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Robert Silverberg - Gilgamesh i
Gilgamesh in the Outback
Robert Silverberg
 
A DF Books NERD’s Release
Copyright (C)1986 Agberg, Ltd.
First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1986
 
Faust. First I will question thee about hell.
Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?
Meph. Under the heavens.
Faust. Ay, but whereabout?
Meph. Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortur'd and remain for ever:
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be:
And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
Faust. Come, I think hell's a fable.
Meph. Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.
Marlowe: Dr. Faustus
Jagged green lightning danced on the horizon and the wind came ripping like a blade
out of the east, skinning the flat land bare and sending up clouds of gray-brown dust.
Gilgamesh grinned broadly. By Enlil, now that was a wind! A lion-killing wind it
was, a wind that turned the air dry and crackling. The beasts of the field gave you the
greatest joy in their hunting when the wind was like that, hard and sharp and cruel.
He narrowed his eyes and stared into the distance, searching for this day's prey. His
bow of several fine woods, the bow that no man but he was strong enough to draw—
no man but he and Enkidu his beloved thrice-lost friend—hung loosely from his hand.
His body was poised and ready. Come now, you beasts! Come and be slain! It is
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who would make his sport with you this day!
Other men in this land, when they went about their hunting, made use of guns, those
foul machines that the New Dead had brought, which hurled death from a great
distance along with much noise and fire and smoke; or they employed the even
deadlier laser devices from whose ugly snouts came spurts of blue-white flame.
Cowardly things, all those killing machines! Gilgamesh loathed them, as he did most
instruments of the New Dead, those slick and bustling Johnny-come-latelies of Hell.
He would not touch them if he could help it. In all the thousands of years he had
dwelled in this nether world he had never used any weapons but those he had known
during his first lifetime: the javelin, the spear, the double-headed axe, the hunting
bow, the good bronze sword. It took some skill, hunting with such weapons as those.
And there was physical effort; there was more than a little risk. Hunting was a
contest, was it not? Then it must make demands. Why, if the idea was merely to
slaughter one's prey in the fastest and easiest and safest way, then the sensible thing to
do would be to ride high above the hunting grounds in a weapons platform and drop a
little nuke, eh, and lay waste five kingdoms’ worth of beasts at a single stroke!
 
He knew that there were those who thought him a fool for such ideas. Caesar, for
one. Cocksure coldblooded Julius with the gleaming pistols thrust into his belt and the
submachine gun slung across his shoulders. “Why don't you admit it?” Caesar had
asked him once, riding up in his jeep as Gilgamesh was making ready to set forth
toward Hell's open wilderness. “It's a pure affectation, Gilgamesh, all this insistence
on arrows and javelins and spears. This isn't old Sumer you're living in now.”
Gilgamesh spat. “Hunt with 9-millimeter automatics? Hunt with grenades and cluster
bombs and lasers? You call that sport, Caesar?”
“I call it acceptance of reality. Is it technology you hate? What's the difference
between using a bow and arrow and using a gun? They're both technology,
Gilgamesh. It isn't as though you kill the animals with your bare hands.”
“I have done that, too,” said Gilgamesh.
“Bah! I'm on to your game. Big hulking Gilgamesh, the simple innocent oversized
Bronze Age hero! That's just an affectation, too, my friend! You pretend to be a
stupid, stubborn thick-skulled barbarian because it suits you to be left alone to your
hunting and your wandering, and that's all you claim that you really want. But
secretly you regard yourself as superior to anybody who lived in an era softer than
your own. You mean to restore the bad old filthy ways of the ancient ancients, isn't
that so? If I read you the right way you're just biding your time, skulking around with
your bow and arrow in the dreary Outback until you think it's the right moment to
launch the putsch that carries you to supreme power here. Isn't that it, Gilgamesh?
You've got some crazy fantasy of overthrowing Satan himself and lording it over all
of us. And then we'll live in mud cities again and make little chicken scratches on clay
tablets, the way we were meant to do. What do you say?”
“I say this is great nonsense, Caesar.”
“Is it? This place is full of kings and emperors and sultans and pharaohs and shahs
and presidents and dictators, and every single one of them wants to be Number One
again. My guess is that you're no exception.”
“In this you are very wrong.”
“I doubt that. I suspect you believe you're the best of us all: you, the sturdy warrior,
the great hunter, the maker of bricks, the builder of vast temples and lofty walls, the
shining beacon of ancient heroism. You think we're all decadent rascally degenerates
and that you're the one true virtuous man. But you're as proud and ambitious as any of
us. Isn't that how it is? You're a fraud, Gilgamesh, a huge musclebound fraud!”
“At least I am no slippery tricky serpent like you, Caesar, who dons a wig and spies
on women at their mysteries if it pleases him.”
Caesar looked untroubled by the thrust. “And so you pass three-quarters of your time
killing stupid monstrous creatures in the Outback and you make sure everyone knows
that you're too pious to have anything to do with modern weapons while you do it.
You don't fool me. It isn't virtue that keeps you from doing your killing with a decent
 
double-barreled .470 Springfield. It's intellectual pride, or maybe simple laziness. The
bow just happens to be the weapon you grew up with, who knows how many
thousands of years ago. You like it because it's familiar. But what language are you
speaking now, eh? Is it your thick-tongued Euphrates gibberish? No, it seems to be
English, doesn't it? Did you grow up speaking English too, Gilgamesh? Did you grow
up riding around in jeeps and choppers? Apparently some of the new ways are
acceptable to you.”
Gilgamesh shrugged. “I speak English with you because that is what is spoken now
in this place. In my heart I speak the old tongue, Caesar. In my heart I am still
Gilgamesh of Uruk, and I will hunt as I hunt.”
“Uruk's long gone to dust. This is the life after life, my friend. We've been here a
long time. We'll be here for all time to come, unless I miss my guess. New people
constantly bring new ideas to this place, and it's impossible to ignore them. Even you
can't do it. Isn't that a wristwatch I see on your arm, Gilgamesh? A digital watch, no
less?”
“I will hunt as I hunt,” said Gilgamesh. “There is no sport in it, when you do it with
guns. There is no grace in it.”
Caesar shook his head. “I never could understand hunting for sport, anyway. Killing
a few stags, yes, or a boar or two, when you're bivouacked in some dismal Gaulish
forest and your men want meat. But hunting? Slaughtering hideous animals that aren't
even edible? By Apollo, it's all nonsense to me!”
“My point exactly.”
“But if you must hunt, to scorn the use of a decent hunting rifle—”
“You will never convince me.”
“No,” Caesar said with a sigh. “I suppose I won't. I should know better than to argue
with a reactionary.”
“Reactionary! In my time I was thought to be a radical,” said Gilgamesh. “When I
was king in Uruk—”
“Just so,” Caesar said, laughing. “King in Uruk. Was there ever a king who wasn't
reactionary? You put a crown on your head and it addles your brains instantly. Three
times Antonius offered me a crown, Gilgamesh. Three times, and—”
“—you did thrice refuse it, yes. I know all that. ‘Was this ambition?’ You thought
you'd have the power without the emblem. Who were you fooling, Caesar? Not
Brutus, so I hear. Brutus said you were ambitious. And Brutus—”
That stung him. “Damn you, don't say it!”
“—was an honorable man,” Gilgamesh concluded, enjoying Caesar's discomfiture.
Caesar groaned. “If I hear that line once more—”
 

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