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"There's more to it than that. We are speaking of a chemical which changes any living substance by which it is absorbed." Ramses waited a moment, glancing at both of them. Then he went on: "Centuries ago, when I was still Ramses, ruler of this land, I dreamed I would use this elixir to make food and drink aplenty for my people. We would have famine no more. Wheat that would grow back instantly after every harvest. Fruit trees that would bear forever. Do you know what came to pass?"

Fascinated, they stared at him in silence.

"My people could not digest this immortal food. It stayed whole in their insides. They died in agony as if they had eaten sand."

"Ye gods," Julie whispered. "Yet it's perfectly logical. Of course!"

"And when I sought to burn the fields and slaughter the immortal hens and milk cows, I saw the burnt wheat spring to life as soon as the sun shone on it. I saw burnt and headless carcasses struggle to rise. Finally it was all cast into the sea, weighted and sent to the very bottom, where surely it remains, whole and intact, to this day."

Samir shuddered; he folded his arms over his chest as if he were cold.

Julie looked steadily at Ramses. "So what you're saying is ... if the secret fell into the wrong hands, whole regions of the earth could be rendered immortal."

"Whole peoples," Ramses answered soberly. "And we who are immortal hunger as much as the living. We would crowd out the living to consume what has always been theirs!"

"The very rhythm of life and death would be endangered," Samir said.

"This secret must be destroyed utterly!" Julie said. "If you have the elixir in your possession, destroy it. Now."

"And how do I do that, dearest? If I hurl the dry powder into the wind, the tiny particles cleave as they fall to the earth, waiting for the first rain to liquefy them and carry them down to the roots of the trees, which they will make immortal. If I pour the liquid into the sand, it pools there until the camel comes to drink. Pour it into the sea and I give birth to immortal fishes, serpents, crocodiles."

"Stop," she whispered.

"Can you consume it yourself, sire, without harm coming to you?"

"I don't know. I would imagine that I could. But who knows?"

"Don't do it!" Julie whispered.

He gave her a faint, sad smile.

"You care still what becomes of me, Julie Stratford?"

"Yes, I care," she whispered. "You're only a man; with a god's secret in your possession. I care."

"That's just it, Julie," he said. "I have the secret in here." He tapped the side of his forehead. "I know how to make the elixir. What happens to the few vials I possess does not ultimately matter, for I can always brew more."

They looked at each other. The full horror of it was impossible to encompass steadily. One had to view it, draw away from it and then reexamine it again.

"Now you understand why for a thousand years I shared the elixir with no one. I knew the danger. And then, with the weakness of a mortal man--to use your modern phrase--I fell in love."

Julie's eyes again filled with tears. Samir waited patiently.

"Yes, I know." Ramses sighed. "I've been a fool. Two thousand years ago, I watched my love die rather than give the elixir to her lover--Mark Antony, a dissolute man, who would have hounded me to the ends of the earth for the formula itself. Can you imagine those two, immortal rulers? 'Why can we not make an immortal army?' she said to me when his influence had thoroughly corrupted her. When she had become his pawn. And now, in this day and age of astonishing wonders, I overruled her last words to me and brought her back to life."

Julie swallowed. The tears poured down silently. She no longer even wiped at them with the little handkerchief. She reached across the table and touched the back of his hand.

"No. Ramses, it isn't Cleopatra. Don't you see? You've made a terrible mistake, yes, and we must find a way to undo it. But it isn't Cleopatra. It cannot possibly be."

"Julie, I made no mistake on that account! And she knew me! Don't you understand? She called my name!"

Soft music drifted from the Mena House. There were twinkling yellow lights in its windows. Tiny figures moved back and forth on its broad terrace.

Cleopatra and the American stood in a dark tunnel, high up on the pyramid; the burial shaft.

Feverishly she embraced him, slipping her silk-covered fingers into his shirt. Ah, the nipples of men, so tender; such a key to torment and ecstasy; how he writhed as she twisted them ever so gently, her tongue darting in and out of his mouth.

All the bravado and high spirits were gone now. He was her slave. She ripped the linen fabric back off his chest,