One of the bloated bugs turned to him, and spoke in a diminutive version of his father’s voice, followed by another, then another, each blabbing Saeba’s most shameful private memories:
The first Kush-bug said, “Svindla loved you, Fat-lump! Remember how funny her screams were before you bashed her skull open with your mace?”
The second flapped its wings and squealed, “Riding on your pahpo’s knee, until he drops you on your pointy head, and laughs at your sense of betrayal and baby tearzzz zzz zzz!”
A third bug flew up and landed on his nose, followed by the others. “‘Stupid oaf!’ your pahpo calls you—when he found you in the bushes kissing on another boy! ‘You twisted heap of fat!’”
Only then did Saeba scream like a terrified little girl.
25
El’Issaq could not believe that Kush was stupid enough to think that Napalku had conspired with Imdugud marauders. “That’s ridiculous!”
Kush laughed like some deranged clown. “That it may well be, but I feel it needs to be explored anyway—emergency powers and all that.”
El’Issaq noticed in the corner of his eye that Saeba had begun to dig inside his own ears with his finger, as if scratching some maddening itch there. He tried to keep his focus on Kush, however. “What does finding Napalku get you, anyway? You and Nimurta already have what you want.”
Kush let his laughter settle. “This may come as a surprise to you, El’Issaq, but this isn’t about what I or my son want.”
“What is it about then?”
“The good of us all.”
“As defined by you.”
Kush’s jovial demeanor vanished. “Never mind; I think Assur already has the information I want. Magog, what did Assur have to say when you came south through his lands with this prisoner?”
The golden-braided giant from the north said, “He told me that one of his sons—a prominent chieftain—has gained the young Khaldi’s confidence. Assur has had this son quietly put out word that Napalku can expect to find safety in his tents.”
El’Issaq held his tongue, trying not to show his dismay in his eyes. Not En’Tarah-ana, too!
That was when Saeba began to shriek. His wailing brought to El’Issaq’s beaten mind the image of an enormous pregnant woman with Saeba’s face, coated in pitch, burning alive, while straining in hard labor to give birth to horrors no sane person would ever want to see.
PART 2
NINURTA
Ninurta – The Sumero-Babylonian god of rain, fertility, war, thunderstorms, wells, canals, floods, the plough and the South Wind. His name means “lord of the earth” and mankind owed to him the fertile fields and the healthy live-stock. He is a son of Enlil, and his wife is Gula. When the Tablets of Destiny were stolen by the storm-bird Zu he managed to retrieve them. As the ‘great hunter’ is related to Nimrod, as mentioned in Genesis 10:8-12…. According to one poem he once dammed up the bitter waters of the Under-world and conquered various monsters.
—Encyclopedia Mythica
Encyclopedia Mythica Online at www.pantheon.org/articles/n/ninurta.html
First Interlude
The Woman’s face and voice haunted my dreams: “I am Pyra—mother of tribes, speaker to beasts, singer, of the Eight who crossed the waters of Primal Chaos from the vanished First Time with the cask of Atum-Ra.
“In youth, I was a priestess in the Temple city of Epymetu and Pandura, in sunken Aztlan—a place of sorcery, and of lunatics who imagined themselves masters of creation in a world now buried under the stones of fire and dark oceans…
“That Pyra is as long dead as her world. Our names still mean red fire in the Elder Speech; which none now speak—except in broken phrases…
“People knew me by a better name once.
“Still, I do not use the name Pyra by choice. There is no seer’s charm to it. It is expedience. You see, my better name is unpronounceable…
“They call me “Mother Goddess,” or some other superstitious nonsense. After so many centuries, I sometimes do not know, anymore, if there is not some morbid truth in…. There certainly are worse models in this chaotic Dark Age for a mother goddess—worse models who gladly take such false honors.
“Oh, I know what you are thinking, you who see and hear me from your lofty pyramid of hindsight at the end of time. You are saying that I have turned and believed Lotan’s lie, that the delusion that took the world of my youth ensnared me, too. You think that if I—if we—had truly been a faithful remnant, then surely some legacy, some success…
“Surely only the divinely cursed could end up as we have!
“You have not fought, as I have, to… You can’t… nor have you seen generations of your own children aging and dying…
“No, I am not so arrogant to think myself the Goddess! But you have not fought, as I have, to convince a world of feral children…
“All they know is what they have heard from their parents about we who are the Firstborn…. No, O proud one, I do not think myself divine! Yet it is easy to understand how they do.
“Our descendants have lost so much that not even we who remember the truth can give back to them. If only we could reach more of the younger ones born after the…. But the few we can reach only understand as small children, at best.... Some have tamed them with vulgar inducements, as Gilgamesh and Shamhat trained Enkidu—the rest we must drive off as wild beasts! Then, there are the cannibals who live in cities…
“We had such lofty dreams. Then it all came to an end, when…
“We never wanted to be gods and demigods—at least that faithful remnant of us never did. But the knowledge we few retained proved too much for even some of us to resist, once we were cast adrift among our…
“Often our very survival depended on keeping them in fear—for they greatly outnumber us. We decrease, while they spread to the great islands of distant seas!
“My husband was the Deukal-uinne, who promised a new wine, better than that which his father drank on that one stormy night of human frailty…. Many tales spread of my Deukal-uinne, most of which are distorted legends to suppress what really happened to us. Fables replace our substance with the Lie, so that only the old names pass on, until they too dissolve as moth-eaten rags…
“My Deukal-uinne, you received the mantle from your father, and became the M’El-Ki—Steward-Judge for the Earth. You set out in the great work to rebuild an entire world. You tried with all that you had to keep your holy charge. What did it get you?
“No, Pyra darling, don’t get off into that! Don’t let bitterness have you! There must be a purpose in it all…
“Iyapeti, and you others, we must never forget the purpose, even if we can never understand it—even if we must endure weeping until the end of days, only to see the heavens split open, once again, into crashing planets and elemental flame…”
I woke up five minutes before my alarm, and swore at the clock, begrudging even those few minutes of sleep lost—half because my dreams about the Woman robbed me of rest, and half because I longed for those dreams to go on so I could learn more.
The same realization came each morning, usually about thirty seconds to a few minutes after waking up: They were just dreams. I wasn’t learning anything from them, just experiencing a vivid set of subjective impressions. Sure, I’d gotten a few insights into the language spoken by the Woman, but how much of that was “insight” and how much of it was my own projection? The dreams might be more misleading than leading.
I tossed on my clothes, and went outside into the bitter pre-dawn cold. The makeshift cafeteria in one of the other doublewide mobile buildings near the cleanroom was open. I needed coffee and lots of it.
Aside from the navy CS petty officer on duty, only Norby was inside, picking at his breakfast. After doctoring my “anti-zombie serum,” I sat down across from him. He seemed to be muttering under his breath.
I said, “Hey Norby, what’s the word?”
He looked up at me with a coke-bottle spectacle magnified
glare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just a figure of speech, buddy; I was saying good morning.”
Skorbner softened. “Oh. Sorry, Ben, just had a bad night.”
“Dreams?”
In the weeks since my arrival, Norby and I had come to be on a first-name basis—the only one other than Vris; that is, Dr. Chandragupta.
Norby played with his bacon. “Yeah, howd’ya know?”
“You and me, both. Maybe I’m working too hard, but I see that Woman’s face the minute I close my eyes.”
“Her lips move, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.”
I laughed. “With me it’s just the opposite. I understand almost everything—at least I think I do when I’m dreaming.”
Skorbner almost came up from his chair. “I’d give anything to be you! She probably can’t reach me ‘cause I suck at languages.”
“Norby, we’ve been here before, that SETI stuff was just me speculating—a mind game for modeling things out, nothing more.”
“Yeah, I get that. Sorry. I do understand her sometimes, a bit.”
“What do you understand?”
Norby tilted his head and looked into my eyes. “At first, I thought she was talking about having babies—I know how beyond-nerdy that sounds, so we don’t need to go there, ‘kay. Then last week, I realized she wasn’t talking about having children, but losing them. She weeps for all her lost children, like they all went insane or something.”
I dropped my coffee, spilling it all over myself, and the table. My heart drummed in my throat as something akin to that madness swam up from somewhere deep inside me like a vast hungry shark. It took me many seconds to regain control, but by then my eyes had given me away. My words sounded as ludicrous to me as my hope that Norby would not notice my terror. “Jeez! Sorry about that! I didn’t spill it on you, did I?”
Norby had not even bothered to slide his chair back. “No. It’s fine—napkins in the holder, by the salt.”
I pulled out a stack and dabbed up the spill, relieved he hadn’t noticed. Relieved, that was, until he spoke with uncanny lucidity.
Norby said, “So Ben, tell me about all her lost children.”
And all the earth was one lip, and there was one language to all. And it came to pass as they moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Senaar, and they dwelt there. And a man said to his neighbour, Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And the brick was to them for stone, and their mortar was bitumen. And they said, Come, let us build to ourselves a city and tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make to ourselves a name, before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.
—Genesis 11:1-4
Brenton English Translation of the Septuagint
(Septuagint Genesis [LXX] was translated from Hebrew to Greek , circa 280 BC)
8
Metropolis
26
Kengu surveyed the work of his brick masons, squinting down the bronze transit tube he had specially designed for the Bab’Elu project. The vertical angle of the ziggurat’s second main embankment lined up perfectly with the horizontal wall, which itself aligned to true north, according to the solar compass. Only Kengu’s father used the solar compass.
Nimurta could be possessive about such things. The solar compass was a Treasure Cave artifact from the World-that-Was—a device that required a level of metallurgy that the new foundries of Akkad and Bad-Tibira should soon be able to duplicate. The first batch of iron ore from the Ghimmuraya should arrive by caravan through the Mountains of Weeping Stone by year’s end.
“How does it measure, Lugal-Banda?” came the creaky voice of P’Tah-Tahut from behind Kengu.
Lugal-Banda Kengu stood, and turned to face the Vizier, a tall man with cold slits for eyes, over high, angular cheekbones, and immense spidery limbs.
Kengu said, “Flush. Has my father returned to Kish yet?”
Tahut shook his long head. “His house for Inana at Uruk grows into a virtual temple. He even calls it E’Anna, the House of Heaven. Your mother is most jealous, but her own pursuits ensure that she has little to say about Nimurta’s latest diversion—not publically, anyway.”
Kengu had trouble thinking of Gula as his mother, so preoccupied with her healing and herbal lore had she been during his childhood. He had always been in the way somehow. At least his father had taken him hunting.
“Any other family gossip?”
P’Tah-Tahut arched one of his ponderous brows. “It seems Saeba has had another of his fits.”
“What did he screech about this time?”
“He’s back to the scarab dung beetles eating his soul—much like his outburst a couple years ago, except I think that was about termites. Nobody wants to work for him anymore. We may need to drill into his skull to relieve the fluid pressure on his brain.”
“Uncle Saba already has too many holes in his head. Last time he was here, he started shrieking at my workers—bashed one in the face for no reason. The man’s a menace!”
P’Tah-Tahut laughed—a sound that made Kengu think of drying flesh tightening on the brittle bones of a corpse. The Vizier said, “Even menaces have uses—it’s just the prices you pay to feed and house them between such uses that get steep.”
Kengu snorted. “Yeah, well, his uses here are few. M’Es-Ki-aj-Kish-Saar and my father can’t even trust him with prisoners anymore—not since he nearly killed that northerner a couple years ago. Nimurta had to send the man to recover in Surupag—not sure that was such a great idea, either! Wasn’t he one of S’Eduku-tal-ebab’s spies?”
“Better that than to arouse Iyapeti too much. If not for the hostages at Surupag, he would surely have attacked in force by now. Magog and the Ghimmuraya keep him busy with border skirmishes, but not even they can prevent Iyapeti from driving south with a large army, if he decides enough’s enough. They have horses now, too. We’d probably win, but it would cost.”
Kengu folded up his transit tripod. “When did they get horses?”
“Early this year. Thuras’ men took a large herd from some careless Tukormag sub-chieftain. Magog was furious—but then, Magog usually is.”
“I’ll bet.”
They descended the main stair that sliced through the giant ziggurat’s lower tiers. Boat traffic on the nearby Ufratsi River resembled waterbugs and butterflies (for the sailing vessels) lighting on the surface of a long garden pool. Already, gardeners worked to bring up soil for the troughs to line each major step of the great pyramid, for the hanging gardens and fountains that would border-dress the main layers. Kengu could not help the swagger in his step as they turned onto the lower ramp. Nothing like this structure had existed since the World-that-Was.
Tahut interlaced spidery fingers and cracked his knuckles with a nerve-jarring explosion of sound that always made Kengu wince. “Your father is pleased by your progress, Lugal-Banda. He wanted me to convey that to you, and to tell you also that he has secured the desired Khaldini writ to sanction your new—ah—marriages. We had to force two more of the M’El-Ki’s more traditionally-minded order to join their elders at Surupag before it happened, but the others have fallen into line now.”
Kengu’s swagger became barely restrained leaps. Unlike other prominent men—even his own father—he had refused to have any of his favored women until the High Khaldini received divine confirmation on the new legalities. The Sacred Watchers do not watch for nothing! I will not put young Gilgamesh through what my parents did to me! “Thank you, Vizier, and send thanks to my father when you return to Kish—assuming he can pull himself from his little love goddess to meet you there.”
Tahut said, “That’s the second time you’ve said Kish instead of Kush, Lugal-Banda. Too much sun working the high platforms?”
Kengu laughed. His father’s chief advisor always prattled whenever he got bored. “If it makes you happy that I pronounce Kish Kuish for you, I’ll try to remember to do it whenever you’re around. Unlike Saba, you, Vizier,
are always useful and welcome.”
“Your esteem is warmly appreciated, Lugal-Banda. I shall endeavor not to follow the ways of Saeba, lest you begin to forget my name also.”
They reached the pavement, where Tahut’s wagon waited to return him to “Kuish” or whatever he wanted to call the capital city today. All Kengu knew was that he had a Khaldi priest to meet, to arrange a group wedding festival for his seven new brides.
27
The modest two-room baked-brick shrine at Eridu was really more of a down-payment on bigger and better things in Utu’s mind—Nimurta had promised as much when he had “suggested” to Qe’Nani that the new High Khaldi name his youngest half-brother as Chief Priest for the rediscovered “First City.” That Utu was barely the age of a novice mattered nothing to the people of Eridu. Nimurta and Qe’Nani had sold the idea as, “the young to teach the young on their own level.”
The Eridu folk were mostly diggers and masons anyway. Utu, on the other hand, felt transforming waves washing over him. Pleasurable auras of enhanced light and color pulsated to a rhythmic vibration of every aspect of his new reality. How do I teach this new reality to diggers and masons? Are such people even equipped to appreciate it?
The youngest son of Lord Arrafu considered these questions as he receded into the inner jipar chamber of the shrine where he spent most of his waking hours now, communing with Shamash, some Khana’Anhu slave girl, a flask of date liquor, or some combination of the above. He slept there too—just as his sister Inana did in hers, at her admittedly larger house going up at Uruk. Nimurta can have her—she’s too controlling anyway! Here, I give the orders! What I have buried under my house beats it all!
Utu ran his sandal over the removable tile, beneath which lay the golden tablets of the Divine M’Ae that he had helped Inana and Nimurta wrest secretly from Arrata.
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 12