Khumi’s face yellowed as a clammy sweat broke out on his brow. Tiva could feel him trembling under his arm, where she steadied him.
Lugalbanda led them into the E’Anna temple-house, and quartered them all in the same chamber, where he left them, taking Tahut with him.
Khumi collapsed on one of the couches and wept convulsively. “I’ve brought this all on us! Me! But how could even the powers of heaven be changed? Punish me, yes; but not you two!”
Tiva slid her lap under her husband’s head to prop him up.
A’Nu-Ahki, nearing collapse himself, shuffled to their side, and said, “The powers of heaven have not been overthrown, son. Did you not see how twice this spirit—the same Pahn who tormented you both in the olden-world—was forced to changed his mind. He could not shove you away from Tiva, nor could he strike her. He was a minor player with great pretenses in the olden world, and only seems strong now because many of his biggest co-rebels are imprisoned deep inside the Earth.”
“I hope you’re right,” Tiva said. “He challenged you to command him to depart, as you did on the Grove Hollow trail, when you first rescued me, as if he knew you could not do it. Is he right?”
The Ancient shuffled over to the other couch across the chamber, and sat down before he fell. “I couldn’t do it, yes, but not because the power of E’Yahavah has been overthrown in the Heavens, or even here on Earth. It’s only because Uruk is given over to them by design. I cannot command him to leave here, but neither can he go beyond the limits imposed on him from above. They cannot harm our persons, only imprison us.”
“Are we to die here, then?” Khumi rasped.
Pahpi Nu stared off into space, and said, “My day is coming very soon, but not in this place. Not quite yet.”
Tiva asked, “Where then, and when?”
A’Nu-Ahki smiled. “There is one more appointment I have. We go to exile at Tel’Muhn, the Hill of Delights. You two shall return one day, and be reunited with U’Sumi, T’Qinna, and Iyapeti—yes, T’Qinna is safe.”
Tiva could not stop her tears any longer. “But what about you?”
Pahpi Nu smiled for her. “I shall not be returning. Give my love to the others when the time comes; for I will not see them again on this Earth.”
116
The Monster Pahn faced Ninurta in the E’Anna’s brightly colored jipar room, as a triumphant straticon from the World-that-Was would a junior captain. “You have not lived up to our expectations, O En’Mer-Kar. Kish is in enemy hands.”
Ninurta’s eyes flared with rage, which quickly wilted into terror, the longer he looked at the body that used to belong only to his son. “I rejoiced at the goddingness of Kengu; now seeing I that Kengu is not. Who are you?”
Pahn pressed Lugalbanda’s face up to Ninurta’s. “There are classes of gods; always remember that. I take your son’s form, but I am of the Igigi—Watchers, who are Sons of Anu—the Anunnaki. You are a god of earth, mighty Ninurta. En-Ki is the new Captain of my order. Do you see behind me the Asag of Death?”
Ninurta’s head dropped. “I see it. But I cannot be second to my son, even if be you only Lugalbanda in form and not substance.”
Pahn smiled. “Which is why the Proud Hunter must go into exile, though not in defeat; we just give you a new opportunity. En-Ki grants you another chance to complete your divinity.”
Ninurta fell to his knees, weeping. “I did everything you asked!”
“Yes. Yet still you failed to unify the world under us.”
“But I tried!”
“Trying isn’t good enough; you must succeed!” Pahn’s voice became one with the snarling Asag’s. “Be satisfied that we give you another chance to complete your divinity. The name of Ninurta shall be remembered here as the Mighty Hero, and War God! But only if you go to a new place.”
“But what of Inana?”
Pahn softened his voice, now that he had the Great Hunter in terror of him. “Inana shall find you in her son. There will be other Inanas for you. You shall have not only another Ishtar, but as many women as you desire. Nothing will be restrained from you.”
“What must I do?”
“Take the new colony ships you have captured. Bring P’Tah-Tahut, and any other sons of Misori’Ra in Uruk with you, on one of them, but leave Suinne with me. You are also to take Zuisudra and his companions—for En-Ki has given him immortality and godhood, after a kind. Deposit him and his companions, with a small colony to support him, on one of the islands deep in the Absu. You shall name it Tel’Muhn, for the island will not be swampy, but have a hill filled with date palms and fruit trees. Then you shall go on with your colony, to a place I will tell you in a moment. Now repeat back to me your destiny.”
Ninurta stammered, “Take Zuisudra to date palm place deep in the Absu, called Dilmun, and leave for him servants. Where do I go after?”
Ninurta’s confidence returned like a tidal wave when Pahn told him.
PART 4
The Falcon
Horus, the Avenger of Osiris, came before the Great Ennead (Re and the eight other primordial Egyptian gods—KGP). With His Mother beside Him, He spoke of the cruel murder of his father at the hands of Seth. He spoke of the usurpation of the throne of Egypt. The Gods were impressed by the eloquence of the Falcon-Headed One, and they pitied him.
Shu, Son of the Creator, was the first to speak: “Right should rule might. Mighty Seth hath force on His side, but young Horus hath Justice. We shalt do justice unto Horus…”
Thoth, …spake unto the Ennead, “This is right a million times!”
Isis gave a great cry of joy. She begged the North Wind to change direction westward to whisper the news unto Osiris.
Lord Shu declared, “Giving the throne unto Horus seems right to the whole of the Ennead! Thoth shalt give the royal signet ring to Horus…”
And, to this, Seth proclaimed, “It is I who slay the Enemy of Re daily. It is I who stand in the prow of the Bark of Millions of Years, and no other God can do it. It is I who should receive the office of Osiris!”
The Gods knew the terrors of the Serpents of Chaos. They muttered that Seth was right. Horus, Lord of Light, spake and said, “Shall one give office to the uncle when the bodily Son is there?”
Isis became furious at the Ennead for not speaking in favour of Her Son. She complained to them until, for the sake of peace, they promised that justice should be given unto Horus.
Mighty Seth was angered. “How dare ye cowards break thine oath! I shalt fetch my Great Scepter and strike one of you down with it each day! I swear that I will not argue my case in any Court where Isis is present!”
—The 80-Year Contention
between Horus and Seth
(An ancient Egyptian text)
Third Interlude
Either the others were going mad, or I was.
I had Vris and Norby to prove that I wasn’t, but the very act of trying to do so to anyone beyond our little triad would implicate all three of us.
The madness became fully apparent the day the Cleanroom Technician removed his security badge, so it would not snag on the aperture when he changed a HEPA filter. He forgot to replace it once the job was finished. Stavenger found the photo ID on the floor grating, and instantly sounded the alarm, ordering the arrest of the absent-minded tech. In seconds, security troopers with automatic weapons raced through the cleanroom without suits, doing face-to-badge checks, guns aimed at our chests.
Weeks ago, Stavenger had cleared up an earlier forgotten badge incident simply by taking the ID to the person in question—which had been me. I had taken it off while helping Vris fix the loading chamber on the scanning electron microscope. The CIA man had smiled and told me not to leave my toys out while I helped my girlfriend with her SEM. The worst thing that came of it was that I blushed profusely, and Vris had laughed.
Nor was it only Stavenger.
Yesterday, Hobbes had shrieked at Norby in the Device Room, “If I were your supervisor at M.I.T. I would not only dism
iss you, but also see that you never worked anywhere ever again. You, Mr. Skorbner, are the single, most compelling justification for eugenics I have ever seen! No sane society should allow a man to reproduce who believes in space alien women; much less permit you to have the prestige of a career at an institute of higher learning! You are a Delta, an Epsilon, and a dunce! You also smell…”
At that point, I had walked in from the adjoining chamber and told Hobbes to go out for some air, or I would remove him. His crumpled-yeti scowl showed yellowed teeth like monkey fangs as he hissed at me, and left.
“What was that all about?” I had asked Norby.
“I told him the spectrography results were in on that new glass nodule he found inside the Device’s broken globe. I think he was pissed that he missed it during his first three surveys. I let Vris examine it too.”
We laughed, but the humor had already worn thin.
Even the Navy CS Petty Officer at the “Hotel California” (which was what we had named the cafeteria trailer) seemed to view us with shifty eyes. The security people continually fingered their weapons, as if expecting sudden assault from some unknown quarter—something I knew their training discouraged, the nearness of the Iranian border notwithstanding.
The night after Stavenger arrested the technician, I discovered it was worse than we thought.
Norby, Vris, and I had each left the isolated research facility, walking in different directions, at different times, for what would appear, hopefully, to be separate evening strolls. I had told Vris to go straight to the volcanic rocks where we had spoken before. She left her quarters last, forty minutes after Norby had left his. I left first, so that either Vris or I would reach the rendezvous point before Norby could. He had never been there before, and had the longest to walk after he turned to circle the camp from the south. I had wandered east, the meeting point being north-northwest.
I found Vris waiting for me, her hair glistening in the cold moonlight, as she sat on the same rock we had used last time we met there.
I smiled. “What’s a hot number like you doing in a joint like this?”
The moon gave enough light that I could see her roll her eyes. Her white teeth lit up her smile like glow-in-the-dark pearls. “There’s this information theorist with wild ideas, but I can’t seem to get rid of him.”
I sat down next to her. “Gee, I guess you can’t.”
“What’s taking Norby?”
“Longest hike; I planned it that way.”
She punched me playfully on the arm. “This is serious, and we’re flirting like a couple of high schoolers.”
“What did your tests on the new component find?”
Vris grew quiet a moment. “Shouldn’t we wait for Norby?”
“I’m here,” said the voice of a shadow sliding down a small slope from an old lava run.
“Anyone see you?”
Norby said, “A guard as I left the compound, but I walked extra far before turning to circle around. I also hid and waited a couple times to see if anyone followed. Nobody did.”
I allowed Norby to park himself as comfortably as possible on a rock before I spoke: “We’re having the same dreams. That just doesn’t happen. Now, all the others are behaving strangely—paranoid—which also doesn’t happen. Either that or we are sharing our own paranoid hallucination. I asked Vris to redo some tests on the Device components, particularly the new one Hobbes just found, to see if some form of unknown brainwave transmission technology might be at work, or perhaps a pathogen. A pathogen is less likely only because it could not give us the same dream or hallucination. Vris?”
“No power source is operative in the Device, not even one of micro-watt output. Besides Hobbes’ find, I focused on the crystal components, testing EM, spectrometry, and for transmissions and resonant frequency vibrations from other power sources not related to the Device. I looked for anything analogous to mechanisms that translate neuro-electrical signals into artificial muscle movement, like the latest prosthetic limbs use, and got nothing even close. I also checked the bio-components for spores, bacteria, and unknown viruses—the Woman speaks of a plague of madness in the dreams. Results were inconclusive, but none appeared in my own blood sample.”
I said, “Neuro-electrical muscle command impulses are not nearly as sophisticated as cerebral code would need to be—assuming our minds and brains have some analogous relationships to software programming and computer hardware devices. They may not, or not entirely. Language itself might be the operating system code of the human mind. Do you have to consciously think the words ‘lift your arm’ to lift your arm? No, you just do it. Even so, if the creators of the Device had somehow cracked thought codes into the subconscious mind to project similar dreams into three or more people, it would still require some form of power output; even in the nano-watt range.”
Norby asked, “What about nanotechnology?”
Vris said, “I looked for that especially, both on scrapings taken from the surface of the Device itself, its interior components, and from the discarded HEPA filters from the Device room—nothing. Its builders do not seem to have been as advanced as we are in that direction, strangely enough, despite their superior software capabilities. At least nothing on the Device suggests they were. I found microcircuits that would have worked more efficiently using smaller geometries. The smallest ones used in the Device are all in the two to five micron range—much larger than the submicron and nanotech ranges we use regularly.”
Norby deflated into his rock, spaceships likely crashing in his mind.
I felt his frustration. “There must be either a technology capable of projecting dreams, or a bug attacking our brains!”
“Why?” Vris said. “Why must there be only these two possibilities?”
I gazed at her and said, “What else could it be?”
The whites of her eyes seemed to have a light of their own. “You’re the information theorist; what about communication?”
“Yes, but how? How is this woman from five million years ago communicating with us?”
“The radiometric dating shows the impossible—that the biotech components of the Device are younger than the bones found in the outer chamber; as if they had lived on in dormancy for hundreds of thousands of years before desiccating. Conditions in the sealed chamber would have desiccated them in weeks, considering that the place was sealed over by lava. That calls our assumptions about the age of the Device into severe question.”
“But that means the lava field that covered the chamber is also not nearly as old as geologists universally think!” I objected.
Vris stared off into the lava field. “Not universally. There are a minority who question some of the assumptions behind radiometric dating.”
I snorted. “Creationists? They’re a bunch of hucksters!”
Vris said, “I don’t know that they are right, but I do know that thousands of them have advanced scientific degrees and have done serious research—I know several in Australia, and have had interesting technical discussions with them. They may be wrong, but they are not hucksters. The ‘scientific consensus’ has often been proved wrong by a minority motivated to ask questions that do not occur to others. Copernicus objected to a geocentric cosmos because he was a Neo-Platonist, not because he had any evidence observable at the time for his view—that evidence only came later, after he was dead, once Galileo invented a better telescope.”
I knew she was right—about Copernicus, not about Creationists. The possibility that the lava field was much younger than consensus science supposed did not mean that Bishop Ussher was right about the age of the Earth, just that maybe the consensus had systematically messed up in dating the local lava. It just irked me that it was this particular local lava from that particular mountain away in the distance. I got disgusted at myself that maybe Hobbes was beginning to rub off on me. Still, credulity can stretch only so far, and I was not willing to go out on such a career-destroying limb.
I said, “Ok, so maybe
we got it wrong about the age of this lava. What does that mean?”
“The Woman is somehow communicating…”
Norby finished her thought, “Or someone is communicating, using her image as an avatar.”
I growled, “This isn’t a video game!”
Skorbner flew up from his rock. “Don’t patronize me, Ben! I know this ain’t no video game! It’s also not behaving according to your rules any more than those of Hobbes or Stavenger! The dreams maybe use the Woman’s image because whoever or whatever’s sending them wants to be nonthreatening.”
Vris said, “Both of you, please stop. You don’t want whatever’s happening to the others to start happening to us, do you?”
My heart turned to ice in my chest. “No, of course not; I’m sorry Norby. You’re right. We know nothing about what’s really happening here. The Woman might just as easily be a vehicle rather than the source.”
Vris said, “I was just trying to say that there is no evidence that the technology of the Device, or some biological agent within it, is the cause of our dreams, and the paranoia of the others. We just assume it has to be that way, despite the lack of any evidence.”
Norby said, “I wonder why that is? And Ben, sorry I got mad.”
I shrugged. “It’s totally my bad, Norby. And you’re right, Vris, we have assumed that. Maybe it’s affected the questions we’ve asked of the evidence. Maybe we need new starting assumptions.”
Norby cackled. “Where do we get those, Assumptions-R-Us?”
Vris smiled. “Can we agree someone is trying to tell us something?”
I shrugged. “It seems a better alternative than paranoia—to which I’m not immune. I just wondered if maybe this whole thing isn’t about the Device at all, but some CIA experiment about long-term exposure to a neurotoxic gas—but there’s even less evidence of that than for some technology or bio-agent in the Device.”
Norby chuckled. “And they call me the conspiracy nut!”
I laughed with him. “Vris is right. It means communication.”
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 36