by Neal Asher
What use is it to try to measure the distances we have traveled? What use is the personality of the old Pavel Mirsky to comprehend them? Soon, I firmly resolve, I will gather up my courage and join with the extended personalities in City Memory.
And yet with all this to occupy me, I still mourn. I still weep for the lost part of myself, still feel sad for a land I cannot return to, a land doubly inaccessible now. But the weeping is buried deeply, where even Talsit sessions have difficulty reaching ... perhaps lodged in the one area it is illegal to modify, known as Mystery. How ironic, that in this way I still feel like a Russian, and that so long as any part of me exists, it will be Russian!
Because I share the same Mystery with the old Pavel Mirsky, I feel continuity. I feel...
An urge for the stars, yes, but more than that.
When I was a child in Kiev (or so a few dim portions of my memory inform me) I once asked my stepfather how long people would live when the Worker's Paradise was achieved. He was a computer technician, very imaginative, and he said, "Perhaps as long as they wish. Perhaps a billion years."
"How long is a billion years?" I asked him.
"It is a very long time," he said. "An age, an eternity, time enough for all life to rise and all life to end. Some people call it an eon."
In geological terms, I learned later, an aeon is indeed a billion years. But the Greeks who coined the word were not so specific. They used it as a pointer to eternity, the lifetime of a universe, far more than a billion years. It was also the personification of a god's cycle of time.
I have survived the Worker's Paradise. I have survived the end of my universe, and may survive countless others.
Dear stepfather, it looks as if I will outlive the gods themselves...
A true eon.
So much to learn, and so much change to look forward to. Each day I breathe deeply, count my choices and realize how lucky we are. (If only I can convince Rimskaya. Sad man.)
I am free.
Four/ Aigyptos, Year of Alexandros 2323
Young queen Kleopatra the 21st had just spent a long and drowsy four hours listening to the complicated testimony of five ostracized congressmen from the Oxyrrhynkhos Nome's Boule. Their complaints, her most trusted counselor decided, were without merit, so she dismissed them with a stern smile and warned them not to take their complaints
outside Aigyptos, to any other polity, or they would be exiled from the Alexandrian Oikoumene and forced to wander east or west in the lands of the barbarians, or even worse, in Latium.
Three times a week, Kleopatra received such complaints, selected from thousands of cases by her counselors, well aware they were mostly for show and had been predecided. She was not entirely happy with the limitations of royal power imposed by the Oikoumenical Boule in the time of her fathers, but it was that or exile, and an exiled eighteen-year-old queen had few places to go outside the Oikoumene. How things had changed in the past five hundred years!
Kleopatra looked forward to her next visitor, however. She had heard many stories about the head priestess and sophe of the Hypateion in Rhodos; the woman was legendary not only for the tale of how she had come to the Oikoumene, but for her accomplishments in the last half-century. Yet queen and priestess had never met.
The sophe Patrikia had flown in from Rhodos two days before, landing at the Rakhotis airport just west of Alexandria and then taking up privileged residence in the Mouseion until an audience could be arranged. In those two days, the sophe had been taken on the virtually mandatory tours of the pyramidons of Alexandros and the Diadokhoi to observe (how tiresome, Kleopatra thought) the gold-wrapped mummies of the founders of the Alexandrian Oikoumene, and then through the surrounding pyramids and tombs of the Later Successors. It was said that the sophe had borne the tours well, and some of her observations had been recorded for broadcast to the eighty-five nomes of the Oikoumene.
Heralds arrived to announce that the sophe had come to the Lokhias Promontory and would shortly be at the royal residence. The counselors cleared the court and Kleopatra was surrounded by her flies, as she called them—her chamberlains and makeup maids, wiping sweat from her brow, powdering her cheeks and nose, arranging her robes around the golden throne. Across the courtyard, standing half in shadow and half in sun, was the phalanx of royal security. When they divided into two lines, one on each side of the portal, Kleopatra would assume her Attitude and welcome the sophe.
The lines formed and the heralds went through their wearisome rituals.
The date was Sothis 4, old-style, Arkhimedes 27, new-style.
Kleopatra sat patiently on her throne, made of cedar from the troublesome hierarchy of Ioudeia, sometimes called Nea Phoenikia, sipping sparkling water from Gallia out of a cup manufactured in Metascythia. Thus in every single day she tried to utilize goods from the nomes, polities and friendly nations all around, knowing that they would feel honored and that their peoples would feel proud for serving the oldest of the old empires, the Alexandrian Oikoumene. It would be well for the sophe to see Kleopatra fulfilling her duties, for in truth the young queen had little else to do; the Boule and the Council of Elected Speakers now made the truly important decisions, in the Athenian manner.
The great bronze doors of Theotokopolos swung wide and the procession began. Kleopatra ignored the rapidly-swelling crowd of courtiers and chamberlains and petty politicians. Her eyes went immediately to the sophe Patrikia, entering the chamber supported on the arms of her two sons, themselves middle-aged.
The priestess wore a gown of black Chin-Ch'ing silk, simple and elegant, with a star above one breast and a moon above the other. Her hair was long, still luxuriantly thick and dark; her face appeared youthful despite her seventy-four years, her eyes black and square and penetrating. Kleopatra met those eyes with difficulty; they seemed dangerous, too provocative.
"Welcome," she said, deliberately eschewing all the ceremony. "Come sit. I am told we have things to discuss."
"Oh, yes, we do, my beautiful queen," the sophe said, stepping away from the arms of her sons and approaching the throne, one hand lifting the long hem of her gown. She was very spry, actually; no doubt she retained her sons in the temple for their own good, and not hers; the Oikoumene was not the easiest place to find employment these days.
Patrlkia sat on the pillow-covered chair, a body length below the queen's throne, and lifted her face to Kleopatra, eyes bright with excitement.
"I am also told you have brought some of your wonderful instruments, to show them to me, and reveal their purposes," Kleopatra said.
"If I may...?"
"By all means."
Patrikia gestured and two Hypateion students carried up a wide, shallow wooden case. Kleopatra recognized the wood: pigeon's-eye maple from Nea Karkhedon across the broad Atlantic. She wondered how their revolution was coming along; little news leaked out from the blockaded coastal territories.
The priestess ordered the case to be set down on a wide round table of beaten brass chased with silver. "Perhaps your Imperial Hypselotes knows my story...?"
Kleopatra nodded and smiled. "That you dropped from the sky, chased by a furious star, and that you were not born on this Gaia."
"And that I brought with me...?" Patrikia prompted, for all the world like one of Kleopatra's tutors. The queen didn't mind; she enjoyed tutoring and learning. Indeed, she had spent most of her life in classrooms, learning the qualities and extent of her realm, and the languages, as well.
"You brought marvelous instruments, for which there are no exact equivalents in our world. Yes, yes, these stories are well known."
"Then I now tell you things known only to myself," Patrikia said. She glanced around the court and then returned her extraordinary gaze to the young queen. Kleopatra understood and nodded.
"This will be a private audience. We will adjourn and meet in my chambers."
The court was quickly cleared, and Kleopatra unceremoniously dropped her heavy robes and gathered a light cloak of byssos aro
und her shoulders. With only two guards and the sophe's sons accompanying them, they strolled to the queen's chambers. Trays of quail and crystal goblets of wines from Cos awaited them, and the sophe ate with the
queen, a very rare privilege.
When they were done, the sons ate, and Kleopalra and Patrikia made themselves comfortable on pillows in a corner. Chamberlains drew curtains around them for privacy.
Then and only then did Patrikia open the lid of the wooden case. There, in thick Tyrian purple felt—the felt from Pridden and the dye from Ioudeia—rested a silver-and-glass, palm-sized flat object, a second slightly smaller object and something saddle-shaped with protruding handles.
These objects were almost as famous as the Cache of General Ptolemaios Soter, especially among scholars and philosophers. Few had ever seen them, not even her mother and fathers.
Kleopatra regarded them with unabashed curiosity. "Tell me, please," she said.
"With this," and Patrikia pointed to the smaller flat object, "I can measure the qualities of space and time. Years ago, when I took refuge in the Hypateion, after the death of my husband, the tekhnai there made me new batteries, and these devices function again."
"I must commend them," Kleopatra said. Patrikia smiled and waved her hand as if at trivial matters.
"The philosophy and tekhnos of your world is not so advanced as mine in some respects, though very nearly. But you have wonderful mathematicians, wonderful astronomers. My work has progressed."
"Yes?"
"And..." Patrikia lifted the object with handles from the case. "This instrument tells me when others are trying to open passages to our world, this Gaia. It senses their workings, and it tells me."
"Does it have any other purpose?" Kleopatra asked, aware she was already out of her depth.
"No. Not now, not here."
To her astonishment, the queen realized that the old priestess had tears in her eyes. "I have never given up my dream," Patrikia said. "And I have never given up my hope. But I am growing old, my Imperial Hypselotes, and my senses are not so keen..." She lifted herself up in her seat and resettled, with a deep sigh. "Still, I am certain now. I have been given the proper signs by this device."
"Signs of what?"
"I do not know why, or where, my queen, but a passageway has been opened on our world. This device feels its presence, and so do I. Somewhere on Gaia, my queen. Before I die, I wish to find this passage, and see if perhaps there is some slight chance I might fulfill my dream..."
"A passage? What do you mean?"
"A gate to the place from which I came. They have reopened my gate, perhaps. Or—someone has created an entirely new road to the stars."
Kleopatra was suddenly troubled. The instincts of a hundred and twenty generations of the Makedonian Dynastic Succession were not idle in her blood. "Are those in your world people of peace and goodwill?" she asked.
The priestess's eyes became momentarily distant and cloudy. "I do not know. Probably they are. But I ask the queen to locate this passage, this gate, with all the means at her disposal..."
Kleopatra frowned and bent forward to see the priestess's face from a better perspective. Then she took one of the sophe's withered hands in hers.
"Would our lands benefit from this passage, this gate?"
"Almost certainly," Patrikia said. "I am a very minor example of the wonders that could lie beyond such an opening."
Kleopatra frowned and pondered this for a moment. The Oikoumene was beset with many problems, some of them, her counselors assured her, insurmountable, the problems of an elderly civilization on the wane. She did not believe this—not entirely—but the thought frightened her. Even in an age of airplanes and radio, there had to be other things, other marvels, which would rescue them from their plight.
"This is a shortcut to distant territories, places where we might extend our trade, and learn new things?"
Patrikia smiled. "Your understanding is quick, my queen."
"Then we will search. I will decree that all our allied states and empires will search as well."
"It may be hidden, very small," the priestess warned. "Perhaps only a test gate, as wide across as a man's arm is long."
"Our searchers will be thorough," Kleopatra said. "With your guidance, they will find this gate."
Patrikia squinted at her with almost insolent suspicion. "I have long been regarded as a crazy old woman, despite these marvels," she said, resting her hand on the case. "Do you believe me?"
"Yes, upon my heritage as a Queen of Alexandros's Egypt and the Makedonian Dynasty," Kleopatra said. She wanted to believe the priestess. Life in the court had been very dull the past few years. And the queen did indeed exercise some powers, chiefly in matters involving the political spirit and aims of the state. She could fit this quest into those territories nicely.
"Thank you," Patrikia said. "My husband never truly believed me. He was a fine man, a farmer of fish ... But he worried about me and said I should live this life only, and not dream of others..."
"I hate limitations," Kleopatra said vehemently. "What will you do if we find this passage?"
Patrikia's eyes widened.
"I will go home," she said. "Finally, however futile it may be, I will go home."
"Not before you have finished your work for us, I presume."
"No. That will be my first priority."
"Good. So be it, then."
Kleopatra called in her counselors, warned them sternly this was an Imperial decree not subject to dissension, and
issued a command that the search begin.
"Thank you, my Imperiai Hypselotes," the priestess said as they strolled back to the court. Kleopatra watched Patrikia leave through the Theotokopolos door, on her way back to the Hypateion until such time as the search would begin. Then the queen closed her eyes and tried to imagine...
The old woman's home. Where would such a woman have come from? A place of gleaming towers and mighty fortresses, where people might be more like gods or devils than the men and women she knew. Only such a place could have produced this small, intense sophe.
"How strange," Kleopatra murmured, resuming her throne. The heavy robes were wrapped around her shoulders again. She felt a shuddering thrill. "How wonderful..."
"Unless you know where you are, you don't know who you are."
--Wendell Barry
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