language, the poem still ached with grief. Perhaps Gilgamesh had been struggling against the glass walls all the centuries since then, moving further and further away from humanity, undying and yet eternally alone.
And his strange slanted approaches to Rob were his last gasp for help, the final attempt to break free from this cave and all that it meant. Only the utmost desperation could have driven a proud ancient king to give away half his power to a stranger.
Edwin seemed to be acting on the same thought. He stepped around the warning arm Rob flung out and said, “You poor old fellow! You didn’t have to do it this way. That’s not how making friends works at all. We’ll cook you some dinner. Maybe you don’t need to eat, but you ought to. And this cave is way too cold for a bathrobe. Here, take this …” He went down on one knee to talk to Gilgamesh on the level, unzipping his red parka.
For a second Rob thought it was really going to happen— his faith in Edwin’s genius for friendship was that strong. Surely no one was beyond Edwin’s warm rescuing grasp: the bridge builder, the opener of doors, standing at the edge of the dark wood with a rechargeable camping lantern in one hand. But a look at the old king told the story. Rage suffused the brown skeletal face. “You dare to pity me,” he creaked. “You dare, you insect. You worm, you—”
“Microbe,” Edwin suggested, smiling.
Rob could have punched him, the idiot! “Look, he only wants to help,” he
began. “We both do—”
With a shimmer like heat lightning Gilgamesh lashed out. Edwin tumbled backwards with a choked cry. Rob shouted, “No!” and jumped forward.
He towered above the frail old man, his fists clenched. A physical fight would have been no contest at all. But to his horror, this contest was a stalemate. Rob put his full strength into pushing Gilgamesh out of Edwin’s head, and he couldn’t do it. He could hold his own position, but that was all. Between them at their feet Edwin moaned, a shrill and terrible sound.
“We shall kill him between us,” Gilgamesh said. “Such slaves have not fiber enough to endure our battle.”
The truth of this was shatteringly obvious. Rob was forced to retreat. “If you are Gilgamesh,” he panted, “so am I. This one has stood as Enkidu to me.”
“Yes indeed,” Gilgamesh said almost fondly. “Very good! You have it right. You are Gilgamesh too. You are I. If I made you to serve my need, you made this one. He is not your friend, he is your pawn, your tool. And now we have met, you have no more need of him.” He poked Edwin with a sandaled toe. “Up, you. Stand.”
Edwin reeled upright. His face was slack, as blank as a dummy’s, but his eyes were still his own. Repetition had not yet worked its dulling magic.
His gaze was luminous with terror. Rob stuck his hands deep into his pockets, fighting down another impulse to try and grab the strings out of Gilgamesh’s control. The old man’s words were like a knife-blade, stabbing him with truth. The difference between what he’s doing to Ed and what I did is only a matter of degree. We’re equal and exactly alike, indeed.
“Go back to Aqebin,” the old king commanded. “Behind the temple was a cliff. Throw yourself off it.”
Rob held back a gasp of protest. Let Gilgamesh think he concurred. Edwin pivoted like a puppet. Rob felt his pleading gaze, but kept his face impassive and looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. He listened to Edwin’s slow footsteps receding down the passage and clenched the fist in his pocket tight: around the keys of the Land Rover.
Edwin would have to walk back. It had taken them an hour to drive here from the site. It would take Edwin longer than that to return on foot. If Rob could fudge up some excuse to step outside soon, he could drive back, catch up with Edwin, and release him from the enforced command. It could be done!
“I agree that we must begin with a battle,” Gilgamesh was saying. “It is an old, old tradition—the way all heroes become friends. But a single human mind is too small a battlefield, and too frail. The planet itself shall be our arena. Return you to your western lands, and conquer them. Meanwhile I shall subdue Europe and Asia to my will, and be a king of men again. We can then battle: with pawns. Let us agree to begin the war one year from today.
That should be plenty of time.”
Rob was unable to keep silent any more. “You have it all planned, don’t you?”
“I have spent centuries in thought,” Gilgamesh said with smiling pride.
“After the war we can be reconciled. You shall call me Gil, and I shall call you Rob. Is that not the parlance of these times?”
“Why bother to ask? You have it all taped out.” Rob’s voice slipped from his control again, shaking with emotion. “You are insane. I will have no part of this!”
“But we are brothers!” The old man sounded genuinely surprised.
“You don’t want a friend or a brother,” Rob said savagely. “You want a pawn or a tool, you murdering psychopath. And you can go to hell!”
“I made you,” Gilgamesh rasped. “Long and long did I search, sifting through tiny vermin minds around the world, until I found one that might grow to match mine. I raised you up from the slime to sit beside me. You are as I now: a god. You should be on your knees with gratitude!”
“I never wanted this thing,” Rob shouted. “You pushed it on me in a lump without asking, and left me to struggle with it. And now I’m going to leave
you to it. Play your little games alone!”
Rob turned on his heel. There was plenty of time—Edwin had scarcely fifteen minutes’ start on him. Nevertheless he moved fast down the shadowy cramped passage, so fast that he tripped on the rough floor and fell.
In the instant of falling, Rob knew he had made a huge and possibly fatal mistake. He had turned his back on Gilgamesh. His body was probably still in the cavern, sprawled on the gritty stone floor. Severed from it, his mental self fell and fell, an endless tumbling drop through the dark.
He landed hard, on his back. Harsh summer sunshine filled the cloudless desert sky above him. Its heat was like a furnace. Rob rolled quickly to his feet. Big square stones polished to a glossy sheen paved a wide plaza. Around the sides cyclopean stone buildings stood empty, their windows blank and dark. In the center the gleaming obelisk stood tall, graven deep with the boasts of a god-king. This was the Aqebin site as it had been thousands of years ago. And this was the original of that paper landscape, the reality that Gilgamesh had photocopied to mail to him. Definitely the wrong playground, Rob realized. This is going to be ugly.
Now there were no more decisions to make, Rob felt icy-calm. He only had to fight and get out, fast, before too much time passed. “Hurry up, damn you,” he called.
“Listen to the little rooster crow,” a deep voice bellowed. From the black
yawning doorway of the biggest building, a tall figure came striding out into the sun, a Sumerian warrior in full battle dress. A glittering round bronze helmet protected his head. Bright overlapping metal strips armored his chest, which was once more superbly muscled. He carried a long flashing battle-axe with a curved edge. The black beard was braided and tied with gold, and above it, full red lips curved in a wide terrifying smile. In spite of himself Rob was impressed. Gilgamesh in the center of his power made an awesome sight.
“You think mighty well of yourself, Gil, old pal,” Rob said. “And you sure don’t worry about fighting fair.” Gilgamesh here was head and shoulders the taller. Without armor or weapons, Rob could not hope to stand against him. In fact, his down parka and flannel linings handicapped him with their heat and bulk.
“I have no wish to fight you, brother,” Gilgamesh rumbled. “We are too nearly matched. It could be unpleasant. I only want you to do as I say.
After all, I am considerably your elder. You should heed me.”
“I deny the relationship,” Rob said between his teeth.
“Then I must convince you to alter your mind.”
Rob tensed, getting ready to dodge that long deadly axe. But suddenly Gilgamesh
was gone, between one eye-blink and the next, like a special effect in a movie. Rob was alone. Something more complicated than just a whack from an axe was coming.
“Oh god,” Rob said aloud. “I am alone.” In this huge and illimitable inner landscape there was not one living thing. Gilgamesh had paved it over, smashing everything flat, nuking everything except himself. Rob had never known either agoraphobia or claustrophobia, but both seized him now at once. He was both isolated in space and yet closed in. Sheer terror bore him to his knees. Sweat poured down his face. “The bastard, he’s doing this to me,” he whispered, as he had in the sub-basement. But this time it didn’t help. In this place Rob was defenseless, and Gilgamesh’s power was supreme.
In New York City the isolation had been a bell jar. Here it descended on Rob in glass bricks, weighting him down, crushing him flat against the hot pavement. Gilgamesh was squeezing him like a bug under a glass paperweight. Rob was being deliberately driven insane. Strange voices chanted in his ears, and a dizzying vertigo made the world spin even through his clenched eyelids. No, he thought, clawing at his wits. Been there, done that. I am not going to go crazy again. He writhed, pushing out and away with desperate strength, back to the cool reality of the cave.
“You astound me!” Gilgamesh said, in his rusty-iron voice. “Have you indeed the boldness and artifice to escape?”
Rob gasped on his hands and knees at the old man’s feet. “How can you stand
it there?” he panted. “How can you do that to yourself? There’s nothing alive there. It’s all dead!”
“Have no worry about me, pretty boy,” the old king chuckled. “Taste this instead. You may not know it.”
Suddenly every muscle in Rob’s body locked rigid in cramp. His back arched and his limbs twisted. A shout of pain tore out of his throat before his windpipe closed. The agony was unspeakable. Under the breastbone his heart turned traitor, galloping wildly faster and faster. A hot red haze filled his eyes, and the long bones in his legs and arms creaked under the strain.
In another second they would snap, or his overdriven heart would collapse.
I’m dying, he realized. He’s using my own brain to murder me. But I can’t die yet. I have to, to …
For a moment he couldn’t remember. Rescuing Edwin, returning to Julianne, raising his children, everything slipped away into the scalding mist of pain, and death nearly had him. Then an image came to him: fifty feet of porch railing and a pair of stair banisters in Silver Spring, Maryland. And the commitment to finish them was so mundane, so specific and ordinary and down-to-earth, that it was obvious he wasn’t going to die. Carpenters and handymen do not get themselves racked to death by Mesopotamian monarchs.
He didn’t die. Gilgamesh let him go just in time. The smiling skull-face swam into Rob’s view as the haze of pain cleared. “That was interesting,”
he said happily.
Rob’s breath rasped unevenly through his raw throat. His nose was bleeding. In his chest his heart jumped and slowed, trying to return to its normal rhythm. He lay on his side, shuddering and throbbing as if he’d been worked over with a baseball bat. The sadistic swine, he thought foggily. Another one like that will kill me.
And yet this was familiar too. The monster in his sub-basement would get on with Gil just fine. That’s why he chose me, Rob realized. Gil was looking for a brother, someone whose personality matched his, equal and exactly alike. And in the basement I have a psychopath too, every bit as bad, a rapist, a bully, a murderer. All I have to do is let him out, and Gil will be my best friend.
The sandaled foot by his head took a few practice swings and then kicked him in the face. The old man was too starved and slight to do more than gash Rob’s eyebrow. All Rob could do was blink the hot sting of blood out of his eye. He was too drained to stir.
“That,” Gilgamesh said, “was for being defeated. For you are defeated. I wasn’t quite truthful when I said we were completely equal. I do have the advantage of experience, little brother.” He set his foot on Rob’s mouth and chin. “In time to come,” he said, “I want you to remember this moment. Remember who had the mastery. Admit it!”
The taste of chilly leather and sand ground into his mouth. If I could just turn his own trick on him, Rob thought. I saw him do it, so I know how.
Pull him in. Touch him, skin to skin.
With a tremendous effort Rob turned his head a little. The crushing foot slipped a bit in the blood, and for a second the papery cold ankle touched his nose and cheek. Instantly Rob grabbed through that contact at Gilgamesh. He pulled, falling backwards to drag the old king into himself.
He had no idea what the inner landscape was doing today, but he trusted it would answer his need as it had always done.
Rob stood up. His pains dropped away. Times Square swirled around him, neon signs and skyscrapers and traffic signals and crowds of people, a glorious heart-lifting sight. Power and joy surged through him. “My playground,
Gil,” he shouted laughing. “New York, New York!”
The traffic lights changed and the pedestrians hurried across, every one of them layered with their different histories. As properly cool New Yorkers should, they stepped around the Sumerian monarch crouched on the sidewalk without looking at him. Gilgamesh stared wildly around, his mouth open. Jet contrails threaded the sky. The towering buildings were festooned with advertising banners. Cars honked. Bicycle messengers whizzed past.
Everything, however small, revealed an infinite complexity the moment it was examined. Millions of people, billions of artifacts and toys, zillions of magazines and books and newspapers—there was a galaxy of information
here, enough and to spare to totally overwhelm any reclusive ancient king.
“How do you stand it?” Gilgamesh moaned, covering his eyes.
“Stand it? I made it!” Rob said, with a shock of delighted discovery. This wasn’t the real New York City—he could see differences in the skyline, and the sidewalks were impossibly clean. It was only a reflection: the reflection in himself of the real city. It all hooked up, all of it, right back to that very first day when he had admired the chocolate artists and the Star Trek fans at the office luncheon. Diversity, that was the theme.
Nothing the same, not one person, not one flower in the endless garden he had surveyed, not even one grain of sand, and yet a unity. E pluribus unum, just like on the dollar bills.
“Gil, I’m pleased to say we are fundamentally different afer all,” Rob announced. “You pruned everything inside away and made a desert. I opened up and let things grow. You ground things down to be the same, and I love things that are different. We really have no common ground to stand on. And now—I don’t suppose you read comic books? Well, watch this!”
Here Rob knew he could do anything. He had always wanted to fly, and now he did. He jumped up into the air and it held him up nicely. He paddled higher, up among the pigeons fluttering between the concrete towers. His horrible experience inside Gilgamesh’s universe had been educational. The trick was to call the reflection’s basic character into play. He knew exactly what to do now.
About sixty stories up Rob halted, treading air. From here he could see most of downtown. The city throbbed with life, a community yet chockful of diversity, more complex and beautiful and unique than anything he could imagine. It’s only a reflection, he told himself. But a really good one.
I’m proud of it.
Rob called on that quality now. Gilgamesh had socked him with undiluted isolation. Rob was going to return the favor, with pure community. It rose up behind him in an invisible tidal wave, a whole city’s worth of everything that people did or made or said to hook themselves up with other people, and followed him as he zoomed down, in an irresistible curving breaker right onto Gilgamesh’s dazed head.
Rob swooped clear in the best superhero style, leading with one fist like Superman in flight. Then he looped back to inspect the result. The old king lay prone, unmoving, his long lank hair and beard spilled onto t
he sidewalk. Rob landed with a grace he could not hope to duplicate in real life, and hauled Gilgamesh by the arms into a nearby bus shelter. He had to find a permanent fix for Gil. The guy was far too dangerous to let go. And he had to do it now, before the old king recovered.
Rob propped the limp old man in the corner against a Mostly Mozart poster, and sat on the bench to consider the problem. Could Gilgamesh be killed? If a magic sea flower had endowed him with eternal life that was a real
question. He’d already hung around for millennia. If it was possible at all then some accident should have done him in long ago. Perhaps Rob could strip him of his powers. He had been given half of them already. Would it be possible to remove the other half by force?
We are equal and exactly alike, Rob reminded himself. He did it to me, without my participation or knowledge. So I should be able to turn the tables on him. And here I can do anything. It’s a reflection: I can bend it to my desire if I find the right image to do it in. He put his will behind it, leaning his forehead against his clenched hands.
Then, looking down, he noticed a small rectangular tag at the base of Gilgamesh’s skinny neck, between the protruding points of the collar bones. It looked exactly like a zipper tab. When he looked closer he even saw the brand name “Talon” imprinted on the plastic. “It’s not any more unusual than swimming in the air, I guess,” he said out loud. He took the tab between finger and thumb, and pulled it down.
Gilgamesh unzipped very tidily down the middle past his navel. He looked like an untenanted wetsuit, his skin as thick as neoprene rubber and showing the seams on the inside. There were no organs inside the hollow shell. In the middle only two little objects rolled around. Rob reached in and scooped them up before zipping the old man back together again.
He examined the things carefully. They were beads, one a pearl and the other a gleaming red-orange crystal like a fat drop of juice from a blood
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