Ishtar

by Deborah Biancotti

  Davis — Marduk — gives her a soft glare.

  “Partnerships between organisations with differing goals,” he says, enunciating each word, “have a habit of falling apart.”

  “Like cops and robbers, that sort of thing?” Adrienne says. “I’ve seen that one fall apart. What about you, Steve?”

  Steve gives Davis a wink. Davis doesn’t respond. He’s not prepared to buy the good-cop-bad-cop routine, that’s clear.

  “Socialism,” says Davis, “frequently aligns itself with atheism. We’re not atheists. Our goals are not the refusal of the gods. Just the...containment of them.”

  “Sounds complicated,” Steve says. “How do you do that?”

  Davis rolls his eyes.

  “We’re looking for a goddess right now, as it happens,” Adrienne says.

  “Oh, really? Which one?” Davis has an expression like he’s entertaining the ideas of a small child.

  “The goddess of goddesses,” says Adrienne. She pretends to check her notes. “What do you know about someone calling herself...Ishtar?”

  Davis gives his first smile of the encounter. “Ah, the two faces of the human race. Love and war. Everyone knows Ishtar. At one time, the name Ishtar came to mean simply ‘goddess’. As if there was no other. She is the every-goddess. In a way, she’s the mother of all of us.”

  “So you call home once a week?” Adrienne asks.

  Steve sniggers.

  Davis looks through her like he’s smelled something bad and doesn’t want to admit it’s his. “If it’s her you’re after, you’ve got a big problem on your hands.”

  “We like problems,” Steve says.

  “Why’s that a problem?” Adrienne asks simultaneously.

  “She’s evil,” Davis says. “She’ll destroy the world, just because she can.”

  “I never understand the bad guys that want to destroy the world,” Steve says. “I mean, they live in the world, right?”

  Davis chuckles. “Ishtar can take it or leave it. One of the few deities to walk into the Underworld and right back out again. She enjoys the dead.”

  “The dead?” Adrienne prompts.

  “Ishtar,” says Davis, “is always talking about the dead. She threatened her own father once. Said if he didn’t do what she wanted, she’d raise the dead to eat the food of the living.”

  “Eat our food?” Steve says. “That’s harsh.”

  “And I’m just betting,” says Davis, “that the dead don’t have the patience for farming. So when they run out of food...”

  He lets the sentence hang.

  “Zombies,” says Steve with disgust.

  Stillborns, thinks Adrienne.

  “What did Daddy do to earn that threat?” Adrienne asks. She figures she should probably read up on this stuff. Maybe it will come in handy.

  “I wouldn’t say it was earned,” Davis says. “He tried to talk her out of taking revenge on Gilgamesh. But Gilgamesh had humiliated her.”

  “That happen a lot, the humiliation?” Steve asks.

  “Of Ishtar? No,” Davis shakes his head. “By all accounts she was stunning. And powerful. No one else in history rejected a proposition from Ishtar. But Gilgamesh thought he knew better. He recounted to her a list of her abused lovers. Ishtar didn’t like that.”

  “No sense of humour?” Steve asks.

  “Do you know where we could find her?” Adrienne asks.

  “Find her?” Davis echoes. “You mean...find the way to the goddess?”

  “I mean something less esoteric than that,” says Adrienne. “I mean find her, meet her. Shake her hand and tell her to have a nice day.”

  Davis looks nonplussed. “What?”

  “Do you know,” Adrienne says carefully, mimicking his earlier enunciation, “where we could find someone claiming to be the goddess Ishtar, come to avenge men and raise an army of dead children?”

  Davis stares. “Jesus Christ.”

  “See?” She turns to Steve. “Scratch a Neo-pagan, you’ll almost always find a Christian.”

  “Can’t fight upbringing,” Steve says.

  “You’re talking,” says Davis, “about a goddess that walked the earth thousands of years ago. Do I know how you find her today? No.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” Adrienne insists. “You know something. Maybe you know where her spurned lover is? What’s his name? Tammy Something?”

  “Tammuz.” Davis looks edgy.

  “Is he here, too?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “When he returns, I’ll know. I’ll be summoned.”

  “You’re that important?”

  “I’m his chief bodyguard!” Davis’ face is white.

  Adrienne smirks. “Not much of a Champion of gods, then. A bodyguard. What, you just liked the name, Marduk?”

  Davis looks at her sourly, opens his mouth, and apparently prefers not to provoke a cop. Adrienne thinks less of him for it.

  She says, “Any chance he’s spending July in Sydney this year?”

  “July is the month of Tammuz,” Davis looks past her. “Farming season in the northern hemisphere. Were he anywhere on earth, Detective, it wouldn’t be here. And if I’d had a summons from Tammuz, I wouldn’t be here to explain all this to you.”

  “So, even if Ishtar was sending an army after him, say, she wouldn’t send it this way?”

  “You were serious about the army?”

  Adrienne’s had enough. She turns towards the door.

  Steve gives Davis a mock salute with his notebook. “Don’t try to be a hero.”

  ****

  “That was a waste of time.” Adrienne slams the car door behind her. “Davis knows less than we do. Remind me why I even listened to that crazy Chapel bastard.”

  “You didn’t lose anything this time?” Steve asks.

  “What?”

  “You’ve been losing stuff all day,” he says. “Just checking.”

  Adrienne checks she still has her wallet, badge, watch, notebook; all there. She wonders where her scarf is and then figures it’s in the pocket of the jacket she left at the Cult of Ishtar’s house.

  “Where can I drop you?” Steve asks.

  It’s clear he’s ready to call it a day. Adrienne’s phone rings and its Nina. She holds up a hand to stall Steve, but he starts the engine anyway.

  “I just met a man,” says Adrienne by way of introduction, “who goes by the name of Marduk.”

  Nina’s deep-throated chuckle travels down the line. “Modest, isn’t he?”

  “Just your regular ego-maniac,” Adrienne replies.

  “The God of Babylon,” says Nina.

  “I thought there were a bunch of gods in Babylon, anyhow.” Adrienne exhausts her entire knowledge of ancient Babylonian gods in one sentence.

  “There were gods in Babylon, sure,” Nina says, “but Marduk is the patron god of the city of Babylon.”

  “Okay.” Adrienne doesn’t want to hear any more.

  “Meet you?” Nina asks.

  “Home time?” Steve says simultaneously.

  She nods. “Drop me at a bar, would you?”

  “Which one?” he asks.

  “Any one.” To Nina she says, “I’ll text you when I’m there.”

  She hunkers down in her seat, resting her head. She’s lived in this city, maybe not all her life, but all the most interesting and best bits of it, and she’s learning now it isn’t her city at all. Something else owns it, something old and powerful in ways she doesn’t understand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Steve finds her an old brown pub somewhere near the centre of town and she texts Nina her location. It’s happy hour, so the drinks are cheap. It’s always happy hour someplace. She orders two at once to save herself another walk to the bar, and sits with her phone on the table in front of her, spinning it idly while she downs the beers.

  Nina arrives while she’s on her fourth drink.

  “How’s the supernatural world treati
ng you?” Nina asks. When Adrienne doesn’t answer, Nina nods. “Always like that the first time.”

  “You’ve seen this stuff before?”

  Nina helps herself to a bar stool. “Nope, not like this. I found Candice Angers, by the way. The woman who found the body—”

  “Behind the church, right,” says Adrienne. “She up for questioning?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Powdered?”

  “No, not like that,” Nina says. “They haven’t released a cause. Officially.”

  “Unofficially?”

  “Her heart stopped.”

  Adrienne wonders if the bitch-goddess has anything to do with that. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  She downs her drink and thinks about ordering another, but she’s distracted by someone entering the dim pub. A woman. There’s something familiar about her walk.

  The newcomer squints into the dark interior and heads towards the bar with the rapid step of someone used to too much attention. She’s wearing a long skirt and heavy boots, a gothic look probably perfected in her teens. Now she’s older, the clothes are faded and less earnest.

  “Want a drink?” Adrienne asks Nina, eyes on the woman.

  Adrienne doesn’t wait for an answer, just picks up an empty glass and goes to the bar. She comes up around the woman’s right side as she’s paying for her drink. Adrienne tries to lean into the other woman’s line of vision. The woman ignores her for as long as it takes to get her change, then she turns with a defensive frown on her face.

  “Can I help — Jesus. Adrienne?”

  “When were you going to call?” Some barely remembered sense of familial duty tells Adrienne she should embrace her sister, but her gut is clenched and she can’t seem to uncoil her hand from the empty glass.

  Grace opens her mouth to respond, but collapses instead into an apologetic grin. “Wow, I barely recognise you.”

  “I could say the same.”

  It’s true Grace has changed, but that’s not what she means.

  Standing beside her sister like a stranger, she thinks she should feel something. Fierce protectiveness mixed with equally fierce impatience; resentment from being the ‘other’ sister, the one who wasn’t the favourite. There’s a lifetime of emotional back-and-forth Adrienne should be able to draw on, but she’s numb. If blood is thicker than water, she’s not feeling it.

  Neither woman moves to touch each other, to hug or even shake hands, to make sure of the other’s reality. They stand like bridge pylons, unable to shake the history that binds them, but afraid to acknowledge it. At least, that’s how Adrienne feels.

  “Shall we sit down?” Grace shifts her weight from one foot to another.

  The spell is broken. Adrienne buys a drink and a glass of water for Nina, then leads Grace back to the table.

  “This is Grace,” she says simply. “Grace, this is Nina.”

  Nina is the first to speak. She offers her hand. “Adrienne’s little sister? Thought you were dead.”

  “Adrienne just likes to pretend I am.” Grace sits with a grimace that she masks with a quick smile.

  Adrienne sits opposite, relieved; there it is, that familiar gnawing hostility that comes from being around Grace.

  ****

  “So, where’ve you been?” Adrienne spins her glass. She’s lost the taste for beer, but such losses are usually temporary.

  “Well,” Grace clasps a glass of lemonade, pushes a straw around, unsettling the ice, “I was in Somalia for a while, covering the pirate attacks.”

  Grace looks tired. Her fringe hangs long over her eyes. The colour has seeped out of it over time, and grey is beginning to show in her little sister’s hair. Her face is still young, though.

  “Sounds dangerous,” Adrienne says.

  Grace grins. “You think it’s too dangerous a job for me? It better be because I’m your baby sister, and not because I’m female.”

  “They take it out on women worse,” Adrienne says.

  “They take it out on women worse everywhere. I could be sitting in my apartment, I could be walking through a park—”

  “But if you were here,” says Adrienne, “we could find the sons of bitches. We could pursue them with every means available to us.”

  “Every legal means,” Grace says.

  “Whatever.”

  There’s silence. Nina sips her water and pretends to be deaf.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about that,” Grace says. “I’m here because of what’s going on in the Persian Gulf. What the news isn’t covering.”

  “The Persian Gulf? As in, the Gulf War gulf?” Adrienne’s about to launch into another stinging attack about safety when Nina catches her eye. She eases back in her seat.

  Grace says, “I snuck my camera out of the country — well, I won’t tell you how. There’s an embargo on this.” Grace pushes her drink aside. “Brace yourself for something weird.”

  “Oh, great. I love weird.”

  One thing Grace has never been is a drama queen. Always quietly went her own way, against the grain — or with the grain as she saw fit. She reaches for her bag, some tawdry thing made of silk and ribbons. No doubt it was rainbow colours when it started, but now it’s become muted and ragged. To Adrienne, it looks like a pile of sick with hairballs. She fights the urge to tell her sister to take better care of her stuff. This is Grace. She doesn’t take care of stuff.

  Grace pulls out a digital camera. It’s battered and dusty and she gives it a cursory wipe, then flips it around and switches it on. Adrienne sees an image of green water, the canal walls behind it bleached white in the sun. A lone palm tree stands tall beside low buildings. But this isn’t the detail Adrienne is meant to be looking at. On the sand is row upon row of fleshy, lifeless soldiers, feet raised like they’re marching into the water.

  “What in hell...?” Nina asks.

  “They say it’s an army,” says Grace, “belonging to—”

  In unison they say, “Ishtar.”

  “How’d you know?” Grace asks, her eyebrows high on her forehead, hitting her faded fringe.

  “Long story.”

  “Okay.” Grace looks at Adrienne expectantly, but when nothing else is forthcoming, she continues. “Well, they were seen going into the ocean at Iran, Kuwait, even as far south as Saudi Arabia and Oman.”

  They look like grey, human balloons, skin bloated and slippery-wet in the sunlight. Their eyes are closed, their bodies completely hairless. Some of them have fingers and toes, but not all of them. Many don’t even have arms. Their necks are thick, as if the head is joined to body by a long, fat tube.

  Nina leans back, looking queasy. “They look like sausage meat.”

  “Or pale slugs,” says Grace, unperturbed.

  “They’re stillborns,” Adrienne says.

  “What?” Nina blurts.

  “They’re stillborn children, an army of them.”

  “They’re too big,” argues Nina.

  “Wait, I’ve heard of this. Word among the locals is that Ishtar had a stillborn army once before,” Grace says. “But if these guys are part of the same army, they’re the miscarriages.”

  “So this is the B-team?” Adrienne angles the camera for another look.

  “They were small when they came out of the caves. People on the Tigris and Euphrates were joking that they were bait,” Grace says. “Thing is, they’re growing. And they’re growing pragmatically. You shoot one, cut it in half, then there’s two of them. They develop whatever they need to keep pace with the army. They grow feet, but they don’t grow a new head, or a face. See?”

  She flips through more photos. Adrienne leans over to look. The tallest members of the army are shown passing a man in fatigues. He’s holding a camera and pointing it down. The stillborns don’t pass his knee. And they’re weird. Oddly-shaped, bulbous and strange. Definitely not any kind of creature Adrienne recognises.

  “Any theories on why that is?”

  Grace says, “Locals b
elieve they’re monsters. That if they were ever human, they’ve forgotten how to be. And every day, they get a bigger. This one’s being carried by one of its brethren, but you can see tiny feet — at both ends of its body.” She gives her sister a queasy smile. “How sick is that?”

  “Pretty sick,” agrees Adrienne. “How many of them are there?”

  “Thousands.”

  “So they’ve marched into the ocean—” Adrienne says, ignoring Nina’s muttered blasphemes.

  “Yeah, they’re following a leader, I think.” Grace flips to a photo of a grey skin sack with its hands towards its face. The figure stares straight ahead with bulbous eyes in its wet skin, its head like a balloon. “Look. It’s sucking its fingers.”

  “Sweet.” Adrienne tries to sound casual. “So where are they now?”

  Grace is wrapped up in the story her photos tell. “They were being tracked, but it became impossible. They went east and then...”

  “Then what?”

  Grace spreads her hands. “How do you track something with no heartbeat? No body temperature? No need to come up for air. They’re down there somewhere, in the ocean, looking for their queen.”

  “And,” Adrienne hesitates, “when they find her?”

  Grace shrugs. “Who knows? Unholy Hell, I imagine. I mean, you only need an army if you’re going to war, right?”

  “And what if Ishtar is...here?” Adrienne asks. “What if they’re coming this way?”

  “To Australia?” Grace laughs. “Why would she be here? Heck, that’s why I came home. I figured this had to be the safest place in the world, right? We’re hardly a superpower. What kind of threat are we?”

  Adrienne thinks it through. No near neighbours and no allies that care much about us. Australia, a desert on a rock. Perfect place to train your army away from the glare of the world’s attention.

  “Maybe that’s the point,” she says. “We’re not a threat. We’re easy pickings. Practice.”

  A training ground.

  Grace finishes her drink. “Bathroom,” she announces.

  It’s only as she gets up, her coat falling away at the sides, that Adrienne realises her little sister is pregnant. She feels sober and sick at the same time. She stares, speechless, and Grace catches her expression and grins.