Balefires

by David Drake

  Then, always a scientist, his mind picked up the puzzling thread it had brushed and he asked a simple, musing question that caused me to break out into a sweat again:"I wonder why I can only pick up the identities of the dead? You'd think that either all the surface thoughts would come through, or none at all. Surely members of other races don't spend all their time repeating their human names, do they?"

  But this seemed only a minor matter, soon to be clarified along with much greater mysteries, and Denkirch returned to the business at hand.

  "All you have to do," he repeated, "is put your helmet on, move the switch to the second jog to free my mind, and then to the third in ten minutes to bring me back."

  I waited a moment, locking my hands across my knees to keep them from shaking, and asked the question whose answer I already feared: "When do you plan to try it out?"

  "When?"he echoed, surprised. "Why tonight, of course. The sky is clear, the static level is low-what more could we ask?"

  For the next forty-five minutes I waited in silent resignation as Denkirch gave his equipment a final check, until at last he stepped back, and regarded it for a moment, arms akimbo, and said, "Well, I guess all that remains is to turn it on and let it warm up."

  He touched a switch on the far end of the consol and the room shook as the nearby generator picked up speed. The shaking died away again to a low purr after a few minutes and Denkirch explained, "That was just the capacitors charging. The cones will soak up a lot of power when they kick in. There's a light switch above the consol that you ought to flip before you turn on the apparatus. It turns off everything but the necessary instruments, to keep the load down when you turn on the cones. The dial lights will be enough for you to see by when your eyes adjust, and besides, most of what you'll see will be through my eyes."

  With that Denkirch sat down on the bed, slipped on the helmet there, and lay down full length with his arms at his sides."Would you strap me in, Johnnie?" he said with his words somewhat muffled by the chinstrap of the helmet. "I doubt that it makes much difference, but there is a slim chance that my body might move a little after my mind is disconnected, and I wouldn't want to damage my helmet and keep you from seeing what is going on, you know."

  The clasp clicked shut and I walked from the bed to the consul trying to think of words to explain to Denkirch what I feared. But it wasn't a fear that could be explained; it was too basic for that.

  The helmet leads were too short for me to reach the light switch with the helmet on, so I turned out the lights and then sat down to wait until I could see again before attempting to put the cumbersome thing on… perhaps more, and in a way that minute was the most horrible thing I underwent that night. It was as if I had awakened an instant before my alarm went off in the morning, still comfortably composed in bed but knowing the strident clamor would burst out at any moment. This and more, for it was the ultimate blissful dream that was about to be shattered, and my subconscious knew it though it could not speak.

  Denkirch called out from the darkness behind me, "Are you ready?"

  The hours of fear I had been feeling finally broke through my dignity and I cried,^" Denny, this is wrong! For God's sake forget about this and just publish the rest of your findings. Those alone are enough to make you as rich and famous as you could want."

  ^" No," he answered, "I already am as rich and famous as I want to be. I just want truth. I'm not taking a wild risk, but even if I were it would be worth it for the chance of advancing human understanding as much as this will. Pull the switch, Johnnie."

  Just as he finished, the red aircraft-warning light winked on in front of me.

  "There's a plane overhead," I said eagerly, certain now of at least a short delay. If we had delayed… But it might have made no difference.

  "That doesn't matter for the first stage and it will be gone before I come back. Pull the switch."

  And, God help me, I did. But there is no god, is there? No god, no heaven, only the hells that glitter down on us every clear night. It was obvious as soon as I closed the switch that Denkirch had been perfectly correct. What neither of us had realized until then was how completely powerless the terran ego would be in the new body. I had not even begun to move my hand before it yanked down the switch almost of its own accord and I sat, quivering in the darkness with my own and Denkirch's screams still echoing through my mind.

  Can you imagine-can you begin to imagine!-what it is to be totally alien? Your body, your world, even your mind except for that tiny, impotent speck of ego that screams, "This is not I," and screams the louder for knowing that it is and it will be forever, body after body, eon after eon, until space and time are no more! And that is why I no longer sleep on cloudless nights, for the stars in their myriads greet me in my dreams whispering, "Soon you will be with us, every one of us," and a high, thin scream from the Pleiades tells me where Denkirch is now.

  An unlikely story, I know, and I myself might have thought it a dream had I not turned and seen in the green witchlight of the glowing dials the last earthly remains of Samuel Denkirch. Then I hurled my helmet into the consol and fled from the cellar that blazed behind me as sputtering arcs from the shattered instruments ignited the frame walls; nor do I remember anything afterwards but my own screams until a highway patrol car stopped me in Indiana. Perhaps the return itself had been fatal, but I rather think it was the atmosphere; for Denkirch had returned to Earth as the tentacled abomination he had become on Deneb…

  The False Prophet

  Latin has been my soul's anchor ever since my second semester of college. I don't know why that should be, but I can tell you how it happened.

  I took two years of Latin in high school because it was that or Spanish. Neither option appealed to me, but I had to take some foreign language. My grades were adequate but nobody was going to mistake me for a Latin scholar, and I don't recall getting any particular pleasure from the classes.

  My plan in college (the University of Iowa) was to major in chemistry, go to law school, and become a patent attorney. Chemistry required German, so I started German with the expectation that I'd never read another line of Latin.

  I pretty quickly realized that I wasn't cut out to be a chem major (or, I suspected, a patent attorney), so I switched to history. I continued with German (which I didn't actively dislike), because I didn't believe that I could ever get back into Latin after a year away from the language.

  That's when things get kind of odd. College was a complete disruption of my life. Everything had changed. I don't mean everything was bad-Iowa's huge library in particular was a wonderful resource for somebody like me who can get interested in a wide range of subjects-but everything was different. I found myself thinking of Latin as the one part I might reclaim of the, well, youth which I'd surrendered when I left home.

  I borrowed an old copy of the Latin book I'd used in high school and studied it on my own. Studied it for the first time, really: in high school I'd shown a flair for sight translations but I hadn't bothered much about grammar. I started regular course work in my third semester and took about all the Latin courses offered at Iowa before I graduated. (I wound up with thirty semester hours and asked if I could call Latin a double major with my history. The administration agreed.)

  I entered Duke Law School in 1967. That was stressful too; I took Latin courses in the main university to settle me. (They'd never had anybody do that before, but there were no rules against it.)

  When I was drafted out of law school I couldn't take courses, but I carried my Oxford Classical Text of Horace through basic training and as much of Southeast Asia as I saw. I continue to read Latin for pleasure. I also read extensively on classical subjects, because they interest me and I've got a good formal grounding from my undergraduate days.

  Naturally I've used a lot of classical backgrounds in my fiction, SF as well as fantasy and horror. I wrote "The False Prophet" to fill out a collection of previously written stories in a classical milieu.

  Someth
ing I've come to realize is that many readers think they know things about ancient Rome. When they read a contrary statement in a story of mine, some assume I've made a stupid mistake. Well, I do make stupid mistakes (for example, the time I nearly severed a tendon while sharpening a knife), but when the subject is Roman history or culture, the smart money is going to bet on me.

  A universal case is that educated people don't want to believe that Roman shields were made of plywood. I had a stranger call me from California to tell me that plywood hadn't been invented until the nineteenth century. Roman shields were made of three plies of (generally) birch, glued together. The grain on the front and back layers ran crosswise, but it was vertical on the central ply. Archeologists call the material plywood (What on Earth else would they call it?); the educated man in the street finds that truth ridiculous.

  I once complained that I should feel lucky that I don't get similar objections when I mention that most Roman buildings were concrete. The next day I got a query from an editor who wanted to know whether my mention of "Roman concrete" was a mistake.

  A similar problem involves readers who believe that colloquial Latin should be translated into something closer to William Morris than to normal English. There's a place for high style, but it doesn't get much use among soldiers or ordinary people in general, now or two thousand years ago. My dialogue (like that of Martial, Catullus, Petronius, and a very long list of other Latin writers) tends to be colloquial in form.

  A lot of reading and research went into these stories; but my heart went into them too.

  The big young man, grinning at Dama through the doorway of the City Prefect's private office, had the look of a killer. Dama knew the fellow's name, Lucius Vettius-and knew that he was an officer in the imperial guard, though at the moment he wore a civilian toga. Dama smiled back. "The virtuous Marcus Licinius Dama!" bellowed the nomenclator in a strong Syrian accent. Why couldn't Gaius Rutilius Rutilianus-who was, by Mithra, City Prefect of Rome-buy servants who at least pronounced Latin properly?

  "He didn't mention that you're only a merchant!" Menelaus whispered to

  Dama in amazement. "No, he didn't," Dama agreed without amplifying his response. The nomenclator was wearing a new tunic. So was the doorkeeper who'd let

  Dama and his older companion into Rutilianus's reception room with a crowd of over a hundred other favor-seekers. The tunics were best-quality Egyptian linen and represented a hefty outlay Even to Dama, who imported them along with the silks which were his primary stock in trade. "His companion," cried the nomenclator, "the learned Faustus Pompeius Menelaus!" The nomenclator paused. "Known as The Wise.'' Menelaus suddenly looked ten years younger. He straightened to his full height and fluffed his long gray beard.

  Though Dama said nothing as the pair of them stepped into Rutilianus's private office, the nomenclator had earned himself a bonus by the degree to which his ad-libbed comment had brightened the old man's face.

  Menelaus and Dama's father had remained friends throughout the latter's life. Dama stopped visiting his parent when disease and pain so wracked the older man that every conversation became a litany of insult and complaint; but Menelaus continued to come, to read aloud and to bear bitter insults because to do so was a philosopher's duty-and a friend's.

  "Well, he sure looks the part, doesn't he?" quipped Caelius, one of the four civilians standing around the Prefect's couch. "Got any owls nesting in that beard, old man?"

  "Looking the part's easy enough," countered Vulco."If you want a philosopher ofreal learning, though, you'll hire Pactolides."

  "I think it's unchristian to be hiringany sort of pagan philosopher," said Macer. "Severiana won't like it a bit."

  "My wife doesn't make the decisions inthis house," the Prefect said so forcefully that everyone listening knew that Rutilianus was as much voicing a wish as stating a fact.

  The Prefect shifted his heavy body on the couch and scratched himself. Though the morning air was comfortable by most standards, Rutilianus was sweating despite having dispensed with the formality of his toga while handling this private interview.

  The men were the Prefect's friends, advisors, and employees-and wore all those separate masks at the same time. Except for Vettius (who was about Dama's age), they'd accompanied Rutilianus during his governorships in Spain and North Africa. They carried out important commissions, gave confidential advice-and picked up the bits and scraps which form the perquisites of those having the ear of high office.

  "Anyway," offered Sosius, "I don't think that there's anything sinful about hearing advice on living a good life, even if it does come from a pagan."

  For what Dama had paid Sosius, he'd expected more enthusiastic support. Pactolides was getting much better value for his bribe to Vulco.

  "Well, let's hear what he says for himself," the Prefect said, still peevish at the mention of his wife. He nodded toward Menelaus. "Youcan speak, can't you?" he demanded. "Not much use in having a personal philosopher who can't, is there?"

  "Pactolides can speak like an angel," muttered Vulco. "Voice like a choirboy, that man has…"

  Dama prompted his friend with a tap on the shoulder. Menelaus stepped forward and bowed. "If ever there was a man who was rightly afraid when called to speak in your presence, noble Rutilianus," the old philosopher boomed, "it is I; and I sense-" he made a light, sweeping bow to the Prefect's companions "-that those who participate in your counsels are well able to see my distress."

  Menelaus was a different man as soon as he began his set oration-confident, commanding; his tones and volume pitched to blast through the chatter filling a rain-crowded basilica when he addressed his students in one corner. Dama had worried that the old man's desperate need for a job would cause him to freeze up when the opportunity was offered. He should have known better.

  "-for my heart is filled with the awareness of the way you, armed like Mars himself, preserved the liberty of this Republic; and now, wearing the toga, increase its civil glory. For-"

  The soldier, Vettius, crooked a finger toward Dama and nodded in the direction of the garden behind the office.

  Rutilianus's other councilors looked bored-Vulco was yawning ostentatiously-but the Prefect himself listened to the panegyric with pleasure. He nodded with unconscious agreement while Menelaus continued, "-while all those who have borne the burden of your exalted prefecture are to be praised, to you especially is honor due."

  Vettius, waiting at the door into the garden, crooked his finger again. Dama pursed his lips and followed, walking with small steps to disturb the gathering as little as possible-though Menelaus in full cry couldn't have been put off his stride by someone shoutingFire! and the Prefect was rapt at the mellifluous description of his virtues.

  The garden behind Rutilianus's house had a covered walk on three sides, providing shade at all times of the day. The open area was large enough to hold a dozen fruit trees as well as a small grape arbor and a variety of roses, exotic peonies, and other flowers.

  Military equipment was stacked beside the door: a bronze helmet and body armor modeled with idealized muscles over which a pair of naiads cavorted; a swordbelt supporting the sheathed dagger and long, straight-bladed spatha of a cavalryman; and a large, circular shield in its canvas cover.

  Vettius followed Dama's eyes toward the gear and volunteered, "I'm army- seconded to the City Prefect for the time being."

  There were two ways for Dama to handle his response. He made the snap decision that concealing his knowledge from this big, hard-eyed soldier couldn't bring any dividends equal to getting the man's respect from the start.

  "Yes," he said. "A decurion in the squadron of Domestic Horse."

  Vettius was surprised enough to glance sideways to make sure that canvas still covered the gilt spikes and hearts against the blue background of his shieldface. "Right, that's me," he agreed mildly. "The Prefect's bodyguard, more or less. The name's Lucius Vettius-as I suppose you knew."

  There was no question in the final clau
se, but Dama nodded his agreement anyway. He'd done his homework-as he always did his homework before a major sale.

  This business, because it was personal and not merely a matter of money, was the most major sale of his life…

  "Let me hope," rolled Menelaus's voice through the open door and window of the office, "that my words today can be touched by a fraction of the felicity with which all Rome greeted the news that you had been appointed her helmsman."

  "I was wondering," Vettius said, "just how much you'd paid Sosius?"

  Dama prodded the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

  "The reason I'm wondering," the soldier continued, "is that he's taking money from Pactolides too." He laughed. "Vulco's an unusually virtuous councilor, you know."

  Dama grimaced bitterly. "Yeah," he agreed. "Vulco stays bought."

  "My words are driven out under the compulsion of the virtue and benignity which I see before me…" Menelaus continued in an orotund voice.

  "I hadn't thought," continued Dama, choosing his words carefully, "that a decurion was worth bribing. Until now that I've met you."

  "I'd have taken your money," Vettius said with the same cold smile as before. "But it wouldn't've gained you anything. What I'd really like from you, Citizen Dama…"

  Dama nodded his head upward in agreement. "Go ahead," he said.

  If not money, then a woman? Aparticular woman to whom a silk merchant might have access…?

  "… is information." The flat certainty with which the words came out of Vettius's mouth emphasized the size and strength of the man speaking. He had black hair and spoke with a slight tang of the Illyrian frontier.

  "Go ahead," Dama repeated with outward calm.

  From the office came "… though I fear that by mentioning any particular excellence first, I will seem to devalue…"