"Do you ask?"

She drew another breath, freer than the last. She shook her head and the weight of braided locks swung about her face. "No." She went to fighting stance. "No need." The goddess stretched out her hand. The sword grew cold as the left eye of God himself and shattered in her hand.

She hurled the hilt, and the goddess flung up her hands to ward it off; in that instant she rushed forward and flung her arms about her death.

It was utter, bitter cold. And Neit whispered in her ear: "You have won, daughter. I will tell your name. Let me go."

"Do you swear?"

"By the left eye I swear." And Neit became like smoke, flowing backward from her grasp, so that she stumbled to her knees. "Dear sister."

"My name!"

"It is Sekhmet."

— temples ravaged, gold spilled, images of the lion-eyed tumbled and stripped of ornament, her name erased and scarred—

"No," she cried. "I never was!"

"Sekhmet, my sister. They have burned your cities, slaughtered your babes, and your priestesses—can you forget? Can you forget your land?"

— priestesses dying in the courtyards, the young man before the walls—

"Do you not hear them?"

It was a murmuring, like the river, like the wail of babes and the keening of the doomed.

— A few struggled in the dark, in the shadow, a few still struck and ran—

"I have no sword!"

Goddess! Sekhmet! Lion-headed, lion-hearted, help us or we die—

"One can always forget again," said Neit. "One can lie down and sleep in this place of forgotten gods."

"A curse on you!" Sekhmet cried, and picked up the bladeless hilt.

"With that?" Neit mocked her. "You left your shield. Your bow is broken. You have no sword."

"Iron," Sekhmet said. She drew a great breath, and hurled the hilt through Neit's insubstance. There came a sweet taint of corruption in the air. And blood. She walked upon it. Her feet slipped upon the stones.

"Where are you going?" Anubis asked, jackal-headed. He stood in shadows close to the path. His ears pricked up. His voice came strangely from narrow jaws. "What are you hunting, Sekhmet?"

She turned her face on him and he stepped back. "Follow in my steps," she said; and her voice had changed. Her step had grown softer and catlike sure.

"What do you seek?" asked Neit, behind her, her voice grown faint and far. "What do you seek?"

"Worshippers. And swords."

Then there was no voice. She leapt from rock to rock.

The wind stirred, for God spread his wings. He turned his left eye to the world, and the silver cold of it spilled down the cliffs and onto the stones and round their edges until there was no shadow anywhere. There was only cold, cold to crack the marrow and break the rocks. A lion stalked the unshadowed plain, headed riverward, though that river was long distant. At some distance a jackal followed in the distracted way of his kind, seeking this and seeking that, but never losing the track, not quite. The great terror was loose again; war stalked on lion's feet, seeking lost young, lost prey, and her steps had the smell of blood. He always followed her, did the jackal god.

1985

POTS

It was a most bitter trip, the shuttle-descent to the windy surface. Suited, encumbered by lifesupport, Desan stepped off the platform and waddled onward into the world, waving off the attentions of small spidery surface robots: "Citizen, this way, this way, citizen, have a care— Do watch your step; a suit tear is hazardous."

Low-level servitors. Desan detested them. The chief of operations had plainly sent these creatures accompanied only by an AI eight-wheel transport, which inconveniently chose to park itself a good five hundred paces beyond the shuttle blast zone, an uncomfortable long walk across the dusty pan in the crinkling, pack-encumbered oxy-suit. Desan turned, casting a forlorn glance at the shuttle waiting there on its landing gear, silver, dip-nosed wedge under a gunmetal sky, at rest on an ocher and rust landscape. He shivered in the sky-view, surrendered himself and his meager luggage to the irritating ministries of the service robots, and waddled on his slow way down to the waiting AI transport.

"Good day," the vehicle said inanely, opening a door. "My passenger compartment is not safe atmosphere; do you understand. Lord Desan?

"Yes, yes." Desan climbed in and settled himself in the front seat, a slight give of the transport's suspensors. The robots fussed about in in-sectile hesitance, delicately setting his luggage case just so, adjusting, adjusting till it conformed with their robotic, template-compared notion of their job. Maddening. Typical robotic efficiency. Desan slapped the pressure-sensitive seating. "Come, let's get this moving, shall we?"

The AI talked to its duller cousins, a single squeal that sent them scuttling; "Attention to the door, citizen." It lowered and locked. The AI started its noisy drive motor. "Will you want the windows dimmed, citizen?"

"No. I want to see this place."

"A pleasure, Lord Desan."

Doubtless for the AI, it was.

The station was situated a long drive across the pan, across increasingly softer dust that rolled up to obscure the rearview—softer, looser dust, occasionally a wind-scooped hollow that made the transport flex— "Do forgive me, citizen. Are you comfortable?"

"Quite, quite, you're very good."

"Thank you, citizen."

And finally— finally!—something other than flat appeared, the merest humps of hills, and one anomalous mountain, a massive, long bar that began as a haze and became solid; became a smooth regularity before the gentle brown folding of hills hardly worthy of the name. Mountain. The eye indeed took it for a volcanic or sedimentary formation at distance, some anomalous and stubborn outcrop in this barren reach, where all else had declined to entropy, absolute, featureless flat. But when the AI passed along its side this mountain had joints and seams, had the marks of makingon it; and even knowing in advance what it was, driving along within view of the jointing, this work of Ancient hands—chilled Desan's well-traveled soul. The station itself came into view against the weathered hills, a collection of shocking green domes on a brown lifeless world. But such domes Desan had seen. With only the AI for witness, Desan turned in his seat, pressed the flexible bubble of the helmet to the double-seal window, and stared and stared at the stonework until it passed to the rear and the dust obscured it.

"Here, lord," said the AI, eternally cheerful. "We are almost at the station—a little climb. I do it very smoothly."

Flex and lean; sway and turn. The domes lurched closer in the forward window and the motor whined. "I've very much enjoyed serving you."

Thank you," Desan murmured, seeing another walk before him, ascent of a plastic grid to an airlock and no sight of a welcoming committee.

More service robots, scuttling toward them as the transport stopped and adjusted itself with a pneumatic wheeze.

Thank you, Lord Desan, do watch your helmet, watch your life-support connections, watch your footing please. The dust is slick. . . ."

"Thank you." With an AI one had no recourse.

Thank you, my lord." The door came up; Desan extricated himself from the seat and stepped to the dusty ground, carefully shielding the oxy-pack from the door-frame and panting with the unaccustomed weight of it in such gravity. The service robots moved to take his luggage while Desan waddled doggedly on, up the plastic gridwork path to the glaringly lime-green domes. Plastics. Plastics which could not even originate in this desolation, but which came from their ships' spare bio-mass. Here all was dead, frighteningly void: even the signal that guided him to the lakebed was robotic, like the advisement that a transport would meet him. The airlock door shot open ahead; and living, suited personnel appeared, three of them, at last, at long last, flesh-and-blood personnel came walking toward him to offer proper courtesy. But before that mountain of stone; before these glaring green structures and the robotic paraphernalia of research that made all the reports real— Desan still felt the deathliness of the place. He trudged ahead, touched the offered, gloved hands, acknowledged the expected salutations, and proceeded up the jointed-plastic walk to the open airlock. His marrow refused to be warmed. The place refused to come into clear focus, like some bad dream with familiar elements hideously distorted.