The Light of Our Yesterdays

by Ken Hansen

  Isa responded, “Rally? I know of no rally. I was simply teaching them about truth.”

  The soldier replied, “Truth? Well, truth is pretty much what we choose to believe, isn’t it? Truth. Look, speak straight with me, I am warning you. Are you the one who taught religion in the plaza today?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you must come with us.” The soldier nodded to the others with one stripe on their foreheads and they encircled Isa.

  “Are you arresting him?” asked Simeon.

  “Call it what you want. We are taking him to the Emperor.” Then the soldier noticed Tomadus standing by the statue. “You there, are you the Romanus merchant?” He flipped over the handbill and referred to some handwritten notes on the back. “Tomadus of Roma?”

  Yohanan stepped between them. “Why do you care? He is just a merchant.”

  “Did I ask you?” said the soldier. “Stay out of this or you’ll be next.”

  Yohanan stood his ground. “You have no right to—”

  “I have every right. Take him as well.” Another soldier stood next to Yohanan with his rap rifle raised.

  Tomadus stepped forward. “Leave him be. Yes, I am that merchant of Roma. Please, leave this man alone.”

  “You three have an audience with the Emperor. Anyone else interested in attending?” He paused and the others shrunk back. “No, I thought not. Now clear out.”

  Isa turned back to the group. “Be not afraid, my friends. We are in no danger, for it is not yet our time.” He turned toward the first soldier. “Please, lead on.”

  Tomadus looked at Isa and shook his head. This Isa was such an eloquent and insightful student of the hearts of men, yet obviously so ignorant and naïve about the politics of his day.

  Chapter 52

  Tomadus grabbed his head as the pain seared through his brain. He fumbled for his neck and ears, but he felt no blood dripping down them. He had seen a wooden cross with a man, this Jesus that Isa now emulated, nailed to it. The cross hung behind two women seated near him—near this Huxley—in strange living quarters. The women had begun falling quickly to their sides as a hole appeared in a brick wall behind him and light seared through his eyes, into Huxley’s brain and down his neck. The vision had faded to black until a new light exploded again. Then the visiscan screen appeared again with all of those bodies burning on the stage beside the Viking ship as Hugleikr kept calming the masses, and he had heard the voiceover inform all that the murderer Quintillus had been found and executed…

  When the pain and the intensity of the glowing light receded a bit, Tomadus opened his eyes. There were no women or hole in the wall, no Viking ship, no dead bodies. Instead, he was sitting with Yohanan and Isa in a large, ornate room. He shuddered and breathed hard. This man, this Huxley, can he see the horrors I have seen as well?

  “Well, at least it’s not a dungeon,” Yohanan joked. “I’ve seen a few jail cells in my time, and I can tell you they don’t typically have forty-foot ceilings, marble columns, gold-leaf cornices and alabaster and jade sculptures.”

  Tomadus surveyed the huge hall and marveled at its ornamentation. The marble dais in front of them held an empty marble throne inlaid with a tufted red velvet seat and back. The remainder of the dais was empty, except for a podium with a microphone far to its left. A small corridor trailed off the back of the dais and behind a wall of gold, silver and jade that reached the full thirty cubitus to the ceiling. Four of their former escorts were posted as guards at each of the four main ten-cubitus high double doors that opened into the hall. Isa sat quietly contemplating, perhaps praying, with his palms resting together in front of his lips and his eyes comfortably closed.

  “We’re in the Emperor’s palace,” said Tomadus. “He can pronounce us guilty of whatever crimes he chooses to invent. This is the Aztec Empire. He can do whatever he wishes.”

  From the rear corridor, a guard emerged wearing ceremonial colors of red, orange and green. He held not a modern rap rifle but an obsidian-tipped spear. He spoke loudly as if the enormous hall were filled with a large crowd, “All rise for His Majesty, the King of Kings, Emperor Acamapichtli X.” One of the soldiers came over with his rap rifle raised, and the three prisoners stood in unison. A few moments later, a tall and powerful man appeared from the rear corridor to the dais. He wore an elaborate headdress made of gold and covered with jade, diamonds and other jewels. Pinned at his collar, his jade green robe hung to his calves; it wrapped around the sides of his ancient iron breastplate and short white skirt. Intricately designed red and orange cloths wrapped around his huge calves and accentuated his muscular upper legs. Ornately bejeweled sandals adorned his feet. In his hand, he held a spear similar to the ceremonial guard, but this one was tipped with a pointed diamond the size of two fingers. His thin mustache and thick beard seemed out of place in Tenochtitlan. He moved to the front of the dais and stared at the three men.

  The ceremonial guard pronounced officially, “You shall approach His Majesty, the Emperor, on your knees.” Tomadus dropped to his knees, followed by Yohanan. Isa remained standing, mute, staring directly at the Emperor.

  One of the guards came forward and raised his rap rifle with two hands to butt Isa in the head from behind, but the Emperor intervened, “Stop! Do not strike him. You other two may stand as well. All three of you may approach on your feet. Indeed, we seek a private audience with these men. Guards, leave us. These men pose no danger.”

  The guard dressed in ceremonial garb said, “But your Highness, security concerns demand that I—”

  “We will be the judges of our security needs. Leave us.” Immediately, all of the guards disappeared out nearby doors.

  The Emperor stepped down the dais and bowed slightly toward the men, his right hand raised to his heart in the manner of the traditional greeting in Roma and the Three Empires. “Peace be with you.” The three responded with like gestures and words. The Emperor continued, “Isa of Palestine, welcome to my land. I have been following your progress abroad for several months now. I was delighted to see you come to Aztalan and our capital in Tenochtitlan. And now I am thrilled to finally meet you.”

  Isa nodded slightly. “Thank you, Emperor. You have taken your time in summoning us. We have been in your land teaching your people for weeks.”

  “Yes, I know. I am sorry my security personnel had to follow you, but it was necessary to ensure that I had made no mistake in my measure of you. Your display a few minutes ago told me that I had not.”

  “You were not offended by Isa’s refusal to kneel?” Tomadus asked.

  “A small test. I knew if Isa believed what he says, he would not kneel to me.” The emperor motioned to the back of the dais. “Please let us continue this conversation in less formal quarters and with less formal attire. I came here straight from an appearance to celebrate Tlamatinime Ilhucaatl Day. I still wear the pomp of ceremony, and it itches so.” He removed the headdress, pivoted and walked up the dais, motioning to the three to follow him down the rear corridor, which gave way to an anteroom, a marbled hallway, and finally a large sitting area overlooking the plaza below.

  The Emperor turned toward them. “I apologize for the way my soldiers summoned you. That was a small part of my investigation. If you had resisted or tried to flee, we would not be having this conversation. But you acquitted yourselves as I expected, so here we are. Please, feel free to partake of the food and the fruit of the vine, for we have many good varieties here.” He motioned to a table of plenty nearby. They partook with a glass each and claimed heavily cushioned seats in a circle.

  “Why have you summoned us?” Tomadus asked.

  The Emperor’s left eyebrow rose. “Is that not obvious already to a famous technologist from Roma? I simply seek to speak with you, for not to discuss with a man worthy of conversation is to waste the man. To discuss with a man not worthy of conversation is to waste words. The wise waste neither men nor words. I have studied Isa from afar and know well that he is worthy of conversation. I ha
ve heard the same of you from merchant members of my court, Tomadus. This other man, Yohanan is it? Your reputation from Tetepe is well earned, is it not?”

  “I have left my past transgressions behind. I am seeking a new path now.”

  “I see. Then I trust I will not waste my words on you, for a wise man who has faults does not fear to abandon them.”

  Tomadus tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. He was nearly certain he had heard similar aphorisms before, or at least bits of them, but it was so many years ago. Yet even the tone reminded him of his old teacher. “Your Highness, although you are an Aztec emperor, you appear well-trained in the words of the ancient Chinese master, Confucius. Were you educated in the East Asian Empire?”

  “I see you remember your Romanus tutelage well,” said the Emperor. “Sometimes I forget that your culture was infused with a little Asian flavoring when the Mongols occupied your Latin empire for so many centuries. No, Tomadus, I was educated here in Tenochtitlan. As I am sure you are aware, we too have enjoyed some of the benefits of Asian culture, for far longer than many foreigners realize. For example, today we are celebrating Tlamatinime Ilhucaatl Day, which translated means ‘Feast of the Wise Men from the Sea.’ You know of this?”

  Tomadus shook his head. “Only vaguely, I’m afraid. There seems to be a bit of a reluctance on the part of Romanus state schools to teach much Aztec history.”

  “That does not surprise me. So allow me to enlighten you, my friends, for learning without thought is labor lost, but thought without learning is perilous. The event marked by this celebration occurred early in our empire, in 1034.”

  Tomadus asked, “1034? Is that AH—Year of the Hijra—or are you using an Aztecan calendar?”

  “Yes, it is AH—the Year of the Hijra. I have used the year from your imperfect Muslim calendar because that is the best reference point for you, is it not? Or do you Romani now go by the year of the founding of Roma? I find it humorous that the precursor to your Roman Empire, Julius Caesar, promulgated a quite accurate annual calendar over 650 years before the Hijra of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, yet your region of the world has chosen to adopt that flawed monthly Muslim calendar as if the world began on that date. But no matter, as long as we know we are referring to the same system.”

  “The date has great religious significance for the Muslims,” Tomadus said. “We choose to follow their lead.”

  “Of course, as you do in a great many things,” said the Emperor. “So the event occurred in 1034 AH, over three centuries after the founding of this great city. The empire was vast for that time, extending from the Sea to the Ocean and, in your lexicon, for over 250 milia passuum north and south of this city. Then it was but a loose conglomeration of tribute states, and any further expansion was limited by our meager means of transportation. Even if we could administer the outer regions, we had no advantage at arms other than our numbers to hold the outlying areas in check. The arrival of the wise men from the sea changed all of that—both for good and bad.”

  “Good and bad?” Tomadus asked.

  “Yes. At first, many of my people thought these travelers were gods, for their technology and weaponry far exceeded our own. We understand now that they were troubled emigrants travelling from China, bound across the Western Ocean to the huge island-continent to the south. They had departed China just after economic stresses from the difficult Imjin War with the Nipponese had put them in opposition with the Wanli emperor near the end of the Ming Dynasty. They sailed in a ship a hundred times bigger than our own at the time. Their departure was, shall we say, promoted by the Chinese government, but these emigrants were told they could return only at the risk of death. It was lucky for us, for this motivated them to include among their cargo as much technology, agriculture and weaponry as could be useful in their new home. They also found it prudent to include among their number many skilled craftsmen.”

  “Why did they sail here?” asked Yohanan.

  The Emperor replied, “Unfortunately for these wise men, they encountered the edge of a hurricane north of the equator that severely damaged their sailing ship. By the time they had repaired the ship, they had floated into the counter-current just five degrees north of the equator. And then the doldrums hit, with no wind for weeks. They could do nothing but float ever more eastward with the current until they were beyond any maps or charts known to them. As the current took them near the coast, it changed direction and carried them north to our shores. They landed nearly a hundred days later and a few weeks after they had expended most of their foodstuffs. The long voyage and their great hunger had weakened them, so they thought twice about seeking any conquest of our empire with their far superior weapons. There were only a hundred of them left, and eventually they knew they would have run out of ammunition. So wisdom prevailed and they sought refuge among the Aztecs. If we had been unfortunate enough to have a fool for an emperor, they would have been executed immediately as an outside threat. But Emperor Mochtezacatl demonstrated great vision and welcomed as opportunity what others saw only as peril. He accepted these travelers as counselors, technicians and teachers and slowly began to integrate their technology and agriculture into our own.”

  “It must have helped your economy,” Tomadus said.

  “To say the least,” the Emperor said. “From them we learned many things we take for granted today—like the wheel. There had been little reason to invent that marvel in this land because there were no substantial beasts of burden to take advantage of it with wagons. But the wise men also brought horses and oxen and wheat. They taught us to make gunpowder, to smelt iron, and to build iron weapons, cannons and primitive guns. Within a few short years, they transformed us into a powerful empire. Emperor Mochtezacatl erected stelae as a tribute recounting their trip and innovations to our society.”

  “That all sounds pretty good. What happened?” asked Tomadus.

  “Well, their arrival also devastated us. These Chinese travelers unwittingly brought to our continent new diseases. Measles, scarlet fever and small pox ravaged our population. It is believed that over a third of our people died from the new diseases alone in the ten years after the wise men arrived. Many of my people thought our gods were punishing us for taking in these foreigners. Some of the people called for the foreigners to be sacrificed to the great god Huitzilopochtli at the Great Temple. But Emperor Mochtezacatl placed all of the Chinese immigrants under his private protection. He proclaimed that their death at the hands of any Aztec citizen would be equivalent to killing one of his royal family. This angered many of the people, and several of the more independent kingdoms to the east soon rebelled. Other kingdoms began to join them and eventually the people of this city committed a great treason and rose up and killed Emperor Mochtezacatl. The mob then rounded up all of the Chinese immigrants and killed them. By then, some of the Chinese had married some of the Aztecs and had produced young children. These mixed-race offspring were temporarily spared by the mob, but only so they could be used as special sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli.”

  Yohanan closed his eyes and hung his head, shaking it slowly from side to side.

  “Yes, Yohanan,” the Emperor said, “I see you comprehend. These horrible murders cast a long shadow over our collective soul. Nevertheless, their deaths came too late to undermine their technological contributions to our Aztec Empire. They had brought us great weapons, so we killed them for angering our gods, yet found no hypocrisy in using the new weapons to greatly expand our borders. Expansion proved to be easy. The diseases that had ravaged our population now ebbed in our empire just as they flowed into other nations to the north and the south. As our new enemies fell, the new emperor predictably claimed credit. The Chinese immigrants—these wise men who made much of our great empire possible—were largely forgotten and their stelae removed.”

  “So why do you celebrate them today?” asked Yohanan.

  The Emperor nodded. “Well that was nearly a millennium ago. It was another 500 years before one of our early
historians dug into the old legends, found the abandoned stelae and discovered the importance of these visitors to our empire. With half a millennia of hindsight, we realized the dreadful diseases from your continents would have come later anyway, with the arrival in later centuries of the Vikings and other European peoples, except our people would have been decimated at exactly the wrong time. Instead, over time we had developed immunities and we had enhanced our technology from the wise men from the sea. And through these advantages, we were able to eventually dominate the newcomers.”

  Yohanan nodded. “Hence the vast expanse of the Aztec Empire for centuries.”

  “Yes. It took 500 years, but this newly enlightened emperor finally acknowledged that our forbearers had mistreated these wise men from the sea. He pronounced a new celebration of Tlamatinime Ilhucaatl Day. Of course, his decision also might have been influenced by his efforts at the time to establish stronger relations with the East Asian Empire. The celebration has grown ever since. I personally have re-emphasized our connections with East Asia since I was handed the mantle of leadership fifteen years ago. Hence, you see a Buddha in the Tlamatinime Ilhucaatl Plaza and the many other symbols of Chinese culture interwoven with our traditional Aztec strength. Whether man or nation, each of us is strongest when he stands on both legs, don’t you think?”

  Not when the legs run in two different directions, Tomadus thought. While the conversation continued, Tomadus could hear little more. He began rubbing both temples with his fingertips, hoping to soothe the intense pain. The Emperor’s history lesson had driven a wedge through his brain and into his soul. In his current reality, the story fit what he knew, though it added some interesting elements he had never considered. Wise men from the sea—no teacher had ever mentioned that in Roma. But his memories from the other world kept intruding as the Emperor spoke. The Aztec government and culture had been wiped out by the weapons and intrigues of the Conquistadors from Spain as well as by the blights of disease and religion that followed them. No, that’s not right. That is that other world. There is no Spain, no France, no England and no Christianity. There never has been in this world. No, these bits of history existed only in his troubled mind, freshly warped by new visions of the Light.