MacRoscope (41 page)

She had been so eager to ingratiate herself with him — but not personally involved enough to stay awake for the romantic denouement. Well, this released him of any obligation he might have felt for her assistance.

What would have happened, had he meekly accompanied the two guards into the temple? Probably nothing. He would have demonstrated thereby his ignorance of the mercenary dialect, his innocence of spylike suspicions, his general naïveté about temple politics. He might then have been treated with the courtesy due a genuine traveler from a distant land. His gift of tongues had betrayed him.

Gift of tongues?

He stopped rowing, and the coracle jerked about as Aia’s stroke met no counteraction. “Careful, lover,” she said.

“It occurs to me that I have nowhere to go,” he told her, watching her as carefully as he could in the dark.

“Nowhere? But—”

“America is much too far away, and I would be no better off at any other local city than I am at Tyre. We might as well go back.”

“But Mattan—”

“What
of
Mattan? I’m sure I can explain about the mistake to him, and everything will be all right.”

“All right! After he sent you as sacrifice to Melqart?”

“I was only going to the temple to talk with the priests there. Mattan told me so. I suppose the one that met me assumed I was to be sacrificed, but they should have all that straightened out by now. These little errors happen. I should have realized then that it was a common misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding! How blind can you—” She paused. “Well, what about
me?
Aren’t you going to help me escape?”

“From what?”

“From the temple. I told you how they meant to make me serve as—”

“You told me that there was no harm a man could do you. You could have a good life at the temple, and a nice comfortable sleep every night with a new ship in your port, just the way you like it.”

For a moment he thought she was going to hit him with the paddle; but her words, when they came, were low. “Do you know what Mattan does with an unsuccessful spy?”

“One he catches, you mean? I do have some inkling.”

“One he
assigns
.”

Now he caught her meaning. “The sacrifice?”

“Bride of Melqart — and our Baal has a fiery member.”

“Suppose we land you on the mainland, then, and I can paddle back by myself. I want to see Mattan and clear this thing up as soon as possible.”

“You couldn’t handle this craft by yourself.”

“Maybe I can find a canoe or something. I’ll make do. You can travel back to Urartu.”

“I didn’t really come from Urartu.”

“Strange. I
do
really come from America.”

“Stay with me,” she pleaded, setting down the paddle and reaching for him. “I can guide you past the soldiers that are watching us now, and when we are free I promise you I will stay awake until you are exhausted. Until the very hull of your ship is blistered. I will steal valuables for you. I will—”

“Steady,” he said, worried about the equilibrium of the craft as Aia sought to approach and embrace him. She did have a fine body, but her mind appealed to him less and less. “Unfortunately your promises lack conviction. Or are they threats?”

She let go. “What do you want?”

“I want, believe it or not, to go home. It is not a journey you can share. I travel to the stars.”

“I can take you to the finest astrologer!” she said eagerly.

He began to laugh, harshly. Then, as he had done a night ago, he reconsidered. He just might be able to use a good astrologer. Hadn’t Groton told him that they had traditionally been the most educated of men? “Where?”

“It is said that the very best reside in Babylonia, particularly the city of Harran. We can join a trading caravan—

“How long would such a trip take?”

“It is across the great deserts where the nomads raid.”

“How
long
?”

“Not long. Thirty days, maybe only twenty-five.”

“Scratch Babylon. Who is there in Tyre?”

She considered disconsolately. “There is Gorolot — but he is very old. However, in other cities—”

“Should be very wise, then. Is he an honest scholar or a faker?”

“Honest. That is why he is so poor. But elsewhere there are—”

“Gorolot will do. We’ll see him tonight.”

“Tonight! He is already asleep.”

“We’ll have to wake him.”

“We have no money for his fee.”

“Do you want to help or don’t you?”

“Will you leave Tyre after you see him?”

“Sleeping Beauty, I may leave this
world
after I see him!”

She twisted the paddle until the craft was in position for the return voyage.

“What I have in mind for payment,” Ivo said, “is service. If Gorolot is old and poor and honest, he has no servants, right? A strong young woman could do marvels for his household, and perhaps encourage business too. And—”

“I am no household slave!” she exclaimed.

“And Mattan would never suspect that the household slave of an aged astrologer could be an unsuccessful counterspy or potential bride of Melqart.”

She paddled silently.

Gorolot, once roused by strenuous clamor, had the aspect of a sleepy old fraud. His eyes were sunken, his beard straggly and white, his clothing unkempt. He agreed to consider Ivo’s case once the terms had been clarified.

“I wish I had a better offer to make,” Ivo said regretfully. “But I may not be in these parts long. Aia — you’ll have to change her name — isn’t too reliable and will need a lot of supervision—”

“I will not!” she exclaimed angrily. “I can do the job as well as any girl in the city.”

“And you dare not entrust the daily marketing for staples to her, because she can’t bargain well—”

“I bargain very well! I’ll show you!”

“And she’ll probably run away within a week or two, but at least—”

“I will not!”

“But she may be all right, if she doesn’t fall asleep on the job.”

“I—” She shot him a dirty look and twitched her hip, conscious at last of the needling.

The two men sat down at Gorolot’s official table. Ivo saw that there were no flashy pictures of stars, planets or other symbols in evidence, and the man had donned no special robe. Probably the soiled tunic on his back was all he owned. The effect was unimpressive, even though such things had no inherent validity.

“What is your date of birth?” Gorolot inquired.

Ivo hesitated, but found after reflection that he was able to express it in local chronology, except for the year. That he solved by taking his age and figuring back to the year he would have been born, had he been born into this world and age. It came to the fifteenth year of the reign of Hiram the Great.

Gorolot brought out a scroll of stripped camel hide together with several clay tablets. “Do not expect too much,” he warned. “The meanings of the motions of the planets are not yet well known to us, and many times have I made mistakes. Often the Babylonian interpretations differ from the Egyptian, and I do not know the truth of it. I offer only the portents; I do not vouch for their authenticity.”

Ivo nodded. An honest man, yes, and a humble one. How many potentially well-paying customers did he alienate by his candor?

For almost an hour the astrologer pored over his records and assessed the imperatives of the seven planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto being unknown to Phoenician astronomy — questioning Ivo occasionally, while Aia showed her mounting impatience. “Others give instant readings,” she whispered.

“Others are charlatans,” Ivo replied. Gorolot labored on, unheeding.

At last he looked up. “Is there some event in your life that—”

Ivo gave him the same event he had given Groton, modified slightly in detail.

Still the astrologer was not satisfied. He mumbled and shook his head and rechecked his texts and runes fretfully. “I cannot help you,” he said abruptly.

Aia started to object, but Ivo gestured her to silence. “You have already helped me considerably,” he said. “I know you see something. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You have spent all this time contemplating nothing?” Aia demanded.

“The signs are contradictory, as I warned you they might be,” Gorolot said to Ivo. “But more than that, and it disturbs me deeply, some aspects are sure, yet they are the least credible of all. Either you have never been born, or you come from so far away that you are not truly under any of the signs I know.” He shrugged. “You must have been born, for I see you here, and I do not credit genii. Yet the signs are all-inclusive. So there is error — but not one it is in me to fathom. I am old and tired, and perhaps my brain is weakening. Take your servant-girl and go.”

“You admit you are a charlatan!” Aia exclaimed.

“No,” Ivo said firmly. “He is right. I have never been born — but I
will
be born thousands of years hence. And in my time the constellations have moved, and there are newly discovered planets; some of their meanings have — er, developed with the march of time.”

Gorolot peered at him over the flickering pewter lamp. “My charts suggest that this is so, but still it is a thing beyond my experience. I deem myself a sensible man, and all my life I have denied the supposed impact of the supernatural on the affairs of men. Yet here you are, real but inexplicable. Surely you mock me?”

Aia was silent now, looking at Ivo intently. The red in her hair was stronger, her features almost familiar in a non-Phoenician sense. She was extremely lovely.

“Do you speak other languages?” Ivo asked the astrologer. The man nodded. “I will show you that I am not of this world. I have the gift of tongues.”

“Are you familiar with this one?” Gorolot said in a foreign language, smiling.

“Egyptian, southern dialect,” Ivo said in the same language.

“And this?”

“Phrygian — as a Lydian tribesman would speak it.”

“No one in Tyre knows this one but me, and I know it only from my texts,” Gorolot said carefully.

“No wonder. It is parent-stock Etruscan. If I may — here is a correction on your phrasing.” He gave it.

Gorolot stared at him. “You are right. I remember now. You speak it far better than I.” He had lapsed into Phoenician. “You
do
have the gift of tongues, and you are far too young to have mastered it here. You
are
—”

“I don’t believe it,” Aia said, half believing it.

“So you come from Ugarit — peasant stock,” Ivo told her. She looked dismayed, and he turned back to Gorolot.

The man’s features changed. The white beard faded, leaving him clean-shaven. His face filled out. Behind him the mud-plaster wall metamorphosed into metal.

Groton was opposite him, a look of incredulous hope on his face. To the side stood Afra, weeping silently.

“I’m back,” Ivo said.

“It was Schön’s doing,” Ivo explained. Afra obviously had caught on to his secret, so no further pretense was in order. “It took me a long time to catch on to that, possibly because he tried to hide the evidence from me, more likely because I didn’t really want to believe it. But even a genius can’t convince an ordinary person that white is purple. Not always. Not when the purple stinks.” But he hadn’t told them about the dye yet. “And that gift of tongues was the unmistakable key. Schön has it, and he had to make it available to me in order to have me participate properly in that world; otherwise I would have popped out again quickly. When I realized that, I was on the way to victory, because I knew he was behind it all.”

“Why?” Groton wanted to know.

“Why did he do it? Easy. Because he wants to take over, and he can’t do it unless I abdicate. He tried to drive me into a situation that only he could save me from, hoping that I would capitulate. Maybe he forgot how stubborn I was.”

“But the destroyer—”

“Either he doesn’t know about that, or he isn’t afraid of it.”

“Why didn’t he give you just one language — Phoenician?”

“It doesn’t work that way. He can’t give me part of a talent. Only so many speech centers in the brain, as I make it.”

“But that would mean that English takes up one,” Afra said, “and all the other languages of the world, the other. That isn’t reasonable.”

“Schön isn’t reasonable, by our definition. Maybe he has some other setup. Anyway, it’s everything, or it’s nothing.”

“Do you have it now?” Afra asked, mopping her face. She looked so much like Aia that it set him back. Obviously one girl had been modeled from the other, just as one astrologer had emulated the other.

“No.”

“He took it away when you broke out?” Groton asked.

“No. I left it there. I didn’t want it.”

The two looked at him.

“It’s hard to explain. This arrangement between us — it isn’t absolutely set. He can give me things, like the intuitive computations, and I can accept them. But I can’t take anything he doesn’t make available and he can’t force anything on me that I refuse to accept. This episode was a special case; I was off-balance and tired, and I accepted more than I should have. Then I had to fight my way out by
his
rules, the hard way. But I stopped it there; I didn’t take the gift with me.”

“But why?” Afra cried. “The gift of tongues! Every language anyone ever spoke!”

“Because each trait I accept from him brings me that much closer to him. I started with two, and that’s the way I like it. I don’t need tongues.”

“But if you can have all that and remain yourself—”

This was like arguing with Aia. “I
can’t
. As I stand, I have two parts out of, say, twenty that make up Schön. Tongues would be a third part, and then I might be tempted to gamble on artistic ability or eidetic recollection. And after that I might get a craving for physical dexterity — you know, be a champion at sports, be able to do sleight-of-hand, control the roll of dice — and at some point Schön would achieve controlling interest. It’s more subtle than the destroyer, but the effect is the same, for me.” And suddenly another reason he had been able to avoid the destroyer popped up: he had had a lifetime of practice protecting his individuality from oblivion.