The tablet was gone.
But there was something else. Soft, woven materiaclass="underline" cloth. He drew it out, felt the long fine shape of it. There was a hood, square sleeves… a cloak?
The marriage tablet gone; in its place a rich tunic.
It did not take Enkidu long to comprehend that the cloak had belonged to Sargan.
NK-2 quested out, alert for the presence of the enemy. But the environment was clear. Still, he had to be cautious, for this could be an enemy trap. If he invested too much of himself checking potential hosts, and then TM-R struck—Better to bring his own host close to any prospects, so that he could check by restricted, concentrated penumbra. Not direct physical contact, for if TM-R lurked here, that would be disastrous. But close noncontact, so that his field was most effective while the risk of invasion remained minimal.
If he could just get his host to circulate, here in the temple…
Sargan. How understand such a man? He had committed savage and calculated atrocities. He had imprisoned countless pretenders, supervised their torture, ruthlessly obliterated their honest, innocent faith. Only after he had rendered them broken and godless had he released them. All in the name of a god of mercy, of whom Sargan deemed himself Chosen. Even his own daughter, whose sole malefaction had been a human compassion…
Had this last act of his, the most evil transaction of all, been too great a load for even his hardened conscience? Obviously Sargan had come to this cell, found the tablet, divested himself of his cloak, and departed. Who could guess what jealous imperative guided him? Selling his daughter to Gabatha…
He had no further business here. Sargan had deprived him of the last vestige of Amyitis. And yet—There must be something of Amys here. There had to be! Some tangible token that she had once existed. Something she had touched. Something he could take and keep and cherish in lieu of the marriage tablet.
Should he search her cell?
No. He did not want to think of her in that filth and squalor. Anything he might find there would be associated only with her days of anguish and terror.
What about her seal? Sargan had evidently kept Enkidu’s own seal in the clock-room. Could Amyitis’ seal still be there?
Enkidu noticed with surprise when he reached the clock-room that he was still clutching Sargan’s cloak. He laid it down on Sargan’s chair, then proceeded to ransack the room. If he could find her seal…
Nothing. There were parchment-rolls, but all were bare. These fragile records were easy to destroy, and the priest had set his house in order before vacating.
“Amyitis!” he cried, in the tone he had once used to invoke his god. But, like his god, she was not here.
There were footsteps in the hall. Someone was coming!
He must not be seen here—but there was only the one exit. He looked about the room for a place to hide, finding nothing. Then his eye fell on Sargan’s robe.
In almost one motion Enkidu managed to slip into it, struggling with the voluminous sleeves and awkward cowl. He seated himself in Sargan’s chair, pulling the cowl close about his face.
It was Amalek, who looked at the robed figure in obvious surprise. “I had thought you departed already,” he remarked.
So Sargan had left. “Not yet,” Enkidu ventured almost in a whisper, hoping his voice would not betray him.
Amalek, somewhat at a loss, informed him of the latest news. There were rumors that Nabonaid had been assassinated; that the invaders were commanded by a general named Gobryas; that Cyrus himself would arrive later for a triumphal entry into Babylon. However that might be, Amalek added in tentative relief, the Persians were no Assyrians; apparently the populace was not to be indiscriminately butchered. But Gobryas had already stipulated that no things of value were to be moved, on pain of instant confiscation. The temple treasures would have to remain here until such time as the Persians came to take inventory and levy tribute.
Enkidu merely nodded in the manner of Sargan and hoped that Amalek would go away. But the man lingered. “Your orders with regard to the pretender Amyitis have been carried out.”
That much Enkidu already knew.
After a moment, Amalek added: “I have daughters of my own, as you know. I intend to raise them in unenlightened heathendom, and my son also. Perhaps in the Persian worship of Ahura Mazda.”
At last he left. Enkidu relaxed and looked at the frieze. The wall flickered in the light of the single lamp and strange pictures seemed to form. He wondered whether Aten could be seen within that framework, were Aten not a false god. It was as though everything pertaining to him belonged in a different life—a life now vanished like the glories of Nineveh. There was nothing for him here.
There was nothing for him anywhere.
He remembered Tamar’s comment that a god was very like a man.
Perhaps a god needed men for fulfillment of his divine existence, even as men needed a god in fulfillment of their mortal existence. Perhaps—NK-2 wrenched himself out of it. He had been following his host’s mental processes so closely, seeking the proper spot to nudge them in an advantageous direction, that he had started thinking like a man! Soon, if he were not careful, he would begin believing in the god Aten himself!
He had checked the native Amalek and found him void. Now he extended, alert for the enemy, seeking to locate the other natives of this temple.
Abruptly he encountered the expanding penumbra of another entity. He recoiled automatically before he realized that it was not TM-R.
It was another galactic. The station representative!
Enkidu realized that Dishon’s torture had forced him to examine his simple faith in greater depth, and that faith had thereby vanished into the nothingness of illusion. But he had also lost part of himself. He was now a wiser but a lesser man. The elimination of his innocence had made him less worthy than before. For a time he had replaced the love of his unattainable god with the love of an unobtainable woman—and now no vestige remained of either, and he was empty.
He divested himself of Sargan’s robe—and felt something hard and cylindrical in a pocket of one sleeve. He brought it out.
It was a seal, and it bore an intaglio design.
A butterfly.
“Thank Aten!” The words were out before he thought. It seemed that he could never entirely give over his faith, though he certainly could not accept it. Gone were the old certainties, either of belief or of disbelief.
He held up the seal and imagined it dangling between the breasts of a carefree young girl as she went about her concerns… this seal, whose purpose was to stamp the imprint of her existence on the clay documents that were a part of every Babylonian’s transactions.
Its symbolism staggered him in a sudden flash of revelation, and he wondered that he had never grasped it before.
The imprint of the seal upon clay. It symbolized the more subtle but unmistakable imprint of the spirit on the clay of life…
The seal existed after Amyitis herself had died. The imprints it had made could endure after the seal was gone. The imprint of Amys’ spirit, her love, remained on him regardless of her physical fate.
And the imprint of Aten remained upon them both, whether Aten existed now or not. Whether he had ever existed.
Perhaps Aten was not a god. Perhaps he was no more than a shedu, an invisible spirit. Perhaps he had descended from those bright stars above Babylon, and touched just a few people, and departed. Now, because he was gone, he could be labeled false—but that was only one way of looking at it.
As meaning to writing, so was that spirit to its host. As the seal on the envelope of an important document, validating it—false if the tablet were broken, but true so long as it remained intact.