The Gods Look Down Read online

  ‘He must have genuinely needed it.’ The Director adjusted his bifocals and peered closely at the chart. ‘I think we should pursue this, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure.’

  The light from the angled window gave Queghan’s eyes a peculiar kind of blank luminosity, like those seen in colour photographs taken by flashlight. They were in marked contrast to the pale severity of his face, the thin high ridge of his nose and long narrow jaw. A small artery beat in his neck. ‘The impressions are confused,’ he said after a moment. ‘And it’s knowing where to start.’

  ‘That’s always a problem.’ Karve’s tone was light, almost casual, though it concealed a deeper uncertainty that had yet to be resolved. They were conversing in a kind of code. ‘It’s your decision, Chris. You’re the one who takes the risks.’ This was nearer the core of what they were actually talking about, on the edge of the truth.

  Queghan said, ‘The trouble with being a Myth Technologist is that you get the nasty feeling you’re stuck fast in other people’s dreams and fantasies and there’s no escape. It isn’t pleasant.’

  Karve nodded sympathetically though he wasn’t really listening. He said, ‘Have you thought of processing the text cyberthetically? Why not start with the description of the machine, or whatever it is? You never know, Cyb might come up with a blinding revelation.’

  ‘A workshop manual with a piece-by-piece breakdown of assembly,’ Queghan smiled. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You know something, Johann, that’s not a bad idea.’

  ‘Do you have the text?’

  ‘I have the description.’

  ‘There’s our starting point.’ Karve smoothed the chart with his veined hands. ‘If we can discover what its purpose is then maybe we’ll have some idea of what it was doing there – and who put it on Old Earth in the first place.’

  ‘You mean which of the two Saviours,’ Queghan said sardonically.

  Karve frowned at him. ‘I’m not happy with that interpretation.’

  ‘No more than I am.’

  ‘Dagon ben Shem Tov doesn’t have one Saviour and we’ve got two.’

  ‘I suppose it’s foolish to speculate that we might be talking about another planetary system? I mean, could it not be Old Earth?’

  ‘There are too many points of similarity,’ Karve said firmly. He bethought himself. ‘Although it has been known for two completely separate cultures to have an identical religious mythology – sun-worshippers, for instance. They tend to have the same rituals, the same sacrifices, the same taboos; the only difference is in the terminology. But against that we know that the texts Dr Dagon has been deciphering originated on Old Earth.’ He paused, sniffed, and cleared his throat. ‘I suppose we do know that. Don’t we?’

  The Director and the mythographer looked at one another.

  ‘We have to assume certain criteria even if the evidence isn’t one hundred per cent conclusive,’ Queghan said. ‘Otherwise on what do we base our hypotheses?’

  Karve sighed and shook his head. ‘It’s a vast time-scale, Chris. According to this it’s over two thousand years back from the 13th century, which would put it around 1000 BC. You’ve got from then till the birth of Christ – one thousand years – to cover in a mytho-logical survey. You could spend a lifetime and not come within fifty years of it.’

  ‘Several lifetimes. So we’re going to have to be pretty sure of the precise period we’re aiming for.’

  Karve clasped his hands together. ‘We have to find a way,’ he said slowly, ‘of pinpointing the exact spatio-temporal co-ordinate. And I don’t know how we’re going to do it.’

  They were silent for a while. This was a major problem.

  Queghan said jocosely, ‘I’ll have to turn religious and start reading the Bible. Maybe there’s a clue there somewhere.’

  ‘We have it in Archives, all nineteen versions.’

  ‘Which do you recommend?’

  ‘The King James. It’s one of the oldest but at least the style doesn’t insult your intelligence.’

  ‘Is it historically accurate?’

  ‘No,’ said Karve, ‘but that doesn’t matter. It’s just about the finest mytho-logical treatise ever written. Seriously, Chris, you could start looking for an injection point in worse places. Spend some time in Archives and see what you can dig out—’ he stopped and shook his head irritably and mumbled to himself.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘My brain’s starting to atrophy.’ The Director spread his hands and said in a quiet urgent voice, ‘What was it I said about Angel?’

  Queghan tried to recall. ‘That he was the central symbol representing Biblical history and the genetic process. Have you thought of something?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it could be, yes it could.’

  ‘What could?’ Queghan said with exasperation.

  ‘Angel could be more of a mytho-logical figure than we suspected, the abortive prototype of a new species. If he was the result of cytoplasmic mutation …’

  The mythographer waited. Karve’s voice gathered pace and urgency:

  ‘Supposing Angel was an attempt to genetically manufacture a Saviour.’ He raised his head and the bifocals gleamed like rims of fire. ‘Only the experiment failed and produced a mutant instead.’

  Part Two

  ‘But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof. And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, the Ark of God shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god.’

  I Samuel 5: 6

  8

  The Ark of God

  The temple was built of lava-rock. The city surrounding it was like a maze of pink stone, flat-roofed and close to the desert floor as if no one building had the temerity to rise up off its knees and stand in the presence of the temple. Narrow dusty streets and rutted alleyways ran like crooked rivers and disjointed streams through the city, adjoining quiet arched courtyards, which were the backwaters, and linking fast-flowing main thoroughfares, feeding them like tributaries. The city swam with life: some seventy thousand people living and working here, bartering and marrying, tilling the land and raising children, worshipping in the temple and eventually going to meet their Maker.

  For many years the city of Shiloh had enjoyed peace and prosperity. The spring which bubbled up from the lava-rock had been channelled and led to cool stone tanks below ground, saved and not squandered, and from there to the fields where it fed crops of maize and corn and small groves of olive trees. The city was self-sufficient in the basic necessities of life, and anything it lacked (timber was in short supply, as were spices, woven cloth and fresh camel meat) it could exchange for grain with the traders who came from the north: hard-eyed men with weatherbeaten faces who spoke in a guttural mixture of dialects, drove hard bargains, got drunk on local wine and then rode off into the wilderness.

  So the Tribe had found a place and made a home for itself; the centre and high point of their lives, as it was the centre and high point of the city, was the temple, and in the temple resided their most precious and holy relic: the Ark of God. It was rarely seen by the people of Shiloh, kept within the silent inner chamber and guarded day and night by priests who were appointed by the High Priest, Eli, who came of direct descent through fourteen generations from Kish, First of the Prophets. At this time Eli was ninety-eight years old and he was almost blind, and while the people loved and respected him and sought his counsel in all matters his longevity was the cause of bitterness and dissent amongst those of his own family, principally his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas.

  They were jealous men, impatient men, envious of their father’s position and authority, and anxious for the day when he would die and one of them would become High Priest in his place. This was a further cause of unease and bad feeling because it was not yet decided which of his two sons Eli would choose to succeed him. By ancient t
radition and the law of the Tribe it should have been the elder, Hophni, but the final decision rested with the High Priest and he had not yet pronounced which was to be chosen. Eli despaired of them, and since his wife had been dead twenty years or more he had no one close to him in whom he could confide.

  Several young men – and even very young boys – attended to his ministry, did charitable work for the poor of the city and held in sacred trust their duty to protect the Ark of God from prying eyes. No one was permitted to approach it unless in the company of the High Priest, not even his sons, who chafed at this restriction and called him a fool behind his back. Of the young men who administered Eli’s affairs, Uzza was the most favoured. He was attentive and considerate, having genuine affection for the ageing High Priest, who came more and more to rely on him. Now that his eyes were dim he had to be led everywhere and no longer was able to read the Scriptures of Kish to the people – although he knew by heart long passages which told the story of how the Ark had been sent from heaven to protect the people from plague and famine and to deliver them from their enemies. The tales of its awesome power were legendary.

  Phinehas, the younger son, often pestered his father for a demonstration of this power, which he privately believed to be nothing more than a fable; he said that it was unreasonable to expect the Tribe to believe in the sacredness of the Ark when the only evidence of its power resided in a bundle of decaying scrolls that no one took the trouble to read any more.

  Eli answered him in this way: ‘You mean that you do not believe, Phinehas. It is you whose faith is lacking, not the people’s. I know that the Ark was sent from on high and that its power has served us since the days of our forefathers. You will have to take my word not as your father but as the High Priest.’

  ‘But even you have to take it on trust,’ Phinehas protested. He glanced at his brother and raised his eyes to the ceiling in a show of insolent frustration, knowing that Eli was unable to see his expression. He sighed and said, ‘We’re told that the Ark has this so-called power, we’re instructed from birth to believe in it, but we’re never shown anything. It could be an old wives’ tale for all anybody knows.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Hophni said stolidly, it’s a fact.’ He was six years older than his brother, a dour unprepossessing man lacking intellect and imagination. Phinehas made fun of him and his plodding ways, though out of his hearing.

  ‘You are both faithless,’ Eli said, more in sadness than in anger. His eyes were curdled like sour milk, only able to perceive the difference betweeen light and dark and a few vague indiscriminate shapes, seen dimly like monsters in a fog.

  ‘Uzza has enough faith for both of us,’ Phinehas snickered, pulling a face at the young man who stood by Eli’s chair, waiting to serve him. ‘He even believes that the Ark fed us in the wilderness, making food from stones and’ – he threw up his hands in a flippant gesture – ‘thin air.’

  ‘I do believe it,’ Uzza said gravely. ‘The evidence is here all around us: the city, the people, the temple—’

  ‘And the sacred Ark,’ Phinehas scoffed.

  ‘Do not make a mockery of it,’ Eli said. He raised his milky eyes and looked in the direction of Phinehas’s voice. ‘Unbelief will be your downfall, my son. “He that despises the works of the Lord shall perish”,’ he quoted from the Scriptures.

  Phinehas wrinkled up his nose and blew out his cheeks in an exaggerated parody of derision and then winked at his brother in silent conspiracy. He knew that Uzza would say nothing: he never did, no doubt out of a sense of personal integrity, which branded him a fool in Phinehas’s eyes.

  Hophni said woodenly, ‘Did the Ark plant crops? Did it harvest them so that we could eat? How did it find water in the desert?’

  ‘It is not meant for us to know these things,’ said his father. We don’t possess the wisdom to understand the ways of God. But by believing in Him we have received his bountiful mercy and protection through many generations. Uzza is right: the evidence that these things came to pass is all around us if we have eyes to see.’

  ‘I have eyes,’ Phinehas said glibly. ‘But have you?’ A smirk that was more of a grimace hovered on one side of his face.

  ‘The Prophet Kish,’ Hophni said, flexing his broad shoulders. ‘We hear every day of his, prophecies but nothing ever comes of them. Nobody appears, no miracles happen, no Saviour comes. Are we supposed to wait forever?’

  ‘The Saviour will not come until His time,’ Uzza said quietly. ‘If you bothered to read the Scriptures you’d know that.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me,’ Hophni said, becoming red in the face. ‘I’ve read the Scriptures. They say things will happen but they never do.’ He smacked his meaty palms together. ‘Why do we need a Saviour anyway? What is He supposed to save us from?’ He looked at his brother.

  The High Priest gazed blindly in front of him. ‘From ourselves if need be. He is the true light who will lead us along the path of righteousness. All men are weak, all men have sinned; it is only through our belief in His Divine Grace that we will find salvation.’

  Phinehas made a grotesque face again, this time in a fit of sulky ill temper, like a childish tantrum. ‘Yes of course, father,’ he said sweetly, his words at odds with his contorted expression. ‘Anything you say, father.’

  Eli held out his right hand and at this signal Uzza stepped forward and helped him rise. ‘I must go into the silent inner chamber. An old man has so little time left to pray. Lead me forward, Uzza.’

  ‘Pray for us, father,’ Phinehas said.

  ‘I will do that, my son.’

  They went out, the High Priest leaning on the arm of the young man and staring sightlessly ahead.

  ‘I wish he’d hurry up and die.’ Hophni folded his arms and grasped his biceps, digging his thumbs into the hard muscular swellings.

  ‘That will still leave you and me, dear brother,’ said Phinehas with a charming smile. ‘Supposing he drops down dead without having named his successor? Are we to fight one another for the privilege?’

  ‘I am the eldest,’ Hophni said. It was flat and without emotion, a statement of fact.

  ‘The High Priest must choose. That is the law.’

  ‘We shall see.’

  ‘We shall indeed see.’

  ‘He will choose me.’

  ‘In a blue moon,’ said Phinehas, and threw up his hands. ‘What’s the point in squabbling about it? He won’t die, he’ll hang on till he’s 150. He’s tough as an old goat and just as stubborn.’

  ‘I could throttle him with my bare hands.’

  ‘Well done. Good thinking. What a brilliant mind you have. Then we’d be cast out and left to shrivel in the desert like camel dung. A few bleached bones and a couple of empty skulls.’

  Hophni lifted his leg and farted and wafted the odour away with his heavy blunt hands. ‘I’m not prepared to wait forever,’ he snarled.

  ‘Well now, dear brother,’ Phinehas said, stepping up to the High Priest’s chair and sitting down, wrapping the cloak around his legs. ‘There are others who would like to see him dispatched to his Maker – for a price.’

  Hophni frowned stupidly. ‘Others?’ he said. ‘Here in the city? The people of Shiloh?’

  ‘Not the people of Shiloh.’ Phinehas almost groaned with the tedium of having to explain everything at the level a child of ten would understand. ‘The people of Shiloh would sooner gaze into the sun all day than harm a hair on his head.’ He leaned forward and his voice became soft and low. ‘There’s a tribe nine days’ journey from here, to the south, across the desert plateau, who dwell in a city called Ashdod.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said his brother. ‘Who would have known.’

  ‘Don’t mock me,’ Hophni warned him. ‘I’m just in the mood to wring a neck or two.’ He swung his heavy arms to and fro.

  ‘Listen. Shut up and listen. In the temple at Ashdod there is a god, worshipped by the people of that tribe. He and his people will be
the instrument of our release from this tiresome burden: they too desire to number the days of our beloved father, the High Priest Eli.’

  ‘Why? For what reason?’

  ‘I told you – for a price.’

  Hophni was suspicious. ‘What price? What do they want?’

  ‘They want the Ark,’ Phinehas said, beaming all over his face. ‘They want that pile of useless old junk in the silent inner chamber. Now of course Eli will never agree to it and so they will have to kill him to get it. Do you see how simple it is, how neat? And we’ll be rid of him!’

  ‘That’s all?’ Hophni said. He didn’t seem entirely convinced. ‘What do they want it for? What use is it to them?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know. As the Dagonites – ask Dagon himself. Anyway, what does it matter? They will come to take it, Eli and the people will resist, he’ll be killed along with a few thousand others and that will leave only you and me. Dear brother.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Hophni said, his brows drawn together. ‘How do you know this?’

  Phinehas was grinning. ‘I know because I’ve spoken with the emissary of Dagon. He’s in the city at this moment. He sought me out.’

  ‘He sought you out? The son of the High Priest? Why should he do that?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Phinehas said impishly, ‘because I sent for him.’ He looked at Hophni’s face for a moment and sighed and shook his head. ‘You make everything such hard work, dear brother. Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you?’

  ‘You sent for him,’ Hophni said slowly. He was nodding. ‘Yes, I understand that.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Phinehas. ‘This is going to take hours.’

  ‘Then – dear brother – it is going to take hours,’ Hophni said, looking at him with a fixed and intense expression which was not to be avoided.

  *

  The emissary of the Dagonites appeared in the temple on the following day.

  Phinehas had gone to his father saying that an important visitor had arrived, seeking private audience with the High Priest, and Eli, as ever courteous to strangers and conscious of his responsibility, had agreed to meet him. From the beginning he knew there was something odd about the man from the tone and pitch of his voice (it was muffled and at the same time hollow as if he were speaking into a copper vessel) but he couldn’t guess the extent of the emissary’s strange appearance until Uzza described it to him.