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sir.”
    “No; I’ve had enough of flying,” said Atrahasis.
    He wrapped himself in a cloak, and went down through the tunnels and out of the city by secret ways, and glided away through the night like a serpent.
    But he had gone back to his duties at last. What else was there for an immortal to do, besides plot for power and sound out prospective allies?
    He had first come down the Nile on a reed boat, in a time before there were any pyramids at Giza. Nothing then more remarkable in that landscape than a great outcropping of rock that resembled a lion’s head, which likeness successive generations of mortals had increased by chiseling out eyes and a muzzle. Graffiti was scrawled across its lower surfaces now. Not yet the Sphinx, it stared gloomily across the land that wasn’t yet Egypt. Atrahasis—not yet Labienus—sympathized with it.
    He had liked the delta country once. The river was wide and clear, the air was purity itself. Dawn wind came across the green murmuring reeds and when the young sun rose above them it really might have been a god, such was its brilliance and clean heat. No smoke in the sky; light sharp as a diamond.
    Then the mortals had come. For a while the crocodiles and floods had kept their numbers down, but they had multiplied at last, and spoiled it all. At this point in time it was only the smoke of their cook-fires that muddied the face of the sun, and this was bad enough. In the time to come the very dust of their mummified dead would rise like a pall, the gases of their sewage, the chemical fumes of their cities. All this fresh young world lost to ancient bricks, blackened corpses.
    Atrahasis put it firmly out of his mind, as the river bore him to the city of white walls. It had been built to rule both Upper and Lower Kingdoms. Two dynasties had come and gone and the third was prosperous, expansive, so the damned place was sprawling now. Shading his eyes, he could see the necropolis
on its ridge. The world’s first pyramid was no more than a foundation yet. Mortals swarmed over it like insects, setting the little limestone blocks.
    He sighed and glanced down from his high seat to the water, where a ridged back paced his boat, drifting unobtrusively near. Poor old crocodile. There had been a time when Atrahasis might have given an order and had a clumsy slave tossed overboard like a crust of bread, and before the river gods converged on him the slave would have screamed his thanks at being so honored. One couldn’t get away with that nowadays. Too much history was being recorded.
    When his boatman docked and bowed him ashore, Atrahasis walked through the streets and the mortals fell back before him, gaping at the splendid lord in his finery, marveling at the tall spearmen who went before and followed him. They wondered at the mortal slaves who bore the carved chest that was splendidly covered in beaten gold, inlaid with turquoise and lapis. They thought surely he must be an ambassador bringing gifts to the king.
    But he did not go to the palace. Atrahasis went swiftly to the house of Imhotep, the high priest, he who was the king’s chief minister, he who had designed and was overseeing the construction of the latest thing in monuments to royal glory.
    The mortal onlookers nodded to each other knowingly. No surprise that this regal-looking stranger was calling on Imhotep first. Imhotep might claim he was merely a man, but everyone knew better. He had miraculous healing powers, he knew the name of every star in the sky and their secret paths, and his ability to work spectacularly showy magic was famous. Of course he must entertain gods from time to time! Before Atrahasis had stepped through the courtyard gate, word was spreading that Imhotep had another divine visitor.
    To Atrahasis’s annoyance, he was not at once admitted to the august presence of the high priest of Ptah.
    “He is bathing, my lord,” stammered the mortal woman. She clapped her hands and servants ran to her side. “A