by Rob Swigart
“Soon,” she assured him.
They glided through the night streets. Lisa was staring blankly at the Place de la Concorde when Steve spoke. “You’re trying to see.”
She grunted.
“Anything that would help?”
“No.” She sighed. “Something’s blocking the future.”
“Why’s that not a surprise?” He tried to soften it with a smile, but it was a challenge nonetheless.
“Dimme,” Usem said suddenly.
“Pardon?”
“Dimme, daughter of the Great God An,” he explained. “A demon. She has powers to deceive and obscure. She also kills, mostly babies and pregnant women. This is well known. Freiderich Schnabel of Berlin wrote an article in 1990…”
“Yes, that’s helpful,” Lisa interrupted gently. “What can you tell us about Muššatur?”
“Mythical snake,” Usem said, and added as an afterthought. “Also a kind of viper.”
“See?” Frédo was suddenly paying attention. “Snakes again!”
“Muššatur is the world before it was made,” Usem went on. “You know, Void, or Chaos. She can change or even block the future. She’s the Divine Mother of the universe.”
“This’s interesting,” Steve interrupted, turning in his seat. “But people are after this ‘miraculous child,’ and we don’t have much time. We have to get there first. No time to waste on theory.”
“How long will it take you to translate it?” Lisa asked Usem.
He shook his head. “Sixty-four lines of difficult, archaic Sumerian. There are… ambiguities.”
“How long?” she insisted.
“A month, perhaps two. For something rough.”
“You have a day.”
“I can’t…” He stopped when he saw her face. “The child’s due, isn’t it, as I feared? I’ll try, but I’m still groggy.”
“That’s all we can ask. Was there mention of omens?”
The old man shook his head. “I didn’t have time to read it, just put it together. I know it’s going to change the world; I just wish I knew how.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Steve’s tone was sour. “Maybe Constantine will help. His text sounds urgent.”
“Not much we can do now,” Lisa said. “Even if we went there, no women, remember.”
“The message was specifically to you. He must think you can get in.”
She shook her head. “All right, Alain, get the plane ready, just in case. Steve, find out what he thinks he has. If this is a diversion, we can’t afford the time.”
Alain pulled up in front of the apartment at the rue du Dragon. Steve told Usem he would have the guest room. “I’ll be on watch downstairs. Alain and Frédo will go to Montpensier. I don’t like to separate like this, but we have a lot to do, and both places should be safe.”
When the three of them were inside the apartment with the door closed and locked and the upgraded security systems on, she placed the volume of Voltaire’s letters on the dining room table. “If you can stay awake long enough,” she said to Usem, “it would be helpful if you could look for omens. It’s a place to start.”
He took the book and sat down with a sigh. “Voltaire? It’s heavy.” He glanced at the frontispiece and turned the pages one by one until he reached the hollowed-out section.
When he saw the tablet he slammed the book shut.
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.
Usem shook his head. With trembling hands he opened it once more. “Oh, my God,” he moaned, hands gripping the sides. He leaned down and whispered, as if to the tablet, “Please. Forgive me.”
“Why should God forgive you?” she asked.
He looked at her with burning eyes. “I brought this abomination into the light. I never should have done that. Pride. Damnable pride.”
Her compassion was as much for herself as for him. “Usem, you’ve done something extraordinary. Prepared the way. Because of you, we have a chance to stop something very bad from happening.”
“What?”
“The end of the world as we know it.”
Nizam
“You failed me,” Nizam al-Muriq said. “Again. You failed the Divine Mother.”
Despite his Teacher’s grim disapproval, Lex knew him well enough to detect an odd undertone in his voice: the Teacher didn’t believe his own words. The tone was low and even, but tonight it hummed with suppressed energy. He was excited! That was it, an excitement alien to this patient, imperturbable man, and for the first time Lex caught a glimpse into a different Nizam al-Muriq; not the Teacher, but The Gnome. Cruel, yes, but now excited and unpredictable. The sensation was unsettling, like standing at the edge of an abyss, for Lex’s obedience had always been assured until now; now a new variable had entered the calculation.
He was once more facing the Teacher in the grand salon of the house they called Alamut, the only major room in the vast house untouched by the violent incident earlier that night. As before, all the curtains were drawn, now hiding them from the darkness outside. In the foyer, men were cleaning up. The sounds of vacuums, conversation, and the scrape of furniture came to them through the sliding oak doors.
Lex watched the older man’s face closely, but the opening vanished as quickly as it appeared. What he had seen lingered with him, though. Whatever the cause of this change, it signified an opportunity. He kept his own counsel. “I’m sorry, Teacher,” he said firmly with a shake of his head. “I do not quite understand. Brother Constantine was… compliant. Cooperative.”
“Mmm,” Nizam sniffed with an odd sideways shake of his lopsided head.
Lex waited, but the gesture ended with all the protective shutters down.
Patience, he told himself. He had spoken truly. Constantine swore to redouble his efforts to eavesdrop on the Delphi Group, and surely he had done so, for the life had been visibly driven from the monk’s eyes by a mortal terror right before Lex left the monastery.
His Teacher was losing his edge.
“By now he’s done it. There is nothing to fear.”
“No.”
“No?” Nizam’s calm was not only affected, it was getting tiresome.
“Constantine has sided with them.”
“How could you know this?” Lex’s alarm rose swiftly. Perhaps he had mistaken anger for excitement.
The Teacher’s voice thinned to a whisper. “You question me? You who pledged your loyalty, who declared your willingness, no, your eagerness to ascend to the Second Mystery? Only yesterday you declared this, here, in this very room. Redemption. Sacrifice. You claimed you were ready.”
With an effort, Lex maintained his steady gaze. “So I did, Teacher. That has not changed. I am ready.”
“Then why does Constantinos remain alive?”
Lex shook his head. “You demanded he work for us. You said nothing of his death.”
Like the strike of a cobra Al-Muriq seized Lex’s forearm and squeezed hard. “He betrayed us, habibi.”
Again, Nizam put that odd emphasis on the term of endearment, and a venomous chill flowed through the American. His jaw muscles tightened. He swallowed the chill.
Nizam continued, “You would ask how I could know this? True, you arrived after the disturbance tonight and haven’t heard, so you are forgiven.”
“Thank you, Teacher.” Lex leveled his voice to conceal the irony. He had no need of forgiveness.
“You’re aware we have other ways of knowing, ways not of this world.” It was The Gnome speaking now, an imperfectly concealed smirk in his voice.
“Yes, this is something I do know, Teacher.” Lex struggled to keep his tone humble; in a slight quaver to his Teacher’s voice he detected a resurgence of that unexpected elation.
The man’s grip was painful. Deep under the surface a wild exhilaration was flowing through Nizam al-Muriq’s grip like an electrical current. Despite it, Nizam’s nod was somber. “We have many ways of knowing.”
He trailed off for a moment. With a flash of s
mile, he said, “Those other sources were unnecessary in this instance. Logic is enough. Ibrahim brought us the woman; he disabled her GPS and she could not communicate. Her friends couldn’t follow. As always, Ibrahim was careful. Yet, habibi, they were here. They broke into this house and we had to let the woman leave with the scholar.” He paused. “Perhaps they wanted to retaliate for your… mistake attacking them. Perhaps such a reaction is understandable. Perhaps. But three of our people are certainly dead, and they escaped unharmed. That is an important difference, don’t you agree?”
“Of course, Teacher. But Constantine?”
“Logic. Delphi Group knew about this house, its location, its rooms and security arrangements, even where we were keeping the scholar. The only possible conclusion is that Constantine informed them.” Nizam dropped Lex’s forearm and stretched his fingers in dismissal. “Well, let us put that to one side. It’s no longer of consequence. It is in the past and there is no taking it back, just as there is no return for our fallen.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
Al-Muriq took a step toward Lex and leaned forward, as if to keep the cleaners in the foyer from hearing. “Here is what will happen, habibi. After you have finished what you should have done before, you will meet Ibrahim in Harran.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
“If you survive, you may yet reach the Second Mystery, Iskander.”
There it was again, that thin rasp: a tension ascending toward triumph, and just a whiff of sarcasm in his name.
If he survived? The old man couldn’t refrain from spoiling everything he said with a thinly veiled threat. Very well. In Harran, he would learn the truth.
When he replied, he confined himself to, “Thank you,” omitting the title, Teacher.
Al-Muriq’s eyes narrowed at the slight, but the trace of satisfaction that passed over his lips was the whisper of an angel’s wing.
Sunday: The Recording
Lisa found Usem asleep at the dining room table, head cradled on one arm. The lovely morocco bound book was open, its hollow empty. The tablet, removed from its glassine envelope and reassembled on the table, caught a ray of early sun. Beside it was a yellow legal pad. The top page was covered with meticulous notes.
His pen had rolled across the table and teetered on the edge. His empty hand rested beside the pad. Near the bottom of the top page were notes with a rectangle drawn around them. It was labeled “Omens?” Inside the box he had written:
1. 37 ff.
ud (moon) mud (blood) – da =(nominalizer) /
šu2 šu2 (cover) – a=(nominalizer)
Ud-mud-a šu-šu-a = Moon covered with blood = blood moon
mul (star) / sig7 (ši-ši = green-yellow, blue) /
šub- (fall) – ba=nominalizer
mul ši-ši šub-ba = a (blue) star falling = blue comet
So he had found them. A comet and a blood moon described in a four thousand-year-old tablet! What were the odds of two such astronomical anomalies appearing together on the same day?
She had asked Usem to look for them. Now, standing over this sleeping man, she thought maybe she should have asked after the child instead. Today was Sunday. On Wednesday, the equinox, there would be a blood moon. Surely the tablet would confirm the child was due then. Ophis Sophia knew it, too. No, she was right, the omens first: they confirmed the tablet’s importance.
The muscles in Usem’s face were slack. The dark pouches under his eyes, deep wrinkles radiating from their corners, corrugated forehead, tufts of white hair in his ears, and loose skin of his neck all attested to his age, but the waxy yellow cast to the skin of his cheeks frightened her.
Had Ibrahim tortured or poisoned the man? They were capable of it, but, no, she thought, they wouldn’t do that. They still needed him, just as she did. It was age, that’s all. He must have stayed up all night. He was simply exhausted.
Instead of waking him, she pushed the pad across the table and sat down opposite.
The pages were covered with references to sign readings, suggestions for meanings, bits of grammar. His notes were meaningless to her. She recognized Dimme, daughter of the Great God An. An was the god of the heavens, the first after the initial chaos. Aside from that, nothing seemed useful.
Usem said, “You look tired.” He was sitting up, his hands palms down on the polished table. A dense network of dark veins covered their backs. His voice was thin, reedy, a little querulous.
She grinned. “So do you.”
“Mmm. Well. You were thinking.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“Someone once told me the only way to see the future is to look with neither fear nor hope. Seen through your fears, whatever they are— war, extinction, climate change— and your fears darken it; if you see through hope— for prosperity, peace… children— the future glows in all the wrong shades.”
Usem leaned forward intently. “Who was this person?”
She looked at him curiously, trying to decide what he really wanted. He was more than curious. Her answer was important to him. “Someone I loved. Raimond Foix was… family. We were walking along a river south of Paris one afternoon in spring, the Bièvre, and we came to a kind of spillway where water pours into a pond. All around is green, lush trees, bushes. There was nothing else, no people, roads, cars, buildings, nothing but green. Raimond looked at the pond for a long time. Finally he turned and asked me what I saw.”
Usem sat back a little. “What did you say?”
She brushed her hair back. “The pond. Ripples spread across the surface. The motion was constant, the way complicated new ripples formed from every drop and spread, and more again. Yet the movement was changing all the time, too, the rhythm, the size, the sprays from the falling water, in random ways; tiny rainbows that formed and vanished, and the ripples never quite made it to the opposite side, they just faded away. That’s all.”
“No fear. No hope.”
“The only way to see the truth ahead. To see the overall pattern.”
Usem let out a sigh. “Thank you, whoever you are. You rescued me, and I thank you, but I didn’t know anything about you.”
“Now you do. I’m just a colleague, Usem. Frédo was worried about you.”
“Ah. But you see the future. How does that work?”
“I once thought I could teach people how to do what I do, to grasp how the future would unfold so they could choose the best course among many.” She spread her hands. “Of course, once you know the future, or even think you know, and take any kind of action, you’ve already changed it.”
“Paradox,” Usem observed.
“I can’t teach it. Most take one look and give up.”
“Faith helps,” Usem suggested.
She thought about this. “Faith? Comforting, perhaps, but for me it would be an excuse to do nothing. Something is very close now, something massive and pale and powerful. Fear darkens my vision. I struggle to clear it.”
“The night I discovered the tablet,” he said, “I saw something vast and pale, as you say. It seemed to… heave. Is that the word? Like swells on a fish-white sea.”
“Yes, like that. But we must not be afraid, Usem. We must look at it straight. It’s the only way.”
“What can it be?”
“I don’t know yet, but we’re going to find out. Muššatur?”
“Possible,” Usem replied. “Chaos.” He swallowed hard. “There’s something else. They mentioned a Divine Mother.”
“Divine Mother? Interesting. I’ll ask Ted and Marianne to look into it. Perhaps she’s known.” She pushed the yellow pad back to him. “We must not fear chaos, Usem. Without some chaos there’s no change. Just not too much.”
“Muššatur is coming.”
“Yes, but you’ll be safe here. I’ve asked some friends to be with you. You’ll like them, Ted and Marianne, coming from Dijon. Ted will be here in ten minutes, Marianne, a half hour later.”
Usem looked puzzled.
“They seldom take
the same train,” Lisa explained. “Use the guest room. Get some sleep. They’ll be here when you wake up. Work on the tablet when you’re fresh. They’ll send us your work. When you’re done with the tablet, put it back inside the book. Ted will hide it among the other books in the study upstairs. I don’t mean to alarm you, but time is short.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
“Yes.” She stood, touched his shoulder briefly.
He called, “Wait.”
She turned.
“My computer?”
“Oh, yes.” She took his laptop case from Elizabethan Court Cupboard and sat beside him.
He opened it eagerly. “Before you go,” he said slowly, opening the sound file. “I started listening to something. After they drugged me, I forgot, but now I think you should hear it.”
She heard his sincerity, his concern. “All right.”
He sucked on his lower lip. “The Society of Jesus sent this. I don’t know where they got it or how. It’s a girl talking. Just listen for a minute.” He pressed PLAY.
The slow, stilted voice recited: “Dimme munuš dumu Ana.”
Usem pressed STOP and looked up at her.
She said, “That’s the tablet? It means, Dimme, daughter of An?”
“That’s right.”
“Does she recite the entire tablet?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I had time to hear. Do you have any idea who she is?”
“Yes. She’s a woman who will give birth in three days near a place called Desfiladero de las Xanas. She has a wide, gray face… Never mind. Will listening to the file help?”
“If it’s accurate, yes, it’ll speed up the translation. If it’s accurate,” he repeated.
“It’s accurate,” Lisa said firmly. “You can work here. Frédo will come later to help if he can.”
“Where are you going?”
Lisa stood. “Eventually to Spain. We need you to translate this tablet. It’s very important, Usem, you know that. Very important. Get some sleep. Then send it as soon as you have a translation.”
