Alternate Empires

by Gregory Benford

  Our course wound onward and onward, like a nightmare. Amid the squalor, I spied remnants, a fluted column, a slim spire, a wall slab that bore the worn-down carving of a winged bull with a man’s head. The downslope grew ever more steep, lanes turned into flights of stairs hollowed out by uncounted footfalls, and ahead of us, above the flat roofs, I saw turrets and battlements four-square athwart eastern hills. A few times a ragged form scuttled around a corner or into a lane. My skin crawled with the feeling of eyes that peered through slits in the shouldering walls.

  “Where do you take us?” I asked Boran, forgetting that she had told me.

  “To the House of Sorrows,” Herod piped up.

  The woman winced. “A horrible name,” she said. “It is rightfully the Basileum.”

  The Greek word stood forth in the Persian. “And what might that mean, my lady?”

  “It is the archive of archives,” she answered. “There repose the chronicles, the records, the tablets and letters and … whatever whispers to us of the past. Such things are no longer of use to the state, but precious to what scholars remain alive.”

  I searched my mind. “Basileum? That which a king built? Should the word not be—m-m—no, I suppose not ‘biblioteka’—‘museum’?”

  Her tone softened. “You are no barbarian, Ro, are you?”

  “I have read books.” Maybe they were what first called me outward from my homeland.

  “This was founded by Julian the Second, Augustus in Byzantium, when the East Romans still held the Syriac lands. He established others where he could, though I know of none else that have endured. Rome itself had lately fallen. He foresaw a dark age. How else might the heritage of the ancients be saved, even a little?”

  I shivered. That was fifteen hundred years ago, was it not?

  We passed a monument. A muffled shriek from Boran tore me out of my thoughts. Two deathlings sprawled before us. They were pulp, splinters, huge splashes and pools of blood flamingly red under the sun. Flies blackened the simmering air.

  I caught her elbow. “Come along,” I said. She moaned once, but swallowed her sickness.

  “Turks, by what’s left of their clothes,” Ailill muttered. “One quite young, a girl.”

  Their kin must have dwelt in Mirzabad since the Sultans ruled it, when white men were barely setting foot on the shores of Markland; but today they had become outlanders, unbelievers, and a gang that caught them had stamped them into the stones. After all my wanderings I should have been able to shrug off a sight like this, but it saddened me anyhow. “May their Buddha take them home,” I said.

  “Hurry, hurry,” Herod chattered.

  “You ought never to have gone forth, Boran,” I told her.

  “I slipped away before my father could forbid it,” she answered. It did her good to speak. “The Basileum is in his care.”

  Since he was surely a Mithraist, I knew he had a Zarathushtran above him; but that was belike a eunuch of the governor’s, who did scant more than draw large pay and pass half of it on to his lord. It was no wonder that the New Revelation was taking hold in souls from the Caspian to the Midworld Sea.

  “These are genealogies and annals that the Shrine kept,” she went on, holding them tightly to her. “Often has my father longed to study them. I saw his anguish when it seemed they might be lost, and—”

  “Behold!” Herod crowed.

  We had reached a small square, in whose faded and patched paving dolphins rollicked. Across from us lifted a building of no great size. Age had pitted and blurred it. Gracefulness lingered in the pillars of the portico, the golden rectangle and low gable of the front; the marble was the hue of wan amber beneath tiles that had gone dusky rose. As we drew nigh, I saw Greek letters above the columns, and they were clear. Lifetime by lifetime, somebody had renewed them as they wore away.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, pointing.

  Boran’s voice was as hushed as mine: “‘Polla ta deina’—Wonders are many, and none more wondrous than man.”

  We mounted the stairs and must have been seen through a slotted shutter, for the door opened before us. Him who came out in a white robe I knew by his gray-bearded handsomeness to be Boran’s father. He reached his arms toward her. “Oh, my dearest,” he called.

  She caught her breath, stumbled forward, and blurted, “I b-brought you the books from the Shrine.”

  “You should not have, you should not have. I was terrified when I found you were missing. Madness runs free.”

  “That is why I had to go.” She shook her head as if to dash the tears from her lashes.

  The man looked across her to me. “Ro Esbernsson of Markland, learned sir,” I named myself, “with Ailill mac Cerbaill of Eirinn and, and Herod. We met your daughter and escorted her.”

  “That was nobly done of you,” he said with renewed steadiness. “The Lord Mithras will remember when your souls depart for the stars. I am Jahan Taki, in charge of the Basileum now that … others have abandoned it. Enter, I pray you.”

  He stood aside. We walked through an anteroom into a broad chamber of mosaic murals. I knew Athene, foremost among the figures. Tinted glass in a clerestory softened light. Air was blessedly cool. Half a dozen men stared at us. Two were old, three young but thin and stoop-shouldered. The only one that might be worth anything in a fight was a big black African whose garb said that he did the rough work.

  Boran set the books down on a table of ivory-inlaid ebony. Gold glowed in the robes of gods and philosophers on the walls. What a house to sack, I thought.

  Jahan Taki might have heard that. “I am not sure how safe a refuge this is,” he said. “For excuse, raveners can scream that the books are full of wicked falsehoods and should be destroyed.”

  “They get by me first,” growled the African. He saw my startlement and gave me a harsh smile. “I work for low wages because wiseman Taki lets me read.”

  “And these among my colleagues and students would not flee either.” The pride in Jahan faded. “We can only pray that none will come until peace has been restored.”

  “That may take days,” I warned. “Have you food and drink on hand?”

  Boran nodded. “I reminded them when we first gathered here,” she said, “and the cistern already held sufficient.”

  “Good,” I answered through the dust in my throat. “Let us have some of that water, and we’ll look to your defenses.”

  The African hastened off. Meanwhile Jahan took me over the ground floor. The books and relics were in vaults beneath. There were two doors. I told him they should be barricaded as well as bolted. “At the front, leave a space for going in and out, but narrow enough for a single man to hold. If you have nothing better, pile up your furniture.”

  Jahan winced. “It will hurt like fire, but rather that than lose the books. Most have never been printed. I think many are the last copies that survive anywhere.”

  It struck me as strange, this love of learning for its own sake, a Greek thing I had thought died with Rome like the avowed love of men for boys. The Zarathushtrans study their holy writ but add nothing new. The rest of us give ourselves to the worldly arts. Oh, we measure the earth and the stars in their courses because that helps navigation, but to wonder about them, that is something children outgrow. We keep old books if they are useful or enjoyable, but otherwise, why should we care? In this house I felt as though I stood among ghosts. Had they a right to spook through the life of young Boran?

  The African brought the water. I swished mine about in my mouth before swallowing it. The mummy dryness began to go away. “Can you make the place secure according to what master Taki has heard from me?” I asked him.

  “As well as the Yazata will have it, my lord,” he answered. So he was a Zarathushtran himself.

  “I know a wee bit about such things too,” Ailill put in. “But ye’ll be foreman over us, Ro, won’t ye?”

  I shook my head. “No, the task had better not wait till I get back. Which I may not.”

  He
blinked. “What? Why, sir, here we’ve stumbled into an anchorage as snug as any outside the Ispanyan fort—”

  Boran caught our drift. Her hand fell on my arm. For an Eastern woman to do thus gave away, more than any words, how shaken she was. “Ro, you would leave us? You must not!”

  “I go without joy,” I told her, “but honor requires it. I am in the service of a man. As long as I take his pay, I do his bidding.”

  “Where do you seek, my son?” Jahan asked.

  “To the Saxonian factor. I bear a message.”

  Sharply to me came the room overlooking Sicamino harbor where I had been given that word. Through its window I saw the schooners, barks, square-riggers, dhows, feluccas, the trade of half a world. The bay opened out to a sea that shone like quicksilver. Against the dazzle, at the edge of sight, I could just make out three tall vessels. Light struck little sparks off their guns. I knew that at their mastheads flew the falcon banner of the Hauptmann of Saxonia.

  My look returned, crossed the desk, came to rest on Konrad von Heidenheim. The consul sat sweating, as so fleshy a man does in such heat. The beard spilling down his chest was wet with it. His right hand wielded a fan, his left cradled a fuming pipe. But the eyes were like chips of ice, and when he spoke it was a drumroll from the depths.

  “Ro, boy, I do not myself like the job I have for you. However, need is for several couriers I can trust to bring a word from me and keep it quiet. I think you will go to Mirzabad. The Handelsbund has a good-sized post there. It is of more than economic value. It has strategic potential.”

  I leaned back, crossed shank over knee, and waited.

  He chuckled dourly. “Ach, always you play the lynx-calm soldier of fortune. As you like. Now listen close. I have a lecture prepared.

  “You think you know why Saxonia has brought ships and troops offshore. This crazy Prophet and his Puritans are tearing the interior of the Shandom in pieces. The trouble will spread farther before it is put down, if it can be put down. Maybe it cannot. Maybe the Prophet will enter Persepolis. That will mean the Ispanyans depart. Their wardership is shaky, they have ample grief overseas, they will not protest an order from a new government for their expulsion. A wave of religious persecution will sweep through the footprints they leave.

  “The Russians may then move in. The Grand Knyaz in Kiev is not willing for such a risk. Too many of his boyars are, though. If they prevail, the Russian armies may march ‘to the rescue of their Turkish coreligionists,’ as the mealy-mouths will say. Saxonia can ill afford such a threat to its Balkan flank. We have brought strength into the eastern Mediterranean and are marshaling troops in Greece as a warning to the Russians not to attempt this, no?”

  “That’s what I’ve been given to understand, herr,” I said, not unthankful for hearing it again. It was new to me and less than clear. I was lately back from two free months in Egypt, a land so lost in mysticism that, once well up the Nile, you hear hardly a whisper from outside.

  Von Heidenheim puffed smoke that stung my nostrils. “Well, you should know and keep it to yourself, matters are more dangerous still. They have intelligence reports in Hamburg that they have relayed to their agents abroad, like me. Frankland will not let the Russians take over Persia. If they try, it means war, general war, with my poor Saxonia caught between Franks to the west and Russians to the east. At the same time, Frankland has not yet mustered the strength to forestall those hot-headed boyars.

  “We have it. Wotan with her, Saxonia can interpose herself. The Russians should feel much less eager to move, knowing they shall fight us while the Franks make ready. It is risky, yes, that is obvious; but the risks of inaction look worse. Of course, we take this action only if we must. Perhaps things will not explode after all, and everybody can go home. But I have my doubts.

  “So.” He leaned forward. “This is my message to our various factors throughout the maritime provinces of the Shah. Come trouble, come the breakdown of royal authority and the Wardership, they should not flee. If at all possible—and their buildings are stout—they should hold fast and call for help. Most of them keep carrier pigeons that will make for Sicamino. I tell them that we will land troops at once and come straight to their rescue.

  “Do you see? This demonstration of will and power should give even the Puritan fanatics pause. It could perhaps be the one added push that keeps the Shah from falling down. But we must have proper cause for intervention—landsmen of ours and their valuable goods to save, as is our right. Else it looks too much like collusion between us and the Franks, and may touch off the very war we hope to prevent.

  “Therefore, go to Mirzabad and tell Otto Gneisberg to ready his establishment for a possible siege.”

  We had not known I would be too late.

  Or was I?

  A small voice at my elbow: “Where now would my master fare?”

  I looked down. Herod had tiptoed wide-eyed through what he might well believe were the splendors of a djinni’s hall. “Best you stay behind, lad. You’ve done well, but it’s dangerous out there.” I reached for my purse. “First I’d better pay you. Uh, learned Taki, may he remain?”

  “Of course,” Boran answered softly. “He has made himself our child.” Her father nodded.

  Herod straightened his thin body. “I am not a babe,” he said. “Have I not led men? Master, let me prove my worth beyond doubting. Then perhaps I can be your servant always.”

  I thought I knew what went on in that shock head. Money, a good berth, a way out of the trap that held his mother—for him, if not for her. But the big eyes sought mine with more than reckoning behind them. I knew that hope, that he had found himself a lord to live for and die at the feet of. I never would.

  It touched me more than I might have awaited. Also, I could in truth use his guidance. “If you will have it thus, Herod,” I told him. “Your pay shall be three gold royals.”

  He sprang up and down for joy.

  “Go with Mithras and Isis,” Boran whispered. “Return to us. Oh, return, Ro.”

  I found I was unable to speak further. Instead I lifted my hand and made the sign of the Hammer. They did not ken it, but maybe they would guess that it stood for the strongest wish I could offer.

  Swiftly, the boy and I left. When we were out on the square he chirped, “Where shall I take you?”

  “To the house of the Saxonian traders,” I said. “Do you know? They are in the Street of the Magi, where the red-haired man was set upon.”

  He pondered, finger to chin, laughed, and slipped off.

  Thrice we heard prowling packs. He drew me into side lanes and we waited until he felt we could go on. Again he brought me widely around; but belike I would not have arrived without him.

  Above the massive door of a building that was a stronghold, its few outside windows iron-shuttered, hung a sign, as signs hang in Western lands. It showed an olden galley sailing on the red-black-red of Bremen. I knocked and shouted. The noise rattled between neighboring walls. “None here,” I mumbled at last.

  “They went to the Ispanyans,” Herod guessed.

  “So must we.”

  “My lord, I told you I have seen the men in yellow sashes outside that place. They will not let us through. Else everyone they mean to kill would flock there.”

  “Go back to … the House of Sorrows.”

  “Lord!” He sounded downright angry. “I am your servant.”

  I smiled a little. “Well, lead me as you did before.”

  We snaked our way onward, though only once needed we go to earth. We were getting back to the upper town, which the rebels must have under some control. Trudging down the sky, the sun had begun to glare in my eyes. I saw vultures wheeling aloft.

  The garrison besat a steading much like the one in Sicamino, though smaller. From the city wall, where a tower reared, jutted three of brick. The compound within held barracks, officers’ quarters, arsenal, whatever’ else the peacekeeping force needed—and, now, fugitives crammed together. A broad open space ringe
d the defenses. From its far side I saw the three gates shut. Watchmen stood tautly on the parapet. Below them squatted warriors posted by Moussavi. Those were mostly Edomites, in threadbare djellabas and burnooses; but yellow was around every waist and a firearm at every shoulder. Townsfolk who felt themselves safe and, I supposed, were glad the Puritans had come, milled and babbled before them.

  “Wait here,” I told Herod, and strode forward. It would not help me to have such a ragamuffin in tow. I looked neither right nor left, walking as if I were the conqueror. Men scowled, snarled, spat, but habit was strong in them. They gave way, a roiling bow wave that closed in a wake of curses and shaken fists. My sweat reeked. I would not let myself think how easily a knife could slide between my ribs.

  “Hold!” cried a man who seemed in charge on the east side. “None may pass.”

  I halted and gave him my haughtiest stare. “May none come out?” I asked. “This will surely be of interest to him who gave you your orders.”

  Uneasy, he tugged his greasy beard. “We are here … to keep the law of the Prophet,” he growled. “What do you want, Westman?”

  “To convey a message of the greatest moment, desert runner,” I snapped. “If I may not pass through, you shall let someone out to hear me. Else I will report this, and after that your camel will know you no more.”

  Before he could think, I filled my lungs and shouted in Ispanyan. The sentries above leaned over the battlements. For a moment I was unsure whether I would live. A real soldier would at the least have had me seized. But these were simple peasants and nomads, unused to chains of command. I won my bet. The headman let me finish, he waved back followers who sidled near with rifles cocked, he even bade them hold off the crowd that pressed close and threatened me.

  Nonetheless, that became a long wait in the heat and the reaching shadows.

  It wasn’t really. They were able men inside, who knew they must act at once. Otherwise the folk might get out of hand, or a true officer of the Puritans happen by. The doors creaked ajar. A lean, dark-haired man in blue tunic, white breeks, and headcloth marched forth. He looked about and went to me.