The interior was opulent beyond imagining. Polished stone floors supported pillars of agate and turquoise and jade, which rose to a vaulted ceiling so high that shadows nested in it. Flambeaux lined the fishbone-ribbed walls and wavering lines of white candles floated high in the air above. Beneath them clay-fleshed homunculi stumped and winged eyeballs flew and giant snails slid, all passing to and fro without any visible purpose amid splendors that dwarfed everything the People had. Such was the power of the Igigi. Yet they had forced their captives to slave in the mud to build what they could have made with a thought!
To the far end of the great room, a sweep of serpentine steps rose to a dais atop which were what at first appeared to be two mounds of garbage, but on approach revealed themselves as crudely built thrones.
We stopped at the foot of the dais, and the figures seated upon the thrones arose.
"Kneel!” Irra whispered urgently. He did not name the two, but by the awe and disgust I felt within me, I knew them for who they were.
The King and Queen of the Igigi advanced to the top of the steps and stared down on us.
The Queen's face was perfection itself, as sweet and beautiful as the dawn of the very first day. She wore a billowing robe of soft scarlet feathers which opened here and there to reveal a body that would have been as ravishing as her face were it not for her breasts, which reached down to the ground and dragged on the floor behind her.
The King was entirely naked, but his legs were jointed wrong, forcing him to walk backward, buttocks-first. He had no head, but when he came to a stop and turned, I saw that his features were on his chest and abdomen, so that when he opened his mouth to speak, his stomach gaped wide and his penis waggled on his chin like a goatee.
The hall hushed in anticipation of his words.
"Brekekekek koax koax!” he cried. “Tarball honeycrat kadaa muil. Thrippsy pillivinx. Jolifanto bambla o falli bambla. Aeroflux electroluxe. Flosky! Beebul trimble flosky! Grossiga m'pfa habla horem. Archer Daniel Midlands codfeather squinks. Spectrophotometer. AK-47. Rauserauserauserause. Zero commercials next!"
The Queen threw back her head and laughed like a hyena.
"They demand to know,” Irra said, “what new thing this is that the First have done. We send out our best warriors and they do not return. Why?"
I said nothing.
"Why?” Irra repeated angrily. But still I did not respond.
The Queen looked at the King and yipped sharply twice.
"I don't think we need to be subliminable,” the King said. “I think we agree, the past is over. I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order—order out of chaos. But we will. I understand reality. If you're asking me ... would I understand reality, I do. There will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences. Our enemies never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. I understand small business growth. I was one. They misunderestimated me. My answer is bring ‘em on."
"He says that if you do not speak voluntarily, you will be made to speak."
I crossed my arms.
The King shrugged. Almost casually, he said, “Pain."
"Paain,” the Queen repeated. “Paaaaaiiiinnnn,” she moaned. She made it sound as if it were a good and desirable thing. Then she nodded in my direction.
Pain fell on me.
How to describe what I felt then? Perhaps once, when you were chopping wood, your axe took an unlucky bounce off a knot and the blade sank itself in your leg, so that you fell down screaming and all the world disappeared save your agony alone. Maybe your clothes caught fire and when your friends slapped out the flames, the burning went on and on because your flesh was blackened and blistered. You could not reason then. You howled. You could not think of anything except the pain. That was how it was for me. I folded into myself, weeping.
"Kraw,” said the King. “Craaaaaawwwawaw. Craw-aw-wul. Crawl."
Irra looked at me. “Crawl!” he said.
And, pity help me, I did. I crawled, I groveled, I wailed, I pleaded, and when at last my tormentors granted me permission to speak, I told them everything I knew. “It is called death,” I said. “Humbaba invented it.” And I explained its nature as best I could, including the fact that the People were subject to it as well as the Igigi. It would have been better, far better, had I said nothing. But the pain unmanned me, and I babbled on and on until Irra finally said, “Enough."
Thus it was that I became a traitor.
* * * *
The next day the war began in earnest. Where before the Igigi had attacked in ones and threes, now they came in phalanxes. Where before they had taken captives, now they sought only to kill. Such were the fruits of my treachery.
The People fought like heroes, every one. They were heroes—the first and the best that ever were. They fought as no one had ever fought before or ever will again. Glory shone about their brows. Lightnings shot out of their eyes.
They lost.
Do I need to tell you about the fighting? It was as ugly and confusing then as it is today. There were shouts of anger and screams of pain. Blood gushed. Bodies fell. I saw it all from across the lake where—pointlessly, needlessly—we animals labored to widen the drainage canal. This despite the fact that the lake was half-empty already and its mud flats no hindrance to the attacking Igigi at all. But if we stopped we were whipped, and so we toiled on.
The palisades fell. Then the inner walls behind them.
The People retreated up the mountain. Halfway to the summit they had built a final redoubt and this they held against all the Igigi could throw against them. The sides of Ararat were steep and the way up it narrow, and thus the demons could only attack in small numbers. Always, Nimrod stalked the heights, his great bow in hand, so that they dared not approach by air.
At night, as I was herded back to the slave pens, I could see the lower slopes of Ararat ablaze with fires too numerous to count. These were not campfires such as armies build against the cold and to cook their food, for the Igigi needed neither warmth nor sustenance. They were built for no good reason at all, as acts of vandalism. The closer ones flickered as the bodies of the Igigi passed before them, for their numbers were legion.
One evening as the gates to the slave compound slammed shut behind me and I sank to the ground, too tired to struggle through the other animals and fight for food at the trough, it struck me that I was going to die soon and that under the circumstances this might well be no bad thing. As I was thinking these dark thoughts, the gates opened again and in rode Irra on a beast that stumbled and struggled to bear up under his weight. He leapt down from his mount and the beast straightened. It was a woman! She was naked as a child, but leather straps had been lashed about her so that her arms were bound tight to her sides. A saddle was strapped to her back, and there was a bit in her mouth.
For a second I thought it was Silili and my heart leapt up with anger and joy. I rose to my feet. Then I recognized her and my heart fell again.
"Mylitta,” I said sadly. “You were captured too."
"She cannot understand you,” Irra said. “Have you forgotten?"
I had. Now, however, I moved one foot like an ox pawing the ground: Hello.
Mylitta did not respond. Her eyes were dull and lifeless, and so I knew that she had, like so many other captives, given up all hope and sunk down into a less-than-animal state. Either she had been captured in an Igigi raid or—more likely, it seemed to me—she had slipped away to look for her lover. And, finding him, been treated thus.
I do not think I have ever hated another human being as in that instant I hated Irra.
"Stop staring at the beast!” Irra commanded. “Nimrod broods upon the mountaintop. Our King and Queen believe he contemplates some sorcery so mighty that even he fears its consequences. They feel his growing resolve upon the
night winds. So he must be stopped. It is their command that you kill him."
"Me?” I struggled against the urge to sink back to the ground. “I can barely stand. I'd laugh if I had the strength for it."
"You shall have all the strength you need.” Irra drew a peeled willow wand from his tunic and with it struck me between the shoulder blades. I grunted and bent over double as enormous wings of bone and leather erupted from my back. When I straightened, I saw that Irra had given himself bat-wings as well.
"Follow!” he cried, and leapt into the air.
Involuntarily, I surged after him. Below me, poor Mylitta dwindled into an unmoving speck and was lost among the other captive slaves. That was the last that ever I saw her.
We flew.
* * * *
Under other circumstances, it would have been a glorious experience. Flying was easier than swimming. My muscles worked surely and strongly, and the wind felt silky-smooth under my wings. But the lands we flew over were ugly and defiled. Pits and trenches had been gouged into them for no purpose whatsoever. A constellation of trash-fires that had once been our crofts smoldered under us. The very clouds overhead were lit a sullen orange by them.
"Look upon your work,” I said bitterly.
Irra swooped downward, drawing me involuntarily after him, so that we skimmed low over the mud-flats of the half-drained lake. They were littered with corpses. “Behold yours,” he said. “And tell me—whose creation is the more monstrous?"
To this I had no response.
We flew in a wide circle around Ararat, in order to approach the redoubt from its less defended side. For hours we flew. From my lofty vantage I could see the multitudes of invaders infesting and defiling the land below. Their numbers took my breath away. It is scant exaggeration to declare that there was a nation of monsters for each one of the People. I did not see how we could possibly prevail. But at last, in the long gray hour of false dawn, we alit in the steep and disputed mountainside between the People's final fortress and the Igigi encampments. There, at a touch of Irra's wand, my wings folded themselves back into my body. Without dismissing his own wings, he proceeded to take a long and leisurely leak against a nearby boulder.
Finally, I spoke. “Mylitta loved you! How could you treat her so?"
Irra smiled over his shoulder. “You want reasons. But there are none. Even this stone is wiser than you are.” He turned, still pissing. I had to jump backward, almost spraining an ankle, to avoid being sprayed. “You see? The stone knows that the world is what it is, and so it endures what it must. You hope for better, and so you suffer.” Done, he tucked himself in and said, “Wait here.” Then he threw himself into the air again, soaring higher and higher until he was no larger than a flea. Up he went and down he came. Yet as he drew closer he dwindled in size, so that he grew no larger to the eye. When he reached his starting place, he was as small as a midge. Three times he buzzed around my head.
Then he flew into my ear.
With a dreadful itching sensation that made me claw desperately at my head, Irra burrowed deep into my brain. Coming at last to rest, he said, “Climb upward. When you reach the redoubt, its defenders will recognize you and let you in. If your actions displease me, I will treat you thus."
I screamed as every bone in my body shattered and blood exploded from all my orifices.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone. I was still standing, and unhurt. Everything but the pain had been an illusion. “That was but a warning,” Irra said. “If you disobey or displease me in the least way, I will visit such torments upon you that you will remember the Igigi Queen's ministrations with fond nostalgia. Do you understand?"
Abjectly, I nodded my head.
"Then go!"
Like a mouse, I crept up the mountain's flank, using its trees and bushes for cover when I could and furtively clinging to the bare rock when I could not. Once, I caught a glimpse of Nimrod's gigantic figure as he stood at the topmost peak, back to me, contemplating the war below. His power was a palpable thing, and in that instant I felt sure that Irra's cause was hopeless, for his merest glance, were it to fall upon me, would have burnt me to ashes. Simultaneously, I experienced an involuntary lifting of my spirits, for the upper slopes of Ararat were untouched by the Igigi and the scent of the pines was clean and invigorating. I began to hope and, hoping, began to scheme. The redoubt, when we reached it, was less a thing than a congeries of defenses—here a wall, there a scarp at the top of which defenders stood with piles of stones. If the mountain had been taller and steeper, the People could have held it forever. But I had seen the Igigis’ swarming millions and knew that inevitably Ararat must fall. Nevertheless, when I came strolling up King Nimrod's path, whistling and swinging my arms as Irra had directed me to do, I was waved on upward by the guards after the most cursory of examinations.
I was home again.
Despite everything, it felt wonderful.
The People were everywhere working urgently. Shelters were being built and defenses strengthened. Sparks flew upward from the smithies and baskets of apples and cattail roots were hustled away into newly dug caves. Most astonishing of all, the oxen were People once more! I saw them carrying long-knives and spears and huddled over plans for the defenses, arguing in grunts and snorts. They were clapped on the shoulder in passing by others who clearly could not understand them, and there were even those—I noticed them, though Irra did not seem to—who could speak both tongues. One tall woman strode by with a war-trident over her shoulder, singing words that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. Clearly, the oxen-speech had evolved.
I was but newly arrived when my old friend Namtar rushed up and, dropping an armful of long-knives on the ground, hugged me.
I pawed the ground with one foot: Hello.
Namtar made a cage of one hand and whistled frantically like a captive bird. Then, opening the hand, he trilled like that same bird escaping. Finally, he said, “Eh?” Meaning: How had I escaped?
I slammed one fist into the other. Holding my hands out as if throttling a monster's neck, I twisted them. “Snap!” I lied: I fought my way free.
Namtar grinned appreciatively. Then he made a noise—"Shhhweeoo, shhhweeoo!"—like the hurrying wind and pointing first to me and then to the swords, made a carrying gesture. He lifted his voice in a sweet, clear note, which could only refer to she who had invented song: He had to hurry. Would I bring these things to Aruru?
I snorted assent, and he was gone.
"That was well done,” Irra said from within my ear. “Walk briskly. Wait until nobody is watching. Then get rid of this junk."
I dumped the long-knives on a dung heap, and threw an armload of hay over them so that no one would know. Soon after, somebody called me to her and gave me another chore. So went my day. I worked my way up the slope, smiling cheerfully (for Irra punished me if I was anything less than upbeat), accepting whatever work was given me and then abandoning it when I could and performing it with apparent enthusiasm when I could not. Three steps forward, two steps back. By degrees, I pushed toward Ararat's summit.
At midday I ate a meager lunch of two taro-cakes and an apple while sitting at the top of a short cliff. It was not far to its bottom, I reflected, only five body-lengths or so, yet the fall would certainly be enough to kill me.
Though he could not read them, Irra was able to intuit my thoughts. “Cast yourself off,” he suggested mockingly. “If you die, so will I and Their Anarchic Majesties’ plans will come to nothing."
I shivered involuntarily at the awfulness of his suggestion. For, wretched as I was, I did not wish to die. Nobody truly knows what death is, and so we fear it above all things. Moreover, my dread was all the greater for the idea of death being so new to me.
And yet—was it an altogether ignoble idea?
Irra, I reasoned, taunted me because he thought that I would not—that I could not—kill myself, and surely this was an understandable thing to assume since nobody had ever done so bef
ore. But after all I had seen and experienced, nothing seemed impossible to me anymore. I went to the very brink of the precipice and looked down. I thought of the People and how much I loved them. I thought of Nimrod, their bulwark and strength. I thought of my joyless existence. But mostly I thought of Silili, lost to me forever. Then I did the bravest thing I had ever done in all my life.
Light and giddy with relief and fear, I stepped off.
Or, rather, I tried to.
My feet would not obey me. Will it though I might, I could not take that one crucial step forward. Deep within my ear, Irra laughed and laughed. “You see? I can control your actions. Never forget that."
All this time I had been thinking, and the more I thought, the less plausible it seemed that when I finally stood face to face with King Nimrod, I would defeat him in combat. A hundred such as I could not have done so. It did not matter what magics and powers Irra might have. The very idea was absurd.
Now I was angry enough to say so.
Irra was unmoved. “Humbaba invented death,” he said complacently. “Between them, the Igigi and the People invented war. Great works come in threes. You and I, Gil, will create a third and final novelty, and in some ways it will be the greatest of all, for where the others are universal and impersonal, this will be singular and intimate."
"Will we?"
"Oh, yes, I call it murder."
Irra explained his intent. I was unimpressed. “How does this differ from simply killing somebody?"
"By its treachery. You will approach Nimrod with smiles and salaams. You will oil and braid his hair for him, all the while praising his wisdom and his strength. Then, with his back turned and he unsuspicious, you will pick up a rock and smash it down upon his head with all your might."
The picture he drew sickened me for I could imagine it all too well: The weight of the rock in my hands. The unsuspecting king. The sound of that great skull splitting. And afterward, his blood gushing. I would give anything not to have this crime on my hands. But Irra had already taught me that pain could render me helpless before it. I sobbed wordlessly.
FSF, October 2007 Page 26
