Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (2 page)

           
Deborah Tate: of medium height, and
definitely graceful, though unusually so. Her shoulders sloped remarkably.
This was the first physical characteristic of Deborah’s which had struck Alex:
that strange, almost alien swoop of the shoulders sloping down from a long,
vase-like neck. She was like some African tribal woman whose neck had been
stretched, and her shoulders pressed down by brass neck-bands. Such African
beauties could not, of course, support their skulls unaided upon the stretched
vertebrae, not without a column of strong metal to brace the neck. Yet
Deborah’s white skin soared unaided. So in a way she looked almost unhuman, as
though she was a woman from another star; her neck and shoulders a perfect touch-sculpture.
Since no one else had stared at her wonderingly Alex had concluded that her
neck and shoulders somehow conformed to some ideal pattern within himself: the
geometry of some personal emotional equation.

 
          
Her
eyes were glossy dark; her hair raven dark and strong, cut close in a thick
helmet-cut with a protective black tongue teasing her nape. She wore a loose
white poncho blouse of linen over a long white linen robe from which the tips
of leather sandals and her toes peeped out. Her arms were bare, with copper
bangles at the wrists.

 
          
In
her Greek costume she looked chaste. But she had already hinted that once in
Babylon
she would soon go to sit in the
Temple
of
Love
to wait for any stranger to come along and
toss a coin in her lap. Old man, youngster, ugly or handsome, skinny or fat,
clean or filthy, she must go with him and lie with him. Every woman of Babylon
was obliged to do so sometime before she reached the age of thirty; a custom
which could prove inconvenient if the woman was ugly - she might spend weeks
waiting. Presumably one of the priests might then bribe a beggar to cast the
coin.

           
The prospect seemed to fascinate
Deborah.

 
          
Maybe
she only spoke of it to Alex, back at the university, in the hope that the
stranger might be him? So that she could experience the frisson of excitement
and trepidation, then avoid the reality?

 
          
Alex
already knew that it would not be he who threw that coin in her lap, with the
head of King Alexander stamped on it. Not he; not yet. To do so would be untrue
to
Babylon
. He hoped she understood this.

 
          
Later
on, though - presuming that they both became Babylonian citizens - maybe he
would bid for Deborah before the auction block in the marriage market of
Babylon
. (For that was also a custom, if a woman
had no dowry.) Maybe.

           
Alex was already sure that he would
become a citizen at the end of the first trial month. He would enter
Babel
Tower
to be taught Babylonian, lying drugged and
hypnotized in some deep stone chamber. He would emerge, to grow his hair long,
and wear a turban and perfume, and flourish a jaunty walking stick.

 
          
He
wouldn’t simply be some Greek-speaking tourist who departed again, delighted or
disgusted, to be debriefed by the university psychologists.
Babylon
still needed tens of thousands more
citizens. The city had been completed only five years ago. Alex would be one of
those citizens; he would belong.

 
          
‘There’s
a drumming in my ears,’ Deborah said softly in Greek.

 
          
Alex
touched her hand lightly; only lightly, and quickly. ‘It’ll fade. It’ll pass.’

 
          
Maybe
that was the wrong response? Maybe she spoke of her excitement so as to share
it with him?

           
But how could there be right things
or wrong things to say on this journey? Silence was best. The other passengers
were mostly absorbed in themselves, as if gathering strength to hoist a great
rock, to shoulder a whole new world. There was very little tourist chatter;
only the dying hum in all their skulls.

 
          
She
said, in Greek:

 
          
‘My tongue freezes into silence,

 
          
And a gentle fire courses through my flesh;

 
          
My eyes see nothing,

 
          
And there’s a drumming in my ears . . .’

 
          
Alex
imagined for a moment that she was echoing his own thoughts in rapport. But no;
surely she was quoting poetry. Yes, that was it. She was reciting one of
Sappho’s love songs. Seventh-century Sappho; no anachronism there.

 
          
The
skull hum had all but disappeared; so why the drumming in her ears? Was it for
him? - or for
Babylon
? - or for the
temple
of
Ishtar
, the sacred brothel?

 
          
Deborah
came from
New
York
,
opposite point of the compass to Alex. Perhaps
New York
gave her something of a prior lien on
Babylon
? Her mundane background was computer
operator. Also, hopeful actress; but already that particular dream had died, to
be replaced by the desire to live a role at last.

 
          
That
was about all Alex knew of her earlier life; and he had told her just as little
of his own. Arriving ten days earlier at the hypermodern
township
of
Heuristics
south of Casa Grande on Interstate 8, all
the new arrivals put their pasts behind them. Their purpose: to confront the
future which was written in the past, but not in their own personal past.

 
          
He
and she had flown into
Sky
Harbor
Airport
,
Phoenix
, to be bussed out together with thirty or
so other people to the University of the Future in the desert at Heuristics. It
wasn’t entirely by chance that they had sat together on the bus, but it was
only on the bus that they had mentioned their previous lives.

 
          
Heuristics:
as a name this sounded no more nor less capricious than the names of several other
townships thereabouts. Such as Aztec. And
Mecca
. Salome, and
Bagdad
. Yet of course ‘
heuristics'
meant the art of asking questions, a word from the
ancient Greek, as Alex now well knew.

 
          
Being
hypermodern, the
township
of
Heuristics
was mainly invisible; just as the future
was invisible? Heuristics was mostly underground, with window- ceilings. This
highly energy-conservative design also served to hide the actual extent of the
university, which might have been smaller or very much larger than the actual
oasis of glass, the array of twinkling lakes which would have been visible from
the air: a chequerboard of mirages or mirrors. Mirrors, more like. The
University of the Future was indeed a many- faceted mirror reflecting the past
into the future. Though what did it show of its graduates’ faces? Alex did not
know yet. By the time he did know, would he wear the same countenance as
before? Would Deborah?

 
          
‘Look,’
she said in Greek.

 
          
Everyone
in
Babylon
spoke Greek to begin with. Greek was the
world language used by travellers. It was the English of its day. For this was
the epoch of Alexander the Great, and these were the last days of his reign.
Alex’s namesake lay dying of fever even now in the
palace
of
Nebuchadnezzar
.

 
          
‘Look,
Alex!’

 
          
Ahead
to east and west fields fuzzed the desert with rich greens. Canal water
glinted, webbing irrigated farmland . . .

           
Babylonia
did not actually trespass upon the Papago
Indian Reservation, but it came quite close, the further to remove itself from
modern civilization: from the rumbling, farting commercial entrails of
Arizona
. Were the Papagos - those weavers of bright
baskets - not now retrenched deep within their heartland, surviving on
welfare, with their few starving cattle cropping the last arid pasture, they
might well have been incensed to behold the greenery of Babylonia and to guess
how much money was spent on piping water underground from the flood-control
reservoir on the Gila River outside Gila Bend. However, it was a fifty- mile
walk from the nearest Papago village to
Babylon
. The Indians still held their wasteland in
perpetuity. The border between
Babylonia
and Papaguerla remained sacrosanct, inviolate; except to buzzards.

 
          
Realistically
- Alex told himself -
Babylon
made not one jot of difference to the neighbouring Indians. If there
had been no
Babylon
, the money certainly wouldn’t have been
spent on piping a river into Papa- guerfa. So there was no injustice.

 
          
Why
then did the thought cross his mind? Was he, the trained survivor, suffering a
twinge of liberal conscience?

 
          
If
so he was a fool. Unprepared for the Babylonian experience.

 
          
Besides,
there were only four or five thousand Papago Indians. There were thirty or
forty times as many Babylonians. Probably some of the more go- ahead Indians
were already basket-weavers or herdsmen in
Babylonia
.

 
          
At
last! Far off Alex spied the city walls with the
Tower
of
Babel
rising behind.

 
          
This
time he did clasp Deborah’s hand. When he let go she shook her wrist as though
a fly had settled on it. Her copper bangles rattled.

 
          
*
* *

           
The fields running up to the outer
wall were patchworks of leeks and onions, turnips and cabbages. Dykes, shaded
by date palms, divided the fields. (Big, mature palms - of which there were
thousands - must have been transplanted here full-grown.) Dozens of men and
women laboured at a leisurely pace, a few cranking hand pumps, most carrying
and emptying water-pots. The women wore loose cotton or flannel smocks, belted
at the waist. The men were mainly stripped to their loincloths.

 
          
The
Euphrates flowed citywards close by, bearing coracles, some with a single
donkey tethered aboard, others giant boats with three or four donkeys penned on
them in addition to passengers and cargoes of produce, wine-casks, or goats.
From atop the great brick citadel a few guards eyed and counted the river
traffic.

 
          
Coracles
weren’t the handiest of boats. Even with oars fore and aft and with a central
mast dangling sail to trim the course, these perfectly round craft tended to
spin in the current like waltzer cars at a funfair.

 
          
Yet
this was how goods arrived in town from upstream
Babylonia
, dizzily water-borne. Then the skin hulls
were stripped off the stick frames and loaded on to the donkeys to be carried
back north. The donkeys munched up the straw padding of the boats to sustain
them on the return journey; while the sticks were sold as kindling.