Tablet of Destinies (37 page)

‘I'll only live once,' he decided, and with a great heave the dragon bowed forward. The bed slid into the ornamental bedhead to expose a stairway underneath.

‘I owe you one, my friend,' Adama smiled, proud of his brother for even conceiving of such a favour.

Descending the stairs, Adama was momentarily concerned as to how he would close the entrance behind him, but by the time he'd reached a walkway, the secret passage had begun to close of its own accord. The next worry was that he was going to find himself in complete darkness once the entrance was sealed.

And how shall I get back out?
He turned to scale the stairs, but it was too late. The passage closed and darkness fell. ‘Damn,' he uttered, only slightly perturbed by his oversight.

A single, thin tube of light ran from the floor, around the roof of the tubular tunnel and back down to the opposite side to the floor. Other tubes of light lit up
one after the other all the way down the passage and off into the distance.

‘Holy cow!' Adama ventured forward. He had never imagined that a tunnel of this magnitude ran under the palace. What was its real purpose? Enki, of course, could simply manifest where he chose, so why go to all this trouble?

Marduk had only told him that, a little way down this passage, he would come to a ladder that gave access to the palace exterior. Marduk had not mentioned where the tunnel led.

Adama reached the foot of the ladder, and looked down the seemingly never-ending tunnel of light, at an impasse as to which way to go. Up the ladder, he decided.

At the top, a panel slid aside, and sticking his head out, he found himself in a tree stump in the forest, just outside the city.

The direction the tunnel went was to the east, away from civilisation and into the wilderness. ‘What on earth could Father be thinking?' Adama had to find out, and closing the exit over, he descended to the tunnel once more.

He walked for some time until he became fed up with the journey and began to run, desperate to find the end of the passage. If it didn't come to an end soon, he'd be forced to turn back having used up all his time.

His burst of energy dissipated and he slowed to a walking pace. Having caught his breath, he came to focus on what appeared to be a brightly lit entrance ahead.

As he neared, Adama was alarmed to discern a lone figure awaiting his arrival.
The tunnel light must have alerted them to my approach.
It was too late to turn back, he figured, and so pressed on.

The lone figure was cloaked and stood in the shadows between the light tubes at the tunnel's end. The back lighting, streaming through the glass entrance behind the figure, made it a dark silhouette.

‘Hello?' Adama called, warily.

‘You are not the Lord Enki,' said the person, in a distinctly female voice.

Adama's heart leapt into his throat as he'd never met a female, bar his mother, Ninki, and the female Nefilim who served her, but Adama had been kept well away from her. He halted where he was, not wanting to alarm her.

‘You are right,' he confessed. ‘I am Adapa, the Lord Enki's firstborn human son. And you are?' he queried hopefully. The female did not answer straightaway, but Adapa was patient and did not push for a response.

‘This place is forbidden to you,' she stated, finally.

‘Really?' Adama played ignorant. ‘I didn't realise being lost was a crime.'

‘You accidentally stumbled into the secret royal passage to the House of Shimti?' she challenged.

Shimti meant, ‘where the breath of life is blown in', and Adama realised he was standing before the place where he had been fashioned by Ninharsag — the House of Shimti was her dominion. He wondered if it was the Great Mother herself he was addressing — if it was, she had probably telepathically discerned why he was here.

‘You should return the way you came, Adama, son of Enki,' she advised when he failed to answer. ‘If you are discovered here your life will not be worth living. Leave now and I will tell no one of the incident.'

As she turned to go through the open glass doors, her face caught the light, and Adama could have sworn he glimpsed the distinct features of a human. ‘Wait!' he cried, unsure of the best way to sway this woman to his will. To chase her could be construed as an attack and if she was one of the Nefilim playing tricks, she might well end his days for such insolence. Thus, Adama fell to his knees. ‘Nin, please. If you are human, have mercy, for I have been searching all my life for proof of your existence.'

The cloaked figure halted and bowed her head. ‘Then your adventure this day has not been completely in vain.'

Adama rose slowly as she chanced a look back in his direction.

‘I am Eve,' she advised, removing the hood that shrouded her human features. Her long brown hair was piled in an elaborate arrangement of braids at the back of her head. ‘The firstborn human daughter of the Lord Enki.'

Her face was a revelation to Adama. In a world of alien beings and creatures it felt strange to see a female of his own species. Her skin was the colour of his skin, her eyes as dark as his own. Her facial features were petite and, although her mouth was smaller than his own, her lips were full and pert. Adama had tried many times to envision what the perfect human female might
look like, but Eve's beauty surpassed anything his imagination had conjured. She was more magnificent than any creature in the whole of creation.

‘Would you speak with me a while, Eve?' The sound of her name set his heart to pounding in his chest. ‘I have so many things I'd like to ask you.'

‘I know what you want, Adama,' she replied, coldly, ‘and it has nothing to do with conversation.'

Adama was a little disconcerted by her response, feeling that he'd done nothing to warrant her suspicion. ‘I don't know what you mean. I just want to speak with you.'

‘And where will our talk lead us?' She turned fully around to face him, keeping her cloak well about her. ‘On an exploration of my body, I expect.'

Adama was dumbstruck by her response. Being human, she couldn't read his thoughts.

‘Males, be they Nefilim or human, are all the same,' she concluded wearily, when Adama did not deny the accusation.

Adama was doubly shocked by this comment. He was horrified to think that his father, having created the perfect female, had not created her for his human sons but for his Nefilim ones.

‘The Nefilim have taken privileges with your body?' he queried her, the hurt in his tone clearly conveying his shock and sympathy.

‘Well, no,' Eve confessed, still suspicious, ‘but they have taken such favours from some of my sisters.'

Now that statement was a revelation! ‘How many sisters do you have?' he asked cautiously.

‘I have told you too much already.' She withdrew inside the glass doors and was of the mind to push the button that closed and locked them.

‘Please, Eve, it is very important that I know,' he begged in desperation.

She hesitated, but the look on Adama's face was breaking her heart. He seemed genuine. ‘I have six,' she said finally. ‘Now you must go.'

‘Meet me again, Eve?' he bravely spluttered, before she locked him out. ‘Just to talk,' he swore, ‘as we are now.' She seemed flustered and made strange little noises in her throat as she attempted to make up her mind. Adama found this behaviour most amusing. ‘Tomorrow,' he suggested.

‘No,' she decided when pushed.

‘Two days then. Three. Four!' Adama kept counting, hoping that Eve would stop shaking her head and give him a nod. ‘Five, six, seven —'

‘Alright,' she caved in. ‘But you had better keep your member to yourself. I know much about human anatomy, and I know how to inflict grievous bodily injury and pain if need be.'

‘I am not a Nefilim Lord, Eve,' he reassured her. ‘As you are different from Nefilim females, so do I differ from Nefilim males.'

‘Hah!' Eve had to suppress her amusement. ‘We will see, Adama … in seven days, after sundown.' She pressed the button that closed the glass doors, but her eyes remained fixed upon him as a set of metal doors slowly began to close also.

Adama moved closer now, and when the metal
doors had nearly concealed her from sight, Eve melted into a smile. ‘Yes!' Adama cried, excited by the outcome of their first meeting. ‘I think that went rather well.'

 

Eve must give herself to Adama of her own accord,
Ninharsag insisted, as she and Enki looked down upon the round surveillance screen which was set into a table, watching Adama depart the underground entrance doors to her laboratory.
I shall have no more ‘education' for my girls. I'm not running a brothel for the male members of your household.

Fear not. The attraction is unavoidable in this instance,
Enki replied confidently.
Eve was fashioned from Adama's essence; you extracted the material from his rib yourself.

Anu had advised Enki how the development of mankind should proceed, and had insisted that each female of the species must be fashioned from the essence, or DNA, of a male. Each male of the species was to be fashioned as Adama had been, from the Gods, and one female only was to be fashioned from each man.

Mates is a lame description of what these beings mean to each other,
Enki stated, knowing the cosmic reason behind Anu's instructions.
It is my understanding that mankind is not to be a lone-soul organism as we Nefilim are. They are to be the first split-soul entities. The existence of such an entity is made possible via the highly-developed emotional body that humans have, which gives them the capacity to care for another as much, if not more, than they care for themselves. Our Adama and Eve are soul-mates, the female and male split of the same soul-mind, and I firmly believe that they will reinvent the word ‘love' as we understand it.

You know you'll never prove that theory, Enki.
Ninharsag smiled, appreciating his reassurances, but only scientific inquiry would set her mind at ease about the fate of humankind, and whether or not she could get them successfully breeding of their own accord.

It does not matter that I cannot prove it, dear sister,
Enki told her.
It is creation's plan and mankind's destiny.

 

As Adama wandered back down the long tunnel, his thoughts turned to sneaking back into the palace. If he was caught, he would be questioned about what he'd discovered. What he needed was an alibi, and another story to that of meeting Eve.

The Nefilim were telepathic, but Adama had learnt ways to stop them knowing his every thought. Lesser thoughts often went unheeded, so the trick was to find an experience more stimulating than the one he was trying to hide; one that could monopolise his mind were he probed about his adventures this day. An experience so overwhelming could not be dreamt up by the imagination, as the recall of a lie would never hold together under scrutiny. A fabrication was incomplete and unreliable, and therefore open to change.

The quest for a stimulating experience firmly in mind, Adama scaled the ladder that exited in the forest, and he headed off down the dirt road towards town. He was already late and in trouble, so he figured that he might as well make the most of it.

Eridu was hailed as the best-planned city in Edin, and the most becoming on the eye. Outside the huge ziggurats, gardens and waterways of the fortified palace
grounds, there were several complexes under construction: a larger landing port for Nefilim spacecraft, a temple dedicated to Anu, and another sanctuary for giving thanks and praise to Enki, ruler of the city. It was mainly Nefilim who populated the city dwellings at Eridu, but also a few genetic mutants who had proven to have a head for business. Most of the human-like slave class lived in camps near to their assigned workstations, unless they had progressed as far as to be a house servant to a Nefilim Lord, in which case they were usually given some squalid accommodation, or a piece of floor in the Lord's house.

‘If father scattered my brothers throughout Eridu to prevent us finding each other …' Adama was working on the premise that he had six brothers just as Eve had six sisters, ‘… then there are not too many options as to where they could be residing. If Adapa was doing construction work, and I was placed in the palace, then it makes sense that I should find another brother in the city, another in the fields, one by the harbour docks, another working the forests, and the other …?' Adama looked across the city from his vantage point, running out of possibilities. The only other area was the technological complex near Eridu's new spaceport. ‘Worth a try,' he shrugged, heading off on the main street through town to begin his search there.

The main street was lined with market stalls selling produce, manned by all manner of creatures. Behind these were the shopfronts of Nefilim merchants trading in metals, jewellery, cloth, clothes, pottery, vehicles, spare parts and so forth.

Adama was scouting the area for a human face with the distinct red-brown colouring he possessed, when a battalion of Nefilim troops came marching down the centre of the road, willing a large metal cage on wheels along behind them.

‘Make way for the mighty Samson,' cried the guard at the head of the parade. ‘The strongest human in existence!'

The claim brought the citizens of Eridu running to see the caged man, and Adama joined them as they thronged to the side of the road.

Inside the cage stood one of Adama's lost brothers; from the colour of his skin there could be no mistake. He was stooped to fit inside his cage, but still, he appeared to be shorter than Adama was, perhaps more like Adapa's height. Adama had rarely seen a physique on any male, Nefilim or human, the like of this man — he certainly seemed to be as strong as the Nefilim guard was boasting.

‘One hundred gold pieces,' the guard held up a leather pouch, ‘promises that Samson will meet the challenge of any mortal beast. If any of you have a worthy opponent, please come forth and place a bet.'