My inclination to scale the wall and explore the Great Temple of Aten, never great to begin with, had by this time become a positive aversion. I wanted to go home and go to bed, but that, unfortunately, was not one of the choices. I walked slowly back to where I had left my gear. I sat down on a pile of mud bricks and wondered what I was going to do next. My answer came in the form of three rapidly walking figures, the center one gesturing and mumbling. “Rylieh thinks he has Baal and Moloch all sewn up, and is making a mint selling those big brazen idols out around Arcturus. Boy, is he in for a surprise. When we’re done he won’t have a claim to the seven hundred seventy-seventh avatar of Vishnu.” I hid behind my pile of bricks and watched them pass. Once they had gotten far enough into the lead, I followed. I was looking for a religion addict, and a group of religion smugglers was as good a thing to use to find him as any. So the Bishop had put these guys on to me. That was interesting, though it didn’t really help me understand anything.
They left the city, which wasn’t hard, since it could be walked end to end in about ten minutes, and headed in the direction of a wadi that cut through the cliffs to the west, where the tomb of Akhenaten himself was going to be located. I kept well back, since, as seemingly the only other person in all of Akhetaten awake at this hour, I felt rather conspicuous and had trouble keeping track of them in the darkness. They climbed a small rise, then, silhouetted against the star-filled sky and cliffs glowing in the moonlight, turned left off the path into scrub. I could hear all three of them talking now, in low voices. They slowed down, turned, and were suddenly gone.
I waited, to make sure they hadn’t simply ducked down to catch me in an ambush, then made my way to the spot where I had last seen them. Nothing. Nothing at all. They had walked into a wormhole and disappeared from that tiny fragment of the space-time continuum I was able to keep under observation. Figuring out which wormhole they had taken would have to wait until morning, when I could see something. I sat down on an outcropping and watched the moonlit flow of the Nile, just visible at the end of the wadi. The excitement of this soon palled, and it ended up being a long night.
In the morning I could follow their footprints in the sand, up to the point where they vanished. It was clear. The city of Isfahan, Persia, 1617 CE. Safavid Persia. Shiite Persia. I thought about the tomb full of Korans and clay disks. Stuff smuggled out of Isfahan, obviously, bound for somewhere there was a demand for it. Things were getting more interesting all the time. I checked some Persian garb out from Qerrarrquq, and followed.
❖
I was jumped as soon as I stepped into the sunlit street that ran past the base of the great mosque of the Masjid-i-Shah, Qerrarrquq’s “have fun” still ringing in my ears. It wasn’t Shorty and his two friends, however, but two dark-skinned toughs with broken teeth, wearing turbans. They, however, didn’t seem to have any shyness about attacking people to whom they had not been properly introduced, and moved in with their knives. I turned to run. Silly idea, really. There were three more of them behind me.
They were obviously adept at taking advantage of the moment of disorientation that comes just after coming through a wormhole. But the fact that they depended on that disorientation might make them lax. That was all I could count on. I scanned the men around me and picked out the one who seemed less sure of himself, who hung back, to let his comrades take care of the messy work. I screamed and attacked him. He went down, and I kicked him in the head. Big deal. The other four moved in to filet me with their knives.
Suddenly, one of my assailants yelped and flew over my shoulder, to slam headfirst against the wall. He wore a circle of gold on his upper arm. I dodged a knife and kicked at my attacker’s groin. I missed my target and fell down, narrowly avoiding another swing of his knife. Someone got his throat in a hammerlock, and he gurgled and dropped his knife. “Someone” was a tiny dark-eyed woman with lots of rings on her fingers. She twisted, and he went limp. Meanwhile, the other two were being stood off by a hook-nosed man with a long curly beard. He kicked out, and his foot actually connected with its intended target. The footpad screamed, then he and his remaining associate turned and ran.
“Let’s go,” the man said, in a reasonable tone. “There may be others.” The three of us trotted off down the street. I gasped for air as we ran. I had absorbed several more blows, and on top of my previous night’s adventures in Akhetaten, they made my entire body hurt. I was getting a tour of the pummeling techniques of various world capitals. I started to plan a brochure for such a tour, for when I retired from the detective business.
We found ourselves on the Maidan-i-Shah, the central square of Isfahan. It was crowded with chattering people going about the business of running their lives, and was a symbol of a world prosperous and at peace. The day was sunny, and the tiled domes of the city were beautiful against the clear blue sky and the snow-covered mountains of the Zagros. I began to think that everything might make sense after all.
“We will have to make our reports to Mann,” my bearded rescuer said, gloomily. My thanks for my rescue brought him no joy. He made the already familiar gesture that R. E. Mann’s minions used to identify each other. I responded with the gesture I had seen Shorty’s goon use. He relaxed and introduced himself. His name was Solomon ben Ezra, and the woman, his wife, was named Rachel.
Both of them stared at me, two pairs of sharp brown eyes. “Where are the other two?” she asked.
I thought fast. If my three friends from Akhetaten had left early, to return to Isfahan six hours before I had, they had been jumped by the footpads in the dark. I remembered the gold armband, which had started out on Shorty’s arm and ended up on the thug’s. Somehow, I didn’t quite succeed in feeling sorry for him. But these two thought I was Shorty, since I had shown up at his scheduled arrival time. They’d obviously never seen him. “I, ah, I left them behind in Akhetaten. This monotheism stuff is delicate, and I think Kinbarn screwed it up.” I took a leap. If the Bishop had sent me to Akhetaten, it wasn’t because Kinbarn was still there. “It would be good if I could find him....”
Solomon shrugged. “I have no idea where he is. The Horizon of Aten was difficult for him. We had to detoxify him after that one. Sun gods, indeed.” He snorted, and Rachel looked contemptuous. “It took most of Isaac Newton’s Principia to snap him out of it.”
“The Talmud would have done just as well,” Rachel said, with some venom. Solomon darted a frightened look at me. “Be still,” he hissed. “These are private matters.” She glared back at him.
“Who jumped me?” I said. “Rylieh’s men?”
He looked startled. “Rylieh’s? Here? Hardly. Rylieh doesn’t have the channels for distributing Shiism. Last time he tried, he got stuck with a load of screaming ayatollahs somewhere off Procyon, where they don’t use the hard stuff, just a little Confucianism, you know, that sort of thing. That cost him. No, your assailants were simply thugs. That happens a lot, you know. Locals find out that confused people with interesting possessions just seem to pop up in one location, from nowhere, and can be killed and robbed without consequence. Worse things, sometimes. I’ve heard stories....”
He seemed glad to change the subject, so he told me a few. They were hair-raising. Rachel said nothing, but sulked. We walked the length of the Maidan, then through a gate into a side road lined with uniform buildings with arched recesses. He knocked on a door. It opened, and we entered R. E. Mann’s headquarters.
The narrow hallways and dark chambers of that place were piled with junk. Religious junk. Byzantine icons, Chinese bronze temple bells, jade statues of the Aztec god Tlaloc, Tibetan Tantric scrolls, a Zoroastrian fire altar, a roll of the Torah, a particularly striking marble Athena. There was barely any room to move. And lying on top of a statue of Mithra slaying the bull was draped a soiled and tattered piece of cloth that I recognized as the original for the scorched polyester copy of the Tunic of the Holy Virgin I had seen in Chartres Cathedral.
“It would be robbery,” boomed a hearty voice
from another room. “Sheer robbery. They kill for this stuff around Fomalhaut. Kill for it! This is quality, Ngargh. Top-notch stuff. We’re talking authentic dualism here. Real conflict. Light versus Darkness. Good versus Evil. The top match, Ngargh. The Big Event. You can’t miss.”
“That may well be, Mann,” another voice replied. It was a disturbing voice, quavery, distant. I recognized it as belonging to a species from a planet circling the star known on Earth as Epsilon Eridani. “But ‘kill for it’ is an uncertain, and cheap, price. We speak of cash, valuta. For such an uncomplicated theology, you ask too much.”
“Uncomplicated! You call this uncomplicated?” Mann was offended. “It’s structured for maximal cult spin-off potential. A couple of generations, you got a dozen competing sects, you got spiritual ecstatics, you got self-mutilators, you got hysterical millenarians. Cut this stuff with some ritualistic filler, and you got some real profits. I’m talking Manichaeanism here, Ngargh, not some cheap Gnostic bullshit. Real quality. It always tells in the end.”
I peeked around the edge of the door. R. E. Mann looked pretty much the way I would have expected, a fat bald man with a double chin, pinky rings, a purple shirt, and a cigar. He pointed the cigar at Ngargh, who resembled a large grasshopper with its head coated with metal shavings. “Whaddaya say?”
“I don’t know, Mann. My principals were not pleased with the quality of the last shipment. Not pleased at all.”
Mann snorted smoke. “Are you guys still whining about that Lamaism business? It’s not my fault if you don’t take the proper precautions, is it?”
“Yak butter!” Ngargh said. “The planets of Antares alone require fifty million metric tons of yak butter per year to burn in their ceremonies. Their economies are in a shambles.”
“Whoever told you you can get religious ecstasy without side effects? Smarten up, Ngargh. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll throw in a few small cults, Rastafarianism, that sort of thing, with no price increase. Sweet deal. How about it, Ngargh?”
“I wish to think about it.”
“Fine, fine. Go in the other room, play with some paraphernalia. Some of it’s kind of fun.” Ngargh slumped out unenthusiastically. Mann’s eye wandered for a moment, seeking distraction. It fixed on Solomon ben Ezra.
“Solly! Just who I wanted to see. Come in, come in. You know, Solly, I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking about marketing. A new concept. Now this Jewish stuff you’ve been giving me is great, no kidding, all these pillars of fire, manna from Heaven, angels on ladders, talking serpents, floods, dens of lions, burning cities full of queers. Great stuff, and it’s been a real good seller, no kidding. Hell, we got Hasidic Rigellian mud dwellers wearing spit curls and fur hats. But as I said, I’ve been thinking. We could really make it, I mean graduate Judaism to real blockbuster status, if we had a good central symbol. A hook, Solly. We need a hook.” With a hand on his shoulder, he led Solomon over to a bulky shape covered with a drop cloth. “You know, we helped old Pharaoh Akhenaten out with that sun worship business of his. He didn’t get the hang of monotheism for quite a while, kept asking if his god wouldn’t get lonely, with no pantheon to play with. But I convinced him. I could do the same for you. If I could take a meeting with one of your top boys, you know, Moses, Abraham, Jeremiah, whoever, we could come up with something that would sweep the market. We’d be rich in no time. I’m talking awesome.” With a grand gesture, he whipped the cloth off, revealing a gleaming statue. It was a golden calf. “Hot stuff, eh, Solly? Can’t miss.”
Solomon’s face went white. “I’ll... I’ll have to think about it.”
“You do that, Solly. No rush.” Mann sat back down in his chair, clasped his hands over his belly, and stared at me. “And who’s this guy?”
Solomon turned a startled and speculative look at me. “Why—he is one of our agents, from Akhetaten.”
Mann shook his head decisively. “No way, Solly. I ain’t never seen him before.”
“He is an agent of our enemies, those minions of Rylieh who seek to profit from the teachings of Our Lord. He came to me, asking of Kinbarn.” The Bishop of Chartres entered the room. He wore local garb, loose flowing trousers and vest, but still had his cross dangling in the middle of his chest. It sounded as if R. E. Mann had really sold him a bill of goods, coming off as Mr. Clean.
“Rylieh!” Mann’s face tried to turn as purple as his shirt, and almost made it. “That scumbag’s been giving me a real pain. Particularly Egypt. We divided up the territory, but he’s trying to horn in.” He peered at me. “Or are you some small operator? Did Belle Zebub send you? She’s got the monopoly on the Pharisees. Small sect, but really popular, for some reason. Ah, screw it. Alphonse, get ’im!” There was suddenly a huge figure behind me. How did people keep sneaking up on me? He took hold of me, gently. I felt like I had been welded into an Iron Maiden. He was about twice the size of the two goons from Akhetaten. He had a tiny head whose only apparent purpose was anchoring neck muscles. With a turban on it looked like a bandaged thumb. He caught me looking at him and hit me. I got the idea, and stopped looking at him.
“What luck!” Mann said. “Ngargh was thinking of buying Thuggee, the ritual murder cult of the goddess Kali, but I told him we were fresh out of demonstration models. I think we can put it back in the catalog.” He began to stalk around the room, throwing open cabinets and burrowing through them. “Silken strangling cords, silken strangling cords,” he muttered. “How come nothing ever stays put around here?” He looked up at all of us. “Don’t just stand there. Stick him in a cell. Hell, let him pick out some last rites for himself, on the house.” He winked at me. “No one ever called R. E. Mann a cheapie. Enjoy yourself.”
Alphonse hauled me downstairs and threw me into a room the size of a gym locker that smelled of urine and pain. The door slammed shut and left me in total darkness. I leaned against the rough stone walls and decided that, at long last, I could not console myself with the thought that things might be worse.
❖
The Bishop looked worried. Extremely worried. “You are a Catholic?” He spoke to me through a slot in the door.
“Yes, of course,” I lied. “You cannot allow me to die unshriven.” I tried to fall to my knees, as well as I could within the confines of that tiny cell.
“Wait, wait,” he said. I could tell I’d called him right, from what I had seen and heard that night, when he’d gone to Kinbarn’s monk’s cell with Martin. He was a genuine and convinced Christian. “If you are a Catholic, why do you not help us in our struggle to convert the ignorant races of the galaxy?”
Oho. So that was it. The urge to proselytize is a dangerous one. The Bishop was bagging souls and racking up an immense score, not realizing the hollowness of his triumph. Martin had known the truth.
“I pursued Kinbarn,” I said, “because of the sacrilege he had committed, to assist in Mann’s marketing plans.”
A sharp indrawn breath. “What sacrilege?”
“He stole the true Tunic of the Virgin, put a false one in its place. The true Tunic will go to one of Mann’s local dealers, somewhere else in the galaxy.”
“You lie! It is the same relic that has been there since I can remember. I was almost convinced by your—”
“The Tunic was switched long before your time, at least before the fire, forty years ago, your time. There are other wormholes to Chartres, you realize. If you wish to find the real Tunic, it lies among Mann’s loot, upstairs. It lies on top of—” I was talking to empty air. The Bishop was gone. But the door was still locked.
A few minutes later I heard voices. It was Rachel and Solomon, who had decided on the hallway leading to my cell as a convenient place to argue.
“I warned you,” she said. “I told you it was dangerous, that it was a sacrilege. The search for knowledge is God’s work,’ you said. ‘Selling your soul is the Devil’s work,’ I said. Now look where you’ve gotten us.”
“I know,” Solomon said miserably. “We will leave now, and retur
n to our shtetl in Chelm. It was so green there.” He sighed. “I never thought that I would miss Poland.”
“Leave? And allow that abomination to continue its foul existence? The golden calf, Aaron’s sin, right before your eyes. How can you ignore it?”
Solomon groaned. “Oh, God, I should have stuck with my study of the Talmud. It is so much less complicated.”
“That’s what I told you.”
“I know, I know.”
“Hey!” I said. “I can help you.”
They stopped their argument and came up to the door to my cell. “How can you help us?” Solomon said, hope coming into his voice.
“He can’t,” Rachel said venomously. I felt like hitting her. “He’s just one of Mann’s competitors. He’d sell that golden calf just like Mann. He’s no different.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not like the others,” I said. “I’m an agent of the Constabulary. I’m after Kinbarn.”
The slot opened up and Solomon peered in, eyes wide. “The Constabulary? Why are you after Kinbarn? He’s just a runner, small fry.”
The Breath of Suspension Page 12