I look down at Scipio, and wonder whether, if I look up again, I will see the interior of the Chamber of Isis, and my own face not only painted on the east panel but staring back at me from where I stood a few hours ago in the middle of the room. Was I the jinn, then, seen through a refracting lens? Am I the jinn now, looking back? Was the choking hive not an attack, but some consequence of my being in close proximity to unbuttressed, undivine, un-Alkahested self? But has someone not told me recently that once the Alkahest is in you, it was always so? That once you step beyond the mortal frame of time, cause and consequence come unbound?