Then she called for him to be taken away, like all the others. “Next!”
Kolya believed that the Mongols’ expansion was pathological. It was a ghastly spiral of positive feedback, born of Genghis Khan’s unquestioned military genius and fueled by easy conquests, a plague of insanity and destruction that had spread across most of the known world.
Russians especially had reasons to despise the memory of Genghis Khan. The Mongols had struck twice. Great cities grown fat on trade, Novgorod, Ryazan and Kiev, were reduced to boneyards. In those dread moments the heart had been torn out of the country, forever.
“Not again,” Kolya whispered, unable to hear the words himself. “Not again.” He knew Casey and the others would resist the Mongol menace as hard as they could. Maybe the Mongols had made too many enemies in the old timeline; maybe in some transcendent way they were now facing payback.
Of course his own gamble was still to be played out—was his weapon powerful enough, would it even work? But he had confidence in his own technical abilities.
Reaching the target, though, was another matter. He had observed Genghis. Unlike Alexander, Genghis was a commander who had watched battles from the safety of the rear, and retired to his yurt at the close of the day; aged nearly sixty, he was predictable to that degree.
Could Kolya be sure, though, any longer, after three days, quite what time it was? Could he be sure that the heavy tread he sensed now was indeed the man he sought to destroy? His only real regret was that he would never know.
Kolya smiled, thought of his wife, and closed the trigger. He had no eyes, no ears, but he felt the earth lurch.
Abdikadir was back-to-back with a handful of British and Macedonians, fighting off Mongols who swirled around them, most still on horseback, lashing and cutting. His ammunition long exhausted, he had dropped the useless Kalashnikov and fought with bayonet, scimitar, lance, javelin, whatever came to hand, the detritus of dead warriors from ages separated by more than a thousand years.
As the battle had closed around him, at first he had felt as if he had become more alive—as if his life had been reduced to this instant, of blood, noise, intense effort and pain, and all that had gone before was a mere prologue. But as fatigue poisons built up, that sense of vividness had been replaced by a coppery unreality, as if he was on the point of fainting. He had trained for this—the “drone zone,” they called it, a place where the body ignored pain, grew impervious to hot or cold, and a new form of consciousness cut in, a kind of dogged autopilot. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
This little group was surviving where others had already been cut down, an island of resistance in a sea of blood across which the Mongols surged at will. He himself had taken blow after blow. But he knew he couldn’t take much more. The battle was being lost, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Over the carnage of the battlefield, he heard the cry of a trumpet, an uneven rhythm played on a war drum. He was briefly distracted.
A mace swung down from the sky, smashing the scimitar from his hand. Pain lanced; he had broken a finger. Unarmed, one-handed, he turned to face a Mongol cavalryman who reared above him, raising the mace again. Abdikadir lunged, his good hand stretched out stiff as a board, and stabbed at the Mongol’s thigh, aiming for a nerve center. The cavalryman stiffened and flopped backward, and his horse stumbled back. Abdikadir got to his knees, found his scimitar in the bloody dirt, and straightened up, panting hard, looking for his next assailant.
But there was none.
The Mongol cavalrymen were wheeling their horses around, turning back toward their distant encampment. As they galloped away, occasionally one would stop to pick up a dismounted comrade. Abdikadir, standing there panting, clutching his scimitar, simply couldn’t take it in. It was as surprising as if a tide had suddenly reversed.
He heard a snapping sound, close to his ear, almost insectile. He knew what that was, but his mind seemed to grind slowly, dredging up the memory. A sonic boomlet. A bullet. He turned to look.
Before the Ishtar Gate there was one exception to the general withdrawal. Perhaps fifty Mongols, packed tight on their horses, charged at the open gate. And somebody in there, somebody in the middle of the charge, was shooting at him.
He dropped the scimitar. The world wheeled, and he found the earth, sodden with blood, reaching up to him.
Bisesa heard the screams and roars, right outside her casualty point. She rushed out of the door to see what was happening. Ruddy Kipling, the whole front of his shirt sticky with blood, followed her.
A pack of Mongol warriors had smashed through the defenders’ lines and pushed into the gate. Macedonians were closing around them like antibodies around an infection, and their officers screamed orders. Though the Mongols slashed hard at those around them, already they were being pulled from their horses.
But a single figure burst from the struggling pack, and ran down Babylon’s processional way. It was a woman. The Macedonians hadn’t noticed her—or if they had, didn’t take her seriously enough to stop her. She was dressed in leather armor, Bisesa saw, but her hair was tied back by a strip of material, bright orange.
“Day-Glo,” Bisesa muttered.
Ruddy said, “What did you say?”
“That has to be Sable. Shit, she’s heading for the temple—”
“The Eye of Marduk—”
“It’s what this has been all about. Come on!”
They ran after Sable down the ceremonial way. Worried-looking Macedonian soldiers rushed past them toward the incursion at the gate, and baffled, terrified Babylonian citizens cowered. Over their heads, Eyes hovered, like strings of CCTV cameras, impassive; Bisesa was shocked by how many there were.
Ruddy was first to the chamber of Marduk. The great Eye still hovered over its puddle of congealed gold. Sable stood before the Eye, panting, her hair disheveled over her Mongol armor, gazing up at a distorted reflection of herself. She raised a hand to touch the Eye.
Ruddy Kipling stepped forward. “Madam, get away from there, or—”
With a single movement she turned, raised a pistol, and shot him. In the ancient chamber the crack of the weapon was loud. Ruddy was hurled backward, slammed against the wall, and slumped to the floor.
Bisesa screamed, “Ruddy!”
Sable had raised the gun to Bisesa. “Don’t try it.”
Ruddy looked up helplessly at Bisesa, his broad brow dotted with sweat, his thick glasses spattered with the blood of strangers. He clutched his hip. Blood gushed from between his fingers. He grinned foolishly. “I’m shot.”
Bisesa longed to go to Ruddy. But she stood still and raised her hands. “Sable Jones.”
“My fame spreads.”
“Where’s Kolya?”
“Dead . . . Ah.” She smiled. “A thought occurs. The Mongols sounded the retreat. There was me thinking it was a coincidence. But you know what must have happened? Genghis Khan is dead, and his sons and brothers and generals are hurrying back for a quriltai to decide who gets the big prize. The Mongols have the social structure of a pack of chimpanzees. But, just like the chimps, when the alpha male falls all bets are off. And Kolya used that against them.” She shook her head. “You have to admire the scrawny little bastard. I wonder how he did it.” The gun in her hand never wavered.
Ruddy groaned.
Bisesa tried not to be distracted. “What do you want, Sable?”
“What do you think?” Sable jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “We could hear this thing’s signal from orbit. Whatever’s going on here, this is the key—to past, present and future—”
“To a new world.”
“Yeah.”
“I think you’re right. I’ve been studying it.”
Sable’s eyes narrowed. “In that case you might be able to help me. What do you say? You’re either with me or against me.”
Bisesa looked directly at the Eye. She let her eyes open wider, and forced a smile. “Evidently it’s been expecting you.”
<
br /> Sable turned her head. It was a simple trick, but Sable’s vanity had trapped her—and Bisesa had won a single half-second. It took one kick to shatter Sable’s wrist and get the gun out of her hand, another to bring her down.
Panting hard, she stood over the fallen cosmonaut. Bisesa thought she could smell her, a stink of milk and fat, like the Mongols she had fallen in with. “Sable, did you really think the Eye would care about you, and your petty ambitions? May you rot in hell.” She glared up at the Eye. “And you—have you seen enough? Is this what you wanted? Have we suffered enough for you? . . .”
“Bisesa.” It was a groan, barely formed as a word.
Bisesa ran to Ruddy.
36: AFTERMATH
Hephaistion was dead.
Alexander had won a great battle in almost impossible circumstances, in a new world, against a foe more than a thousand years more advanced. But in doing so he had lost his companion, his lover—his only true friend.
Alexander knew what was expected of him, at this moment. He would retire to his tent, and drink himself to oblivion. Or else he would refuse to drink or eat at all for days on end, until his family and companions feared for his health. Or he would order the construction of an impossibly grandiose memorial: perhaps a carving of a majestic lion, he thought idly.
Alexander decided he would do none of those things. He would grieve for Hephaistion in private, true. Perhaps he would order that all the horses in camp should have their manes and tails clipped. Homer told of how Achilles had shorn his horses in honor of his dead, beloved Patroclus; yes, that was how Alexander might mourn Hephaistion.
But for now there was too much to do.
He walked over the blood-soaked ground of the battlefield, and through the tents and buildings that housed the wounded. His advisers and companions fluttered anxiously at his heels—and his doctor, for Alexander had taken more than a few more blows himself. Many of the men were glad to see him, of course. Some boasted of what they had done in the battle, and Alexander listened patiently and, straight-faced, commended them on their valor. But others were sunk in shock. He had seen this before. They would sit numbly, or they would tell their petty stories over and over. The men would recover, as they always did, as would this bloodied ground, when the spring came and the grass grew again. But nothing could erase the anger and guilt of those who had survived where companions had fallen, as their King would never forget Hephaistion.
Ruddy lay back against the wall, arms limp, palms up, fingers curled. His small hands, coated in blood, looked like two crabs, she thought. Blood was gushing from a puncture wound, just below his left hip. “We’re seeing a lot of blood today, Bisesa.” He was still smiling.
“Yeah.” She dragged Curlex from her pocket, and tried jamming it in the hole. But the blood was still pumping. Sable’s shot seemed to have ruptured a femoral artery, one of the primary avenues by which blood reached the lower half of the body. There was no way she could move him—no transfusions she could give him, no casevac she could call in.
No time for sentiment: she had to treat Ruddy as a broken machine, a truck with the bonnet up, that she had to fix. She thought desperately. She began to rip open his trouser leg. “Try not to talk,” she said. “Everything will be fine.”
“As Casey would say, bullshit.”
“Casey is a bad influence.”
“Tell me,” he whispered.
“What?”
“What becomes of me . . . Or would have.”
“No time, Ruddy.” Exposed, the wound gaped, a bloody crater from which crimson liquid still flowed. “Here, help me.” She got hold of his hands and pushed them against the wound, and she pressed herself, pushing her fingers into the hole up to the knuckle.
He squirmed, but he didn’t cry out. He seemed terribly pale. His blood was forming a lake beneath him on the floor of the temple, a mirror to the melted gold of the god. “There’s time for nothing else, Bisesa. Please.”
“You become loved,” she said, still working frantically. “The voice of a nation, of an age. You’re internationally famous too. Wealthy. You refuse honors, but they’re repeatedly offered to you. You help shape national life. You win a Nobel prize for literature. They will say of you that your voice is heard around the world whenever it drops a remark . . .”
“Ah.” He smiled and closed his eyes. She shifted her fingers. Blood spurted out, as strongly as ever, and he grunted. “All those books I will never write.”
“But they exist, Ruddy. They’re in my phone. Every last damn word.”
“There’s that, I suppose—even if it makes no logical sense if the author doesn’t survive to write them . . . And my family?”
Trying to staunch the flow this way was like trying to stop up a broken pipe by pushing down on it through a pillow. The only thing she could do, she knew, was to find the femoral artery and tie it off directly. “Ruddy, this will hurt like hell.” She dug her fingers into the wound and ripped it wider open.
His back arched, his eyes closed. “My family. Please.” His voice was a flutter, dry as autumn leaves.
She dug into his leg, picking through layers of fat, muscle and blood vessel, but she couldn’t find the artery. It might have retracted when it was severed. “I could cut you open,” she said. “Search for the damn artery. But the blood loss . . .” She couldn’t believe how much blood had already poured from the young man; it was all over his legs, her arms, the floor.
“It hurts, you know. But it’s cold.” His words were labored. He was going into shock.
She pressed down on the wound. “You have a long marriage,” she said quickly. “Happy, I think. Children. A son.”
“Yes? . . . What is his name?”
“John. John Kipling. There is a great war, that consumes Europe.”
“The Germans, I suppose. Always the Germans.”
“Yes. John volunteers to fight in France. He dies.”
“Ah.” Ruddy’s face was almost expressionless now, but his mouth twitched. “At least he will be spared that pain, as will I—or perhaps not. That damn logic again! I wish I understood.” He opened his eyes, and she saw reflected in them the impassive sphere of the Eye of Marduk. “The light,” he said. “The light in the morning . . .”
She pressed a bloody hand to his chest. His heart fluttered, and stopped.
Refusing help, Alexander clambered stiffly to the top of the Ishtar Gate. He looked out to the east, over the plain, to where the fires of the Mongols still burned. The hovering spheres the men called Eyes, that had littered the air during the battle, had all evaporated now, all save the great monstrosity in the Temple of Marduk. Perhaps these new indifferent gods had seen all they wanted to see.
There were tribunals to arrange. It had turned out that the strange Englishman Cecil de Morgan had been feeding information to Mongol spies—information that included the route by which Sable Jones had reached the Eye of Marduk so quickly. The English commander Grove, and those others, Bisesa and Abdikadir, were demanding the right to try these renegades, de Morgan and Sable, according to their own customs. But Alexander was King, and he knew there was only one justice his men would accept. De Morgan and Sable would be tried before the whole army, drawn up on the plain outside the city; in his own mind their fate was assured.
This war was not done, he thought, even if this mighty figure Genghis was dead. He was confident he could destroy the Mongols eventually. But why should Macedonian and Mongol fight at the behest of the Gods of the Eye, like dogs thrown into a pit? They were men, not beasts. Perhaps there was another way.
It amused him that Bisesa and the others called themselves modern—as if Alexander and his time were pale stories from long ago, told by a tired old man. But from Alexander’s point of view these strange, spindly, gaudy creatures, from a far and uninteresting future, were a froth. There was only a handful of them, compared to the great crowds of his Macedonians, and of the Mongols. Oh, their gadgets had been briefly useful in the battle against the Kha
n, but they had soon been exhausted, and then it had been back to the most ancient weapons of all, iron and blood, discipline and raw courage. The moderns didn’t matter. It was clear to him that the beating heart of the new world lay here—with him, and these Mongols.
He had always known that his moment of hesitation at the river Beas had been an aberration. Now it was behind him. He decided he would instruct Eumenes to approach the Mongols once again and seek common ground. If he defeated the Mongols he would be strong; but if he combined with them stronger still. There was surely not a power in this wounded world that could match them. And then, armed with the knowledge that Bisesa and the others had brought, there was no limit to the possibilities of the future.
Thinking, planning, Alexander tasted the wind that blew from the east, the heart of the world continent, rich and full of time.
PART 5
MIR
37: LABORATORY
You could hardly call it a cage.
Five years after the Discontinuity and their capture, the man-apes were still trapped under a bit of camouflage net, thrown loosely over a conveniently hovering Eye, and weighted down with boulders. Nobody had given any thought to putting together anything better—though some quirk of the military mind had ordered the boulders to be painted white; there was always somebody who needed his attitude adjusted with a bit of pointless work.
It was under this net that Seeker spent her days, alone save for the fast-growing Grasper. Grasper was nearly six years old now. Her young mind still forming, she had adjusted to the reality of their confinement. Seeker couldn’t adjust. But she had to accept it.
The soldiers came in once a day to give her food and water and scrape out her dung. Sometimes they held her down and pushed their fat penises into her body. Seeker didn’t care about that. She wasn’t hurt, and she had learned to let her captors do what they want, while she kept an eye on Grasper. She had no idea why the soldiers did what they did. But whether she knew or not didn’t matter, of course, for she had no power to stop them.