Celestial Matters

by Garfinkle, Richard

  “And if there were another explanation of the evidence?” I asked, tentatively.

  “Tell me what it is,” she said.

  And there lay my dilemma. I could not tell her why Ramonojon was innocent; but the god had implied that I needed her assistance to prove his innocence.

  Then Athena whispered to me through the fog of Dionysos. The goddess reminded me that there were things that would convince so pure a Spartan as Yellow Hare that would not sway a lesser soul.

  My legs nearly gave out from under me as I stood up into the most erect posture I could manage. Then with careful movements I covered my heart with both hands. “I, Aias of Athens, swear before almighty Zeus that I possess evidence exonerating Ramonojon from the charge of spying.”

  Yellow Hare stared at me with a frown of mingled respect and concern. “Why have you not shown this evidence to Aeson?”

  “As Military Commander of this ship,” I said, “Aeson has duties he would feel obligated to carry out even if he personally disagreed with them.”

  Yellow Hare leaned forward, her bright eyes burning with understanding.

  “What crime has Ramonojon committed?”

  “I cannot tell you that,” I said, pleased at the quickness of her mind. “But I swear that his offense will not prevent Sunthief from succeeding. I swear to you before the Styx that in trying to help Ramonojon, I have sought to fulfill all of my own duties.”

  “Aias of Athens,” Yellow Hare said, drawing her sword and holding it point up in front of her face, “I place myself under your command in this matter and will obey your orders so long as they do not put your life at risk.”

  I reached out and wrapped my hands around hers and the hilt of her sword. “Yellow Hare of Sparta, I accept you into my command.”

  I released my grip and she sheathed her sword. The last dregs of strength fled my muscles and I collapsed onto the couch. Yellow Hare walked over to my table to extinguish the candles. Full darkness came and soothed the throbbing of my head as I faded off to sleep. That night I dreamed of dolphins and the deep currents of the ocean.

  * * *

  The next morning, I went down to the hospital cave for an injection of Jovial Humour to clear away my hangover. Euripos stuck the quill into my arm, but instead of giving me the usual warnings about giving in to the artificial sense of elation, he muttered curses under his breath in a bad caricature of a Middler accent.

  “What in ’Ermes’ name are you doing?” I asked when my head had cleared.

  A yellowed grin broke the network of lines on his face. “I have a part in an upcoming comedy. I play a Middler alchemist intent on developing a new explosive.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Somehow, I can’t imagine you in a comedy.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” he said. “There was a period in my youth when I did a lot of acting. I think you were about two years old at the time, living with your mother in Tyre. Your father’s army was stationed on garrison duty near the upper end of the east bank of the Mississipp. The terrain was swampy, and as company physician I saw a lot of unpleasant diseases. You wouldn’t believe the variety of illnesses that bad swamp air produces.”

  “What about the acting?” I said, not having the mental stamina to sit through another war story about my father.

  “Well, the duty was very boring; your father instituted athletics, of course, but there comes a time when even the most dedicated soldier needs something to exercise his mind. So he grudgingly permitted us to put on plays.”

  “Comedies?”

  “Of course. Your father didn’t like it, but he knew it was good for morale. At one point, I actually had the part of Sokrates in Aristophanes’ the Clouds.”

  “Please don’t mention that play,” I said. No Akademic likes to be reminded of that particular piece of slander.

  “My apologies, Commander.” The old man fell silent. It always bothered him to be reminded that the child who had once ransacked his medicine bag out of pure curiosity now outranked him.

  “I look forward to your performance,” I said to mollify him, and I was rewarded with a thankful smile. As I walked out of the cave, I realized much to my surprise that I was indeed looking forward to his play. My mind had been freed of the burden of constant worrying by Yellow Hare’s gift of her service. Not only had she freed me to think about other things, she had reinvigorated my hope that I would be able to exonerate Ramonojon, guide Sunthief to success, and from thence carry out the Archons’ plans to win the war.

  Flushed with this feeling of success, I decided to seek out more allies. I took Yellow Hare and went to see Mihradarius.

  We found the brilliant Persian in his lab seated at his writing table, staring at the figure of Alexander that glowed on his wall. Mihradarius was tapping the back end of his quill so hard against a parchment full of calculations that the tufts of the feather were flying loose.

  I coughed, and he nearly jumped off his stool. “Commander, it’s you. You startled me. I’m sorry, I haven’t finished these solar drag calculations; I hope you don’t need the figures immediately?”

  “No, Mihradarius,” I said. “I didn’t come for your work. I want to talk to you about Ramonojon.”

  The Persian offered me a stool and a bowl of wine. I accepted the former but declined the latter.

  “What about Ramonojon?” Mihradarius asked.

  I tapped my lips with my fingertips, hoping to discern Mihradarius’s attitudes in his face, and failing. “He’s not a spy.”

  Mihradarius twisted his mouth into a wry grimace and barked out two sharp laughs. “That is the worst-kept secret on this ship.” He looked over my shoulder at Yellow Hare and lowered his voice. “Only the military would be stupid enough to think Ramonojon could be an assassin.”

  The hackles on the back of my neck rose at the insult to my bodyguard, but I kept my peace, wanting to gain Mihradarius’s aid rather than argue with him.

  “Then who do you think the spy is?” I asked.

  “I don’t think there is one,” he said, taking a sip from his bowl. “I think the Middlers have developed a device that allows them to watch us at long range. Such an instrument would permit them to stage both the raids on this ship and the specific attempts on your life.”

  “No,” Yellow Hare said.

  Mhradarius and I both turned sharply to look at her. That blunt, unvarnished word “No” without any accompanying explanation was quite contrary to Akademe manners. The Persian cocked an eyebrow in my bodyguard’s direction as if to ask what this rude Spartan was doing interrupting an Athenian discourse.

  “Clarify that statement, Captain,” I said.

  “If the Middlers had such a device,” she said, “they would use it to stage ambushes of our armies, or attacks on our undefended cities, not assassinations of our leaders.”

  “In any case,” I said, “such a device would not account for the pieces of Middler technology found on this ship, nor does it explain Kleon’s sickness.”

  “Explain it?” Mihradarius said. “Why does Hyperclarity of Pneuma need explaining?”

  I related Yellow Hare’s theory about the source of the illness, emphasizing that it was her idea.

  Mihradarius threw up his arms hopelessly. “Maybe the captain is right, but who can tell? Speculating about Taoist science is fruitless.”

  “I know,” I said. “But we have so little to go on.” I paused for a few seconds but he said nothing, so I continued. “Mihradarius, I would like your assistance in this matter.”

  “Commander,” he said, straightening his sleeves. “Ramonojon and I have never been very amicable, but if there is anything I can do to help you, I give you my word as an Athenian that I will do so.”

  “Thank you, Chief Ouranologist,” I said. “I want you to speak to your staff, find out if they have noticed any hints of strange activities on this ship.”

  “Right away, Commander,” he said, and ushered us out of his laboratory.

  I spent the next several
days talking to scientists, soldiers, and slaves about Ramonojon, seeking information and allies. Those who knew him well thought it impossible for him to be a spy, but all conceded that he had been behaving strangely; the rest of the crew were so grateful that the unknown menace in their midst had been captured that they did not want to believe a mistake had been made. I gained no useful assistance from either group of people, nor did any of them report any nontrivial peculiarities.

  At the end of these interviews, my hope had dwindled from a gleaming fire to a few sad embers. My sadness must have been obvious since Yellow Hare spoke to me about it.

  “Commander,” she said. “I have learned a great deal about our hidden spy.”

  “And what have you learned?” I asked.

  “That he is sufficiently well placed on Chandra’s Tear to be able to misdirect and distract the entire crew up to and including the ship’s commanders.”

  “You mean the spy is a member of senior staff.”

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “A well-placed slave could do the same; so could some of the army officers, either of the guard captains, even a well-connected file clerk could do so. But the more we learn the closer I come to finding out who it is.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” I said, pleased at the solidity of her reasoning. “A succinct analysis.”

  That evening the plays were to be performed and I went to watch with my spirit buoyed by Yellow Hare’s words and presence.

  The performance took the classical form of a three-part tragedy followed by a one-act comedy. The dramatic trilogy was a two-hundred-year-old work entitled The Siege of Persepolis, which recounted in semimythical form an event that happened some three centuries before it was written.

  The tragedy had been innocently selected by one of the guard captains for its stirring Spartan “We who are about to die shall go bravely, giving our all for our people!” message, but my historian’s eyes saw the performance rather differently. Indeed, as the play progressed I began to realize that the work is a subtly veiled attack on the nobility of soldiers. The muttered growling to my left made me realize that Captain Yellow Hare saw the same thing; once again I was impressed by the clarity of her awareness of all things military.

  My suspicions of irony were first aroused in an early scene in the first part of the trilogy. Xanthippos, the Spartan military governor of Persepolis, leaves the city to parlay with T’Sao T’Sao, the Middler general, whose capture of that city launched him on the road to becoming Son of Heaven. Most ’Ellenic plays about T’Sao T’Sao portray him as a monster whose evil was beyond the comprehension of men, but this play paints a very human portrait.

  During the parlay Xanthippos tries to convince T’Sao T’Sao to abandon the siege. The debate between the two generals quickly turns into an exchange of quotations from Alexander. The governor finds himself unable to reply when T’Sao T’Sao states word for word Alexander’s justifications to the last Persian emperor when our hero had conquered his country. Phrases like “the inevitability of fate,” “the clear favor of the gods,” and “the glory of victory” resounded through the amphitheater from the yellow-masked actor portraying the future emperor of the Middle Kingdom.

  The second play consists almost entirely of a series of arguments between the Spartan Xanthippos and the Athenian governor of the city, whose name has not been remembered. The debates become ever more heated as it becomes clear to both of them that Persepolis will be taken. Halfway through, the Athenian implores the Spartan to permit surrender, but Xanthippos makes repeated reference to Leonidas and the Three Hundred at Thermopylae. The general’s lines were written so broadly as to make him seem like a fool blinded by Ate rather than a brave man accepting death in the finest traditions of his homeland.

  The trilogy ends with a man-to-man duel between T’Sao T’Sao and the military governor that results in the Spartan’s death. Stabbed through the chest, Xanthippos kneels on the stage gasping out his final monologue for nearly five minutes. His soliloquy expresses his firm confidence that letting the city be sacked and the citizens killed assures him a place as a hero on Olympos. T’Sao T’Sao orders his body exposed for the birds to tear at, then commands his own doctors to attend to the survivors on both sides.

  The general had, of course, been declared a hero; he had held T’Sao T’Sao in place for that yearlong siege, and by so doing had slowed the Middler general enough to keep him from reaching the Peloponnese itself before he had to turn back in order to take the throne of the Middle Kingdom.

  After this veiled dramatic sarcasm, we were treated to the comedy Euripos was acting in. It was a short piece with only two major characters, a pair of Taoist alchemists. The work was a pleasantly crude comedy with a lot of onstage explosions as the pair tried to out do each other in creating bombs to wreak havoc on offstage ’Ellenic soldiers. The play ended with a massive display of pyrotechnics in which the alchemists blew each other up into the heavens. There they were joined by a generic Middler god who offered to show them how to make really large explosions.

  Yellow Hare refused to be cheered up by this humorous display and grumbled all the way back to my cave.

  “For whatever the opinion of an Athenian on military matters is worth,” I said as we settled in to sleep, me on my couch and her on the floor blankets, “I do not believe that Xanthippos’s bravery was really stupidity.”

  She turned the twin suns of her eyes to me and smiled. “Thank you, Aias. And I do not think the intelligence of the Athenian governor was really cowardice.”

  * * *

  Four days later we reached the sphere of Aphrodite and slowed to a crawl as we neared the gray-green planet. Aeson and I watched the approach from the top of the hill, offering libations of honey wine to the goddess of love.

  Kleon brought us carefully through the network of Aphrodite’s epicycles toward our scheduled rendezvous with Ishtar’s Necklace, the mining ship that held our consignment of Aphroditean matter for the net.

  After an hour’s maneuvering we slipped inside the crystal sphere and reached the far side of Aphrodite. There, on the planet’s equator, was a tiny scar carved into her body and hidden from earthly view with maidenly modesty. Two miles above that point the ship sliced from the scar was supposed to be waiting.

  But instead of a celestial ship, we found seven jagged pieces of green rock floating in perfect synchronicity with the planet below.

  “They’ve been attacked,” Yellow Hare said.

  “Impossible,” I said. “There must have been an accident. The Middlers have never traveled farther out than Selene.”

  But then a huge silk shadow darted out from behind one of the fragments, giving the lie to my confident pronouncement. It was the largest battle kite I’d ever seen, a two-hundred-yard-long wingless dragon with silver Xi lance spines up and down its water blue back, and a vicious red mouth filled with impossibly liquid fire. Its outline flickered strangely in the mixture of green light from the planet and silver glow from Chandra’s Tear. The shimmer made it hard to tell exactly where the kite was, but it was definitely coming toward us.

  “Down!” Yellow Hare shouted, shoving me behind the statue of Alexander. She and Aeson dove behind the statue, flanking me, and drew their throwers.

  Our topside cannon batteries opened fire, spraying a barrage of tetras through columns of rarefied air into the body of the dragon kite. Dozens of holes appeared in the enemy craft, but it flew on. The silken underside of the dragon split open to reveal the bamboo skeleton underneath. Hanging from the arched wooden bones of the kite were dozens of green bundles; in the shimmering haze they resembled eight-foot-long, rolled-up scrolls. The bundles fell out of the dragon and each unfurled into a one-man kite shaped like a jade bat. The swarms of aircraft swooped over our port side, firing their Xi lances in unison at our cannon batteries. The metal cylinders began to coil and twist as if huge invisible hands were wringing them.

  The tail of the main kite opened like a flower and from it squadrons of men d
ropped down, falling impossibly slowly toward the center of Chandra’s Tear. As they descended they threw small metal stars that flew too fast and cut through our soldiers’ armor like scythes through wheat. Huge balls of flame vomited from the dragon’s mouth and exploded on our port side, melting the twisted evac cannons into slags of gold and steel.

  Our soldiers ran up the hill to reinforce Aeson and Yellow Hare just as the first Middlers touched down in the courtyard. Both sides opened fire at once, filling the air with stars and tetras. Yellow Hare killed four of the enemy with her thrower before they reached her, then she drew her sword and engaged them hand to hand.

  She stabbed one man through the throat and fell back to keep between me and the other three. Aeson paralleled her, shooting down the enemy with Spartan calm and accuracy.

  One of the Middlers shouted a single word in their language. “Blood!”

  Four warriors who had held themselves at a distance threw four large steel stars toward Aeson. My co-commander saw them coming, dove to the ground, and started to roll away, but the Middler who had given the order pointed a handheld Xi lance at the flying stars. As they were about to pass harmlessly over him, the projectiles turned impossibly in midair and spun downward, piercing Aeson’s head and chest.

  I screamed Aeson’s name and started to run across the courtyard toward the Middler who had given the orders, but Yellow Hare pushed me aside and shot the man through the heart. He fell as noiselessly as Aeson had.

  Reinforcements arrived—our reinforcements, thank Ares and Athena. They pushed the Middlers off the hill with a coordinated barrage of tetras. I ran over to Aeson and knelt down. He was still breathing, but his eyes were closed and his heartbeat was ragged. Yellow Hare ordered the soldiers to form a perimeter around the hilltop. Then she methodically removed Aeson’s helmet and armor, pulled the stars from his body, and bound his wounds.

  Forcing myself to remember my duty, I turned away from Aeson to survey the battle. The dragon had made its way to the bow of the ship, curling and darting to avoid the barrage from the forward cannons. The kite’s head spat fire again and the amphitheater exploded. As if that were a signal to them, the squadrons of bats left their single assaults and turned to follow their mother’s lead, converging on the navigation tower.