Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Nobody thought to search for stolen objects in the wagon of the High Khaldi’s son, weeks after Imdugud renegades had supposedly spirited the tablets away. It never occurred to anyone to search in Arrata at all. Inana and Utu had squeezed together into every nook of the inner Treasure Cave at least once—tiny grottos not even the excavators seemed to know about—where the Tablets of Destiny lay hidden until time came to transport them south. By the Big Move, nobody even noticed the extra bundles in Utu’s wagons.

  So, what do I teach diggers? He reclined on his down pillow behind the inner altar, and stared up at the gold filigree serpent-and-tree designs covering the indigo-dyed plaster walls of his tiny sacred room. I stand on the stairway at mid-point between the Ten Heavens and Under-world, abreast the Center of the Earth. I lay above the Abyssu, in the Gate that connects the Abssu to Earth and the Heavens! Perhaps I should teach them how vital their simple dig-diggity-digging really is…

  The gold serpents on the wall began writhing like shiny worms.

  Utu smiled as the Power of the Absu welled up through him, throbbing from watery deeps. The voices chattered in his head all the time now. At first, they had muttered only in the evening, then only in random words and noises. Only recently, had they begun to speak in phrases, and occasionally, in coherent thoughts. Then there was the laughter—the maddening, contagious laughter—as if he were the butt of, or the knowing participant in, some great cosmic joke. He sometimes wasn’t sure which.

  What he liked best was when he left his body altogether behind in the jipar room, and travelled—those times when he saw things happening to people far away; when he knew and witnessed things impossible for him to know and see. The chattering voices always grew loudest then, and made him most certain the Great Cosmic Joke was not on him, but on someone else—anyone else, please!

  Now, the golden trees on the wall grew, sprouting more branches, with new serpents wavering on each one like stretching maggots with horns. Faces comprised of the patterned spaces between the gold filigree—empty faces with hungry, vacant eyes the color of the indigo wall plaster—moved and spoke through spastic mouths.

  The words in Utu’s head slowly synchronized with the talking mouths of the Faces in the Spaces, but they were all gibberish.

  “Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu. Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu…”

  A voice spoke from deep out of the Earth, beneath his jipar—as if from the miry Absu itself; “When you can speak and understand the words, then Utu shall become Shamash, radiant as the sun!”

  Utu cackled like a demented bush bird, and began to mouth the nonsense words of the lipless, shape-faces on the wall.

  “Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu. Eli baltuti ima’ ‘idu…”

  28

  Nimurta arrived on the quay of Kush around the same time P’Tah-Tahut rode in from the city’s newly finished gate. They met at the courtyard of Kush’s palace, entering up the wide step-way, almost as if synchronized by dark powers greater than they were. Both walked, without speaking, through the small pavement that separated the two wings of the building. Nimurta could almost feel himself drawn forward by the attraction of some terrible lodestone to the inner metal of his personality; a magical force he could no longer resist even if he wanted to.

  Rather than some newly descended demi-god pulling them forward, however, only Suinne, the court astronomer of M’Es-Ki-aj-Kush-Saar, joined them at the head of the courtyard.

  That was bad enough.

  Even Nimurta shuddered at the sight of Suinne—an enigma on every level of his monstrous existence. An astronomer who was not Khaldini, a Khana’Anhu slave who was a lord, a son of dark-skinned parents who was ghostly pale—not just fair, but bleached white from hair to toe, except for a pair of bloody red slits for eyes that glared from a skull-like head, livid as death. Suinne: who walked under a hooded cloak by day, and wandered the lonely wastes by night, avoiding the firelight of human camps.

  There, in dark isolation, the terrible void had touched Kush’s personal astronomer in ways that would drive any sane man mad. Rumors told how children vanished near the places Suinne roamed, leaving no trace but occasional distant wails in the night.

  Nimurta and his Vizier followed their wraith-like astronomer into Kush’s crude library of clay tablets, above the hidden chamber where Saeba had interrogated El’Issaq, a little over two years ago. Once inside, Suinne removed his hood, and allowed his thin strands of cobweb hair to fall to his hunched shoulders. The pallor of his marble-hued skin nearly shone with a cold light of its own. Nimurta almost expected a brood of spiders to come scuttling out from behind the astronomer’s snail-flesh earlobes.

  Suinne motioned the others onto some floor cushions with a skeletal hand, despite the fact that the palace belonged to Nimurta’s father. Yet Nimurta never stood on ceremony where Suinne was concerned. He knew that if it ever came down to a choice between killing the astronomer and one of his own sons, Kush would choose one of his own sons for reasons that Nimurta was almost completely sure he did not want to know—almost. At least such reasons could wait for another day.

  Those bloody eye-slits seemed unusually animated. “The morning calisthenics keep the workers strong of body, and united of mind, yes? Look what we have accomplished in so short a time!”

  Tahut nodded. “It is impressive, my Lugal.”

  Nimurta smirked. “The Khaldini speak in step with our mind, now that the last dissenters are contained at Surupag. True, our experiment with letting Arrafu remain at S’Eduku-tal-ebab failed, but I’m now convinced it’s best we keep him with his mother and the Zhui’Sudra. Easier to have potential trouble sequestered in one place.”

  P’Tah-Tahut said, “I still fear some may question our actions.”

  Nimurta waved it off. “People are sheep. All it takes is that we suggest our vision to them in popular stories and songs, until it seems like the common sense of one neighbor speaking to another. The emergent gods are with us beyond all doubt.”

  Suinne rubbed his palms together. “Since this is so, should we not slaughter the old dissenters in Surupag while we can?”

  The Astronomer’s sudden stupidity took Nimurta by surprise. “That would only awaken the consciences of our most recent converts, and bring down Iyapeti from the north before we’re ready. Surupag is a hostage city by design. Wiser to adapt the Zhui’Sudra’s story to our narrative rather than suppress it. How could we successfully enforce the forgetting of a history every one of us grew up with, anyway? As time goes on, we can push the Deluge further into the background, and give it new meaning, but erasing it altogether is both unrealistic and undesirable.”

  Suinne crimped his face. “You know best. I just need advance notice of any sudden changes in the program, if I am to find the proper heavenly signs to correspond to them. That stooge, Qe’Nani, knows nothing about the Khaldi family business of interpreting the heavens! He says one thing one day, and the opposite the next, as if he can just make things up as he goes!”

  Nimurta said, “Also as I planned. Better a compliant stooge than a compromised man of knowledge, who might connect the constellation stars, so to speak, and have second thoughts. That’s what so quickly went wrong with leaving Lord Arrafu at Arrata.” What does my father see in this bent night creature, who murders valuable children for fun?

  “It’s just that he says such stupid things, that people have trouble taking him—and potentially you, by extension—seriously, Lord. He’s a liability.”

  Nimurta rubbed his chin. “Yes, there is that. It could become a problem if it happens too much.”

  Suinne continued, “So far, I’ve handled questions by appealing to the supposed value of the High Khaldi’s ‘child-like wisdom’ and other such rubbish. At other times, I’m able to recast Qe’Nani’s drivel into something that sounds remotely plausible, but…”

  Nimurta interrupted, “It’s not about helping people with questions make sense of things. We should discourage difficult questions. Simplify, simplify, and when it loo
ks simple enough, simplify it some more! Shame questioners for their arrogance, and reward even the most mindless support as obedience. Qe’Nani appeals to most of them because he is as common as common comes! Your job is to make him sound halfway intelligent to the few who aren’t fully with the program yet. Qe’Nani is the mystic of El-N’Lil; he’s supposed to sound inscrutable!”

  The ghost-man slumped noticeably. “Lord Nimurta, I’m simply saying that ‘inscrutability’ and ‘common as common comes’ do not often go hand in hand. If he could be encouraged to speak less, and to stay away from the taverns more, it might help.”

  Nimurta said, “Suggestion noted. I used to admonish him for his drinking when he was my tracker; maybe he still needs that.” He turned to Tahut. “How are the Lugal-Banda’s workers keeping to the time table?”

  “They’re ahead of schedule. Kengu anticipates completion in less than five years—sooner if he can get more workers. I am concerned about one thing, however…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve heard rumors from the northern Akkad construction zone of a sickness afflicting workers in their outlying settlements.”

  Nimurta looked up. “What kind of sickness?”

  “Some form of brain fever that strikes suddenly and lingers.”

  “Is it affecting the work?”

  Tahut hesitated and then answered, “Not yet.”

  Nimurta waved his hand as if shooing away a fly. “Then don’t trouble about it, unless it slows the program down. Send Gula up there, if you’re concerned. She needs something useful to do.”

  “I merely suggest that you not pull the northern workers south for your speech next month, lest this sickness spread. After that, we’ll know if it’s a fever or just some bad ground water.”

  Nimurta’s jaw tightened. “I respect your concerns, Tahut, but we make public the new crisis in next month’s speech. My father says we need every major settlement present for the news to spread evenly. Suinne, have you drawn anything from the heavens to support the new crisis narrative?”

  The astronomer seemed eager to share. “Good news there, my Lugal. There is a planetary conjunction between L’Mekku and Khronos, with a number of comets to choose from, one will even be visible to the naked eye next month.”

  “Give me a plausible interpretation from the traditional perspective, and let’s see how we can tap it into place from there.”

  Suinne grinned like a shark. “The comet is in the Constellation of the Scales, which the interpretive tablets of Seti and the texts of Enukki would indisputably read as a time for the weighing of hearts, minds, and deeds. As to the planetary alignment, Khronos speaks of the ancient line of the Divine M’Ae, offset by L’Mekku—the planet of blood, war, and jeopardy. We thus have a believable warning that the governing forces of the world are in jeopardy, and that we are soon to be tested. How fortunate; we may not even need to ‘tap the signs into place.’”

  Nimurta shuddered involuntarily. “Fortunate indeed.”

  Suinne was not finished. “Even so, Lord, Qe’Nani must silence his random thoughts. Yesterday, before he left for Uruk, he blathered of ‘signs of good times’ as he blessed the new beer. Nothing invites doubt like blatant contradictions. An otherwise useful idiot must not undermine the Second Crisis. Only after building crisis upon crisis can you restore the Tablets of Destiny from the Imdugud Dragon-bird. The people’s sense of relief, and subsequent compliance, will be directly proportional to the weight of compounded fear on their hearts. Nothing else will do.”

  “Yes, I understand the implications, Suinne. Tahut, have you given any more thought to what form the upcoming string of crises should take?”

  The somber Vizier cracked his knuckles. “The irregularity of the warm decades versus the cold ones, since the end of the Deluge, is unlike the other three natural cycles of summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, and day and night, described on the Tablets. Nothing in the text demands that this particular cycle be regular, but it might be something we can exploit for a truly cosmic-scaled crisis, if we suggest that it should be.”

  “Explain.”

  Tahut said, “The ‘cold and heat’ does not follow a daily, seasonal, or yearly cycle. The first warm time immediately after the Deluge lasted less than twenty-five years, followed by an intense cold of less than twenty years. The warm, dry spell since then has lasted almost three centuries, with the exception of two cold years with almost no summers.”

  Nimurta stretched. “What does this suggest to you?”

  P’Tah-Tahut leaned forward, and told them both.

  The Lugal smiled. “Yes. Implemented in carefully regulated stages, it could work.” Nimurta turned to Suinne. “Can the Sky Signs support it?”

  Kush’s astronomer sighed, a noise Nimurta found similar to gas he had heard slowly seeping from the putrefying corpse of a large beast he once encountered on one of his many hunts. Suinne answered, “Initially; but it will require an entirely different set of tables for interpretation of the constellations eventually, if we are to keep it going. Since the Deluge, many things have needed adjustment in the old tablets—the lunar cycle’s divergence from the solar one, for example—but the scope of change needed for this would be unprecedented. Again, they would require gradual alterations over several generations.”

  Tahut added, “Which would track with the unfolding myth.”

  Nimurta nodded. “Good. Onto the last item, now—conversion of the Academy to focus on what used to be called engineering. The M’El-Ki only trusted his most devout students with knowledge about the powers of the Ancients. You and I Tahut, plus Psydon the Shipwright, were of only a handful of non-Khaldini initiates. Have any of the others been won over?”

  Tahut looked down. “Only two, my Lugal. The remainder is an obstinate bunch, all the more so since we took Arrafu away.”

  “What about Usalaq?”

  The Vizier pondered before answering. “He shows no interest in politics. He may not be with us, but he’s said nothing against us.”

  Nimurta frowned. “We cannot base important decisions on an ambiguous quantity.”

  “You’re right, of course. I shall make it a priority to find out where Usalaq stands…”

  Nimurta cut him off. “Usalaq is lost in his little world of ancient engineering. Push at him there, and he will fall in line. Threaten his world by showing that you are not afraid to destroy it. His younger acolytes are a resource we can ill afford to waste, but it would be better to skin one of them to shake loose the rest, and be certain. Usalaq has no stomach for violence and making the hard calls. It’s why the M’El-Ki never involved him in politics.”

  “But they all have specialized knowledge!”

  Nimurta rose from his cushion. “I know, Tahut, but we must choose a lamb for the slaughter—one that has skills either you or I can duplicate or come closest to duplicating.”

  “The technical texts are also too worn-out to transport, and too long and detailed to effectively copy onto the crude mediums available to us!”

  “Yes, I know that too. But we require water wheels to generate quickfire for Kush, and copper cords to carry it into the city. Can we at least copy those sections most needed for that end?”

  Tahut said, “I will depart for Arrata after your speech, and see to it.

  Nimurta felt fire in his eyes. “No. You will depart immediately.”

  “As you wish, my Lugal.”

  “As for you, Astronomer, ‘the new cosmic crisis’ is due to the mismanaging of our limited resources, and to ritual neglect by the previous government. Give me a stirring speech with incantations to keep this crisis at bay. They shall hereafter be called, ‘the Incantations of Nimurta.’”

  A team of American researchers… speculate that extraterrestrial environmentalists could be so appalled by our planet-polluting ways that they view us as a threat to the intergalactic ecosystem and decide to destroy us. The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and
the NASA Planetary Science Division, entitled “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis.” …One such scenario is the stuff of many a Hollywood blockbuster… But another might resonate more with fans of Al Gore’s documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth.” It speculates that aliens, worried we might inflict the damage done to our own planet on others, might “seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us.”

  —Aliens Could Attack Earth to End Global Warming NASA Scientist Claims

  foxnews.com/scitech, 08/19/2011

  9

  Phobos

  29

  The Listener felt the mob’s creeping fear; could almost see it encircle them like an army of shadows in the peripheral vision of their thoughts. It showed in their eyes, and in the agitated shuffling of restless feet unable to burn off the nervous energy of awakening horror. Never tending much toward philosophical speculation, the Listener was still old enough to sense the deliberate effect of Nimurta’s speech on the crowd. He was also experienced enough to know nonsense when he heard it.

  The up-and-coming Lugal of Uruk stood atop the enormous platform at the Bab’Eluhar Ziggurat’s first level, his well-oiled muscles gleaming in the sun like polished wood. Behind him, the stairwell cut upward through the mostly-completed second level, to the artificial plateau where the third and final stage of the tower would sit. The smell of fresh tar-like kapar cement oozed from between the orange-tan baked bricks, reminding the Listener of another building project long ago…

  Nimurta’s speech continued, “In the face of our current crisis, we must demonstrate to the heaven-dwellers our commitment to preventing what happened to the World-that-Was from happening here. The previous government relied too heavily on a bickering Council of Tribal Ensi that rarely formed a consensus needed to govern effectively. The weakness and mismanagement of the old regime became so bad as to enable a band of Amurru Imdugud cult renegades to come in and steal the Tablets of Destiny, even as the Council met!