The white figure abruptly stood up. Amalek immediately followed him. “This session is at an end,” he said. He beckoned to the eunuch. “Return this deluded man to his cell.”
Dishon obliged.
“Who is the man in the white robe?” Enkidu inquired as he followed the lamp-bearer down the hall. “Or is it a man? It never spoke.”
“That one is chief inquisitor of the nameless temple,” Dishon answered. “He is called Sargan.”
Sargan! Tamar’s information had been correct, then. “How long am I to be imprisoned?”
“Until you recant. You will be granted time to consider. Then a second interview, that you will like less than this one. After that—I will persuade you, if that becomes necessary. Consider well, pretender.”
This was rather more information than Enkidu liked. So they planned to torture him to make him deny his god! Yet he felt somehow that the big eunuch slave was not his enemy. At least Dishon gave direct and simple answers to his questions, and affected no air of mystery.
Why should these people hate Aten so? Why didn’t they merely worship some other god, and leave Aten alone? What was there about Aten that made them determined to hurt him? When he understood that, he suspected he would know why Aten was well worth his own worship!
He would remain firm. If his faith were great enough, he would win through to the true temple of Aten, and stand at last in the company of those who believed as he did, and his life would have the meaning he had long craved.
Aten, he thought, they have raised up awful barriers between us, but they cannot deny you my worship! They can make my mouth cry their words, with their tortures, but they cannot separate me from my god.
“Recant,” Dishon advised. “Do not suffer for a god that does not exist.”
What use to argue with a godless castrate?
NK-2 was as distressed as his host, but for another reason. He knew there was no god “Aten.” This had to be some enemy maneuver to prevent galactics from reaching Station A-10. And the enemy seemed to be in control.
CHAPTER 7.
There was bread and water in the alcove, and Enkidu ate again, disturbed in several ways. No gods were banned in Babylon, and Aten certainly should have no enemies—yet here were people dedicated to his interdiction. How could this be?
After a time he remembered the prisoner in the next cell. Was he still there?
Enkidu knelt beside the wall, the bracelet of Ishtar in his hand. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.
He listened eagerly for a response. He longed to talk with the stranger, to learn more about this foreboding situation. In the contemplation of another’s plight he might find respite from his own fear and bafflement.
But there was no reply.
Enkidu set to work cleaning out his cell, kicking the offal into the lowest corner. During the brightest part of the day—still very dim, here—he searched the walls again. No gaps. He tapped again, hopeful. No answer.
He leaned against the door and stared up at the ceiling, high above his farthest reach. Was there any chance of scaling the wall to reach that tantalizing glimmer and perhaps pry his way out? If this were an ordinary dwelling, with palm-bough roof supports, yes. But here the ceiling was domed, the circular rows of bricks overlapping inward, rank inside rank, until only the tiny circle at the apex was left with its slit of light. The task was hopeless.
“Aten,” he prayed aloud. “Give me a sign, that I may recover the confidence I sorely need.”
In the stillness he noticed the rustlings of the rats, scuttling in search of provender. He saw one go to the wall, wriggle, then vanish.
He brought his mind back to the problems of escape—but it only drifted again. He did have a friend, or at least a wife—but how could he trust her until he understood her motives? She had come to him only when she heard him utter Aten’s name. Yet she worshipped Ishtar.
After a time Enkidu drifted off to sleep. He dreamed of Nineveh in the hour of its destruction; the thunder of the siege machines as they battered down the walls, the flaming pitch, the great stones hurtling over the city from the catapults, the spears and the flights of arrows. The air torn by the screams of dying men, the shrill ululations of ravished women, the bawling of children suddenly orphaned. The ornate temples crashing down, their marvelous stones hauled away, their gods defiled and desecrated. Mighty Asshur fell that day, his power gone, to become little more than an evil memory.
He stood within the temple of Aten as the city crashed around it. Aten was a god foreign to Assyria and its atrocities—but Nineveh, like Babylon today, had been the center of all religion. Aten’s worshippers were slaughtered, his principles ignored, and his idol was borne away in the careless tread of Babylonian vengeance.
His host was correct about that part of it, NK-2 thought as he stretched. Station A-10 had been located at Nineveh, and it had surely been relocated here.
Was it possible that this nameless temple was in fact the station, taken over by the enemy? Were regular reports sent out galactically, while the enemy trapped any galactics who docked at this planet? Or was it being set up for an intrusion into the galactic authority itself? If so, it was a monstrous plot, and far more was at stake than NK-2’s own existence.
He had to ascertain the truth, and somehow survive to reveal his information. But the chances of his present host were diminishing.
This was a difficult step, and one he did not like at all—but he would have to make preparations for transfer to another host.
If he could find one remotely suitable.
Enkidu woke. Was this dream, or vision? Imagination or history? What did he really know about Aten?
He stood and stretched, feeling better. He went to the wall and poked where the rat had gone—and found the hole he had missed before, hidden under accumulated refuse. One brick had cracked and the rats had chipped and squeezed until they were able to pass.
He put his fingers into the hole and pried. The rest of the brick budged. It was loose, then! He had the beginning of his escape.
He remembered his communications. This was the wall he had been tapping. He took out the lion bracelet and tapped again.
This time an answer came back. A varied pattern of taps established that the other prisoner was back in his cell, perhaps after an interrogation.
But tapping was not enough. There was no meaning to it, once the occupancy of the adjacent cells had been established. An exchange of information was necessary.
He dared not shout; that would surely bring Dishon. He studied the rat-hole. Did it go all the way through?
These brick walls, he knew, had to be very thick, especially at the base. This one had very little slope. Even at shoulder height and above, the wall must be too thick to reach through. Probably the rats lived inside, deserting their nests only for the promise of fresh offal.
He let his fancy wander. Why not catch a rat, tie a note to its tail… but no rat could drag a tablet through.
As though nudged externally, his mind started a new chain of thought. Was it possible to communicate through the tapping itself? To set up a code: one tap for “yes,” two for “no”? Each word had its own wedge pattern; could he make wedges in sound?
No, it wouldn’t work. Taps could not be oriented up, down or sideways; there were just noises. Yes and No were the only practicable words—and even if the other party knew which signal stood for which word, the conversation would be limited. “Yes, no, yes, yes no?” And the reply: “No, no, yes, no, yes!” He dropped the whole idea.
What about a written message, assuming it could be delivered? Would the other prisoner be able to read it? Surely only Enkidu himself was stupid enough to become a literate dungeon inmate. And of course he had no tablet.