And in a puff of black smoke that smelled hideously charnal, the Devil was gone.
But the demons weren't. They were outside Zeno's cell in the hall. They were outside his window, making obscene snowmen from the white caps of Sinai. And they were waiting, Zeno knew, for the hourly chimes to toll.
He didn't need to hear that first ragged, imprecise and tardy announcement of the approaching hour to know what the demons were going to do to him, every hour on the hour, for howsoever long he failed to make the clocks toll simultaneously.
The snowman outside his window looked just like him, and what was happening to it was so awful, and so graphic, and the demons were having so much fun doing it, that Zeno's hands were trembling like leaves before he'd even gotten down to work.
It wasn't so much the fear of intermittent punishment that made him shake, but the fear of getting caught in one of those space-time glitches while he had a demon up his ass.
GILGAMESH REDUX
Janet Morris
"To the end of the Outback, and back again."
Silverberg: Gilgamesh In The Outback
"The lord Gilgamesh, toward the Land of the Living set his mind," chanted Enkidu, hairy and bold, trekking beside Gilgamesh up to the mountain peak.
And Gilgamesh, gasping for breath because the trek was hard and the air was thin, interrupted,
"Enlfl, the mighty mountain, the father of all the gods, has determined the fate of Gilgamesh -
determined it for kingship, but for eternal life. He has not determined it..."
These lines, from the epic sung as The Death of Gilgamesh for ages, shut both men's mouths.
But in the inner ear of Gilgamesh, the poem continued, fragments sharp as spear points in a wild boar's heart: "Supremacy over mankind has Enlil granted thee, Gilgamesh. Battles from which none may retreat has he granted thee.
Onslaughts unrivalled has he granted thee ...in life. Be not aggrieved, be not sad of heart.
On the bed of Fate now lies Gilgamesh and he rises not ... he rises not... he rises not."
On the top of the mountain peak now stood the lord Gilgamesh and his servant -
his friend - Enkidu. And Gilgamesh wondered if Enlil inhabited this peak even in Hell.
It was silly, it was foolish, to have climbed this mountain in search of more than he could ever find in Hell. For that was where Gilgamesh now was, who had sought Eternal Life and now sought Eternal Death-the peaceful sleep that had been promised him while all around him were the lamentations of his family.
In life. So long ago Uruk.
For a time the presence of Enkidu had soothed him, but now it did not. Below and behind them was the caravan they had joined because Enkidu had seen a woman there he craved. And because the caravan was well supplied with weapons that were to Enkidu like toys to a greedy child: plasma rifles, molecular disrupters, enhanced kinetic-kill pistols that fired bullets tipped with thallium shot whose spread was as wide as Gilgamesh's outstretched arms.
Cowards' weapons. Evil upon evil here at die end of the Outback. Such was behind Gilgamesh, down on the flat among the covered wagons of the mongrel caravanners with whom, for the sake of Enkidu, he'd fallen in.
Before him, on the far side of this mountain whose peak Enlil did not inhabit, was a shore and a sea and an island off that shore, an island belching steam and gouts of flame from its central peak-the destination of the caravan
Gilgamesh had left behind on the flat. Pompeii was the name of the island, and whatever awaited there, neither Eternal Life nor Eternal Death was among its secrets.
Gilgamesh knew This because he was the man to whom all secrets had been revealed in life, and some of that wisdom clung to him even in afterlife.
"To the Land of the Living," Enkidu took up his chant once more in stubborn defiance of the murky sea and burning isle before them, "the lord Gilgamesh set his mind."
As if it made any difference to Fate what Gilgamesh wanted, now That Gilgamesh was consigned to Hell. Enkidu's mind had been poisoned by the woman with the caravan, by nights with her and the thighs of her and the lips of her which spoke the hopes other heart: That there was a way out of Hell.
So now Enkidu sought a way out of Hell through tunnels; through the intercession of the Anunnaki, the Seven Judges of the Underworld whom
Gilgamesh had seen in life; through perseverance and even force of arms. Myths from the lips of a woman had seduced Enkidu and put foolish hopes in the heart of Gilgamesh's one-time servant and beloved friend - hopes that were, with the possible exception of intercession by the Anannali (whom Gilgamesh had seen and knew to exist), entirely apocryphal.
If Enkidu and Gilgamesh had not so recently quarreled and parted, if Gilgamesh had not missed his friend so terribly when they did, the lord of lost Uruk would have argued longer and harder with Enkidu. He would have refused to join the caravan. He would have stamped out Enkidu's vain and foolish hope of escape from Hell.
He should have done all those. But there was no one in the land like Enkidu, no one else who could stride the mountains at Gilgamesh's side, whose stamina was as great, whose heart was as strong, whose hairy body pleased Gilgamesh so much to look upon.
There was no companion for Gilgamesh but Enkidu, no equal among the ranks of the damned.
Thus Gilgamesh put up with Enkidu's foolish hopes and hopeless dreams. Enkidu was not the man to whom all secrete had been revealed.
Only Gilgamesh was that man. Only Gilgamesh had known the truth in life. the truth had less value, here in afterlife. It had no more value than the carcass of a feral cat or a rutting stag or a rabid demon - all of which Gilgamesh had slain while hunting in the Outback. It had no more value than the skins he cut from those carcasses as he had in life. It had no more value than the flesh beneath the skin of those animals, dead while he dressed their carcasses, dead while he ate -
when he must - their flesh.
But not dead. Death was rebirth here. Death was forever elusive. Death was merely a hiatus -
and a short cut to the teeming cities of Hell's most helpless damned, among whom Gilgamesh could not breathe.
In Hell's cities, Gilgamesh felt like the lion caged to please the king. In Hell's cities, his limbs grew weak and his spirits low.
This city before them now was no exception. It dried the chant in Enkidu's throat. It dried the blood in Gilgamesh's veins. Pompeii, the caravanners whispered, had come whole to Hell, so purely iniquitous were its very streets.
Its dogs had come. Its dolphins had come.
Its whores had come. Even Pompeii s children had come to Hell.
And it was a city, so the tales ran, where everything was as it once had been - where outsiders were unwelcome and never settled, where a language neither Greek nor English was the norm.
Gilgamesh looked at Enkidu out of the corner of his eye. Enkidu had brought them here, from the clean violence of the Outback, because of his loins and his lust for modem weapons.
Gilgamesh had never asked Enkidu if the former servant got pleasure from his copulation with the woman, or only frustration, as was the lot of so many men in Hell. Men whose manhood was too dear, too often proved, too important to their hearts, often could not consummate the act.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu had met because of one such woman, centuries ago in life.
He shook away the cobwebs of memory, so common lately, and said to Enkidu, "See, the city of ill repute. Let us leave the caravan now, Enkidu, and return to the Outback, where the hunting is good."
"Gilgamesh," replied Enkidu, "the animals we hunt do not die, they only suffer. The skins we take ... are these not better left on animals who must re-grow them? And the haunches we eat, which distress our bowels? Let us go with the caravan into the city, and explore its treasures. Are you not curious about That place, which came to Hell entire?"