Twilight in Babylon (35 page)

“They know everything, then,” Cheftu said.

Nimrod nodded slowly.

Cheftu looked at the ground. “Do we know who they are?”

“I can’t get much out of them.”

Cheftu noted the black eye of one, the bloody nose of the other. One’s gaze was wide, petrified, in shock. The other’s was knowing, derisive. “Let me look at their hands.”

Nimrod spun around and gestured for his guards to release the prisoners. The terrified one began to whimper, the other one’s expression grew more solemn.

Cheftu turned each hand over, checking the cuticles, the calluses, the palms, and the heels. “Restrain them again,” he said. Nimrod gestured, and his men retied and suspended the thieves. Cheftu walked to the doorway and stared out. The sky was a heartless blue, the shadows of the palms black on the ground. His thousands of gold-beaded braids were soaked with sweat. Absently, his fingers ran over the impressions of the seals around his waist.

“What do you want me to do?”

Cheftu turned and peered into Nimrod’s face, his eyes. He looked at the men who stood on tiptoe and watched him with terror. Cheftu wasn’t worthy to make these choices, but by any standard, these men would be killed. France, Egypt, Aztlan, Jerusalem—no society looked kindly on grave robbers.

He spoke softly. “When you retrieve Chloe, return the loot.”

“What about the men?”

Cheftu inhaled deeply, then spoke. “Take them to the marshes,” he said. “But first—cut out their tongues.”

Nimrod turned on his heel and motioned his men. It sickened Cheftu to watch; he was a healer, not a despot, but he had no choice. If Nimrod had to enact Cheftu’s decision, then Cheftu would witness it.

The two men’s cries rang in Cheftu’s ears; neither was brave, then they were quickly bundled off by Nimrod’s efficient mountain guards. Nimrod joined Cheftu as they returned to the pit. “Why look at their hands?” he asked.

Cheftu felt the blaze of sun on his back and shoulders, it beat down and centered in the golden diadem around his head. The priests were waiting for him, lounging on the ground.

“If they could write, they would have calluses. If they could write, they would have had to die.” Cutting their tongues took away their only method of communication.

“You are merciful,” Nimrod said. “If I were
lugal,
I would make you a justice.”

“I’m not worthy,” Cheftu said and joined the priests for the next series of offerings.

*      *     *

At twilight they started to gather, the families of Ur, the landed gentry, the leading merchants, the master craftsmen. Silent, so as not to invite the gods’ greater wrath, they bid farewell to the representative who would give himself in sacrifice for each family.

Unlike those who had gone into the pit, these people were buried as individuals, named, with their belongings and coffins. And if the one who was named was not the one who entered the quickly constructed chamber, his neighbor wasn’t going to betray him.

A sacrifice was a sacrifice. The gods just wanted people dead, bearing the identification of those specific families. The quays were crowded with merchant ships turned passenger vessels, heading for long journeys on the evening’s tide. The road beside the Euphrates was jammed with onagers and their owners, faces carefully hidden from the sun and from recognition, on their way to extended family, or distant fields, or noted Tablet Houses in other commonwealths.

The people of Ur were accepting of fate, but they also knew the gods had an eye for a bargain and weren’t above bartering, “merchandise” exchanges, or half-price sales. Destiny was designed for negotiation.

Guli’s stomach was tight as the kettledrum. He’d eaten too much, spent the day in the bath with perfumes and oils, a blonde, and a brunette, then dealt with distributing his hairdressing tools. He looked at his hands, saddened that he would never feel the weight of glossy locks across his palms again.

The intricate twists he could make with his index finger, while holding the other twists in place, would not be a skill he’d use in Kur. His cuticles were still stained from the last job on Ulu—making her golden to be Puabi. The smell of blood was washed away, though. His clothes were new—he even wore the bordered and fringed cloak of an Old Boy and carried a death mask hammered into an exact reproduction of a gentleman’s hairstyle, every braid picked out in detail.

Kalam was on a boat tonight, headed for Dilmun. He would trade for spices and jewels, then return in a few months. The danger would have passed by then, no one but the priests would know about the substitution, and, if necessary, they were easy to bribe.

Gilgamesh, son of Shem, had returned to Ur, and been voted in as
lugal
during a special meeting of joint houses. He now stood at the head of his family. The basket hat looked strange on his shaved skull, and he wore no beard, but he stood with dignity, the seals and cylinders of his new position hanging from his beaded belt. The former
lugal,
Shem, in contrast, looked all of his years.

Shem’s was the First Family. They had landed here after the Deluge, and the brothers had fought and been sent to separate corners of the world to ensure peace. Ziusudra, it was whispered, had had enough of their bickering on the boat. Rumor was that Ziusudra’s first project of planting vineyards was because he wanted to be drunk and forget his annoying offspring.

Kham had been cursed to the west desert and beyond, Japhet had set sail across the great northern sea and now Shem, the
lugal
of Ur, the protector of the brown-haired humans, the ruler of the black-haired humans, stepped into line as a sacrifice.

Guli didn’t know numbers well, but Shem had lived almost as long as the kings of Before. The healing properties of the water were gone now, though. Boy grew to man quickly, had his children, and was bent with age in less time than a boy used to grow to a man. A lasting curse of the Deluge.

Guli wondered if they were averting something as great as the Deluge by this sacrifice, as he glanced at the sky. It was orange and rose and striped with gold. The temple courtyard filled with flickering lamps.

He had just seen his final sunset.

En
Kidu looked as golden as the
ensi
had, though his hair and beard were naturally fair, Guli guessed. Even his eyes were golden.

The
en’s
expression was strained, and the lines around his eyes and mouth were pronounced in the twilight. The drums began and he looked down, his lips moving in prayer. Someone’s wife screamed, then her cries were muffled. The priests wheeled forward a sledge holding the great copper pot.

Ningal’s hand trembled as he patted Guli’s arm. “For you,” he said, and handed Guli a parcel.

Guli unwrapped it and rubbed his fingers over the carving. “My seal.”

“It bears your name,” Ningal said. “Guli, blessed of Inana. You go to die for Mes-Kalam-Dug, but the gods will not forget you, good Guli.” He handed him a cup.

The old man’s eyes were shiny; Guli didn’t know what to say. They embraced stiffly, Guli was afraid he’d break Ningal’s ribs. Then he let go and stepped into the line, holding his cup and seal. It was mostly men, representatives of their lineages, many of them aged, volunteering in order to spare their young. The handsome young priests blessed them as they walked by.

Guli counted fifty volunteers who had already disappeared down the narrow shaft, into the chamber, another sixty to go. At the landing before the tunnel led down, the priests held the pot. “Dip in, dear client,” they said in unison.

Holding the edges of the cup, Guli dipped, getting it full, for he was a large man. A last glance at the temple, the stages illumined with lamps, the blue chamber to heaven shining in the night.

Would that even one god watched and cared. Even one. Guli stepped down in time to the beat of the drum.

*      *     *

It was dark out, and Chloe hadn’t exactly made a decision. Should the thieves come back—she couldn’t imagine why they would—but she’d been surprised by their presences altogether, so her suppositions couldn’t be trusted—if she was in the well, they would find her.

Dead Chloe.

Having just dodged poison, the itching and cramping and vomiting effects of surviving it, and crawling over bones and bodies to get there, she wasn’t going to die by being stupid in the end.

Provided
that
was the stupid choice.

Neither was she going to stay in the room with the skeletons beside her and the rotting corpses above. She didn’t have a masochistic bone in her body.

The tunnel leading to the dry well didn’t run straight. At the end, it curved. Probably a ladder or rope there. She could see that far, so she had some warning if people came down the well, into the tunnel.

Consequently, she’d wedged herself in the mouth between the tunnel and the pit. The burial pit was an arm’s length away, easy to fall into and hide, but she got the benefit of fresh breezes, and the psychological boon of not being with the dead.

Something must have gone wrong with the plan, though. Nimrod and Cheftu should have been there double hours ago. It was dark again. Drums were beating, faintly, but beating, again.

All of this had been to assure that the eclipse would be only that, and just like after twilight, the sun would return.

That had been the reason for the whole exercise. What could have possibly gone wrong? Eclipses eclipsed, then it was over. What signs could they have seen that made the drums beat?

Maybe it’s a continuation of the burial process, she thought. Nothing is wrong, it’s just taking longer for them to get away than they thought originally.

She didn’t have water; there had been no place to hide a flask in her funeral clothes. Nor did she have food.
Don’t even think about candy bars,
she reprimanded herself.
Halva,
she thought.
The ancient candy bar.

You don’t have that either, so think about… bugs.

The fried roaches in the bazaar, the seasoned worms they sold like calamari, ant soup, grasshopper pie
—okay, she was losing her appetite. She flicked a spider off her arm and stared down the tunnel.

“Hurry up and wait,” she muttered. “It’s becoming my motto.”

Cheftu moved his lips by rote, letting the training he hadn’t done and the memories he didn’t have take control. The clients stepped so cheerfully, so pridefully to their death. For them, it was honor. Life was a task of serving the fickle, anthropomorphic gods, and some bets were won and others lost.

In his soul, Cheftu was an ancient man. He understood the confusion and desperation and resignation that could come with crop failure, flood, eclipses, and unexplained events in the heavens. There was a very good chance that after today, the seasons would return to their paces, the sky would stay in its appointed place, and life would return to normal. It was not his place to decide for these ancients; they were the merchants of their lives.

Aside from his soul, he had a nineteenth-century-educated mind that had been expanded by his sometimes caustic and usually skeptical twentieth-century wife.

It screamed at the insanity of this performance.

The heavens were gas and fire, as unaware of the Black-Haired Ones as the Black-Haired Ones were of viruses—so Chloe had taught him. Farming ran in cycles—some years were good and some were bad. Whole regions were wiped out by bad luck and bad weather, she said, and told him about a part of the United States colonies that had become a Dust Bowl and brought on a Great Depression. Her family had had a farm and made it their duty to feed those who passed through their gates. But thousands had lost everything.

It was the way of the world. Cycles.

One of the things Cheftu had hated most in European travelers was how they compared everything to home. The English in Cairo who complained that the tea wasn’t properly brewed; or the Frenchmen who were irritated when the right silk wasn’t available for a hat. Even as a youth, Cheftu had wanted to shout at those people to go home.

Egypt wasn’t about brewed tea, it was about thrice-boiled tea, made of mint and served sticky sweet, or tiny cups of coffee whose bottom half resembled damp soot. Egypt wasn’t a land of silks, but of the finest, sheerest cotton and lightest linen. The only hat should not be one of Parisian design, but a turban or a fez.

Cheftu couldn’t change the way he thought now. The streets of Ur were filthy, but these were the people who first conceived of writing. They slaughtered animals in the lane, and one had to step over bloody streams, but they ruled democratically and taxed men proportionately. Their eyebrows were unkempt, but through accounting and complex mathematics, they knew to the kernel how much surplus barley they stored and how many people it would feed.

If volunteer sacrifice was the means of their religion, it could be they knew more than he did. And this sacrifice would certainly help the rest of population, regarding supplies of food and water.

So Cheftu continued to move his mouth, as he watched old men, young men, goldsmiths and weavers, dyers and wheelwrights, move into the earth. Death came to all humans. Perhaps it was better to choose when, than to have it chosen for one. It was definitely better to die for a reason than just to die because it was part of the cycle.

The
lugal’s
gaze met his, and Cheftu inclined his head, to show his respect. Heart heavy, he followed the leader into the chamber. Men leaned against the walls, packed the room tightly, surrounded by the outward trappings of their positions.

Shem turned to him. “I can do this,” he said. “You are among the living, my friend. Go, comfort our families and tell them we do this for respect of the commonwealth, the health and affection of our lines, and in obedience to our gods.”

They embraced, and Cheftu climbed up the stairs, out into the torchlit wildness of living.

*      *     *

Chloe dozed, absently brushing away the creatures that explored her arms and legs. It was downright cool, and she pulled her woolen dress and cloak closer to her body, twisting them in an attempt to discourage curious multipeds. The drums were soft, especially compared to her stomach, which was loud, talkative and irritated. The words of “To His Coy Mistress” floated through her head, and Chloe reflexively cursed her English teacher. But the frights of the night before had faded—perhaps from such frequent viewing in her imagination.