“Abgal,” Astra said. She shuddered and spoke more words, but they were unintelligible.
“Who was Abgal?” Eli asked. “You remember him.”
“Abgal piloted the Boats of Heaven. Everyone knows that,” Astra said, and giggled.
“Ah, yes,” Eli concurred. “A spacecraft pilot. Utu was his commander, wasn’t he?”
“He taught me flying . . . and other things too,” Astra said, and chuckled.
“There was a spaceport in the Sinai Peninsula, the restricted region. . . . It was called Tilmun then, the Place of the Rocketships. . . . Tell me about it, Astra.”
She wiggled in her chair. “The Landing Place was in the Cedar Mountain,” she said slowly.
Eli looked for a particular slide and, having found it, flashed it on the screen. It showed a spherical object with three extended legs. A bulbous protrusion was hanging down from its bottom, and its midriff was lined with eyelike apertures.
“A wall painting from an archaeological site on the eastern bank of the river Jordan, some seven thousand years old,” he said. “A celestial sphere, a skyship. To roam Earth’s skies. To go to the Landing Place.”
He paused, but Astra was silent. “Gilgamesh,” Eli continued. “He went to the Landing Place. Ishtar saw him there. . . . There was a tablet . . .”
“Abgal piloted a Gir,” Astra said emphatically.
“But of course,” Eli replied. He changed slides, showing on the screen drawings of a rocketship with flames billowing from its tail. In one instance it was depicted with a pointed upper part attached to the rocketship’s main body. In the other, the upper module was shown separated and moving away from the rocketship.
“Here is the Gir,” he said. “It served as a shuttlecraft, landing on Earth and taking off to rejoin the orbiting spaceship. . . . Abgal took you up in a Gir, did he?”
“Nibiru glowed like a radiant star,” Astra said.
“The tablet,” Eli prompted. “Do you recall the tablet?”
Astra groaned. Eli went around to look at her. Her eyes were open but there was a blank look in them. He kissed her on the forehead.
“The Tablet of Destinies, Astra,” he said to her softly. “I will show it to you segment by segment. You will remember! You must remember! Our lives depend on it!”
He went back to the slide projector and flashed on the screen the photograph of the disclike object he had shown her before.
“The Tablet of Destinies,” he said. “You must remember!”
She shifted uneasily in her seat. “It’s different,” she finally said. “It does not look the same.”
“Great gods!” Eli cried out. “You are remembering!” He changed the slides, flashing on the screen a line drawing of the object, clarifying the geometrical shapes and the cuneiform writing.
“The directions,” Eli said. “Do you recognize the directions?”
“It is not the Writing of Heaven,” Astra said. “It’s profane.”
“But of course,” Eli told her. “How right you are. . . . The object I’ve been showing you is made of clay, a replica found by archaeologists and now kept in the British Museum. The writing was converted by the replicator into cuneiform in ancient Erech. . . . It is not the Writing of Heaven, but it has made it possible to read the instructions. . . . Here, let me show you more.”
He flashed on the screen an enlargement of a segment of the tablet on which there were drawn two triangles connected by an angled line, along which there were seven dots. At the edge of the second triangle were four more dots.
“The god Enlil went by the planets,” Eli said. “That’s what the inscription says below the seven dots arranged along the line. . . . ‘Seven planets on the route from Nibiru to Earth.’ Pluto was encountered first, then the pair Neptune and Uranus, then the giant Saturn and Jupiter. Coming from Nibiru, Mars was the sixth. And the seventh was Earth. Beyond there lay the Moon and Venus and Mercury, and finally the Sun . . . in a solar system of which Nibiru was the twelfth member.”
There was no reaction from Astra.
“The writing along the bottom edge of the segment,” Eli continued, “says in Sumerian ‘Rocket, Rocket, Pile-Up, Mountain, Mountain’ and along the inclined edge ‘High, High, High, High, Vapor-Cloud, No Vapor-Cloud’ . . . . Along the curving circumference the instruction ‘Set’ is repeated six times and the names of celestial bodies are given, but the tablet was damaged there, making this part illegible. . . . What were these instructions, Astra? Can you remember?”
“Enlil came from Nibiru,” Astra said dreamily. “It was the domain of Anu.”
“Yes! Yes!” Eli said. There was agitation in his voice. “We know all that. Concentrate on the tablet. You must remember!” His arm twitched and he grabbed it with his other hand to steady it. He began to perspire. He flashed an enlargement of another segment of the tablet on the screen.
“Concentrate on this, Astra,” he told her. “This is an enlargement of the second of the tablet’s eight segments. It’s badly eroded, but the words ‘Take,’ ‘Cast,’ ‘Complete’ are legible.”
Astra remained silent. He changed slides. “This segment, with the odd shapes and arrowed line, has the legend ‘Planet Jupiter That Provides Guidance.’ The names of two constellations are also inscribed, ‘Gemini and Taurus.’ Surely you can recall what that means, Astra!”
She mumbled unintelligibly. Eli flashed another slide on the screen.
“After a course fix at Jupiter and a turning at Mars, the spacemen from Nibiru reached the landing corridor on Earth. The words ‘Our Light’ and ‘Change’ are repeated along the descending line. There’s an instruction stating ‘Observe Path and High Ground.’ The horizontal line has the words ‘Rocket, Rocket, Rocket, Rise, Glide’ written along it, followed by a series of numbers. Where the two lines meet, the words ‘Flat Ground’ are written. The geometrical forms in this section, at its level portion, depict three triangular peaks, two high and one lower . . .”
“The pyramids!” Astra cried out. “The great mountains. The handiwork of Enki.”
“Go on,” Eli said when she stopped. She uttered a few more words that were unintelligible, twisted her body, and flailed her hands and fell silent.
“Yes,” Eli said, “the pyramids were built by the Anunnaki to serve as landing beacons, pointing the way to the spaceport in the Sinai.” He changed slides. “Although badly eroded, this segment is quite informative. The descending line has the legend ‘Central Plain’ and the number one hundred is repeated six times. The interconnecting lines state ‘Run Way,’ ‘Swift Onset,’ and ‘Finish.’ ‘The Gir had landed!’”
“Enlil returned to visit his father,” Astra said abruptly.
“Yes,” Eli said. “The last segment of the Tablet of Destinies indeed gave important instructions for the return to Nibiru. That is what the evening is all about, Astra . . .”
He flashed on the screen a segment showing crossed lines, a central arrowed line, and some inscribed words. “Here, at the edge, at the arrow pointing skyward,” he said, “the Sumerian word meaning ‘Return’ is clearly legible. . . . There’s a way back, Astra, and we can take it!”
“You showed only seven segments,” Astra pointed out.
“Well, yes,” Eli said hesitatingly. “I’ve skipped the third segment. It’s badly eroded.”
“You promised to tell me all—everything!” Astra said, visibly upset.
“Yes, yes,” Eli said. He searched for a slide, and finding it, pulled out the previous one. The bright beam momentarily lit up the room as he inserted the new slide.
“The lightning has struck!” Astra shouted, jumping up from her seat.
He rushed over to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
“The lightning has struck!” she said again and shuddered. “It’s an omen!”
Eli kissed her on the forehead and pulled her body toward his. Her shuddering stopped.
“Yes,” he said softly, caressing
her. “It was an omen, from Anu, from Nibiru. . . . Look at the screen.”
The segment whose enlargement was projected appeared to have been badly damaged in its upper half. A geometrical form that remained partially discernible suggested that it was a drawing of an ellipse with several small triangles within it. The writing on the top half and on the curved margin was illegible, but the words written along the horizontal line were intact.
“Tell me . . . read the words of the omen,” Astra whispered.
“These are divine words,” Eli said. “What is left on the undamaged portion reads thus, ‘Emissary of Divine Anu . . . to Divine Ishtar, the Divine Beloved of Anu.’” He let go of the embrace, and Astra stepped back.
“Great gods!” she exclaimed, “an invitation from Anu! An invitation to return to Nibiru, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Eli said. “That’s what it was. . . . That’s what it still is.”
“Still is?”
“If we could find the original Tablet of Destinies that was sent from Heaven!”
“We?”
“Yes, you and I. . . . It can be done, but I cannot go alone. We must go back together!”
Astra took another step back. “Who are you?” she asked. There was a harshness in her voice.
“You’d better sit down,” he said. “We must sip more of the nectar before I answer.”
She sat down in her armchair. He refilled the glasses with the nectar and took a sip of his. Astra, reluctant at first, followed suit. He went back to the slide projector and again flashed on the screen the photograph of the disclike tablet.
“This is a replica,” he told her, “made in ancient times. The original Writing of Heaven was replaced with cuneiform symbols to enable its reading by others . . . those who were not gods. . . . The original tablet was a disc encoded with instructions for a space journey to Nibiru. I was the one who found it.”
“You?”
“It descended from the skies of Erech on a star-filled night, the last night of the New Year festival. . . . It was inside a space capsule. . . . I found it, I took it. . . . I hid it from you . . .”
He spoke dreamily and his words tapered off . . .
“Go on!” Astra insisted.
“My family, through the millennia, has retained the name Elios. It is but a mispronunciation of Helios, the Greek name for the sun god Shamash. . . . It has been a secret tradition in my family, passed from father to son, that we are descended from Shamash . . .”
He shut off the slide projector and came around to stand before her.
“The Sumerian king lists clearly state that Gilgamesh was descended from Shamash, through his father. . . . Ishtar and Shamash were twins; they both had the divine gene of the sixth finger. So did Gilgamesh . . .”
He bent and kissed her on her lips. “Oh, my beloved,” he whispered. “Don’t you remember me? I was Gilgamesh!”
She looked at him in puzzlement. He stared straight into her eyes.
“And who am I—who was I?” she asked softly.
“Close your eyes. . . . Float back, and you shall know!”
She closed her eyes. There was silence for a while. Then she felt Eli’s lips on her forehead. He was turning her armchair around.
“You can look now,” he told her.
3
When Astra opened her eyes, and even before she could recall where she was or why she was there, she saw at once the other woman.
She was standing inside an opening in the wall—perhaps a doorway, perhaps not—bathed in the glow of a yellow-golden light that made her stand out against the dark background behind her. At first Astra thought the woman was naked, but then Astra saw she was wearing a kind of see-through, clinging dress that accentuated her breasts. Her neck and chest were covered with a multi-rowed necklace, the stones of which were smaller on the top strands and larger on the bottom ones. The woman wore two odd shoulder pads, which, together with the necklace that was tight against her chin, seemed to force her head into a stiff, upright position.
Some of the woman’s braided hair could be seen protruding from under a most unusual helmet that she wore. It looked like an old-fashioned aviator’s leather padded helmet. It was held tight against the woman’s head by two horns, which began as bulbous protrusions over her ears and then curved up, meeting in the center of the helmet, above her forehead.
The woman stood still. Her delicate face had slightly raised cheekbones and a wide, prominent chin. Her lips were pursed in a quasi-smile. Astra could not make out her nose, but she could see dark, deep eyes. In her hands the woman held a heavy, thick-walled vase, partly tilted toward Astra, as though it was a gesture of offering.
“Who are you?” Astra cried out.
The woman did not answer, remaining motionless.
“Who are you?!” Astra shouted, fright and anger in her voice. But again the other woman stood still, the quasi-smile frozen on her face.
“Don’t you recognize her?” a voice said, and in an instant Astra recalled Eli. He switched on the light of the table lamp and Astra could see him now, sitting where he had sat at the beginning of the evening.
“Who is she? What does this other woman do here?”
“Don’t you recognize her?” Eli repeated.
Astra turned to look again at the intruder. The woman was still standing there, a faint smile on her lips, her dark eyes looking straight at Astra. Astra’s eyes surveyed the full lips, the prominent cheekbones, the squarish chin. She closed her eyes and shuddered.
“My God,” she said. “It’s me!”
She shuddered again and slumped in the armchair.
Eli jumped from his seat and rushed to Astra’s side. He grabbed her cold hands in his, rubbing them for warmth. He slapped her cheeks gently.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right. It’s only a statue.”
Astra opened her eyes. “A statue?”
He helped her up and led her toward the lighted opening. It was, Astra now realized, a kind of alcove between the bookshelves that she had not noticed prior to its being lit up. The figure was indeed a statue, almost exactly the same height as she was.
“Who is she—who was she?” Astra asked.
“Ishtar,” Eli said with emphasis. “The great goddess Inanna, known as Ishtar, also as Astarte . . .”
“Oh my God . . . Oh my God . . .” Astra whispered. She turned her face away and crossed herself. Eli let her be for a few moments.
“I can’t believe it . . . it’s impossible!” Astra said as she regained her composure. “She looks—looked—so much like me . . .”
“You could say it the other way,” said Eli, “that you look so much like her!”
Astra put her hand out and touched the frozen face, then the round breasts. “So much like me . . . I am so much like her,” she said softly.
“And you also bear her name,” Eli said. “Astra, the Celestial One. Astarte . . . Ishtar!”
“It’s so lifelike,” Astra said.
“Yes,” said Eli. “It was found at Mari, an ancient capital on the Euphrates River. When the archaeologists who had found it were photographed standing beside it, no one could distinguish between the living men and the stone goddess . . .”
He turned the statue around on its pedestal so that Astra could see its back.
The protrusions from which the horns curved up in front could now be clearly seen as ear phone like devices. At the back of the helmet a squarish box was held in place with a stripe. From the bottom of the box, a hose made of several sections descended almost the whole length of the statue. The equipment the goddess was wearing must have been rather heavy, for it was supported by the large shoulder pads and was held in place by two sets of stripes that crossed her back and chest diagonally.
“The Flying Goddess,” Astra said. She went over the features with her fingers, then turned the statue around to face them.
“Why?” she said. “Why the statue?”
“To convince you.”
“It was removed surgically on the eighth day after birth—a rite echoed in the Jewish circumcision of eight-day-old baby males. . . . Here you can see, however, that the sculptor, true to life, left telltale scars where the sixth fingers and toes would have been.”
Astra touched the spots.
“I see,” she said. “She was like me. . . . I am like her.” She turned to face Eli. “Am I as beautiful as she is . . . was?”
He grabbed her by the hips and drew her to him. “You are!” he replied and kissed her on the lips, a long, passionate kiss.
“I am ready,” she whispered. “Ready to go back . . .”
“Come then, my beloved queen,” he said as he held her tightly against his body. “We shall journey together . . . to the past!”
She reached for his mouth and kissed him passionately. “I’m ready,” she said. “I was Ishtar . . . I want to be Ishtar again.”
“You will have to trust me completely,” Eli told her. “You must believe, with all your innermost senses, that whatever happens, no harm will come to you.”
“I trust you, my beloved . . . my Gilgamesh!”
“Tonight is the night,” he said as he caressed her. “The night of the rites of the Sacred Marriage, to seal the sacred union. . . . The night of endless lovemaking, the night Ishtar and Gilgamesh were joined as one . . .”
“Take me back,” she said softly. “I must find the tablet, answer Anu’s call . . .”
“We will go back together,” he said. “We must regress together . . . to Erech, to the night of the falling stars . . . united in body and soul!”
Eli led her into the alcove where the statue was standing, and Astra realized that it was a small elevator, one of those old-fashioned ones that had neither door nor protective grillwork.
They squeezed into the three-person elevator, the statue serving as their co-passenger. Eli pressed a button, and they rose slowly to the floor above. They stepped into a large, dimly lit room, engulfed in the same yellow-golden light in which the statue was bathed inside the elevator. As she entered the room, Astra turned her head back to glimpse the statue once more, and again, as when she had seen it initially, she could not help marveling how lifelike it was.
The King Who Refused to Die Page 4
