“It is life and it is death. It is the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe. You do not have to understand it, Wakim. Your comprehension or your lack of it, your approval or your disapproval, will in no way alter its operation.”

“And whence come you, Anubis-and Osiris-that you control it?”

“There are some things that are not for you to know.”

“And how do the Middle Worlds accept your control?”

“They live with it, and they die with it. It is above their objections, for it is necessary for their continued existence. It is become a natural law, and it is utterly impartial, applying with equal force to all who come beneath it.”

“There are some who do not?”

“You shall learn more of this when I am ready to tell you, which is not now. I have made you a machine Wakim. Now I shall make you a man. Who is to say how you started, where you started? Were I to wipe out your memories up to this moment and then re-embody you, you would recollect that you had begun as metal.”

“Will you do this thing?”

“No. I want you equipped with the memories which you now possess, when and if I assign you to your new duties.”

Then Anubis raises his hands and strikes them together.

A machine removes Wakim from the shelf and switches off his senses as it lowers him. The music pulses and falls about the dancers, the two hundred torches blaze upon the pillars like immortal thoughts, Anubis stares at a blackened place upon the floor of the great Hall, and overhead the canopy of smoke moves to its own rhythms.

Wakim opens his eyes and looks upon grayness. He lies on his back, staring upward. The tiles are cold beneath him, and there is a flickering of light off to his right. Suddenly, he clenches his left hand, feels for his thumb, finds it, sighs.

“Yes,” says Anubis.

He sits up before the throne, looks down upon himself, looks up at Anubis.

“You have been baptized, you have been born again into the flesh.”