Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Timna was an unusual girl who had come from Akka with her father on a trading visit, and she had won Urbaal’s respect for the congenial manner in which she had adjusted to Matred, his domineering first wife. Instead of fighting, Timna had insisted upon a house of love—which was the more credit to her in that for the first three years of her life with Urbaal she had been childless and the target of contempt from Matred, but with the recent arrival of her first son a more harmonious balance had been achieved. As a mother she could demand respect from Matred, but now, her composure fled, she told her husband, “The priest of Melak was here.”

This was what Urbaal had expected. It was bound to come and he wished he knew something that would console his gentle wife, but he had learned that in these matters nothing could be done. “We’ll have other children,” he promised. She started to weep and a clever lie sprang to his mind. “Timna,” he whispered seductively, “look at what I’ve just bought you. A new Astarte.” She looked at the smiling goddess, so bursting with fertility, and covered her face.

“Could we run away?” she pleaded.

“Timna!” The idea was blasphemous, for Urbaal was definitely a part of the land … this land … these olive trees by the well.

“I will not surrender my son,” she persisted.

“We all do,” he reasoned gently, and he pulled her to his couch, from which she could see the reassuring Astartes who promised her fertility for years to come. Placing his arm about her he tried to add his personal reassurance, telling her of how Matred had found courage to face the same problem. “At first she nearly perished with grief,” he confided, and Timna wondered how that austere woman had found a way to show grief. “But later she had four other children, and one night she confessed to me, ‘We did the right thing.’ You’ll have others playing about your knees, and you’ll feel the same way.”

She listened attentively, but in the end whimpered, “I cannot.”

He was tempted to show his irritation, but she was so gentle that he did not. Instead he reasoned, “It is to Melak that we look for protection. Great El is necessary, and we cherish him, but in war only Melak is our protector.”

“Why must he be so cruel?” Timna pleaded.

“He does much for us,” Urbaal explained, “and all he asks in return … our first-born sons.” To the farmer this was persuasive logic, and he started to leave for his olive fields, but Timna held his hands, pleading, until he felt that he must shock her into reality. “As long as Makor has existed,” he said harshly, “we have delivered to Melak our first-born sons. Matred did so. The slave girls did so. And you shall, too.” He left the room, but as he passed the courtyard he saw his latest son, six months old, gurgling in the shadows of the courtyard, and he experienced a paralyzing regret which he had been afraid to share with Timna, but she had followed him from the room and from the doorway saw his involuntary gesture of grief. She thought: Three times he has surrendered his first-born sons—Matred’s and the slave girls’. His pain is greater than mine but he dares not show it.

Timna was right. Her simple-minded husband was enmeshed in the contradictions that perplexed the men of that age, the conflict between death and life—Melak demanding death while Astarte bestowed life—and he fled from the house of gaiety where his slave girls were singing with the children, and stamped through the gate, seeking solace in his olive grove. As he walked among those lovely gray-green trees whose leaves swirled upward in varied patterns, turning new faces to the sun and shimmering like jewels, he tried to counteract death by conjuring a vision of the seductive slave girl he had watched at the temple; and he recalled the first day he had seen her. The warriors of Makor had marched out on a minor raid of no consequence, one little town pestering another, and he had not bothered to go along, but when the troops returned he had come out of his house to greet them. They had come singing through the zigzag gate and among their prisoners was this enchanting girl, then only fifteen and not a resident of the town the troops had fought against, but a slave who had been captured by that town from some site farther north. Since no specific soldier had captured her, she was claimed by the priests, who saw in her a symbol which they could manipulate for profit to the town. They had sequestered her, allowing her to be seen only infrequently, and had let it be known that she was reserved for a solemn purpose. Their plan had worked. The men of Makor were excited by her presence and were tending their fields and olive presses as never before. Now her tantalizing vision moved with Urbaal as he inspected his trees.

By habit he went first to the center of his grove, where a rounded stone, scarcely six inches higher than the earth, served as the home of the baal who commanded the olive trees. Paying his obeisance to the god, Urbaal summoned his foreman, who ran up sweating. “Still a good crop?” the farmer asked.

“Look,” the foreman said. He led Urbaal to an area of sloping rock where an ancient machine produced much of Makor’s wealth. At the highest level a deep square pit some ten feet on the side had been hacked into the solid rock. It had required both tools and patience to dig so deep a hole, but the use to which it was put required inventive genius. Rising from the middle of this first pit stood a wooden table with a high rim inside which the oily fruit of pitted olives was piled; fastened into a hole in the northern face of the pit was the butt end of a stout pole, free to move up and down with considerable leverage. Over the rimmed table fitted a heavy square of wood which pressed down to squeeze the olives and extract the oil, and it was against this pressing board that the pole was brought down with considerable force. Then, because men were scarce at Makor and could not stand hour after hour merely pulling down a pole, huge stones were provided to be hung by slings on the far end of the pole so as to keep the pressure constant day and night. It was one of the world’s first complicated machines, and it worked.

But part of its ingenuity lay in the fact that below the first pit lay a second, and below it a third. Through the solid rock connecting the various levels, some skilled workman had driven a small hole, so that by gravity the olive oil from the pressing pit could filter down into the second and then into the third, losing its sediment and impurities on the way. The entire process represented a sophisticated system that would hardly be improved upon in the next four thousand years. Urbaal, dipping his finger into the bottom pit, tasted the results and told his foreman, “Good.”

“This time you’re sure to win,” the foreman winked.

Then Urbaal exposed the fear that disturbed him. “How’s Amalek doing with his cows?”

“They say very good,” the foreman replied.

“He always does,” Urbaal said, not trying to hide his worry.

The foreman moved closer. “We could turn some dogs loose among his calves.”

Urbaal shook his head. “We don’t need such tricks, but in case he’s thinking the same way, I hope you’re guarding the pits.”

The foreman pointed to a booth which he had recently constructed, four poles stuck in earth supporting a platform two feet off the ground, roofed over with a canopy of branches. “From now till the end of harvest I’m sleeping in the booth,” the foreman said, and after praying to the baal of the oil pits Urbaal left the grove with a feeling of confidence; but as he returned through the zigzag gate he passed the one man who could destroy that feeling, the herdsman Amalek, a strong, wiry man taller and younger than himself, with huge muscles on the back of his legs and a confident, sunburned grin marking his amiable face. He was no mean opponent, for once before he had won and apparently intended doing so again. He greeted Urbaal with a friendly wave and left the town with long swinging strides.