"I—ah." Ruddy fell silent, his broad brow furrowed. "It would take a better theologian than I to puzzle that out. Let's add it to the itinerary—we must seek Augustine, or Aquinas, and ask them what they think. And what about you, Abdikadir? What if there is no Mecca—what if Muhammad has yet to be born?"
Abdikadir said, "Islam is not time-bound, as Christianity is. Tawhid, unicity, remains true: on Mir as on Earth, in the past as in the future, there is no god but God, and every particle of the universe, every leaf on every tree, is an expression of His immanence. And the Quran is the unmediated word of God, in this world as in any other, whether His prophet exists here to speak it or not."
Josh nodded. "It's a comforting point of view."
"As salaam alaikum," said Abdikadir.
"Anyhow it may be even more complicated than that," Bisesa said. "Mir didn't come from one time-frame, remember. It is a patchwork, and that surely applies in Mecca and Judea. Perhaps there are bits of Judea dating from before Christ's birth—but bits later, where He once walked. So does the Incarnation apply to this universe, or not?"
Ruddy said, "How strange it is! We are each granted twenty-five thousand days of our lives, say. Is it possible that we too are fragmented—that each day has been cut out of our lives like a square from a quilt?" He waved a hand at the ash-gray sky. "Is it possible there are twenty-five thousand other Ruddys out there somewhere, each picking up his life where he can?"
"One of you mouthy assholes is enough for me," Casey growled, his first contribution to the debate, and he took a pull from his skin of watered-down wine.
Cecil de Morgan listened to such talk, mostly silently. Bisesa knew he had formed a loose alliance with Alexander's Greek Secretary, Eumenes, and de Morgan reported back such speculations to his new partner. They were both in it for themselves, of course: Eumenes' priority was his own jostling with Alexander's other courtiers, notably Hephaistion; and Cecil was, as always, playing both ends against the middle. But everybody knew that. And Bisesa saw no harm in information flowing through Cecil to Eumenes. They were all in this together, after all.
The fleet sailed on.
26. The Temple
WHEN MONGOLS BROKE CAMP, the first task was to round up horses.
Mongol horses lived semiwild, in herds that were allowed to roam around the plains until needed. There had been some concern that the time slips might have magicked away many of the herds Genghis Khan's plans relied on, but riders were sent out into the field to bring them in, and after a day great clouds of horses came thundering across the plain toward the metropolis of yurts. The men closed around the horses brandishing long poles with lassos on the end. As if they knew that a march of thousands of kilometers lay ahead of them, the horses bucked and darted defiantly. But once bound, they allowed themselves to be led away stoically.
Kolya thought it was typical of the Mongols' whole uncivilized enterprise that even the greatest campaign should have to start with a rodeo.
After the spectacle of the roundup, the preparations for the march were rapid. Most of the yurts were collapsed and loaded onto carts or baggage animals, but some of the larger tents, including those that had made up Genghis's pavilion, were loaded onto broad-based carts drawn by teams of oxen. Even the Soyuz capsule was to be dragged along. It had been brought here at Genghis's orders from the village of Scacatai; Kolya understood that a siege engine had been adapted to lift it. Sitting on a heavy-duty cart, strapped on by horsehair ropes, it looked like a metal yurt itself.
For his march on Babylon Kolya estimated that Genghis Khan would be accompanied by around twenty thousand warriors—most of them cavalrymen, and each of these accompanied by at least one attendant, and two or three spare horses. Genghis organized his traveling force into three divisions: armies of the left wing, and of the right, and of the center. The center, commanded by Genghis Khan himself, included the elite imperial guard, including Genghis's own thousand-strong bodyguard. Sable and Kolya would travel with the center, in the retinue of Yeh-lü.
Some forces were left behind to garrison Mongolia itself, and to continue the task of piecing together what had become of the empire. The garrison would be left under the command of one of Genghis Khan's sons, Tolui. Genghis Khan was not significantly weakened by leaving Tolui behind. As well as his chancellor Yeh-lü he had with him another son, Ögödei, and his general Subedei. Considering that Ögödei was the man who would have succeeded Genghis Khan in the old timeline, and that Subedei was perhaps Genghis's most able general—the man who would have masterminded the invasion of Europe after Genghis's death—it was a formidable team indeed.
Kolya witnessed the moment when Genghis Khan took leave of his son. Genghis drew Tolui's face to his own with his two hands and touched his lips to one of Tolui's cheeks, inhaling deeply. Sable dismissed it as an "Iron Age air-kiss." But Kolya was oddly moved.
At last Genghis's standard was raised, and with a clamor of shouts, trumpets and drums, the force set off, followed by long baggage trains. The three columns, under the command of Genghis, Ögödei and Sabutai, were to travel independently, perhaps diverging hundreds of kilometers from each other, but they would keep in touch daily, through fast riders, trumpet blasts and smoke signals. Soon the great clouds of kicked-up dust were separating across the plains of Mongolia, and by the second day the forces were out of each other's sight.
* * *
Traveling west from the region of Genghis Khan's birthplace, they followed a tributary of the Onon river through a country of rich meadows. Kolya rode in a cart with Sable, Basil and other subdued-looking foreign traders, and some of Yeh-lü's staff. After the first couple of days, they entered a country of gloomy, somewhat sinister forests, broken by boggy valleys that were frequently difficult to ford. The skies remained leaden, and the rain beat down. Kolya felt oppressed in this dismal, gloomy place. He warned Yeh-lü about acid rain, and the administrator passed on orders that the soldiers should ride with their caps on and collars raised on their coats.
Genghis's troops were no more hygienic than the common Mongols. But they took pride in their appearance. They rode on saddles high at the back and front, with solid stirrups. They wore conical felt caps, lined with fur from fox, wolf or even lynx, and long robe-like coats that opened from top to bottom. The Mongols had worn such garments since time immemorial, but these were a wealthy people now, and some of the officers wore coats embroidered with silk or gold thread, and silken underwear from China. But even Genghis's generals would wipe their mouths on their sleeves, and their hands on their trousers.
The Mongols' field craft was slick and practiced—but then it was the product of centuries of tradition. The march was broken each night, and rations distributed: dried milk curd, millet meal, kumis, an alcoholic drink made from fermented milk curd, and cured meat. In the morning a rider would put a bit of dried curd and water into a leather bag, and the shaking as he rode along would soon turn it into a kind of yogurt, consumed with great relish and much belching. Kolya envied the Mongols' skills: how they made rawhide from cow skin, even how they used a distillate of human urine as a purgative when one man had a fever.
Genghis's army moved efficiently, and orders and changes of plan were transmitted rapidly and without confusion. The army was rigidly governed by a hierarchy based on rules of ten. That way, the chain of command was simplified, with each officer having no more than ten subordinates. The Mongols empowered their local commanders as much as possible, which enhanced the army's flexibility and responsiveness. And Genghis made sure that all units of his army, down to the poorest platoon, was made up of a mix of nationalities, clans and tribes. He wanted nobody to have any loyalty, save to the Khan himself. It was, Kolya thought, a remarkably modern way of structuring an army: no wonder these Mongols had overwhelmed the ragbag forces of medieval Europe. But the system relied heavily on efficient and loyal staff. The officer corps was ruthlessly weeded out in training, through such tests as the battue—and, of course, in battle.
&nbs
p; After a few days, still deep in the heart of Mongolia, the army crossed a grassy plain toward Karakorum. This city had once been the power center of the Uighurs, and Genghis Khan had established it as his own permanent seat of power. But even from a distance Kolya could see the city's walls were ruined. Inside the walls a few abandoned temples huddled in one corner, but the rest of the city had been conquered by the eternal grass.
Genghis Khan himself, accompanied by burly guards, stalked with Ögödei around this place. To Genghis it was only a few years since he had established the city, and now here it was, eroded to rubble. Kolya saw him return to his traveling yurt, his face like thunder, as if he was angry with the very gods who would make such a mockery of his ambitions.
* * *
In the days that followed the army passed through the valley of the Orkhon river, an immense walled plain bounded to the east by blue mountains. It was almost like a Martian vallis, Kolya thought idly. The earth here was gray and flaking, the river languid. Sometimes they had to ford tributaries and river channels. At night they camped on islands of bare mud, and made huge aromatic fires of dead willow wood.
They crossed one last river, and the country began to rise. Sable said they were leaving the modern Mongolian province of Arhangay, and crossing the Hangay massif. Behind Kolya, the country folded up into a complex patchwork of forests and valleys, but beyond the massif he could see a more elemental landscape of yellow grassland stretching away.
At the massif's broad summit there were many small ridges and folds, littered by shattered pebbles, as if many time slices had crisscrossed. But a cairn stood here, a heap of stones that had somehow survived the time shocks. As the army passed each man added a pebble or rock to the cairn. Kolya saw that by the time they had all gone by it would be a mighty mound.
They descended at last to the steppe. The massif receded over the horizon, leaving nothing but flatness, and they walked across a treeless plain where the long grass rippled around the horses like parting water. As the world opened up around him, the immense scale of central Asia at last diminishing even Genghis Khan and his ambitions, Kolya felt a huge relief.
But they encountered no people. In this huge place there could sometimes be seen the circular shadows of yurts, the scars of fires, the ghosts of small villages packed up and moved on to another pasture. The steppe was timeless, people always lived here much the same way, and these scars could have been made by Huns, Mongols or even Soviet-era Communists—and those who left these shadows might have walked across the plain and into another time entirely. Maybe, Kolya thought, when the last shreds of civilization wore away, when the Earth was forgotten and nothing was left but Mir, they would all become nomads, drawn into this great pit of human destiny.
But no people. Sometimes Genghis would send out search parties, but nobody was found.
Then, lost in the middle of the steppe, the scouts unexpectedly came upon a temple.
* * *
A party was sent ahead to investigate. Yeh-lü included Kolya and Sable, hoping that their perspective might be of use.
The temple was a small, boxlike building with tall doors, ornately carved and decorated with lion-head knockers. Out front was a porch framed by lacquered pillars, and the beams at the top were decorated by gold skulls. Kolya, Sable and some of the Mongols stepped cautiously inside. On low tables manuscript rolls had been set out amid the debris of a meal. The walls were wooden, the air full of strong incense, and the feeling of enclosure was powerful.
Kolya found himself whispering. "Buddhists, you think?"
Sable had no qualms about raising her voice. "Yes. And at least some of them are still around. No telling when this place is from. Buddhists are as timeless as nomads."
"Not quite," Kolya said grimly. "The Soviets tried to purge Mongolia of the temples. This place must predate the twentieth century..."
Two figures came shuffling forward from the shadows at the back of the temple. The Mongol soldiers drew their daggers, to be stopped by a sharp word from Yeh-lü's advisor.
At first Kolya thought they were two children, they seemed so similar in size and build. But as they came into the light he saw that one of them was indeed a child, but the other an old man. The old one, evidently a lama, wore a red satin robe and slippers, and he carried a string of amber prayer beads. He was astonishingly thin, his wrists protruding from his sleeves like the bones of a bird. The child was a boy, no older than ten, as tall as the old one, and nearly as skinny. He wore some kind of red robe too—but on his feet were sneakers, Kolya noted with a start. The lama had one skinny arm wrapped around the boy, but the lama was so frail his weight could have been no burden even to a child.
The lama grinned, showing an almost toothless mouth, and began to speak in a rustling voice. The Mongols tried to reply, but it was soon obvious there was no point of contact.
Kolya whispered to Sable, "Look at the boy's shoes. Maybe this place is more recent than we think."
Sable grunted. "The shoes are recent. Proves nothing. If these two have been left alone here, the kid must have been out foraging..."
"The lama's so old," Kolya whispered. So he was: his skin looked paper-thin and, stained by age, hung in gentle folds from his bones, and his eyes were a blue so pale they almost seemed transparent. It was as if he had sublimated with age, his substance just evaporated away.
"Yeah," said Sable. "Ninety if he's a day. But—look at the two of them, Kol. Put aside the age gap. Look at their eyes, the bone structure, the chin..."
Kolya stared, wishing the light were brighter. The shape of the boy's skull was hidden by a mop of black hair, but his face, his pale blue eyes—"They look alike."
"So they do," Sable said dryly. "Kolya, when you come to a place like this, it's for life. You arrive as a cadet at eight or nine, you stay here and chant and pray, and you're still at it when you're ninety, if you live that long."
"Sable—"
"These two are one: the same man, the youthful cadet, the aged lama, brought together by faults in time. And the boy knows that when he grows old, he will one day see his own younger self come walking across the steppe." She grinned. "They don't seem fazed, do they? Maybe Buddhist philosophy doesn't have to be stretched too far to accommodate what's happened. It's just a circle closing, after all..."
The Mongol soldiers searched desultorily for plunder, but there was nothing to be had save for a few scraps of food, and the petty treasures of worship: prayer-wheels, sacred texts. The Mongols made to kill the monks. They prepared for this without emotion, just a matter of routine; killing was what they did. Kolya plucked up his courage and interceded with Yeh-lü's advisor to stop this.
They left the temple to its paradoxical slumber, and the army moved on.
27. The Fish-Eaters
AFTER THREE WEEKS OF the journey along the coast of the Gulf, Eumenes let the moderns know that the scouts had found an inhabited village.
Driven by curiosity and a need for a break from the sea, Bisesa, Abdikadir, Josh, Ruddy and a small squad of British soldiers under Corporal Batson joined an advance party at the head of the sprawling train that Alexander's army had become. All the moderns were discreetly equipped with firearms. As they disembarked, Casey, his leg still weak, watched from the boat with envy.
It was a day's walk to the village, and it was a tough slog. Though Ruddy was the first to grumble, they were all soon suffering. If they walked too close to the shore there was nothing but salt and stony ground where nothing grew, but if they went inland, they hit sand dunes over which the going would have been tough even without the rain. There was always a danger of flash floods, as water came pouring down overloaded courses. And when the rain stopped falling, the horseflies would rise up like clouds.
Snakes were a constant hazard. None of the moderns was able to recognize the varieties they encountered here—but as they might have been drawn from a line of descent that spanned two million years or more, perhaps that wasn't surprising.
Bisesa
glared at the unmoving Eyes, effortlessly placed over the most difficult country, which watched her petty struggles as she passed.
* * *
At the end of the day the party came to the village. With the Macedonian soldiers, Bisesa and the others crept up the crest of a bluff to see. Close to the shore, it was a poor-looking place. Round-shouldered huts sat squat on the stony ground. A few scrawny sheep grazed the scrubby grass behind the village.
The natives weren't prepossessing. Adults and children alike had long, matted, filthy hair, and the men trailed beards. Their main source of nourishment was fish, which they caught by wading into the water and casting nets made of palm bark. They went about their business dressed crudely in what looked like the treated skin of fish, or maybe even whale.
Ruddy said, "They are clearly human. But they are Stone Age."
De Morgan said, "But they may have come from a time not much before now—I mean, Alexander's era. One of the Macedonians has seen people like this before; he calls them Fish-Eaters."
Abdikadir nodded. "We tend to forget how empty Alexander's world was. A couple of thousand kilometers away you have the Greece of Aristotle—but here you have Neolithics, living as they have since the Ice Age, perhaps."
Bisesa said, "Then perhaps this new world won't seem so strange to the Macedonians as it does to us."
The Macedonians treated the Fish-Eaters briskly, driving them off with a volley of arrows. Then the advance party marched into the deserted village.
Bisesa looked around curiously. The stink of fish permeated everything. She found a kind of knife on the ground—made of bone, perhaps the scapula of a small whale or dolphin. It had been finely carved, and dolphins danced over its surface.
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