Rob could feel Edwin's uneasy gaze prickling on the back of his neck. "My father passed away in 1989. He was a retired civil engineer."

"I seduced your mother," the man suggested.

Rob folded his arms. He couldn't fathom the motive behind this rigmarole.

"I'm the living image of Dad. Everyone says so. We even wore the same shoe size."

"I think then you must guess my name," the man said grumpily. "You are not doing this right. And who is that?" He glanced at Edwin.

"A friend." Danger signals shivered down Rob's spine. He didn't want to tell Edwin's name. Though he couldn't avoid giving his own. "My name is Robertson Michael Lewis. And I bet I can name you. You are Gilgamesh son of Lugalbanda, once king of Uruk in Mesopotamia."

Edwin's mouth opened in astonishment. The skeletal man's eyes got even wider. "My name is still spoken," he said, pleased. "And my epic is still sung!"

"I have the book out in the car."

"Later on you must show it. How did you know me?"

"Yeah," Edwin interjected. "That was some stunt, even for you!"

"I recognized you right away when I read the book," Rob said slowly. "I knew that Gilgamesh was someone with the power-like me. I told you that,"

he added to Edwin.

"I thought you were being metaphorical! And the plant," Edwin said, struck by another thought. "The magical undersea plant that gives immortality. I read about it on the plane. The story said you lost it to a snake."

"A story is only a story," Gilgamesh said, baring his teeth in a skeletal smile again.

"Holy Mike! That means you're maybe five thousand years old! You wouldn't by any chance consider visiting NIH, would you?"

Rob had to set his teeth to keep from laughing out loud. Gilgamesh stared at Edwin with annoyance. "Silence," he rasped. Rob could feel the subtle crackle of power, and when Edwin opened his mouth no words came out.

"I don't feel that's necessary," Rob said mildly. He had never seen that trick before. But merely seeing it done was disproportionately informative.

With a mental gesture he easily undid Edwin's dumbness. "Although you might consider taking the hint," he suggested.

"Right," Edwin gulped.

"Oh, you are a bold one," Gilgamesh said to Rob. "I will give you your true title then. Not slave, nor son-but brother."

The whispery creaking voice held for Rob the note of truth. Here was someone with exactly his abilities, an equal, just as he had once wished for. "I've been looking for you," Rob said in a low tone.

"Now that sounds right." Gilgamesh nodded in approval, the black strings of hair shifting on his shoulders and chest. "You alone fully understand, then. I am a king and the son of a king, monarch of humanity's first city, the mightiest hero of my age. Tell me: How do I come to the desert, my subjects only a few nomad shepherds?"

Rob looked into his own heart, and knew the answer. "You couldn't stand it.

The pressure, dealing with all the people, all around. You had to get away, to where it was empty."

"Very good! One insect, a hundred even, I can smash, but it becomes a weariness." Rob began to speak-that hadn't been quite what he'd meant-but Gilgamesh was already going on. "Even the shepherds here were too near. I made the overlords of this land drive them farther off."

"You had them drop an H-bomb?" Rob said, horrified.

"Is that what it is named? The noise was impressive. But recently I decided it was time to turn again. I felt a need for a companion, an equal, an Enkidu as of old. And ..."

The rasping voice trailed away. Gilgamesh stared at Rob out of his huge glittering eyes, and raised a bony hand in an inviting gesture. Rob could feel the blood draining away from his face. "Oh my god." It burst out of him in a sob. "Oh my god. You did this to me. This power is from you."

Gilgamesh clapped his bony hands together. "Oh, well done. Very good. Yes, I divided my godhead with you. Half- a fair sharing, remember that. We are equal, and exactly alike. Except for the immortality, of course-that is mine alone. It should be very diverting."

"You mean-you did this to me, you trashed my life, broke up my family, drove me almost insane, for a diversion? Just to amuse yourself?" A pure and towering fury filled Rob, making his voice crack. Through his down sleeve and all the thermal layers he felt Edwin's restraining clutch on his arm.

"You talk as if this were a whim," Gilgamesh said. "Since we are brothers I will admit to you what I would tell no other. It is a solitary business, being divine."

Again Rob felt the prickle of recognition. The same horrible isolation had oppressed him. The weirdness could sever a man from his fellows like a sword. You became too strong, too different, no longer on the same level as other people. Rob himself had only broken out by luck-with Edwin's help.

And the epic had told of the death of Enkidu, how in spite of all his power Gilgamesh had been helpless to save his best friend. Over the thousands of years, and through the dozens of translations from language to language to language, the poem still ached with grief. Perhaps Gilgamesh had been struggling against the glass walls all the centuries since then, moving further and further away from humanity, undying and yet eternally alone.

And his strange slanted approaches to Rob were his last gasp for help, the final attempt to break free from this cave and all that it meant. Only the utmost desperation could have driven a proud ancient king to give away half his power to a stranger.

Edwin seemed to be acting on the same thought. He stepped around the warning arm Rob flung out and said, "You poor old fellow! You didn't have to do it this way. That's not how making friends works at all. We'll cook you some dinner. Maybe you don't need to eat, but you ought to. And this cave is way too cold for a bathrobe. Here, take this ..." He went down on one knee to talk to Gilgamesh on the level, unzipping his red parka.

For a second Rob thought it was really going to happen- his faith in Edwin's genius for friendship was that strong. Surely no one was beyond Edwin's warm rescuing grasp: the bridge builder, the opener of doors, standing at the edge of the dark wood with a rechargeable camping lantern in one hand. But a look at the old king told the story. Rage suffused the brown skeletal face. "You dare to pity me," he creaked. "You dare, you insect. You worm, you-"

"Microbe," Edwin suggested, smiling.

Rob could have punched him, the idiot! "Look, he only wants to help," he began. "We both do-"

With a shimmer like heat lightning Gilgamesh lashed out. Edwin tumbled backwards with a choked cry. Rob shouted, "No!" and jumped forward.

He towered above the frail old man, his fists clenched. A physical fight would have been no contest at all. But to his horror, this contest was a stalemate. Rob put his full strength into pushing Gilgamesh out of Edwin's head, and he couldn't do it. He could hold his own position, but that was all. Between them at their feet Edwin moaned, a shrill and terrible sound.

"We shall kill him between us," Gilgamesh said. "Such slaves have not fiber enough to endure our battle."

The truth of this was shatteringly obvious. Rob was forced to retreat. "If you are Gilgamesh," he panted, "so am I. This one has stood as Enkidu to me."

"Yes indeed," Gilgamesh said almost fondly. "Very good! You have it right.

You are Gilgamesh too. You are I. If I made you to serve my need, you made this one. He is not your friend, he is your pawn, your tool. And now we have met, you have no more need of him." He poked Edwin with a sandaled toe. "Up, you. Stand."

Edwin reeled upright. His face was slack, as blank as a dummy's, but his eyes were still his own. Repetition had not yet worked its dulling magic.

His gaze was luminous with terror. Rob stuck his hands deep into his pockets, fighting down another impulse to try and grab the strings out of Gilgamesh's control. The old man's words were like a knife-blade, stabbing him with truth. The difference between what he's doing to Ed and what I did is only a matter of degree. We're equal and exactly alike, indeed.

"Go back to Aqebin," the old king commanded. "Behind the temple was a cliff. Throw yourself off it."

Rob held back a gasp of protest. Let Gilgamesh think he concurred. Edwin pivoted like a puppet. Rob felt his pleading gaze, but kept his face impassive and looked at his watch. It was two o'clock. He listened to Edwin's slow footsteps receding down the passage and clenched the fist in his pocket tight: around the keys of the Land Rover.

Edwin would have to walk back. It had taken them an hour to drive here from the site. It would take Edwin longer than that to return on foot. If Rob could fudge up some excuse to step outside soon, he could drive back, catch up with Edwin, and release him from the enforced command. It could be done!

"I agree that we must begin with a battle," Gilgamesh was saying. "It is an old, old tradition-the way all heroes become friends. But a single human mind is too small a battlefield, and too frail. The planet itself shall be our arena. Return you to your western lands, and conquer them. Meanwhile I shall subdue Europe and Asia to my will, and be a king of men again. We can then battle: with pawns. Let us agree to begin the war one year from today.

That should be plenty of time."

Rob was unable to keep silent any more. "You have it all planned, don't you?"

"I have spent centuries in thought," Gilgamesh said with smiling pride.

"After the war we can be reconciled. You shall call me Gil, and I shall call you Rob. Is that not the parlance of these times?"

"Why bother to ask? You have it all taped out." Rob's voice slipped from his control again, shaking with emotion. "You are insane. I will have no part of this!"

"But we are brothers!" The old man sounded genuinely surprised.