He heard the tapping of the neat hooves, or perhaps the great white teeth. Tap-tap, tap-tap—which was the proper image? Recant, recant, tap-tap, tap-tap… He struggled awake, hearing the signal for Amys’ reply.
Her message solved his dilemma.
AT FIRST I DID NOT BELIEVE YOU. THE PRIESTESSES OF ISHTAR SELDOM MARRY, AND NEVER BELOW THEIR STATION… Yes, of course she had suspected him of being an agent of Gabatha. A slave-scribe married to Ishtar? Not likely! Any information she might have provided in that situation would have been as useful as an unbridled ass. THEN I FEARED YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE ME—FOR WHO WOULD TRUST THE WORDS OF ONE WOMAN AGAINST ANOTHER? Who indeed? Jealous claims among women were notorious. BUT AT THE END I DID NOT WISH TO HURT YOU, AND SO I KEPT SILENT. And she had accepted the status of an inferior wife—knowing that his first wife could have no inferiors. For Enkidu had married, in the hanging gardens, a woman who had given her body to nameless and numberless vagabonds of the street and who had given her husband: a bracelet.
ONE OTHER THING I HELD FROM YOU, Amys continued contritely. SARGAN IS MY STEPFATHER.
Enkidu dropped the tablet. It fell upon its face in the mud. By the time he retrieved it the final words to him were lost.
The stern but upright man who had raised Amys and defended her from the lechery of Gabatha—this was now the head priest of the nameless temple? The one who had ordered Enkidu’s own torture?
Why not? It did fit the character of the man she had described. One who tried to be fair but who would stop at nothing to achieve the ends he believed were righteous. A good father at home; an implacable priest. A man who would be most careful to keep his bricks lined straight, in a case like this. Yes, it was obvious—now.
Even so, what sort of man could do this to his own daughter, or even stepdaughter? After he had nurtured her, taught her to read, brought her into his own religion. The daughter who had known only kindness from him… imprisoned because she objected to torture in the name of a god of mercy!
Sargan.
A man of demented consistency.
Only a demented god would tolerate this.
Enkidu’s struggle was over. Amys was right. Such a hypocritical god could not be his god. The name of mercy without the spirit. He would have to recant. But not because he had failed Aten.
His god had failed him. Aten was false.
He planned coldly. He would not recant immediately, for that would be suspicious. They might investigate and discover his connection with Amys, and put her also to the torture. He could not permit that.
He would have to undergo as much of the torture as he could bear, before capitulating in such a way as to convince his tormentors. Never would he betray what he had learned in this cell.
Once more Enkidu fell asleep, this time dreamlessly.
CHAPTER 13.
It was the morning of the start of the Harvest Festival, but Sargan sat beside the water-clock without pleasure. He had kept vigil here since dawn, staring into the sparkling pictures and looking for the sign from Aten that did not come. The sign that he need not do what he knew he must do: be executioner to the living spirit of his daughter. In the name of Aten.
Amalek had arrived periodically with reports: more of Cyrus’ army was camped outside the walls of Babylon, to the north, but no one in the city knew what they were doing out there. The women were gathering at the temple of Ishtar to absorb the harangue of the ambitious priestess Tamar. The pretender had undergone the first inflicting of oil, and the second, moaning and retching within his gag but never making the signal of recantal. And Amyitis—forgotten be her name!—was to be heard sobbing in her cell. Things were proceeding, but nothing was going well.
How could he forget the lovely child, the butterfly, that had brightened his somber days? The regime of the temple was often harsh, but she had been his joy when he went home. That child had grown to an exceedingly comely young woman—a woman Aten himself should have been proud to number among his chosen.
If only he had shown the good judgment to leave the child to her happy heathenhood! She could have lived out a good life as wife to some upright citizen—not a priest, not a merchant, no!—some soldier or scribe. She would at this moment be free.
Instead his touch, his teachings, intended to exalt her to eternal life, had withered her joy in a dark, unwholesome cell. He, Sargan, had done this to her.
Yet did not a part of the blame attach to her? Soon she would have been admitted to fellowship in the nameless temple. Then she could have profaned the name of Aten with impunity, since the duty of loyal members was to discourage belief in their god only in outsiders. Sargan himself had profaned Aten many times when interrogating pretenders.
But her exclamation, coming as it did before her final confirmation, had been the ultimate in ill timing. It had betrayed the fatal insecurity of her faith, at a moment when she was still vulnerable. To admit her to fellowship after this heresy would have been a gross breach of his responsibility to Aten. His only recourse had been to try to undo, at any cost, what had been done; to reject her as a candidate, thus forcing her into the status of pretender. To secure a recantal, and then…
“Show me your will, my god,” he prayed to the wall, while the clock dripped beside him. “The hour of decision is at hand. All that I have labored for is in peril. I know not which way to turn. How may your temple be saved? Is it your will that I do to my daughter what I must do? Show me your will, I implore you.”
If there were an answer, he could not fathom it.
“In all ways I have labored to honor your name,” he continued. “To your service I have dedicated my life. There is nothing I would not do for you; there is no sacrifice I would not make…” He paused.
Was he really prepared to sacrifice his daughter? “Only show me your will, Aten, and it shall be done. Show me your will.”
Tears coursed down his face as he stared into the wall. But Aten gave no sign.
“Do not turn from me, my god. If I have offended you, if I have wronged you in any way, show me the nature of my neglect and I will make it right again. My life is yours. Grant me your presence, Aten; without you I cannot live…”
Yet how could a man live with himself, if he delivered his daughter into the hands of Dishon or the likes of Gabatha?
Aten withheld his presence.
It was a long vigil for NK-2, too. He could not reenter his primary host during the physical and emotional stress of torture, yet he was gaining nothing here. Both he and this Sargan-host were helpless until the pretender recanted.
Strange that the girl had helped Enkidu make the necessary decision. If this were a device of the enemy, it was remarkably subtle. Could she be host instead to a friend: the galactic representative? Somehow stripped of his penumbra and helpless? Or was that what NK-2 was meant to think?
Show me your presence, A-10…
The idea struck Sargan quite suddenly. He sat very still and thought about it carefully. Presently he rose, paced the floor, and thought some more. He was so absorbed that he almost bumped into Amalek coming in.
Amalek said: “The pretender is ready to recant.”
Sargan scarcely heard him. “I have the answer!” he cried. “Thank Aten, I have the answer at last!”
But he knew in his spleen that the answer had come not from Aten, but from the depths of his own despair. “Amyitis can be spared… Listen.”
Aten had withheld his presence. So be it, then. Sargan outlined to Amalek the answer he had found within himself.