How can I see something if I don’t know what to look for? Can you write the if-then for that?
Martin ignored the sarcasm and focused on more important matters.
“Do we need them?”
Looking back, they have been useful, Artie admitted. I can see several instances over the last thousand years where they have, essentially, saved us from having to go back and start over again.
“And it is damned hard to find good help these days,” Martin said in silent mode. He glanced at Achadina and, for the first time since the siege began, he felt better. Perhaps something good might come out of history, just once.
He turned to face her directly.
“The Stone Eagle flies tonight.”
She ducked her head, straightened and nodded.
“Holograph control override on,” Martin said in silent mode.
Override acknowledged. Ready, but not executed, Artie said, his voice formal and expressionless. Password?
“Raising elephants is so utterly boring, 1991.”
Accepted, Artie said. You now have control of the Stone Eagle image.
“Control in all visible frequencies? Infrared and ultraviolet? And as a time beacon?” Martin asked in silent mode.
Yes. Everything is waiting for you.
“Turn every signal off on my gesture. Prepare the third floor to separate, but do not separate yet,” Martin ordered Artie. He turned to Achadina and smiled. He spoke to Artie in silent: “Make this look impressive.”
He pointed up at the carving and closed his fist. The Stone Eagle image seemed to stir and twist, brighter and brighter, until it unfolded its wings and stared down at Martin and Achadina. Then the Stone Eagle opened its beak. It screamed and stretched and launched itself up and out, toward the hills and beyond until it faded and only the blank, ordinary, stone and mud brick of the pillar was left behind. The eagle flickered to the south and was gone. Achadina watched, wide-eyed.
“The Stone Eagle has flown,” Achadina whispered.
“Exactly.” Martin turned to her and spoke briskly. “Within the hour, General Assur will return here. He will walk through the door into the temple, shut the door, and become the priest Larry. He and I and the lesser priests will then empty the temple and be gone. So will the third floor of the temple. Within a short candle after that the walls will be breached and the enemy will take Nineveh.”
Achadina nodded slowly.
“King Sin-sar-iskun will die tonight, in a few hours, fighting the barbarians in his burning palace,” Martin continued, his voice sure and determined. He stared at her intently. “That is what all the records will say. I want all of your tribe to know what to say. There can be only one story that comes out of this night.”
“I understand,” Achadina said. “What about us? My people and my children?”
“Leave the temple now. Gather your family and your tribe,” Martin ordered. “You don’t have much time. Travel light. Get to the Halzi Gate before the enemy is inside.”
“What about the guards? No one can get in or out of the city. And the tribes outside.”
“Ask for the sergeant of the guard at the gate. The password is ‘Catalhoyuk.’ Tell him that word and the guards will open the gates and let you out. Once you get outside, get away from the walls, into the copse of trees down by the river. Wait there. I’ll meet you and get you through the tribes.”
“After that, what about the Stone Eagle? Where will you be? Where do we go?”
“The Stone Eagle is not just in one place, or one time,” Martin explained. “But for this time, for you and your people, head for Babylon, the temple district. Look high up on the walls on the streets where the temple district meets the market squares. When you see the Stone Eagle, knock on the door of that building.”
“You will take care of us?”
Seems fair, Artie said, diffidently.
“Yes,” Martin said firmly.
Achadina stood and bowed.
“Thank you.”
“Hurry,” Martin reminded her. “The candle is burning.”
Achadina hurried to the pillar, opened the door and slipped down the ladder.
That was either a very smart thing to do, or a very stupid thing to do, Artie said.
“Why don’t you go into the future and tell me which?” Martin asked sarcastically.
Artie laughed.
“Now, find me Larry…”
* * *
General Assur and his two followers tried to open the door to the temple. It was locked on the inside and refused to open.
“Artie?”
He’s pissed off, Larry, Artie said apologetically. He’s invoked personal danger.
“I override.”
Can’t do it, Artie said regretfully. Primary mission gives me the tie breaker. And my if-then agrees with Martin.
“So you’re going to leave me—us—out here to die?”
He hasn’t made up his mind, yet, Artie said. All I can tell you is that the beacon is shut down, the travellers are all gone. But the third floor is still attached.
“Then there is still a chance,” one of the lesser priests whispered.
The bundle slung across the back of General Assur’s horse began to move and struggle. One of the lesser priests moved closer. There was the sparkle nimbus of a Victorian stunner and the bundle went still.
“Martin, I couldn’t just let him die,” Larry said, his silent voice louder and pitched to carry. “I just couldn’t do it. I had to give him a chance to get away, to escape.”
He shook his head.
“And he wouldn’t take it. The stubborn son-of-a-bitch insisted that he was the king, damn it, and if the whole city had to starve and burn and fight to the death, then that was what was going to happen. That he was the king now and he was going to stay king until he died.”
Martin’s image flickered into sight in front of the door. He looked tired and determined. He folded his arms.
“And doesn’t that sound familiar?”
Larry gave him a crooked smile. He leaned forward, across the neck of his horse.
“Why, yes, it does. It reminds me of someone I met back near Gobekli Tepe, on the plains of the Garden of Edin.”
Martin winced at the memory.
“I do remember I saved your life that day,” Larry said, musingly.
“Not fair,” Martin protested. “I saved your life later.”
“Really?
Martin looked uncomfortable. He pointed at the body strapped to the back of Larry’s horse. “The king?”
“Yes,” Larry said, and absently reached back to pat the muffled figure. “You know the archeologists in the twentieth century never found his body in that burned-out palace? There was just that story he died fighting in the burning ruins.”
He paused and tried to look dignified.
“But, in these days, every king dies a heroic death,” Larry said. “Sounds to me like the kind of story that someone would—will—tell and write, no matter what. Particularly if it is repeated a few times over the next few years by people who claim they were actually there and managed to escape.”
Martin started to speak, then shut his lips tightly. A moment later he tried again.
“You have a plan, for once?”
Larry nodded, his expression slightly hurt.
“I always have a plan,” he explained. “They just don’t always work out.”
Martin rolled his eyes.
“He goes into our standstill room,” Larry said hurriedly. “A hundred years or so ought to be enough. It’ll be an instant to him but, by then, the Babylonians will have this area thoroughly pacified. And if he stays with the Eagle, he’ll be fine.”
“And if he leaves us, no one will believe him and he’ll be ignored as an antique hermit who’s been out in the desert too long,” Martin said thoughtfully. He studied Larry and the two lesser priests.
“Artie?”
It should work, Artie said, reluctantly. When we take Sin-sar-
iskun out of stasis we’ll keep him on the first floor of whatever temple we set up. He doesn’t need to know anything about upstairs. If he asks questions, Larry can tell him it was magic, that he sacrificed a goat for him or something like that. That usually ends the discussion these days.
Martin thought for a moment, then nodded. He unfolded his arms.
“Fine,” he said to Larry. “I don’t like it, but I owe you. Artie, open the door.”
The main doors opened. The force fields shut down. Larry and the two lesser priests urged their horses through Martin’s image, into the temple. Martin turned to face Larry and others.
“And I expect you three to tell very convincing stories over the next hundred years!”
* * *
“—so I gave them the password and told them to meet us in Babylon.”
Larry laughed and shook his head.
“What’s so funny?” Martin asked. Larry shook his head again, irritated.
“I wondered why you let me get away with rescuing the king. You were feeling guilty about rescuing Achadina and her tribe!”
He’s right, Artie added.
Martin opened his mouth, then shut it. He knew Larry and Artie were probably right.
“Well, it’s too late to do anything else now,” Larry said, regretfully.
“You’re not very upset with me,” Martin said, puzzled. Larry shook his head.
“You had to make a decision. You made it. What am I going to do now? You want me to risk going back and ending up in another timeline? I don’t think so. So my only choice would be to stay here and make sure they all die on the road,” Larry said distastefully. He looked back at Nineveh, a thousand feet below them and a dozen miles behind, clearly outlined and engulfed in flames as the enemy poured through the gates and into the city.
“And I’m tired of killing.”
Martin nodded. Long ago he had given up trying to remember all the faces, back over all the long years. Sometimes they still came to visit him in his dreams but even then they were mainly faceless blanks. Artie had all of Martin’s memories stored, but Martin never asked for them.
“You met Achadina and her tribe got through the gate? You met them by the river?”
“Yes,” Martin said.
“Hvakhshatra was there?” Larry asked, curious.
“Call him Cyaxares. It’s easier on my throat. And, yes, I met him there.”
“You made a deal?”
“Yes,” Larry nodded. “Achadina’s people brought their families, but no weapons. Cyaxares gave them free passage to the south after his men made sure they didn’t carry anything valuable. I gave him an extra bag of gold to make the deal go through. When the tribe was safely gone, we opened the gates and let his army inside.”
Larry’s face twitched. He looked back at Nineveh one more time, closed his eyes, then opened them and turned away. Artie closed the image.
“Tell me again, why this had to happen,” Larry said bitterly. “Tell me again why they all had to die. Tell me again about your Babylonian steles and your Roman scrolls and your Bible.”
They moved south, safely above the ground.
“History sucks,” Larry said.
“I know.”
* * *
“So, what’s next? You’re the historian.”
“We split up, I’m afraid,” Martin said. “The newcomers are going to have to handle the groundwork for some of the big ones coming up. And even the whole thing for some of the minor events.”
Larry frowned.
“I’m not sure I like that.”
Martin shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter if you like it,” he said. He focused intently on Larry. “Things are changing. More people, more technology, more history. More opportunities for things to go right or go wrong. It’s not like Gobekli Tepe or Stonehenge or Carnac any more, with history depending on just one pivot point. Now we can’t be in just one place, at one time, to oversee and make things go right.”
Martin gestured and a world map appeared on the wall.
“You get Babylon. Get Achadina and her family and tribe settled in. They may be useful in the future,” Martin said. “I’m going to Wangcheng.”
“Confucius?”
Martin nodded.
“I’ve always had a weakness for his philosophy. And he’ll be born soon.”
“The others?” Larry asked and tipped his head back toward the timeliners.
“Pick someone you like to set up in Ecbatana,” Martin said. “Your Babylonians and their Medes are going to have an interesting century together. You might as well work with someone you like.”
“Where else?”
“Someone stubborn but not too bright for Cahokia, Illinois. It’s time for the mound-builders to get started on that big pile of dirt.”
“And we need someone for Miletus to make sure Anaximander gets born and Pythagoras gets started on the right track. Then there’s India and the mahajanapadas and, eventually, Buddha. And, of course, Egypt. We have to make sure the pharaoh funds Necho’s expedition.”
“Damn,” Larry said. He shook his head and stood. He looked ahead at the darkness.
“I need some sleep. Wake me when we get to Babylon and the new temple.”
He stepped out of the control room. Martin shut the door behind him.
“Well?”
Well, what?
“You can’t really need that much re-programming.”
Yes, I ran the DNA sequencing on Achadina and the rest of the staff and the neighborhood.
“And?”
Well, her family has been following the Stone Eagle for over the last thousand years, Artie said uncomfortably.
“And Larry and I are men with an ordinary need for emotional attachments. Larry might be gay, but I’m not. Which, I am uncomfortably reminded, means that there have been a number of times over the centuries when I might have had too much to drink. There are times I remember waking up, with a hangover, and I was not alone in my bed.…”
Yes.
“How much and how many?” Martin groaned.
Nothing that would cause any kind of genetic nastiness, Artie hurried to emphasize. You have been very good about distributing your favors. But, yes, it seems you are also part of Achadina’s tribe. An elder, you might say. As for Achadina, well, if she ever calls you great-great-great-grandfather, just nod and smile.…
The Vanishing Kind
LAVIE TIDHAR
Here’s another story by Lavie Tidhar, whose story “Terminal” can be found elsewhere in this anthology. This one is a moody, noirish, alternate worlds story about a Gestapo officer in an England that has been conquered and occupied by the Nazis trying to keep an eye on a lovesick tourist who is trying to track down a missing woman through the mean streets of a world where just about everybody is corrupt and nobody is to be trusted.
1
During the rebuilding of London in the 1950s they had erected a large Ferris wheel on the south bank of the Thames. When it was opened, it cost 2 Reichsmarks for a ride, but it was seldom busy. London after the war wasn’t a place you went to on holiday.
Gunther Sloam came to London in the autumn, which is when I first became acquainted with him. He was neither too tall nor too short, but an unassuming man in a good suit and a worn fedora. He could have been a shopkeeper or a travelling salesman, though he was neither. Before the war he had been a screenwriter in Berlin.
He came following a woman, which is how this kind of story usually starts. She had written to him two weeks earlier, c/o the Tobis Film Syndikat in Berlin, and a friend who was still working there eventually passed him her note. It read:
My Dear Gunther,
I am in London and I think I am in trouble. I fear my life is in danger. Please, if you continue to remember me fondly, come at once. I am residing at 47 Dean Street, Soho. If I am not there, ask for the dwarf.
Yours, ever,
Ulla.
The note had been smudged with a red lipstick
kiss.
It was a week from the time the letter was sent, to Gunther receiving it. It was another week before he finally departed Berlin, on board a Luftwaffe transport plane carrying with it the famed soprano, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and her entourage. She was to perform in London’s newly rebuilt opera house. Gunther spent the short flight making notes in his pocket book, for a screenplay he was vaguely thinking to write. He was not unduly concerned about Ulla. His view of women in general, and of actresses in particular, was that they were prone to exaggeration. No doubt Ulla’s trouble would prove such as they’d always been—usually, he thought with a sigh, something to do with money. In that he was both right and wrong.
He was flattered, and glad, that she wanted to see him again. They had carried on a passionate love affair for several months, in Berlin in ’43, before Gunther was sent to the Eastern Front, and Ulla went on to star in several well-received patriotic films, the pinnacle of which was Die Grosse Liebe, for a time the highest-grossing film in all of Germany. Gunther had watched it in the hospital camp, while recovering from the wound which, even now, made him walk with a slight, almost unnoticeable limp. He only really felt it on very cold days, and the pangs in his leg brought with them memories of the hell that was the Eastern Front. He had never known such cold.
“Don’t you see?” he said to me, much later. He was pacing my office, his hair unkempt for once, his eyes ringed black by lack of sleep. He’d lost much of his cool amused air by then. “Because we did it, we beat the Russians, and Ulla went on to star in Stalingrad, that Stemmle picture, but it was the last big film she did. I don’t know what happened after that. We lost touch, though there’d always been rumours, you see.”
He’d told me quite a lot by then but I was happy to let him talk. I knew some of the story by then and, of course, I’d known Miss Ulla Blau. We had been taking an interest in her activities for some time.
The plane landed in Northolt. There was no one there to welcome him and the soprano and her entourage were whisked away by my superior, Group Leader Pohl. I saw Gunther emerge into the terminal with that somewhat bewildered look that afflicts the visitor. He saw me and came over. “Where can a man get a taxi around here?” he said, in German.
“I’m afraid I don’t…” I said, in English. His eyes, surprisingly, lit up. “You are British?” he said.
The Year's Best Science Fiction--Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection Page 71