Suddenly there were screams. Some of Genghis' guards broke ranks and fled, despite the howls of their commanders. Through the billowing dust before Genghis, Kolya saw a red rag flung through the air—no, not a rag, it was a human being, a Mongol warrior, his chest ripped open, entrails dangling.
Genghis Khan held his ground, holding his horse steady, his lance and scimitar raised.
Kolya saw the beast coming, emerging from the dust. It was like a lion in its stealthy advance, but it was massively muscled, its shoulders more like a bear's. And when it opened its mouth it revealed teeth that curved like Genghis Khan's scimitar. In a moment of deadly stillness emperor and saber-toothed cat faced each other.
Then a single shot rang out, as unexpected as a clap of thunder from a clear sky. It was so close to Kolya his ears rang, and he heard the hiss of the bullet as it flew. Around Kolya the royal party and their attendants screamed and quailed. Suddenly the cat lay in the dirt, its hind legs twitching, its head exploded to a bloody mass. Genghis's horse was shying, but the Emperor had not flinched.
It had been Sable, of course. But she had already hidden the pistol.
Sable spread her arms. "Tengri! I am the emissary of Heaven, sent to save you, great one, for you are intended to live forever, and to rule all the world!" She turned to a whimpering Basil. In broken French she hissed, "Translate, you dog, or it will be your head I take off next."
Genghis Khan stared up at her.
* * *
The slaughter of the animals inside the cordon took days. It was customary for some of the animals to be let loose, but on this occasion, as Genghis's life had been threatened, none was allowed to live.
Kolya inspected the remains curiously. The heads and tusks of several mammoths were presented to Genghis, along with a pride of lions of a size nobody had seen before, and foxes with coats of a beautiful snowy whiteness.
And there were a strange kind of people, too, caught up in the Mongols' net. Naked, fast-running but unable to escape, they were a small family, a man, woman and boy. The man was dispatched immediately, and the woman and child brought in chains to the royal household. The creatures were naked and filthy, and seemed to have no speech. The woman was given to the soldiers for their sport, and the child was kept in a cage for a few days. Without his parents, the child would not eat, and rapidly weakened.
Kolya saw him up close just once. Squatting on the ground inside his cage, the boy was tall—taller than all the Mongols, even taller than Kolya—but his face and body had the unformed look of a child. His skin was weather-beaten and his feet were callused. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his body, but his muscles were hard. He looked as if he could run all day without a break. Over his eyes was a heavy ridge of bone. When he looked at Kolya his eyes were startling blue, clear as the sky. There was intelligence there, Kolya thought—but it wasn't a human intelligence; it was a blank knowingness, without a center in self, like the eyes of a lion.
Kolya tried to talk about this with Sable. Perhaps this was some prehuman, a Homo erectus perhaps, haplessly caught up in the Discontinuity. But Sable was nowhere to be found.
When Kolya went back, the cage had gone. He learned the boy had died, his body removed and burned with the rest of the waste from the hunt.
* * *
Sable reappeared about noon the day after that. Yeh-lü and Kolya were in the middle of another of their strategy sessions.
Sable was wearing a Mongol tunic, of the expensive, embroidered sort the Golden Family sported, but she had bits of bright orange parachute silk in her hair and around her neck, a badge of her different origins. She looked wild, a creature neither of one world nor the other, out of control.
Yeh-lü sat back and watched her steadily, wary, calculating.
"What happened to you?" Kolya said in English. "I haven't seen you since you pulled that gun."
"Spectacular, wasn't it?" she breathed. "And it worked."
"What do you mean, it worked? Genghis could have had you killed, for violating his priority in the hunt."
"But he didn't. He called me to his yurt. He sent out everybody, even the interpreters—there were just the two of us. I think he really believes now that I am from his Tengri. You know, when I went to him Genghis had been drinking for hours, so I cured his hangover. I kissed his cup of wine—I slipped in a few aspirins I'd put in my mouth. It was so easy. I tell you, Kolya—"
"What did you offer him, Sable?"
"What he wants. Long ago he was given a divine mission, via a shaman. Genghis is Tengri's representative on Earth, sent to rule over all of us. He knows his mission isn't complete yet—and since the Discontinuity he's actually gone backward—but he also knows he's getting older. That Communist monument recording the date of his death spooked the bejesus out of him. He wants time to complete his mission—he wants immortality. And that's what I offered him. I told him that in Babylon he will find the philosopher's stone."
Kolya gasped. "You're crazy."
"How do you know, Kolya? We've no idea what waits for us in Babylon. Who knows what's possible? And who is to stop us?" she sneered. "Casey? Those dumb-ass Brits in India?"
Kolya hesitated. "Did Genghis take you to his bed?"
She smiled. "I knew he would be put off by clean flesh. So I took a little dung from his favorite horse, and rubbed it in my scalp. I even rolled around in the dirt a bit. It worked. And you know, he liked my skin. The smoothness—the absence of disease scars. He may not like hygiene, but he likes its results." Her face darkened. "He took me from behind. The Mongols make love about as subtly as they wage war. Some day that hard-faced bastard will pay for that."
"Sable—"
"But not today. He got what he wanted, and so did I." She beckoned Basil. "You, Frenchie. Tell Yeh-lü that Genghis has decided. The Mongols would have reached Iraq anyhow, in a generation or so; the campaign won't be a challenge for them. The quriltai, the council of war, has already been called." She took a dagger from her boot, and thrust it into the map, where she had placed it before, into Babylon. This time nobody dared remove it.
Part Four: THE CONFLUENCE OF HISTORY
25. The Fleet
BISESA THOUGHT THAT ALEXANDER'S fleet, gathered offshore, looked magnificent despite the rain. There were triremes with their banks of oars, horses whinnied nervously on flat-bottomed barges, and most impressive of all were the zohruks, shallow-draft grain-lighters, an Indian design that would persist to the twenty-first century. The rain fell in sheets, obscuring everything, washing out colors and softening lines and perspectives, but it was hot, and the oarsmen went naked, their brown, wiry bodies glistening, the water plastering their hair flat and running down their faces.
Bisesa couldn't resist taking snaps of the spectacle. But the phone was complaining. "What do you think this is, a theme park? You're going to fill my memory long before we get to Babylon, and then what will you do? And I'm getting wet..."
Alexander meanwhile was seeking the gods' approval of the coming journey. Standing at the bow of his ship, he poured libations from a golden bowl into the water, and called on Poseidon, the sea-nymphs, and the spirits of the World Ocean to preserve and protect his fleet. Then he went on to make offerings to Heracles, who he supposed was his ancestor, and Ammon, the Egyptian god he had come to identify with Zeus, and indeed had "discovered" to be his own father at a shrine in the desert.
The few hundred nineteenth-century British troops, drawn up in rough order by their officers, watched with amazement, and some ribald comments, as the King did his divine duty. But Tommies and sepoys alike had been happy enough to accept the hospitality of the Macedonian camp; Alexander's gestures today were the finale of days of sacrifices and celebration, of musical festivals and athletic contests. Last night the King had given a "sacrificial" animal, a sheep, cow or goat, to each platoon. It had been, Bisesa thought, like the mightiest barbecue in history.
Ruddy Kipling, standing with his broad face sheltered by a peaked cap, pulled irritably at his mus
tache. "What nonsense fills the minds of men! You know, as a child my ayah was a Roman Catholic, who would take us children to church—the one by the Botanical Gardens in Parel, if you know it. I liked the solemnity and dignity of it all. But then we had a bearer called Meeta who would teach us local songs and take us to Hindu temples. I rather liked their dimly seen but friendly gods."
Abdikadir said dryly, "An interestingly ecumenical childhood."
"Perhaps," Ruddy said. "But stories told to children are one thing—and the ludicrous Hindu pantheon is little more than that: monstrous and inane, and littered with obscene phallic images! And what is it but a remote echo of this nonsensical crew on whom Alexander wastes good wine—indeed, of whom he believes himself to be a part?"
"Ruddy, when in Rome, do as the Romans do," Josh said.
Ruddy clapped him on the back. "But, chum, hereabouts Rome probably hasn't been built! So what am I to do? Eh, eh?"
The ceremonies finished at last. Bisesa and the others made for the boats that would transfer them to the ships. They and most of the British troops were to sail with the fleet, with about half of Alexander's army, while the rump would follow the shore.
The army camp broke up, and the baggage train began to form. It was a chaotic scene, with thousands of men, women, children, ponies, mules, bullocks, goats and sheep, all milling around. There were carts laden with goods and tools for the cooks, carpenters, cobblers, armorers and other craftsmen and traders who followed the army. More enigmatic shapes of wood and iron were catapults and siege engines, broken down into kit form. Prostitutes and water-carriers worked the crowd, and Bisesa saw the proud heads of camels lifting above the crush. The noise was extraordinary, a clamor of voices, bells and trumpets, and the complaints of draft animals. The presence of the bewildered man-apes, confined in a lashed-up cage on their own cart, only added to the circuslike atmosphere of the whole venture.
The moderns marveled. "What a gagglefuck," Casey said. "I have never seen anything like it in my life."
But it was all somehow coming together. The coxes began to shout, and oars splashed in the water. And on land and on the sea, Alexander's followers began to join in rhythmic songs.
Abdikadir said, "The songs of Sinde. A magnificent sound—tens of thousands of voices united."
"Come on," Casey said, "let's get aboard before those sepoys grab the best deck chairs."
* * *
The plan was that the fleet would sail west across the Arabian Sea and then into the Persian Gulf, while the army and baggage train would track its movements following the southern coasts of Pakistan and Iran. They would meet again at the head of the Gulf, and after that they would strike overland to Babylon. These parallel journeys were necessary; Alexander's boats could not last more than a few days at sea without provisioning from the land.
But on land the going was difficult. The peculiar volcanic rain continued with barely a break, and the sky was a lid of ash-gray cloud. The ground turned to mud, bogging down the carts, animals and humans alike, and the heat remained intense, the humidity extraordinary. The baggage train was soon strung out over kilometers, a chain of suffering, and in its wake it left behind the corpses of broken animals, irreparable bits of equipment—and, after only a few days, people.
Casey couldn't bear the sight of Indian women who had to walk behind the carts or the camels with great heaps of goods piled up on their heads. As Ruddy remarked, "Have you noticed how these Iron Age chaps lack so much—not just the obvious like gaslights and typewriters and trousers—but blindingly simple things like carthorse collars? I suppose it's just that nobody's thought of it yet, and once it's invented it stays invented..."
That observation struck Casey. After a few days he sketched a crude wheelbarrow, and went to Alexander's advisors with it. Hephaistion would not consider his proposal, and even Eumenes was skeptical, until Casey put together a hasty, toy-sized prototype to demonstrate the idea.
After that, at the next overnight stop, Eumenes ordered the construction of as many wheelbarrows as could be managed. There was little fresh wood to be had, but the timber from one foundered barge was scavenged and reused. In that first night, under Casey's direction, the carpenters put together more than fifty serviceable barrows, and the next night, having learned from the mistakes of the first batch, nearly a hundred. But then, this was an army that had managed to build a whole fleet for itself on the banks of the Indus; compared to that, knocking together a few wheelbarrows wasn't such a trick.
For the first couple of days after that the train happened to pass over hard, stony ground, and the barrows worked well. It was quite a sight to see the women of Alexander's baggage train happily pushing along barrows that might have come from a garden center in Middle England, laden with goods, and with children balancing precariously on top. But after that the mud returned, and the barrows bogged down. The Macedonians soon abandoned them, amid much derision of the moderns' newfangled technology.
Every three days or so the ships had to put into shore for provisioning. The shore-based troops were expected to live off the land, providing for themselves and for the crews and passengers of the ships. That became increasingly difficult away from the Indus delta, as the land grew more barren.
So the sailors would vary their rations with the contents of tidal pools: razor clams, oysters and sometimes mussels. Once, as Bisesa took part in one of these enjoyable scavenging expeditions, a whale broke the surface of the water, its blowhole plume erupting perilously close to some of the anchored ships. At first the Macedonians were terrified, though the Indians laughed. A troop of foot soldiers ran into the sea, yelling and hammering at the water with their shields and spears and the flats of their swords. The next time the whale surfaced it was a hundred meters further away from shore, and it was not seen again.
Where the army passed, its scouts surveyed the land and made maps, as Alexander's army had always done. Mapmaking had also been a crucial tool for the British in establishing and holding their own empire, and now the Greek and Macedonian scouts were joined by British cartographers armed with theodolites. Everywhere they went they drew new maps and compared them with the old, from before the Discontinuity.
They encountered few people, however.
Once the army scouts found a crowd of around a hundred, men, women and children, they said, dressed in strange, bright clothes that were nevertheless falling to rags. They were dying of thirst, and they spoke in a tongue none of the Macedonians could recognize. None of the British or Bisesa's party got a firsthand glimpse of this crowd. Abdikadir speculated that they could have come from a hotel from the twentieth or even twenty-first centuries. Cut off when their home vanished into the corridors of time, left to wander, such refugees were like negative-image ruins, Bisesa thought. In a normally flowing history the people would vanish and leave their city slowly to decay into the sand; here it was the other way round... Alexander's troops, ordered to protect the baggage train, had killed a couple of refugees as an example, and driven the rest off.
If people were rare, the Eyes were a continual presence. As they worked along the coast, they found Eyes hovering like lamps along the shoreline, one every few kilometers, and in a loose array covering the interior.
Most people ignored them, but Bisesa remained queasily fascinated by the Eyes. If an Eye had popped into existence in the old world—if it had come to hover over that old favorite of UFO dreamers, the White House lawn—it would have been an extraordinary event, the sensation of the century. But most people didn't even want to talk about it. Eumenes was a notable exception; he would stare at the Eyes, hands on hips, as if challenging them to respond.
* * *
Despite the attrition of the march, Ruddy's spirits seemed to rise as the days passed. He wrote when he could, in a tiny, crabbed, paper-preserving hand. And he speculated on the state of the world, expounding to whoever would listen.
"We should not stop at Babylon," he said. He, Bisesa, Abdikadir, Josh, Casey and Cecil de Morga
n were sitting under the awning of an officers' ship; the rain rattled on the awning, and hissed on the surface of the sea. "We should go on—explore Judea, for example. Think about it, Bisesa! The ethereal eye of your space boat could make out only scattered settlements there, a few threads of smoke. What if, in one of those mean huts, even now the Nazarene is taking His first lusty breath? Why, we would be like ten thousand magi, following a strange star."
"And then there is Mecca," Abdikadir said dryly.
Ruddy spread his hands expansively. "Let's be ecumenical about it!"
Bisesa asked, "So, after your complicated origins, you've ended up a Christian, Ruddy?"
He stroked his mustache. "Put it this way. Believe in God. Not sure about the Trinity. Can't accept eternal damnation—but there must be some retribution." He smiled. "I sound like a Methodist! My father would be pleased. Anyhow I'd be delighted to meet the chap who started it all."
But Josh said, "Be careful what you wish for, Ruddy. This is not some vast museum through which we travel. Perhaps you would find Christ in Judea. But what if not? It's unlikely after all—in fact it's far more likely that all of the Judea we find here has been ripped out of a time before Christ's birth."
"I was born after the Incarnation," Ruddy said firmly. "There is no doubt about that. And if I could summon up one grandfather after another in a great chain of predecessors I could have them attest to that fact."
"Yes," said Josh. "But you are not in the history of your grandfathers any more, Ruddy. What if there has been no Incarnation here? Then you are a saved man in a pagan world. Are you Virgil, or Dante?"
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