Part 2 (1/2)

”You take this much too seriously,” said Nicomedes the Paphlagonian, when, much later in the evening and after too many more flasks of wine, I confided my fears to him. ”Perhaps you should cover your head when you go out of doors at midday, Corbulo. The sun of Arabia is very strong, and it can do great injury to the mind.”

No, Horatius. I am right and he is wrong. Once they are launched, the legions of Allah will not be checked until they have marched on through Italia and Gallia and Britannia to the far sh.o.r.es of the Ocean Sea, and all the world is Mahmud's.

It shall not be.

I will save the world from him, Horatius, and perhaps in so doing I will save myself.

Mecca is, of course, a sanctuary city. No man may lift his hand against another within its precincts, under pain of the most awful penalties.

Umar the idol-maker, who served in the temple of the G.o.ddess Uzza, understood that. I came to Umar in his workshop, where he sat turning out big-breasted figurines of Uzza, who is the Venus of the Saracens, and bought from him for a handful of coppers a fine little statuette carved from black stone that I hope to show you one of these days, and then I put a gold piece of Justinian's time before him and told him what I wanted done; and his only response was to tap his finger two times against Justinian's nose. Not understanding his meaning, I merely frowned.

”This man of whom you speak is my enemy and the enemy of all who love the G.o.ds,”

said Umar the idol-maker, ”and I would kill him for you for three copper coins if I did not have a family to support. But the work will involve me in travel, and that is expensive. It cannot be done in Mecca, you know.” And he tapped the nose of Justinian a second time. This time I understood, and I laid a second gold piece beside the first one, and the idol-maker smiled.

Twelve days ago Mahmud left Mecca on one of his business trips into the lands to the east. He has not returned. He has met with some accident, I fear, in those sandy wastes, and by now the drifting dunes have probably hidden his body forever.

Umar the idol-maker appears to have disappeared also. The talk around town is that he went out into the desert to collect the black stone that he carves his idols from, and some fellow craftsman with whom he was feuding followed him to the quarry. I think you will agree with me, Horatius, that this was a wise thing to arrange. The disappearance of a well-known man like Mahmud will probably engender some inquiries that could ultimately have led in embarra.s.sing directions, but no one except the wife of Umar will care about the vanis.h.i.+ng of Umar the idol-maker.

All of this strikes me as highly regrettable, of course. But it was absolutely necessary.

”He's almost certainly dead by this time,” Nicomedes said last night. We still dine together frequently. ”How very sad, Corbulo. He was an interesting man.”

”A very great one, in his way. If he had lived, I think he would have changed the world.”

”I doubt that very much,” said Nicomedes, in his airy, ever-skeptical Greek way.

”But we'll never know, will we?”

”We'll never know,” I agreed. I raised my gla.s.s. ”To Mahmud, poor devil.”

”To Mahmud, yes.”

And there you have the whole sad story. Go to the Emperor, Horatius. Tell him what I've done. Place it in its full context, against the grand sweep of Imperial history past and present and especially future. Speak to him of Hannibal, of Vercingetorix, of Attila, of all our great enemies of days gone by, and tell him that I have snuffed out in its earliest stages a threat to Roma far more frightening than any of those. Make him understand, if you can, the significance of my deed.

Tell him, Horatius. Tell him that I have saved all the world from conquest: that I have done for him a thing that was utterly essential to do, something which no one else at all could have achieved on his behalf, for who would have had the foresight to see the shape of things to come as I was able to see them? Tell him that.

Above all else, tell him to bring me home. I have dwelled amidst the sands of Arabia long enough. My work is done; I beg for surcease from the dreariness of the desert, the infernal heat, the loneliness of my life here. This is no place for a hero of the Empire.

A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING.

by Robert Silverberg ======================.

Copyright (c)First Published in Playboy Magazine, 1989 Fictionwise Contemporary Science Fiction and Fantasy ---------------------------------.

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”Channeling?” I said. ”For Christ's sake, Joe! You brought me all the way down here for dumb bulls.h.i.+t like that?”

”This isn't channeling,” Joe said.

”The kid who drove me from the airport said you've got a machine that can talk with dead people.”

A slow, angry flush spread across Joe's face. He's a small, compact man with very glossy skin and very sharp features, and when he's annoyed he inflates like a puff-adder.

”He shouldn't have said that.”

”Is that what you're doing here?” I asked. ”Some sort of channeling experiments?”

”Forget that s.h.i.+thead word, will you, Mike?” Joe sounded impatient and irritable. But there was an odd fluttery look in his eye, conveying -- what? Uncertainty? Vulnerability? Those were traits I hadn't ever a.s.sociated with Joe Hedley, not in the thirty years we'd known each other. ”We aren't sure what the f.u.c.k we're doing here,” he said. ”We thought maybe you could tell us.”

”Me?”

”You, yes. Here, put the helmet on. Come on, put it on, Mike. Put it on. Please.”

I stared. Nothing ever changes. Ever since we were kids Joe's been using me for one c.o.c.keyed thing or another, because he knows he can count on me to give him a sober-minded common-sense opinion. Always bouncing this bizarre scheme or that off me, so he can measure the caroms.

The helmet was a golden strip of wire mesh studded with a row of microwave pickups the size of a dime and flanked by a pair of suction electrodes that fit over the temples. It looked like some vagrant piece of death-house equipment.

I ran my fingers over it. ”How much current is this thing capable of sending through my head?”

He looked even angrier. ”Oh, f.u.c.k you, you hypercautious b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Would I ever ask you to do anything that could harm you?”

With a patient little sigh I said, ”Okay. How do I do this?”

”Ear to ear, over the top of your head. I'll adjust the electrodes for you.”

”You won't tell me what any of this is all about?”

”I want an uncontaminated response. That's science talk, Mike. I'm a scientist. You know that, don't you?”

”So that's what you are. I wondered.”

Joe bustled about above me, moving the helmet around, pressing the electrodes against my skull.

”How does it fit?”

”Like a glove.”

”You always wear your gloves on your head?” he asked.

”You must be G.o.dd.a.m.n nervous if you think that's funny.”

”I am,” he said ”You must be too, if you take a line like that seriously. But I tell you that you won't get hurt. I promise you that, Mike.”

”All right.”