Flesh sizzled on coals, fell away from bones, went up in fat smoke. Through the storm, terrible in their splendor, came the gods.
Pillar-tall, bull-broad, beard spilling down over the lion skin that clad him, eyes capturing the fire-gleam, Melqart snuffed deep. He licked his lips. “It is done, it is well, it is life,” he boomed.
Wind tossed the hair of Ashtoreth, rain jeweled it, lightning-light sheened on breasts and belly. Her own nostrils drank. She clasped his gigantic organ as if it were a staff and raised her left hand into heaven. “Bring forth the Resurrected!” she cried.
Baal-Adon leaned heavily on Adat, his beloved, his mourner, his avenger. He stumbled, still half blind after the murk of the underworld; he trembled, still half frozen from the grave. She guided him to the smoke of the offering. She took the bowl filled with its blood and gave him to drink. Warmth returned, beauty, wakefulness. He saw, he heard how men and women coupled in the grove and across the land in honor of his arising; and he turned to his consort.
More gods crowded about, Chushor out of the waves, Dagon out of the plowlands, Aliaan out of the springs and underground waters, Resheph out of the storm, and more and more. Clouds began to part. Distantly gleamed the twin pillars and pure lake before the home of El.
A sunbeam smote the eight who stood on the topheth near the beryl, invisible to priest and acolytes. The gods stared and stiffened. Melqart raised bis club that had smitten the Sea, primordial Chaos, in the dawn of the world. “Who dares betread the holy of holies?” he bellowed.
Hanno trod forward. “Dread ones,” he said calmly, with respect but not abasing himself, looking straight into those eyes, “we are eight from afar in space, time, and strangeness. We too command the powers of heaven, earth, and hell. But fain would we guest you a while and learn the wonders of your reigning. Behold, we bear gifts.” He signalled, and there appeared a treasure of golden ware, gems, precious woods, incense.
Melqart lowered his weapon and stared with a greed that awoke also in the features of Ashtoreth; but her regard was on the men.
27
ONE BY one, they disengaged. That was a simple matter of removing induction helmets and feedback suits. The web of union between them and the guiding, creating computer had already vanished; the pseudo-experience was at an end. Nonetheless, after they had emerged from their booths into the commonplaceness of the dream chamber, it took them silent minutes to return altogether to themselves. Meanwhile they stood side by side, hand in hand, groping for comfort.
Eventually Patulcius mumbled, “I thought I knew something about the ancient Near East. But that was the most damnable—”
“Horror and wonder,” Macandal said unevenly. “Lust and love. Death and life. Was it really like that, Hanno?”
“I can’t be sure,” the captain answered. “The historical Tyre we visited seemed about right to me.” —in a full-sensory hallucination, where the computer drew on his memories and then let the seekers act and be acted on as they would have in a material world. “Hard to tell, after so long. Besides, you know I’d tried to put it behind me, tried to grow away from what was bad in it. This, though, the Phoenician conceptual universe— No, I don’t believe I ever thought in just that way, even when I was young and supposed I was mortal.”
“No matter authenticity,” Yukiko said. “We want practice in dealing with aliens; and this was amply alien.”
“Too much.” Tu Shan’s burly frame shivered. “Come, dear. I want a time gentle and human, don’t you?” She accompanied him out.
“What society shall we draw on next?” asked Svoboda. Her attention sought Wanderer. “Those you knew must have been at least as foreign to the rest of us.”
“No doubt,” he replied rather grimly. “In due course, yes, we will. But first a setting more … rational. China, Russia?”
“We have plenty of tune,” Patulcius said. “Better we digest this before we think about anything else. Kyrie eleison, to have witnessed the gods at work!” He tugged at Macandal, “I’m exhausted. A stiff drink, a long sleep, and several days’ idleness.”