Celestial Matters

by Garfinkle, Richard

  “When he had his supplies, that crazy Middler stuck the needles all over you. I wanted to stop him, but she wouldn’t let me.” He cocked his head to indicate Yellow Hare. “He painted lines all over you, connecting one pin to the next. Then he sat down in that chair, and just watched you for a day.”

  Euripos stopped for a moment; his face clouded over with a mixture of annoyance and bewilderment. I recognized that look. Every Academic who ever had to describe something Middler science had accomplished had that look on his face.

  “It was like magic,” Euripos said. “The paint migrated across your body, twisting into new patterns. For the next two days he kept painting new lines and twisting the needles until yesterday the lines stopped moving and he said you were cured.”

  I sighed, and coughed a little. My lungs felt a little congested, but apart from that, and the dryness in my throat, I felt much better. I offered my doctor the standard Akademe excuse on the incomprehensibility of Taoist science, but the words sounded hollow, the vain protestations of someone railing against fate. “Don’t bother trying to understand it. Once the Middlers have been conquered we’ll have all the time in the world to divine their secrets.”

  The old Roman’s eyes lit up with the thought of conquest.

  “How long have I been unconscious?” I asked.

  “Ten days,” Captain Yellow Hare said matter-of-factly.

  “When can I get back to work?” I asked Euripos.

  “According to that Middler, all we have to do is clean the paint off and you’ll be fit for duty.”

  “Well then, send for a slave to wash me. I’m anxious to return to work.”

  Yellow Hare stepped forward and put her hand on the hilt of her sword. I realized she was about to offer it to me as an acknowledgment of her failure to protect me.

  I had to make clear to her that I still had confidence in her. No one could have anticipated an attack at that time and place against an enemy using new weapons, and no one could have done a better job defending me, or been more zealous to revive me when I was injured. But I could not say those things; Spartans do not listen to excuses, particularly about their own failings.

  A different approach was needed and, all praises to you, lady of wisdom, Athena provided me with the words I needed. “Captain, make sure the path back to the hill is safe.”

  “Commander … perhaps…”

  “That is an order, Captain.”

  “Yes, Commander,” she said, taking her hand from her sword.

  By the time she returned from scouting out my route, I had been cleaned and dressed. Yellow Hare took my arm and helped me walk stiffly and slowly up through the hospital caverns and out onto the surface.

  Dawn was breaking as I emerged and Chandra’s Tear was flying eastward into it. ’Elios glowed a warm yellow-orange that welcomed me back into his light. He seemed no longer angry with me, assuming he ever had been.

  “Do you need to rest?” Yellow Hare asked.

  “No,” I said, and turned my gaze toward the hill. “Lead on.”

  Yellow Hare escorted me bowward around the hill and up to the courtyard. Just as we ascended the final step and reached the starboard statue of Athena a cry rose up from a hundred voices assembled on the apex of the hill. “Hail Aias! Hail Commander!”

  All the science staff had come together to welcome me back to the living.

  “Hail to you all, and thank you,” I said.

  My three senior subordinates stepped forward.

  “The reshaping of Chandra’s Tear is completed, Commander,” Ramonojon said, eyes slightly downcast. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “The Ares impellers are installed, Commander,” Kleon said. “And we’ve risen to eight hundred miles above the earth. We should be safe from attack here.”

  “Preparations for the demonstration are proceeding as scheduled,” Mihradarius said.

  “Well done,” I said to them.

  I stepped out to face the arrayed ranks of my subordinates.

  “Forgive me,” I said to that sea of anxious faces. “I cannot stay and drink my health with you because I have fallen several days behind in my work.”

  There was a scattering of relieved laughter. “But I want you all to go to the commissary and eat and drink your fill. And perhaps spill a little wine to Apollo and Asklepios to insure my continued health.”

  “Hail, Aias!” they said again, and left me alone with Yellow Hare and Aeson, who had emerged from his office when the speeches were done.

  “Welcome back, Aias,” he said, gripping my elbow gently.

  “Thank you, Aeson,” I said, returning the gesture.

  He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Yellow Hare asked to be replaced. I told her she’d have to talk to you about that. I advise you not to do it; there is no better soldier in all the League.”

  “The matter’s been dealt with,” I said. “I managed to stop her from asking.”

  “Good.”

  We straightened up and our voices resumed their normal volume.

  “How did you arrange to get a Middler doctor?” I asked.

  “I sent a message directly to the Archons and they had one shipped by moon sled from a prison camp in eastern India.”

  “No problems? No protests from either Athens or Sparta?” I could hardly believe that neither the bureaucracy nor the high command would complain about something this unorthodox.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “You have an explanation?” he said, divining my thoughts from the expression on my face.

  “Clearly, Sunthief has grown in importance, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think that increase may have to do with the recent improvements in Middler technology.”

  “That makes sense,” he said, “but I do not like it.”

  “Neither do I,” I said. “But if the Archons wish to lavish their confidence on us, we had better not disappoint them.”

  He smiled and squeezed my elbow again. Then we broke our grips and separated, each going to his own office.

  My accustomed workplace was a welcome sight, but the huge pile of scrolls waiting for me on my desk was not. By late afternoon I’d managed to sort through them and bring myself up-to-date on the present state of things aboard ship. I had my lunch brought to me, and ate far too much of it trying to make up for my enforced ten-day fast.

  Near the bottom of the pile, I found more evidence of Sunthief’s greater importance. It was an official scroll bearing the seal of the Delian League and the signature of Croesus, the Archon of Athens. It stated that we would be provided with the Aphroditean and ’Ermean matter Mihradarius had requested. I read it three times to make sure they were not demanding some budget cut to compensate, nor requiring that the requisition forms be filled out in triplicate and countersigned by the Athenian bureaucracy.

  That added weight to my hypothesis, but made me feel even more uncomfortable. Sunthief was a military gamble. We couldn’t guarantee it would work or that if it did work we would be able to reach ’AngXou, let alone drop the sun fragment on it.

  I looked up at Yellow Hare. “I need the opinion of a Spartan,” I said.

  She beckoned with an open hand, as if to say, “Go on.”

  I outlined the situation.

  “Should you not ask Commander Aeson about this?”

  I shook my head. “I need an outside opinion. What do you think?”

  “That the success of your project relies greatly on Fortune, an untrustworthy goddess.…” She paused.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Both of the Archons have been blessed by Fortune.”

  I chuckled. Considering that in their youth Kroisos and Miltiades had flown to the moon in a wicker basket suspended under a sphere of fire-gold, I had to agree with her.

  “But,” she said, “since their election to the office of Archon, neither has been inclined to gamble the safety of the League on that blessing.”

  “Then why are they doing so
now?”

  “I do not know the cause,” she said, “but it must be a very grave one.”

  I nodded and we both fell into silent contemplation.

  When evening came, Yellow Hare insisted we return to my cave so I could dine and rest. Dinner consisted of roast lamb, curried chicken, and fresh fruits from India. There was also a great deal of wheat bread. Yellow Hare ate very little, but that seemed less like Spartan fastidiousness than the distraction of deep thought. She spent most of the meal gnawing at a bit of lamb and methodically cutting an orange up into smaller and smaller pieces.

  At the end of the meal she took a long wooden pipe out of her pack, filled its bowl with tobakou, and lit it with the flame from a small fire box.

  “Are you thinking about the Archons?” I asked.

  She flicked her eyes toward me and licked orange juice from her lips before taking a deep draw of smoke from the pipe. “No, I am trying to determine which of your crewmen is the spy.”

  “Spy? What spy?”

  “The one who’s telling the Middlers where and when to attack you.”

  “Why do you assume the Middlers knew?”

  She focused her eyes on me like a teacher about to give careful instructions. “First, they clearly know what you look like. Second, they attacked when the ship’s forward cannon battery was being moved for the reshaping. And third, they flew straight for the mystery cave, where you would be on only one day each month.”

  I nodded. Succinct and sensible. A small, hopeful thought appeared in my mind. If she was right, and the spy could be found, then the attempts on my life would end and Sunthief could be carried through. “Who do you suspect?”

  “Ramonojon, the Indian.” She made his nationality sound like an insult.

  I took a deep breath to contain my outrage at her distrust, but instead of clarifying, pure air, I sucked in a lungful of earth-heavy smoke. “Why him?” I said with a cough.

  She exhaled a billow of gray which gleamed in the moonlight. “Because he is exhibiting the first sign of treason.”

  “And what is that?”

  “An abrupt change in behavior,” she said. “Sometimes the change is obvious. Sometimes new traitors try to conceal it, but there are ways to penetrate such disguises.”

  “How do you know Ramonojon’s acting differently? You only met him a few weeks ago.”

  “Because of the concern you have shown about his behavior. The reactions of a man’s friends tell you a great deal about that man.”

  I had not realized my distress was that obvious. Certainly Ramonojon had changed, become distant and distracted, but I couldn’t believe my friend would set an assassin on me. I decided to go on the attack. “Do you have any substantial proof?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then I suggest you find some before you accuse him.”

  “I will,” she said, and I could feel Zeus of the thunders fill her voice with confidence.

  * * *

  Two days later Ramonojon came to see me in my office. Yellow Hare announced his approach half a minute before I heard his unsure knock on my door.

  “Please let him in,” I said, and my bodyguard did so with the confident stride of a tiger welcoming a deer.

  He entered hesitantly. “Do you have some time, Aias?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.”

  I looked at the five scrolls on my desk, all that remained from the pile that had accumulated in my absence. “I always have time for you,” I said, gently reminding him of our neglected friendship.

  Ramonojon sat on the stool in front of my desk, hunched slightly over, making it impossible to see his expression. “I would like to speak to you alone,” he said.

  “No,” Yellow Hare said; her eyes bored into his back like spears of celestial flame.

  “Aias?” he said, and I thought I detected a twinge of pleading.

  “I’m sorry, Ramonojon. I have to do what Yellow Hare thinks necessary for my safety.”

  “I see,” he said, and then fell silent.

  “Is this about Mihradarius’s demonstration?” I asked after two minutes of strained quiet.

  “Not really, no.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, then fell back into stillness.

  I tried another safe option. “Are you having more problems with Kleon?”

  He shook his head. I ate a fig from the bowl I kept on my desk and offered him one. He picked it up and studied it intently, as if he had never seen a fruit before, then put it back. Finally he spoke. “Aias, have you ever given any thought to the ethics of what we’re doing?”

  A strange question, to say the least. Ramonojon and I had talked many times about history, theology, politics, and many other topics the Akademe considered fruitless, but never ethics. My face must have suddenly put on the mask of my surprise. Yellow Hare’s statue visage hardened into a look of condemning confidence, and I could almost see Dike, goddess of justice, glaring out from behind her eyes.

  I concentrated on Ramonojon, knowing that I would never be able to make it through the discussion if I had to consider Yellow Hare’s reactions to everything I said. And it seemed to me most important to find out what was really disturbing him and do what I could to help.

  “Do you mean,” I asked him, “have I thought about how Sunthief serves the Good? If so, I think the answer is obvious. Serving the state helps the people, hence it aids the Good.”

  “No, that is not the ethical matter I am concerned with,” he said enunciating each syllable carefully. He was clearly straining to control some weighty feeling.

  “Is it then a question of which of our personal virtues we are increasing by this work?”

  “Increasing?” His mask of calm cracked. “We’re working to destroy a city of two million people. How can that aid virtue? How can that be good?”

  Yellow Hare growled. “Innocent people always die in war.”

  He turned to look at her; I could not see his face, but whatever was written on it caused Yellow Hare to narrow her eyes to predatory slits.

  “Should two million noncombatants die?” Ramonojon said.

  I stood, walked around the desk, and stepped between them, forcing both my friend and my bodyguard to look at me. “The Son of Heaven,” I said, “the Middle Kingdom bureaucracy, and the central military establishment are all headquartered in ’AngXou. It is the opinion of the Archons that destroying that city will cripple the enemy.”

  “Cripple?” he said. “I wonder how many Spartan generals, how many Archons have made that same claim during the course of this futile war.”

  “Futile?” Yellow Hare gripped the hilt of her sword at the insult to Sparta. “Are you accusing the general staff of incompetence?”

  Ramonojon ignored this burst of heat from Yellow Hare. He seemed to draw calmness from some well deep within him as he steepled his hands together. “No, I am accusing them of ignoring the history of this war.”

  I was about to speak, but Kleio grabbed my throat and stilled my voice.

  “Nine hundred years ago,” Ramonojon said, “Alexander took the province of Xin from the Middle Kingdom. In response, the Middlers promptly ended the civil war they’d been fighting for some two centuries and put the first ’An emperor on the throne. He in turn forced the independent Taoist alchemists to become state scientists, and ordered them to provide his armies with weapons to counter the ones Aristotle had made for Alexander’s troops. After Alexander’s death, the Middle Kingdom armies used their new armament to push the League out of Xin back to their earlier border of India.”

  Yellow Hare looked at me for confirmation. I nodded, still unable to speak.

  “Since that time,” Ramonojon continued, “the Middle Kingdom has captured and in turn lost India and north Persia; the Spartan army has captured and lost Tibet and Xin. At this very moment, the armies of the League and the Kingdom are battling on the outskirts of Xin. Some soldier is fighting on the exact spot where Alexander himself stood nine centuries ago. How has any of this served the Goo
d?”

  Kleio released me and I answered. “It spurred us to expand and add Africa, the lands of the Russoi, and half of Atlantea to the League,” I said. “Furthermore, the war forced the Delian League to become a strong, stable government rather than a group of arguing city-states.”

  “Was the stability worth the bloodshed?” Ramonojon challenged.

  “How can you ask that?” I said. “Remember the history of your own country. When Alexander first reached India, he found a mass of warring kingdoms; each Raza had marshaled his own armies in order to try and to conquer his neighbors. Thanks to the League, India is united. A mere handful of your people die in battle each year compared to the vast numbers that used to fall in the internecine warfare.”

  Yellow Hare broke in at that moment. “And more of our warriors have died defending the League against Indian rebellions than India has lost in the war against the Middlers.”

  At that moment, I decided to change the line of discussion. Yellow Hare is one of the purest warriors ever born on Earth, but even she was not free of the Spartan grudge against the Indians for the ancient cow rebellion and the more recent Buddhist pacifist rebellion.

  “Is there anything more?” I asked.

  “What about the corruption of science and philosophy?” Ramonojon said.

  I blushed out of shame. How could I deny that the war had been responsible for that? Yellow Hare too fell silent; I could feel her golden eyes upon me waiting for an answer, but I had none to give.

  “Well?” Ramonojon asked.

  “The war did not do that,” I said. “Alexander and Aristotle did. Had Alexander conquered all of the Middle Kingdom in his lifetime and ended the war there and then, the Akademe would not have been turned back into the school it was under Plato.”

  Ramonojon shook his head sadly, stood up, and walked uncaring past Captain Yellow Hare.

  He opened the door, but turned to face me just before leaving. “Remember Sokrates’ final words in the Apology,” he said; then he walked out.

  I lapsed into silence, unsure of what to think about that strange discussion. After a few minutes, Yellow Hare cleared her throat and said, “What is the Apology?”