Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (23 page)

 
          
This
was the man who was going to marry Deborah; just as he married a beautiful new
woman every year.

 
          
All
at once a number of puzzles resolved themselves. Thessany was virtual mistress
of her father’s house. Marduk didn’t - or couldn’t - make it his home. Each
year when he remarried gloriously he spurned the memory of Thessany’s mother,
whoever she had been. Symbolically he rejected his plain daughter. Still, he
dominated Thessany - he was power incarnate.

 
          
How
it would delight Thessany to upset her father’s wedding! She would be jealous
of the new bride: the woman whom Alex happened to adore, as had easily become
evident to his mistress in spite of his dissem- blings. By humiliating Alex,
Thessany struck out at Deborah (at least in the equation of her own emotions).

 
          
In
the midst of her capers Thessany had, however, collided with a deeper, bloodier
plot connected with
tekhne
and with
power politics . . .

 
          
Thessany
clasped her hands. ‘Kinma, Tuku, Aran- unna, Irkingu, Lugaldurmah! Hear us,
bless us, tell us!’

 
          
Marduk
shifted his phantom weight from one foot to the other. He flexed his arms, as
though gathering the world in and crushing it against himself.

 
          
‘I
will wed ten days from now. The city will be renewed.’ His voice - a deep if
hollow baritone - came from some way behind him. ‘You, my earthly daughter
Thessany, will wed Muzi, son of Gibil, one week afterwards; and dwell in this
house with your husband. He is of good stock. Vigorous! You shall bear a son
who will be reared in my temple to inherit the mantle of Marduk when I die.’

 
          
Even
in the pearly backwash of light from her father’s image, Alex saw Thessany
blanch with shock and anger.

 
          
She
stood up to face Marduk.

 
          
‘Sir,’
she said - and all the servants hid their heads - ‘while it amuses me to be wed
so soon after my father’s annual bout of concupiscence with beauty, am I
suddenly to be a breeding cow? And am I not to be allowed the stall of my own
choice, to dwell in with my new bull? And is my first-born boy - if any - to be
taken away from me? Just as I was once taken away from my own mother!’

 
          
‘Your
mother was unsuitable,’ said Marduk. ‘She drank, she took drugs.’

 
          
‘Living
with you, Great Lord of the World, who would blame her?’

 
          
‘Silence!
She stunted your growth. Great was my love for you. So I rescued you.’

 
          
‘Kidnapped
me! Brought me somewhere without laws!’

 
          
‘I
am the law, by and large. Your early memories mislead you. They are fantasies;
concoctions. Your mother was almost a mad criminal.’

 
          
‘Why
then, so am I! Almost! Being her offspring.’

 
          
‘And
mine too. Mine is the strength in you, hers the weakness.’

 
          
‘I
certainly inherited your beauty, sir.’

 
          
‘You
know what you inherited. You have brains. Muzi, son of Gibil, has body, comely
and muscular. Do not pretend that the arrangement will not suit you. I know
you. And these arrangements are necessary!

           
‘Are they? What a shame that all
your wives have been barren, except for one, my mother! One might almost
suppose you impotent through guilt, Great Lord. Or have your wives given birth
in secret to useless daughters?’ Thessany slapped her narrow hips derisively.
‘I will die in childbirth, producing a dead daughter.’

 
          
‘You
will produce a son. A Greek physician from the palace will ensure this, thanks
to a cunning elixir. When your time approaches he will deliver you,
unconscious, of your son directly through your belly without danger to the
child; or you. As Lugaldurmah, navel of the world - by which title you invoked
me - I assure you of that.’

 
          
Thessany’s
mood seemed to change. She sank back down on to her knees.

 
          
‘Great
Marduk, how could I disobey? It shall be exactly as you command. I shall even
prepare a delightful present for your newest bride. I love you, Marduk. I
honour and obey you. Needless to say.’

 
          
‘Good.
Let Praxis notify Lord Gibil.’ Marduk’s image vanished, plunging the chapel
into darkness. By the time eyes adjusted to the dim lamplight, the black
curtain was back in place.

 
          
Thessany
strode from the chamber. Alex jumped up and pursued her. He had begun to feel a
great pity for her welling up in him. He overtook her in the dusken courtyard,
constellations of diamonds already glinting overhead.

 
          
She
swung round. ‘How dare you follow me! I will have you whipped.’

 
          
‘No,
please listen, I beg you! I
understand
.’

 
          
‘Understand
me? How little you understand! Each lash will make your poverty of wisdom
plainly visible.’

           
‘I understand the political plot. I
know why Moriel was murdered - and what’s happening in the House of Judgement!’

 
          
She
hesitated. ‘Go on.’

 
          
‘Why
are we all here, but to discover the best way to survive? How this city shall
survive. How a culture - how history itself - shall survive. Different
civilizations have tried different ways; and all have failed in the end, and
the dust has covered them because they didn’t understand the processes, they
weren’t sufficiently alert. The Egyptians had the will and the energy. They
poured so much wealth and work into the future. Their dynasties endured the
longest. But it was a future
after death
which obsessed them. So in the end they crumbled too.’

 
          
‘I’m
not interested in a lecture. Get to the point. Failing which, you will be
whipped repeatedly day after day.’

 
          
Alex
swallowed. ‘Marduk and some of his men have decided that a hereditary god is
the key to survival. A god with a human blood line. A son of Marduk himself and
his year-wife would only become a priest. The boy wouldn’t inherit the mantle.
But a grandson from his family
can
.’

 
          
‘So
my father wants to perpetuate his power even after he’s dead?’

 
          
‘Yes,
but that isn’t the whole of it - though the proposed increase in Marduk’s power
is causing violent, covert opposition. A hereditary supreme god, plus mundane
military administration: that’s the new formula. A king and a court - plus a
boss god, descending son to grandson in a single family line. At the moment the
various gods - the different interest groups - are fairly well balanced. Each
god takes it in turn to present a woman to Marduk as his wife. Even so, I don’t
think Marduk’s aiming to be a monotheist god - the way Pharaoh Akhenaten tried
to fix the system.’

           
‘The other gods will still figure,
but rather less so?’

 
          
‘They
must. See how Shazar, priest of Sin, supports your father.’

 
          
‘Does
he?’

 
          
‘He
must. I’ll tell you why. Each year-bride is chosen by a rival god who has all
the time in the world to train her and make her loyal to him, rather than to
Marduk. Afterwards she goes to the House of Judgement - where fates are
decided, I suppose. Where the city’s horoscope is plotted; where plan and
reality are compared, where formula and experiment are matched - that’s my
guess. Where she’s dead to the world, but can still push buttons. Perhaps!

 
          
‘Why
should Shazar choose Deborah as this year’s bride? Apart from her
attractiveness! Why her, rather than someone he had trained and prepared for
ages? In this, the first year of Marduk’s enhancement?

 
          
‘The
answer has to be that she was a new arrival. An innocent - in a sense! Shazar
didn’t trust other possible candidates. They might have been subverted by magi
hostile to the plan, who knew in advance that this year it was the turn of the
temple of Sin. Shazar suspected this; Shazar feared it. So he must be
cooperating with Marduk.’

 
          
‘Who
else is co-operating in this amazing intrigue?’ she asked.

 
          
‘Offhand,
I’d say: mundane finance - in the person of Lord Gibil. And how about the
palace futurologist? One day the ever-dying king will be replaced - not by his
bloodline, but by a copy of himself. The secular ruler dies and dies, but the
god is reborn and reborn. That’s the pattern.

 
          
‘I
think the palace must support your father - at least in a qualified, heuristic
way, for the sake of experiment - because Aristander seemed to have made
projections that fitted in with . . . yes, I see it now! . . . with what your
father’s trying to do. The palace was giving him the nod; but the hint of a
deep conspiracy was news to Aristander. So the magi who oppose the plan haven’t
approached the palace.’

 
          
Thessany
stared at Alex tensely as he rushed on, intoxicated. ‘Who does support those
magi? Some other temple? Foreigners on Babel? Or even foreigners from outside?
Thessany, Mistress, I must know what was in the scroll - which was smuggled in
from outside!’

 
          
Thessany
caught hold of Alex, nearly dragging him off his feet. ‘
What
,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘do you know of the palace?
How
do you know about Aristander?’

 
          
The
other servants had bunched in the chapel doorway. They were keeping clear of
trouble, and perhaps striving to eavesdrop.

 
          
‘How
do you know?’ Her lips hardly moved; the words were growled softly in her
throat.

 
          
‘Um
. . . before I went to Babel I visited the Hanging Gardens. One thing led to
another. I met the king and Aristander. Aristander found out about the scroll,
and - ’

 
          
‘So
that’s
who the two fighters were, who
intervened! I thought they were constables of the babble parliament in plain
clothes. Instead they were men from the palace. Oh, damn it. I never thought
that
you
. . .’ She regarded Alex
with more admiration than anger.

 
          
‘Well,
we both got things wrong.
I
thought
Praxis was waiting for you, not for me. How did he time it so neatly?’

 
          
She
answered distractedly: ‘I had a beggar keeping an eye on the temple of Sin.
When Shazar’s magi took that Deborah woman off to
Babel
, my beggar raced back to report. I nipped
along there on impulse, spotted you ascending on your own. I guessed you’d
defaulted at the inn. Your language lessons wouldn’t start till the day after;
and pumping Babylonian into applicants always takes the same length of time.’

 
          
‘I
see. So Deborah was ahead of me. She must have taken the ascent as easily as we
did; or else she stopped for a long siesta.’

 
          
‘We?’
queried Thessany.

 
          
‘Gupta
and me. Gupta caught up with me while I was climbing.’

 
          
‘Do
you mean that Indian who was with you when Praxis and Anshar nabbed you? Praxis
said you had an Indian friend who wouldn’t lend you his worldly wealth.’ Her
eyes narrowed. ‘Who is he?’

 
          
‘Oh,
of course - you didn’t spot the two of us together in the parliament, did you?’

 
          
They
had begun to converse like fellow-conspirators. Thessany must have recollected
that she and Alex weren’t actually accomplices, even if their relationship had
nominally begun under that guise. She drew back a pace.