucrat coughed discreetly. "Perhaps it would be better if the powder mill and gunshops could also be transferred here," he said. "To have them so far south out of the way, near a turbulent frontier province like Kush…"

McAndrews shrugged. "Then they would not work, eminent Vizier," he said. "They need fast-flowing water to turn the wheels. The First Cataract is the nearest place with such rapids. And the iron ore is there, too."

Pharaoh leaned forward. "And the training of men to fire the rifles! How goes that?"

"Chosen of Ra, I have been working closely with Djehuty of the Brigade of Seth, and with your son the Great General of the Armies. We now have a battalion trained every month."

Ramses nodded. "It seems so swift…"

"Favored of Amun, a rifle not only strikes faster and harder than a bow, it is much easier to learn."

Good archers had to be virtually born at it; any peasant pulled from the plow could learn a musket in a couple of months.

"Already we have employed both the rifles and the cannon against your enemies to the southward."

Pharaoh nodded: "We have seen the reports of the damage wrought. They are all your first demonstrations led me to believe."

His fist descended slowly on his knee. "Kashtiliash in Babylon and Tudhaliyas in Hattusas have both sent to me, and this upstart from nowhere Jared Cofflin, they have all sent insolent insults, demanding that I give up your person, Mek-Andrus. To so demand you is to demand that Egypt have none of the new weapons! The weapons Kashtiliash used to conquer the Assyrians and Elamites, and which the King of Men has used to spread his power over the Sea Kingdoms. Do they think me a fool? Do they think I will leave the Two Lands bound, naked and helpless?"

That didn't seem to call for any comment. Then Ramses went on: "But now I can meet all of them on equal terms."

"Strong Bull, it is my grief that this is not so," McAndrews said, reckless of Pharaoh's frown. "At present, we have only the simpler of the new weapons."

Muzzle-loading minie rifles, basic bronze cannon, iron blades, some improvements like better chariot harness; Civil War-era materiel, or earlier.

Walker was turning out this stuff a couple of months after we arrived in Greece. He shorted me on the machine tools, all clapped-out models from the first batches Cuddy did up.

How to put it so Ramses could understand? You couldn't even say "interchangeable parts" in Egyptian.

"The weapons we have are to the ones the King of Men has… as a simple bow of wood is to the bow of a chariot fighter, strengthened with horn and sinew."

Ramses scowled again. "How long until we have the best of weapons? Nothing less is acceptable to My person!"

"Divine Horus, I have been here only one year and a few months. To make the things we need, more machines must be built and more men trained; this is not a matter of rounding up peasants to chop stone and haul dirt. It is more like training a goldsmith. Not less than one more year to produce what Great Achaea does now; perhaps as many as three. I tell the Lord of the Great House that which is true, not soothing lies."

The vizier's expression showed what he thought of that. Ramses was a little uncertain; but then, he'd spent his whole life wondering if people would tell him only what he wanted to hear.

"Work unceasingly," Ramses ordered. "Be vigilant for Pharaoh's interests!" And then more bowing and scraping, until he could get away.

Household slaves handed him his weapons belt, and he unhitched the Gold of Valor and handed it to one of his own retainers with a word of thanks, suppressing a grunt of relief at not having the twenty-pound weight around his neck. Otherwise, Egyptian clothes made a lot of sense for the climate.

Right now the katana and Walkeropolis-made revolver were a lot more reassuring than a gong; there had been two assassination attempts already. Pharaoh's favor didn't necessarily protect you from a knife in the back.

Goddamn Egyptians, he thought, stepping into his chariot.

The driver flicked up the horses, wheeling them about in the broad paved forecourt. McAndrews's own retainers rose from where they'd squatted on their hams with weapons across their knees. They bowed to him and swung into the saddle, the butts of their rifles again resting on their thighs, thumbs ready to draw back the hammers and eyes wary.

They were all Nubians or Kushites or from further south, and all ex-slaves. It turned his stomach to bid in a slave market, but buying men and then treating them well, and freeing them for good behavior, was the only really quick way of getting loyal followers here. Particularly if you didn't have any hereditary clout. Many of them were from the estates in the far south that Pharaoh had granted him, winning favor for their families as well as themselves.

The party took off in a spurt of gravel. This end of the palace quarter of Pi-Ramses was all gardens and pools and canals. The great colored mass of the palace was to the northward, and beyond that the Temple of Wadjet, the Cobra Goddess; another pile of masonry to the east honored Hathor-Isis-Astarte; south was the Temple of Seth and west was Amun. Those two were the primary patrons of the Ramesside dynasty, and he'd gone to considerable lengths to pacify their priesthoods.

"God-damned Egyptians," he muttered aloud-in English, as they passed a forty-foot-tall colossus of Ramses, carved from Aswan granite and overlaid with sheet gold; it hurt the eyes to look at it.

Swearing in English was a bit of a safety valve. Will they listen to me? No, they will not listen. What does a foreigner know?

Oh, they'd take some things he offered gladly: gunpowder, cannon, iron weapons and armor, stirrups. The Hyksos conquest still lived in memory, when they'd been caught napping by the first horse-and-chariot army to reach the Nile valley. Weapons they'd take, and things necessary to make the weapons.

But, say, a wind pump to replace peasants with shadoofs, or alphabetic writing? The Gods forbid! The scribes had been even more horrified when he pointed out that twenty-six symbols from their own writing system would convey all the sounds of Egyptian, and reduce the schooling time for literacy from twelve years to six months. He strongly suspected some of them were behind one of the failed assassins. Products of the scribal schools dominated the whole bureaucracy of the kingdom; they all had a vested interest in keeping up the value of their expensive training, and the tricks of a civil service two thousand years old let them tie you in knots without breaking a sweat.

The Gods alone knew who the other knifeman had been working for, which made him even more nervous. He'd taken on a food taster recently.

Arithmetic? Rule-of-thumb worked for grandpa, so away with outland gibberish; same for real paper, no matter how much cheaper and better than papyrus. He'd demonstrated a simple rotary quern for grinding grain, and met flat, blank disinterest, or contempt-did the dumb nigger barbarian think that Egypt didn't have enough slave girls to rub two rocks together?

No, that's not quite fair, he made himself acknowledge. It wasn't really his skin color they held against him; it was the fact he wasn't Egyptian. If you tried really hard to assimilate, they'd accept a foreigner… or maybe his kids or grandkids. But you had to accept that Egypt was the center of everything and home of absolutely everything worthwhile.

For the first time in his life he felt some sympathy for British imperialists-at least in nineteenth-century China.

Yeah, the Confucian bureaucrats kept calling all the Brit emissaries "tribute bearers" from the "barbarian vassal Victoria." You were from the Middle Kingdom, or you were a dumb-ass barbarian-no box marked "other."

Egyptians of this era made those Manchu mandarins look like web junkie change-aholics. There were times when he daydreamed about sailing a gunboat up the Water of Ra-the Canoptic branch of the Nile-and blowing the vizier's residence sky-high with a few shells from an eighteen-pounder, himself. Lately that had replaced strangling William Walker as his favorite fantasy.

The chariot trotted out of the high, blank, whitewashed wall that surrounded the palace complex and onto a long avenue lined with sphinxes; most bore the head of Ramses, although some had that of a curl-horned ram, the symbol of Amun, with little statues of Ramses tucked under their chins.

Yeah, the symbolism runs from I am God to God Really Likes Me. Hot shit.

Pi-Ramses was a planned city, and only about forty years old; it had many processional ways like this, as well as plenty of twisting, slimy alleys in the poorer quarters. The streets here were quiet; now and then a noble lady with her parasol-bearer sheltering her from the sun, a shaven-headed priest with a leopardskin over his shoulder, a Libyan mercenary in cloak and penis sheath, a Syrian merchant with curled beard and long striped wool robe and train of porters, or slaves from as far away as Punt or Alba on errands. Sometimes a unit of spearmen or archers or musketeers marched along to the beat of a drum. Those were like a horizontal bongo slung around the musician's neck, beaten with the hands; a glittering fan-shaped standard on a pole went before.

McAndrews's own town villa wasn't far from the palace, a mark of favor. It had a perimeter wall, too, enclosing stables, gardens, ornamental pools, pillared halls-all on a smaller scale than the palace, of course, but that must be like living in a monster hotel. This was something altogether more civilized, once he'd installed Achaean-made water filters, shower, bath, and flush Johns. And given everyone a dose for worms.

He'd almost gotten used to the lack of privacy a great man had to endure in this era. It was still a relief when he was alone in the north loggia-alone except for Miw-Sherri. She smiled and handed him a cup of pomegranate juice, a slender brown girl in a long sheath dress banded in bright colors. That and the gold necklace set off skin one shade darker than his. She was a daughter of Ramses himself, not by a Great Wife or even acknowledged concubine, of course; informally, by a harem attendant. It was still a major honor, another sign of Pharaoh's favor…

"What I hadn't expected was to actually like her," he said to himself-again in English.

He hadn't had one woman around for long since Ygwaina died in childbirth, just before they got chased out of Alba. Even now, he shuddered at that memory. Could Hong have saved her, if she'd given a damn? Walker had told him Captain Alston was raising the daughter he'd never seen-told him with that goddamn half smile, half sneer…

His son by Miw-Sherri was going on nine months now, and both were doing fine.

"My husband?" Miw-Sherri-the name meant "kitten"-said.

"Just thanking the Gods for you, Sherri," he said, and she snuggled in against him. Egyptians didn't have the Achaean taboo on public displays of affection.

"And thinking deep thoughts," she said, poking a finger into his midriff. "Forgetting that Djehuty and Takushet are coming to dinner."

He slapped his forehead and grinned at her. "I leave all that to you," he said. "Like the wise man in the tale, I 'watch and am silent, recognizing your talents.''

"Go then, go," she said, laughing. At seventeen she was young but a woman by Egyptian standards, and proud of her skill at managing a great nobleman's household.

He went, out into the private garden near the villa's chapel. There he stripped to his loincloth and took up the bokken, looking forward to burning off some of the frustration of a meeting at the palace. He'd gotten into the iajutsu habit during the years with Walker-relaxing, and healthy, and occasionally horribly useful. The household staff knew better than to disturb the master. He lost himself in the movements, patterned choreography of breath and will, until he looked up two hours later, running with sweat and chest heaving deep and slow. Something teased at his awareness-

Blank-faced, he took up Marlins's dai-katana, sliding the long steel free of the sheath and raising it in both hands, right hand over left on the long hilt.

"I'll be with you in a minute," he said, without looking over his shoulder. Then:

"Disssaaaaa!"

The blade swept down, right to left, and the shoulder and arm of the papyrus-reed man-shape before him fell in a clump, the tough springy reeds sheered clear away. Another kia, and the return sweep bisected the whole figure.

He turned. The man leaning on his spear watching him was so black that he almost vanished in the shadow of the painted wooden pillars that upbore the portico, like a statue carved in ebony; as tall as McAndrews but a little more lightly built. His kilt was the skin of lions, and a swath of the mane lay on his shoulders; his face was marked by three parallel sets of gouges on each cheek, and by a lion's steady stare from dark eyes. Raw gold circled his arms, a necklace of lion fangs and gold around his neck, and a light bronze Egyptian army-issue fighting ax was tucked into his belt.

"You speak this language?" McAndrews said in Egyptian, going through the ritual of cleaning and sheathing the blade, his hands and face steady as rock despite the hammering of his heart.

"I learn it from traders," the other man said, and nodded. Ocher-dyed braids moved, and the ostrich plumes they carried. "And to fight the Horse Masters, the men of Khem. I am Ghejo, chief among the Marazwe, whom your messenger gave safe-conduct over the border and north to this place."

Suddenly he grinned, teeth very white. "I knew that you were rich, Mek-Andrus. I had heard that you were a wizard, and believed it, from the weapons you gave the Horse Masters. I had heard also that you were a warrior… and now I believe that, too."

McAndrews nodded curtly; he had a fair collection of battle scars now. Yeah, this is a dude you wouldn't disrespect. But so am I, these days.

"You are my guest," McAndrews said, conferring semisacred status on his visitor.

He turned and dived into the tile-edged pool, swam a length, then hauled himself out. Attendants brought a towel and a fresh kilt, set out a table in the shade of the portico, loaded it with roast duck, fresh wheat bread, a salad, steamed vegetables, and a bowl of fruit. Ghejo ate the duck and bread with enthusiasm and looked at the greens as if his host were eating weeds. McAndrews hid a shudder as the Kushite smacked his lips over a jug of Egyptian beer. The stuff was brewed from a fermented mash of barley bread, and tasted like it.

"So," Ghejo said at last. "You are a warrior, a wizard, and have great wealth."

He looked around, obviously determined to be unimpressed and equally obviously awe-smitten.

"What do you wish with us poor desert dwellers?" he went on, a sardonic note in his voice.

"Because you don't build temples like the Egyptians, or write on papyrus, I don't imagine you're a fool," McAndrews said. "I'm not an Egyptian myself."

"Yes," the chief's son said, considering him. "You look more like us-and your voice is not quite a Khemite's. Tales reach us from Elephantine, at the first cataract, where you build your wizard weapons, that you are from a far, strange land. I still ask my question."

McAndrews ate a fig. "Your spear is a good weapon," he said. It was-seven feet of ironwood, with a bronze butt-spike and a long bronze head. "Have your people many like it?"

Ghejo scowled. "You know we do not," he said. "The Horse Masters take our ivory, ebony, plumes, gold dust, slaves, and give us a pittance. When we fight them, we have spears with heads of bone or stone against their bronze, and no chariots. Now we face your thunder-death-makers as well."

McAndrews nodded; with their only real trade route downstream to Egypt, the free Kushites-dwellers in what he'd known as the northern Sudan-were on the receiving end of a monopoly.

"Spearheads are made of copper and tin," McAndrews said. "Or they were, until I brought the art of iron and steel to these lands."

He clapped his hands; a guard brought a sword. It was made to a traditional Egyptian pattern, a half-moon slashing blade with a short straight section above the hilt, called a kopesh. This was blue-gray gleaming steel, though. The hilt was checked olive wood and the pommel gold and lapis. It was the blade that drew Ghejo's eyes; they lit as he took it up, tested the edge, stood to sweep it through a few practice slashes.

"A gift," McAndrews said grandly.

"A good gift!" Ghejo replied.

"The ore from which this iron is made," McAndrews said, wiping his mouth on a linen napkin and eating a fig, "is common in your land."

Ghejo's head came up with a snap like a striking snake. "Say you so?" he breathed softly.

McAndrews smiled, carefully prepared words moving behind his eyes. "I do," he said. "Isn't that interesting?"

Ghejo's eyes narrowed, and he nodded. McAndrews had picked up considerable experience with barbarians over the past ten years. Most of them weren't much moved by the prospect of being civilized; civilization meant someone like Ramses hitting you up with the bill for his palaces and wars and forty-foot gold statues. He had found that barbarians were just as enchanted as anyone else at the prospect of wealth, and their chiefs were as greedy for power as any Pharaoh. The trick would be to make any arrangement look like a good solid exchange of value-for-value, from someone their bloodthirsty code could let them respect. They were strange, but not necessarily fools.

Meroe, he thought, as the verbal fencing went on.

The first great sub-Saharan African kingdom had been there, about where Khartoum was in the original history. It was through there that ironworking had spread to the black peoples. That was slated for five hundred years from now, though, in a history that wasn't going to happen. In this history, the rest of the world was getting an enormous leg up while black Africans were still just getting started. Egypt had more people than all the rest of the continent put together. Most of Africa was still pygmy and bushman country, nearly empty. His own black ancestors were a thin fringe of farmers and herdsmen along the southern edge of the Sahara. They'd barely begun the great millennia-long migration that would take them all the way to Zululand in the Iron Age, and make them masters of the tropical jungles.

It's not that Alston wants to do down Mother Africa, he thought grudgingly. Or even Cofflin and the others.

She-all the Islanders-just didn't much care. West Africa wasn't worth their while, considering the effort it would take to push through to the few Neolithic farmers of the savannahs. With so much easier and more agreeable territory open to them…

But if someone didn't do something, outsiders would take the empty parts of Africa-he'd seen how when farmers met hunters, the farmers pushed the hunters aside without even really noticing they were there. And if the Islanders were too principled to do it, others who'd learned from them would. Black folk would be confined to a little patch in the northwest of the continent, and they'd be an enclave of primitives even there, easy victims for any aggressor.

Ghejo wouldn't know what he was talking about, if he tried to explain.

"You are rich here," the chief said. "You have great power here. Why do you wish to make alliance with us? We live in little villages, or follow our herds." By the way he was looking around, Ghejo wouldn't mind an alternative lifestyle himself.

"I have wealth and power here," McAndrews said. "But I also have many enemies here. If they prevail against me, I would have somewhere to go… but not as a fugitive, dependent on the favor of others. And with me I could bring many others, skilled in making"-he nodded to the steel kopesh- "and other things besides; the fire-weapons."

"Ahhh…" Ghejo said. McAndrews recognized the look; it was a man seeing possibilities. "We must speak more of this- and I must consult my neighbors…"

"You will go from here with rich gifts," McAndrews said, smiling. "And perhaps you and many others might gain some experience with the new weapons in the war that begins soon, if you could furnish troops and workmen…"

There was a lot of potential around Meroe. He knew how to build dams and canals-the area south of Khartoum had plenty of land that could be watered, to support millions of people where now a few villagers scratched fields of millet and herded goats. There was iron ore nearby, and other minerals fairly close. If he wanted a better climate, the Ethiopian highlands were right there to the east, and to west it was flat open grasslands for six thousand miles to the Atlantic. Easy for innovations to spread. When the Nantucketers, or the Achaeans, landed from their helicopters, they weren't going to find nekkid savages with grass skirts, nohow.

I'm just a dumb nigger with his head full of Afrocentrist shit, hey, Walker King of Men? Didn't occur to you that if I couldn't find the black Egypt of my dreams, I could fucking build one of my own, did it?