The Far Arena

by Richard Ben Sapir

  I was quiet. She said many years had passed since people were crucified.

  That must be so, because if you had seen my slaves and friends, Plutarch and Demosthenes, die you never would have worn a remembrance of that death.'

  'Not the death, the man.'

  ‘I remember the deaths. Choose what you will.’

  The next day we discussed this on the sun porch with Semyonus but I was more interested in this land. I saw a hill in the distance, and Olava said we were just outside the city, on the edge of it

  It was a great city of the north people. Nurse slaves brought us things to eat and drink, and I wanted none of it.

  Olava told me she was telling Semyonus about the sexual encounter. A rigid woman normally, she became taut like an overstretched thong on a bow, smiling suddenly every once and a while,

  'Oh, yes. There were two kinds. One good and the other not so good. Not so good were potions. They would mostly work. There was one best one, of course.’

  'Which was?'

  'Celibacy,' I said, and at this they both laughed, so I added the ever-popular 'Underclothes.' And this time they didn't laugh.

  'What was sex like in your home with your wife, with Miriamne?'

  I tried to answer, but when I thought of Miriamne not even being remembered by anyone but me, not a kind word said of how she treated others, and all manner of things people say of those who are good, I wept. I wept for her and for Petronius, not only dead, both of them, but with no one to remember them but me.

  Semyonus offered that if I so loved my wife and son, I should know they felt no pain at this time. And that was a kind thing to say, but my heart wanted something more. Olava spoke with Semyonus.

  Their builders here were good. The glass was quite even, and the sun came through without distortions. Far off in the very air, the big metal air chariots like slow, shiny blots in the eye of the sky moved down towards where they gathered near here. The economy was such that the giant latifundia no longer existed where carpenters and ironsmiths produced things, rather there would be a whole latifundium which did nothing but produce things like air chariots or those that went on the ground, and other devices in which there was great commerce between these nations. One could buy shares in these latifundia, called corporations. In Semyonus's land, east of the middle of Germany which was not civilized, everyone owned everything. Unlike Olava, Semyonus took offence when I referred to eastern lands as barbaric.

  'I have the permission of my friend and yours, Semyonus,' said Olava, 'to have my cult perform holy ceremonies for your wife and child, who I believe were early participants of my cult. At least I think your wife was.'

  'Good,' I said. 'That feels so much better. Although Petronius did not believe in those things. He was a smart boy. There was much slander against that little Jewish cult. There were those who said they drank the blood and ate the body of their god in horrible symbolic ritual sacrifice, but there is no lack of bad things said about the unknown, hence the stories about death.'

  A red flush galloped across the pale face of Olava. She adjusted her big body. The words came hard to her.

  'Eugeni. You are describing the Mass, but it commemorates God offering up his son in sacrifice for all mankind. The wine and bread represent his body and blood.'

  'Yellow-haired people adopted this religion, yes?'

  'You don't understand, Eugeni. It is love, not cannibalism. What greater love can someone have than to die for someone?'

  'Live for them. Any idiot can die. Would that I had lived for my Miriamne and Petronius. She would have had the comfort of my love, and Petronius my strength. I cast them adrift because of a moment's insanity.'

  'Because of the patrician Publius ?'

  'Because of me. Let us talk of sex. We, in our strange and now ancient manner, performed secret and unusual sexual acts.'

  I waited for Olava to translate. Semyonus leaned forward, nervously eyeing Olava.

  'There was this special way to do sex that drove women so mad with passion that they would voluntarily cast themselves into slavery just to have you touch them once again,' I said.

  Olava concentrated on her book of papers with lines, in which she would write now and then. Semyonus said something, Olava did not translate.

  'What did he say?' I asked.

  'Nothing.'

  'It was one word. What was it?’

  The word was "really," signifying great interest'

  'I can only show these great sexual feats if I know I will be rewarded in some manner, because the act itself drains, not so much on the virility but on the fat, and I do not have the fat to spare. Now Semyonus would be left with glistening muscle from this act and look like a god.'

  Olava translated, but I could tell she explained more, and I was fairly certain she told Semyonus this was a bit of a game I was playing.

  'How much will this miracle be?' asked Olava. 'Did Semyonus ask that?'

  ‘No,' she said. 'And stop selling sex stories to him. He is a good man, and his only crime is believing too much.'

  'Only crime,' I asked in amazement. 'Good woman, you may not be punished for murder or for stealing, but gullibility as certain as sunrise will get its price. It is always punished.'

  'You don't want to talk about sex with Miriamne?' she said. She understood.

  'Correct.'

  Then we will talk of other things. You are free. What was your daily life like? I would like details this time. From the beginning.'

  'I do not understand the question.'

  'What was your daily life like? What was a typical day? How did it start? What was the absolute first thing you did?' 'I awoke.' 'And then?' 'I urinated.' 'And then?' 'I bathed.' 'Every day?’ 'Yes.'

  'With what?'

  'In the tears of a thousand Parthian virgins carried by runners bathed in the oil of the essence of roses.' 'Water, correct?'

  'Yes, unless oils were on the body, and then they would be scraped off.'

  'We know you had hot baths and cold baths, but what did the average Roman bathe in?' 'Average?' 'The typical.' 'I don't understand.'

  'If you were to go out in the street and stop the first passer-by, who would it most likely be?'

  'I don't know. I didn't go out in the street to stop people. I only went out for public occasions, and then surrounded by my retainers and armoured slaves.'

  She said there had been enough questions for the morning. The heavy woman with whom I had copulated brought fruit on a tray, and I saw she had taken the abomination from her neck. So I smiled. When she bent over, I patted her buttocks. She jumped with a giggle, spilling an apple and a few grapes. Semyonus looked to Olava with shock, apparently for her.

  'Was that a common public occurrence, the pat with the hand ?' asked Olava. She flushed during this subject and made up for it by becoming even more tense and concentrated.

  'With the average typical Roman of the street?' I asked in response. "The one your god Science loves so much?'

  'Yes, was it a common gesture?'

  'I would say it was done often.'

  'How often?'

  'As often as there was a man's hand and a woman's buttocks.'

  'Did women do it to men?'

  'Yes.'

  'And you wouldn't know the frequency, I suppose. All right, I see in your face you are tired.' The slave nurse gathered the fruit and took it away with her.

  They had machines that did the work of artists called 'cameras' whose product I had seen before as a demonstration that time had done so much, even to the stones of Rome.

  At my leisure I could examine these pictures, I was told. I glanced briefly and laughed.

  'Who are these people?'

  "They are actors and actresses in costume in a play. You had plays, but without the sort of costumes we use now for realism. This is a play about your time in Rome.'

  'Ridiculous. The picture is ridiculous.'

  'Historians helped in the cramming. Where did they make mistakes?'

  'Every
where.'

  'We have records and paintings of the manner of your clothes. What details did they miss?' 'Everything.'

  'In what way? You don't have to answer now.'

  I told her what was wrong with the painting. These people who could fly in the air seemed to lose their senses at times. In the painting there was one man wearing armour for war, another for the arena, another for a parade, another for a formal speech to the senate or at some forum, and the women were dressed for formal occasions and for going to bed. All these people were crowded around a giant dinner, and someone was dancing while they ate.

  The costumes are wrong. What about the dinner?'

  'More than three people at a formal meal is really improper.'

  'What about the orgies and feasts?' asked Olava.

  'Some people did them. Some people slept with animals too. Some people will do anything,' I said.

  The slave nurse left, giving me a surreptitious smile. I had questions of my own. Who provided the monies for this ? What would the information be used for ? If the god Science was the purpose, where was his temple? Who was the chief priest?

  The answer, that sunny day in the north country spring, was that different peoples of different beliefs all got together in support of the truth and learning.

  If I believed that one. I would have been most surely punished for it.

  Twenty One

  Lew McCardle at times had been caught looking before, but never had he felt so stripped and so challenged as in making eye contact with this patient. He had drunk seven or eight glasses of red wine, and suddenly the mild little glow was gone, replaced by chilling sobriety. It was as though two dogs had met suddenly in an alley, and one of them had to back off.

  Lew McCardle was a full foot and then some taller than the little fellow, and more than one hundred pounds heavier, but when he caught the dark, cold glance of the patient, it was like being stripped of the secrecy of his mind. The little fellow at dinner was looking through him.

  It was not like the stranger to the century being awed and trying desperately to absorb and digest his strange surroundings.

  Lew had been gauging Sister Olav and Petrovitch at the meal and was just about to lock in on the little fellow when he looked back, gauging McCardle.

  And Lew excused himself from the table.

  'Good-bye, Semyonus. Good-bye, Olava, give my good-byes to Eugeni. I will be back in two days at the most.'

  'Good-bye, Lewus,' said Sister Olav.

  'Take your time, Lew,' said Petrovitch. 'Say hello to Rome for Eugeni,' said Petrovitch.

  'You're going to Rome?’

  ‘Just some research,' said Lew.

  'Geological research in Rome ?' asked Sister Olav.

  'No. Something very important that I think I have discovered.'

  'What could that be? Why didn't you tell me?' said Sister Olav.

  'You were too busy, ma'am. You all don't have time to rest as it is.'

  ‘I can make time.'

  'Two days, and my regards to Eugeni. Good-bye,' said Lew. He did not want to continue this conversation with the little fellow looking on. He had been reserved with his questions, secretive with his studies, and quite casual with Sister Olav on the suggestion that they move to an isolated cabin somewhere. When she had said 'no, the patient is doing fine where he is, why change it?' Lew knew he had to find the reason why they would all change it.

  If they didn't remove the patient from this cryonics floor to some distant place, the whole ball of yarn would come unravelled. And when the world found out that through an accident of poison, the function of nature, and the committed skills of a Russian doctor, not only had a body been suspended in time through cryonics, but that it was Roman and the premier gladiator of the imperial period, there would be a circus from Oslo to the drilling site and beyond - a greater circus than even Rome would stage, because now there was electronics instead of slave power.

  Everything Houghton was trying to do would be lost. There was no chance it could be saved under those circumstances; Lew's retirement going because the world wanted to be amused. They would have it all, only later, Lew thought, leaving the cryonics floor and going to his small office where he packed the stacks of typewritten reports from Sister Olav. These reports had Lew's pencil markings on them, like intellectual graffiti. Questions to be answered but, after days, none big enough. Not enough to make Sister Olav want to move the patient away from the university hospital complex. He needed something very big, and he was going to Rome for it.

  While both Petrovitch and Sister Olav sought seclusion, as each day went by there was less reason why they should maintain it so closely, as their solid scientific studies became firmer and more thorough.

  Moreover, the hospital was beginning to get a scent from the cryonics floor. It was not the administrators who had showed Lew his deceptions could be punctured, but rather a simple general practitioner working in emergency who had treated an attendant assigned to the Petrovitch cryonics floor. He wanted to know about a strange fracture.

  The doctor, in white coat with stethoscope hanging around his neck, puffing on an old pipe and speaking English with a singsong accent one could almost put to music, neatly punctured all of Lew's cover stories that had worked so well with the administration.

  'What are you treating the patient on the Petrovitch floor for, if I may be so bold to ask ? I am just a doctor, not a great scientist, and everybody seems to think only you can answer questions, Dr McCardle.'

  'As I told the administration, mental destabilization. It's a form of cryonic therapy we're doing.'

  'That is your business, Dr McCardle. But when your patient or subject becomes lethal, it is mine.'

  'Lethal? Is someone dead?'

  'No. We are lucky, considering the punch your patient threw.' 'How could a punch be so deadly?'

  The doctor pressed an X-ray into clips on a metal box, then flicked on a light behind it, showing a side view of a human skull.

  'This is an X-ray of the attendant's skull,' said the physician, and with his mottled pipe stem traced a very thin dark line running up through whitish bone halfway up the nose. 'That's the fracture, but look here ... a splinter driven towards the brain.'

  The pipe stem stopped at a dark eye socket. Lew couldn't tell the splinter from normal bone, but he took note.

  The physician continued. 'If that splinter were driven into the brain, we would have had a fatality on that cryonics floor that is sealed to everyone as though you were kings or something.'

  'I would say we certainly are lucky, especially since an accidental blow almost killed. We will do whatever we can for the attendant, and let me say whatever extra might be needed, please provide at our expense.'

  'You can't buy everyone. You people should have found that out in Vietnam. We are not talking about an accidental blow. The attendant was lucky because your ... whoever he is ... hit him twice. According to the attendant, one blow with the fist broke the nose, as you see here, and the second with the heel of the hand coming immediately afterwards, drove the splinter up towards the brain.'

  'Lucky?' asked McCardle.

  'Lucky he's alive. That was a killing blow, a blow designed to murder.' 'Can you prove intent?'

  'If I could, police would be up there. You can bet all your money on that, I tell you.'

  'Well, we certainly will do what we can to avoid anything like this happening again and, on behalf of the Petrovitch floor, I would like to say I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I really am.'

  'Perhaps,' said the physician. 'But you corporate executives are such practised deliverers of sincerity.'

  'I have a PhD in geology, doctor,' Lew had said.

  'Not as good as business administration, eh ?' said the physician with his departing cut.

  For eighteen hours straight, Lew stayed in his little office, building a collection of empty beer cans as he went through the transcripts Sister Olav had so painstakingly typed herself after each laborious and meticulous interview w
ith the paient.

  He made notes on the transcripts, such as - Sex - Domitia... Perisilium ... Demosthenes ... Tonsor ... Plutarch - why Plutarch? Latifundia? No. Who did Publius strike in arena chamber?

  It was 4 a.m. when he reached Petrovitch at his apartment by telephone.

  'Is everything all right?' Semyon asked, worried. 'Sure. Sure,' said Lew. 'Do we know for certain if the patient has recovered one hundred percent?' 'Why do you ask?' 'I'm working on something.' 'That's not an explanation. Is something wrong?’ ‘I think so.' ‘What?'

  'I'll tell you later. Maybe show you. Brain damage is the one thing we are not certain of, correct?'

  'Yes. Because if it forgets something, how would we know what it has forgotten, and besides it could be normal memory lapse. Have you found something?'

  Lew held the receiver a long time. Finally he said very softly, 'Maybe.'

  'Do you think Olava loves him?' asked Petrovitch, apparently little concerned with whatever Lew found. 'I don't know. I don't think so. No. It's four a.m., Semyon.' 'I answered your questions, and it's only a few seconds later.' 'All right, my answer is no.' 'Why do you say that?' 'Because I don't think she does.' 'She spends all the time she can with him.’ That's her job.'