Alternate Empires

by Gregory Benford

  “Themistokles Neokles’ son,” Polydoros read again and again, and then once, to vary the monotony, “Themistokles of the district Phrearrios.” He turned to Mithredath, raised an eyebrow. “I think we may assume this to be the same man referred to by the rest of the sherds.”

  “Er—yes.” Mithredath watched the pile of potsherds grow by Polydoros’s feet. He began to feel like a sorcerer whose spell had proven stronger than he expected.

  His servants had speculations of their own. “Who d’you suppose this Themis-whatever was?” Tishtrya asked Raga as they worked together to uproot a particularly stubborn plant.

  “Probably a he-whore, putting his name about so he’d have plenty of trade,” Raga panted. Mithredath, listening, did not dismiss the idea out of hand. It made more sense than anything he’d been able to think of.

  “Themistokles son of Neokles,” Polydoros said, almost an hour later. He put down another sherd. “That makes, ah, ninety-two.”

  “Enough.” Mithredath threw his hands in the air. “At this rate we could go on all summer. I think there are more important things to do.”

  “Like the ruin, for example?” Polydoros asked slyly.

  “Well, now that you mention it, yes,” Mithredath said with such grace as he could muster. He kicked a foot toward the pile of potsherds. “We’ll leave this rubbish here. I see no use for it but to prove how strange the men of Athens were, and it would glorify neither Khsrish the Conqueror nor through him our Khsrish IV, may Ahuramazda make long his reign, to say he overcame a race of madmen.”

  The eunuch’s servants laughed at that: they were Persians too. Polydoros managed a lopsided smile. He was on the quiet side as the four men made their way back to the ruined building in the marketplace.

  Once they were there, the Hellene quickly regained his good spirits, for he found he had a chance to gloat. “This building is called the Stoa Basileios,” he said, pointing to letters carved on an overthrown piece of frieze: “the Royal Portico. If we wanted to learn of kings, we should have come here first.”

  Chagrin and excitement warred in Mithredath. Excitement won. “Good Polydoros, you were right. Find me here, if you can, a list of the kings of Athens. The last one, surely, will be the man Khsrish overcame.” Which will mean, he added to himself, that I can get out of these ruins and this whole backward satrapy.

  Seized perhaps by some of that same hope, Raga and Tishtrya searched the ruins with three times the energy they had shown hunting for potsherds. Stones untouched since the Persian sack save by wind, rain, and scurrying mice went crashing over as the servants scoured the area for more bits of writing.

  Mithredath found the first new inscription himself, but already had learned not to be overwhelmed by an idle wall-scratching. All the same, he called Polydoros over. “‘Phrynikhos thinks Aiskhylos is beautiful,’” the Hellene read dutifully.

  “About what I expected, but one never knows.” Mithredath nodded, and went on looking. He had been gelded just before puberty; feeling desire was as alien to him as Athens’s battered rocky landscape. He knew he would never understand what drove this Phrynikhos to declare his lust for the pretty boy. Lust—other men’s lust—was just something he had used to advance himself, back when he was young enough to trade on it. Once in a while, abstractly, he wondered what it was like.

  Raga let out a shout that drove all such useless fancies from his mind: “Here’s a big flat stone covered with letters!” Everyone came rushing over to see. The servant went on, “I saw this wasn’t one stone here but two, the white one covering the gray. So I used my staff to lever the white one off—and look!” He was as proud as if he’d done the writing himself.

  Mithredath plunged pen into ink, readied papyrus. “What does it say?” he asked Polydoros.

  The Hellene plucked nervously at his beard, looked from the inscription to Mithredath and back again. The eunuch’s impatient glare finally made him start to talk: “‘It seemed good to the council and to the people—’”

  “What!” Mithredath jumped as if a wasp had stung him. “More nonsense about council and people? Where is the list of kings? In Ahuramazda’s name, where if not by the Royal Portico?”

  “I would not know that, excellent saris,” Polydoros said stiffly. “If I may, though, I suggest you hear me out as I read. This stone bears on your quest, I assure you.”

  “Very well.” It wasn’t very well, but there was nothing Mithredath could do about it. Grouchily, he composed himself to listen.

  “‘It seemed good to the council and to the people,’” Polydoros resumed, “‘with the tribe of Oineïs presiding, Phainippos serving as chairman, Aristomenes as secretary, Kleisthenes proposed these things concerning ostrakismos—’”

  “What in Ahriman’s name is ostrakismos?” Mithredath asked.

  “Something pertaining to ostraka—potsherds. I don’t know how to put it into Aramaic any more precisely than that, excellent saris; I’m sorry. But the words on the stone explain it better than I could, in any case, if you’ll let me go on.”

  Mithredath nodded. “Thank you, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “Where was I? Oh, yes: … concerning ostrakismos: Each year, when the sixth tribe presides, let the people decide if they wish to hold an ostrakophoria.’” Seeing Mithredath roll his eyes, Polydoros explained, “That means a meeting to which potsherds are carried.”

  “I presume this is leading somewhere,” the eunuch said heavily.

  “I believe so, yes.” Polydoros gave his attention back to the inscribed stone. “‘Let the ostrakophoria be held if more of the people are counted to favor it than to oppose. If at the ostrakophoria more than six thousand potsherds are counted, let him whose name appears on the largest number of ostraka leave Athens within ten days for ten years, suffering no loss of property in the interim. May there be good fortune to the people of Athens from this.’ ”

  “Exiled by potsherds?” Mithredath said as his pen scratched across the sheet of papyrus. “Even for Yauna, that strikes me as preposterous.” Then he and Polydoros looked first at each other, then back the way they had come. “Raga! Tishtrya! Go gather up the sherds we were looking at. I think we may have a need for them, after all.” The servants trotted off.

  “I also think we may,” Polydoros said. “Let me read on: ‘Those who have been ordained to leave the city: In the year when Ankises was arkhon—’”

  “Arkhon?” Mithredath asked.

  “Some officer or other.” Polydoros shrugged. “It means ‘leader’ or ‘ruler,’ but if a man only held the post a year, it can hardly have been important, can it?”

  “I suppose not. Go on.”

  “‘In the year when Ankises was arkhon, Hipparkhos son of Kharmos; in the year when Telesinos was arkhon, Megakles son of Hippokrates; in the year when Kritias was arkhon—’” The Hellene broke off. “No one was exiled that year, it seems. In the next, when Philokrates was arkhon, Xanthippos son of Ariphron was exiled, then no one again, and then—” he paused for effect—“Themistokles son of Neokles.”

  “Well, well.” Mithredath scribbled furiously, pausing only to shake his head in wonder. “The people really did make these choices, then, without a king to guide them.”

  “So it would seem, excellent saris.”

  “How strange. Did the ostrakismos”—Mithredath stumbled over the Yauna word, but neither Aramaic nor Persian had an equivalent—“fall upon anyone else?”

  “Not in the next two years, excellent saris,” Polydoros said, “but in the year when Hypsikhides was arkhon, the Athenian people chose exile for Xerxes son of Dareios, who can only be the King of Kings, the Conqueror. I would guess that to be a last gesture of defiance; the list of arkhontes ends abruptly with Hypsikhides.”

  “Very likely you are right. So they tried to exile Khsrish, did they? Much good it did them.” Mithredath finished writing. The servants were coming back, carrying in a leather sack the sherds that had helped exile a man. Their shadows were long before them; Mithredath saw
with surprise that the sun had almost touched the rocky western horizon. He turned to Polydoros. “It would be dark by the time we got back to Peiraieus. Falling into a pothole I never saw holds no appeal. Shall we spend one more night here, and return with the light of morning?”

  The Hellene dipped his head. “That strikes me as a good plan, if you are satisfied you have found what you came to learn.”

  “I think I have,” Mithredath said. Hearing that, Tishtrya and Raga began to make camp close by the ruins of the Royal Portico. Bread and goat cheese and onions, washed down with river water, seemed as fine a feast as any of the elaborate banquets Mithredath had enjoyed in Babylon. Triumph, he thought, was an even better sauce than pickled fish.

  His servants dove into their bedrolls as soon as they finished eating; their snores all but drowned out the little night noises that came from beyond the circle of light around the campfire. Mithredath and Polydoros did not go to sleep right away. The eunuch was glad to have company. He felt like talking about the strange way the Athenians had run their affairs, and the Hellene had shown himself bright enough to have ideas of his own.

  “No sign of a king anywhere,” Mithredath said, still bemused at that. “I wonder if they settled everything they needed to decide on by counting potsherds.”

  “I would guess they probably must have, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “All the inscriptions read, ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people.’ How would they know that—why would they write that—if they had not counted potsherds to know what seemed good to the people?”

  “There you have me, good Polydoros. But what if something that ‘seemed good to the people’ was in fact bad for them?”

  “Then they suffered the consequences, I suppose. They certainly did when they decided to oppose Xerxes.” Polydoros waved at the dark ruins all around.

  “But they were the leading Yauna power at the time, were they not? They must have been, or Khsrish would not have obliterated their city as a lesson to the others. Until they chose to fight him, they must have done well.”

  “A king can also make an error,” Polydoros said.

  “Oh, indeed.” Being a courtier, Mithredath knew better than the Hellene how gruesomely true that could be. “But,” he pointed out, “a king knows the problems that face his land. And if by some mischance he should not, why, then he has his ministers to point them out to him, so that he may decide what needs to be done. How could the people—farmers, most of them, and cobblers and potters and dyers—how could they even have hoped to learn the issues that affected Athens, let alone what to do about them?”

  “There you have me,” Polydoros confessed. “They would be too busy, I’d think, working just to stay alive to be able to act, as you say, more or less as ministers in their own behalf.”

  Mithredath nodded. “Exactly. The king decides, the ministers and courtiers advise, and the people obey. So it is, so it has always been, so it always will be.”

  “No doubt you are right.” An enormous yawn blurred Polydoros’s words. “Your pardon, excellent saris. I think I will imitate your servants.” He unrolled his blanket, wrapped it around himself. “Will you join us?”

  “Soon.”

  Polydoros did not snore, but before long was breathing with the slow regularity of sleep. Mithredath remained some time awake. Every so often his eyes went to the bag of potsherds, which lay close by Raga’s head. He kept trying to imagine what being an Athenian before Khsrish the Conqueror came had been like. If the farmers and potters and such ruled themselves by counting sherds, would they have made an effort to learn about all the things Athens was doing, so they could make sensible choices when the time came to put the sherds in a basket for counting, or whatever it was they did? What would it have been like, to be a tavern-keeper, say, with the same concerns as a great noble?

  The eunuch tried to imagine it, and felt himself failing. It was as alien to him as lust. He knew whole men felt that, even if he could not. He supposed the Athenians might have had this other sense, but he was sure he did not.

  He gave it up, and rolled himself in his blanket to get some rest. As he grew drowsy, his mind began to roam. He had a sudden mental picture of the whole vast Persian Empire being run by people writing on potsherds. He had visions of armies of clerks trying to transport and count them, and of mountains of broken pottery climbing to the sky. He fell asleep laughing at his own silliness.

  Third-rate town though it was, Peiraieus looked good to Mithredath after some days pawing through the ruins of dead Athens. He paid Polydoros five gold darics for his help there. The Hellene bowed low. “You are most generous, excellent saris.”

  Mithredath presented his cheek for a kiss, then said, “Your assistance has but earned its fitting reward, good Polydoros.”

  “If you will excuse me, then, I’m off to see how much work has fallen on my table while I was away.” At Mithredath’s nod, Polydoros bowed again and trotted away. He turned back once to wave, then quickly vanished among the people crowding the port’s streets.

  “And now we are off to the satrap’s residence,” the eunuch told his servants. “I shall inform Vahauka of the success of my mission, and draw from the ganzabara—” Mithredath snapped his fingers. “What was the fellow’s name?”

  “Hermippos, wasn’t it, sir?” Tishtrya said.

  “Yes; thank you. I shall draw from Hermippos the funds we need for our return journey to Babylon. After giving Polydoros his due, we are for the moment poor, but only for the moment.”

  “Yes, sir. I like the sound of going home fine, sir,” Tishtrya said. Raga nodded.

  “I wouldn’t be sorry never to see this satrapy again, myself,” Mithredath admitted, smiling.

  The satrap’s residence was busier in the early morning than it had been at nightfall. A couple of guards stood outside the entrance to make sure the line of people waiting to see Vahauka and his officials stayed orderly.

  Mithredath recognized one of the guards as the man who had been at the door the evening he’d arrived. He went up to the fellow. “Be so good as to convey me to his excellency the satrap,” he said. “I don’t care to waste an hour of my time standing here.”

  The guard made no move to do as Mithredath had asked. Instead, he looked down his long, straight nose at the eunuch and said, “You can just wait your turn like anybody else.”

  Mithredath stared. “Why, you insolent—” He started to push past, but the guard swung up his spear. “What do you think you’re playing at?” the eunuch said angrily.

  “I told you, no-stones—wait your turn.” The spearhead pointed straight at Mithredath’s belly. It did not waver. The guard looked as though he would enjoy thrusting it home.

  Mithredath glanced at his servants. Like any travelers with a shekel’s weight of sense, he, Tishtrya, and Raga all carried long daggers as protection against robbers. Neither servant, though, seemed eager to take on a spear-carrying soldier, especially when the man served the local satrap. Seething, Mithredath took his place in line. “I shall remember your face,” he promised the guard.

  “And I’ll forget yours.” The lout laughed loudly at his own wit. The line crawled ahead, but Mithredath was too furious to become bored. The revenges he invented grew more and more chilling as he got hotter and hotter. A soldier who thwarted one of the royal eunuchs—even a soldier so far from Babylon as this guard—was asking to have his corpse given to ravens and kites.

  The eunuch had thought Vahauka would signal him forward as soon as he saw him, but the satrap went right on with his business. At last Mithredath stood before him. Mithredath started to prostrate himself, waited for Vahauka to stop him and offer his cheek. Vahauka did not. Feeling his stomach knot within him, the eunuch finished the prostration.

  When he rose, he had his face under control. “My lord,” he said, and gestured toward the bag of potsherds Raga held, “I am pleased to report my success in the mission personally set me by Khsrish, King of Kings”—he stressed the ruler’s
name and title—“may Ahuramazda make long his reign.”

  Vahauka yawned. Of all the responses Mithredath might have expected, that was the last.

  Having to work now to keep his voice from stumbling, the eunuch went on. “As I have succeeded, I plan to draw funds from the ganzabara Hermippos for my return voyage to Babylon.”

  “No.” Vahauka yawned again.

  “My lord, must I remind you of my closeness to the King of Kings?” Only alarm made Mithredath’s threat come out so badly.

  “No-balls, I doubt very much if you ever have been—or ever will be—close to Kurash, King of Kings, may Ahuramazda smile upon him and make long his reign.”

  “Ku—” The rest of the name could not get through the lump of ice that suddenly filled Mithredath’s throat.

  “Aye, Kurash. A ship came in with the word he’d overthrown and slain your worthless Khsrish the day you left for the old ruined inland town. Good riddance, says I—now we have a real King of Kings again, and now I don’t have to toady to a half-man anymore, either. And I won’t. Get out of my sight, wretch, and thank the good god I don’t stripe your back to send you on your way.”

  The satrap’s mocking laughter pursued Mithredath as he left the hall. His servants followed, as stunned as he.

  Even the vestiges of dignity deserted him as soon as he was out of sight of the satrap’s residence. He sat down heavily, buried his face in his hands so he could not have to see the passersby staring at him.

  Tishtrya and Raga were muttering back and forth. “Poor,” he heard one of them say. “He can’t pay us anymore.”

  “Well, to Ahriman with him, then. What else is he good for?” the other replied. It was Raga. He dropped the leather sack. The potsherds inside clinked. The sack came open. Some sherds spilled out.

  Mithredath did not look up. Nor did he look up at the sound of his servants—no, his ex-servants, he thought dully—walking away.