Astonished, Enkidu did his best to comply. After the recent beating he had absorbed this wasn’t so much of a feat.
She had taken him to the northwest section of the palace grounds, where a small hill rose—the only hill he had seen in this flat land. They mounted a long series of steps to a walled structure about fifty paces long. The wall was of stone—unusual in this rockless land of the twin rivers.
The steps climbed the side of the wall, turned, and passed through a gap. Guards stood aside and Enkidu’s guide passed through. Inside was foliage.
They were in the hanging gardens! Palms grew in alcoves set in an inner wall, and exotic plants flourished in carefully tended plots. Steps went up to a higher level. The woman took her seat on a sheltered bench and gestured for him to join her.
“Who are you?” he asked. “I thought only the King’s harem was allowed here.”
She smiled indulgently. “Have I given you cause to think otherwise, innocent outlander?” Her features were delicate and fair in this light, her hair like barley before the harvest. She must be of northern stock; he had heard these people were fair. She was comely, certainly.
“Am I still a eunuch?”
She laughed. “Perhaps when you are clean I shall be able to tell.” She summoned him to a fountain springing from the wall nearby and made him duck his head in the flowing water. “I am Tamar. That is much of what you need to know.” She cleaned his face and hair with a delicate cloth. “You have been beaten,” she observed. “What was the provocation?”
He told her of the events of the night and the morning. As he talked he became acutely conscious of the nearness of her body as her tunic pulled tight beneath her reaching arms. Once her shrouded breast brushed his shoulder, and he knew that the contact had not been accidental.
“Those are the scavengers of Rimut, watchdog of the King,” she said. “Every day they comb through the city searching out the poor, the infirm, victims of plague or other useless creatures and herd them out of the city. This is lawful. Stay clear of them. Now the feet.”
It was a bit late to advise him to stay clear; he had already been dumped in the Kebar! Enkidu dipped his bare and battered feet into the coolness. Tamar rinsed her cloth and to his great embarrassment began to wipe away the crusted dust and dung. He had been barefoot since the canal episode, and the gentle cleansing was a luxury.
“Why was your tablet so important?” she asked next. “Perhaps it was broken—but couldn’t someone have put the pieces together in order to read the message?”
“It is plain you are no scribe,” he said. She shot him a sultry look and began to scrub his knees. He went on quickly, before she could decide that his tunic also needed washing. “I mean, you probably believe that a person’s signature, the stamp of his seal, is a guarantee that the document is genuine. It is true that the signature of the originator and of the witnesses cannot be forged; but the document could still be altered. Any scribe could scratch in an extra wedge or two and change the entire meaning. Must you do that?”
She was now well above the knees. “No,” she said judiciously, “I don’t believe you are a eunuch, after all.” But she had mercy and ceased her upward spiraling.
“So the original tablet is protected with an envelope,” Enkidu continued, all too conscious of the truth of her observation. “This is merely another layer of clay, the thickness of a wafer. It is wrapped around the original and sealed. Then the identical document is inscribed on the surface of the envelope, and the witnesses impress their signatures just as before. Once letter and envelope harden—”
Gently she led him on around the tiers of the garden, past strange blooms and flowing irrigation channels. Where, he wondered, did the water come from? And why was he allowed here? He glanced about, half expecting the guards to realize their mistake and come to make him a eunuch in fact as well as name.
“But it should be easy to break open the envelope, change the message, then make a new envelope to match,” Tamar pointed out. “Oh—but I had forgotten the seals.”
“That’s right. An unprotected document can be forged—but not the seals on the envelope. And since the clay shrinks as it dries, a fresh envelope on a tablet already hardened always cracks open. You cannot tamper with such a document.”
“But the envelope on your tablet was destroyed—”
“Making the document suspect. The temple priests would not even have bothered to read it.”
“It follows, then, that you are either an unemployed man or a runaway slave.”
“It follows,” he agreed, glumly.
She brought him to a halt beside a leaning date-palm. “My handsome young friend, you are in even greater trouble than you suspect. Let me explain.”
“But the priests at Calah will inquire if they do not hear from me, and they will verify that—”
She grasped his elbows with both hands and brought her lovely face close. “Listen to me, innocent scribe,” she said quietly but rapidly. “I know Babylon as you do not. You were a fool to delay your approach to the priesthood here for even one day. You could easily have toured the city after you were settled, with your money and your position secured. You were twice a fool to dally with a common harlot”—she waved aside his attempted disclaimer—“and to spend the night at her mercy. You were thrice a fool to argue with the sanitation squad, which brooks no interference in its purging of the city. And four times a fool you were to make the magistrate in court look like the fool he is. He will now be your enemy. But your crowning idiocy—”
“Aten protect me!” he murmured contritely.
Her eyes flashed. “That is the stupidity that will cost you everything,” she cried, then immediately hushed her voice. “You uttered that name in public, where Amalek heard you. Where is your sense of—?”
“Aten? But he is my god!”
She dipped her head and beat gently against his chest. “Ten times a fool!” she exclaimed. “Don’t say that name again. There is no temple in Babylon for this god you seek. Instead there is a mystery cult, nameless and obscure, that will stop at nothing to stamp out that name from either public or private knowledge.”
NK-2, deep buried yet listening, came abruptly alert. This was the action of the enemy, surely—but to what conceivable purpose? Station A-10 would under no circumstances indulge in local politics; it existed solely as a contact point for galactics. The enemy should have no need to expunge it this way. Far easier to dissipate the galactic representative outright, irrespective of native repercussions. What was going on?
“The hooded one—Amalek you called him?—just what is his authority?” Enkidu asked after a pause.
Tamar shrugged. “He is the go-between—the emissary of the nameless temple to the palace of the King. He will surely buy you and take you to their chief inquisitor, Sargan. You have uttered the forbidden name. You will not be seen on the streets of Babylon again. That’s why I—”
“Buy me? Kill me?” Enkidu was horrified. “How can he get away with that?”
“The magistrate is greedy, and you have embarrassed him. He will declare you to be a runaway slave. Amalek will offer a generous price. The priest of Marduk will stamp his approval, since you bear the spade of Marduk, and he will pocket a share of the profit. That way there will be no loss if you turn out not to be a slave: the transaction is complete and authorized by all parties. I have seen such things happen before. Your little temple at Calah will not venture to oppose that of Babylon.”
There was a dismaying ring of truth to her words and logic. “Why did you bring me here? To help me escape?”