Nihala

by Scott Burdick

  “Kayla, listen—” Tem reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

  “I’m grateful to all of you,” she said. “But I need to be alone.”

  Ganesh and Sir Richard left, but Tem remained.

  “Please leave,” Kayla said, hiding her tears.

  Tem rose and walked out, closing the door behind him. The click of the latch echoed with such loneliness that Kayla covered her ears against it.

  Chapter 18

  Alexander of Macedon sat astride his horse and surveyed the Sinae troops advancing in a mass of gleaming armor, dagger-axes, and chariots. A clear, cold autumn afternoon. Just the right temperature so the horses wouldn’t overheat. The breeze carried the salt-tinged evidence of the Great Eastern Ocean just beyond the horizon.

  A perfect day for a battle.

  His second-in-command, Ptolemy, sat mounted on a Persian stallion. “Xiong Huai is beneath that banner.” Ptolemy pointed at the King of Chu’s royal standard flapping in the breeze at the rear of the opposing army.

  Alexander smiled, and the battle scars crisscrossing his fifty-two-year-old face tugged like a half-finished spiderweb in a breeze. A bronze helmet hid the expanding bald spot atop his graying head of hair. “Our dream of an empire stretching from the shores of the Mediterranean to the great Eastern Ocean is nearly complete.”

  “We’ve been fortunate,” Ptolemy said.

  What was his general implying? Yes, the division of China into warring states had been fortunate, as well as their use of outmoded chariots instead of the modern light cavalry. But that did not mean it had been easy.

  “Fortune favors the bold, my friend,” Alexander said.

  “It’s especially lucky that you recovered from your illness twenty years ago at the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar. Had you died, who can say what might have happened to the empire.”

  Alexander smiled. “Maybe you would have become the King of Egypt and started a long dynasty of your own at Alexandria.”

  “I’m a soldier, not the son of a king like you.”

  “Every dynasty has its founder, and sometimes greatness is thrust upon us.”

  “Like declaring yourself a god?” Ptolemy asked.

  Alexander glanced over his shoulder. Fortunately, none of his personal guard had heard the comment. “Such things are necessary. It is what people expect in an emperor.”

  Ptolemy sighed. “Yes, men prefer following divine orders rather those of a a fellow mortal. Some things will never change, I suppose.”

  The Chinese soldiers neared their hill, and Alexander pulled his spear from the mud as if plucking a sapling from the ground. His gaze swept his own troops, an amalgam of volunteers from all the conquered people of his vast empire, including large contingents from the subdued Chinese states of Qin, Han, and Wei. Only a few of his original Greek soldiers remained.

  Ptolemy drew his double-edged xiphos, its blade as long as his forearm and sharpened to a sheen. “They outnumber us two to one.”

  “At Gaugamela, King Darius outnumbered us five to one.”

  Ptolemy’s frown deepened.

  “What troubles you?”

  His most trusted general squinted past the advancing army, through the dust plume stirred by a thirty-thousand-foot tread, and to the walled city beyond. “As I grow older, the screams of those innocents we’ve put to the sword haunt my dreams.”

  “Do you think I enjoy such things? That I took pleasure in executing my own cousin after the death of my father?” Alexander reined his horse around and faced Ptolemy squarely. “Killing one of my own blood saved thousands by avoiding a civil war of succession. In all of my campaigns, I seek the greater good. Cities that submit without a fight are incorporated into the empire, given full rights equal to a Greek citizen, freedom to worship their own gods, and more liberty than they’ve ever known.”

  “Yet you put the entire city of Gaza to the sword even after they surrendered,” Ptolemy said.

  Alexander’s knuckles whitened on the shaft of his spear. “Had I spared Gaza after they forced a bloody siege, every one of the cities of the Levant would have barred their gates, ensuring years of bloodshed. Chaos, lawlessness, and extended suffering results from wars waged with half-measures.”

  “But why conquer those who never threatened Greece?”

  “Through unification, we bring them under a single law, allowing safe passage for trade and ideas across borders once closed. My beloved teacher, Aristotle, taught me the value of order in both thought and government.” Alexander placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “War can be a tool for peace, freedom, and enlightenment if used properly.”

  Ptolemy nodded and gazed at the advancing troops. “I suppose I have one last battle in these old bones of mine.”

  Alexander faced the tens of thousands of troops he’d so thoroughly trained and prepared for this moment. “Free citizens of the Empire!” he shouted. “Are you prepared to seek your glory?” A roar rose from the army, and swords pounded against shields in a rhythmic boom.

  The familiar exhilaration coursed through every vein. With a shout of the Macedonian battle cry, Alexander jabbed his spear forward, and the infantry advanced—shields locking into an impenetrable mass, spears bristled from the first three rows of the phalanx like a porcupine. The army marched down the slope in step as a single living creature.

  From the Chinese ranks rose a dark cloud, advancing like a vast shadow. The swarm of crossbow bolts rained down on the phalanx, but few found gaps in the wall of armor. When the two armies came to within several yards of each other, Xiong Huai’s infantry surged forward, hurling their lances and bodies against the leading edge of the invaders. They died by the thousands. Alexander’s advancing troops trampled the fallen underfoot in a steady advance.

  The Chinese chariots swept around the left flank in a thunderous charge, intent on striking the vulnerable rear of the phalanx.

  Alexander led his mounted troops in response. At a shout, the Companions divided and swept around the chariots and then attacked from the sides and rear. The chariots struggled to turn and face their foes head-on, but were no match for the speed and mobility of the light cavalry.

  Alexander thrust his spear into the face of one foe, and drew his sword to parry another before removing the warrior’s head with a counter stroke. His horsemen soon drove the Chinese chariots before them in a stampede.

  They’re giving up too easily.

  Alexander halted the pursuit and led the Companions back to the main battle, just in time to defend a larger chariot thrust on the right flank. Had he taken the bait of the first charge, his infantry would have been flanked and the battle lost. After decimating the main contingent of chariots, Alexander led his mounted soldiers around the main battle and struck toward the King of Chu’s standard.

  Xiong Huai’s elite guard fought bravely, but the Greek tactics and weapons amounted to an insurmountable technological advantage. Little by little, Alexander hurled his cavalry at the protective shield of men guarding the Chinese leader. Alexander slashed to the right and left, killing, maiming, and fighting toward his prey. The king awaited him atop his royal stallion, facing the famed Macedonian with chin thrust forward, eyes unflinching. When Alexander broke through the protective ring, Xiong Huai spurred his own horse forward to meet him in single combat.

  Their swords met in a shower of sparks—and then Alexander’s horse froze in mid-leap, as did every soldier, sword, and spraying droplet of blood for as far as the eye could see.

  “Can’t this wait!” Alexander the Great shouted.

  “I’m sorry, General,” a tremulous voice replied from nowhere. “But you ordered me to inform you the moment we received any information of possible Rogue activity.”

  Alexander sighed and gestured with his left hand. The battlefield morphed into a simple office, and Alexander shape-shifted into General Colrev. He frowned at Sergeant Phillips, who snapped to attention and saluted.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” the general said. �
�Why didn’t you bring this to the World President first?”

  “In military matters, the president is—”

  “The man is a buffoon and an idiot,” Colrev said. “Has the Rogue attack begun?”

  “Well, no, sir, but I found something odd.”

  A transparent screen appeared in front of the two men, displaying a group of drones chasing Ganesh on his flying motorcycle.

  “This is a known Gene-Freak fugitive,” the sergeant said.

  “What do I care about a Gene-Freak, for Godʼs sake!” Colrev snapped. “We suspended Earth surveillance a hundred years ago. With every human off-planet, the few remaining Gene-Freaks pose no threat, so why bother sending drones after them?”

  “That’s just it. There’s no record of this flight in the logs at all. These drones are old decommissioned models slotted for recycling.”

  “How could there be no record? They can’t fly themselves.”

  “These older models used radio receivers from a time before the Heisenberg communication systems.”

  “Hackers going Gene-Freak hunting?”

  “That’s what I thought at first, except for this.”

  The subordinate paused the recording and zoomed in on Kayla as she glanced back.

  “This girl isn’t in the system at all,” Phillips said.

  Colrev shrugged. “So someone’s personal Gene-Freak prostitute slipped through the records. Who cares?”

  The sergeant pointed to Kayla’s face. “The girl is pretty by the standards of a natural-born human, but hardly the perfection one expects in a genetically manufactured product.”

  “I see what you mean.” The general leaned forward, studying the face. “So you’re suggesting she isn’t a Gene-Freak at all.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But our records of Pure humans are complete.”

  “She could be from Potemia.”

  Colrev frowned. “Wouldn’t the Wall’s protocol have notified us if someone went through?”

  “It should have, unless something has malfunctioned with the Wall.”

  “Have you run a diagnostic?”

  Phillips squirmed. “Yes, and it looks clean.”

  “So you think the Wall has gone Rogue based on a fuzzy image of a girl who isn’t in the records?”

  “Programs go bad all the time in Ixtalia,” the sergeant said.

  “Your post-Plague generation so easily forgets history. The Wall cannot go Rogue. Its programming is frozen in a crystalline structure, rendering any changes impossible.”

  The sergeant’s face relaxed. “So the Wall cannot evolve and becoming sentient.”

  “The Neo-Luddites insisted on this so we couldn’t reprogram it for an attack at a later date.” General Colrev scowled. “Which is exactly what I’d have done if that damn Reinhold Watts hadn’t been so thorough. I tried everything, from getting through the force-field dome above or below it, to finding a way of short-circuiting its code. Somehow, the Wall allows air, water, and inorganic material through the dome, but excludes anything living or mechanical.”

  “At least we know she can’t be from Potemia, in that case.”

  The general motioned to the drones. “What happened after this?”

  The sergeant played the recording through the chase, and Colrev whistled. “That elephant can certainly fly!”

  When Ganesh displayed the metal disc, the general frowned. “Where would a Gene-Freak get a fission bomb?”

  “Probably a secret Scientarian weapons dump that we never located before the migration.”

  Ganesh placed his hand on the bomb’s button, and the screen went black.

  “That’s where the recording ends,” the sergeant said with a frown.

  “So the Gene-Freak killed himself as well as a couple of obsolete drones. So what?”

  “It has taken me weeks to decode the primitive radio signal sent to the drones during this encounter, but I solved it today.”

  An eerie voice crackled to life. “Proceed to the main target and eliminate Nihala.”

  “Nihala? Is this the elephant, or the girl?” the general asked.

  “The Gene-Freak records list the elephant-man’s name as Ganesh, so I assume Nihala is the girl’s name. I’ve searched the databases and found only one match. A rejected government research proposal titled Project Nihala. I don’t have top-level security clearance, so that’s all I could learn.”

  “Project Nihala …” Colrev shook his head. “I don’t remember anything by that name.”

  These damn junior officers, jumping at every shadow. Could he blame them, though? Born too late, never having seen a real war in their lifetime, they probably felt like randy teens in an all-boy’s summer camp.

  The sergeant shifted from foot to foot under the general’s disapproving glare. “A final point, sir. There should be a white frame at the end of the recording in the case of a fission explosion—but it simply went black.”

  ***

  No longer did Kayla venture from her sanctuary into Middilgard, and neither did she allow anyone to enter. She stopped eating or taking advantage of any of the pleasures of the villa. Probably due to her inattention, even Puck spent most of his time outside their home.

  Was my love for Ishan an illusion? Does he even exist?

  Hunched at the table in the library, she chose the one escape open to her. Books. Fiction, History, Science, and whatever else sat on their shelves. One after the other, she read them until sleep vanquished consciousness. When she awoke, she resumed where she’d left off.

  One book contained the Unabomber’s Manifesto in full. Much of it mirrored the sayings she’d learned as a child in Potemia, passed down in an oral history. When taken in their entirety, the words filled her with nausea. She learned that Theodore John Kaczynski didn’t even believe in God. How ironic that Minister Coglin spoke of the Founder and Jesus as if they were brothers. How had such a fact been forgotten? Had Peter known?

  To call the Founder delusional was an understatement. To say he was a dangerous murderer was a proven fact. And yet, seeing the destruction of the natural world outside the Wall, had he been completely wrong?

  She read books on history, archaeology, and genetics, and it became clear that much of the Old Testament wasn’t supported by facts. So much scientific evidence contradicted stories like the Garden of Eden and the Flood, that reconciling faith and logic seemed impossible.

  Kayla spoke the words from Proverbs as if chanting a spell against doubt. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

  But how could knowledge be bad? If only she could find some evidence to support her faith, rather than contradict it.

  The miracles of Moses had reached such a scale that evidence must have survived outside the Bible alone.

  But no Egyptian Hieroglyphs mention Moses or the flight of what would have been at least a million Jews. Such an economic disaster should have sent shock waves through all of Egypt. But the histories contained no mention of it. The Egyptians detailed other military defeats and historical upheavals in a nearly unbroken record from pharaoh to pharaoh, so what could explain such a glaring absence?

  But the Hebrews must have come from somewhere when they swept into the land of Israel and conquered the Canaanites. If not from Egypt, then where?

  Archaeological artifacts in the Holy Land showed a gradual evolution of Canaanite pottery to Hebrew over thousands of years rather than the abrupt change one would expect from a sudden invasion by a foreign people, as claimed in the Bible.

  Even the linguistic terms and practices of the Hebrew language and religion betrayed signs of an incremental transformation out the previous religions of the area. The Canaanite father god El became the Hebrew term for God. Why would a conquering people call their god the name of their enemy’s deity? Historians concluded that Israelites simply evolved out of the earlier Canaanite culture.

  Had the writers of the Torah rewritten history to replace the roots of its cre
ation with a more heroic myth that absolved its followers of killing their Canaanite cousins for worship the old gods? This would absolve God from ordering the genocide of the Canaanites and Amalekites, but left a more troubling question. If some of the stories in the Bible were false, how to determine which were true?

  Or could there be another explanation that historians couldn’t imagine? Wasn’t trusting the words of God easier than relying on the imperfect perceptions of man?

  The New Testament was more recent—written by eyewitnesses to the actual events. That much was a historical fact, wasn’t it?

  Jesus is enough proof. He is all I need.

  Days, weeks, and months merged. The growing piles of discarded tomes and the clearing bookcases marked time.

  If only I could forget. The memory of Peter’s encounter with the policeman flashed before her mind. His most painful memories had been erased. Maybe I should do the same with my false memories of Potemia. Or even the blasphemies that have caused me to doubt God. Wouldn’t I be much happier?

  Faster and faster she read, eventually devouring dozens of books a day—impossible, like everything else about her. The authors projected their joys, sorrows, and loves over the gulf of time and space. Their hopes, dreams, and memories stood in for her own.

  A day came when she tossed the final leather-bound time capsule aside. Panic rose within as her deceitful mind reasserted itself.

  One shelf of books remained. The section on the history of Christianity. Some of the titles were in English, but most were in either Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. She read the titles without hesitation, her language ability somehow extending even to the written word.

  Is Tem right? Am I too afraid to confront the truth?

  She’d risked death when she took the forbidden books from the desert. No one would burn her at the stake in Middilgard for reading the words on this shelf, and yet her hand trembled as she reached for a book titled The History of the Gospels.

  Her hand grasped the book and the tremors ceased.

  I’m not a coward.

  The original Gospels had been written in Greek and not the Hebrew or Aramaic the apostles would have spoken. Only a small elite of Jews were even literate at the time, and it seemed that Jesus himself never wrote anything down to avoid later confusion. So it became the responsibility of his closest followers. But would simple fishermen have learned Greek after Jesus rose from the dead?