can walk down the street in any city and go unnoticed really except for his unusual poise perhaps and the subtle, wise expression on his face? He was an imposing man, but why? He was commanding, but why? He was forthcoming and yet somehow utterly unyielding.
"Tell us what happened," said Stuart as gently as he could. "Why were you exiled? What did you do?"
"Refuse to worship the gods," said Margon, his words coming in a half murmur as he stared forward. "Refuse to sacrifice in the Temple to deities carved out of stone. Refuse to recite hymns to the monotonous beat of drums about the marriage of gods and goddesses who never existed and which never took place. Refuse to tell the people that if they did not worship, if they did not sacrifice, if they did not break their backs in the fields and digging the canals that watered them, that the gods would bring the cosmos to an end. Margon the Godless refused to tell lies."
He raised his voice just a little. "No, I do not have trouble remembering," he said. "But some deep emotional and visceral faith in the act of recounting it has long been lost."
"Why didn,t they just execute you?" Stuart asked.
"They couldn,t," Margon said in a small voice, looking at him. "I was their divine king."
Stuart was delighted with the answer. He couldn,t conceal his excitement.
This is so simple, Reuben was thinking. Stuart keeps asking all the questions to which I want the answers, and to which Laura probably wants answers. And the questions are indeed driving the flow of revelation, so why complain?
He could feel the hot oppressive sun of the Iraqi desert suddenly. He saw the dusty trenches of the archaeological dig on which he,d worked. He saw those tablets, those ancient cuneiform tablets, those precious fragments laid out on the table in the secret room.
He was so excited by this little bit of intelligence that he might have gone off, perplexed, pondering for a long time. It was like reading a wonderful sentence in a book, and not being able to continue because so many possibilities were crowding his mind.
Margon picked up the water, and tasted it, then drank it. And carefully he set it down again, staring at it as if fascinated by its bubbles, the play of light in the leaded-crystal glass.
He did not touch the bits of fruit on the small plate in front of him. But he drank the coffee, drank it while it was still smoking. And reached suddenly for the silver carafe.
Reuben filled the cup for him. Cupbearer for a king.
Felix and Thibault were gazing calmly at Margon. And Laura had turned in her chair, the better to see him, arms folded, comfortable as she waited.
Stuart was the only one who couldn,t wait.
"What city was it?" Stuart asked. "Come on, Margon, tell me!"
Felix gestured for him to be quiet, with a severe reprimanding look.
"Ah, it,s only natural for him to want to know," said Margon. "Remember, there have been those who weren,t curious at all, who wanted to know nothing of the past, and how did that serve them? Maybe it would have been better for them if they had had a history, an ancestry, even if it was nothing more than descriptive. Maybe we need this."
"I need it," whispered Stuart. "I need to hear everything."
"I,m not sure," said Margon gently, "that you,ve really heard what I have said so far."
That,s just it, thought Reuben, the very difficulty. How to hear that the man sitting here has been alive continuously since the beginning of recorded time? How do you hear that?
"Well, I will not be the chronicler of the Morphenkinder just now," said Margon, "and not ever perhaps. But I will tell you some things. It,s enough for you to know I was deposed, exiled. I wouldn,t claim to be the divine son of the fictive god who,d built the canals and the temples - venerable forerunner to Enlil, Enki, Marduk, Amun Ra. I sought for answers within ourselves. And believe me, this point of view was not so radical as you might think. It was common. But to express the point of view was not common at all."
"This was Uruk, wasn,t it?" Stuart asked breathlessly.
"Far older than Uruk," Margon shot back. "Far older than Eridu, Larsa, Jericho - any city you might name. The sands have never yielded the remains of my city. Perhaps they never will. I myself don,t know what happened to