Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  health. They were supposed to send us a new head, all the way from the main

  factory at Abydos in Egypt, but it got sent to the wrong Alexandria, and since

  they had a perfectly good head already, they spirited it away and stuck it in

  the nearest lime-kiln; so now it’s helping the crops grow, just like a good god

  should. The factory’s closed down now, of course. King Ptolemy (General Ptolemy,

  as was) had it turned into a plant for making catapult-balls. I gather they’re

  very good, too.

  A day or so after I’d dedicated the temple, I was standing by in a hammock in

  the courtyard of the really rather fine house I’d been allocated as governor

  when the major-domo waddled in and announced that there was a deputation waiting

  to see me. I wasn’t expecting visitors, let alone any deputations, but there was

  always the off-chance that it was something important, so I told the man to

  bring them in.

  ‘We’d like you to dedicate the shrine,’ their spokesman said.

  ‘Already done that,’ I replied.

  The man shook his head. ‘Not the temple,’ he said, ‘the shrine.

  We built it specially as soon as we knew you were coming.’

  I frowned. I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘this is the first

  I’ve heard about any shrine. Whose shrine is it, specifically?’

  The man looked confused. ‘For the sacred serpent,’ he said. ‘You know, the one

  you carry about with you in the jar. We’ve built a per­manent home for it, just

  past the corn exchange as you go up the hill. It’s very nice.’

  I was silent for a very long time. ‘Let me just make sure I’ve got this right,’

  I said. ‘You want me to give you my snake.’

  He looked worried. ‘It may seem like that at first sight,’ he said nervously,

  ‘but it isn’t, really. We just thought the serpent might be happier if it had

  some kind of permanent home.’

  I shook my head. ‘He’s a nomad, my snake,’ I said. ‘Just like your cousins to

  the north. Just like me, I guess,’ I added; it hadn’t occurred to me before but

  yes, in my time I’ve been every bit as nomadic as your average full-blooded

  Scythian. ‘He doesn’t want a permanent home. He likes the freedom, you see.’

  ‘The freedom,’ the spokesman replied. ‘In a jar.’

  ‘A jar that’s been all over the world,’ I pointed out. ‘Just because he’s stayed

  inside the jar doesn’t mean he hasn’t been to all those exotic places. I’m sure

  he’d have paid proper attention to them if he’d ever stuck his head up above the

  rim.’

  But it obviously meant a lot to them. So, in spite of my serious reservations

  about the whole idea, I said I’d do it. This left me with a problem, of course;

  inside the jar — no snake. Well, I couldn’t very well buy one, in case people

  put two and two together and got upset. Nor could I find one, however hard I

  looked (and usually the trick is not finding one, as you walk the fields in your

  bare feet). So; no buy, no find; all that was left was to try making one. That

  may sound daft to you, but when I was a kid we used to find cast-off snakeskins

  in the fields, stuff them with wool and use them to frighten the life out of

  people by leaving them lying about (in the clothes-press, for instance, or

  buried in someone’s clothes while he was swimming in the sea). With a little

  practice, we were able to get them looking ever so lifelike, and they had the

  tremendous advantage over the real thing of not being able to bite and kill you.

  Well, of course, I didn’t have a snakeskin either; but I had an idea where there

  might be one. You may remember that when I was in Macedon, Alexander put a snake

  in my jar; it popped out at an embarrassing moment, if you recall. I’d noticed

  recently when I’d been moving the jar around that there was something small and

  light rattling around in there; my guess was that Alexander’s snake had taken

  advantage of the quiet and privacy of my jar to slough its skin. Anyhow, it

  wouldn’t cost me anything to turn the jar out and have a look.

  So I stood on a stool and reached up to lift it down from the hook in the

  rafters where I’d hung it; but it was a very old, tired stool. I heard a sharp

  crack, just as I’d lifted the ear of the jar off the hook, and the next thing I

  knew was that I was sitting uncomfortably on the floor, one leg folded

  underneath me at a very unusual angle, feeling extremely sorry for myself.

  Strangely enough, it was my right leg I broke, whereas my brother broke his

  left.

  I was too preoccupied with screaming and sobbing with pain to pay too much

  attention at first to what had become of the jar; but after I’d yelled myself

  hoarse and nobody came (major-domo and cook down at the market, shopping;

  housemaid and gardener off together somewhere), I calmed down a bit and saw that

  the jar had smashed, That shook me, I’ll admit. The jar had been with me a long

  time, it had been my living and a tremendous influence on the lives of myself

  and others — think; if I hadn’t had the jar, Queen Olympias would never have

  wanted me to tutor her son; if I hadn’t tutored Alexander ... Well. And now it

  was broken; and there among the small, sharp potsherds I saw the dried-up

  remains of a dead snake, curled up tightly like a coil of coarse rope, as

  perfectly preserved as an Egyptian king.

  Well, they do say that snakes are immortal too; instead of dying as we do, they

  simply slough off their old bodies and slither away. I wonder; as they break out

  of death like a chick out of an egg, do they remember the life ahead of them, or

  do they have to wait for it to come back piecemeal, like us ordinary gods? I

  have no idea; I never knew the answer to that one, or else it’s slipped my mind.

  I’m getting terribly forgetful these days, Phryzeutzis; I can’t remember

  anything unless I write it down somewhere.

  The broken leg was a perfect excuse for not dedicating the shrine; and one day

  while I was laid up waiting for it to mend, the gardener came rushing by with a

  basket in one hand and a long stick in the other. I asked him what the fuss was

  about.

  ‘There’s a snake got into the storeroom,’ he said. ‘Thrassa’s doing her block,

  so I’m going to get rid of it.’

  I propped myself up on one elbow. ‘Do me a favour,’ I said. ‘When you’ve caught

  it, don’t kill it; sling it in a jar and stuff the neck with straw. I’ve got a

  use for a live snake.’

  He looked at me as if I was crazy; then again, he always looked at me as if I

  was crazy. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where do you want it put?’

  ‘Oh, anywhere,’ I said. ‘Just see that nobody disturbs it.’

  So the shrine got its snake, a little wriggly green bugger that slid away out of

  sight as soon as I pulled the straw out. The assembled local worthies were no

  end impressed, and took care to stand back as I passed so my shadow wouldn’t

  fall on them. For two pins, I think, they’d have started worshipping me as a

  god.

  The Macedonians have a law, or at any rate a tradition, that you don’t start a

  war during the month Daisios (that’s roughly the Athenian Thargelion; gods know

  wha
t you people call it. At any rate, it’s between the rise of the Pleiades and

  solstice, about threshing time, and if you haven’t finished digging over the

  vineyards, you’re way behind). In the middle of Daisios in the thirteenth year

  of his reign, when he was thirty-two years old, Alexander was in Babylon , all

  ready to set off and conquer Arabia , a huge and worthless desert away to the

  south. On previous occasions, he’d taken the trouble to sidestep the tradition

  by having his astronomers repeat the previous month, Artemisios; this time,

  however, he couldn’t be bothered. Besides, he argued winningly, the intercalated

  second Artemisios had clearly been spurious, which meant that in the eyes of his

  fellow gods he’d gone to war in Daisios before and got away with it, so there

  was no reason why he shouldn’t do the same thing again.

  A day or so before the scheduled departure date, Alexander went to a party given

  by a man called Medius. It must have been a good party, because he woke up

  feeling awful, so he ordered the domestic staff to shift his quarters from the

  palace to a house in a park on the posh side of the river, where it was quiet

  and peaceful and a man could recover after a long night with a jar. There was a

  swimming pool at this house, and he decided to sleep beside it, under the stars;

  apparently Babylon ’s like an oven at that time of year, and it’s nice and cool

  by the water.

  Next day he was a little feverish, so he had a bath and spent the rest of the

  day at home with Medius, some other friends and a hair or two of the dog, since

  he wanted to be sure to be fighting fit when the army moved out in a couple of

  days’ time. He didn’t sleep well that night, and the next day the fever was a

  little worse. The general staff started making plans for postponing the

  expedition, but he wouldn’t hear of if, even though the next day, which was when

  the fleet should have sailed, he was no better. But the day after that he was

  almost fully recovered, and put in a full day’s work catching up on what he’d

  missed while he’d been ill. Maybe he overdid it; he was so bad the next day that

  he had to be taken back to the palace.

  He lived for another four days. Most of the time he was too weak to say

  anything, and when he wasn’t he was wandering in his mind, calling out all sorts

  of strange, delusional gibberish, the way people do when they’re out of their

  heads with fever. He did have a lucid spell near the end, but when his chief

  officers and ministers of state tried to talk to him about the succession he

  didn’t appear to remember who they were. When he was dying, he kept shouting

  that there were snakes on his pillow, but it was all right; he’d strangled them,

  because he was the infant Hercules and just about to be born. Then he said that

  Aristotle had had him poisoned, because Aristotle didn’t believe in gods and

  thought there shouldn’t be any; he’d got the recipe for the poison out of his

  nephew Gallisthenes’ book, the one Eudaemon had told him about, and the poison

  had been served to him in a cup made out of the hoof of a mule, because

  half-breed gods can’t have children. He gave orders for Babylon to be burned to

  the ground, followed by the whole of the earth, because he remembered that last

  time he’d wiped out the human race with a great flood and it didn’t do to repeat

  one’s effects. Then he sat upright and asked for someone to read to him out of

  Euxenus’ book about the war, since he wanted to know what had happened in the

  end. They told him Euxenus hadn’t written any books, and asked him which of the

  generals he wanted to have the empire after he was gone. ‘How should I know?’ he

  answered angrily, ‘I haven’t got to that bit yet,’ whereupon the generals had

  the room cleared.

  Some people say he died screaming, or in tears; that he went to bed just before

  he died; that in the last moment of his life a mighty eagle swooped in through

  the window and carried his soul away to Olympus . Other people will tell you

  that he didn’t die at all, that the embalmed, imperishable corpse that lies

  buried in Alexandria in Egypt (perfectly preserved, like a dried snake in a jar)

  is somebody quite other, a body he sloughed off when it started to fray, and

  Alexander is still alive somewhere, waiting for some unspecified event which

  means it’s time for him to return and continue where he left off. Some people

  would have you believe that he will never die, that he lives on in the group

  mind of the swarm of Macedonians and Greeks that are buzzing all through Europe

  and Asia these days, gathering nectar and nesting in every crack and corner of

  the world, even as far out as the eastern border of Scythia.

  Personally, I think he’s dead, and bloody good riddance.

  If history were to end there, with the death of Alexander and the collapse of

  his empire, it’d be a poor show; a great deal of work would have been wasted

  with nothing to show for it, and generations yet unborn would make pilgrimages

  to piss on our graves. I don’t intend it to be that way. I may be old, but I’m

  not so old that I can’t still dream about the ideal society, or at any rate the

  perfect city.

  It started a year or so ago, when that Lydian merchant showed up with his little

  cart full of plunder from some battle or other. Odd creatures, your Lydians;

  they’re about as Greek as the river Ganges, but they’ve had Greeks living next

  to them for so long that the colours have run, so to speak, and to listen to

  some of them talk, you’d almost believe they were as Greek as I am. This Lydian

  was like that; he called himself Theocles or some such Greek name, and if you

  believed his sales pitch everything in his cart that wasn’t made in Athens was

  made in Corinth or Megara orThebes. Anyway, in among the bloodstained boots and

  the slightly war-damaged armour (one careful but unfortunate owner) there was,

  he told me, something he knew I’d want to buy. In fact, he said, once I knew

  what it was I’d be so desperate to buy it I’d undoubtedly offer him far more

  money than I could possibly afford, so as a favour to me and a token of respect

  for the memory of the divine Alexander he’d offer it to me for a mere ten

  staters, sight unseen.

  Needless to say, I told him to go forth and multiply, whereupon he gave me a

  very sad look, the sort of look Lydian faces were expressly designed for, and

  said that the price was now twelve staters. This intrigued me; so I said that if

  he told me what this thing was, I’d give him half a stater, local coin. His face

  lengthened a little more, his hand turned palm upwards, and he told me it was a

  book.

  ‘A book?’ I said.

  ‘A book. A Greek book,’ he added.

  He was right; I was interested. ‘What sort of book?’ I asked.

  ‘About so long,’ he replied, ‘so much round, in its own brass tube. Tube’s

  extra,’ he added quickly, but not quickly enough.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But what’s it about? Who’s it by?’

  He shrugged; a complicated, multi-dimensional folding of the shoulders, as if he

  was about to take his arms off and put them neatly away. ‘Does it matter?’ he

  sa
id. ‘It’s a book. In Greek.’

  I thought about it for a moment. ‘I might be interested,’ I said. ‘For three

  staters.’

  Honestly, I thought he was about to burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said; then

  he fished about under his tunic and produced this book-tube, with the very

  dog-eared edges of a book poking out. He pulled it from the tube, unwound about

  a hand’s span, tore it off and ate it. ‘Fifteen staters,’ he said.

  I wanted to see how this was going to turn out. ‘Seven,’ I said.

  He unrolled and ate another span. ‘Seventeen,’ he said.

  ‘Done.’

  ‘You won’t be sorry,’ he said, spitting out a wadge of half-chewed Egyptian

  paper. ‘And three for the tube.’

  ‘You know what you can do with the tube,’ I told him.

  As I’d feared, the book turned out to be the goddamned bloody Iliad, messily

  copied by an illiterate scribe somewhere in Egypt , at a guess. Still, a book’s

  a book, so that afternoon, when it was too hot to do anything else, I sat down

  under a tree and started idly scrolling through, more interested in the

  footnotes and the little comments scrawled by previous owners in the margins

  than Homer’s actual immortal words. When I reached the end, I saw there was

  something else after it; the scribe, having cramped his writing up really small,

  had been left with blank space at the end and had to fill it up with something

  else. The text he’d chosen was new to me; it was On Death, by someone called

  Pherecrates of Cnidus. Quite by chance I’d stumbled across a treasure richer

  than gold: a book I’d never read by a man I’d never heard of. My lucky day.

  That afternoon, I got to know Pherecrates of Gnidus pretty well. He wasn’t a

  difficult man to understand; a gentleman farmer like myself, who made use of the

  idle parts of the year by renting space on his rich neighbour’s ship, loading up

  his surplus produce and a few bits and pieces he’d bought in specially, and

  cruising up and down the coast between Rhodes and the Hellespont. Men like

  Pherecrates don’t usually tend to trouble history, and Pherecrates himself would

  never have been an exception to this rule if he hadn’t come ashore one day at a

  something-and-nothing little town on the island of Chios, whose name he couldn’t