“You may go,” Akhnaton intoned.
Nefron bowed her head again and left the room. She steadfastly avoided making eye contact with Krysty.
Akhnaton sipped the wine and cast Krysty a questioning look. She tasted it, found it sweet with just a hint of a bitter aftertaste, but more than palatable overall.
Akhnaton placed the goblet on the desk, and his eyes gazed directly into hers. “Now that the wine has cleansed our palates of falsehoods, let us speak truthfully and plainly, shall we?”
Krysty met that crimson stare and felt a distinct shock somewhere in the back of her mind. “Yes,” she heard herself saying, “we shall.”
“I knew our individual roads of destiny would converge at this time.”
“Destiny?” She crooked an ironic eyebrow at him. “I’m not sure if I understand you.”
He gestured with both hands. “My monument could not be completed without your presence, but I continued to build it, knowing you would arrive before the capstone ceremony. And you have.”
“A strange coincidence, I can’t deny that.”
“Coincidence?” Akhnaton spluttered with laughter. “Krysty, I have searched for you for many years.”
“Why?”
“Because you are my fated queen—now, as always. We have always been together. When I, as Amenhotep, took the name of Akhnaton, I took you to wife.”
Krysty stared at him incredulously. “When was this?”
“At the height of the glorious Eighteenth Dynasty… over three thousand years ago, give or take a decade or two. Your name was Nefertiti. You know that, don’t you? You have the same psychic memory as I, stretching back over the long track and tide of time. You and I have been reborn many, many times, and always we have been together.”
Krysty wasn’t frightened by the man’s words, or by the obvious sincerity that charged them with emotion. She accepted, if not necessarily believed, the doctrine of reincarnation and was intrigued. But all she said was, “I belong to another.”
Akhnaton waved aside her statement as if he were brushing off a bothersome gnat. “As did I. Merely way stops on the road of fate, temporary patches on the wounds of loneliness. Always I knew my ka mate was coming. It was hard to be patient, but I was. I waited. And here you are, at last.”
Krysty inhaled deeply, noting how Akhnaton’s eyes suddenly flickered toward her half-revealed bosom. “You said we would speak the truth to each other.”
He nodded. “So I did.”
“Then let us do so, without dragging souls, destiny and past lives into the mix. I was in the redoubt where you were born—or created. There was another like you, a female. She died. I found out about you, about O’Brien, about Harrier.”
Akhnaton’s face remained an immobile bronze mask, impassive and unreadable.
“Somehow, when my friends and I jumped into the redoubt, you got into our heads—Ryan, Doc and most of all, me. You were testing us from here, finding out who was the most psi-sensitive, and you locked in on me. Your abilities are like mine, operating on an empathic level rather than telepathic. You made me—” she searched for a tactful word, then chose the first one that popped into her mind “—perform for you. Later, when we tried to leave, you kept the mat-trans chamber from working. Psychokinesis?”
“Yes. After many years of practice, I possess a small degree of it.”
Krysty didn’t delve further. She supposed that since distance meant nothing to psi-powers, as long as Akhnaton retained a clear picture of the redoubt, he could mentally reach out and interact with it. “Have I spoken the truth?”
“You have. Your perception of it, at least.”
“Then speak of your perception. Why have you done all of this?”
“I believe I explained that.”
Krysty smiled coldly. “You explained nothing. I possess a limited precognitive gift, but for you to have known well in advance that one day I would appear in your redoubt is too thin for me to consider the truth.”
Akhnaton let a sigh of weariness escape his lips. Slowly, he rose from the desk and paced over to his worktable. A closed cabinet hung on the wall above it. He opened the door panel, saying softly, reverently, “Look at this, Krysty. Look.”