Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (20 page)

 
          
A
wide brick tunnel curved upward, its goal masked by the bend of the walls.

 
          
‘You
are both reborn,’ said one mage. ‘You are citizens. Go and find your way
through Babel. Discover your place within Babylon. If Babel attracts you,
return in a year’s time and crave admittance to the city within a city.’

 
          
The
two new citizens stepped through the wicket, and set off up the brick slope. As
they rounded the bend, the wicket still stood open behind, presumably so that
the ruffians could follow.

 
          
Ahead,
the tunnel opened into a torchlit brick cavern awash with noise.

 
          
The
belly of Babel? The bowel? A hundred languages were in dispute; or at least at
odds.

 
          
Persons
were prattling Pentecostally, women were wailing wild words, boys were burbling
a brouhaha: from marble plinths, from stone podia, from rickety wooden
platforms arranged in avenues. A number of magi patrolled, heads cocked,
attentive, as though they were the living recorders of these sounds.

 
          
What
was this? An oratory contest? A madhouse? A bazaar where languages themselves
were being traded? Or a cathedral, a temple designed to propitiate - or to
delight - the God of Time who would hear all voices grow mute in the end, all
poetry, all philosophy and prophecy become incomprehensible?

 
          
The
acoustics of the cavern dislocated every fervent utterance into a great
symphony of discord. Echoes beat down from the vault like bats frenzied by the
torchlight. It seemed as though here was the melting pot of
Word
itself, the cauldron of
communication where some original Ur-speech might eventually coalesce,
renaming everything in the world truly at last - and meaninglessly - in
the voice of the thunder, the grind of glaciers, the sibilance of snow, the
liquid vowels of flood waters which together shattered, crushed, smothered, and
washed away all creations of culture.

 
          
A
mage passed by; Alex grabbed at his sleeve. ‘What
is
this place, sir?’

 
          
‘This
is the Parliament of Babel, citizen! If we are to speak with the future, we
must first know what is nonsense. Most of what we say is nonsense. Yet out of
this nonsense, sense is born. Out of the original random noise of the cosmos,
organs are thrust. Organisms, organization, organons. Here is the voice of
that organ of a hundred pipes. Here is the warbling womb of words. Here is the
music of the mother of meaning in her birth pangs. Here is Mummu. Here is the
hot lava welling from the bowels of being to harden into the crust upon the
slopes of Babel.’

 
          
The
mage swept onward, listening to left and right.

 
          
The
magi who master all means of communication . . . Aristander’s phrase came back
into Alex’s mind.

           
A score of separate archways led out
of this parliament - to steps, to ramps, to tunnels which forked and twisted
abruptly. Over each archway were different symbols in tiled relief: the sun
haloed in spiky rays, the crescent moon, a bull’s head, a monkey, a lozenge in
the shape of lips, a bee, a lion, a cross, a dog. All the time people were entering,
and people departing.

 
          
This
place was more alien than anything in Babylon or crusted upon the flanks of
Babel Tower. Here was a sound chamber designed to communicate with beings yet
unborn, yet unconceived, beings quite different from man. A great unborn god
seemed to crouch brooding in this chamber like a queen bee in her pulsing hive.

 
          
Here,
thought Alex, is the subconscious of Babylon . . .

 
          
And
here magi paced about, harkening to the throats of time; mastering mysteries,
or maybe drowning in them.

 
          
With
a hiss of breath Alex drew back behind a block of marble - upon which stood a
plump, sweating, butter-skinned lad, reciting loudly.

 
          
Through
the arch marked with the sign of the monkey, came Moriel, moving slyly,
Thessany just behind him.

 
          
Alex
plucked Gupta too behind the block, and the raving boy. ‘Hush. Don’t show
yourself.’

 
          
‘Hush?
In this hubbub? It’s total tohu-bohu.’

 
          
‘Ssshhh!
Let me watch.’

 
          
‘At
least tell me who I’m hiding from.’

 
          
‘Over
there. Small girl with brown hair. Dandy with broken nose.’

 
          
‘Who
are they? Why hide?’

 
          
‘Never
mind.’

 
          
Thessany
paused by a stage on stilts where four fellows who might have been Slavs were
declaiming simultaneously like some absurd barbershop quartet. The master
barber himself, Moriel, sneaked onward, veering quite close to where Alex and
Gupta hid but keeping his gaze fixed on the archway with the sign of the lips.

 
          
A
mage emerged from that archway: hooked nose, black beard chignoned in a hairnet
- a great dark goitre. The mage spotted Moriel. Moriel beckoned. Mage and
Moriel met only thirty paces from the hiding place.

 
          
The
two spoke softly - then the mage produced a small package which looked
extremely familiar. He held it tightly while Moriel counted out coins. Exchange
took place, and the man with the big ugly bun of a beard turned away.

 
          
Alex
hurried from hiding to reclaim his property . . . or at least to obtain a
reckoning from Moriel.

 
          
He
was very close to his quarry when two skinny men wearing kilts and cloaks
darted. One caught hold of Moriel’s wrist, twisting so that the package fell.
The cry which burst briefly from Moriel’s lips wasn’t on account of a sprained
wrist. Already he was sagging with a knife hilt jutting from his ribs, the gift
of the other assailant.

 
          
Alex
thudded into the first robber, stooped, snatched the fallen package - and
jumped back, not a moment early. A knife gleamed in the fellow’s hand. The
other robber ignored the crumpled corpse with his weapon lodged in it. Plucking
a replacement blade from his cloak, he circled to trap Alex in between.

 
          
One
against two! Mitch’s training reflexed back into Alex as he scrabbled for his
own knife.

 
          
The
knife wasn’t there.

 
          
He
had surrendered it at Alexander’s palace. The guards had taken it when he was
granted audience. Then one thing happened, and another, and he forgot to claim
it back. He forgot about it all the way to the summit of
Babel
- because he had a bodyguard dogging his
heels. Thereafter he had spent a week of confusion. Only now did he realize
that he was as good as naked.

 
          
As
he uselessly flexed the fingers of his right hand, he could have wept. The
murderer of Moriel feinted, then smiled smugly.

 
          
A
mufti figure leapt in the way. It was one of the ruffians. His robe swirled
free of his body, denuding him but for an undergarment. The robe was a cape
swirling in the man’s left hand, while a knife in his right hand slashed the
air a hair’s breadth from the murderer’s arm. No! A line of blood welled across
the killer’s forearm.

 
          
At
Alex’s back the other ruffian danced, protecting him.

 
          
Thirty
paces beyond, the mage was watching.

 
          
The
fight was as fast as the dash of a cheetah which will run out of energy if it
doesn’t pull its prey down within the first hundred bounding steps.

 
          
A
sally - and a cut across the murderer’s brows dripped blood into his eyes. A
moment later the ruffian stabbed his blinded opponent in the belly. A dying man
jackknifed. At the same time Alex was bowled forward by the other ruffian who
staggered against him, choking and burbling - clutching his own butchered
throat in a self-stranglehold, in vain.

 
          
Briefly
two victors faced one another; Alex between them. With a sweep of his arm the
surviving ruffian knocked Alex aside. Within moments a knife was deep in the
robber’s belly.

 
          
The
fallen ruffian soon lay still, drowned by his own blood; but the two robbers
flopped like beached fish. This was the first time Alex had ever seen knives
used in anger. The speedy ease of Moriel’s death - result of skill, or sheer
chance - had been quite misleading. As Alex looked on in horror, the robbers
continued squirming their way very slowly towards death. He felt like vomiting.

 
          
He
noticed the mage take alarm, begin to hurry away, beard-bun bobbing.

 
          
A
slighter figure skipped through the carnage.

 
          
Til
take that!’ (Thessany’s voice.) The package was snatched from his limp hand.
She flitted away. He blundered in pursuit, skidded on blood and nearly fell. A
glimpse of sudden movement made him turn to fend off attack - but it was the
victorious ruffian, clad once more in his mufti.

 
          
‘Get
away from here before
Babel
constables come! Take the Sun exit. Be at the palace tomorrow - and
recover that package if you can. Go!’ The ruffian fled.

 
          
Nearby
the hubbub had stilled (though elsewhere hundreds of voices competed). Many
faces stared as the two brown men continued agonizing on the ground. Alex stood
alone, shivering with shock.

 
          
Gupta
ran to the rescue.

 
          
‘I
recommend a hasty departure from this revolting scene,’ he said in Babylonian,
gripping and shaking Alex.

 
          
‘Yes,
by the Sun way,’ Alex answered in Greek. The ruffian - Aristander’s agent - had
been speaking Greek.

 
          
Together
they raced to the spiky Sun sign. A level brick corridor zigged and zagged,
then spilled them into a market-hall mostly crowded with jolly, roundfaced
Sumerians. Stalls were piled with fruit. Arched doorways at the end of the hall
framed dazzling white sunshine, and city buildings not far distant. Gaining one
of those doorways, they found themselves at the very bottom of the great
road-ramp. A quick sprint, and they would be safe in the Esagila quarter. Alex
squinted tearfully into the flood of light.

           
‘No one pursues us yet,’ said Gupta.
‘Let’s wait till our eyes accustom. Meantime, maybe you can illuminate me? What
was in that package? Who is the young woman? Who were the fighters who saved
you? What did the survivor say? These little details puzzle me. I do have to
safeguard my shekel and a half, ha ha!’

 
          
‘Urn,
well.’

 
          
‘A
bargain! I’ll tell you what I observed, and you can comment. The mage who
handed the packet to the foppish fellow wanted big money. He also yearned to
keep the packet, enough to hire thugs to murder the said popinjay immediately
afterwards. So the packet wasn’t originally the mage’s property; he wasn’t
selling it. It belonged to the woman, with the fop acting as her accomplice.
She was wild to recover it. If she had possessed the packet previously, why
entrust it to such a venal mage? She must have needed to know what the packet
signified
- how it could be interpreted.
This
was the service which the mage
performed. Did he not use the arch marked with lips? A route which must lead
towards certain items of
tekhne
, with
which we have spent a dazed week, and no doubt other hidden
tekhne
too! If the enigmatic contents of
the packet were merely scribed in a strange tongue, I feel sure she could have
had it interpreted more easily somewhere up on the flanks of
Babel
. The contents must have demanded high
tekhne
to unravel them.