Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (19 page)

 
          
‘Did
I not rescue you?’ protested Gupta.

 
          
‘Yes,
you
did.’

 
          
‘Ah!’
Gupta peered around. ‘Was someone else suppposed to save you from the
consequences?’

 
          
‘Of
course not,’ Alex said hastily.

 
          
No
doubt his frantic dash into Chinese quarters had astonished his shadows.
Perhaps he had already disconcerted them by the sheer sloth of his approach to
the summit. To distract Gupta, he cursed long and low at his loss of Deborah.

 
          
‘I
wonder why she was with two magi?’ Gupta pondered.

 
          
‘She’s
going to be Marduk’s bride.’

 
          
‘How
do you know that?’

 
          
‘Oh
... I heard.’

 
          
‘From
that boy who visited our inn, and took your money?’

 
          
‘Maybe.’

 
          
‘Now
you’re jealous of Marduk? That spells danger. Speaking as someone newly
responsible for your safety, ha ha, I advise discretion. Do not hare off in hot
pursuit of a soon-to-be-sacred lady.’

 
          
‘You’re
probably right.’

 
          
‘Yet
you mean to ignore my advice. Perhaps I should resign responsibility.’

 
          
‘Do
so.’

 
          
‘Not
yet. We must find a place to spend the night.’

 
          
‘The
night?’

 
          
‘This
dark stuff that approaches. When better to arrive at the peak than in dawn’s
early rays? We mustn’t expect officials to deal with us any earlier. Don’t
worry, I shall pay for you. You are still my erring, foolish son till I deliver
you safely to the summit.’

 
          
‘Thanks.’

 
          
They
walked on into Hunnish territory, which in 323
b.c.
was still adjacent to China, and quickly found an inn. A
signboard, conveniently in Greek, named the inn ominously
Edge of the Abyss
; but inside the place was hospitable, not unlike
a latter-day German beer-hall, though the decorations were lugubrious stuffed
horses’ heads. Shortly after Alex and Gupta had sat down to eat steaks of
horsemeat and drink fermented milk, the two shadows also slipped indoors.

 
          
Rising
early,
Morgenlich leuchtend in rosigem
Schein
, they reached the summit not quite at dawn, though not long after,
without any further sighting of Deborah.

 
          
The
final curve of the ramp led up on to a circular field of brick. In the centre
was a stubby round brick tower, from which a spear of iron rose as lightning
conductor. A wooden door stood wide. Outside at a table sat a black-robed mage
sorting a heap of waxed record boards. They approached.

 
          
Gupta
kissed his fingers and bowed; Alex followed suit.

 
          
In
flowery vein Gupta declared, ‘We present ourselves here! We crave to become
citizens of the greatest of cities, the Gate of God!’

           
Behind, the two ruffians emerged on
to the brickfield and occupied themselves with the view from the balustrade.

 
          
‘Hmm,’
said the mage. ‘Names, please. Dates of arrival.’

 
          
These
they furnished; these he scratched in wax.

 
          
‘Wait.’
He went inside the tower - to consult a computer terminal? A guard armed with a
doubleheaded axe appeared and lounged in the doorway. The mage soon returned,
to gesture them inside.

 
          
‘Don’t
look now,’ murmured Gupta, ‘but we’re being followed. By two mufti men who were
at the inn.’

 
          
‘They
probably want to become citizens too.’

 
          
‘They
already look Babylonian. And Alex, I have never known anyone who refrains from
peeping when told not to. You didn’t bat an eyelid, much less look.’

 
          
Hastily
Alex addressed the mage: ‘Sir, has a woman with dark hair cut in a helmet style
come this way, accompanied by two magi?’

 
          
‘The
business of magi isn’t your business, Greek.’ The mage led them round the curve
of an inner wall, where what they encountered relieved Alex of any remaining
need to answer Gupta. On the far side of the curve was a cage door: the door of
a lift. A trio of oil lamps burned on brackets within. The lift could have held
twenty people.

 
          
At
the summit of Babel was a shaft, plunging down to the depths.

 
          
The
mage opened the cage door. Toggles protruded from an iron plate on the outside,
by the door; there were no controls within.

 
          
‘Descend
into the Underworld! Die as Greeks; be reborn as Babylonians. Hurry up with you.
We haven’t got all day.’

           
Alex and Gupta entered and were
locked inside, behind a sliding grille. The lift began to drop. Lamp flames
wavered; shadows danced; a dim cliff face of brick sped upward . . .

 
          
Alex
wandered the inner courts of Babel one evening (if it was really evening)
during the hour of exercise. His brain buzzed with Babylonian. The new language
gestated swiftly inside him, forming limbs and sense organs. Like a vigorous
foetus it kicked the walls of his skull. He was drugged, dazed and dopey. For
all he knew he might be dreaming while awake.

 
          
Dozens
of other applicants likewise trod the floors of these vaulted, torchlit caverns
and arcades deep within Babel mountain. They moved mostly like praying monks
of a later age, or like somnambulistic tightrope walkers. Occasionally someone
danced, pranced, pirouetted. That was when a surfeit of words suddenly fired in
the person’s head, jerking their nerves; it relieved the tedium of the limbs.

 
          
Apart
from a half-hour on awakening and an hour before sleep, applicants spent all
their time in warm, dim cells hooked to teaching terminals. The attending magi
drugged their charges, hypnotized them, fed them; expelled them for recreation
and ablutions.

 
          
Recreation
periods weren’t necessarily synchronized. Perhaps neither were ‘morning’ and
‘evening’. Alex had encountered Gupta only once, while the Indian was being
shepherded back to his cell. Deborah he hadn’t seen at all. During how many
days? Five?

 
          
Two
more days, and Alex would be a Babylonian.

 
          
During
his periods of exercise, the pair of ruffians shadowed him. They made no
approaches, merely lurked in the background. No mage accosted them, so the
ruffians had authority to be in these subterranean courts. Where did they eat?
And sleep? What did they do for the rest of the time? Alex had no idea. One
‘evening' only one ruffian was present; the next ‘morning’ his mate had
rejoined him. During teaching hours and at ‘night’ perhaps they went elsewhere.

 
          
Though
torchlit, the brick caverns were gloomy. Masses of shadow hung overhead, dank
as thunderclouds. Black miasmas bunched between the sconces, whose fires
seemed to breed darkness as much as they created light. Here was a land of the
dead where souls must perambulate at morn and eve, sadly confused, their
memories mumbling or gibbering half- comprehended reproaches and reminders of
deeds undone, of words unsaid.

 
          
The
halls and intervening arcades eventually led back to one another: some sooner,
some later. After a while you paid no attention to several great brass- bound
doors set in the walls of different caverns, with locked wickets in them. One,
of course, gave access to the lift, but Alex had forgotten which until, on his
third or fourth ghostly promenade, the wicket happened to open as he was
passing and a mage ushered a group of new applicants through.

 
          
Presumably
another door must lead to the computer and to its handmaidens, Marduk’s former
wives.

 
          
After
a while the doors might as well just be decorated bits of walls.

 
          
At
last, that evening (if it was evening), Alex saw Deborah.

 
          
She
was walking on her own. He overtook her.

 
          
‘Deb.
Hullo! How are you?’ What language was he speaking? Greek, Babylonian, a
mixture? He wasn’t sure.

 
          
She
looked at him, confused. ‘I am . . . well. You are here too?’

 
          
‘Yes,
yes. Listen to me, Deb, I know you’re planning to marry a god, or at least his
priest - ’

           
‘Shazar,’ she said vaguely.

 
          
‘No,
Marduk’s
high priest. Shazar is just
the go- between.’

 
          
‘Shazar,’
she repeated. ‘He passed by the temple of Ishtar as I entered. Overwhelmed, he
turned aside and followed me. As soon as I sat down he stood before me,
considering, ready to throw a coin to anticipate any other overtures; still not
certain. Then the spirit of Sin came into him, and he was sure.’

 
          
If
she sounded drugged and hypnotized - well, that’s exactly what she was.

 
          
‘Yes,
but Shazar isn’t the man you’ll marry. Have you even
met
Marduk’s priest? Was he at the Festival Temple? Do you know
what happens to you after you’ve been married to Marduk for a year? Do you,
Deb?’

 
          
‘Questions,
questions. He was certain. And I am certain.’

 
          
‘Certain
of what? Of one year as a goddess? Followed by a lifetime as . . .’ - and he
slipped briefly into English - ‘. . . as a computer operator! Yes, behind one of
the doors down here. Locked away from all the light and life of Babylon!’

 
          
‘After
one year ... I go to the House of Judgement.’

 
          
‘Is
that what they call the computer room?’

 
          
‘God
Marduk himself appeared in terrible glory out of thin air and told me. Then he
vanished and was not there.’

 
          
‘He
must have been a
holographos
, Deb!
That’s all.’

 
          
Deborah
looked scared, as though Alex himself was an apparition. She began to hurry on.

 
          
He
pursued. ‘Think, Deb, think!’

 
          
Distressed,
she began to babble Babylonian words: ‘Go away! Stop hurting me! Leave me be!
You’re mad.’

 
          
‘Listen!
Do you remember the little scroll? The
tape
cassette
?’

           
‘No!’

 
          
Two
magi came running. They caught hold of Alex, cunningly restraining him. He
couldn’t struggle. They led him back towards his cell.

 
          
The
two ruffians slipped like fish, like hungry pike, from pool of shadow to pool
of shadow, watching.

 
          
On
the seventh day Alex woke with his brain still humming and muttering, but
somehow everything seemed newly coherent and connected; or perhaps more
anciently coherent. He spoke Babylonian as if he had always spoken it.
Babylonian was more ancient than Greek. No, it wasn’t. It just seemed so.

 
          
A
mage led him from his cell. Soon they came to one of the brass-bound doors.
Another mage arrived, accompanying Gupta. The wicket was unlocked.