Crusaders in Hell

GILGAMESH REDUX Janet Morris

"The lord Gilgamesh, toward the Land of the Living set his mind," chanted Enkidu, hairy and bold, trekking beside Gilgamesh up to the mountain peak.

And Gilgamesh, gasping for breath because the trek was hard and the air was thin, interrupted,

"Enlfl, the mighty mountain, the father of all the gods, has determined the fate of Gilgamesh -

determined it for kingship, but for eternal life. He has not determined it..."

These lines, from the epic sung as The Death of Gilgamesh for ages, shut both men's mouths.

But in the inner ear of Gilgamesh, the poem continued, fragments sharp as spear points in a wild boar's heart: "Supremacy over mankind has Enlil granted thee, Gilgamesh. Battles from which none may retreat has he granted thee.

Onslaughts unrivalled has he granted thee ...in life. Be not aggrieved, be not sad of heart.

On the bed of Fate now lies Gilgamesh and he rises not ... he rises not... he rises not."

On the top of the mountain peak now stood the lord Gilgamesh and his servant -

his friend - Enkidu. And Gilgamesh wondered if Enlil inhabited this peak even in Hell.

It was silly, it was foolish, to have climbed this mountain in search of more than he could ever find in Hell. For that was where Gilgamesh now was, who had sought Eternal Life and now sought Eternal Death-the peaceful sleep that had been promised him while all around him were the lamentations of his family.

In life. So long ago Uruk.

For a time the presence of Enkidu had soothed him, but now it did not. Below and behind them was the caravan they had joined because Enkidu had seen a woman there he craved. And because the caravan was well supplied with weapons that were to Enkidu like toys to a greedy child: plasma rifles, molecular disrupters, enhanced kinetic-kill pistols that fired bullets tipped with thallium shot whose spread was as wide as Gilgamesh's outstretched arms.

Cowards' weapons. Evil upon evil here at die end of the Outback. Such was behind Gilgamesh, down on the flat among the covered wagons of the mongrel caravanners with whom, for the sake of Enkidu, he'd fallen in.

Before him, on the far side of this mountain whose peak Enlil did not inhabit, was a shore and a sea and an island off that shore, an island belching steam and gouts of flame from its central peak-the destination of the caravan

Gilgamesh had left behind on the flat. Pompeii was the name of the island, and whatever awaited there, neither Eternal Life nor Eternal Death was among its secrets.

Gilgamesh knew This because he was the man to whom all secrets had been revealed in life, and some of that wisdom clung to him even in afterlife.

"To the Land of the Living," Enkidu took up his chant once more in stubborn defiance of the murky sea and burning isle before them, "the lord Gilgamesh set his mind."

As if it made any difference to Fate what Gilgamesh wanted, now That Gilgamesh was consigned to Hell. Enkidu's mind had been poisoned by the woman with the caravan, by nights with her and the thighs of her and the lips of her which spoke the hopes other heart: That there was a way out of Hell.

So now Enkidu sought a way out of Hell through tunnels; through the intercession of the Anunnaki, the Seven Judges of the Underworld whom

Gilgamesh had seen in life; through perseverance and even force of arms. Myths from the lips of a woman had seduced Enkidu and put foolish hopes in the heart of Gilgamesh's one-time servant and beloved friend - hopes that were, with the possible exception of intercession by the Anannali (whom Gilgamesh had seen and knew to exist), entirely apocryphal.

If Enkidu and Gilgamesh had not so recently quarreled and parted, if Gilgamesh had not missed his friend so terribly when they did, the lord of lost Uruk would have argued longer and harder with Enkidu. He would have refused to join the caravan. He would have stamped out Enkidu's vain and foolish hope of escape from Hell.

He should have done all those. But there was no one in the land like Enkidu, no one else who could stride the mountains at Gilgamesh's side, whose stamina was as great, whose heart was as strong, whose hairy body pleased Gilgamesh so much to look upon.

There was no companion for Gilgamesh but Enkidu, no equal among the ranks of the damned.

Thus Gilgamesh put up with Enkidu's foolish hopes and hopeless dreams. Enkidu was not the man to whom all secrete had been revealed.

Only Gilgamesh was that man. Only Gilgamesh had known the truth in life. the truth had less value, here in afterlife. It had no more value than the carcass of a feral cat or a rutting stag or a rabid demon - all of which Gilgamesh had slain while hunting in the Outback. It had no more value than the skins he cut from those carcasses as he had in life. It had no more value than the flesh beneath the skin of those animals, dead while he dressed their carcasses, dead while he ate -

when he must - their flesh.

But not dead. Death was rebirth here. Death was forever elusive. Death was merely a hiatus -

and a short cut to the teeming cities of Hell's most helpless damned, among whom Gilgamesh could not breathe.

In Hell's cities, Gilgamesh felt like the lion caged to please the king. In Hell's cities, his limbs grew weak and his spirits low.

This city before them now was no exception. It dried the chant in Enkidu's throat. It dried the blood in Gilgamesh's veins. Pompeii, the caravanners whispered, had come whole to Hell, so purely iniquitous were its very streets.

Its dogs had come. Its dolphins had come.

Its whores had come. Even Pompeii s children had come to Hell.

And it was a city, so the tales ran, where everything was as it once had been - where outsiders were unwelcome and never settled, where a language neither Greek nor English was the norm.

Gilgamesh looked at Enkidu out of the corner of his eye. Enkidu had brought them here, from the clean violence of the Outback, because of his loins and his lust for modem weapons.

Gilgamesh had never asked Enkidu if the former servant got pleasure from his copulation with the woman, or only frustration, as was the lot of so many men in Hell. Men whose manhood was too dear, too often proved, too important to their hearts, often could not consummate the act.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu had met because of one such woman, centuries ago in life.

He shook away the cobwebs of memory, so common lately, and said to Enkidu, "See, the city of ill repute. Let us leave the caravan now, Enkidu, and return to the Outback, where the hunting is good."

"Gilgamesh," replied Enkidu, "the animals we hunt do not die, they only suffer. The skins we take ... are these not better left on animals who must re-grow them? And the haunches we eat, which distress our bowels? Let us go with the caravan into the city, and explore its treasures. Are you not curious about That place, which came to Hell entire?"

This woman was destroying Enkidu, rotting the very fiber of his mind, Gilgamesh realized. But he said only, with the patience of a king, "We will not be allowed into the city, Enkidu, you know That. the caravan must camp on the shore and its people go no farther."

"Ah, but the lord of the city will come to us and then, hearing That you are Gilgamesh, lord of the land, king of Uruk, he will surely invite us there ...

to see what no outsider has ever seen." Enkidu's eyes were shining.

Gilgamesh had never been able to resist that look. He said, "If you will put away this woman--who will not be allowed to travel with us to the city in any case--and separate from the caravan thereafter, Enkidu, I will announce myself to the lord of the city and demand the hospitality due the once king of Uruk - and his friend."

"Done!" cried Enkidu.

High above the caravan, in a helicopter hidden by Hell's ruddy clouds, an agent of Authority named Welch reviewed the background data That had brought him here, on his Diabolical Majesty's most secret service. Welch had become a member of the Devil's Children, Satan's

"personal Agency" among a dizzying proliferation of lesser agencies, without ever meeting Old Nick face to face.

Agency was special, privileged, demanding and unforgiving of failure.

Agency was not, however, infallible, and the briefing material before Welch on the chopper's CRT was no better than what Welch's own spotty memory could provide. Worse, perhaps. Since bureaucracy in Hell functioned but never functioned well.

Tapping irritably at a toggle to clear his screen, Welch mentally recapped the "secret" analysis he'd just read:

Mao Tse-tungs Celestial People's Republic had spread quickly along the tundra of the Outback, stopped only by Prester John's border to the south and the Sea of Sighs to the west. New Kara-Khitai had already been invaded by the collectivizing hordes of the CPB, led by Mao's Minister of War himself, Kublai Khan.

Communist troops in the Outback didn't bother Authority - as Mao had said, revolution wasn't made in silk boxes. the misery Mao's CPR fanatics brought with them like bayonets on the barrels of their ChiCom rifles would have been allowed to spread unchecked, at least until it over-swept Queen Elizabeth's domain and the entire West was Mao's if Mao could have been content with That.

Unfortunately, Chairman Mao had greater ambitions. He sought to export revolution to every socialist crazy who could say Marghiella, and that included Che Guevara (or what was left of his soul since Welch had called in an air strike on Che's main Dissident camp north of New Hell). If the export of revolution had stopped with rhetoric, perhaps AuAority could have looked the other way.

But Mao was using drug money to fund his ideological allies - from Che on the East Coast to the Shi'ite bloc landlocked in the Midwest. Once his revolutionary exports reached New Hell, reached as far as the very Mortuary itself, then something had to be done.

Narco-terrorism wasn't to be tolerated. the poppy fields of the Devil's Triangle reached from Idi Amin's southern frontier to the Persian holdings in the Midwest, and over to Mao's capital, the City of the Fire Dogs. From Dog City, "China White" made its way south sad east by boat and caravan, dulling the sensibilities of the damned.

Communism was one of the Devil's favorite inventions, and that made Welch's assignment harder. Agency couldn't simply nuke the emerging Western ComBtoc back to the stone age -

Authority wouldn't permit it. Welch's assignment was to stop the flow of drugs East, especially into New Hell, where the Dissidents were attracting too much attention. So it was over-flights in this Huey, piloted by a hot-dog Old Dead, Achilles. It was a covert crusade against drug smugglers.

And it was going to take one hell of a long time to show any results.

Welch sat back from the computer bank in the belly of the Huey and reached sideways for his pack of Camels and a swig of beer.

Machiavelli had done this to him: vendetta. More precisely, Machiavelli had done it to Nichols, Welch's one-time ADC-sent Nichols out on a search-and-destroy mission aimed at a specific caravan master who did business out of Pompeii; seat him with an Achaean relic for a pilot and Tamara Burke, whose sympathies in life and afterlife were questionable.

(Whether she'd been KGB or CIA, even Welch wasn't sure.)

Rather than let Nichols spend the rest of Eternity fighting Mao's considerably greater resources, Welch had pulled every string he could think of to secure command of this mission - even called an air strike on Che's base camp to clear his decks in time to board Achillies' Huey.

Welch shouldn't have been here, fighting the Yellow Peril put in the boonies when Agency had bigger fish to fry, not when be had so much unfinished business with Julius Caesar's crew back in New Hell. But he owed Nichols This much and more: Welch's miscalculation on their last mission had gotten Nichols killed.

If Welch had been doing his job right - before and directly after Nichols' death at Troy - he wouldn't have owed the soldier anything. But Welch had come back from the Trojan Campaign with a case of something very like hysterical amnesia. It had been Nichols who found Welch, sloppy drunk with Tanya - Tamara Burke - in a New Hell bar and offered aid and comfort.

Aid and comfort in Hell were hard to find. Aid and comfort coming from a junior officer rankled. Welch had been the case officer on the Trojan Campaign; Nichols had been one of many weapons Welch had employed there.

So it was all backwards, to Welch s way of thinking. He had to get things back into a perspective he could live with. Or die with. In Hell it didn't much matter, but case officers thought in terms of human coin - debts owed, favors done, responsibility and trust.

Trust was a big one: whether betraying it or ratifying it, it was the fulcrum on which all operations turned.

This mission, on the face of it, was simple, if Achilles' assessment was correct: strafe the caravan with the Huey's chain gun until nothing moved; firebomb what was left once they'd made sure that Enkidu and Gilgamesh were among the dead... or the missing. That was a little addendum to the main mission: separate Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and send or bring both Sumerians back to Reassignments.

There was nothing in the orders about how, though, and Achilles was right: death meant the Trip; the Trip ended you at the Mortuary (except, sometimes, if you died on the battle plain of Ilion, a couple of dimensions away from here...) and then at Reassignments.

Even Tamara Burke had voted for the easy way, until Welch had put her down with a carpetbag full of feminine accouterments and detailed her to infiltrate the caravan and seduce one of the Sumerians.

Tanya had a field phone, tracer jewelry, and a chopped Bren Ten that could be heard to New Hell and back if she had to shoot it. She was an experienced field collector, as well as a proven seductress.

But the look she'd shot Welch when they'd let her out a hill away from the caravan had been scathing. Only Achilles was pleased with that.

So now it was Welch and Nichols in the belly of the chopper, alone but for their data collection equipment and each other, bathed in sweat and running lights and trying to keep their equipment cool as they waited for a signal from Tanya that the caravan had picked up its load of drugs and was headed toward the hinterland. The low-shrubbed boonies. The damned no-man's-land of buffer zone that was so undesirable even the commies hadn't claimed it. Yet

"You know, something about this doesn't feel right," Welch said to Nichols.

Arching his back in his ergo chair, Welch put one foot up on the padded bumper of the "mapping" console that could show him how much spare change Enkidu had in his pocket or how much ammo was in one of the caravan guard's Maadi AKs.

"Tanya should have called in by now. The caravan should be loaded up and on its way out by now. And I can't find the right heat signature for Gilgamesh and Enkidu to save my soul."

"Umn," said Nichols with illuminating volubility. "Me neither." Nichols was still hunched over his tracking console, stripped down to a black t-shirt that showed the screaming-eagle tattoo on one muscular arm. "Think maybe they've gone off on their own? the OD's, I mean?"

The ODs: the Old Dead - Gilgamesh and Enkidu. One of Nichols' little rebellions was a feigned inability to pronounce either name. "Tanya would have let us know," Welch said, because it was his job to say that, not because he really believed he knew what Burke would do in any circumstance That might come up during fieldwork.

"Yeah?" Nichols was more blunt, the sneer on his square face eloquent as he shifted to lock eyes with his superior. "What if Achilles and her have cooked up a little something of their own?

That's lots of money, lots of power, lots of anonymity, down there." Nichols' gaze flickered to his feet on the deck, below which was the caravan camped on the shore in sight of Pompeii.

Nichols didn't like Achilles and the feeling was mutual.

Achilles liked Tanya, though. Anything with a dork would follow Tamara Burke anywhere, sniffing and wagging its tail and leaving its common sense behind.

Welch ought to know.

"What are you getting at?" They knew each other too well for Welch to take umbrage at the

"Sirs" missing from Nichols' badinage. When you were sweating it out in a corn truck on the battle plain of Ilion or in Caesar's private office at a New Hell villa or in a chopper flown by one of the biggest egos in

Hell, you wanted a man like Nichols - to have your best interests-and the success of your mission - at heart.

"A little recon. If you don't mind. You don't need me here right now. What these babies ain't sayin', you can handle." Nichols' chin jutted toward the electronics displays.

Maybe it wasn't necessary, but it was logical. And it was what Nichols did better than he did anything but exponentially increase body count.

Okay, you're go," said Welch absently in their familiar shorthand, and unwound from his chair to give the order to Achilles on the flight deck. He could have patched into Achilles' helmet-circuit from here, but if there was an argument - and there almost always was with Achilles - he didn't need Nichols hearing it.

Standing, Welch had to slump to avoid hitting his head. Stooped over, he said:

"Finish my beer for me. And take more than you need down-there. Including this." He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out one of the miniaturized black boxes he'd requisitioned for his recent sortie into Che's camp. "You get into trouble, or just want extracted, push this button."

He turned the match-box sized oblong in his fingers until the red nipple on one side was facing Nichols. "I'll be waiting."

"You expecting this kind of trouble?" Nichols frowned at the black box before he took it.

Tm expecting a real good reason why Tanya's not checking in, yeah."

Damned women, you could never tell what they had in mind. But it wasn't so much that he didn't trust Tanya, it was that Welch knew Nichols. Nichols had a disdain for the Old Dead that might cause him to underestimate the opposition.

No matter who me antiques were, the opposition here was really Mao. And Mao was nobody's friend, nobody's fool. Welch promised himself that, when he got back to New Hell, he was going to get Machiavelli transferred to Sanitation Engineering.

Up on the flight deck, listening to the inevitable "better idea" that Achilles had, Welch made a mental note to include the Achaean in Machiavelli's

Sanitation squad. Then he pulled his 9mm off his hip and, flicking suede lint from its barrel, said levelly to die pilot, "You fly 'em. I'll call 'em. Understood?"

The chopper pilot began landing procedures without another word.

Nichols had scrambled thirty feet away from the Huey before he looked back.

Even knowing where it was, he couldn't see die damned thing. Stealth technology had come a long way since Nichols died, not in the Med during the Big War, but on an island off America's coast in the aftermath.

Didn't matter. Nichols shook his camouflaged head. Didn't mean a damn thing, Welch was right.

But it made him queasy, looking back at the electro-optically distorted field which masked the chopper so well you could have walked right into one of its rotor blades and gashed your head open.

Okay, he thought, so Achilles knows his job. Ought to give him one point. But Nichols couldn't do that; his gut knew better. And Nichols, unlike Welch, remembered every minute of the Trojan Campaign - up until he'd died during it.

They'd scaled die very gates of Hell on that one, and Welch, with his partial amnesia and his officer's attitude, just wasn't applying enough good old-fashioned suspicion to the events that had brought matters to their present turn.

Nichols had died in Troy, but been held in limbo, somewhere, awaiting Achilles' pickup-for this mission. On whose orders? To what end? Welch, meanwhile, who would have gotten Nichols out of limbo if he had to use a P-38 to do it, was afflicted with convenient amnesia and watch-dogged by Tamara Burke, whoever and whatever she was. If all this was coincidence, Nichols was a Persian eunuch.

If it was just luck, it was bad luck. And Nichols didn't like bad luck. If he had a god, it was the one that got you out of wherever alive, stepping three inches to the right of a cluster-bomb that would have blown you to perdition; ducking your head to swat a mosquito just when the round that would have smashed it to jelly sped by.

Nichols knew damned well that Achilles was trouble - always had been, always was, always would be trouble, for friend and foe alike. He'd mucked up the first Trojan War and tied the commanders in knots during the second. If Caesar and Alexander the Great couldn't get around the jinx that Achilles put on any mission he was attached to, what chance did he and Welch have?

You couldn't talk to Welch about Achilles, beyond operational talk-Welch didn't believe in luck.

Welch took everything personally. Which was fine, most times-it made him an officer with whom Nichols was proud to serve. But it made him touchy about certain things, like what he didn't remember about Troy.

And Welch didn't remember one very important thing about that mission: he didn't remember that, when Achilles came flying into the middle of an already complex situation, nobody-not Caesar's crew, not the opposition down there, not his passenger Judah Maccabee, not Agency itself, and most especially not Welch - would admit to dispatching him.

Achilles was a damned wild card and even the Myrmidons hadn't had a real cheery survival quotient (so the unit's vets said), serving under him in life.

But Achilles knew his ECM. He could cajole stunts out that Huey like Nichols had never seen-or heard.

Blinking hard and listening harder, Nichols could barely focus on the chopper as it lifted, purring no louder than a happy cat. Stealth, you bet. Better than it had any right to be, like Achilles was better than he had any right to be. Nichols was willing to bet, all that capability was somebody's doing. Lake maybe the Pentagram faction that was supporting the dissidents.

Achilles and Tamara Burke: neither of them had put a foot wrong the whole time they'd been in Hell. He and Welch had called up their jackets, and there wasn't a single negative notation or disciplinary action in either of their files. Too damned perfect not to be trouble.

But you couldn't convince Welch of that, not without proof. Tanya failing to check in wasn't proof, not in the mind of a guy who d been laying her flat while Nichols was on ice somewhere for ... how long? Long enough, that was sure.

Nichols checked his webbing and what he'd hung on it. He could probably have done die whole job himself, with what he was carrying. He had an Alice over his back with a SADEM-Special Atomic Demolition Emergency Munition - that would end any argument, except how he'd come by it He had every electronic gizmo Welch could come up with. He had a det cord bracelet around his wrist and a high-pressure chemical delivery system next to die survival knife in his boot.

Recon had a tendency to turn into more than that, every now and again, and Nichols wanted to be ready.

Crouched among bushes bending violently with the chopper's take-off (even Achilles couldn't alter physics), Nichols checked his weapons-belt-front-line kit was ninety rounds of 7.62 NATO in life, and that was what Nichols took with him on a mission like this, whenever he had a choice.

Then he started scuttling through the bushes on the slope, beyond which he could see the caravan making camp. Get in there without being seen, find Tamara, make sure she didn't have a problem she couldn't handle, and give her Welch's message that she was to maneuver one of the two Sumerians to the pick-up sight and bring the OD onboard, nothing more.

Welch didn't see any reason to kill the two Old Dead, probably because Achilles was so intent on just that. So it had become a command decision, an internecine struggle on which command authority in the field depended.

Personally, Nichols didn't think you could teach Achilles nothin'; he didn't even see a reason to try. Nichols could get the Huey back to New Hell, if the one lesson Achilles might possibly understand became appropriate. Hand on his

M14, Nichols prowled, pumping himself up for a covert entry where there was no night or cover to shield him and plenty of nervous sentries around a caravan expecting to pick up a fortune's worth of drugs.

He had a suppressor on his customized auto-rifle, because that was the way you did this sort of mission, and he kept checking it as he scrambled down the rocky slope. He also had a button in his ear and a mike on his collar, so that he could voice-actuate communications with the chopper.

The odd sky, here where Paradise seemed skewered in place among clouds too dense and too low not to generate ground fog, threw him back in time and place, among the lush fauna of this volcanic, mountainous shore.

Jungle it wasn't, not the real sort, but it was close enough and Nichols had been Sniper Research, despite inter-departmental hassles, for a while when he'd been alive.

He was trembling with chemical hype from his nervous system by the time he reached the edge of the caravan, stopping on an overhang spawning a waterfall that generated some serious white noise, this close. Stopping to take a look-see, wriggling on his belly over rocks and past rocks and over lush grass, getting closer...

"Yo, Nichols!"

The sudden sputter of Achilles' voice in his ear-piece made Nichols flinch.

His foot dislodged a rock, which hit another that tumbled down toward the water and fell over the falls...

"Not now, droolface," Nichols muttered into his collar, where his mike was.

Idiot or spoiler, Nichols was going to kill this guy, no matter what it cost him, and get Achilles reassigned somewhere where bugs were the only things that flew.

Below, the stone, cascading down the waterfall, then bouncing, had flushed something unexpected. Short guys in black outfits came running out from under the falls, gesticulating, chattering to each other.

Damned monkeys, or worse ... no wonder this place sent his mind echoes of Ho Chi Minh trail. Bunch of Asiatics, hiding behind the waterfall...

Nichols looked again, with all the acuity his trained eye could muster and this time the waterfall didn't look natural. But it sure was convenient, and well engineered. Nichols would give Mao's boys that.

Recon meant you were supposed to get back alive to detail enemy troop strength, he reminded himself as two parts of his being conflicted.

Sniper Research meant that you shot whatever you found out there, so that you could do your damned research uninterrupted.

Head count, in this situation, was approximate, but Nichols was willing to bet that behind the waterfall he'd find lots more ChiCom troops-smugglers for the sake of the Revolution, in this case-and a tunnel entrance that would explain why no previous unit with this assignment had been able to find the transship route that Mao was using.

Whistling soundlessly, Nichols rolled over onto his back and very carefully, scanning the terrain around him, wiggled his arse until he'd gotten upstream far enough that he wouldn't kick any more stones into the water.

Then he began unwinding the del cord bracelet on his wrist, combining it with other necessaries from his kit until he had a time-detonated explosive device that ought to block the tunnel entrance, as well as stop the flow of water, when it blew.

He sat there a few seconds, considering his handiwork. You had to use the faults in the rock strata, judge it just right... Deciding it was right enough, if nobody messed with it, he fixed his little trap to blow if a careless foot stumbled onto the det cord, which had enough RDX in it to be trouble by itself, and went on his way.

He'd known he'd find a use for all this stuff he was packing. You don't deplane with ninety pounds on your back and haul it over enemy terrain for nothing. He'd cannibalized one of Welch's black boxes, but Welch wouldn't mind.

It was going to be such a nice, satisfying bang. If the ensuing explosion didn't stop the drug traffic from Mao's fortress in Dog City, it was going to slow things up: rerouting, redeployment of personnel, rebasing ... all these things took time, men, resources.

Content that he could give Welch what the officer needed to report a successful mission, with or without Tanya and the Sumerians - and without setting up a semi-permanent staging area here which they'd have to man - Nichols scrambled down the slope and headed west.

He had no intention of getting caught in the act, or anywhere near here. What he'd left behind was more important than what remained for him to do: score one for on-site decision making.

It took the better part of two hours to circle the camp, find Tamara Burke's wagon, and sup over to it from the rear. He knew he should have reported what he'd done, called in and let Welch know. But then Achilles would know. And he didn't trust Achilles worth a damn. Or the corn line he checked in on.

Welch, who didn't like "excess" casualties, might have given him an argument, Nichols knew.

Welch had a message for Tanya that underscored that forgivable, but very real, flaw in the Harvard man's nature.

The camp was easy enough to negotiate-nobody here asked questions when strangers came around, especially strangers with backpacks in unfamiliar, non-standard, camouflage.

Finding Tamara's wagon was no problem-they'd scrounged it for her; there wasn't another like it in the caravan. Tapping on it with the butt of his survival knife, Nichols had a moment to worry.

He didn't like those sort of moments, wherein possible problems that might never occur popped up like phantoms and scared him witless. But he sat out the flash of anxiety stolidly-he knew how to manage field jitters. You just kept telling yourself, "So what?" and they passed.

Because there was no answer to that question, beyond the simple answer: you handled whatever came your way.

It was taking her too long to respond, and he risked a low, "Hey, Burke, you in there?"

From somewhere, a desperate scramble became a barking dog, launching itself at him.

Reflexively, Nichol's service pistol came to hand. The dog was big, brindle, a decent target.

Deciding, as he watched it bound toward him in a slow motion his adrenalin-prodded physiology provided, that a two-shot burst would beat a headshot in this situation, he drew a bead. Then the gold silk of the wagon parted hurriedly and Tanya Burke said, "Don't you dare, you bastard." And:

"Ajax, down!"

Ajax slid to a slavering, unhappy halt and, paw-before-paw, stretched out on me ground, whining.

"What are you doing here, Nichols?" Tamara Burke demanded angrily.

Everything about her was too damned perfect She was too pretty, too rumpled, too obviously roused from sleep.

"You alone. Burke?" Suspicion kept Nichols alive.

"At the moment." The women crossed her arms over breasts whose nipples were rising in the cold under her thin chemise.

"You didn't check in," said Nichols uncomfortably, his eyes still riveted to her breasts, pressed firmly by her arms.

'This is the first sleep I've had," she said with a strained, game smile.

"Enkidu ... well, I'm doing my job, what I was assigned to do." She shrugged.

'Gilgamesh doesn't like modem equipment, and he's not the only one around here who's suspicious, so I ditched the lot."

"That was dumb." Nichols wanted to get out of here, give her the message and be done with it But the woman was showing signs of stress, real or feigned, and he had to know which.

"I knew you wouldn't leave me. I can't guarantee anything.... They went up the mountain, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. They haven't come back. I think Enkidu will, though-for me. He promised." She darted a look at the dog, then at their immediate surroundings. Content that no one was paying undue attention to them, she leaned closer, her knees now up against her chest.

Nichols leaned in too, and put a hand on one of her bare knees. "Welch wants one Sumerian aboard the chopper-he doesn't care which. Doesn't want to kill'em. Can't imagine it's more than ethics, though, if things get tough-" He safed his service pistol, still in his hand, and held it out to her, butt first.

It was a sacrifice she obviously didn't understand, or appreciate.

She shook her head; her hair flew around her face; she bit her lip: "No, Nichols, if Gilgamesh found that..." Then the rest of what he'd said sank in.

"Look, I haven't seen anything more incriminating that lots of pack animals with nothing to carry. We might be way off base here. And what do you mean, 'wants one Sumerian aboard the chopper'?'

"Let me explain," Nichols suggested. "We don't have much time."

The timer on the explosives was set for ten minutes from now, if he didn't intervene with a radioed signal. And he didn't think he would. These primitives were going to read it as a minor earthquake; they were out of sight of the blast, anyway. And, whether Achilles was somebody's spoiler or not, this mission was going to go perfectly, or Nichols was going to know the reason why.

When hick had given him a handle on the ChiCom problem at the waterfall, pajamas and all, he'd known he was going to win this one.

All that remained in' question was whether Tamara Burke, here, and her Sumeriaa boyfriend lived through it or got back to Reassignments the hard way.

Nichols didn't really care which. It would be interesting to see the look on Achilles' face, however things turned out.

He returned his attention to the business at hand: briefing Burke; getting out unseen; using the extraction beacon Welch had given him from a safe LZ as far as possible from the waterfall and the imminent destruction there.

A few minutes later, beaded upslope on the far side of camp, he heard and felt the explosion and his heart lifted. Behind him, the caravan folk were running around nervously and dogs were barking, but there was no attempt to mount a show of force, no sign that foul play was suspected.

He'd have liked to have some drugs to show, but he had an ex-waterfall, a blocked tunnel, and a new hole to show, and likely - some dead guys.

And, most important, it had worked: nobody had found and disarmed Nichols' explosive ordnance; nobody had stopped his show. Now he just had to make the other side of the bill and wait for pickup. Sometimes. Hell wasn't any worse than life had been. At least, not life as Nichols remembered it.

Enkidu was among the chaos of the caravan when the bird descended on a roaring gale from Heaven.

He had been down on his knees, talking with a dog; barking at the round-eyed hound who barked at him, The dog belonged to the woman of the caravan whose wagon was painted red and gold, with golden silks draping it.

This dog had been barking, "Enkidu! Beware! Danger! Intruder!" Enkidu, who had been like a wild beast in life, who had been lord of the forest and ravager of its game, had barked back, insulted. He, Enkidu, was no intruder and at the dog's bark he had taken offense.

So they had been readying to battle it out there and then, Enkidu and this impolite dog who called him an intruder, when the bird began its descent and the silks on its owner's wagon blew wildly.

If Gilgamesh had been with Enkidu, things might have gone differently. Enkidu would not have been down on his knees in the dirt, barking loudly about how he would bite out the throat of this impudent dog as surely as he, Enkidu, was covered with hair. Enkidu would have been standing upright, like a man; thinking canny thoughts, like a man.

But Gilgamesh had gone to the edge of the Sea of Sighs to greet the magnificent boat with its dolphin's prow and scarlet sail that had come from Pompeii. Gilgamesh had gone aboard the boat to secure passage to the city for them both, leaving Enkidu to wait alone.

Long hours had Enkidu waited, and then gone back up the shore to where the caravan made its camp. Gilgamesh, king of long lost Uruk, would come to find Enkidu when he was ready. And then Enkidu must put the caravan woman by, forget her ivory thighs and pomegranate lips, and go with Gilgamesh onto the boat and into the wondrous city beyond.

Until then, Enkidu had it in his mind to make love to the woman upon her flocked couch. But the dog of the woman had scratched at his spiked collar with a clawed hind foot and bristled his brindle fur and barked harsh words at Enkidu, while his mistress stayed inside her wagon, as if she heard nothing of the argument taking place outside.

So now, as people scattered and hid their faces in the dirt while the dog tucked his tail between his legs and his furry body underneath the wagon, only Enkidu remained in the clearing to brave the buffeting wind and howling cries of the black bird that descended upon them, scattering dust and scraps and detritus in every direction.

Enkidu put a hairy arm over his hairy brow and squinted at this manifestation, wishing that Gilgamesh, to whom all secrets had been revealed, was beside him to read this omen.

Since Gilgamesh was not Acre, Enkidu did as he pleased in the face of the unknowable: he straightened up his great body, like a wild beast protecting its territory in the forest.

Enkidu spread his legs wide and crossed his mighty arms and leaned into the gale come from this black bird from Heaven--or from some other Hell-and then he waited.

Enkidu did not need Gilgamesh to tell him what was right. Enkidu did not need the cowardly dog who whined behind the wagon wheels. Enkidu could protect this woman, this dog, this caravan, this territory, by himself.

Privately, Enkidu wished he had a weapon, .for the bird was twice the height of Gilgamesh and as long as three caravan wagons. But he did not have a weapon, because Gilgamesh despised the weapons of the New Dead and Enkidu loved Gilgamesh, whom the gods had decreed was wiser than he.

Not even Gilgamesh, Enkidu thought as the belly of the bird opened wide, would have known this bird by name or what words to say to gain power over it.

Nor was Gilgamesh here, Enkidu reminded himself, wishing he was not wishing his friend was here to tell him What to do as a man came out of the belly of the bird whose awful breath was blinding and whose terrible roar was deafening.

Because the bird's roar was so loud, Enkidu did not see or hear the woman come out of her silk-topped wagon until she touched his arm.

He looked down at the woman whose red lips said, "Enkidu, come with me. Ask no questions."

Her hands tugged on Enkidu's mighty arm, pulling him toward the bird out of which the man had come..

And that man was running toward them, gesticulating, yelling; "Tamara, come on! Bring him or forget him. Time's up," in English.

The woman jerked hard on Enkidu's arm and pleaded with him, saying, "Enkidu, my hero, you are not afraid of that chariot without horses, are you? Come with me, where wonders abound, if you are brave. But if you are a coward, kiss me goodbye and stay behind!"

Her blond hair whipped around her face in the gale as her pale eyes searched his for an answer and behind them, the once-proud dog began to howl.

"But Gilgamesh ..." Enkidu shouted back as the man stopped and waved again-a man dressed in the colors of the land and with furrows on his brow, a man as tall as Gilgamesh and as bold, for he had come from the belly of the bird.

"Enkidu," pleaded the woman, releasing his arm and running toward the other man. Halfway there, she halted and looked back: "Enkidu, come! Let me save your life!"

The man beyond the woman wore weapons about his person, fine weapons of the most powerful kind. In one hand he held a plasma rifle; around his neck hung far-seeing goggles.

His other hand was outstretched, beckoning Enkidu with a gesture all men understood. Then he grabbed for the woman and jerked her abruptly toward him.

Words were exchanged between them and the man dragged the caravan woman away, toward the belly of the bird while, all around, the caravanners huddled in fear and none lifted a hand to help her.

Behind Enkidu, under the wagon, her dog began to Keen.

Enkidu ran toward the black bird with wide strides, strides that ate up the distance and brought him to the bird's side as the other man and the woman reached it. There the noise was too great for speech and the wind too fierce for open eyes. Squinting, Enkidu saw the woman clamber up into the dark belly of the bird and reach back with her white arm, her fine fingers outstretched to him.

Her mouth was open. She was calling his name. She wanted him to jump into the belly of the bird with her.

And while all the people and the dog with whom he'd just argued were watching, Enkidu made his decision.

He went up to the bird. He touched the bird's side, and found it to be metal.

He grabbed the bird's feet, and found handholds there.

He climbed into the bird of metal, into the dark and stinking shadows of its belly, and there he took the woman in his arms.

"Nice job, Tanya," said the man who wore the colors of the land. "Better get him away from the window. He's not going to like the rest of this."

The woman from the caravan cooed at Enkidu and pulled him gently toward a couch among a magical wall of temple lights while, outside, the noise became unbearable.

Enkidu jumped up from the couch and ran to the place where he'd entered the belly of the bird, but there was no opening there. He ran along the wall until he came to a window, and there he paused.

Outside, the ground was becoming tiny and on it people were falling. From their bodies, blood was pouring. From the wagons, flame was spouting. From his vantage in the belly of the bird rising up into the sky, Enkidu could see it all.

And he could separate the sounds now, those he heard. One sound was that of the bird rising toward the sky, but the other sound was more terrible. The other sound was that of chain guns and cannon, of automatic-weapons fire strafing the caravanners' camp below.

When the bird had risen high enough, Enkidu glimpsed the island where Gilgamesh had gone. It was beautiful and magical and colored like a rainbow; in its center the mouth of a demon belched smoke and fire.

Enkidu felt remorse that Gilgamesh was not with him, in the belly of the bird.

But the caravan woman was telling him how lucky he was to be alive, and how many wonders he would see when the bird reached its destination.

"And weapons, Enkidu, such as you have never had in your hands," said the woman called Tanya.

"But what of Gilgamesh?" said Enkidu. "My friend Gilgamesh was to come back for me, and we were to enter the city together."

"You're lucky you're alive, buddy," said a man whose torso was black to the tops of his arms.

"Stay away from drug runners in future. As for your friend, Gil,"--the; man bared the perfect white teeth of the New Dead-

"Reassignments'll decide when and whether you hook up with him again, because that's where you re going, Mister-Reassignments in New Hell." As he said this, the man took out a pistol and began fondling it. Behind him, Enkidu could see shifting lights and glowing oblongs, like windows into other worlds.

"Reassignments?" asked Enkidu with a frown.

"Nichols!" protested the woman from the caravan at the same time. Then she put her hand upon Enkidu and began to soothe him, promising all and everything she could do to make life better for him in a strange new land.

When Gilgamesh was put ashore by the dolphin-prowed boat of the Pompeiians, he looked everywhere along the beach for Enkidu and did not find him. So Gilgamesh trekked up the shore, toward the caravan's encampment, where Enkidu surely must have gone.

Joy was in Gilgamesh's heart. He was anxious to find Enkidu and tell him of die wonders he had seen.

Behind him, the boat awaited, compliments of Sulla, Pompeii's ruler, to bring both heroes over the water to the city.

Gilgamesh had learned that Pompeii had not always been an island; parts of its shoreline were now submerged, a danger to ships. This Sulla was a Roman who had designated the city a colony for his war-weary veterans. There were many heroes on the island, and people of magical inclination like Greeks and

Etruscans as well.

Quickly did Gilgamesh stride the distance to the camp, imagining the joy in Enkidu's face when he told him of the warm welcome they would receive in the city.

And when Gilgamesh told him another thing: this Sulla had said to Gilgamesh, "Gilgamesh, great king of Uruk? What are you doing so far from home?"

In the eyes of this Sulla, a Roman of soldierly bearing with a head nearly bereft of hair, had been no treachery, only a politician's caution.

Startled, Gilgamesh had replied, "What do you mean; Sulla? Uruk is lost to the ages. I have not seen its streets or slept in its fortress since I... died there." A sadness was in his voice, thinking of lost Uruk, the city of his life.

At that, Sulla queried him piercingly until, satisfied that Gilgamesh spoke the truth, he said, "I believe you, Gilgamesh. There is a false lord in Uruk, then-or another lord, at any rate. My men are tired, hiding on this island, of small squabbles and small adventures'.

Should you and your friend, Enlddu, decide to return to Uruk, to regain your rightful places there, I might be persuaded to help you.' And then a canny glimmer came into the eyes of Sulla.

"Of course, we would have to know just where in the land this Uruk lies."

So Gilgamesh had replied truthfully that he did not know where in all the land Uruk was situated, that he had never come upon it in his wanderings.

And the Roman had told him then of the fabled treasures of long-lost Uruk, and offered again to help him find his home.

Such good news did Gilgamesh have for Enkidu, that he did not notice the quiet until he was upon the very camp itself.

There he saw scattered bodies, ruined wagons, and such destruction as made him cover up his eyes.

Taking his hands away, Gilgamesh ran through the camp, calling out for Enkidu.

But Enkidu was nowhere in the camp. It was if the ground had swallowed him up, as if the demons had taken him, as if he had never been. Body after body did Gilgamesh turn face up in the dirt, but none of these were Enkidu.

After many lamentations, when Gilgamesh was exhausted in his grief, he sank down beside the ruined red-and-yellow wagon of the woman Enkidu had loved.

And there he waited.

Perhaps Enkidu had gone hunting. Perhaps he had not come back to camp at all.

Perhaps he would come back, if Gilgamesh waited long enough.

With a throat raw from lamentation, Enkidu sat there in the dust and watched the bodies of the dead around him disappear: some burst into flame, and those moved as if alive while they burned; some became like water and soaked into the soil; some melted like tallow over a flame; some simply disappeared.

While he was waiting for Enkidu to return, thinking of the dolphin-prowed ship at anchor, ready to take them to the island of Pompeii, Gilgamesh heard a sound.

A cry. A whine. A mewling sob of pain.

Up rose Gilgamesh, searching out the source of this heart-rending cry, and found a dog, underneath the woman's wagon, bleeding from his neck and from his right forepaw.

Gilgamesh knew this dog, whom the woman called Ajax, although Enkidu had told him the dog did not recognize that name. He said, "Dog! Ajax dog, I am Gilgamesh to whom all secrets have been revealed! I can heal you if you let me touch you. Do not bite me, dog."

The dog raised his muzzle and bared his teeth as Gilgamesh reached for him.

Then he sighed a heavy sigh and put his head down on his unwounded paw so that Gilgamesh could touch him.

When Gilgamesh touched the dog, it quivered and then it closed its eyes. When Gilgamesh cleaned the dog's wounds and dressed them with unguents from the woman's wagon, the dog cried but did not bite him.

When Gilgamesh bound the dog's wounds with strips of yellow silk from the wagons curtains, the dog wagged its weary tail.

When it was clear that Enkidu was not returning to the caravan, the king of Uruk picked up the dog called Ajax in his arms and carried it to the boat waiting to take them to Pompeii.

So did Gilgamesh set sail for the magical city, with a wounded dog for his companion, and from there, perhaps, to trek to long-lost Uruk. And because

Enkidu was no longer with him, Gilgamesh stroked the dog and told it everything he would have told Enkidu of the adventures awaiting them.

Gilgamesh did this with a heart that was heavy, but not unbearably heavy.

Enkidu had gone off with the caravan woman, this was certain: neither of their bodies were among the slain.

Gilgamesh, like Enkidu, was not alone.