The Carnelian Cube

Twenty:

Finch climbed through the trap door and found himself in semi-darkness. His eyes gradually made out the roof and walls of a large but slovenly tent, smelling of camel, and a floor piled, high with disorderly bundles of short arrows. Another pile would be prepared clay tablets. He gathered up a small armful and stepped out, into the sunshine.

Around him rose a mountain-range of tents with the ramparts of the hilltop city of Samaria looming above, in the middle distance. The siege seemed a languid one; there appeared to be no fighting going on, and among the tents as though through some peaceful fair moved a varied crowd of booted Assyrian soldiers, robed Aramaens, Philistines in feathered head-dresses, with an occasional long-trousered Elamite.

The rush of new impressions seemed to have blunted Finch's sixth sense of orientation, but his nose and that retching odor of death carried him in the direction where the royal headquarters ought to be. He emerged from the maze of tents on a broad plaza and stood agaze; straight before him, in front of a very large and fancy tent, was a carefully stacked pyramid of human heads. He was near enough to make out that this was no movie set simulacrum, but the real thing.

"... a pleasure to Lamashtu," said a voice behind Finch's back in Assyro-Babylonian. "An honest bronze spearhead would never have been like that and sent me running to the smith."

By Phoebus Appollo, thought Finch, this was what Dr. Chase mean when he talked so easily about "spending" men on reconstruction.

"True," said another voice. (Finch noted with half his mind that he did not actually use a monosyllable, but the florid old-Eastern cognate, "You speak with a tongue of silver.") "True. In the days of the old Lord it was not so; he understood war well enough to know that you win cities with fighting and not by changing the color of your weapons."

But good God, this was horrible, this was carrying the re-enactment of his story to the verge of a mania ... Or was it? Hilprecht had said he was too humanitarian to be a good scientist, and there might be something in that. Had not he himself just been saying that nothing spent in true research was ever lost? If history were a science and not a mere process of romantic dreaming over documents, it must respond to the laws of science.

The first speaker was defending the Young Lord. "At least he keeps the Old Lord's general and other presence, Zilidu, the glory of Asshur."

And science, with its ultimate purpose of benefitting all humanity, could not afford to let minor humanities along the way stand in its path. Think of Walter Reed, Thera had said. Science must be ruthless as war.

"Yes, and makes him hear the prince of Kish, the ruler of Urartu, the door of Elam; playing diplomat to all the temperaments of the subject allies. The old Lord would have flayed them before Bel."

"Tck!" The conversation ceased abruptly, and Finch turned just in time to see the backs of two who had evidently recognized him.

"Hail, excellent Nintudunadin!" Finch turned to face a skirted Assyrian, wincing slightly with the realization that the name by which he had been addressed meant "The Goddess of Fertility has given," but in the same moment remembering that he was there in the strategic position of sukkall, or private secretary to King Shalmanesar.

"The Samaritan slave is to be admitted to the Presence. The Beloved of Asshur wills that the interview pass into the records."

"I hear and obey," said Finch in the formal phrase of acquiescence, with the name "Anak" striking some responsive chord in his memory, and the reflection dashing through his mind that this gilded courtier was scratching for fleas, which would probably mean a typhus infection on the project if it lasted long enough. He would have to do something about that.

A pair of muscular soldiers with gold rings in their ears gazing at vacuity as they leaned on their pikes were evidence that standing at attention had not yet been invented. Within was a largish tent room where an old man sat on the floor, howling discordantly as he plucked at the strings of an instrument. A pair of tent doors with the flaps caught back was behind him. Finch unerringly chose the right-hand one, and found himself in a kind of passage. A gawky, black-haired boy scrambled to his feet and bawled, "Nintudunadin comes!" and voices could be heard repeating it back into the depths.

He was led through another anteroom to what was evidently the throne apartment, with a dirty carpet on the floor and a whole crowd of dignitaries standing about, trying to impress each other with their own importance. An old man with firm lips over a goatish beard in the midst of the group would be Anak, the ambassador from besieged Samaria—a Damascene Syrian who had converted to Judaism, now that Finch remembered. He gave the old fellow the properly condescending nod just as a blast of trumpets, distinctly off key, announced the arrival of Shalmanuasharid, King of Assyria, Babylonia, Chaldea, Mitanni, Thogarma, Khatti, El'am, Damascus, and everything else within reach of his invincible armies.

There was a muffled thumping of palms on the carpet as all present flopped down to hands and knees.

"It is permitted to rise in the Presence," said the king, in a bored tone. Finch did so with a grunt, almost upsetting his tablets. He saw a man in the middle thirties, whose good forehead was more than half cancelled by the puffy eyes and a full, petulant mouth left visible by an inefficient and stringy beard. His cheeks had been elaborately made up, and he wore a towering head-dress that tinkled with white-gold bangles whenever he moved.

The king cradled his face in his hand and drew his eyebrows together somberly. "The Samaritan is permitted to make submission," he said.

Anak's mouth worked. "Oh, King, live forever. We of Samaria are weary of this profitless siege, which increases the King's days without increasing his glory. We would return to the light of the sun of Asshur."

"I am the judge of the increase of glory. Let a trumpet be blown in the second watch of the morning then, and the men of Samaria come forth without arms, bringing with them in chains the judges who have led the people in what you well call a profitless war."

Anak bowed to the floor. "O King, live forever. Let the King learn that sole maker of the war was King Hoshea, who now lies at the King's pleasure in his prisons. We would return to the King's mercy as allies and the bulwark of his power against the miserable Khita and the black lords of Egypt, as it was in the ordinance called Perpetual, given by the old King, your father."

For just a moment there was in the room a silence punctuated by indrawn breaths. Finch saw Shalmanesar's lips draw snarling back from his teeth, and then:

"By Nergal and Shamash, you men of Samaria are bolder with your tongues than with your weapons! Leam, worm, there is no ordinance perpetual but as I make it so. I am the king, and former kings are gone." He stretched out his right hand. "Hear the judgment of the king; I will establish a new order in this land, the like of which you have not seen. There shall be a king in Samaria; out of my household a king, but not to rule over the rebellious children that therein are. I will set a new people in this city, but the people that have rebelled against me will I transport to Elam and the Kassites. This, is my word."

Anak clenched his fists at his side and lifted back his head till his Adam's apple was visible. "Hear him, O Yaweh!" he cried, "who would scatter your people, that have offered freely to sit in his shadow on the terms granted by the King, his father. Or even more; to pay him twice the usual tribute."

Shalmanesar banged the arm of his chair with his fist. "It is said and who shall stay it? You shall take my mercy or drink of my justice; I will demolish your city with fire, and flay your chief men alive, and dishonor your boys and young maidens, and I will roast the captives alive in the flames. For this is a world too small to hold more than one will or one Lord. You have but one more word to say; do you accept that Lord?"

Anak failed to be visibly cowed by this ultimatum. He bowed, but said: "O King, live forever. Nineveh is great; she lifts up the bright sword and the glittering spear. But there may come a day when she sits alone, without children, against those that work destruction. Then woe to that city! Yet the Lord says: he who will repent and who doth good to my children, him will I abundantly pardon, and my angels and my people—"

"Cease!" cried Shalmanesar, but the old man's eyes had taken on a glazed, ecstatic look, as he was stretching out one hand, and he went on:

"—shall stand beside him in the day of the—"

"Impale him!" roared the king.

Someone in the crowd of courtiers laughed, but broke it off midway as Shalmanesar glared in the direction of the sound. A pair of stalwart spearmen had seized Anak, muffling the flow of his voice with a blow that brought blood. Finch looked around from face to face* trying to tell himself this was drama and these were actors, who would presently meet behind the scenes for a cup of coffee; but there was no change in the faces around him, intently watching Shalmanesar. The king cocked his head a little on one side, so that the ornaments on his tiara tinkled, and from outside the tent somewhere there came a dreadful shriek of agony as his sentence was executed.

He shook his head a trifle gloomily and made a what-can-you-expect gesture. "Let the college of the priests of Nergel perform a purification," he said. "It may be that the old demon was casting a spell." He stood up. "I go to take counsel with the Queen Ishtaramat; Tudkhalijash the Hittite and the scribe Nintudunadin accompany me."

As Finch followed the king into the inner recesses of the great tent he could hear a buzz of conversation break out behind. The words were inaudible, but the tone was unmistakably one of criticism and he felt a pleasure that had nothing to do with the impersonal approach of a historian is supposed to give his subject, but simultaneously was moved to the ironic thought that the criticism was probably over some neglected detail of court ceremonial.

Ishtaramat the queen was old and enormously fat; a cascade of flesh propped up among cushions, handling a piece of dyed fabric that in the half light of the tent looked Minoan in design. She let it slip across her knees as the three men came in and smiled. "Will the incarnation of Shamash shed his light on my poor place and recount the augmentation of the domain of Asshur?"

Shalmanesar drew his brows together. "Who shall measure the folly of a fool?" he said. "I sent him to the impalement. Read, Nintudunadin, the words of the King."

Finch cleared his throat, and with some difficulty managed to read off the cuneiform notes on his tablet. It occurred to him that he would not particularly care to be the recipient of the nasty little smile playing around the Queen's lips. When he had finished, she said: "The General Zilidu has conquered the Egyptians in battle. He brings captives to the altar of Asshur."

"Arr-gh!" the King snarled. "Yes, captives from an enemy who stands before them in the field and blows the trumpet, saying, 'We will strive against Asshur.' While I must deal with serpents of the rocks, whose spears are their tongues."

"The King is Lord, and who shall stand against his voice? The General Zilidu could not win victories over the Egyptians if he were conducting the siege and you the expedition."

Shalmanesar's fingers drummed on the arm of his X-shaped chair. "This is an old tale and a bad tale," he said. "I am the King; shall I give my glory to another? Shall I sleep in a cave like the foxes while my slave is among the tents of the King, hearing the singers? Yes, and saying to this one, 'The King has departed,' and to that one, 'Come, let us make a new King.' "

The old Queen gave a little chuckling laugh. "My Lord, the old King, held that the pleasures of battle were above those of the camp as the sun is above the earth; and this is a strong and a warlike people, that desire a king even in their own likeness."

"The Old King! The Old King! Can I do nothing without hearing that word thrown at me? The Old King left me with an empire, yes, his to give but mine to hold and shall the same weapon both cut and grip? There must be a new order in this land, yes so that we are one people."

"The incarnation of Shamash is angry; yet it is against himself that his anger rises, since his new order asks not the impalement of the Samaritan, but his acceptance as an equal ally ... The Old King would have impaled him unheard—and sent Zilidu to follow."

Shalmanesar's lips drew back from his teeth, he leaped from the chair as though to strangle the queen, with hands outstretched, then drew back as she did not stir and began to pace the carpet. "Enough!" he cried. "Hear the judgment of the King, write it on the tablets: Who so shall mention the Old King or his deeds against me as long as the sun shall rise, shall have his legs cut off and be burned with fire. This is my word ... Tudkhalijash, summon the flute-players and the dancing boys, and let wine be brought to my own place. I am tired of state." He turned toward the door.

As they went through it, Finch heard Ishtaramat's low giggle and her final words:

"You will not so easily prevent the army from mentioning General Zilidu, Lord."