"Ajax, down!"
Ajax slid to a slavering, unhappy halt and, paw-before-paw, stretched out on me ground, whining.
"What are you doing here, Nichols?" Tamara Burke demanded angrily.
Everything about her was too damned perfect She was too pretty, too rumpled, too obviously roused from sleep.
"You alone. Burke?" Suspicion kept Nichols alive.
"At the moment." The women crossed her arms over breasts whose nipples were rising in the cold under her thin chemise.
"You didn't check in," said Nichols uncomfortably, his eyes still riveted to her breasts, pressed firmly by her arms.
'This is the first sleep I've had," she said with a strained, game smile.
"Enkidu ... well, I'm doing my job, what I was assigned to do." She shrugged.
'Gilgamesh doesn't like modem equipment, and he's not the only one around here who's suspicious, so I ditched the lot."
"That was dumb." Nichols wanted to get out of here, give her the message and be done with it But the woman was showing signs of stress, real or feigned, and he had to know which.
"I knew you wouldn't leave me. I can't guarantee anything.... They went up the mountain, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. They haven't come back. I think Enkidu will, though-for me. He promised." She darted a look at the dog, then at their immediate surroundings. Content that no one was paying undue attention to them, she leaned closer, her knees now up against her chest.
Nichols leaned in too, and put a hand on one of her bare knees. "Welch wants one Sumerian aboard the chopper-he doesn't care which. Doesn't want to kill'em. Can't imagine it's more than ethics, though, if things get tough-" He safed his service pistol, still in his hand, and held it out to her, butt first.
It was a sacrifice she obviously didn't understand, or appreciate.
She shook her head; her hair flew around her face; she bit her lip: "No, Nichols, if Gilgamesh found that..." Then the rest of what he'd said sank in.
"Look, I haven't seen anything more incriminating that lots of pack animals with nothing to carry. We might be way off base here. And what do you mean, 'wants one Sumerian aboard the chopper'?'
"Let me explain," Nichols suggested. "We don't have much time."
The timer on the explosives was set for ten minutes from now, if he didn't intervene with a radioed signal. And he didn't think he would. These primitives were going to read it as a minor earthquake; they were out of sight of the blast, anyway. And, whether Achilles was somebody's spoiler or not, this mission was going to go perfectly, or Nichols was going to know the reason why.
When hick had given him a handle on the ChiCom problem at the waterfall, pajamas and all, he'd known he was going to win this one.
All that remained in' question was whether Tamara Burke, here, and her Sumeriaa boyfriend lived through it or got back to Reassignments the hard way.
Nichols didn't really care which. It would be interesting to see the look on Achilles' face, however things turned out.
He returned his attention to the business at hand: briefing Burke; getting out unseen; using the extraction beacon Welch had given him from a safe LZ as far as possible from the waterfall and the imminent destruction there.
A few minutes later, beaded upslope on the far side of camp, he heard and felt the explosion and his heart lifted. Behind him, the caravan folk were running around nervously and dogs were barking, but there was no attempt to mount a show of force, no sign that foul play was suspected.
He'd have liked to have some drugs to show, but he had an ex-waterfall, a blocked tunnel, and a new hole to show, and likely - some dead guys.
And, most important, it had worked: nobody had found and disarmed Nichols' explosive ordnance; nobody had stopped his show. Now he just had to make the other side of the bill and wait for pickup. Sometimes. Hell wasn't any worse than life had been. At least, not life as Nichols remembered it.
Enkidu was among the chaos of the caravan when the bird descended on a roaring gale from Heaven.
He had been down on his knees, talking with a dog; barking at the round-eyed hound who barked at him, The dog belonged to the woman of the caravan whose wagon was painted red and gold, with golden silks draping it.
This dog had been barking, "Enkidu! Beware! Danger! Intruder!" Enkidu, who had been like a wild beast in life, who had been lord of the forest and ravager of its game, had barked back, insulted. He, Enkidu, was no intruder and at the dog's bark he had taken offense.
So they had been readying to battle it out there and then, Enkidu and this impolite dog who called him an intruder, when the bird began its descent and the silks on its owner's wagon blew wildly.
If Gilgamesh had been with Enkidu, things might have gone differently. Enkidu would not have been down on his knees in the dirt, barking loudly about how he would bite out the throat of this impudent dog as surely as he, Enkidu, was covered with hair. Enkidu would have been standing upright, like a man; thinking canny thoughts, like a man.
But Gilgamesh had gone to the edge of the Sea of Sighs to greet the magnificent boat with its dolphin's prow and scarlet sail that had come from Pompeii. Gilgamesh had gone aboard the boat to secure passage to the city for them both, leaving Enkidu to wait alone.
Long hours had Enkidu waited, and then gone back up the shore to where the caravan made its camp. Gilgamesh, king of long lost Uruk, would come to find Enkidu when he was ready. And then Enkidu must put the caravan woman by, forget her ivory thighs and pomegranate lips, and go with Gilgamesh onto the boat and into the wondrous city beyond.
Until then, Enkidu had it in his mind to make love to the woman upon her flocked couch. But the dog of the woman had scratched at his spiked collar with a clawed hind foot and bristled his brindle fur and barked harsh words at Enkidu, while his mistress stayed inside her wagon, as if she heard nothing of the argument taking place outside.
So now, as people scattered and hid their faces in the dirt while the dog tucked his tail between his legs and his furry body underneath the wagon, only Enkidu remained in the clearing to brave the buffeting wind and howling cries of the black bird that descended upon them, scattering dust and scraps and detritus in every direction.
Enkidu put a hairy arm over his hairy brow and squinted at this manifestation, wishing that Gilgamesh, to whom all secrets had been revealed, was beside him to read this omen.
Since Gilgamesh was not Acre, Enkidu did as he pleased in the face of the unknowable: he straightened up his great body, like a wild beast protecting its territory in the forest.
Enkidu spread his legs wide and crossed his mighty arms and leaned into the gale come from this black bird from Heaven--or from some other Hell-and then he waited.
Enkidu did not need Gilgamesh to tell him what was right. Enkidu did not need the cowardly dog who whined behind the wagon wheels. Enkidu could protect this woman, this dog, this caravan, this territory, by himself.
Privately, Enkidu wished he had a weapon, .for the bird was twice the height of Gilgamesh and as long as three caravan wagons. But he did not have a weapon, because Gilgamesh despised the weapons of the New Dead and Enkidu loved Gilgamesh, whom the gods had decreed was wiser than he.
Not even Gilgamesh, Enkidu thought as the belly of the bird opened wide, would have known this bird by name or what words to say to gain power over it.
Nor was Gilgamesh here, Enkidu reminded himself, wishing he was not wishing his friend was here to tell him What to do as a man came out of the belly of the bird whose awful breath was blinding and whose terrible roar was deafening.
Because the bird's roar was so loud, Enkidu did not see or hear the woman come out of her silk-topped wagon until she touched his arm.