Macroscope

“The blood!” she exclaimed disapprovingly. “You have left a trail of blood!”

So that was how they had boxed him in so readily! He could not see it himself, but they obviously could, with the torches. Had he any chance at all?

“Perhaps I can still help you,” she said. “Come inside.”

He stumbled in the door she stood beside — in this case, a hole in the wall covered by a length of hide or canvas — and found himself within a small and dirty vestibule. The walls were covered by crumbling brown plaster. Not a domicile of wealth, obviously — yet he could hardly be choosy!

The woman closed the entrance and led him to a small interior court. She was young and tall — very tall for this locale — and quite fair of feature, and the cloak hardly concealed her voluptuousness of form. He wondered dully whether she could be a prostitute. If so, she would turn him out quickly enough when she discovered that he had no money or barter.

“We must stop the blood,” she said. “I know an empty house where they will not find us tonight. But we can’t let the blood betray us.” She peeled back the cloth that had become a soggy bandage and began sponging off the wound.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “Why do you help me?”

“I am Aia. I do not worship Melqart, nor do I like human sacrifice.”

She bound his arm with a rough cloth. Ivo hesitated to inspect the compress closely, certain that it was not very clean. Something nagged him about her statement, but he could not, in his present fuddled state, pin it down. Perhaps it was that opposition to a particular policy or religion should not necessarily lead one to risk one’s own well-being in that co

Still, there was the adage about gift-horses — if they had horses here.

“And,” she said, “I need help myself, to escape from this foul city. Alone, I would soon be pressed into slavery.”

Oh. Nothing like a male fugitive for such assistance! Someone whose imperative for rapid escape was guaranteed.

If that were her case — and there now seemed to be no reason to question it — their needs could very well coincide.

“Do you trust yourself to a stranger?” he asked her anyway. “A criminal, for all you know, a rapist, even a murderer?”

“Do you desire to murder me?”

“No.”

“Then there is no harm you can do me.”

Oh.

“Now we must hurry. The temple guards will find this house very soon.” She showed him to the back exit and peered at the street. Torches were passing.

“And who are you?” she inquired as they waited.

“Ivarch of Merica. I was taken in by a ship and brought before Mattan for interrogation.”

“Mattan,” she said darkly. “He is notorious. Soft spoken but never to be trusted. A dabbler in past events.”

An apt assessment. “What I don’t understand is why he sent me to be sacrificed. How could he get information that way?”

She shrugged. “Mattan is Mattan. Come — they are past.”

So they were, for the moment. Soon they would discover the termination of the bloodstain trail on the other side of the house and backtrack. Aia led him into the dark street, guiding him past irregularities and obstructions while he sheltered the sword under his tunic. She seemed to have an inherent sensitivity to danger, knowing where the temple patrols were likely to be and how to avoid them. In half an hour they were comfortably ensconced in the house she had spoken of: empty, yes, but very well stocked.

Ivo ripped off the remaining shreds of his tunic and cleaned up in the well-appointed bath. He had not expected any drainage facilities, but this had a wooden pipe leading down and out, and the floor was of pink cement set with little marble cubes. As elegant as anything of the twentieth century, except for the lack of heated or ru

Then he had to beg Aia’s help to don a new tunic, hoping she would not be outraged by the request. She obliged without comment, fortunately.

The remainder of the house was simply executed: several rectangular rooms without architectural pretensions. The foundation was stone cleverly fitted together with a minimum of cement, giving way to bricks with occasional upright slabs of stone for strength, and finally to straight wood. The cedar paneling of the upper rooms was handsome but not ornate and there were no objects of art. The owner, apparently conforming to Phoenician taste, had no personal interest in elegance, with the exception of clothing. The house was stocked with an array of material fully as splendid as that of Mattan’s residence: multicolored cloaks, tunics and skirts, heavily embroidered. Some were of wool, others of fine linen. Purple was predominant, and he seemed to remember that Tyre had been famous for its purple dye. Even the pointed caps were richly hued.

Aia served him a tremendous and welcome meal: smoked goatmeat, olives, figs, date wine, honey and pastries made from unidentified grains, finishing off with whole pomegranates. It was almost too rich for him, after his day of hunger, but he disciplined his appetite and filled his stomach without reaction. “How did you know of this place?” he asked her as he pried out the juicy pomegranate morsels. “Won’t the owner object?”

“The owner is a rich merchant who is on the mainland this week negotiating a shipment of cedarwood,” she said. “And of course he is checking into the labors of his mainland slaves who make jewelry and statuettes of foreign gods.”

“Strange — I have seen nothing like that around here.”

“Oh, he has good craftsmen — but of course such baubles are for export only. Fine workmanship brings a better price, you see.”

“Even for religious artifacts? I should think—”

“Look,” she said. She got up gracefully and pulled aside a curtain. Behind was a voluptuous statuette of a female, with bulging stomach and ponderous breasts, flanked by two sphinxes. “Astarte,” she said. “I’ll show you how to milk her.”

She fetched a cup of goat milk and poured it carefully into a hole in the goddess’s head. Then she took a brand from the main fire and touched it to the mossy kindling beneath the statue. The flame caught, warming the entire metal figure.

Suddenly milk spouted from the nipples of the hanging breasts, to pour into a bowl held upon the goddess’s belly. Ivo stared, fascinated and a little repelled, though he realized there was nothing either magical or obscene about it.

“The heat melts the wax plugs,” Aia explained. “The worshipers don’t know that, though. Great moneymaker, I understand.”

“But to commercialize other people’s religion—”

“Oh, he patronizes his own religion too, never fear. He pays graft to the temple and buys small boys for his pleasures. When he tires of one, he donates that lad to Melqart. He is considered extremely devout.”

Ivo, his conscience eased, did not inquire into the matter further. This was as good a domicile to raid as any. “How long are we safe here?”

“No more than a day. Tomorrow night we must leave the city, for they will surely be watching and nowhere in Tyre is there permanent security from the temple.”

When the meal was done she took the lamp — a simple clay saucer, undecorated, with a single pinched beak for the wick — and showed him to the sleeping compartment, where soft pelts were piled upon straw. It looked delightful.

Ivo flung himself down in the bed gratefully… but soon discovered that he had company. “Even the best of ships come into port at night,” she murmured.

She had removed her cloak and other apparel and snuggled under the pelts beside him, close, and he learned that his original estimate of her physical properties had erred conservatively. She was scented with a heavy perfume he could not identify, apart from its effluence of sex appeal, and she was as lithe and sleek as a panther.

Ivo was tired, but he had had a good afternoon’s sleep in the temple and was recovering nicely from his more recent wounds and exertions. Aia had taken good care of him, and the flesh injury of his left arm only hurt when he banged it. He felt, all in all, adequate to the occasion — except for one detail.