Vengeance of Orion o-2

by Ben Bova

  I put my arm around her. “Nefertu says that men built it, and the others. Thousands of men, working like ants.”

  “Only gods or titans could build such a thing,” Helen insisted.

  I recalled the Trojans and Achaians who believed that the walls of Troy had been built by Apollo and Poseidon. The memory, and Helen’s stubborn insistence, put a slightly bitter tang in my mouth. Why do people want to believe that they themselves are not capable of great feats? Why do they ascribe greatness to their gods, who are in truth no wiser or kinder than any wandering shepherd?

  I walked Helen across the width of the boat’s deck, so that we were facing the city.

  “And this mighty pier? Did the gods build this? It’s far longer than the walls of Troy. And the obelisk at its end? The temples and villas we saw today? Did the gods build them?”

  She laughed softly. “Orion, you’re being silly. Of course not; gods don’t stoop to building such mundane things.”

  “Then if the mortal men of this land could build such giant structures, why couldn’t they build the pyramids? There’s nothing terribly mysterious about them; they’re just bigger than the buildings of the city — it took more manpower and time to build them.”

  She dismissed my blasphemy with bantering. “For a man who claims he serves a goddess, Orion, you certainly show scant respect to the immortals.”

  I had to agree. I felt scant respect to those who had created this world and its people. They felt scant respect for us, torturing and killing us for whatever strange purposes moved them.

  Helen sensed my moodiness and tried to soothe me with lovemaking. For a few moments I forgot everything and allowed my body to blot out all my memories and desires. Yet when we clutched each other in the frenzy of passion I closed my eyes and saw the face of my beloved Athene, beautiful beyond human mortality.

  Her bantering mood had changed, also. Whispering in my ear, Helen pleaded, “Don’t challenge the gods, Orion. Please don’t set yourself against them. Nothing good can come of it.”

  I did not reply. There was nothing I could say to her that would not either be a lie or cause her more worry.

  For a while we slept wrapped in each other’s arms. I awoke to the slight rocking of the boat and the subdued sound of men’s muffled laughter. Lukka and the others were coming back. It must be nearly dawn.

  Closing my eyes, I concentrated my mind on Khufu’s great pyramid. Every particle of my being I attuned to that massive pile of stones and the burial chamber hidden within it. I saw it clearly, shining against the night, standing out before the dark starry sky, glowing intensely with a light that no mortal eye could see.

  I stood before the great pyramid and it pulsated with inner energies, glowing, beckoning. Suddenly a beam of brilliant blue shot skyward from the very tip of the pyramid, a scintillating shaft of pure energy rising to the zenith of the bowl of night.

  I was standing before the pyramid. My physical body was there, I knew. Yet the guards standing evenly spaced along the edge of the great plaza before it did not see me. They did not sense the light radiating from the pyramid, did not see the coruscating shaft of brilliant blue energy that blazed skyward from its tip.

  And I could approach no closer. As if an impenetrable wall stood before me, I could not get a single step nearer the pyramid. I stood out in the night air, straining until the sweat streamed down my face and chest, ran in rivulets down my ribs and legs.

  I could not enter the pyramid. The Golden One had sealed himself inside, I realized, and would not let me reach him. Was he protecting himself against me, or against the other Creators who sought to eliminate him?

  No difference, as far as I was concerned. Unless I could get inside the pyramid I could not possibly force him to revive Athene. I screamed aloud into the night, bellowing my anger and frustration at the stars as I collapsed onto the stone paving of the great plaza before Khufu’s tomb.

  Chapter 36

  HELEN’S face was white with shock. “What is it? Orion, what’s the matter?” I was in our bunk aboard the boat, soaked with sweat, tangled in the light sheet that we had thrown over ourselves.

  It took two swallows before I found my voice. “A dream,” I croaked. “Nothing…”

  “You saw the gods again,” she said.

  I heard bare feet running and then a pounding at our door. “My lord Orion!” Lukka’s voice.

  “It’s all right,” I yelled through the closed door. “Only a bad dream.”

  Still ashen-faced, Helen said, “They will destroy you, Orion. If you keep trying this mad assault against them, they will crush you utterly!”

  “No,” I said. “Not until I’ve had my vengeance. They can do what they want to me after that, but I’ll avenge her first.”

  Helen turned away from me, anger and bitter regret etched in every line of her.

  I felt distinctly foolish that morning. If Nefertu wondered what had made me scream, he was too polite to mention it. The crew cast off and we resumed our journey upstream toward the capital.

  All that morning I spent staring at the great pyramid as we slowly sailed upriver, watching its great Eye of Amon open and gaze solemnly back at me. The Golden One has turned it into his fortress, his refuge, I told myself. Somehow I will have to get inside it. Or die in the attempt.

  For weeks we sailed the Nile, long empty days of sun and the river, long frustrating nights of trying to reach the Golden One or any of the other Creators. It was as if they had left the Earth and gone elsewhere. Or perhaps they were all in hiding. But from what?

  Helen watched me intently. She seldom spoke of the gods, except occasionally at night when we were drowsing toward sleep. I wondered how much she really believed of what I had told her. I imagined that she did not know, herself.

  Each day was much like every other, except for the changes in scenery along the riverbanks. One day we passed what looked like a ruined city: buildings reduced to rubble, stone monuments sprawled broken on the ground.

  “Was there a war here?” I asked Nefertu.

  For the first time, I saw him look irritated, almost angry. “This was the city of a king,” he said tightly.

  “A king? You mean this was once the capital?”

  “Briefly.”

  I had to pull the story out of him, line by line. It was clearly painful to him, yet so fascinating that I could not resist asking him more questions until I had the entire tale. The city was named Akhenaten, and it had been built by the king Akhenaten more than a hundred years earlier. Nefertu regarded Akhenaten as an evil king, a heretic who denied all the gods of Egypt except one: Aten, a sun god.

  “He caused great misery in the land, and civil war. When he at last died, his city was abandoned. Horemheb and later kings tore down his monuments and destroyed his temples. His memory brings great shame upon us.”

  Yes, I thought. I could see how uncomfortable the memory made Nefertu. Yet I wondered if Akhenaten’s heresy had not been one of the Golden One’s schemes run awry. Perhaps I had been there, in one of the lives that I could not remember. Perhaps I would one day be sent there by the Creators to do whatever mischief they wanted done.

  No, I told myself. My days of serving them will be finished once I have brought Athene back to life. Or so I hoped.

  We sailed on, and watched crocodiles slithering along the reed-choked banks of the river, and mountainous hippopotami splashing and roaring at one another, their huge pink mouths and stumpy teeth looking ludicrous and terrifying at one and the same time.

  “Not a good place to go swimming,” Lukka observed.

  “Not unless you want to end up as their midday meal,” I agreed.

  Finally we neared Wast, the mighty capital of the Kingdom of the Two Lands. Along the eastern shore of the river, reedy swamps gave way to cultivated fields, and then to low whitewashed dried-brick buildings. Across the river we saw more tombs cut into the western cliffs.

  As we sailed onward the buildings became larger, grander. Dried bric
k gave way to dressed stone. Farm houses gave way to handsome villas with brightly painted murals on their outer walls. Graceful date palms and orchards of citrus trees swayed in the hot wind. In the distance we began to see massive temples and public buildings, tall obelisks and gigantic statues of a standing man, magnificent in physique, his fists clenched at his sides, his face smiling serenely.

  “They all have the same face,” Helen said to Nefertu.

  “They are all statues of the same king, Ramesses II, father of our current king Merneptah.”

  The colossal statues towered along the river’s eastern bank, row upon row of them. The king must have quarried out whole mountains of granite and barged the rock along the river to put up such monuments to himself.

  “Ramesses was a glorious king,” Nefertu explained to us, “mighty in battle and generous to his people. He erected these statues and many more, even larger ones, farther upstream. They stand to remind our people of his glory, and to awe the barbarians to the south. Even to this day they are afraid of his power.”

  “ ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,’ ” I said. The phrase sprang from my memory, and I knew it had been written for this egomaniac Egyptian king.

  There were more tombs along the western cliffs, including one that was so beautiful it took my breath away when I first saw it. White, low, columned and proportioned in a way that would some day grace the Parthenon of Athens.

  “It is the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut,” Nefertu told me. “She ruled like a man — much to the unhappiness of the priests and her husband.”

  If Menefer was impressive, Wast was overwhelming. The city was built to dwarf human scale. Enormous stone buildings loomed along the water’s edge, so that we tied our boat to a stone pier in their cool shadow. Avenues were paved with stone and wide enough for four chariots to run side by side. Up from the riverside rose many temples, massive columns of granite painted brightly, metal-shod roofs gleaming in the sun. Beyond them, up in the hills, handsome villas were dotted among groves of trees and wide cultivated fields.

  We were greeted at the pier by a guard of honor, wearing crisply pleated uniforms of immaculately clean linen and chain mail polished so highly that it glittered. Their swords and spear points were bronze, and I noticed that Lukka took in their weaponry with a swift professional glance.

  Nefertu was met by another official, dressed only in a long white skirt and gold medallion of office against his bare chest, who introduced himself as Mederuk. He led us, one and all, to the palace where we would await our audience with the king. Helen and I were put into a sedan chair carried by black Nubian slaves, while Nefertu and Mederuk took a second one. Lukka and his men walked, flanked by the glittering honor guard.

  Helen was beaming with happiness. “This is truly the city where I belong,” she said.

  I belonged back at Menefer, I thought, at the great pyramid. The longer I remained here in Wast, the less likely my chances of destroying the Golden One and reviving Athene.

  Looking through the curtains of our sedan chair as the Nubian bearers carried us up the rising avenue, I saw that Nefertu and Mederuk were chatting gaily like a pair of old friends catching up on the latest gossip. They were happy. Helen was happy. Even Lukka and his men seemed to be satisfied that they would soon be employed in the Egyptian army.

  Only I felt restless and unsatisfied.

  The royal palace at Wast was a vast complex of temples and living quarters, soldiers’ barracks and grain storehouses, spacious courtyards and pens for meat animals. Cats roamed everywhere. The Egyptians revered them as sacred spirits and gave them free rein throughout the palace complex. I thought that they must be very useful against the mice and other vermin that inevitably infested granaries.

  Our quarters in the palace were — palatial. Helen and I were given adjoining huge, airy rooms with high ceilings of cedar beams and polished granite floors that felt cool to my bare feet. The walls were painted in cool solid blues and greens, with bright reds and golds outlining the doorways and windows. The windows of my room looked out across tiled rooftops toward the river.

  I saw that whoever had designed the room had a strict sense of balance. Exactly opposite the door from the hall stood the door to the terrace. The windows flanking it were balanced on the blank wall by paintings of window frames, exactly the same size and shape as the real windows, their “frames” painted the same bright colors.

  Half a dozen servants were there to look after us. Slaves bathed me in scented water, shaved me, clipped and combed my hair, and dressed me in the cool, light linen fabric of Egypt. I dismissed them all and, once alone in my room, found my dagger amid the clothing I had left in a pile at the foot of my bed. I strapped it onto my thigh once more beneath my fresh Egyptian skirt; I felt almost naked without it.

  Those false windows bothered me. I wondered if they hid a secret entrance to my room. But when I scanned them closely and ran my fingers across the wall, all I detected was paint.

  A servant scratched timidly at the door, and once I gave him permission to enter, he announced that the lords Nefertu and Mederuk would be pleased to take dinner with my lady and me. I asked the servant to invite Nefertu to my room.

  It was time for me to tell him the truth about Helen. After all, she wanted to be invited to stay in Wast. She wanted to be treated like the queen she had been.

  Nefertu came and we sat on the terrace outside, under a softly billowing awning that kept the sun off us. Without my asking, a servant brought us a pitcher of chilled wine and two cups.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said, once the servant had left, “something that I have kept from you until now.”

  Nefertu smiled his polite smile and waited for me to continue.

  “The lady with me, Helen: she was the Queen of Sparta, and a princess of the fallen Troy.”

  “Ahh,” said Nefertu, “I was certain that she was no ordinary woman. Not only her beauty, but her bearing showed royal breeding.”

  I poured wine for us both, then took a sip from my cup. It was excellent, dry and crisp, cool and delicious. I took a longer swallow, savoring the best wine I had tasted since Troy.

  “I had suspected that the lady was an important personage,” Nefertu went on. “And I am happy that you have been honest with me. Actually, I was about to question the two of you rather closely. My lord Nekoptah will want to know everything about you and your travels before he grants you audience with the king.”

  “Nekoptah?”

  “He is the chief priest of the royal house, a cousin to the king himself. He serves mighty Merneptah as first councillor.” Nefertu sipped at his wine. He licked his lips with the tip of his tongue, and darted a glance over his shoulder, as if afraid that someone might be listening to us.

  Leaning closer to me, he said in a lowered voice, “I am told that Nekoptah is not content merely to have the king’s ear; he wants the king’s power for himself.”

  I felt my eyebrows climb. “A palace intrigue?”

  Nefertu shrugged his thin shoulders. “Who is to say? The ways of the palace are complex — and dangerous. Be warned, Orion.”

  “I thank you for the advice.”

  “We are to meet with Nekoptah tomorrow morning. He desires to see you and the lady.”

  “What about Lukka and his troops?”

  “They are quartered comfortably in the military barracks on the other side of the palace. A royal officer will inspect them tomorrow and undoubtedly admit them to the army.”

  Somehow I felt uneasy. Perhaps it was Nefertu’s warning about palace intrigues. “I would like to see Lukka before we go to dinner,” I said. “To make certain he and his men are well taken care of.”

  “That is not necessary,” said Nefertu.

  “It is my responsibility,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’m afraid I have made you suspicious. But perhaps that is all to the good.” Rising, “Come, then. We will visit the barracks and see that your men are happy there.”

>   Lukka and his men were indeed comfortably quartered. The barracks was nothing like the luxury of my own royal apartment, but to the soldiers it was almost heaven: real beds and a solid roof over their heads, slaves to fetch hot water and polish their armor, food and drink and the promise of a night’s whoring.

  “I’ll keep them in check tonight,” Lukka told me, a hard smile on his hawk’s face. “Tomorrow we parade for the Egyptian officers; I don’t want them hung over and disgracing you.”

  “I’ll join you for the inspection,” I told him.

  Nefertu almost objected, but stopped himself before saying a word.

  As we left the barracks and headed back toward our apartments I asked him, “Is there some problem with me being present at the parade ground tomorrow?”

  He smiled his diplomat’s smile. “Merely that the inspection will be at sunrise, and our meeting with Nekoptah is shortly afterward.”

  “I should be with the men when they are under inspection.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is right.” But Nefertu did not seem overly happy about my decision.

  We dined that evening in his apartment, a room about the same in size and decorations as my own. I got the feeling that Nefertu was delighted at his good fortune in finding us. It is not every day that a civil servant working in a small town far from the capital is invited to the royal palace and housed in such splendor.

  Helen told her story to him and Mederuk, the official who had met us at the pier. She held them fascinated with her tale of the war between the Achaians and Trojans, and seemed quite proud to place herself at the center of it all.

  Mederuk stared at her shamelessly all through the dinner. He was a man of middle age, his hair gray and thinning, his body overweight and soft. Like all the Egyptians, his skin was dark and his eyes almost black. He had a bland round face, virtually unlined, almost like a baby’s. His life in the palace had left no traces of laughter or pain or anger on that chubby, insipid face. It was as if he carefully erased all evidence of experience each night and faced each new day with a freshly molded blankness that could not possibly offend anyone — nor give any hint of the thoughts going on behind that bland mask.