To the Land of the Living (35 page)

Ur-Namhani inclined his head curtly in assent.

“Give him anything from this room that he wants,” said Gilgamesh.

The chamberlain of the sash of Enlil gasped.
“Anything?”

“Let him have his fill.”

The eyes of the chamberlain of the sash of Enlil bulged alarmingly. “But – majesty – do I understand you correctly? – I ask you to consider –” Ur-Namhani took a deep breath. “What if he asks for it all?”

“Then he will have a very slow journey of it back to Brasil, with only his five cars to carry this much and his other baggage as well.”

“Majesty – majesty –”

Gilgamesh smiled. “I doubt somehow that even Simon will have the gall to ask for everything. But let him have whatever he wants. Probably only the jewels will interest him, I think. He can have the gold, too, if that catches his fancy. We have no need for this stuff here.”

“These are sacred things, majesty! This is the treasure of Enlil!”

“Enlil is the father of us all,” said Gilgamesh. “If he can create the world and the Afterworld as well, he can surely create himself another six storehouses just as rich as this one. These things do nobody any good locked away down here. Simon, at least, loves them, and will bedeck his palace with them, or perhaps his entire city. It makes no difference to me. Give him his fill, Ur-Namhani. Do you hear? Give him his fill.”

“The vizier Herod is here, majesty,” the major-domo said.

Gilgamesh sighed. “Let him enter.”

Herod came in, carrying an immense print-out, which he unrolled in front of the throne as though it were some precious scroll of far Cathay. Gilgamesh regarded it sourly.

“Well? More data, Herod?” He made
data
sound like an obscenity of obscenities.

“The civil service roster,” Herod said. “Arranged by departments and order of seniority.”

“Seniority? Seniority?”

“It’s very important here, you know. They’ve got strong unions and a string of tough labor codes longer than your –well, your arm. Do you want me to go over this with you now, or should we save it for some other time?”

“Some other time, I think,” said Gilgamesh. Then he shook his head. “No. No. Enlil’s eyes, let’s see it now!” And with as much patience as he could muster he set to work.

Gilgamesh found it surprising, though perhaps he should not have, that ruling over Uruk was so complex and time-consuming a job. There were rituals to perform, appointments to confirm, knotty decisions to make, building projects to initiate and oversee, ambassadors to greet, even the occasional insurrection to quell – for the Afterworld was an
untidy place and self-appointed kings were as common as lizards, popping up constantly to lay claim to the nearest throne. His royal presence was required, too, at theatrical events and games, most particularly the bullfights that now became a regular Sunday feature, under Picasso’s enthusiastic direction, of life in Uruk. Gilgamesh no longer took part in the
corrida
himself – the occasional matador did get killed, and Gilgamesh, now that he had knowledge of his own vulnerability, felt that it would be shirking his sacred kingly duties to run the risk of being sent onward in so frivolous a way. But he attended nearly every one. Enkidu was always the main attraction, dealing with two or sometimes three bulls before the afternoon was out.

The kingship, Gilgamesh thought, certainly hadn’t been nearly this much work in the ancient days of Sumer the Land, nor, he suspected, in the time of his first reign in Afterworld-Uruk; but he was willing to believe that he was deceiving himself in that. He knew all too well, now, how little he could trust his memory of these matters.

But even if there was more now to do than ever there had been before, he did not seriously begrudge it. He had had enough of the solitary wandering life for a long while; and there was high satisfaction in doing a king’s job and doing it well. It was plain to see that this Uruk had been misruled under Dumuzi just as the first Uruk had been in the other world, and Gilgamesh took fierce pleasure once more in undoing Dumuzi’s senseless self-serving decrees and in repairing that which Dumuzi had allowed to fall into decay.

He named his old Ice-Hunter friend Vy-otin his chief minister. Herod was another useful source of advice. He had preferred to remain behind in Uruk with Gilgamesh when Simon Magus, glutted with the jewels of Uruk’s royal treasury, returned to Brasil. Ninsun too, prudent and loving, was a valuable counsellor. There was always Enkidu for diversion and close companionship and earthy, heartfelt wisdom. And after he had been in office some time Gilgamesh acquired another adviser, a strange and unexpected one, none other than the Hairy Man out of deepest prehistoric antiquity who had been Simon’s chief mage in Brasil.

He arrived without warning, appearing on foot outside Uruk one day during a season of hard black weather, of
apocalyptic bellowing storms and torrential floods. Gilgamesh was toiling along the walls of the city when he came, struggling under a merciless iron sky to prop sandbags against the ramparts of baked brick, which were threatened with undermining in half a dozen places. Just about anyone who could carry a load was out there working that day, with the king himself setting the example. Mocking demon-creatures with long scaly yellow necks and bright green wings wheeled and screeched overhead. In the upper sky were flickering lightnings, bloody streamers, fiery comets. The rain was inexorable, an ocean falling upon the city in strands thick as cables. The king was standing thigh-deep in mud, or nearly, catching the sandbags that Enkidu threw him from above and propping them with furious haste against the base of the wall, when a strangely familiar harsh voice came to him out of the storm, speaking in thick frost-edged phrases that were all but impossible to comprehend.

“What?” Gilgamesh roared. “Who’s there? What’d you say?”

“That perhaps this is the great Flood, of which you make so much, returning to drown your land again,” said the other, speaking more slowly now and with an effort at precision.

Gilgamesh glanced behind him. By thundercrack and demon-light he saw the Hairy Man, short and stocky and bestial of face, as casual in the storm as though it were nothing but a gentle spring zephyr. He wore a Roman toga, white edged with crimson, through which his heavy reddish pelt was visible, made dense and matted by the rain. Beneath his massive brows his dark eyes gleamed with a strange primordial fire. This was a creature, Gilgamesh knew, who had lived in the world when the gods were young.

“The Flood, you say?” Gilgamesh grunted.

“The Flood, yes, that came after my time and before yours, or so you told me, King Gilgamesh. Coming again, to end this world and begin a newer one. Here. Let me assist you.” He strode forward into the flowing mud, and, picking up a sandbag that Enkidu had tossed from the rim of the wall to a point beyond the reach of Gilgamesh, pushed it carefully into place.

Gilgamesh stared. “Who are you?”

“Why, you knew me in Brasil.”

“Simon’s high wizard?”

“The same. Peace and gladness, king of Uruk.”

Far above them, Enkidu peered down, frowning. He called something that was lost in the howl of the wind, and tossed another sandbag, which strayed too far to the side. The Hairy Man reached forward to catch it and deflect it into its proper place, and beckoned for another. Gilgamesh eyed him. Well, he supposed, it probably was the same one as before. They all looked alike, the Hairy Men. No wonder none of them had any names. Like shaggy wraiths they wandered their own paths through the Afterworld, these mysterious creatures from the dawn of time, and one was so much like another that they might just as well all be the same one. But as Gilgamesh stared closely at the Hairy Man he decided that something about him seemed familiar, though he did not know what it could be. This must indeed be the one he had known before in Brasil, the one who had guided him through the diabolical streets of that city, the one who had led him to Calandola.

“And what are you doing here?” Gilgamesh asked.

“Simon sent me. I am a gift, to live at your court and be of service to you.”

“A
gift
, did you say?”

“To be your chief sorcerer. Simon thought you might need one.”

Gilgamesh felt a momentary stab of suspicion. Had Simon sent the mage as a spy, perhaps? No, no, he decided. That was too blatant, that was too obvious.

Enkidu yelled again, and another sandbag fell from above. This time Gilgamesh caught it and heaved it into its place.

The Hairy Man went on, “I am sent also as a reward to you for your generosity. Simon felt that he should do something for you in return for the jewels of Uruk, so great was his gratitude for the great treasures which you gave him. When last I saw him he was bathing in them: lying in an alabaster tub, and having the emeralds and rubies poured over him in a great cascade.”

“He is a man of simple pleasures,” said Gilgamesh drily. Thunder resounded again, sharp and fierce, like the crack of the last trump. It was a sound potent enough to bring forth monsters in the air, a swarm of things with many heads, and grasshopper wings, and the yellow eyes of toads. Perhaps the Hairy Man was right, that this was the Flood all over again, in which case he might be wiser hastening to build a new Ark
than wasting time striving to bolster this doomed wall. But no one had prophesied a Flood for the Afterworld, not ever. To the Hairy Man Gilgamesh called, “And are you serious? Do you think this is a new Deluge?”

The Hairy Man uttered a sound that seemed to be a laugh, and shook his heavy thick-necked head, and spoke furry words that were swept away by the wind. Gilgamesh hoped that what he had said was that he was only jesting, that this was no Flood, but only some new Afterworldish prank, a storm that before long would pass without destroying all that lay before it.

They worked on in silence, stolidly placing the sandbags. Hundreds were toiling nearby along this section of the wall, a host of able-bodied men and more than a few women also. The rain seemed to abate a little now. But still came the fierce awesome thundercracks, the showers of streaming lightning, the buzzing thrumming swarms of airborne monsters. The plain surrounding the city was a desert no longer, but now a shining sea. Far off it appeared that a great dazzling blue-white glacier floated in the sky, its jagged edges shining with an inner light, and on its flanks danced stags with human faces, bull-headed men, and strange and frightening behemoths of uncertain shape. The little man Picasso should see these things, Gilgamesh thought, and set them down in drawings. Picasso, though, was safe indoors just now: he did not have much love for this sort of stormy toil, he had said, and would not come out. Well, Picasso could call forth monsters enough from his own teeming brain, Gilgamesh told himself. He had no need to see these.

“If you are a true wizard,” said Gilgamesh to the Hairy Man, “don’t you know some way to bring a halt to this miserable downpour?”

“Wizards far greater than I have sent it, king. There are no spells that will halt it.”

“And will we all drown? Tell me, will we?”

“We will live to die another day, I think,” said the Hairy Man.

Indeed the rain subsided a few hours later, for which the Hairy Man took no credit, and the walls of the city were spared. When the sun returned Gilgamesh walked the rampart with
Enkidu and Vy-otin, looking out in wonder at the flooded plain, the tangle of great trees lying up-ended, the debris of scattered villages and drowned beasts that had washed up out of the lowlands. But Uruk itself was intact, if somewhat waterlogged. There was not to be a second Deluge this time. Perhaps it had been only some war of demons, far overhead, Gilgamesh thought, that had brought this devilish cataclysmic rain upon the city.

It pleased and surprised him that Simon had sent the Hairy Man. There was great wisdom in those ancient beings who had lived before mankind was, and their aid was something much to be prized. Surely Simon had had the short end of the transaction, giving up this age-old sorcerer, this worthy mage, in return for nothing but a few sacks of coloured stones. But it had been a truly kingly gesture, showing that there was more to Simon than mere debauchery and greed. Or maybe the wily old wine-soaked tyrant had not cared; maybe he saw his next death already looking him in the eye, and no longer was concerned with anything but to surround himself with the shining pretties he so deeply loved. Whatever the reason – and Gilgamesh doubted that there was anything sinister at the bottom of it – he was glad to have the strange being at his court.

Gilgamesh provided the Hairy Man with a suite of choice rooms in the royal palace, by a cloistered courtyard where he could sleep out of doors if he chose: creatures of his sort preferred no roofs over their heads by night. In the daily workings of the court Gilgamesh kept him close at hand, both for conjuring and wizardry and for plain consultation in matters of diplomacy and statecraft, for he was a very useful counsellor.

The pace of court life was unrelenting. Every day new envoys arrived from other principalities of the Afterworld, now that word was beginning to get around that the puissant hero Gilgamesh had come to power again in Uruk, and state receptions had to be held for them. They came stumbling in, often frayed and shaken by the random intricacies of their journeys across the vastness of the Afterworld, bearing gifts and praises, and other oily suasions. They all wanted the same thing: alliance with the Sumerian against some actual or potential enemy, or else Gilgamesh’s cooperation in some
elaborate and costly scheme designed to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors.

The stacks of ambassadorial accreditations grew like dunes driven before the wind. Gilgamesh shook his head in irritation over the unruly mounds of them heaped high in his throne chamber. “The Perfect Aryan Republic – the New Ottoman Sultanate – the Glorious Proletarian Kingdom – the Realm of Free Spirits – the Invincible Amazon Empire – the Grand Dionysian Realm – the Rolling Acres Country Club –” He looked up at Vy-otin. “Is that supposed to be a nation too? The Rolling Acres Country Club?”