[What Might Have Been 01] Alternate Empires

by Anthology

  The fountain was a Cupid statue. In some circumstances I would have thought of that as a good sign, but here it didn’t seem to mean anything. Cupid’s nose was chipped, and the fountain was obviously older than Rachel was. I thought of just staying there until Rachel came out, but when I asked Basilius when that would be he gave me a look of delicate patronizing. “Citizeness Rachel works through the afternoon, Citizen Julius,” he informed me.

  “Oh? And what does she work at?”

  “Citizeness Rachel is a famous historian,” he said. “She often works straight through until bedtime. But for you and her uncle, of course, dinner will be served at your convenience.”

  He was quite an obliging fellow. “Thank you, Basilius,” I said. “I believe I’ll go out for a few hours myself.” And then, as he turned politely to go, I said curiously, “You don’t look like a very dangerous criminal. If you don’t mind my asking, what were you enslaved for?”

  “Oh, not for anything violent, Citizen Julius,” he assured me. “Just for debts.”

  I found my way to the Hall of the Egyptian Senate-Inferior easily enough. There was a lot of traffic going that way, because it is, after all, one of the sights of Alexandria.

  The Senate-Inferior wasn’t in session at the time. There was no reason it should have been, of course, because what did the Egyptians need a Senate of any kind for? The time when they’d made any significant decisions for themselves was many centuries past.

  They’d spread themselves for the conference, though. The Senate Temple had niches for at least half a hundred gods. There were the customary figures of Amon-Ra and Jupiter and all the other main figures of the pantheon, of course, but for the sake of the visitors they had installed Ahura-Mazda, Yahweh, Freya, Quetzalcoatl, and at least a dozen I didn’t recognize at all. They were all decorated with fresh sacrifices of flowers and fruits, showing that the tourists, if not the astronomers—and probably the astronomers as well—were taking no chances in getting communications with the Olympians restored. Scientists are an agnostic lot, of course—well, most educated people are, aren’t they? But even an agnostic will risk a piece of fruit to placate a god, just on the chance he’s wrong.

  Outside the hall, hucksters were already putting up their stands, although the first sessions wouldn’t begin for another day. I bought some dates from one of them and wandered around, eating dates and studying the marble frieze on the wall of the Senate. It showed the rippling fields of corn, wheat, and potatoes that had made Egypt the breadbasket of the Empire for two thousand years. It didn’t show anything about the Olympians, of course. Space is not a subject that interests the Egyptians a lot. They prefer to look back on their glorious (they say it’s glorious) past; and there would have been no point in having the conference on the Olympians there at all, except who wants to go to some northern city in December?

  Inside, the great hall was empty, except for slaves arranging seat cushions and cuspidors for the participants. The exhibit halls were noisy with workers setting up displays, but they didn’t want people dropping in to bother them, and the participants’ lounges were dark.

  I was lucky enough to find the media room open. It was always good for a free glass of wine, and besides, I wanted to know where everyone was. The slave in charge couldn’t tell me. “There’s supposed to be a private executive meeting somewhere, that’s all I know—and there’s all these journalists looking for someone to interview.” And then, peering over my shoulder as I signed in: “Oh, you’re the fellow that writes the sci-roms, aren’t you? Well, maybe one of the journalists would settle for you.”

  It wasn’t the most flattering invitation I’d ever had. Still, I didn’t say no. Marcus is always after me to do publicity gigs whenever I get the chance, because he thinks it sells books, and it was worthwhile trying to please Marcus just then.

  The journalist wasn’t much pleased, though. They’d set up a couple of studios in the basement of the Senate, and when I found the one I was directed to, the interviewer was fussing over his hairdo in front of a mirror. A couple of technicians were lounging in front of the tube, watching a broadcast comedy series. When I introduced myself the interviewer took his eyes off his own image long enough to cast a doubtful look in my direction.

  “You’re not a real astronomer,” he told me.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t deny it.

  “Still,” he grumbled, “I’d better get some kind of a spot for the late news. All right. Sit over there, and try to sound as if you know what you’re talking about.” Then he began telling the technical crew what to do.

  That was a strange thing. I’d already noticed that the technicians wore citizens’ gold. The interviewer didn’t. But he was the one who was giving them orders.

  I didn’t approve of that at all. I don’t like big commercial outfits that put slaves in positions of authority over free citizens. It’s a bad practice. Jobs like tutors, college professors, doctors, and so on are fine; slaves can do them as well as a citizen, and usually a lot cheaper. But there’s a moral issue involved here. A slave must have a master. Otherwise, how can you call him a slave? And when you let the slave be the master, even in something as trivial as a broadcasting studio, you strike at the foundations of society.

  The other thing is that it isn’t fair competition. There are free citizens who need those jobs. We had some of that in my own line of work a few years ago. There were two or three slave authors turning out adventure novels, but the rest of us got together and put a stop to it—especially after Marcus bought one of them to use as a sub-editor. Not one citizen writer would work with her. Mark finally had to put her into the publicity department, where she couldn’t do any harm.

  So I started the interview with a chip on my shoulder, and his first question made it worse. He plunged right in. “When you’re pounding out those sci-roms of yours, do you make any effort to keep in touch with scientific reality? Do you know, for instance, that the Olympians have stopped transmitting?”

  I scowled at him, regardless of the cameras. “Science-adventure romances are about scientific reality. And the Olympians haven’t ‘stopped,’ as you put it. There’s just been a technical hitch of some kind, probably caused by radio interference from our own sun. As I said in my earlier romance, The Radio Gods, electromagnetic impulses are susceptible to—”

  He cut me off. “It’s been—” he glanced at his watch—“twenty-nine hours since they stopped. That doesn’t sound like just a technical hitch.”

  “Of course it is. There’s no reason for them to stop. We’ve already demonstrated to them that we’re truly civilized, first because we’re technological, second because we don’t fight wars anymore—that was cleared up in the first year. As I said in my roman, The Radio Gods—”

  He gave me a pained look, then turned and winked into the camera. “You can’t keep a hack from plugging his books, can you?” he remarked humorously. “But it looks like he doesn’t want to use that wild imagination unless he gets paid for it. All I’m asking him for is a guess at why the Olympians don’t want to talk to us anymore, and all he gives me is commercials.”

  As though there were any other reason to do interviews! “Look here,” I said sharply, “if you can’t be courteous when you speak to a citizen, I’m not prepared to go on with this conversation at all.”

  “So be it, pal,” he said, icy cold. He turned to the technical crew. “Stop the cameras,” he ordered. “We’re going back to the studio. This is a waste of time.” We parted on terms of mutual dislike, and once again I had done something that my editor would have been glad to kill me for.

  That night at dinner, Sam was no comfort. “He’s an unpleasant man, sure,” he told me. “But the trouble is, I’m afraid he’s right.”

  “They’ve really stopped?”

  Sam shrugged. “We’re not in line with the sun anymore, so that’s definitely not the reason. Damn. I was hoping it would be.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Uncle Sam,” Rachel said gently
. She was wearing a simple white robe, Hannish silk by the look of it, with no decorations at all. It really looked good on her. I didn’t think there was anything under it except for some very well formed female flesh.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he grumbled. His concerns didn’t affect his appetite, though. He was ladling in the first course—a sort of chicken soup, with bits of a kind of pastry floating in it—and, for that matter, so was I. Whatever Rachel’s faults might be, she had a good cook. It was plain home cooking, none of your partridge-in-a-rabbit-inside-a-boar kind of thing, but well prepared and expertly served by her butler, Basilius. “Anyway,” Sam said, mopping up the last of the broth, “I’ve figured it out.”

  “Why the Olympians stopped?” I asked, to encourage him to go on with the revelation.

  “No, no! I mean about your romance, Julie. My alternate world idea. if you don’t want to write about a different future, how about a different now?”

  I didn’t get a chance to ask him about what he was talking about, because Rachel beat me to it. “There’s only one now, Sam, dear,” she pointed out. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  Sam groaned. “Not you, too, honey,” he complained. “I’m talking about a new kind of sci-rom.”

  “I don’t read many sci-roms,” she apologized, in the tone that isn’t an apology at all.

  He ignored that. “You’re a historian, aren’t you?” She didn’t bother to confirm it; obviously, it was the thing she was that shaped her life. “So what if history had gone a different way?”

  He beamed at us as happily as though he had said something that made sense. Neither of us beamed back. Rachel pointed out the flaw in his remark. “It didn’t, though,” she told him.

  “I said suppose! This isn’t the only possible now, it’s just the one that happened to occur! There could have been a million different ones. Look at all the events in the past that could have gone a different way. Suppose Annius Publius hadn’t discovered the Western Continents in City Year 1820. Suppose Caesar Publius Terminus hadn’t decreed the development of a space program in 2122. Don’t you see what I’m driving at? What kind of a world would we be living in now if those things hadn’t happened?”

  Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but she was saved by the butler. He appeared in the doorway with a look of silent appeal. When she excused herself to see what was needed in the kitchen, that left it up to me. “I never wrote anything like that, Sam,” I told him. “I don’t know anybody else who did, either.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m driving at! It would be something completely new in sci-roms. Don’t you want to pioneer a whole new kind of story?”

  Out of the wisdom of experience, I told him, “Pioneers don’t make any money, Sam.” He scowled at me. “You could write it yourself,” I suggested.

  That just changed the annoyance to gloom. “I wish I could. But until this business with the Olympians is cleared up, I’m not going to have much time for sci-roms. No, it’s up to you, Julie.”

  Then Rachel came back in, looking pleased with herself, followed by Basilius bearing a huge silver platter containing the main course.

  Sam cheered up at once. So did I. The main dish was a whole roasted baby kid, and I realized that the reason Rachel had been called into the kitchen was so that she could weave a garland of flowers around its tiny baby horn buds herself. The maid servant followed with a pitcher of wine, replenishing all our goblets. All in all, we were busy enough eating to stop any conversation but compliments on the food.

  Then Sam looked at his watch. “Great dinner, Rachel,” he told his niece, “but I’ve got to get back. What about it?”

  “What about what?” she asked.

  “About helping poor Julie with some historical turning points he can use in the story?”

  He hadn’t listened to a word I’d said. I didn’t have to say so, because Rachel was looking concerned. She said apologetically, “I don’t know anything about those periods you were talking about—Publius Terminus, and so on. My specialty is the immediate post-Augustan period, when the Senate came back to power.”

  “Fine,” he said, pleased with himself and showing it. “That’s as good a period as any. Think how different things might be now if some little event then had gone in a different way. Say, if Augustus hadn’t married Lady Livia and adopted her son Drusus to succeed him.” He turned to me, encouraging me to take fire from his spark of inspiration. “I’m sure you see the possibilities, Julie! Tell you what you should do. The night’s young yet; take Rachel out dancing or something; have a few drinks; listen to her talk. What’s wrong with that? You two young people ought to be having fun, anyway!”

  That was definitely the most intelligent thing intelligent Sam had said in days.

  So I thought, anyway, and Rachel was a good enough niece to heed her uncle’s advice. Because I was a stranger in town, I had to let her pick the place. After the first couple she mentioned I realized that she was tactfully trying to spare my pocketbook. I couldn’t allow that. After all, a night on the town with Rachel was probably cheaper, and anyway a whole lot more interesting, than the cost of an inn and I meals.

  We settled on a place right on the harborside, out toward the breakwater. It was a revolving nightclub on top of an inn built along the style of one of the old Pyramids. As the room slowly turned we saw the lights of the city of Alexandria, the shipping in the harbor, then the wide sea itself, its gentle waves reflecting starlight.

  I was prepared to forget the whole idea of alternate worlds, but Rachel was more dutiful than that. After the first dance, she said, “I think I can help you. There was something that happened in Drusus’s reign—”

  “Do we have to talk about that?” I asked, refilling her glass.

  “But Uncle Sam said we should. I thought you wanted to try a new kind of sci-rom.”

  “No, that’s your uncle who wants that. See, there’s a bit of a problem here. It’s true that editors are always begging for something new and different, but if you’re dumb enough to try to give it to them they don’t recognize it. When they ask for different, what they mean is something right down the good old ‘different’ groove.”

  “I think,” she informed me, with the certainty of an oracle and a lot less confusion of style, “that when my uncle has an idea, it’s usually a good one.” I didn’t want to argue with her; I didn’t even disagree: at least usually. I let her talk. “You see,” she said, “my specialty is the transfer of power throughout early Roman history. What I’m studying right now is the Judaean Diaspora, after Drusus’s reign. You know what happened then, I suppose?”

  Actually, I did—hazily. “That was the year of the Judaean rebellion, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. She looked very pretty when she nodded, her fair hair moving gracefully and her eyes sparkling. “You see, that was a great tragedy for the Judaeans, and, just as my uncle said, it needn’t have happened. If Procurator Tiberius had lived, it wouldn’t have.”

  I coughed. “I’m not sure I know who Tiberius was,” I said apologetically.

  “He was the Procurator of Judaea, and a very good one. He was just and fair. He was the brother of the Emperor Drusus—the one my uncle was talking about, Livia’s son, the adopted heir of Caesar Augustus. The one who restored the power of the Senate after Augustus had appropriated most of it for himself. Anyway, Tiberius was the best governor the Judaeans ever had, just as Drusus was the best emperor. Tiberius died just a year before the rebellion—ate some spoiled figs, they say, although it might have been his wife who did it—she was Julia, the daughter of Augustus by his first wife—”

  I signaled distress. “I’m getting a little confused by all these names,” I admitted.

  “Well, the important one to remember is Tiberius, and you know who he was. If he had lived, the rebellion probably wouldn’t have happened. Then there wouldn’t have been a Diaspora.”

  “I see,” I said. “Would you like another dance?”

  She frowned at me, t
hen smiled. “Maybe that’s not such an interesting subject—unless you’re a Judaean, anyway,” she said. “All right, let’s dance.”

  That was the best idea yet. It gave me a chance to confirm with my fingers what my eyes, ears, and nose had already told me; this was a very attractive young woman. She had insisted on changing, but fortunately the new gown was as soft and clinging as the old, and the palms of my hands rejoined in the tactile pleasure of her back and arm. I whispered, “I’m sorry if I sound stupid. I really don’t know a whole lot about early history—you know, the first thousand years or so after the Founding of the City.”

  She didn’t bother to point out that she did. She moved with me to the music, very enjoyable, then she straightened up. “I’ve got a different idea,” she announced. “Let’s go back to the booth.” And she was already telling it to me as we left the dance floor. “Let’s talk about your own ancestor, Julius Caesar. He conquered Egypt, right here in Alexandria. But suppose the Egyptians had defeated him instead, as they very nearly did?”

  I was paying close attention now—obviously she had been interested enough in me to ask Sam some questions! “They couldn’t have,” I told her. “Julius never lost a war. Anyway”—I discovered to my surprise that I was beginning to take Sam’s nutty idea seriously—“that would be a really hard one to write, wouldn’t it? If the Legions had been defeated, it would have changed the whole world. Can you imagine a world that isn’t Roman?”

  She said sweetly, “No, but that’s more your job than mine, isn’t it?” I shook my head. “It’s too bizarre,” I complained. “I couldn’t make the readers believe it.”

  “You could try, Julius,” she told me. “You see, there’s an interesting possibility there. Drusus almost didn’t live to become Emperor. He was severely wounded in a war in Gaul, while Augustus was still alive. Tiberius—you remember Tiberius—”