The First Protector ec-2

by James White

  "I must now return to my post."

  In the event it was Sinead who bathed first while Declan talked to the kitchen and household slaves. It was plain from the beginning that the limbs revealed by their short, sleeveless clothing bore no marks of the whip and that their love for their master far outweighed any fear of him. They ranged in age from mature adults to young children and it was obvious that some of them had been given permission, which they told him was unusual for a slave, to marry. Declan was hoping that he would get a chance to meet the strange pagan saint who was their master when Sinead reappeared muffled in a white, togalike garment, and it was his turn to bathe.

  He found that Sinead had elected to await his return before eating, and so had the others. It became a very pleasant evening among people who behaved as if they were the friends and family he had never known, but it was cut short by the arrival of Klum'bgaa who no longer looked like a gate ornament.

  The sharp, bright weapons were still at his belt but the white plumed helmet and matching cloak had been replaced by darker and less decorative wear and with boots that did not shine and trod the floor without sound.

  "Your master, Ma'el, has expressed the desire to visit the catacombs under the Via Latinum at a time before dawn when few citizens will be about to see you, and my master has acceded to his wish. The noble Marcus Grappilius and the other Hibernian visitor, Brian, are engaged in conversation and feasting that will doubtless last the night, and I have been instructed to serve as a guide and guard to your master and yourselves during this excursion.

  "Your weapons will be returned to you at the gate," he added, looking at Declan. "You are advised to wear them."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ma'el Report, recall and review for sociological comparison purposes of Days 36,511 to 36,549 in the local calendar year 67 Anno Domlne…

  Even though the peoples of this world are merely subjects for investigation and evaluation, I am finding it increasingly difficult to remain emotionally indifferent to individual members of a species that is capable of such extremes of nobility and depravity. In spite of the fact that they have conceived and formulated a structure of Roman law that will be the standard of judiciary practice for many centuries to come and their arts, culture, and philosophical breadth of mind is wholly admirable. I must continually remind myself that they are nothing more than a potential Taelon resource and I am here to observe them. "Without feeling.

  'Today I watched a bloody naval engagement that was not fought at sea but inside the shallow, land-locked confines of the Circus Maximus. Four vessels took part, two war galleys on each side, and their masts were bare because they did not need the wind to move them in the restricted space, and sails would have obscured the view of the battle for the occupants of the higher terraces. Instead they carried armed galley slaves who were expected to fight when they were no longer required to row.

  "My understanding of these events is due to the knowledgeable freedman, Severus, who I have employed to guard my person. He was himself a renowned gladiator who fought so fiercely and well, and earned so much gold as a result of his master's gambling on him over the years that, his owner out of gratitude first appointed him as instructor of the gladiatorial team and later gave him his freedom. According to Severus, no long-range weapons such as slingshots, bows, or ship-mounted catapults were being carried in case one or more of the gladiators, the majority of whom were expecting to die anyway, should in a fit of vexation aim his weapon at the august person of their Emperor and self-declared God who had decreed that this battle should take place for the entertainment of his beloved but unruly citizens of Rome. Severus added that the tunics of the contenders, white on one side and yellow on the other, had been chosen the better to display the flow of blood from the combatants' wounds.

  "The tactic favored by both sides was to overcome the initial inertia of their vessels and to build up as much speed as quickly as possible with the oars so that they would be able to pierce the hull of an opposing craft with the submerged, pointed ram in the bow and sink it to the bottom. Since the engagement was taking place in the muddied waters of a flooded arena rather than at sea, the stricken vessel did not sink very far and simply became immobilized with its decks awash. This meant that its crew had to fight either clinging one-handed to the upperworks or while stumbling and splashing waist-deep over an unseen deck. When one of the vessels suffered this fate a few of the spectators were amused by the incongruity of the sight of gladiators behaving like the most unsubtle of clowns, but the majority seemed to be bored by it and shouted loudly for more blood.

  "More blood was forthcoming.

  "But the tactic of ramming the opposing vessel broadside on was effective only once because the commanders of the defending craft immediately began countering it by turning their rams and strengthened forward hulls in a bow-to-bow collision. This was a difficult maneuver to perform with accuracy inside the restricted space of the arena and a misjudgment meant that the two vessels concerned either bumped and scraped heavily past each other, breaking off the oars on those sides and transfixing or grievously injuring the rowers with the splintering wood, or the rams tore open the length of their hulls with the same result for the oarsmen. For a short time the screams of the dying and drowning men could be heard over the noise of the crowd, and the muddy water around them was not dark enough to hide the spreading stains of red.

  "Only one vessel was able to avoid damage and it turned, positioned itself, and rowed forward to ram amidships an opposing vessel that was already listing and beginning to sink. Due either to overenthusiasm or misjudgment, its ram completely transfixed the other craft and, unable to reverse the oars in time to pull clear, the sinking victim pulled its attacker down with it until the other's bow was submerged and it, too, flooded and sank.

  "None of the four vessels remained afloat, but they were joined by their rams or otherwise tumbled together into an untidy mass of partially sunken wreckage. Their fighters could still move, in spite of having to climb and wade chest-deep, or swim with their heavy weapons, from one ship's deck to another, and so the battle continued slowly and awkwardly and without any clear indication of which side was winning it.

  "Their Emperor, Severus had previously explained to me, had promised the crowd a unique and costly spectacle against which all others of the past would pale into insignificance, a bloody sea battle fought before their very eyes inside the arena rather than on the distant secrecy of an ocean. He had promised them that he would awe, amaze, and stir them to heights of excitement far beyond anything in their previous experience, and to ensure that the combatants would give of their best during individual and ship conflicts, he was introducing a new measure.

  "For the greater glory of their Emperor and the entertainment of his beloved citizens of Rome, and to avoid tiresome pauses in the action while he was asked who among the fallen should or should not die, they had been instructed to fight each other to the death without exception. But on this occasion they had been given an even greater incentive to wage bloody battle. The survivors on the winning side would be rewarded and decorated by their Emperor, while those who had fought but did not die on the losing side would be killed in full view of the crowd. The fighting would, therefore, be all the more fierce and completely without mercy.

  "But the great spectacle that Nero had promised was fast becoming the greatest of all anticlimaxes. Hampered by the depth of the water covering the decks, the gladiators had to feel their way with their feet across the timbers and fight slowly and carefully while those who lost their footing and fell overboard into deeper water had to discard their weapons if they were to remain afloat. Watching slow and awkward swordfights or men trying to save themselves from drowning was not what the crowd had expected to see. They began booing and hooting in disdain, and many of them were looking up at the Emperor's enclosure as they did so.

  "It was plain from the color of Nero's already red and angry face that he did not like this mass show of disrespe
ct to his august person, but there were not enough Praetorian Guards ranged around him, or even among the reserves in the palace barracks, to chastise the ungrateful crowd as it deserved. Instead he spoke sharply to one of the personages standing close to him, the man wearing the bright orange toga and diagonal red sash of the Master of the Arena, who quickly disappeared. For a long time the slow, waterlogged conflict and the angry, derisive shouting of the crowd continued while nothing else seemed to be happening except that the Emperor was standing beside his purple-draped divan, smiling broadly and pointing at the sunken ships. A few moments elapsed before the shouting from the crowd died away into a surprised silence as it was borne in on them that the sunken vessels were rising slowly out of the water and a new sound was heard, the loud splashing and gurgling of fast-flowing water. "The arena was being emptied.

  "When the fighting men realized what was happening, they leapt down from the canted and slippery decks to continue the battle on what they thought would be the steadier arena floor, but in this they were wrong. The last of the water was slow to drain away and it covered the normally hard-packed ground in a layer of thick, wet mud. But they fought bravely and fiercely, singly or in groups that charged and countercharged between the canted, broken hulls of their vessels and over the splintered oars and the still and muddy bodies of those who had been killed or had drowned earlier.

  "The crowd howled with laughter as they cut, thrust, slipped, and fell to rise again so muddy that it was no longer possible to tell the team colors apart. But moments later they were shaking their fists and screaming in frustration when the fighters regrouped and began using the shelter of the spaces between the hulks of their ships as strong points, which meant that they all but disappeared from the view of the audience. The battle became a long, bloody, muddy shambles, with few of the fighters knowing who were friends and who enemies, that continued until the sun dipped behind the high, banked terraces on the western rim of the circus. The clash of weapons could still be heard, but all that could be seen were a few glimpses of muddy figures fighting on a similarly muddy ground in the lengthening shadows of the vessels' hulls.

  "It was not the spectacle to end all spectacles that the Emperor had promised, and he was screaming in exasperation and waving his fists as loudly and angrily as any of the crowd. Then Nero gestured for the senior officer of his Praetorian Guard to come forward, spoke to him briefly before the man disappeared on what seemed to be an urgent errand. Moments later a guard detachment armed with long body shields and spears emerged from the gateway under the Imperial enclosure, formed into a single line abreast to march slowly across the muddy ground toward the ships. Ex-gladiators all, they had gained their positions to Caesar's elite guards regiment by being the best or, more accurately, the very worst and most heartless members of that pitiless profession.

  "Stronger and rested and better armed than the weakened or wounded fighters, they moved through the small groups of surviving combatants and unhurriedly and with a complete lack of drama or even effort, began spearing them to death regardless of whether their tunics showed traces of yellow or white under the mud. As they reformed and matched back the crowd went wild again, but not all of them.

  "In a few places there were people who had stopped watching and cheering the Praetorians as they dispensed Caesar's reward for disappointing and embarrassing him before his people. Instead they were looking at the portly figure of Nero himself as he smiled and acknowledged the applause of the crowd. One of those who stared at the Emperor was Severus.

  " 'Those men should not have been put to death like that,' " he had said, a scar on his forehead showing dark against a face white with anger. 'A gladiator expects to die, but there is always the small chance of life and a fighting man's reward. A few of them should have been given that chance, and not slain by those Praetorian butchers just because the Emperor's idea for a sea battle was a stupid mistake from the beginning.

  " 'Nero is the one who deserves to die.'

  "Severus is not a thinking man. I did not tell him that a Caesar who was so profligate and uncaring about the lives of his gladiators would give rise to unease among his own guards who had, after all, been recruited from gladiatorial schools. It was not one of my increasingly rare timesightings but a simple calculation of present cause and future effect.

  "The pictures forming behind my closed eyelids at the time were of a Circus Maximus increased to planetary dimensions, and a sapient species of primitive technology waging hopeless, defensive war against an enemy who would make the monstrous Nero seem gentle and kind by comparison.

  "The Jarridians…"

  –

  Forward to Day 36.549…

  –

  "… The arena has not dried out sufficiently after the abortive sea battle of Day 36,511 for the scheduled chariot race to take place, so that it was replaced by another and always popular event, a mass execution of the Christians who, rumor had it, had been responsible for the fire that had razed a large part of the city to the ground. The Christians ranged in age from very young children to the most senile of adults, and included many family groupings. On this occasion Nero, rather than filling the arena with crosses, the symbol of their dead and supposedly resurrected Redeemer, having the victims tied them to them and then drenching them with oil before putting them to the torch, had decided to give the crowd the sight and smell of raw rather than cooked flesh. The Christians would be armed with sharpened stakes, and lions that had been starved of food for many days would be sent against them.

  "For the further amusement of the crowd, Nero had arranged that the pile of crude, wooden weapons for the Christians' use would be too small in number to arm all of their adults so that they would fight among each other for possession of them while the lions were being released. But perversely they did the unexpected.

  "Instead of fighting barehanded among themselves for one of the weapons, the old ones moved forward into the path of the lions to slow their approach with their own bodies while the younger, who had armed themselves, formed a wide, protective circle around their young, with the unarmed ones standing close by to seize the weapons of the fallen. Strangely there were few screams of fear or agony, except from the children who could be forgiven their weakness, as the jungle cats began ripping their victims into bloody shreds.

  "Severus had turned his head away from the arena, saying that he was accustomed to the sight of blood but had never liked looking at it, and this was like watching cattle being killed in a particularly inefficient slaughterhouse. He spent the remainder of the show trying to attract the attention of a young female several tiers behind him. I merely closed my eyes and my ears to the bestiality taking place because there was much I had to think about.

  "I thought about this most powerful and populous of empires and of the strange cult of gentleness and extraordinary bravery growing here in its heart, of the sentient and sapient yet bestial crowd around me who venerated the deranged human monstrosity that was their leader, and of the defenseless people in the arena that he hated simply because they had been taught and believed, no, they knew, that there was eternal life on the other side of their individual deaths. I would have liked to meet this teacher of theirs, because this is not a concept that sits comfortably on the mind of an already long-lived Taelon.

  "In spite of my ability to isolate mentation from external sensory input, the cries of fear and the dying sounds made by the children in the arena intruded and affected the quality of my thinking. They are like terrified puppies: normally playful, harmless, innocent, affectionate, and with the unconscious ability to attract the affection of others. It must be a hitherto unsuspected weakness in me, a scientist who should remain emotionally aloof to any problem, but I feel that I will not be able to continue thinking constructively until something has been done, no matter how small that thing may be, to reduce the number of unnecessary deaths among such innocent beings

  …"

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ma'el Report. Day 1
12,586. local calendar date 309 AD…

  The return to Rome three Earth centuries after my previous visit has proved to be both a comfort and a disappointment. The violence and excesses are reduced in volume and their practice has become less overt, but the subsequent events including the death of Nero, last of the once proud family of Caesar to hold the position of Emperor, did not come about exactly as I had foreseen. There can be little doubt that my precognitive faculty has become untrustworthy and, considering my complete misreading of the outcome of the sea raid off Finisterre among other incidents, the possibility exists that I may be regressing toward the avatus state and losing it entirely. I dread being like these creatures around me who can see ahead only in the dimensions of space but not through time.

  "In an effort to discover the reason for this, I have subjected my entire sensorium and memory network to a full empathic inventory and feel sure that I have uncovered the problem. Regrettably the solution, if adopted, will destroy the objective worth of this investigation, and there is a strong probability that it could bring about the premature termination of my own life as well as those of my servants, who are becoming much more to me than two subjects for study out of this worlds' many billions.

  "The lives of Sinead and Declan are short enough as they are…"

  –

  Talking incessantly in a respectful near-whisper, and with his enormous body bent almost double, Klum'bgaa led the way through a seemingly endless system of low-ceilinged tunnels. He was being, closely followed in silence by Ma'el, with Sinead and Declan, who were each weighed down with a large bundle of torches, bringing up the rear. In spite of its softness the Nubian's voice came back clearly to Declan.

  They passed the last resting places of countless martyrs. The majority of them were narrow, horizontal niches in the rock walls containing the dusty, cloth-wrapped bones of their nameless occupants while a few were beautifully and elaborately decorated. Klum'bgaa said very little about them because, he insisted, there were too many here who were now wearing martyrs' crowns in Heaven for a few to be given preferment. Instead he kept trying to discover, in a respectful and roundabout fashion that the diplomat spy Brian would have admired, why a foreigner was wanting so badly to visit this hallowed ground. When they paused briefly to rekindle a fresh torch from the dying flame of an old one, Ma'el answered him.