As Amalek remained silent Sargan added: “Surely you understand that it is not this particular pretender I condemn. Were it within my authority to say, ‘Yes, admit this man to the service of Aten,’ I would gladly do this. But I dare not set a precedent that would, in the end, destroy my god. For if we relax our standards for this one man, who may be a perfectly upright worshiper in his fashion, perhaps even a credit to Aten, then we must relax them for the next pretender, and for others who will follow. Soon there would be many devotees—and at the last we should discover that by imperceptible stages we had relaxed our requirements to the point of meaninglessness. Then we should find careless, even corrupt worshipers in our number, sullying the purity of our god.”
“Yes, certainly,” Amalek agreed, but he sounded disappointed.
Goaded by the tone, Sargan spoke again. “If Aten were omnipotent, the world would completely reflect his goodness. Pain and evil and injustice would be strangers to this city. Since Aten has but limited power, it follows that he cannot be of service to all men. Only a limited few may be permitted to worship him in each generation.”
“Yet we are not within that limit,” Amalek said. “A vacancy exists, now that the young woman has been disqualified—”
“Do not speak of that one!” Sargan cried.
“Aten’s ways are not man’s ways. This man’s faith—”
“His pretended faith.”
“His pretended faith, though simple and untutored, seems steadfast. He arrived at just the moment the vacancy developed. Can we be certain that Aten has not chosen him to fill this vacancy? Perhaps by excluding him, we—”
Sargan abruptly changed the subject. “This Tamar. She is up to something.”
Amalek did not pursue the prior topic. “She has been persistent, certainly.”
“This priestess of Ishtar has power,” Sargan said. “Moreover, she hates the nameless temple and threatens to destroy it. Now she claims to be the wife of this pretender.”
“It may be true,” Amalek said. “For weeks she has been loitering about the palace courtroom, though she surely has pressing business elsewhere. When the pretender was brought before the magistrate, and spoke the name of Aten, she stepped in before I could move and took him on a tour of the gardens. She may have seen in him an instrument to attack us from within. Yet I could not let him go—”
“The wiles of women!” Sargan exclaimed. “If we were to accept him into the temple, Ishtar would still have her call on him. If we deal with him as a pretender, it gives her a pretext to bring a mob of women howling at our door…”
“Ishtar into Hades,” Amalek agreed. “You are right. This pretender has been compromised. We cannot accept him. If we are fortunate, he will recant before Tamar strikes. Otherwise we shall be forced to give him over to Dishon, though we thus risk his death under torture.”
“It would be unthinkable for him to die as a believer,” Sargan said. “Then his spirit would burden Aten in the after-life forever, and I should bear the guilt of his death, forever.”
“Not if he is merely the tool of Ishtar!” Amalek protested.
“He may be a tool,” Sargan said heavily, “but he is also a man. Ishtar may be using him—but his faith may be genuine.” He paced the length of the room, finally pausing again before the frieze. “But better even that awful guilt, than the corruption that comes with mass worship!”
Then Sargan crashed his fist against the wall in a gesture so ferocious that blood began to trickle between his closed fingers.
“That accursed vacancy!” he cried in anguish. “First her, then him… and finally this Ishtaritu whore! It is too much!”
In the moment of physical and emotional agony of the host, NK-2 extended in a tight line like a beam of light and shot back to his primary host. He could do that, now that both hosts had been established, and he would be able to revisit this alternate host similarly, should that become necessary. But such travel was a calculated risk, in the vicinity of the enemy, and he would not do it without reason.
He had learned much yet little. Evidently the native head of this “Aten” religion was a sincere man who deeply regretted the actions he had to take with regard to “pretenders,” male and female. Sargan was even more upset about the girl in the other cell than about Enkidu, but was ready to send them both to the torture if they failed to recant.
The girl, Amyitis, evidently was what she claimed to be. But she could still be host to the enemy.
CHAPTER 10.
Another message awaited Enkidu in his cell. He brought it out happily, anxious to distract his mind from the ominous interview earlier in the day.
I DID NOT BELIEVE YOU COULD BE WHAT YOU CLAIMED. IT WAS TOO OBVIOUS—ANOTHER PRETENDER APPEARING AT THE VERY TIME I WAS CONFINED, AND IN THE VERY NEXT CELL. ONE WHO COULD READ, AND WHO HAD THE INITIATIVE AND CAPABILITY TO BREAK THROUGH THE WALL. I KNEW IT HAD TO BE AN AGENT ASSIGNED TO TEST MY RECANTAL, AND ONLY ONE PERSON WOULD SPONSOR SUCH A THING, AND THAT PERSON NOT A MEMBER OF THE NAMELESS TEMPLE. SARGAN WOULD NEVER OPERATE THAT WAY, OR PERMIT IT IF HE KNEW. BUT THIS OTHER PERSON WANTS TO PROVE MY RECANTAL FALSE, SO THAT I MUST BE TORTURED AND SOLD AS A SLAVE…
And as the tablets were exchanged the next two days, Enkidu learned the story of Amys.
Her grandmother had been eighteen when her city of Jerusalem fell the second time to Nebuchadnezzar, and its inhabitants exiled to Babylon. Amys’ mother had tried to instill the Hebrew faith in Amys despite her people’s captivity. She told her the ancient stories of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua and David; the prophets of Yahweh, or Adonai, the Israelites’ god.
But what set Amys’ pulses racing were the tales that her merchant father, a Babylonian, told her of the city’s ancient gods. He smiled indulgently when her mother took her to an improvised meeting center in a shabby house near the Kebar where there was endless talk of Adonai and of prophets and wishful prophecies of future deliverance of the Hebrews from their bondage in Babylon. Next day he took her to Etemenanki.
He led her up the steps built against the massive ziggurat’s side, past the white, black and red stories—each seven or eight times the height of a man!—until they came to the half-way point and rested on the flat terrace provided for that purpose. “At the top,” he told her as she flopped exhausted on the marble bench, “is the great temple of the gods. Inside that temple stands a mighty couch with a golden table by its side. This is the couch of Marduk, ruler of the gods, and at the moment the new year begins he comes to that couch and unites with the beautiful maiden awaiting him from Ishtar’s temple. Thus is the new year conceived…”
But her father died unexpectedly. Amys’ mother was sold to a minor functionary whose star was rising in an obscure mystery sect.
Her new father was a strong, severe man, far more strict in his standards than ever the old had been. Amys did not like him. He never gave her sweetmeats or pretty things to wear, nor did he keep her spellbound with fabulous stories of ancient heroes. She dreamed fervently of the magic world spread before her by her natural father: the tales of Babylon in its ancient splendor, a dream-city more wondrous than any. She dreamed of Gilgamesh, whose home city she had heard was Uruk, but which in truth must have been Babylon.