I've been really lucky. So lucky it's crazy. There were hundreds of times I could've gone under this past year, but I didn't. I'm-thankful, I guess."

"Now I warned you, Rob, not to make a habit of thanking me. It'll get on my nerves, and then I won't invite you to the wedding."

"I wasn't thanking you," Rob said indignantly.

"You're not, huh?" Edwin looked at him, his gaze very sharp. "Then who?

We'll talk later about it. Right now you have a long-awaited date. God bless you, bud."

Rob turned away, and then remembered. "Ed, I forgot! I'm flat broke. I lost every cent I had at the casino. Could you lend me ten bucks for the bus and subway?"

Edwin began to laugh. Reaching into the pocket of his terrycloth bathrobe, he drew out his sodden wallet.

CHAPTER 3.

Rob rode the Metro Red Line downtown in such a turmoil of happiness he could hardly think straight. He almost missed the transfer entirely at Metro Center to the Virginia train. He tried to get a grip on himself. He had worked for this day, dreamed about it for so long, it would be a pity to be incoherent about it.

The twins wouldn't be the same, of course. At that age children grow and change daily, almost hourly. They'd be taller, smarter, maybe even approaching the potty stage. Angela would sing new songs for him, and Davey had probably mastered the playground monkey bars long ago. Perhaps they'd learned to use forks-that would be a major improvement in the household ambiance.

And Julianne. Rob was overwhelmed with yearning: the memory of her kiss, her touch, the smell of her skin. She would have new clothes, of course, and probably a new haircut, but she herself would be exactly the same . . .

wouldn't she?

The train stopped at the end of the line. Rob rode the escalator up to the bus stops. Suddenly he was uneasy. It was illegal, he was sure of it, to just up and abandon your wife and children. He had vanished from his Fairfax life like smoke. He hadn't called, or sent word, or written.

Suppose Julianne had given up on him? Didn't love him any more? Divorce would be an entirely reasonable reaction, given her situation. Desertion was sufficient grounds, wasn't it?

And if she'd gone through with a divorce, she might even have remarried by now, a full year later. People did that every day. In her style, Julianne was as lovely as Carina. There'd be hundreds of guys waiting in line for her. Rob realized that, as always, Edwin had been right. He ought to phone ahead. But just at that moment the commuter bus pulled up at the stop in a cloud of blue diesel exhaust. If he didn't take it, he'd have to wait forty minutes for the next one. The doors sighed open, and he got on. He'd have to go through with it.

The bus wasn't full. He set the ancient brown duffel bag on the seat beside him and searched inside. Down at the bottom corner he felt a clump of metal bits: his keys. He drew them out and held them. If I were marrying a young divorcee with kids, he thought-or, my god! if I bought the house from her when she moved away! If I did that, I would rekey all the locks and bolts.

It would be the sensible, Harry Homeowner thing to do. Even if Julianne has just axed me, the first thing she'd do would be to change the locks. So I don't have to phone. I don't even have to ring the bell and see her new man open the door. Or the new owner of the house. All I have to do is try my key in the lock.

Rob sat and stared tensely out the window as the subdivisions rolled by. He was afraid now, afraid as he hadn't been at Aqebin. Power sang through his bloodstream and bent to his will, power enough to totally dominate the entire earth and everyone on it. And he couldn't use it, not now, not for this. If Julianne had moved on, emotionally or physically, he couldn't muscle her into coming back. She was free to make her own choice, and he would have to accept her decision. He could do absolutely nothing about it.

For all his strength, he was helpless as a child when it came down to what really mattered.

The thought should have been fearful, but was in fact gloriously freeing.

Here, arguably at the pinnacle of human power, Rob was only a small step above everyone else after all. He wasn't a god, had never even been close.

In the family of humanity he wasn't the dad, but only a younger son. The realization was a tremendous relief, like a titanic rock rolling off his back. Somebody else had the job of being God. He had never for one second wanted that burden, and now he knew he would never have to shoulder it.

Dimly he saw, not the details, but the broad contours of belief, a wide new country to explore some day.

When the bus halted at his stop Rob felt dizzy. It roared away into the sweet spring evening, vanishing around the corner before Rob mustered the nerve to cross. I am not going to chicken out, he insisted to himself. I have to know. I've faced so much, I can face this.

His own street now. The house at the corner had a new roof, and someone was barbecuing-Rob could smell the burning charcoal. The azaleas were just coming into flower in masses of clashing reds and pinks. He marched slow but steady down the sidewalk, putting one foot ahead and then the other, watching for the first glimpse of the house.

And there it was. The maroon Plymouth van was parked in the driveway-they hadn't moved away. The lights were on in every room, so that the Cape Cod house glowed a welcome in the twilight. The yard looked in reasonable shape too. Jul had probably hired a lawn service after all.

Rob went slowly up the front walk and set the duffel and the laptop on the stoop. The keys jangled in his shaking hand, and in the shadows he had problems sorting out the right one. She never remembered to put the porch light on.

He pulled open the storm door, the familiar door he had bought and hung himself, and it was too much. He leaned his forehead on the door jamb, silently pleading for mercy, from whom he didn't quite yet know. Then he straightened and pushed the key into the lock.

It fitted. It turned. The deadbolt snicked back, and the door opened. From inside came the aroma of microwave pizza, and the thunder of galloping small feet. Davey's ululating Tarzan cry echoed down the hall. Rob took one more deep breath, right down to the bottom of his stomach. "Thank you," he said aloud. Then he stepped in and shut the door behind him.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

The central alteration I have made in the ancient story of Gilgamesh-that the king actually retained the gift of eternal life instead of mislaying it-is my own. Everything else about the hero I have borrowed from many sources. Of the epic, translator Maureen Gallery Kovacs says, "As was traditional in Mesopotamian literature, 'authorship' consists largely in the creative adaptation of existing themes and plots from other literature to new purposes." I have happily aligned myself with this tradition.

In the New York Public Library, Rob reads David Ferry's Gilgamesh (1992), the most vivid verse rendering available today. The paperback epic he buys on Christmas Eve is the Penguin Classics edition, translated into prose by N.K. Sandars. Randall Garrett coined the term "tarnhelm effect" for his Lord Darcy stories. The Individuated Hobbit, by Timothy R. O'Neill (1979), explicated for me the use of Jungian archetype in fiction. And the marvelous and obvious truth about immortality-that it is a pearl, not an undersea plant-is pointed out by Geoffrey Bibby in Looking for Dilmun (1969).

Many on-line geniuses supplied answers to my inordinate array of questions, ranging from trucks to casino blackjack to EEG machines to the adventures of Mandy Patinkin. David Singer told me about travel in the former USSR and the inmate population of Lorton Reformatory. Dr. Louise Abbott sneaked me into the bowels of buildings at NIH for a private tour. Greg Feeley wrestled mightily with title problems, and Carol Kuniholm and Larry read the manuscript. To all these generous people, my thanks.