Kush opened his eyes. Fog hovered in sheets by a riverbank at night. The Pale One crouched by him, the monster from back when, whose thin white hair and ghostly skin made him a creature of the fog. The dark Fat One also sat nearby, and another who seemed a tall hunter. Others gathered around the fire; a man, two women, and a child, but they were not the same as those whom Kush had seen at the mound or on the boat.
The Voice repeated, “Lord Kush, you are a great father of men.”
It came from the man who looked like a hunter.
Kush answered, “Why have you not spoken before now?”
The Hunter nodded. “The time was not right. I could not do so in front of the others, but these people shall be yours, except for the Pale One.”
The Pale One seemed unaware of the conversation. Kush now recalled that the Pale One had helped him, and that when the others from the boat had been among them, he had held onto the pale man because he had somehow recognized something about him—though what that might be had vanished from his mind.
The Hunter pulled one of the women to sit down with Kush by the fire. She struggled at first, but when he did nothing else to her, she succumbed to the warmth and remained.
Then the Hunter turned again to Kush, and said, “Speak to her, Kush; she will understand you.”
Kush gazed at her. The woman’s skin was dark, like his; and she had big young breasts. She was no child, but still in the prime of her beauty. “Is this so?” he said, “Do you understand me?”
Her dark eyes widened. “I can. Understanding you, me?”
He smiled for the first time. “Yes. I am Kush.”
She scooted closer to him. “Then I am Kush-ah. For no other name have I known.”
The Hunter said, “Take her, Kush. Take her, and have your way with her tonight. For by tomorrow, we shall be at Uruk. There, you will receive further instructions.”
Kush said, “What of the Pale One, and the Fat One, and the others that were with us before, on the grasslands?”
“They are not your concern. You go to a new place with Kush-ah, and others you shall meet at Uruk. Not many old men get to start over again with a young lovely, so you just think on that.”
Kush saw the whiteless black of the Hunter’s eyes, and knew that he was either a god or a monster—maybe both. Either way, he would do as told.
80
Suinne had to go to Uruk instead of back to Kish for the stupidest reason. Kush would not let go of him, and for some inane reason that only the huge, gibbering elder really understood, going with Lugalbanda seemed to terrify him. Fat Saeba also grew hard to control whenever his father got agitated, and his father got agitated every time Lugalbanda drew near to him. Only Suinne’s presence calmed the old man, and though the pale astronomer thought he might know why, he really wanted to be wrong.
Finally, Ninurta sent Suinne with Lugalbanda to control Kush and Saeba. “Thoth can recast tablets, O moon god,” the demented giant had said at their parting. “He is god of writing too.”
This simply was not the sort of contingency Suinne and P’Tah-Tahut had planned for. Whatever Lugal-banda Kengu had become, Suinne did not want to contradict his wishes; not when the creature could talk to him inside his thoughts, and then continue the conversation aloud. The Astronomer was not at all certain he had not contracted the fever, and was suffering the madness himself. In fact, he considered that most likely, despite the fact that his forehead never grew hot and his body did not ache.
Several days after leaving Ninurta’s party, they camped by a foggy riverbank, with maybe another day’s march left to Uruk. There, a tiny family—at least Suinne assumed they were related—joined them out of the fog, two women, an old man, and a child, all dark of skin, with tightly curled hair. None of them spoke.
It had not rained since the day prior, so Lugalbanda started a campfire using a tinder pouch, from which he had carried coals from one of the smoldering regions hit by a fragment of the fireball. Then something happened that made Suinne certain that he had contracted the brain fever: Lugalbanda started speaking to Kush in the same gibberish Kush spoke, and Kush spoke back to him as if he had understood—at least his expressions seemed to suggest that possibility. That and his agitation vanished.
Then Lugalbanda pulled the chubbier of the two women down to sit with he and Kush by the fire. Soon, she too began speaking what sounded like the same jabber. A short time later, old Kush and the full-figured woman got up and retreated into some bushes not too far off.
A few minutes after that, Suinne heard them, and realized that the bushes were not nearly far off enough. He began to snicker to himself, and spied the child—a dark young boy—not unlike Kengu had once been.
Lugalbanda grinned at him. “Don’t even think about it, Suinne. I have a woman for you at Uruk, and you will stay with her, or take her with you back to Kish when the time comes. The Plan demands children for now, and lots of them. If you cooperate, perhaps in a century or so…”
Suinne began to tremble. “What are you, and what do you want of me? Whatever it is, I’ll do it!”
Lugalbanda slid around the fire next to him, eyes aglow, grinning like a demented shark. “Oh, I know you will, Old Monster, because if you don’t, I will skin you alive, and make you watch as I use your pasty hide to make children’s clothes. Because from now on, you will add children to this denuded world, instead of subtracting from it the few it has left. The moon god shall have his own tribe, and his own city. Don’t you want your own tribe?”
The thought terrified and revolted Suinne, just as it had the first time, when he had seen his grandfather, Khana’Ani, with that woman who was not his grandmother, and what the old man did to her afterwards.
Suinne began to cry. “But I’ve never been able to…”
Lugalbanda seized him and shook him violently by the shoulders. “You can and you will, or I will have you replaced just as I had Kengu replaced, with someone who knows what to do with a woman. Then we will bring you back, and I will slowly roast you alive over an open flame, and give her to another—now how’s that for performance pressure in the old nuptial tent, Old Monster? I never thought this could be so much fun!”
A huge flock of crows took flight at the noise of Suinne shrieking uncontrollably in the damp, musty night.
81
U’Sumi and his landing party traveled in a poling skiff up what seemed to be the new main river channel, toward Kush, or “Kish,” as Gilgamesh had called it. The boy had told him that he might find “Ninurta” there. Ruined villages and mud hovels dotted the banks, most of which were deserted. The wave must have hit just after the largest construction boom since Kush and Uruk Haven had built permanent brick centers.
The M’El-Ki had left Haviri in command of the Amirdu, with orders to help Gilgamesh’s people rebuild Uruk, and to show them how to fish and gather provisions. In the eight days between their arrival at the haven, and U’Sumi’s departure up river, the Amirdu’s oracle shack had picked up three other Sun Ships from the Great Southern Ocean. He had called them each home, warning them of the new coastlines and conditions at Uruk.
He had also ordered Haviri to keep Amirdu off shore, and out of sight of the city. Work parties were to make landfall in launches, each with an armed escort. While only he and Haviri had hand-cannons, steel swords and bows seemed to impress the people of Uruk well enough to maintain order. Even so, U’Sumi felt uneasy about leaving his ship.
Be that as it may, Gilgamesh had given him information that made it impossible for him to refuse pressing up river. Although the young lordling gave only a barely coherent account of events in recent years, he had made a couple things clear.
The first was that his father was now a “spirit being.” The second was that “Ninurta had re-enthroned Zhuisudra” at a rebuilt Surupag, just a few days’ boat ride up river. This alarmed U’Sumi on more levels than he could count, chiefly because of all the fire and wave damage. The wall of water had apparently hit the Sumar marshlands i
n an oblique, haphazard zigzag that deflected off the higher grasslands in the west to deposit its silt eastward, past the old main channel, until the sediment fans of the rivers out of the eastern mountains bent it back westward again.
On their third day on the river, U’Sumi and his men found a settlement on the western bank, both undamaged and inhabited, which the wave had apparently missed as its force had lost energy.
They put ashore in partial sight of what younger people these days considered a “palace” of baked brick, a little way in from the river. While U’Sumi and his men disembarked, a half-dozen armed men appeared from the greenery near the riverbank, with arrows fitted and bows drawn. It took U’Sumi several seconds to recognize Misori’Ra, the son of his brother, Khumi. Khumi himself ran from the settlement’s modest main building, and called out to him through a break in the trees.
“By the merciful E’Yahavah, it’s you! It’s really you!”
U’Sumi ran to his brother and pulled him into an embrace for the first time in well over a century and a half. Then he looked up through his tears and saw T’Qinna and his father, and his heart nearly stopped.
His father had aged much, and his wife appeared tired and forlorn. That didn’t stop U’Sumi from rushing to her, and giving her the longest kiss of their centuries of married life together.
82
The tents of Aram clustered in tiny nomadic communities all along the northeastern run of the Ufratsi River, south of the mountains. By the time Iyapeti’s army reached them, the brain fever had struck half of his seven hundred footmen and three hundred horse cavalry, and the other half were too frightened to go on. Most grew sick only in the last two days.
Gray, hunched Iavanni rode next to his father, an ever-present reminder of how quickly this new world used up good men, and tossed them aside before their time. The Gray One said, “They must have contracted the plague from the Ghimmuraya and Tukormag prisoners we left with Thuras.”
Iyapeti tried not to look at his son. “They don’t have it as bad as the prisoners did. Our sick can still ride or march. At worst, they just slur their words as though drunk. They also still seem to understand why we are at war—at least the ones I’ve spoken to do—that’s significant.”
Iavanni said, “Maybe the prisoners exaggerated the plague’s severity. We could understand most of them with some effort.”
Iyapeti doubted it. “The Ghimmuraya were incomprehensible. We found many of the Tukormags easier to understand. Our interrogators focused on them as a result—I checked before we left. Whatever this sickness is, it seems to affect people differently, almost, but not completely, according to their clans.”
“What else did you notice?”
“Not much. The Ghimmuraya all seemed to jabber the same way, at high speed, and I thought most of the Tukormag prisoners spoke similarly to each other, at a more relaxed pace, quite differently from the Ghimmuraya. At least that was how it sounded during the interrogations I led, after the fighting ended. I had no time to test my impressions too far, but I would be surprised if the differences I heard were imaginary.”
They rode on in silence while the afternoon lengthened.
As Iyapeti halted his men outside the camp of Aram at sunset, he wished he had paid more attention to the prisoners. The tent village’s watch called out to his fellows inside their compound with a stream of noises like no speech ‘Peti had ever heard. Shortly afterward, a lone rider came out on an onager, his head uncovered, doubtless to aid recognition in the failing light. As he drew near, Iyapeti saw that it was his nephew, Aram, himself.
‘Peti called, “Hail Aram! Does it go well with you?”
The man reined his tiny mount to a halt, and dismounted before answering. “It would be best not to enter my tents, Uncle. Most of my people are sick with a strange fever. It has ravaged the lands east and southward. Both the Agadae and Sumar plains are devastated. Is it well in the North?”
Iyapeti dismounted and embraced his brother’s son. “Better now, but there has been war among my tribes. The plague struck us too, though not as badly as it did the Ghimmuraya and Tukormags. Magog has betrayed us.”
“Nimurta?”
“Aye.”
“We have had word from those who flee up the Ufratsi.”
Next to his uncle, Aram seemed as his onager did to Iyapeti’s enormous warhorse; small and wiry, but fast and agile, as his father U’Sumi had always been. He looked past his uncle to the weary, some feverish, men.
“How many of your men are stricken?”
Iyapeti led him off away from the others, where they could talk. “About half. Yours?”
“The same,” Aram said. “Beware of Assur, he has sold out to Nimurta, and my patrols say his tents are well-struck with both fever and madness.”
“So I’ve heard. How bad is it down-river?”
“Bad. Refugees meander past us along the river every day. Most cannot speak, except in noises. Many are belligerent. Some are like wild beasts of the earth that would as soon kill you as look at you. A few can speak as small children. From these we learned that the great cities Nimurta and Kush started to build all stand but half-finished and deserted. They also spoke of a giant wave that has buried much of the Sumar marshlands all the way to Kush and the Agadae.”
Iyapeti said, “The darkened skies. It grows frigid in the highlands. Another piece of rubble from Tiamatu has no doubt struck the Earth and reawakened the fire-mountains, the smoke from which blots out the sun. Do your stricken ones speak as though drunk, or as small children, or are they like most of the ones that wander up the river?”
Aram paused, and then said, “We understand them well enough if we listen carefully.”
“My sick are the same.”
“Why do you ask?”
Iyapeti smiled. “It’s something your mother once told us about how plagues work—a remarkable woman, your mother. Of all of us that came over from the World-that-Was, she had the most sophisticated understanding of how diseases work, and how the body and mind react to them. We had many plagues in the final days of the old world, so the topic came up a bit.”
“What did she say?”
“That plagues are strongest where they first strike, but as they spread, person to person, they weaken with each transmission.”
Aram looked up at him with despondent eyes. “Rather like us, as we spread from land to land. Maybe we are the plague!”
Iyapeti clasped his nephew’s shoulder. “You need to speak such things, so speak them to me now, alone. It’s understandable, but you must cut that kind of talk from your tongue before your own children, and in front of my men. That sort of talk will spread like a plague because people will understand it; clear?”
“Yes Uncle, of course. Forgive me.”
Iyapeti embraced him. “There is nothing to forgive. My meaning is that the plague appears to have originated in the Sumar or the Agadae. My tribes in the lake regions were only lightly touched, the Ghimmuraya and Tukormags had it worse only because they had commerce with Nimurta. Your tribe is far up-river. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yes, I think so. You’re saying the worst is over?”
Iyapeti nodded. “As fevers and brain damage go, perhaps; but if we do not set to re-establishing government and communications, the situation may be about to get worse.”
“How can it be worse?”
“The Ghimmuraya were often seized with a violent madness. What happens when insanity is no longer bedded down by fever, and good men cannot communicate with each other?”
Aram’s face drooped. “Do you think the effects are permanent?”
“Even if they are not, people have scattered who will continue to have children. Those children will learn whatever form of speech they hear from impaired parents. I don’t see how the effects cannot be permanent.”
“Then how can we restore order?”
Iyapeti looked past the tents. “I’m not sure. But I do know one thing that tells me we must try, and tha
t we must do so in the lands hit hardest.”
“What’s that?”
“Last year, I spoke to a Khaldi who escaped the overthrow of Arrata. His name was Palqui. He told me that just before Kush and Nimurta seized power, the Oracle Tower on the Treasure Mount received a brief message from one of the Sun Ships. That means at least one has survived. My father got off a signal to call it home.”
“It must have capsized in the big wave.”
“Not necessarily,” Iyapeti said. “I know from experience that if it was far enough away from the impact, and in deep waters, the waves would not be so large—they crawl mostly along the ocean floor, and rear up only at the immediate impact zone, and once they reach shallows. We learned that on the Boat of a Million Years, and designed the Sun Ships to survive big waves because we knew that they stood a high chance of encountering some. Any returning ship will make for Uruk. We need to ensure your father has a friendly shore to welcome him home.”
Aram’s face darkened. “A curse on Nimurta! Why did my father trust him even above his own sons? None of us were ever quite good enough!”
Iyapeti had never suspected such bitterness within his brother’s family, particularly from Aram, who had always seemed personable, dependable, and capable. Then again, so had Assur—up until the time he threw in with Nimurta—as had Magog, despite his hot-headedness, and Ghimmuraya. Then there was Nimurta himself; U’Sumi’s ideal disciple—more than a student, almost a son, it seemed. It “seemed” perhaps far too well.
“I’m sure that was never in your father’s heart, Aram. I know he can be a perfectionist at times—you should have heard the knock-down drag-outs we had as boys—but he’s never lacked graciousness as an adult.”
Aram looked up, as if fighting back tears. “No, you’re most likely right that it wasn’t in his heart. It’s just I fear I will never know for sure.”
Iyapeti smiled. “Maybe you will. Join us, with as many men as you can spare. Ride with me to Surupag, or what is left of it.”
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 27