in order to stay alive? Or that they would only be able to live by night?”
“I wonder if he knew there would be others at all,” Lucy said. “He may have assumed Gilgamesh would keep the gift to himself, not share it and create an entire undead, immortal race.”
“He vowed to…share not the gift.”
They both looked up fast, Lucy shooting to her feet and away from the hatch door as if it had burned her. Utanapishtim was standing there, halfway up the steps, staring at them. He was completely naked and apparently unconcerned about it as he came up the last three steps, onto the deck itself. His hairy thighs were like tree trunks, and he towered over her, standing six-five at the very least.
James got to his feet and stepped between the two of them.
Utanapishtim seemed to search the night sky, probably for the correct words to speak. “I meant not to make…immortal race.”
“I know that,” Lucy said softly. “But it happened all the same.”
“I gave…only to my king.”
“Yes.”
“He swore…only Enkidu, he said.”
“Enkidu was already dead,” Lucy explained. “The king could not bring him back. But when someone else he loved was about to die, he…”
“He…” At a loss for the right word, Utanapishtim mimed snapping something in two.
“Broke,” Lucy said.
“Mmm. Broke. He broke his promise,” Utanapishtim moaned. “For that…I have…” He grimaced as if in pain.
“Suffered,” Lucy said. “You have suffered terribly. But it wasn’t a punishment sent by the gods. There is another reason for your suffering.”
“No other…reason. I saw…Great Flood. Felt its…waters. I know the Anunaki.” He looked at her face, and then at the sea and sky around them. “Do not taunt them, woman. The gods hear all.”
Lowering her head, she wondered how she would ever convince a man from ages past to understand science and logic, when all he’d ever known were superstition and magic. To him, the flood itself was proof the gods existed. To her, it was just a flood, brought about by a period of global warming and the partial melting of the glaciers.
And yet, how could she explain Utanapishtim’s immortality? The fact that he spoke and understood English alone was testimony that what he said was true: that he’d been conscious on some level, even while his body had been reduced to ash. For centuries the sculpture in which he’d been entrapped had been in the possession of an American collector. English had been spoken all around him for generations, until the last heir left the naked priest king to his favorite museum.
If Utanapishtim wasn’t immortal, how had that happened?
“My…offspring. You call…vahmpeer.”
“Vampire,” she said.
“Drinkers of…blood. Like demon Lilith.”
Lucy shook her head quickly. This was just the sort of interpretation she’d been afraid he would begin to put on things. “No. No, Utanapishtim. The vampires do not harm anyone. They are good people. Good people, Utanapishtim.”
He didn’t seem convinced of that. “Yet you are not…vahmpeer?”
“No. I’m as you were. Before the gift of the gods, before the flood.”
He nodded, then shifted his black eyes to James. “You?”
“My father is a vampire. My mother only half.”
“I know not…half,” Utanapishtim said.
Lucy was amazed at the hunger for knowledge she glimpsed in those opaque black-fringed eyes. She held her hands out, palms up. “Vampire,” she said, raising one open palm. “Human,” she said, and raised the other. Then she cupped her hands together.
Utanapishtim grunted, nodding, and sat down on the deck. Then he put a hand on his stomach. “My…hunger burn like fire. My—” He tapped his head.
“Brain? Head? Mind?”
“Mmm, mind. My mind hungers also. You have…tablets?”
“Books?”
“I do not know books.” Utanapishtim sighed, frustrated, and lowered his head into his hands.
“I’ll show him,” James said. “Though hearing our spoken language all those years won’t help you much with learning to read our writing, Utanapishtim.”
Utanapishtim, however, was still holding his head, and nodding it up and down, hands completely covering his face. He was once again muttering in Sumerian.
“I’ll find food,” Lucy said, sending a quick look farther along the deck, to where a second set of stairs led down to the galley. “James, why don’t you find him some clothes, and…some books.”
In the midst of his muttering, Utanapishtim lifted his head from his hands long enough to command, “Be fast, woman.”
Lucy was surprised by the order, but she reminded herself that he had been a king once. He was bound to expect his orders to be followed, his authority to be respected. “Yes. I’ll be as fast as I can.” She took three steps,