Those Hebrews even now resided in squalor and slavery along the banks of the Kebar. They clung to their quaint customs and to their own little god, Adonai, despite his impotence before Marduk. One had only to look at Etemenanki, the towering ziggurat, “House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth,” to realize that the works of Marduk dwarfed all else.
Yet—how great was a god who permitted such corruption? Marduk’s house was divided and it was bound to fall. Marduk might well follow Asshur, and mighty would be the crash thereof, and great the anguish of fair Babylon.
His thoughts were interrupted by the metal gate. He had completed his circuit of the cell and found nothing. No break in the hardness of the bricks.
“Ah, Aten,” he whispered, “it goes hard with us.” He listened for some response, but heard only the scrabble of rats.
Rats! As if he didn’t have problems enough! The scavengers were busy the moment he stopped moving. They were living creatures like himself, but here by choice.
His breath caught. Surely the rats had some entrance! Legend had it that they were generated from the heat of the refuse in which they dwelt, but he didn’t believe that. Maggots, yes, rats, no. They were too big. They must have a passage.
They must have a hole at ground level. Perhaps a little tunnel leading from cell to cell and terminating in the sunshine…
But he was too tired to make another circuit, especially one through filth on hands and knees. He had to rest.
What a day it had been! Robbed in the morning, driven to the Kebar, beaten, hauled into court, married to a lovely but mysterious woman he had never seen before, and finally sold back into slavery and thrown into this cell!
Was he really a husband? Or was that ceremony a dream born of his confusion? He had no need of a wife, particularly not one who called him a fivefold fool and made him a sixfold fool by sending him on to such a cell without even a kiss. What possible motive could she have had? Did she want a husband she would never see again? To stave off a forced marriage to some foreign dignitary, perhaps?
The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. He might have misjudged the priest at the gardens; the man might have abetted what he had known was some rank political maneuver. Yes.
His hand touched the lion bracelet of Ishtar. Why had she given him a thing of such value, then? She had claimed to be marrying him because it was the only way she could save his life—yet she had not kept him out of prison. And what had she called him, there at the end?
Tammuz.
He knew that name, of course. The legend had been one of Tupshar’s favorite writing assignments, at the scribe school. Tammuz had been Ishtar’s beloved, but he had died. She had descended to Hades to reclaim him for the land of the living.
But of course Tamar was no Ishtar, and he was no Tammuz. She would hardly brave this Hades to rescue him!
Yet the memory of her stirred his senses. Her face was flawless, and so must be her body under the concealing clothing.
NK-2 stretched, extending his penumbra cautiously. He did not want to encounter cowled Amalek, the enemy host, again! Or any other entity. But it was necessary for him to spread out every so often to relieve the confinement of a single host.
That host needed help, obviously. He would never locate Station A-10 while trapped here. NK-2 could probably instruct him how to escape—but that would exhaust NK-2 himself, and leave him helpless against the enemy. That would be no gain! Yet if the host did not escape, he might be killed, and that would be the end for both of them.
Compromise was necessary. NK-2 had to conserve his own resources, but he also had to guide the host. If he jogged the host’s mental processes at key spots, he might guide him with a minimum expenditure of energy.
Why had that native female married his host?
Morning. Enkidu forgot his stiff limbs and sore ribs. There was light! It was a ray of comfort from Aten himself from a tiny slit in the cell’s high ceiling.
He was hungry. Now he saw what his hands had somehow missed before. There was a small alcove set in the door, passing through it, and inside it was food. He reached into it and found a gross flat hunk of bread and a jar of water.
Cautiously he wiped his fingers off on his tunic and strained them over the surface. There was, as he had expected, a floating insect or two. The food was very likely corrupted by noxious genii eager to produce disease, but at least they didn’t plan to starve him.
He took some pains to repeat the exorcism against sickness of the entrails, flatulency and the rest; it could do no harm to observe this precaution, though he was no priest. For good measure he also said over the exorcism against the various pustules, poisons, and the food that returns after being eaten. Then he drank. The water was tepid but tolerable, and the bread better than he had expected. No doubt the exorcism had improved it.
Ouch! He removed the end of a hard weed stalk from his mouth and flipped it to the floor in disgust. He had prided himself too soon on his exorcisms!
With the bread in his stomach he felt stronger. Should he break the water jar and use its sharp shards to scrape a hole or pry loose a brick? No. Such a tactic would only summon ungentle guards, and he hurt enough already. The same for returning the jar to the shelf filled with urine. Best simply to behave and wait.
Meanwhile there was more positive work to be done. He meant to find that rat hole. He could not see it, but it must be there. How could he run it down?
He now recalled a useful mystery: when one hard object struck another, sound came forth; and as the objects changed the sound also changed. A hollow jug spoke in a different voice than a full jug. Would the same hold true for hollow bricks, or even loose ones?
Strange he should think of that…
Enkidu took off the bracelet of Ishtar and put his fingers over the snarling lions. He did not wish to damage the craft that had gone into their fashioning, much less offend the goddess herself. And it would be unkind to deface the gift his bride had given him. But the metal backside was suitable, and could not be easily damaged. He stooped and tapped it against a brick.
Tap-tap, tap-tap, interminably. By the time he had covered the wall beside the door his arm was tired. He went on around the corner. All remained solid. His legs and back were now protesting, but he drove himself on. It was the only way he could flee the growing hopelessness of his situation.
He had to rest at last. He was getting nowhere.
Tap-tap, he heard. Tap-tap. The search went on, even though he was not—His breath stopped. Suddenly alert, he put his ear to the wall. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. It was coming from the other side!
Someone was answering him!
Why hadn’t he thought of signaling? Of course there would be other prisoners here, as anxious as he was to regain their freedom. He had inadvertently stumbled on the obvious.
Inadvertently? He looked at Ishtar’s token. Had the goddess herself chosen to help him, then?
The tapping stopped. Quickly he leaned down and rapped the brick, in a different pattern. Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap…
He waited. Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. He had made contact!
A different sound checked his experiment at this point: the heavy tread of approaching guards. Had they come to remove the jar—or to remove him? Suddenly he wanted to stay exactly where he was.
The bar-fastening lifted; the gate swung open. A great man-shape stood outlined in the flicker of a lamp held by another person beyond. Man-shaped, but not a man.