Alvarez’s newfound liking for Kleandros flickered and blew out. Muscles bunched in his arms as he rose. If this downtime dimbulb was trying to cheat them, he was going to remember it for the rest of his life.
A crash behind him made him whirl, hand darting for his gun. Half a dozen fully armored Romans had burst from their concealment within Kleandros’ house and were rushing him, swords drawn, faces grim over their shields. Lou screamed in terror and started to run. Barking an oath, Alvarez snapped off a quick shot. It went wild. Before he could fire again, Kleandros seized his arm and dragged it down. Desperate now, Alvarez smashed at the doctor with his left fist. Kleandros fell with a groan, but by then the soldiers were on the time traveler. A sword knocked the gun from his hand. It flew spinning into the flowers. Punching and kicking to the last, he was borne to the ground and trussed like a hog on the way to the slaughterhouse. Lou Muller got the same treatment; a magnificent flying tackle had brought him down just inside Kleandros’ front door.
One of Alvarez’s captors, a broad-shouldered, grizzled fellow of about fifty, knelt over him, saying, “I arrest you for the murder of Clodius Eprius.” Alvarez spat at him; in return he got a buffet that loosened his teeth. “Eprius was a friend of mine,” the Roman said.
“You were right, Tero,” another trooper said. “They are human, after all.”
“I told you so, Afer. You owe me two aurei.” Tero turned to Kleandros and helped him to his feet. A dark bruise was forming under the doctor’s left eye, but he did not seem badly hurt.
The byplay went on without much attention from Alvarez. He was in pain and sunk deep in despair; the timer would automatically return to 2059 twenty-four hours after it recharged unless someone reset it, and it did not look as if he or Lou would have the chance. He was stuck here and now forever. No, revise that-his future here looked limited, too.
He realized Tero was saying something to him, but did not take the trouble to understand. Tero kicked him in the ribs, not unkindly, and repeated: “Tell me, barbarian, how many years lie between our time and yours?”
Alvarez felt his world coming apart. Somehow these savages had managed to seize him, and now they knew his secret as well. He strained wildly at his bonds, trying to break free, but one thing the Romans plainly knew was how to tie firm knots. “You are the barbarians!” he shouted.
Tero and Kleandros bent over him, faces intent. “It’s true, then?” the Greek whispered. “You do come from the future?”
Utterly beaten, Alvarez said, “Yes.”
“I thought so,” Tero breathed. “Quite by accident, it occurred to me how much more we know now than the heroes of the Trojan Wars. That set me thinking-how much more still would the men who come after us learn? Surely they would have powers we do not: terrible weapons, who knows what? Simpler things, too: the ability to make one coin just like another, for instance. How do you do that, anyway?”
“Molds,” Alvarez said dully.
“Ah? Interesting. It’s neither here nor there, though. Even after I got my notion, I still had to figure out why the men of the future would want anything from us in the first place. That stymied me for a long, long time. By my own logic, you had to have everything we do, and more besides. And then Eprius’ body servant found that one of his master’s books was missing, a rare one.”
“Rare?” Kleandros interjected. “If I had known Eprius had a copy of the Aleadai, I might have killed him myself.”
“You see?” Tero said. “It’s so easy for a book to be lost forever if few copies are made of it. Works like the Aleadai are valuable now-how much more would they be worth in some future time if between now and then they’d been lost altogether? A great deal, I have no doubt. Enough to steal for, enough to kill for? Once we knew the sort of thing you were after, it was easy enough to set a trap, and you walked right into it.”
Kleandros added, “My apologies for not using an authentic copy of Hieronymos of Kardia, but, you see, no one in town owns one.”
This was all a bad dream, Alvarez though. It could not be happening. To be caught was bad enough, but then to be lectured by these stupid barbarians…
He must have said that aloud, for Tero’s lips tightened. He realized the English phrase was close enough to the Latin from which it had come to let the Romans understand him.
“Us, barbarians?” Tero said. “On the contrary. What are the marks of the barbarian? Surely one is acting without thinking ahead to see what results might come of what you do. Did you do that when you used your thunder weapon? Hardly. And because we were ignorant of your device, did you think us dolts?
You were stupid to reveal it to us at all. No, man from another time, if either of us deserves to be called a barbarian, it is you.” He stood and turned to his men. “Take them away,” he said.
DEPARTURES
One of the most enjoyable games in science fiction is to imagine how history would have changed if one of its great figures had taken a different path: if Alexander the Great hadn’t died young, if Napoleon had; if Julius Caesar hadn’t been assassinated, if Franklin D. Roosevelt had. But secular leaders are not the only people who shape history. Here is an example of another sort of figure not performing as he did in the world we know.
The monks at Ir-Ruhaiyeh did not talk casually among themselves. They were not hermits; those who wanted to be pillar sitters like the two Saints Simeon went off into the Syrian Desert by themselves and did not join monastic communities. Still, the Rule of Saint Basil enjoined silence through much of the day.
Despite the Cappadocian Father’s Rule, though, a whispered word ran through the monastery regardless of the canonical hour: “The Persians. The Persians are marching toward Ir-Ruhaiyeh.”
The abbot, Isaac, heard the whispers, though the monks had to shout when they spoke to him. Isaac was past seventy, with a white beard that nearly reached his waist. But he had been abbot here for more than twenty years and had been a simple monk for thirty years before that. He knew what his charges thought almost before they thought it.
Isaac turned to the man he hoped would one day succeed him. “It will be very bad this time, John. I feel it.”
The prior shrugged.”It will be as God wills, Father Abbot.” He was half the abbot’s age, round-faced, and always smiling. What from other men might have seemed prophecy of doom came from his lips as a prediction of good fortune.
Isaac was not cheered, not this time. “I wonder if God does not mean this to be the end for us Christians.”
“The Persians have come to Ir-Ruhaiyeh before,” John said stoutly. “They raided, they moved on. When their campaigns were through, they went back to their homeland once more, and life resumed.”
“I was here,” Isaac agreed. “They came in the younger Justin’s reign, and Tiberius’, and Maurice’s. As you say, they left again soon enough or were driven off. But since this beast of a Phokas murdered his way to the throne of the Roman Empire-”
“Shh.” John looked around. Only one monk was nearby, on his hands and knees in the herb garden.”One never knows who may be listening.”
“I am too old to fear spies overmuch, John,” the abbot said, chuckling. At that moment the monk in the herb garden sat back on his haunches so he could wipe sweat from his strong, swarthy face with the sleeve of his robe. Isaac chuckled again. “And can you seriously imagine him betraying us?”
John laughed, too. “That one? No, you have me there. Ever since he came to us, he’s thought of nothing but his hymns.”
“Nor can I blame him, for they are a gift from God,” Isaac said. “Truly he must be inspired to sing the Lord’s praises so sweetly when he knew not a word of Greek before he fled his horrid paganism to become a Christian and a monk. Romanos the Melodist was a convert, too, they say-born a Jew.”
“Some of our brother’s hymns are a match for his, I think,” John said. “Perhaps they love Christ the more for first discovering Him with the full faculties of grown men.”
“It could be so,” I
saac said thoughtfully. Then, as the monk in the garden resumed his work, the abbot came back to his worries. “When I was younger, we all knew the Persians were harriers, not conquerors. Sooner or later our soldiers would drive them back. This time I think they are come to stay.”
John’s sunny face was not well adapted to showing concern, but it did now. “You may be right, Father Abbot. Since the general Narses rebelled against Phokas, since Germanos attacked Narses, since the Persians beat Germanos and Leontios-”
“Since Phokas broke his own brother’s pledge of safe conduct for Narses and burned him alive, since Germanos was forced to become a monk for losing to the Persians-” Isaac took up the melancholy tale of Roman troubles. “Our armies now are a rabble, those which have not fled. Who will, who can, make King Khosroes’ soldiers leave the empire now?”
John looked this way and that again and lowered his voice so that Isaac had to lean close to hear him at all. “Perhaps it would be as well if they did stay. I wonder,” he went on wistfully, “if the young man with them truly is Maurice’s son Theodosios. Even with Persian backing, he would be better than Phokas.”
“No, John.” The abbot shook his head in grim certainty. “I am sure Theodosios is dead; he was with his father when Phokas overthrew them. And while the new emperor has many failings, no one can doubt his talent as a butcher.”
“True enough.” John sighed. “Well, then, Father Abbot, why not welcome the Persians as liberators from the tyrant?”
“Because of what I heard from a traveler out of the east who took shelter with us last night. He was from a village near Daras, where the Persians have now decided how they will govern the lands they have taken from the empire. He told me they were beginning to make the Christians thereabouts become Nestorians.”
“I had not heard that, Father Abbot,” John said, adding a moment later, “Filthy heresy!”
“Not to the Persians. They exalt Nestorians above all other Christians, trusting their loyalty because we who hold to the right belief have persecuted them so they may no longer live within the empire.” Isaac sadly shook his head. “All too often, that trust has proved justified.”
“What shall we do, then?” John asked. “I will not abandon the faith, but in truth I would sooner serve the Lord as a living monk than as a martyr, though His will be done, of course.” He crossed himself.
So did Isaac. His eyes twinkled. “I do not blame you, my son. I have lived most of my life, so I am ready to see God and His Son face to face whenever He desires, but I understand how younger men might hesitate. Some, to save their lives, might even bow to heresy and forfeit their souls. I think, therefore, that we should abandon Ir-Ruhaiyeh so no one will have to face this bitter choice.”
John whistled softly. “As bad as that?” His glance slid to the monk in the garden, who had looked up but went back to his weeding when the prior’s eye fell on him.
“As bad as that,” Isaac echoed. “I need you to begin drawing up plans for our withdrawal. I want us to leave no later than a week from today.”
“So soon, Father Abbot? As you wish, of course; you know you have my obedience. Shall I arrange for our travel west to Antioch or south to Damascus? I presume you will want us safe behind a city’s walls.”
“Yes, but neither of those,” the abbot said. John stared at him in surprise. Isaac went on. “I doubt Damascus is strong enough to stand against the storm that is rising. And Antioch- Antioch is all in commotion since the Jews rose and murdered the patriarch, may God smile upon him. Besides, the Persians are sure to make for it, and it can fall. I was a tiny boy the last time it did; the sack, I have heard, was ghastly. I would not want us caught up in another such.”
“What then, Father Abbot?” John asked, puzzled now.
“Ready us to travel to Constantinople, John. If Constantinople falls to the Persians, surely it could only portend the coming of the Antichrist and the last days of the world. Even that may come. I find it an evil time to be old.”
“Constantinople. The city.” John’s voice held awe and longing. From the Pillars of Herakles to Mesopotamia, from the Danube to Nubia, all through the Roman Empire, Constantinople was the city. Every man dreamed of seeing it before he died. The prior ran fingers through his beard. His eyes went distant as he began to think of what the monks would need to do to get there. He never noticed Isaac walking away.
What did call him back to his surroundings was the monk leaving the herb garden a few minutes later. Had the fellow simply passed by, John would have paid him no mind. But he was humming as he walked, which disturbed the prior’s thoughts.
“Silence, Brother,” John said reprovingly.
The monk dipped his head in apology. Before he had gone a dozen paces, he was humming again. John rolled his eyes in rueful despair. Taking the music from that one was the next thing to impossible, for it came upon him so strongly that it possessed him without his even realizing it.
Had he not produced such lovely hymns, the prior thought, people might have used the word “possessed” in a different sense. But no demon, surely, could bring forth glowing praise of the Trinity and the Archangel Gabriel.
John dismissed the monk from his mind. He had many more important things to worry about.
“A nomisma for that donkey, that piece of crow bait?” The monk clapped a hand to his tonsured pate in theatrical disbelief. “A goldpiece? You bandit, may Satan lash you with sheets of fire and molten brass for your effrontery! Better you should ask for thirty pieces of silver. That would only be six more, and would show you for the Judas you are!”
After fierce haggling the monk ended up buying the donkey for ten silver pieces, less than half the first asking price. As the trader put the jingling miliaresia into his pouch, he nodded respectfully to his recent opponent. “Holy sir, you are the finest bargainer I ever met at a monastery.”
“I thank you.” Suddenly the monk was shy, not the fierce dickerer he had seemed a moment before. Looking down to the ground, he went on. “I was a merchant one before I found the truth of Christ.”
The trader laughed. “I might have known.” He monk a shrewd once-over. “From out of the south, I’d guess, by your accent.”
“Just so.” The monk’s eyes were distant, remembering. “I was making my first run up to Damascus. I heard a monk preaching in the marketplace. I was not even a Christian at the time, but it seemed to me that I heard within methe voice of the Archangel Gabriel saying, ‘Follow!’ And follow I have, all these years since. My caravan went back without me.”
“A strong call to the faith indeed, holy sir,” the trader said, crossing himself. “But if you ever wish to return to the world, seek me out. For a reasonable share of the profits I know you will bring in, I would be happy to stake you as a merchant again.”
The monk smiled, teeth white against tanned, dark skin and gray-streaked black beard. “Thank you, but I am content and more than content with my life as it is. Inshallah-“ He laughed at himself. “Here I’ve been working all these years to use only Greek, and recalling what I once was makes me forget myself so easily. Theou thelontos, I should have said-God willing-I would have spent all my days here at Ir-Ruhaiyeh. But that is not to be.”
“No.” The trader looked east. No smoke darkened the horizon there, not yet, but both men could see it in their minds eyes. “I may find a new home for myself, as well.”
“God grant you good fortune,” the monk said.
“And you, holy sir. If I have more beasts to sell, be sure I shall look for a time when you are busy elsewhere.
“Spoken like a true thief,” the monk said. They both laughed. The monk led the donkey away toward the stables. They were more crowded now than at any other time he could recall, with horses, camels, and donkeys. Some the monks would ride; others would carry supplies and the monastery’s books and other holy gear.
Words and music filled the monk’s mind as he walked toward the refectory. By now the words came more often in Greek than in his nati
ve tongue, but this time, perhaps because his haggle with the merchant had cast his memory back to the distant pagan days he did not often think of anymore, the idea washed over him in the full guttural splendor of his birth speech.
Sometimes he crafted a hymn line by line, word by word, fighting against stubborn ink and papyrus until the song had the shape he wanted. He was proud of the songs he shaped that way. They were truly his.
Sometimes, though, it was as if he saw the entire shape of a hymn complete at once. Then the praises to the Lord seemed almost to write themselves, his pen racing over the page not as an instrument of his own intelligence but rather as a channel through which God spoke for Himself. Those hymns were the ones for which the monk had gained a reputation that reached beyond Syria. He often wondered if he had earned it. God deserved more credit than he did. But then, he would remind himself, that was true in all things.
This idea he had now was of the second sort, a flash of inspiration so blinding that he staggered and almost fell, unable to bear up under its impact. For a moment he did not even know-or care-where he was. The words, the glorious words reverberating in his mind, were all that mattered.
And yet, because the inspiration came to him in his native language, his intelligence was also engaged. How could he put his thoughts into words his fellows here and folk all through the empire would understand? He knew he had to; God would never forgive him, nor he forgive himself, if he failed here.
The refectory was dark but, since it was filled with summer air and sweating monks, not cool. The monk took a loaf and a cup of wine. He ate without tasting what he had eaten. His comrades spoke to him; he did not answer. His gaze was inward, fixed on something he alone could see.
Suddenly he rose and burst out, “There is no God but the Lord, and Christ is His Son!” That said what he wanted to say, and said it in good Greek, though without the almost hypnotic intensity the phrase had in his native tongue. Still, he saw, it served his purpose: several monks glanced his way, and a couple, having heard only the bare beginning of the song, made the sacred sign of the cross.
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