The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  The question soughed through him: How many chances had he missed, by what slender margins, throughout all the years? He did not share the widespread present-day faith in astrology. It seemed likeliest to him that sheer accident ruled the world. Perhaps today the dice had been due to roll in his favor.

  //the game was real, //anyone like him existed, had ever existed, anywhere under the sky.

  Rufus’ head thrust forward from the heavy shoulders. “Why did you?” he grated. “What the dung be you after?”

  He needed calming down. Lugo check-reined the eagerness within himself, that was half fear. “Drink your wine,” he said. “Listen, and I’ll explain.

  “This house may have led you to think I’m a curial, or a mildly prosperous shopkeeper, or something of that kind. I’m not.” Had not been for a long while. Diocletian’s decree had supposedly frozen everybody into the status to which they were born, including the middle classes. But rather than be crushed, grain by grain, between the stones of taxation, regulation, worthless currency, moribund trade, more and more were fleeing. They slipped off, changed their names, became serfs or outright slaves, illegal itinerant la- borers and mountebanks; some joined the Bacaudae whose bandit gangs terrorized the rural outback, some actually sought to the barbarians. Lugo had made better arrangements for himself, well in advance of need. He was accustomed to looking ahead.

  “Fm currently in the pay of one Aurelian, a senator in this city,” he went on.

  Hostility sparked. “I heard about him.”

  Lugo shrugged again. “So he bribed his way into that rank, and even among his colleagues is monumentally corrupt. What of it? He’s an able man and understands that it’s wise to be loyal to those who serve him. Senators aren’t allowed to engage in commerce, you may know, but he has varied interests. That calls for intermediaries who are not mere figureheads. I come and go for him, to and fro, sniffing out dangers and possibilities, bearing messages, executing tasks that require discretion, giving advice when appropriate. There are worse stations in life. In fact, there are less honorable ones.”

  “What’s Aurelian want with me?” Rufus asked uneasily.

  “Nothing. He’s never heard of you. Fate willing, he never shall. I sought you out on my own account. We may be of very great value to each other.” Lugo sharpened his tone. “I make no threats. If we cannot work together but you have done your best to cooperate with me, I can at least get you smuggled out of Burdigala to someplace where you can start over. Remember, you owe me your life. If I abandon you, you’re a dead man.”

  Sullenness and the gesture of the fig: “They’ll know you hid me here.”

  “Why, I’ll tell them myself,” Lugo declared coolly. “As a solid citizen, I did not want you unlawfully slaughtered, but I did feel it incumbent on me to interview you in private, draw you out—Hold!” He had set his cup on the ground as he talked, expecting Rufus might lunge. Now he gripped the staff in both hands. “Stay right on that stool, boy. You’re sturdy, but you’ve seen what I can do with this.”

  Rufus crouched back.

  Lugo laughed. “That’s better. Don’t be so damned edgy. I really don’t want to cause you any harm. Let me repeat, if you’ll be honest with me and do as I say, the worst that will happen to you is that you leave Burdigala in disguise. Aurelian owns a huge latifundium; it can doubtless use an extra workman, if I put in a good word, and the senator will cover up any little irregularities for me. At best—well, I don’t yet know, and therefore won’t make any promises, but it could be glorious beyond your highest-flying childhood dreams, Rufus.”

  His words and the lulling tone worked. Also, the wine had begun to. Rufus sat quiet a moment, nodded, beamed, tossed off his drink, held out a band. “By the Three, right!” he cried.

  Lugo clasped the hard palm. The gesture was fairly new in Gallia, maybe learned from Germanic immigrants. “Splendid,” he said. “Just speak fully and frankly. I know that won’t be easy, but remember, I have my reasons. I mean to do well by you, as well as God allows.”

  He refilled the emptied cup. Behind his jovial facade, tension gathered and gathered.

  Rufus drank. His vessel wobbled. “What d’you want to know?” he asked.

  “First, why you got into grief.”

  Rufus’ pleasure faded. He scowled beyond his questioner. “Because my wife died,” he mumbled. “That’s what broke the crock.”

  “Many men are widowed,” Lugo said, while memory twisted a sword inside him.

  The big hand tightened around the cup till knuckles stood white. “My Livia was old. White hair, wrinkles, no teeth. We’d two kids what grew up, boy and girl. They be married, kids o’ their own. And they’ve gone gray.”

  “I thought this might be,” Lugo whispered, not in Latin. “O Ashtoreth—”

  Aloud, using today’s language: “The rumors that reached me suggested as much. That’s why I came after you. When were you born, Rufus?”

  “How the muck should I know?” The response was surly. “Balls! Poor folk don’t keep count like you rich ‘uns. I couldn’t tell you who be consul this year, let alone then was. But my Livia was young like me when we got hitched— fourteen, fifteen, whatever. She was a strong mare, she was, popped her young out like melon seeds, though only the two o’ them got to grow up. She didn’t break down fast like some mares.”

  “You may well have reached your threescore and ten, then, or gone beyond,” Lugo said most softly. “You don’t look a day over twenty-five. Were you ever sick?”

  “No, ‘less you count a couple times I got hurt. Bad hurts, but they healed right up in a few days, not so much as a scar. No toothaches ever. I got three teeth knocked out in a fight once, and they grew back.” The arrogance shriveled. “People looked at me more and more slanty. When Livia died, that broke the crock.” Rufus groaned. “They’d been saying I must’ve made a deal with the Devil. She told me what she heard. But what the muck could I do? God give me a strong body, that’s all. She believed.”

  “I do too, Rufus.”

  “When she fell bad sick at last, not many ‘ud speak to me any more. They’d shy from me in the street, make signs, spit on their breasts. I went to a priest. He was scared of me too, I could see it. Said I ought to go to the bishop, but the bastard stalled about taking me to him. Then Livia died.”

  “A release,” Lugo could not help venturing.

  “Well, I’d gone to a whorehouse for a long time,” Rufus answered matter-of-factly. Fury flared. “Now they, them bitches, they told me go away and don’t come back. I got mad, raised a ruckus. People heard and gathered around outside. When I came out, the scumswine yelled at me. I decked the loudest mouthed o’ them. Next thing I knew, they were on me. I barely fought free and ran. They came after me, more and more o’ them.”

  “And you’d have died under their feet,” Lugo said. “Or else presently the rumors would have reached the prefect. The tale of a man who never grew old and was dearly no saint, therefore must be in league with the diabolical. You’d have been arrested, interrogated under torture, doubtless beheaded. These are bad times. Nobody knows what to expect. Will the barbarians prevail? Will we have another civil war? Will plague or famine or a total collapse of trade destroy us? Heretics and sorcerers are objects to take fear out on.”

  “I be none!”

  “I didn’t say you were. I accept you’re a common man, as common as I’ve ever met, aside from— Tell me, have you known or heard of anyone else like you, whom time doesn’t appear to touch? Kinfolk, perhaps?”

  Rufus shook his head.

  Lugo sighed. “Neither have I.” He mustered resolve and plunged forward. “And I have waited and tried, searched and endured, since first I came to understand.”

  “Uh?” The wine splashed from Rufus’ cup.

  Lugo sipped out of his own, for what comfort it could give. “How old do you think I am?” he asked.

  Rufus peered before he said at the bottom of his throat: “You look maybe twenty-five.”
>
  A smile quirked on the left side of Lugo’s mouth. “Like you, I don’t know my age for certain,” he answered slowly. “But Hiram was king in Tyre when I was born there. What chronicles I have since been able to study and figure from show me that that was about twelve centuries ago.”

  Rufus gaped. The freckles stood lurid on a skin gone white. His free hand made a sign.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Lugo urged. “I’m in no pact with darkness. Or with Heaven, for that matter, or any power, any soul. I am your kind of flesh, whatever that means. I have simply been longer on earth. It is lonely. You have had the barest foretaste of how lonely it is.”

  He rose, leaving staff and cup, to pace the cramped floor, hands behind back. “I was not born Flavius Lugo, of course,” he said. “That is only the latest name I have taken out of—I’ve lost count of how many. The earliest was— never mind. A Phoenician name. I was a merchant until the years brought me to trouble much like yours today. Then for a long time I was a sailor, a caravan guard, a mercenary soldier, a wandering bard, any number of trades in which a man may come and go little noticed. That was a hard school I went through. Often I came near dying from wounds, shipwreck, hunger, thirst, a dozen different perils. Sometimes I would have died, were it not for the strange vigor of this body. A slower danger, more frightening as I began to perceive it, was that of drowning, losing my reason, in sheer memories. For a while I did have scant use of my wits. In a way that was a mercy; it blunted the pain of losing everyone I came to care for, losing him and losing her and losing, oh, the children. ... Bit by bit I worked out the art of memory. I now have clear recall, I am like a walking library of Alexandria—no, that burned, didn’t it?” He chuckled at himself. “I do make slips. But I have the art of storing what I know until it’s wanted, then calling it forth. I have the art of controlling sorrow. I have—”

  He observed Rufus’ awed regard and broke off. “Twelve hundred years?” the artisan breathed. “You seen the Savior?”

  Lugo forced a smile. “Sorry, I have not. If he was born in the reign of Augustus, as they say—that would have been, m-m, between three and four hundred years ago—then I was in Britannia at the time. Rome hadn’t conquered it yet, but trade was brisk and the southern tribes were cultured in their fashion. And much less meddlesome. That’s always a highly desirable feature in a place. Damnably hard to find these days, short of running off to the wild German or Scoti or whatever. And even they—

  “Another art I’ve developed is that of aging my appearance. Hair powder, dyes, such things are cumbersome, unreliable. I let everybody talk about how young I continue to look. Some people do, after all. But meanwhile gradually I begin to stoop a little, shuffle a little, cough, pretend to be hard of hearing, complain of aches and pains and the insolence of modern youth. It only works up to a point, of course. Finally I must vanish and start a new life elsewhere under a new name. I try to arrange things so it will be reasonable to suppose I wandered off and met with misfortune, perhaps because I’d grown old and absent-minded. And as a rule I’ve been able to prepare for the move. Accumulate a hoard of gold, learn about the home to be, perhaps visit it and establish my fresh identity—”

  Some of the weariness of the centuries fell over him. “Details, details.” He stopped and looked into one of the blind windows. “Am I going senile? I don’t usually gabble this way. Well, you’re the first like me I’ve found, Rufus, the very first. Let’s hope you won’t be the last.”

  “Did you, uh, know about others?” groped the voice at his back.

  Lugo shook his head. “I told you I never did. How could I? A few times I thought I saw a trace, but it gave out or it proved false. Once I may have. I’m not sure.”

  “What was that ... master? You want to tell me?”

  “I may as well. It was in Syracuse, where I based myself for a good many years because of its ties with Carthage. Lovely, lively city. A woman, Althea was her name, fine to look on and bright in the way women sometimes got to be in the later days of the Greek colonies—I knew her and her husband. He was a shipping magnate and I skippered a tramp freighter. They’d been married for over three decades, he’d gone bald and pot-bellied, she’d borne him a dozen children and the oldest of them was gray, but she might have been a maiden in springtime.”

  Lugo fell silent a while before finishing, flat-voiced: “The Romans captured the city. Sacked it: I was absent. Always make an excuse to clear out when you see that kind of thing coming. When I returned, I inquired. She could have been taken for a slave. I could have tried to find her and buy her free. But no, when I’d tracked down somebody who knew, insignificant enough to’ve been left unhurt, I learned she was dead. Raped and stabbed, I heard. Don’t know if that’s true or not. Stories grow in the telling. No matter. It was long ago.”

  “Too bad. You should’a got in there first.” Lugo tautened. “Uh, sorry, master,” Rufus said. “You don’t, uh, don’t seem to hate Rome.”

  “Why should I? It’s eternally the same tale, war, tyranny, massacre, slavery. I’ve been party to it myself. Now Rome is on the receiving end.”

  “What?” Rufus sounded aghast. “Can’t be! Rome is forever!”

  “As you like.” Lugo turned back to him. “Apparently I have, at last, found a fellow immortal. At least, here is someone I can safeguard, watch, make certain of. Two or three decades should suffice. Though already I have no real doubt.”

  He drew breath. “Do you see what this means? No, you scarcely can. You’ve had no time to think about it.” He surveyed heavy visage, low forehead, dismay yielding to a loose-lipped glee. I don’t expect you ever will, he thought. You are a moderately competent woodworker, nothing else. And I’m lucky to have found this much. Unless Althea—but she slipped through my fingers, away into death.

  “It means I am not unique,” Lugo said. “If there are two of us, there must be more. Very few, very seldom born. It isn’t in the bloodlines, like height or coloring or those deformities I’ve seen run in families. Whatever the cause is, it happens by accident. Or by God’s will, if you prefer, though I’d think that makes God out to be sheerly capricious. And surely senseless mischance takes off many immortals young, as it takes off ordinary men and women and children. Sickness we may escape, but not the sword or the runaway horse or the flood or the fire or the famine or whatever. Possibly more die at the hands of neighbors who think this must be a demon, magician, monster.”

  Rufus cowered. “My head’s all a-spin,” he whimpered.

  “Well, you’ve had a bad time. Immortals need rest too. Sleep if you wish.”

  Rufus’ expression was glazing over. “Why couldn’t we say we was, uh, saints? Angels?”

  “How far would you have gotten?” Lugo gibed. “Conceivably a man born into royalty— But I don’t suppose that’s ever happened, as rare as our kind must be. No, if we survive, we learn early on to keep our heads low.”

  “Then how shall we find each other?”

  Rufus hiccoughed and farted.

  3

  “Come our with me into the peristyle,” said Lugo.

  “Oh, gladly,” Cordelia sang. Almost, she danced at his side.

  It was an evening mild and clear. The moon stood over the eastern roof, close to full, in a sky still violet-blue. Westward, heaven darkened and stars trembled forth. City sounds had mostly died out; crickets chirred. Moonlight dappled the flowerbeds, shivered on the water of a pool, brought Cordelia’s young face and breast out of shadow into argency.

  She and he stood hand in hand a few minutes. “You were so busy today,” she said at length. “When you came back early, I hoped— Of course, you had your work to do.”

  “I did that, unfortunately,” he replied. “But these next hours belong to us.”

  She leaned against him. Her hair carried a remnant fragrance of sunlight. “Christians should give thanks for what they get.” She giggled. “How easy to be a Christian, tonight.”

  “How have the children done today?” he asked�
��his son Julius, no longer stumping about but leaping adventurously everywhere, starting to talk; little, little Dora asleep in her crib, starfish hands curled tight.

  “Why, very well,” said Cordelia, a bit surprised.

  “I see them too seldom.”

  “And you care. Not many fathers do. Not that much.” She squeezed his hand. “I want to give you lots of children.” Impishly: “We can begin at once.”

  “I have ... tried to be kind.”

  She heard how the words dragged, let go of him, widened her eyes in alarm. “What’s wrong, beloved?”

  He made himself take hold of her shoulders, look into her face—the moonlight made her searingly beautiful—and answer: “Between us, nothing at all.” Only the fact that you will grow old and die. And that has happened so often, so often. I cannot count the deaths. There is no measure for tile pain, but I think it has not grown any less; I think I have merely learned to live with it, as a mortal can learn to live an unbeatable wound. I thought we could have, oh, thirty, perhaps forty years together before I must leave. That would have been wonderful.

  “But I have an unexpected journey to make,” he said.

  “Something that man—Marcus—something he’s told you?”

  Lugo nodded.

  Cordelia grimaced. “I don’t like him. Forgive me, but I don’t. He’s coarse and stupid.”

  “He is that,” Lugo agreed. It had seemed wise to him they let Rufus share their supper. Confinement in the room with nothing but his dreads and animal hopes company had been breaking what self-control was left him, and he needed it for the time ahead. “Nevertheless, I got important information from him.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?” He heard how hard she tried not to make it a plea.

  “I’m sorry, no. Nor can I say where I’m bound or how long I’ll be gone.”

  She caught both his hands. Her fingers had turned cold. “The barbarians. Pirates. Bacaudae.”