Watson, Ian - Novel 16 by Whores of Babylon (v1.1) Page A

to find it less
crowded than the precincts.
                 It
did prove to be; though only by comparison and due to the sizable acreage of
the forecourt, where numerous vendors were peddling incense and oil and
bleating lambs, bowls of wine, rissoles, and amulets to the steady trickle of
citizens who made their way through one or other of several gates in the walls
surrounding the court. These walls, enamelled blue and yellow, were high,
though distance eventually dwarfed them. Those were smooth, firm walls with no
loose bricks, naked to public view.
                 The
temple itself looked complicated, with potential nooks and crannies. Broad
ramps sloped steeply upward, zigzagging and bisecting one another, circuiting
the tower-tipped tiers of the dun-coloured edifice which was the colour of
dried blood. Up these ramps climbed worshippers, while others descended. Could
all these people really be intent on prayer? To a god of war? Or did they wish
only to exercise themselves and admire the view from the summit?
                 Impelled
by curiosity, Alex accosted one departing worshipper, bearded and turbaned,
swinging an ornate ivory-handled walking stick.
                 ‘Excuse
me, Sir. Fm a visitor. Do you really worship the god of war here?’ (Or is it
only to ‘fix your mind’ for the day?)
                The man flushed angrily. ‘Fool!’ he
snarled, and shoved Alex aside.
                 Another,
older man heard this exchange. He approached, smiling in wry apology, and stood
twiddling his own bull-headed, bronze-bound stick.
                 ‘Perhaps,
Greek, it is purer to worship gods who don’t exist?’ he offered cryptically.
‘Perhaps worshipping them causes them to exist? On the other hand, where else can you innocently worship war in
these late days? Maybe these worshippers are simply searching for their own
lost innocence - the innocence of the beast, which does not ask whether the sun
will rise tomorrow. Or even whether tomorrow will exist.’
                 ‘Yes?
Go on.’
                 The
old man had a time-lined, dusty face, as though dirt had entered the many
cracks and ingrained itself. Alex felt that he was looking at an aged version
of himself.
                 Fondling
the bronze bull in his hand, the man said, ‘The beast knows nothing of
tomorrow. Yesterday is already erased. All is now, the present, the moment. The
moment repeats itself for ever.Thus the beast and his kind endure for a million
years. In place of history they possess instinct. But perhaps, Greek, the gods
of war destroy empires - with all their records and monuments — every so often,
otherwise the weight of memory would cripple us beneath its burden? We wouldn’t
have the energy for new enterprises; which are really the same old enterprises,
forgotten then rekindled.’
                 What
was Alex to make of this? Was the old man a philosopher, a fantasist, a fool?
Or a futurologist? Was he saying that the world, and civilization, had to be
destroyed — so that the world could continue? That America must fall into decay so that the empire of Amazonia or Ashanti could arise? Surely he was forgetting about
all the nuclear missiles poised in their silos, cradled in their submarines?
Was it possible that society could simply collapse, and the missiles remain
where they were, rusting, unfireable?
                 Alex
didn’t dare phrase such questions here, only a few hundred paces from Marduk’s
temple.
                 The
old man executed a little skip around his walking stick.
                 ‘And
perhaps, Greek,’ he said, ‘Marduk has nothing to do with war. Don’t assume that
you’re wise, merely because you’re a foreigner. What happens elsewhere is
mirrored here. What happens here is mirrored elsewhere. You’re here to
discover Babylon . Babylon isn’t here to discover