Pretender

CHAPTER 6.

The cell was dark and dank and silent. Its gray gloom was broken only by the scuffle of rats’ feet.

For a long time Enkidu lay where he had fallen when the eunuch had shoved him into the black hole and departed with his stone-oil lamp. His bruises weighed heavily on him now. He clutched his seal, the most positive token remaining of his identity.

Why had he fought the court proceedings, antagonizing the fat magistrate? Why did he always fight? Why was he unable to accept his lot, just or unjust, as other people did, and make things easier on himself? He had been raised as a slave; why did he persist in thinking of himself as a man?

In the darkness he saw the shape of his answer: the great beneficent outline that was all he could now picture of Aten. A lesser god, a tortured god, a suppressed god—but still a god, a genuine one, whose radiance would rise again.

“Aten,” he said. But there was no answer.

He tried to see Aten more clearly in his mind. This was not easy, for he had no brazen idol to recall. He could command only sensation, an urge to reach that sunlike presence. But it seemed to him that he felt Aten—faintly, distantly, an impulse in the air, the walls, even within himself.

“I will always worship you, Aten,” he said. “I will always search for your radiance. As a foolish child I believed in a shedu, but now I am grown. I will find you and swell your power again with the fatness of many worshippers.”

A nameless unease pervaded the recesses of his mind at the thought, but dissipated before he could examine it. There was much he did not understand about his god.

It was time to explore his prison. His hands slid about on the floor as he tried to lift himself. His fingers flinched from the cold slime. What dung was he touching?

He gained his feet and stepped carefully back to the door by which he had entered. He found it: clammy immovable metal. His fingers explored the wall on either side, feeling the ridges outlining the small bricks. Baked bricks, too hard for him to attack with his bare hands. No use trying to wash these away with water.

He was hungry; he had not eaten this day. Was he to die here of starvation? “Aten,” he said; but the god was imprisoned too.

Disheartened, he felt his way around the cell. It was lower at the far end, and here his toes squished in slime. This disgusted him, for he had some idea of its nature and there were cuts on his feet that might offer entrance into his body to the evil genii that lurked in such refuse, but he made himself go on. There was stench as of the Kebar Canal.

He knew that breathing became difficult in a confined space, though why this was so was a mystery. The stink here was bad, but he had not felt that peculiar discomfort of the sealed or overcrowded room. Some breath might come from the door—but was there some other opening? Some escape?

He continued the search. There was no exit below; otherwise the rank offal should have drained and become firm. But there did seem to be a slight breeze, just enough for his wet fingers to detect. If only he could see!

How had he come here? The priests of Marduk he had known at Calah would never have treated a man this way! Even the one who had taken him into slavery as a child had acted wholly within the law, canceling the legitimate debt of his father. And the local priest who had blessed his marriage to Tamar in the gardens—he had not sneered at a seeming slave! Why, then, had the priest who arrived at the court been so callous? That one had not been at all concerned with the truth. He had been eager to sell Enkidu for a fee that surely exceeded that recorded on the tablet. Corruption reached even into Marduk’s temple, where the god was certain to know!

How could Marduk smile on both just and unjust?

One priest or the other should have been struck dead!

Enkidu could not doubt either Marduk’s existence or his strength. Marduk had overcome savage Asshur in battle. He had granted his people of Babylon power to destroy Nineveh. He had sent Nebuchadnezzar to conquer the city-states of the west. He had razed the walls of Jerusalem and forced its people into bondage, while their ally Egypt feared to intervene.

Those Hebrews even now resided in squalor and slavery along the banks of the Kebar. They clung to their quaint customs and to their own little god, Adonai, despite his impotence before Marduk. One had only to look at Etemenanki, the towering ziggurat, “House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth,” to realize that the works of Marduk dwarfed all else.

Yet—how great was a god who permitted such corruption? Marduk’s house was divided and it was bound to fall. Marduk might well follow Asshur, and mighty would be the crash thereof, and great the anguish of fair Babylon.

His thoughts were interrupted by the metal gate. He had completed his circuit of the cell and found nothing. No break in the hardness of the bricks.

“Ah, Aten,” he whispered, “it goes hard with us.” He listened for some response, but heard only the scrabble of rats.

Rats! As if he didn’t have problems enough! The scavengers were busy the moment he stopped moving. They were living creatures like himself, but here by choice.

His breath caught. Surely the rats had some entrance! Legend had it that they were generated from the heat of the refuse in which they dwelt, but he didn’t believe that. Maggots, yes, rats, no. They were too big. They must have a passage.

They must have a hole at ground level. Perhaps a little tunnel leading from cell to cell and terminating in the sunshine…

But he was too tired to make another circuit, especially one through filth on hands and knees. He had to rest.

What a day it had been! Robbed in the morning, driven to the Kebar, beaten, hauled into court, married to a lovely but mysterious woman he had never seen before, and finally sold back into slavery and thrown into this cell!

Was he really a husband? Or was that ceremony a dream born of his confusion? He had no need of a wife, particularly not one who called him a fivefold fool and made him a sixfold fool by sending him on to such a cell without even a kiss. What possible motive could she have had? Did she want a husband she would never see again? To stave off a forced marriage to some foreign dignitary, perhaps?

The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. He might have misjudged the priest at the gardens; the man might have abetted what he had known was some rank political maneuver. Yes.

His hand touched the lion bracelet of Ishtar. Why had she given him a thing of such value, then? She had claimed to be marrying him because it was the only way she could save his life—yet she had not kept him out of prison. And what had she called him, there at the end?

Tammuz.

He knew that name, of course. The legend had been one of Tupshar’s favorite writing assignments, at the scribe school. Tammuz had been Ishtar’s beloved, but he had died. She had descended to Hades to reclaim him for the land of the living.

But of course Tamar was no Ishtar, and he was no Tammuz. She would hardly brave this Hades to rescue him!

Yet the memory of her stirred his senses. Her face was flawless, and so must be her body under the concealing clothing.

NK-2 stretched, extending his penumbra cautiously. He did not want to encounter cowled Amalek, the enemy host, again! Or any other entity. But it was necessary for him to spread out every so often to relieve the confinement of a single host.

That host needed help, obviously. He would never locate Station A-10 while trapped here. NK-2 could probably instruct him how to escape—but that would exhaust NK-2 himself, and leave him helpless against the enemy. That would be no gain! Yet if the host did not escape, he might be killed, and that would be the end for both of them.

Compromise was necessary. NK-2 had to conserve his own resources, but he also had to guide the host. If he jogged the host’s mental processes at key spots, he might guide him with a minimum expenditure of energy.

Why had that native female married his host?

Morning. Enkidu forgot his stiff limbs and sore ribs. There was light! It was a ray of comfort from Aten himself from a tiny slit in the cell’s high ceiling.

He was hungry. Now he saw what his hands had somehow missed before. There was a small alcove set in the door, passing through it, and inside it was food. He reached into it and found a gross flat hunk of bread and a jar of water.

Cautiously he wiped his fingers off on his tunic and strained them over the surface. There was, as he had expected, a floating insect or two. The food was very likely corrupted by noxious genii eager to produce disease, but at least they didn’t plan to starve him.

He took some pains to repeat the exorcism against sickness of the entrails, flatulency and the rest; it could do no harm to observe this precaution, though he was no priest. For good measure he also said over the exorcism against the various pustules, poisons, and the food that returns after being eaten. Then he drank. The water was tepid but tolerable, and the bread better than he had expected. No doubt the exorcism had improved it.

Ouch! He removed the end of a hard weed stalk from his mouth and flipped it to the floor in disgust. He had prided himself too soon on his exorcisms!

With the bread in his stomach he felt stronger. Should he break the water jar and use its sharp shards to scrape a hole or pry loose a brick? No. Such a tactic would only summon ungentle guards, and he hurt enough already. The same for returning the jar to the shelf filled with urine. Best simply to behave and wait.

Meanwhile there was more positive work to be done. He meant to find that rat hole. He could not see it, but it must be there. How could he run it down?

He now recalled a useful mystery: when one hard object struck another, sound came forth; and as the objects changed the sound also changed. A hollow jug spoke in a different voice than a full jug. Would the same hold true for hollow bricks, or even loose ones?

Strange he should think of that…

Enkidu took off the bracelet of Ishtar and put his fingers over the snarling lions. He did not wish to damage the craft that had gone into their fashioning, much less offend the goddess herself. And it would be unkind to deface the gift his bride had given him. But the metal backside was suitable, and could not be easily damaged. He stooped and tapped it against a brick.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, interminably. By the time he had covered the wall beside the door his arm was tired. He went on around the corner. All remained solid. His legs and back were now protesting, but he drove himself on. It was the only way he could flee the growing hopelessness of his situation.

He had to rest at last. He was getting nowhere.

Tap-tap, he heard. Tap-tap. The search went on, even though he was not—His breath stopped. Suddenly alert, he put his ear to the wall. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. It was coming from the other side!

Someone was answering him!

Why hadn’t he thought of signaling? Of course there would be other prisoners here, as anxious as he was to regain their freedom. He had inadvertently stumbled on the obvious.

Inadvertently? He looked at Ishtar’s token. Had the goddess herself chosen to help him, then?

The tapping stopped. Quickly he leaned down and rapped the brick, in a different pattern. Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap…

He waited. Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. He had made contact!

A different sound checked his experiment at this point: the heavy tread of approaching guards. Had they come to remove the jar—or to remove him? Suddenly he wanted to stay exactly where he was.

The bar-fastening lifted; the gate swung open. A great man-shape stood outlined in the flicker of a lamp held by another person beyond. Man-shaped, but not a man.

The eunuch had come to take him away. “Come,” he boomed, scowling.

“Who summons me?” Enkidu retorted with probative boldness.

White teeth flashed in a dark countenance. “I summon you. I, Dishon, torturemaster of this nameless temple.”

Suddenly Enkidu did not feel like antagonizing this creature. His bravado deserted him. His heart hammered. He was afraid of physical pain, so that he had left the slave-brand rather than endure the momentary physical agony of its expunction, and thus gotten himself into this fix. He could never stand up to torture.

“Aten protect me!” he implored in a whisper as he came forward.

Dishon heard him. “Better ask the protection of no god, since no god exists.”

Enkidu looked at him, surprised. “I—I had thought perhaps you worshiped Ishtar.” Some of the rites of Ishtar shocked outsiders; Enkidu was an outsider. Some men undertook public castration, dedicating themselves to her service. Goddess of love she was, and of fecundity—but also goddess of death. Mutilation and torture were as much a part of her worship as was the passion of her votive temple courtesans.

“Ishtar?” Dishon’s laughter barked. His huge hand shoved Enkidu forward. He wore heavy leather gloves, virtual gauntlets. That must be his business uniform, protection against spattering blood and flying teeth.

Enkidu clutched his bracelet, feeling nauseous. Ishtar was present here—but she was not his deity. She had no need of his worship, and would not protect him.

The passage was long and dim. He stumbled after the slack-jawed, narrow-headed lamp-bearer, past other cells, and finally up rough brick steps to a second gate. It was lighter here, but Enkidu had no glimpse of the outside. He was propelled down a wider hallway to a chamber at the end. Here there was a brighter light—but the moving shadows cast by the lamps in the niches only made the room more ominous. Enkidu fancied he saw gouges and knives and hot irons, but those were merely products of his fear.

The lamplight glinted on the wall, on the myriad fragments of some intricate mosaic. There seemed to be some pattern to it, yet when he tried to pick it out his mind balked, for the glints were like stars in the night sky.

Directly in front of the mosaic stood a table fashioned of aromatic imported cedarwood, and on this was—no, not a water-torture device, but a water-clock, a clepsydra. A suspended ceramic jar with a small opening in the bottom from which water steadily dripped. A slender copper tube caught the drops and a float gradually rose as the lower water level climbed. A thin rod passed from this through a fulcrum and marked the time of day against a panel.

To the right of the clepsydra sat a figure he recognized: Amalek. Now his face was clearly visible within the cowl. Before him was a papyrus scroll and a reed pen with a small pot of ink. Enkidu had investigated Egyptian writing as a matter of curiosity, but found it so far inferior to wedge-script as to be worthless. Papyrus would burn, and there could be no genuine protection from forgery since there was no hardened clay envelope. Strange that these people should prefer the foreign script to real writing!

At the other side of the table sat a taller figure, in white, also cowled, and this face was almost completely concealed. Only the eyes peered out malevolently.

Dishon heaved Enkidu forward into a red stone circle set into the dull tiles of the floor. “Stand!” the eunuch directed, but there was nowhere to sit. “Answer when addressed!” but no one addressed him. What was coming next?

Presently Amalek spoke. “Give your name and place of birth.”

Was this another trial? Enkidu started to protest, then remembered the torturemaster. “I am Enkidu, son of Hadru, of a village near Calah on the Tigris.”

“Your age?”

“I was born the year Nebuchadnezzar died.”

Amalek nodded, referring to the scroll. “He would be twenty-two, perhaps twenty-three.” The white man neither moved nor spoke in response. “Status and employment?”

“Free scribe of the Temple of Marduk. Prisoner of persons unknown, illegally.”

This was dangerous bait, but Amalek did not rise to it. “Why did you come to Babylon?”

“I thought my god was here.” Enkidu would not be silenced on this score, and he always preferred to speak the direct truth. “Aten.”

The white hood jerked up, its glistening eyes stabbing at him. Amalek lifted his pen, dipped it in ink, and made an entry on his scroll.

“Be advised,” Amalek said, “that you have spoken heresy. It is our intent to show you your error and return your attention to matters proper to the laity.”

“Because I worship Aten?” Enkidu demanded incredulously. He had hardly believed what Tamar had told him, before.

“Aten is a false god,” Amalek said evenly. “That to which you pretend is impossible.”

Enkidu looked at the grim figures beside the waterclock, then at the exotic frieze glinting behind them with its alien midnight sky. These must be formless genii, inchoate within their robes, and that must be their true home. Perhaps they had been sent to test his faith. To strip him spiritually naked.

But he was not naked. The cloak of his god was about him. No apparition could breach his defenses so long as his faith was strong. “Aten is my god,” Enkidu said firmly. “If you say he is false, you lie.”

He faced the table and waited, watching the measured falling of the water droplets. Both demon-figures were as pillars of salt. At last Amalek spoke again. “Where did you learn of Aten?”

“I always knew of him.”

“You can not have had authentic information. How can you pretend to knowledge of his nature?”

Here Enkidu found himself in difficulty. Amalek was not barraging him with blind abuse, he was asking penetrating questions that put Enkidu on the defensive. How could he present outward proof of what he only knew in his spleen to be true? What argument could convince a determined unbeliever?

“I know his nature because he has revealed it to me in ways I cannot doubt. Aten is good, Aten is merciful. I cannot conceive of him otherwise.” Yet that sounded weak.

“I proclaim Aten a false god,” Amalek said. “Aten is unjust and cruel. I curse his name.” He paused. “If I speak falsely, why does he not strike me down for blasphemy?”

“I don’t know,” Enkidu admitted, somewhat discomforted. He had never been forced to explore the matter of his worship in this fashion, and he was not well prepared. “I do not understand all of his ways. That is why I came to Babylon to seek out his following—so that I might come to comprehend the fullness of his nature. Perhaps it is not possible for an unbeliever to blaspheme. Or—Aten may, in his mercy, take pity upon the man who speaks against him, because that man is ignorant, he is spiritually ill, he is not responsible for his words. Perhaps he has compassion on the unjust as well as on the just. I cannot be sure.”

“Do you believe this god you pretend to worship can protect you from our torturemaster?”

That question terrified Enkidu, but he couldn’t deny Aten. “Perhaps it fits his purpose to leave me in your hands. Or your god may be stronger…”

“Do you then deny Aten’s omnipotence?”

Enkidu spread his hands in perplexity. “How can he be omnipotent? There are so many gods—”

Amalek nodded. “There are other gods. Many others. Why do you choose to worship a lesser god when you know there are greater ones available?”

Here he was on better ground. “Because he is my god. I suppose it is a matter of faith rather than power. The mighty gods—Shamash of the sun, Sin of the moon, Bel-Marduk—these have many temples, many devotees. My worship is not important to them. But Aten is not known, not famous. And not bloodthirsty.”

The white figure abruptly stood up. Amalek immediately followed him. “This session is at an end,” he said. He beckoned to the eunuch. “Return this deluded man to his cell.”

Dishon obliged.

“Who is the man in the white robe?” Enkidu inquired as he followed the lamp-bearer down the hall. “Or is it a man? It never spoke.”

“That one is chief inquisitor of the nameless temple,” Dishon answered. “He is called Sargan.”

Sargan! Tamar’s information had been correct, then. “How long am I to be imprisoned?”

“Until you recant. You will be granted time to consider. Then a second interview, that you will like less than this one. After that—I will persuade you, if that becomes necessary. Consider well, pretender.”

This was rather more information than Enkidu liked. So they planned to torture him to make him deny his god! Yet he felt somehow that the big eunuch slave was not his enemy. At least Dishon gave direct and simple answers to his questions, and affected no air of mystery.

Why should these people hate Aten so? Why didn’t they merely worship some other god, and leave Aten alone? What was there about Aten that made them determined to hurt him? When he understood that, he suspected he would know why Aten was well worth his own worship!

He would remain firm. If his faith were great enough, he would win through to the true temple of Aten, and stand at last in the company of those who believed as he did, and his life would have the meaning he had long craved.

Aten, he thought, they have raised up awful barriers between us, but they cannot deny you my worship! They can make my mouth cry their words, with their tortures, but they cannot separate me from my god.

“Recant,” Dishon advised. “Do not suffer for a god that does not exist.”

What use to argue with a godless castrate?

NK-2 was as distressed as his host, but for another reason. He knew there was no god “Aten.” This had to be some enemy maneuver to prevent galactics from reaching Station A-10. And the enemy seemed to be in control.