She hid her face. “To let me go home,” she whispered. “And I think—”
“What?”
“I think it might.”
The others fell silent, shocked. But she had said it, at last, and she knew now that as soon as this jaunt was over she must confront the Eye once more, challenge it again—or die trying.
Some days short of Alexandria, the fleet put to shore. This, Alexander’s surveyors assured him, was the site of Paraetonium, a city he had once visited, although there was no trace of it now. Eumenes met them here. He said he wished to accompany his King as he retraced the most significant pilgrimage of his life.
Alexander sent out scouts to round up camels, which were laden with water for five days’ journey. A small party of no more than a dozen, including Alexander, Eumenes, Josh and Bisesa, with a few close bodyguards, quickly formed up. The Macedonians wrapped themselves up in long Bedouin-style winding cloths: they had been here before, and knew what to expect. The moderns followed their lead.
They set off south, inland from the sea. The journey would last several days. Tracing the border of Egypt and Libya, they followed a chain of eroded hills. As her stiffness wore off, and her muscles and lungs began to respond to the exercise, Bisesa found herself losing her thoughts in the simple physical repetition of the walk. More therapy, she thought dryly. Overnight they slept in tents and their Bedouin wraps. But on the second day they were hit by a sandstorm, a hot blizzard of coarse grit. After that they ventured through a ravine oddly carpeted by seashells, and through landscapes of wind-sculpted rock, and across a grueling gravel plateau.
At last they reached a small oasis. There were palm trees and even some birds, quail and falcon, preserved in a desolate landscape of salt flats. The place was dominated by a gaunt, ruined citadel, and small shrines stood coyly half-hidden by vegetation among the springs. There were no people here, no sign of habitation, nothing but picturesque ruin.
Alexander stepped forward, shadowed by his guards. He walked past the eroded foundations of vanished buildings, and reached a set of steps that led up to what had once been a temple. Alexander was visibly shaking as he climbed these worn steps. He reached a bare, dusty platform, and knelt down, his head bowed.
Eumenes murmured, “When we were here this place was ancient, but not ruined. The god Ammon came riding out in his sacred boat, borne aloft by purified bearers, and virgins sang songs of divinity. The King went through to the holiest shrine of all, a tiny room roofed by palm trunks, where he consulted the oracle. He never revealed the questions he asked, not even to me, not even to Hephaistion. And it was here that Alexander realized his divinity.”
Bisesa knew the story. During Alexander’s first pilgrimage the Macedonians had identified the ram-headed Libyan god Ammon with the Greek Zeus, and Alexander had learned that Zeus-Ammon was his true father, not King Philip of Macedon. From this point he would take Ammon to his heart for the rest of his life.
The King seemed crushed. Perhaps he had hoped to find that the shrine had somehow survived the Discontinuity, that this place, most sacred of all to him, might have been spared. But it was not so, and he had found nothing here but the dead weight of time.
Bisesa murmured to Eumenes, “Tell him it wasn’t always like this. Tell him that nine centuries later, when this place was part of the Roman Empire, and Christianity was the Empire’s official religion, there would still be a group of adherents, here at this oasis, still worshipping Zeus-Ammon, and Alexander himself.”
Eumenes nodded gravely, and in measured tones delivered this news from the future. The King replied, and Eumenes returned to Bisesa. “He says that even a god cannot conquer time, but nine hundred years should be enough for anybody.”
The party stayed a day at the oasis to recuperate and water the camels, and then returned to the shore.
42: LAST NIGHT
A week after their return to Babylon, Bisesa announced she believed the Eye of Marduk would send her home.
This was met with general incredulity, even from her closest companions. She sensed that Abdikadir thought this was no more than wishful thinking, that her impressions of the Eye and the entities beyond it might be fantasy—that all of this was no more than what she wanted to believe.
Alexander, though, faced her with a simple question. “Why you?”
“Because I asked it to,” she said simply.
And he thought that over, nodded, and let her go.
Skeptical or not, her companions, modern, British and Macedonian, accepted her sincerity, and supported her preparations for her departure, such as they were. They even accepted the date she announced for going. She still had no proof of any of this, and couldn’t even be sure if she was interpreting her inchoate impressions of the Eye correctly. But everyone took her seriously, and she was flattered by that, even if some of them gloated a little about how stupid she was going to look if the Eye let her down.
As the last day approached, Bisesa sat with Josh in the chamber of Marduk, with the looming, silent Eye hanging over them. They clung to each other. They were beyond passion: they had made love in defiance of the Eye’s cold glare, but even that could not drive the Eye out of their consciousness. All they wanted now, all they could ask of each other, was comfort.
Josh whispered, “Do you think they care at all about what they have done—the world they have taken apart, those who have died?”
“No. Oh, perhaps they have a certain academic interest in such emotions. Nothing beyond that.”
“Then they are less than me. If I see an animal killed, I am capable of caring for it, of feeling its pain.”
“Yes,” she said patiently, “but, Josh, you don’t care for the millions of bacteria that die in your gut every second. We aren’t bacteria; we are complex, independent, conscious creatures. But they are so far above us that we are diminished to nothing.”
“Then why would they send you home?”
“I don’t know. Because it amuses them, I suppose.”
He glowered at her. “What they want doesn’t matter. Are you sure this is what you want, Bisesa? Even if you do go home—what if Myra doesn’t want you?”
She turned to look at him. His eyes were huge in the lamplight gloom, his skin very smooth, young-looking. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Bisesa, who are you? Who is she? After the Discontinuity, we are all fractured selves that straddle worlds. Perhaps some splinter of you could be given back to some splinter of Myra—”
Resentment exploded in her, as her complicated feelings for both Myra and Josh came bubbling up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He sighed. “You can’t go back, Bisesa. It would mean nothing. Stay here.” He grabbed her hands. “We have houses to build, crops to grow—and children to raise. Stay here with me, Bisesa, and have my children. This world is no longer some alien artifact; it is our home.”
Suddenly she softened. “Oh, Josh.” She pulled him to her. “Dear Josh. I want to stay, believe me I do. But I can’t. It’s not just Myra. This is an opportunity, Josh. An opportunity they haven’t offered to anybody else. Whatever their motives, I have to take it.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I might learn. About why this has happened. About them. About what we might do about all this in the future.”
“Ah.” He smiled wistfully. “I should have known. I can argue with a mother about her love for her child, but I can’t stand in the way of a soldier’s duty.”
“Oh, Josh—”
“Take me with you.”
She sat back, shocked. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Bisesa, you are everything to me. I don’t want to stay here without you. I want to follow you, wherever you go.”
“But I may be killed,” she said softly.
“If I die by your side I will die happy. What else is life for?”
“Josh—I don’t know what to say. All I do is hurt you.”
“No,” he said gently. ?
??Myra is always there—if not between us, then at your side. I understand that.”
“Well, even so, nobody loved me this way before.”
They embraced again, and were silent for a while.
Then he said, “You know, they don’t have a name.”
“Who?”
“The baleful intelligences who engineered all this. They are not God, or any gods—”
“No,” she said. She closed her eyes. She could feel them even now, like a breeze from the heart of an old, dying wood, dry and rustling and laden with decay. “They are not gods. They are of this universe—they were born of it, as we were. But they are old—terribly old, old beyond our imagining.”
“They have lived too long.”
“Perhaps.”
“Then that is what we will call them.” He looked up at the Eye, chin jutting, defiant. “The Firstborn. And may they rot in hell.”
To celebrate Bisesa’s peculiar departure, Alexander ordered an immense feast. It lasted three days and three nights. There were athletic contests, horse races, dances and music—and even an immense battue in the Mongol style, the tales of which had impressed even Alexander the Great.
On the last night Bisesa and Josh were guests of honor at a lavish banquet in Alexander’s commandeered palace. The King himself did her the honor of dressing like Ammon, his father-god, in slippers, horns and purple cloak. It was a violent, noisy, drunken affair, like the ultimate rugby club outing. By three A.M. the booze had polished off poor Josh, who had to be carried out to a bedroom by Alexander’s chamberlains.
Illuminated by a single oil lamp, Bisesa, Abdikadir and Casey sat close to each other on expensive couches, a small fire burning in a hearth between them.
Casey was drinking from a tall glass beaker. He held it out to Bisesa. “Babylonian wine. Better than that Macedonian rotgut. You want some?”
She smiled and passed. “I think I ought to be sober tomorrow.”
Casey grunted. “From what I hear of Josh, one of you needs to be.”
Abdikadir said, “So here we are, the last survivors of the twenty-first century. I can’t remember the last time the three of us were alone.”
Casey said, “Not since the day of the chopper crash.”
“That’s how you think of it?” Bisesa asked. “Not the day the world came apart at the seams, but the day we lost the Bird!”
Casey shrugged. “I’m a professional. I lost my ship.”
She nodded. “You’re a good man, Casey. Give me that stuff.” She grabbed the beaker from him and took a draft of wine. It was rich, tasting very old, almost stale, the produce of a mature vineyard.
Abdikadir was watching her, his blue eyes bright. “Josh spoke to me this evening, before he got too drunk to speak at all. He thinks you are keeping back something from him—even now—something about the Eye.”
“I don’t always know what to tell him,” she said. “He’s a man of the nineteenth century. Christ, he’s so young.”
“But he’s not a child, Bis,” Casey said. “Men no older than him died for us facing the Mongols. And you know he is prepared to give up his life for you.”
“I know.”
“So,” Abdikadir said, “what is it you won’t tell him?”
“My worst suspicions.”
“About what?”
“About facts that have been staring us in the face since day one. Guys, our little bit of Afghanistan—and the slab of sky above it, that preserved the Soyuz—is all that came through the Discontinuity from our own time. And, hard as we’ve looked, we’ve found nothing from any era later than our own. We were the last to be sampled. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Why would a two-million-year history project end with us?”
Abdikadir nodded. “Ah. Because we are the last. After us there is nothing to be sampled. Ours was the last year, the last month—even the last day.”
“I think,” Bisesa said slowly, “that something terrible must happen on that final day—terrible for humanity, or the world. Maybe that’s why we shouldn’t worry about time paradoxes. Going back and changing history. Because after us, Earth has run out of history to change . . .”
Abdikadir said, “And perhaps this answers a question that occurred to me when you described your ideas on space-time rips. It would surely take a stupendous amount of energy to take space-time apart like that. Is that what faces the Earth?” He waved his hands. “Some immense catastrophe: a great outpouring of energy, in the face of which Earth is like a snowflake in a furnace—an energy storm that disrupts space and time itself . . .”
Casey closed his eyes and drank more wine. “Christ, Bis. I knew you’d bring the mood down.”
“And maybe that’s why the sampling happened in the first place,” Abdikadir said.
She hadn’t thought it through that far. “What do you mean?”
“The library is about to burn down. What do you do about it? You run through the galleries, grabbing what you can. Maybe the construction of Mir is an exercise in salvage.”
Casey said, eyes still closed, “Or looting.”
“What?”
“Maybe these Firstborn aren’t just here to record the end. Maybe they caused it. I bet you hadn’t thought of that either, Bis.”
Abdikadir said, “Why couldn’t you tell Josh this?”
“Because he’s full of hope. I couldn’t crush that.”
They sat in tense, brooding silence for a while. Then they started to talk about their future plans.
Abdikadir said, “I think Eumenes sees me as a useful tool in his endless quest to distract the King. I’ve proposed an expedition to the source of the Nile. The Firstborn seem to have preserved fragments of humanity perhaps from the first divergence from the chimps—but what were the very first? What quality about those deepest, hairiest ancestors did the Firstborn recognise as human? That’s the prize I want to dangle before Alexander . . .”
“It’s a fine ambition,” Bisesa said. Privately, though, she doubted if Alexander would be sold on it. It was Alexander’s worldview that was going to shape the near future—and that was a dream of heroes, gods and myths, not a quest for resolving scientific questions. “I have a feeling you will find a place wherever you go, Abdi.”
He smiled. “I have always inclined to the Sufi tradition, I think. The inner exploration of faith: where I am doesn’t matter.”
“I wish I felt the same,” she said earnestly.
Casey said, “As for me I don’t want to live out my life in a James Watt theme park. I’m trying to kick-start other industries—electricity, even electronics maybe . . .”
“What he means,” Abdikadir said dryly, “is that he’s becoming a schoolteacher.”
Casey squirmed a little, but he tapped his broad cranium. “Just want to make sure that what’s up here doesn’t die when I do, so generations of poor saps have to rediscover it all.”
Bisesa squeezed his arm. “It’s okay, Case. I think you’ll be a good teacher. I always did think of you as a surrogate father.”
Casey’s swearing, in English, Greek and even Mongolian, was impressive.
Bisesa stood. “Guys—I hate to say it, but I think I should get some sleep.”
With one instinct, they pulled together, and wrapped their arms around each other, heads together, huddling like players in a football game.
Casey said, “You need a Blue Bomber?”
“I have one . . . One more thing,” Bisesa whispered. “Let the man-apes go. If I can break out of the cage, so should they.”
Casey said, “I promise . . . No good-byes, Bis.”
“No. No good-byes.”
Abdikadir said, “Why is life given / To be thus wrested from us? . . .”
Casey grunted. “Milton. Paradise Lost, right? Satan’s challenge to God.”
Bisesa said, “You never cease to amaze me, Case. The Firstborn are no gods.” She grinned coldly. “But I always admired Satan.”
“Fuck that,” said Casey. “The Firstborn have
to be stopped.”
After a final, long moment, she pulled away, and left them with their wine.
Bisesa sought out Eumenes, and asked permission to leave the banquet.
Eumenes was upright, contained and apparently sober. He said in his stilted, heavily accented English, “Very well. But, madam, only on condition I am allowed to accompany you for a while.”
With a few guards, they walked up Babylon’s ceremonial way. They called at the town house commandeered by Captain Grove. Grove embraced her and wished her luck, in his clipped Noel Coward accent. Bisesa and Eumenes walked on, out of the city walls through the Ishtar Gate, and into the tent city of the army beyond.
The night was clear and cold, with the unfamiliar stars and a bony crescent Moon showing through high, yellowish clouds. When Bisesa was recognized she was greeted with cries and waves. The troops and their followers had been given gifts of wine and meat by the King in Bisesa’s honor. The whole camp seemed to be awake: the tents glowed from lamps lit inside, and music and laughter rose up like smoke.
“They are all sorry to see you go,” Eumenes murmured.
“I just gave them an excuse for a party.”
“You should not—um, underestimate your contribution. We were all pitched together into this fractured new world. There was great suspicion, even incomprehension, between our various parties—and the three of you from the twenty-first century were the fewest and most isolated of all. But without you to help us, even Alexander’s wiles might not have prevailed against the Mongols. We have become an unlikely family.”
“Yes, we have, haven’t we? I suppose that says something about enduring qualities of the human spirit.”
“Yes.” He stopped and faced her, and his expression showed the grim anger she had seen in him before. “And where you are going, as you face an enemy even Alexander could not challenge, you must call on those same qualities again. On behalf of us all.”
A nursing mother, the wife of a soldier, sat on a low stool outside one of the tents, her baby at her breast. The baby’s face was a pale disc, like the Moon. The mother saw Bisesa watching, and smiled.