Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
8
Build It Better
PORTIA WAS CORRECT in her assessment that Bao wanted my cock, which I gladly gave her until she screamed in ecstasy. Then I rolled to my left and, while Nimia kept Bao at a peak, I planted my pole in Portia and made love to my first princess. Yes, remember she was the daughter of a King in Knossos and was supposed to be married to King Drakomaxos until the sod got drunk and left her to be plundered by me. Bao never minded me satisfying my two Minoans as long as one was paying attention to her needs, which always seemed to be at a fever pitch. Occasionally, I had visions of Ninra having the same time with Namri and her two handmaidens. It was a share-and-share-alike arrangement.
When we were sated—for the moment—we shared our discoveries and approved each other’s plans. We set a time to meet with King to describe our intent.
“How many slaves is it going to take to build this new temple and canal?” King demanded. “I will need to take the army and raid the Orasines to get enough slaves to do the work.”
“No!” I bellowed. I suddenly felt the presence of the god and goddess descending on Bao and me. It was no longer I who spoke, and King quaked in front of me. “No slave will lift a brick for our temple,” Ninra said through me. “Hear what I say! The day ground is broken for the foundation of my temple, I will loose the water and fill the canals as they have never been filled before. The sheep will multiply. The grain will ripen. Famine shall be no more. And every laborer who lends his hand to the building of my temple will prosper.”
Bao took up the narrative—or Namri within her.
“No slave shall walk upon our sacred soil. We shall be worshiped by the free citizens of Bathra. Every laborer who sweats to build our temple shall not want for bread or meat but will prosper in our service.”
“Let this be decreed throughout the land: Our home shall be a home for the free citizens of Bathra. We call upon them to help in its building,” I concluded. I felt the presence of the god leave me and caught Bao as she sagged against me.
King turned to his scribes.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Publish this decree and let all the people rush to do the bidding of our gods!”
I found it strange that no one seemed to miss the old wizard and I wondered if he really had an official position in the palace or with King. As I wandered through the halls exploring my new domicile one night…
Let me interrupt to say that it was not unusual for me to slip out in the middle of the night to get a little break from my voracious girls, or to slip into the infinity room with Nimia. Portia had taken to Bao with fanatic devotion and never went into the infinity room any more. Nimia, however, considered the room to be her home. She stayed there more and more and I never let her languish for lack of attention. Over the years, this arrangement would have unexpected consequences, but now, I was happy to have my wife in charge of my home in the infinity room.
Back to my wandering. I happened upon a door I had not opened before. I could see it had various protection and invisibility spells on it, cast by the old mage. Apparently, the spells were wearing off now that he was dead. I thought long and hard about how to open the door and finally, just pushed it in. The spells collapsed at my touch.
Inside, the room reminded me of Pinaruti’s magic room. Shelves of specimens, bottles of potions, a circle chalked on the floor. And scrolls! More scrolls than Pinaruti had. I quickly opened a gateway and called Nimia to me. We began emptying Assininé’s room, taking everything into the satchel where Nimia efficiently organized it. Nimia was the only person other than myself that I allowed in the replica of Pinaruti’s magic room. I considered her to be my first wife and head of my household in the satchel. We didn’t yet know what all the dried and bottled specimens were, nor how to use any of the potions, but I would have leisure to read and experiment once the temple was built.
In the meantime, Nimia organized and straightened and cataloged what she could, putting things with similar items on the shelves and not opening any bottles. She said the task made her feel closer to me, and in a way, she was right. I always carried my satchel or had it next to me. I had expanded the spells on the bag, so it was not visible to anyone unless I showed it to them. That gave me some amount of security when I entered the room myself.
The day after King’s decree went out, we had a hundred volunteers at the new temple site, ready to do the bidding of the gods. Bao put some of the laborers to work extending the sewer ditch so it drained into a pit outside the city walls. I set some to extending the canal system so it would water the district. And the rest were set to relocating families in the way of the actual construction and making sure they had been justly compensated for the inconvenience. As soon as a hovel was emptied, it was torn down. The old sand and clay bricks went into a heap where they were pounded into dust. They would be reshaped into temple blocks, reinforced with fibers and magic.
Not everyone, of course, was a believer. There were those in the city who outright laughed at us, calling out how foolish we were to build canals where there was no water to feed them. Ninra in me wanted to strike them down and curse the town, but Namri in Bao had a way of settling the war god down—which usually included Bao and I having an energetic bout of sex.
I had discovered a secret of reinforcing the bricks with straw fibers, but also discovered the straw was weakened in the slurry for the bricks. I found, however, that the reeds growing in the river water produced strong fibers when they were pounded out and these did not deteriorate in the wet slurry. I sent a crew to harvest the ‘useless’ reeds by the river amidst more jeers from the skeptics.
I set myself to work making more of the molds for the blocks, carefully following the instructions of the god on how to enchant them so they would be stronger and longer-lasting. I trained a crew to pour the slurry and embed the fibers, but Ninra insisted that I be the only one who could enchant the bricks. As soon as I had chanted the spell, which I could do over dozens of brick molds at a time, the bricks were set out to dry—a process that did not take long in the hot sun. In a few days, we had quite a stockpile of bricks forming.
In a few weeks, the canal connection was completed and emptied into a vast pool in front of the temple site. It would empty. At the moment, it was dry, as the water level had not risen to fill the canals. That was my next task.
Over two hundred laborers gathered around the temple square the day I decided it was time to begin the foundation for the temple itself. It was to be a day of great celebration—or a day of great folly. Many of the city skeptics were gathered with the workers to watch the crazy prince and princess pray to their gods. Bao and I held a shovel together as we prayed to the god and goddess so that everyone would hear us asking for their blessing on our work.
The people who had worked on the construction so far had been well cared for. Each family had been given a measure of grain and dried meat that was replenished as long as they continued to labor. They had nothing to want for and all seemed happy enough. But everyone wanted to see the blessing of the gods as it took place.
Bao and I set the spade to the earth and pressed with our feet to dig into the ground. We had staked out the foundation to be an armlength across and an armlength deep. This would then be filled in layers of the slurry and left to dry before adding the next layer. When the foundation was complete, it would be as if we had made a brick that encompassed the entire temple.
When we had broken ground, we heard a great thunderclap. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the mountains opposite the river. There, a glorious display of lightning played along the ridges and the clouds lowered. As far as we were from the storm, we could feel a change in the temperature as rain stormed on the mountains and filled the streams. Those streams, in turn, filled the great river, raising it gradually to a height at which the canals began to fill. We didn’t get rain directly on our building site, so construction began in earnest.
This was a point at which I was kept very busy. Workers could and did dig the foundation trench, but for each pouring of slurry I had to chant the spell over it so it would last as long as the bricks themselves. The key element in this spell was to prevent damage to the bricks or foundation from either water or wind. Both were known to erode the common clay bricks used in constructing houses. In a span of days, the foundation was poured and cured.
And miracle of all, the canals were filled to a level never before seen in Bathra. Even our pool in front of the temple was filled.
This created some problems, as bridges had to be built so people could cross the canals. But it was not difficult. Water also washed into our sewer canal and the effluent was washed at last outside the city walls to the great pit awaiting it.
The skeptics were suddenly silent.
As construction continued, news began to come in from the surrounding countryside that crops were greening in the fields again. Sheep were breeding. Wool was thick. Meat was plentiful
And that is when King died.
His chambermaid reported that the king was looking out his window and saw the full canals and the happy people in the streets. He said simply, “I’m done now. The rest is up to Bao and Bob.” Then he went to bed and went to sleep. He did not wake up.
We had an official day of mourning for the king and no one worked that day. The next day, we had a coronation ceremony. No one worked that day. On the following day, everyone was surprised to find Bao and me back at the worksite preparing bricks and directing workers.
A wealthy citizen approached me as I was mixing slurry. “Your Highness,” he said. I almost missed the fact that he was addressing me, but half a dozen scribes and assistants had followed us to the site and were trying to get court work done while we built. One pointed the man out to me and I turned to find one of our loudest skeptics.
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize you were addressing me. If you would like to work on the construction, you should see my foreman, just over there. He’ll assign a job for you.”
“Oh, not me, sire. It is unseemly that a man of our rank should be laboring in the mud.” Had he just elevated himself to the same rank as the king? “I can bring you ten slaves to do this work and it will go much faster,” he said. I looked hard at him. He didn’t seem to be stupid, but was caught in a new world order he didn’t understand. I remembered the old mage’s words that I ‘will change the very fabric of our culture.’ I guess it was true.
“The gods have decreed that only free citizens, volunteering their labor, will work on their temple,” I said. “Therefore, if you choose to send me ten slaves, they will thenceforth be considered free citizens. They will be compensated with a home and food for their labor. They will no longer be your slaves.”
The man looked at me as though I had spoken Minoan instead of Sumerian. I checked through my memories to be sure I’d spoken directly to the minds of the people around me. I might speak in Minoan, but they would all hear in Sumerian.
“That’s preposterous!” The man said. “It’s not the way things are done. Slaves are slaves! They are not the same as citizens. Some of them aren’t even the same color!”
“A man being captured or defeated in battle, a woman who cannot pay her husband’s debt, a child who has no parents. None of these things make them less of a man, woman, or child. Slavery is a condition we have imposed upon the weak and vulnerable, not something that defines who they are.” I looked around me and my scribes were writing furiously on their tablets. Bao smiled at me and joined by my side.
“Let this proclamation be the first of our rule over Bathra,” I said. “Any slave who is sent to work on the temple is thereby freed and becomes a citizen of Bathra through his labor. Further, if a master dwells seven days in his home with his slaves, the slave woman will become equal to her mistress and the slave will walk side-by-side with his master. The orphan shall come to the temple and be cared for. These are the people of Ninra and Namri. They shall be cared for.”
It was going to take more than that to get slavery abolished. I wasn’t about to tackle that problem right now, but when it was reported that a slave was beaten, the case came before me and I judged whether the punishment was just. If I deemed it was not, I delivered the same punishment back to the master.
And the walls of the temple rose, and the people prospered.
There were some rocky times in store for Bathra. A neighboring kingdom heard about our policy toward slaves and decided this would be a good time to attack and take some slaves for themselves. Our people prospered and they felt they could help themselves to the wealth. I personally led the army out to meet them at our border and they quickly decided it was not such a good time to attack Bathra.
The vanquished leader surrendered himself as payment for leniency to his troops. He was surprised when I let them all return home—minus their weapons. I told him there were only two options when making war against Bathra: Go back home or die. That word spread rapidly throughout the region. I won’t say we had no conflicts, but I met each one with the full strength of our army and reaffirmed that Ninra and Namri were the protectors of Bathra and my army was their army.
While we were campaigning, we came upon several small temples that were broken down or in poor repair. As soon as I could spare people from the building site, I sent crews out to rebuild any temple they found in our land. It made no difference to me what god the temple was erected to honor. We honored all with our labor.
Word spread among the surrounding peoples as far away as Europe, Asia, and Africa, that we were blessed by the gods because we labored for their honor. Countries wanting to share in our bounty quickly saw a different path than making war against us. We were sent gifts from far and near to help make the temples of Bathra glorious.
Massive cedar logs came to us from the north, which we fashioned into beams to support the roof of the temple. Tiles encrusted with jewels reached us from the east, with workers who installed the floors of our temple and then stayed to enjoy their new citizenship in Bathra. Copper came from the mines of the southwest and the metal was used to encase the roof so it was impervious to weather.
It was said that the roof of Ninra’s temple could be seen reflecting the sun as far away as Babylon. And there were so many gifts and excess materials that I expanded and improved the palace so that it was more beautiful than what I’d built for either Drakomaxos or Idiopheles.
And the people prospered.
Bao and I were contacted by our patrons in a dream. We were given instructions on further reforms we could make in our society that would improve justice, care for more poor and weak, and establish us as the rulers of the region. And we were given ‘tokens’ of the gods’ approval. These tokens amounted to so much wealth that we could care for every citizen of Bathra.
Those who worked, no matter what business they conducted, worked in service to the gods and were well-compensated for their labor. Those who refused to work, like the wealthy skeptic who had offered me slaves, were deemed undesirables and were driven out of the city. Oh, we continued to provide food for them, but they could not participate in the bounty of our land. Most soon came around to the idea that working in the service of the gods rather than in service to their greed was good for them and they returned to the city and prospered.
I had never liked the idea of killing people. After Zeus told me what would happen to me if I were killed, I couldn’t see sending others to that fate. I felt I was responsible for the old mage’s death and in a way for Pinaruti’s, but I wasn’t happy about it. There were deaths on the battlefield, but no more than necessary, I felt. Once our enemy surrendered or retreated to his homeland, we did not pursue them and kill them. But there were crimes that were also punishable by death. In most cases, I replaced the penalty with permanent imprisonment. If a man or woman was guilty of a capital offense, he was imprisoned outside the town where the prisoners grew their own food and tended their own flocks, but could not leave the compound.
I maintained only two punishments without mercy. A man guilty of murder was killed. But his family was not punished and continued under the care of the god and goddess. If a man was guilty of rape, he was castrated and made a eunuch. Both crimes all but disappeared from Bathra.
Beatings and cruel punishments decreased as well. There had been a movement toward punishing a person by taking away the body part that committed the offense. If the injured party lost a hand, the guilty party also lost a hand. This resulted in two people who couldn’t work with both hands. I didn’t like that notion. A person might still receive a few lashes if the crime could not be restored, but usually, restoration two-fold was imposed. Stealing from someone was not an interest-free loan.
The day of the temple dedication finally arrived. We had built the walls of the new temple around the temple to Namri, including it inside the temple precincts. “I will protect the poor and defenseless,” Namri said through Bao at the dedication.
“I will protect my wife and her city,” Ninra answered through me.
And Bathra was blessed with peace and prosperity.
“My husband, we must plan for our legacy,” Bao said when we went to bed.
“And what could we leave as a legacy that would be greater than the temple we have built to honor our gods?” I asked. She moved closer to me and threw a leg over my midsection.
“We must leave children who have been brought up in the ways of our god and goddess,” she answered. “They must rule when we are returned to the earth as dust.”
That was a jolt. Bao had just reminded me that she was human and would grow old and die. She, of course, assumed I was merely a divinely blessed man and had no idea I was a demon.
I confess, I hadn’t really thought of my reign in Bathra ending. However, it would become obvious in a few years that I wasn’t getting any older. I needed to think about that. But I also needed to respond to Bao’s statement of leaving children brought up in the ways of our god and goddess. That was true.
“It is good that we are educating the orphans and training them in the way of the gods,” I said. “We will have many children as our legacy.”
“Bob, don’t be dense. We need a child. We’ve fucked at every opportunity for over a year and I am still not pregnant. Nor are Portia or Nimia. You must take another wife into the harem to have your child.”
I was shocked. It was not that I was opposed to more women in my harem—there were only the three—but that I would be expected to father a child. After what happened to my precious Aria, I swore that would never happen.
“Let me consider your words, my wife. I will talk to our god and ask his guidance. And to our goddess. I know nothing about being a father. I will not reject you, beloved.”
I left our bed late that night to wander the city.
And to mourn Aria.
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