“That must mean your friend was on the ark!”
“Yes, and you know her quite well. Did you ever read the name of Ham’s wife?”
Mara drew in a quick breath. “Naamah was on the ark?”
Morgan crossed her arms over her chest. “One and the same.”
Mara gazed at the tree and whistled. No wonder the statues seemed to be saluting! It was the descendant of the original tree of knowledge!
As Morgan approached the center of the room, she lifted her hands toward the ceiling, her voice echoing in the massive chamber. “The entire museum celebrates the wisdom of mankind and his pursuit of knowledge, so it’s fitting that the original source of that knowledge should grow here, the progeny of wisdom’s first blossom.” She stopped at the tree and caressed a red, pear-shaped fruit that dangled from a low branch. “As you explore all the wonders here, you, too, will enjoy the fruits of wisdom.”
Mara stopped at the statue of a tall, stately woman and caressed her smooth marble knee, a knee that seemed ready to bend at the sight of the tree, rooted in a circular planter that lay flush with the surrounding floor. Since the branches spread out ten feet in each direction, only a few paces separated the fruit from its marble-clad worshippers.
As Mara drew closer, the Ovulum in her pocket grew hot and stung her thigh. She halted. Was it angry? Giving a warning? She took three steps back. The egg cooled, but she didn’t want to pull it out. Morgan probably thought she had given it to Nimrod, and it was better if her mistress didn’t know where it was.
Morgan cocked her head to one side. “Is something wrong?”
Folding her hands behind her, Mara shifted back and forth on her feet. “I don’t know. I just felt something strange when I got near the tree.”
“Something strange?” Morgan’s eyes flashed red, but the rest of her face stayed calm. “Eating the fruit is the first step toward true wisdom. The strangeness will fade soon enough.” She held out her hand, her fingers beckoning Mara to come.
Mara took a step, and the egg heated up again, but not quite as hot this time. She halted and gazed at one of the statues. “I’m not hungry right now. Maybe tomorrow.”
A crooked smile spread across Morgan’s face. She folded her hands, and her tone became overly sweet. “If you don’t eat the fruit, my dear, you will forever stay an ignorant freak of nature.”
Mara bit her bottom lip. Tears crept into her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry. She had to change the subject, and fast. “How did the tower get here?”
Morgan drilled her with a piercing stare, but after a few seconds, she seemed willing to give up on the fruit issue, at least for the time being. “It must have come through a dimensional portal,” she said, pointing at the tall shaft of light outside the tower. “The only way they’re created is by a vortex of light energy, so I guessed that the dragons’ fire must have been swirling. Since the green portal faded and a blue one formed here, I think the path between the dimensions actually moved, shifting the lower portal to this room and the upper portal to the midst of the fire around the tower. My guess is that a lower portal’s color change indicates a positional change in its exit point up above.”
“How did you know that the tower sank?”
Morgan looked up at the ceiling. “Only the lowest section of the tower came through the portal, so with the foundation missing, what could the rest of the tower do but sink or fall?”
Mara followed Morgan’s line of sight and saw shelf upon shelf of scrolls, hundreds of them, even thousands. Dozens of wooden ladders rose almost to the domed ceiling, close enough to each other to allow access to every shelf. Quite a number of scrolls also lay on the floor in haphazard piles. Mara let out a contented sigh. “So can I start reading the scrolls right away?”
Morgan shook her head. “Your journey threw you off schedule. It’s time for your sleep cycle. When you wake up, we’ll decide how to split your working hours between your control room duties and your new studies here. Mardon will be too busy to return to our world for quite some time, so I will be your primary instructor.”
“But will Mardon want the scrolls back?” Mara asked. “If he has a lot of work to do, he’ll probably want them.”
“The fool is lucky he’s still alive, and if not for the quick transport of this piece of the tower, none of the scrolls would have survived anyway.” Morgan picked up one of the scrolls that had fallen to the floor and rolled it open. “Besides, the language would be gibberish to him. He wouldn’t understand a single word.”
“What?” Mara peeked around Morgan’s arm and read the first few lines, an introduction to the biography of a man she had never heard of. “I can read it. Why can’t they?”
Morgan rolled the scroll back up. “As soon as the new portal appeared, I went through it to see what created it. I came out in the middle of a dwindling ring of fire, apparently the center of the tower’s original location. The tower had already fallen, and the people were in total chaos, babbling incoherently to each other.” She laid the scroll in Mara’s hands. “It seems that people speak a variety of new tongues now, and they don’t understand normal speech, that is, the language of these scrolls. Since dragons were still attacking the city, I only stayed a few seconds. I came right back and hurried to the old portal, hoping you had found your way home. Fortunately, you used the pathway before it moved.” She swept away a pile of broken marble with her foot. “This disaster has caused a huge displacement in the barrier between our two dimensions. In fact, the portal’s shift from green to blue light tells me that it might not even lead to Shinar any longer. I haven’t figured out what changes we’ll experience, but it will be interesting to see how time passage here compares to the world above.”
Mara unrolled a few inches of the scroll. “First a flood and now a fire. Why does Elohim want to destroy everything?”
“There will be plenty of time for questions and answers. As you read the scrolls, I’ll be here to teach you. But for now, you must go to sleep.”
She hugged the scroll to her chest. “May I take just this one with me tonight?”
“I didn’t get to read it,” Morgan said, touching the end of the scroll. “I don’t want you to study something you’re not ready for.”
Mara frowned and laid the scroll back on the floor near the doorway. When she straightened, Morgan placed her hands on Mara’s cheeks. “Now feel the tension of the day melt from your thoughts,” Morgan said. “You have toiled in the lands above, and your mind is swimming in a flood of new discoveries. Rest, my child, and let yourself float above it all. Think only of warm springs and sweet fig cakes, and everything else will wait until morning’s call.”
Morgan’s cool fingers felt heavenly. Mara really did feel very sleepy. She wanted to ask if Mardon was still fighting the dragons, but the question seemed too difficult to speak. “Okay,” she said, yawning.
Pulling Mara along, Morgan walked to the portal and scooped out a handful of energy. After forming it into a ball of pale blue light, she placed it in Mara’s palm. “This will be enough to light your way to your quarters.” She kissed Mara on the forehead, an icy cold kiss. “Sweet dreams.”
Mara held the ball in front of her and hurried through the tunnel. It tickled her skin, helping her stay awake as she kept her eyes fixed on the path. Finding her coif in the original portal’s chamber, she grabbed it and stuffed it into her pocket, still thinking about the scrolls. Fighting sleep, she turned back toward the tower. Morgan hadn’t exactly said the scrolls were forbidden, had she?
Cupping her hands around the glowing ball and letting only a little light seep through her fingers, Mara hurried back to the tower. Keeping watch for Morgan, she found the scroll next to the door, tucked it under her arm, and retraced her steps, hustling through the tunnels as they wound their way back down toward the laborers’ hovels. As she neared the corridor leading to the growth chamber room, she slowed. Should she stop and check on her spawn? No. Naamah took care of him
. Besides, the light wouldn’t last long enough to feed him.
By the time she arrived at her hovel, the ball had dwindled to the size of a pebble, spritzing tiny blue sparks on the stone floor as she sat in her dugout. She tried to unwind the scroll, but holding the ball made it almost impossible. She only managed to reread the lines she had already seen.
THE WORDS OF THE BLESSING OF ENOCH, WHEREWITH HE BLESSED THE ELECT AND RIGHTEOUS, WHO WILL BE LIVING IN THE DAY OF TRIBULATION, WHEN ALL THE WICKED AND GODLESS ARE TO BE REMOVED.
Paili’s voice drifted over from her own dugout. “Pretty ball!”
“It is pretty,” Mara said, “but I wish it were brighter.” The ball suddenly blazed, casting a sheet of radiance across the scroll. As Mara tried to read the tiny words again, the light dimmed, finally blinking out and leaving the hovel dark. She tightened the scroll and laid it close to her bed. Probing the darkness with a hard stare, she tried to see if any light trickled in from Elam’s room. Nothing. He was probably asleep by now.
“Mara stay?” Paili yawned. “Mara not go away?”
“Yes, Paili. I’m here for the night.” Mara took off her dress and folded it into a pillow. She curled to the side and pulled her sheet up to her shoulders. As she scooted herself into a comfortable position, a lump in her pillow poked her ear. She dug into her dress, withdrew the Ovulum, and held it in front of her eyes. In the darkness, only her fingers could identify the egg that had caused so much trouble in the upper lands.
Caressing its smooth glass brought an odd sense of comfort, soothing warmth that seemed to wash over her like a long soak in the sulfur baths. She brought the Ovulum even closer to her eyes, hoping to see a glimmer of the red light that had appeared before. What could possibly be inside that could bring both grief to a king and peace to her soul? Could a god actually live inside this thing? Why would a god even want to speak through such a small, seemingly fragile object?
Drawing it as close to her lips as possible without smudging the glass, she whispered, “Elohim?”
Paili groaned, but Mara couldn’t tell if she was awake or not. She pulled the sheet over her head and whispered again. “Can you hear me?”
There was no answer. No glow. The egg felt cold and lifeless in her hand. Chilling sensations traveled through her arms and settled in her mind like unfriendly strangers following her in the darkness. Loneliness. Emptiness. Betrayal. Morgan’s awful words echoed in her mind. “Freak of nature. Ignorant freak of nature.”
Mara ran her fingers through her hair her stark, white hair that made King Nimrod’s eyes bulge. New tears emerged, and she tried to sniff them back, but they dripped down to her cheeks, her freakish pale cheeks.
Like the voice of an angry ghost, Nimrod’s words came back to her. “The temple worshippers would love to get their hands on you.” She grimaced at the thought. She had read enough to know what he meant.
Mara hugged the Ovulum against her chest. Confusing thoughts tumbled like flying ash. Whom should she trust? Nimrod seemed good for a while, but why would he want to kill her, or worse, little babies? Mardon was willing to kill the babies for him, but he also rescued her. Morgan was friendly some of the time, but she gave Nimrod something he needed to kill dragons, and the dragons were Elohim’s friends. One thing was certain, Morgan, Nimrod, and Mardon all hated Elohim.
And why not? Elohim flooded the world and killed almost every creature on earth. He sent dragons to destroy the tower and the city, and now the people couldn’t even talk to each other any more. But if Elohim was evil, why would he bother saving eight people on the ark? If he was good, it would make sense for him to war against Nimrod, if Nimrod was evil. Still, they could all be evil, and they’d all do anything to get power, even killing everyone by flooding the world. If only Elohim would just talk to her, maybe he could help her make sense of it all.
She threw the sheet off. Maybe she could warm the Ovulum up and make it work. She rubbed the glass surface vigorously with both hands, waited a few seconds, and looked again. Nothing.
Mara grumbled under her breath. Elohim had spoken to her before. Why didn’t he want to speak now? Was he just too busy? Or maybe she did something wrong, and he was mad at her.
She pushed on the top of her head with her hand. There was just too much to think about! It felt like her brains were about to explode!
She laid her head on her dress and sighed. For some reason, she still wanted to hold the egg close, so she pressed its cool glass against her cheek and nuzzled her dirty pillow. As her mind wandered toward sleep, a low voice whispered in her ear. It was so soothing, she didn’t want to wake up to see if it was real. If it was a dream, she wanted to keep dreaming, imagining that a gentle stranger cared enough to speak to her.
“Sapphira Adi,” it sang. “You are Sapphira Adi, a gem as beautiful as the clearest sky, and your value to me is greater than any gem in all the world . . . Sapphira Adi.”
Mara smiled and whispered, “Sapphira Adi,” then drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 11
Elohim’s Bard
Sapphira closed the scroll and slid it to the edge of the table, pushing aside an embryo jar to make room. With Mardon away for so long, there was no one to dispose of the weaker plants, and she didn’t have the heart to do it herself, so the worktable had become crowded with the new genetic combinations she had tried over the last hundred or so days. She set her chin on her hands and sighed. All she really wanted to do was to climb into the tower shelves and read their literary treasures, but Morgan kept making excuses and giving her more work to do.
In a sarcastic tone, Sapphira mocked her mistress’s harsh voice. “Not until I find the scroll I’m looking for. If you don’t have enough work to do, perhaps you would like to return to the trenches.”
She blew out a loud sigh. At least she had one scroll to look at, but only a few minutes each night to read it. She couldn’t risk falling asleep before putting it back in its hiding place, a narrow hole in her mattress. But those few moments of drinking in Enoch’s mysterious story were worth the risk, even though she couldn’t understand most of it.
A soft, rustling sound made her turn her head. Her spawn had awakened, yawning and smacking his lips. Grabbing a tin full of plant food and her piece of graphite, she shuffled over to Yereq’s chamber and knelt in front of him. “Hungry?”
Yereq gave her a short nod and grinned.
She showed him the hunk of graphite. “Do you want this?”
The little pod’s brow lowered, and a tiny tongue protruded from his lips.
She laughed and dipped her finger in the food. “How about this?”
Yereq pulled his tongue back in and opened his mouth.
Sapphira stuffed the damp morsel in. “I think you’re already smarter than Nabal was. I’m not even going to tell you what I saw him eating once.” As she dipped her finger in again, the control room door opened, and a little girl peeked in.
Sapphira jumped up, leaving the food tin on the floor. “Paili! You’re not supposed to be in here!”
Paili waved her hand frantically. “Come now!”
Sapphira ran to the door and escorted her out, spinning the wheel behind her. “How did you unlock it?”
She pointed at the wheel. “I watch you.”
Sapphira set her hands on her hips. “Okay, what did you want?”
Paili waved her hand. “Come!” She picked up a lantern next to the door and ran into the tunnel. Sapphira chased her, following the bouncing ball of light through the darkness. Paili turned into a side room, and when Sapphira caught up, she leaned against the doorway to catch her breath. Inside, Paili set the lantern on a flat stone table that dominated the center of the small chamber. Atop the table, various breads, fruits, and vegetables were spread from end to end. The aroma of stew drifted through the room, wafting from a huge pot dangling over an open floor vent against the wall.
Paili stirred the pot with a ladle nearly as long as she was tall, and the
light from the magma stream underneath the kitchen washed her face in an orange glow. “I cook,” Paili said. She skipped over to the table and picked up a red, oblong fruit. “Morgan bring.”
Sapphira took the fruit and held it in her hands. Instantly, the Ovulum in her pocket stung her leg like a hot poker. She dropped the fruit onto the table and stepped back. “Morgan wants you to put that in the stew?”
Paili nodded.
“How did you know to come to me?”
“I dream.” She pointed at the fruit and stuck out her tongue, grimacing. “That bad.”
Sapphira wrapped the girl in her arms. “Oh, Paili! You did the right thing! You were so brave to come into the control room and find me.”
“I knock.” She pushed her finger into Sapphira’s stomach. “You not come.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.” Sapphira picked up a knife from the table and tapped it against the stone. “If you don’t put it in the stew, she’ll probably figure it out, and then you’ll be in big trouble.” She chopped down on the fruit and split it in two. Inside, a half dozen tiny red seeds spilled out from the core of the cream-colored flesh.
Sapphira snapped her fingers. “Is there another pot in here?”
Paili pointed under the table. “Two more.”
Sapphira pulled out one of them and hustled it to the bigger stewpot. Transferring ladle full after ladle full, she filled the new pot about halfway with stew. “Okay,” she said, grunting as she lifted the new pot to the table. “Go ahead and put the fruit in the big pot, and I’ll hide this one in our hovel. We’ll pass the word that Morgan’s up to something and warn them not to eat the stew tonight. If anyone listens to us, she can come to our hovel and get something to eat after baths.”
Paili nodded and picked up the two halves of fruit. “I eat . . . our stew . . . later.”