Arthur Clarke - Firstborn

Bloom pointed out the sights, like a tour guide at the world’s fair. “The complex to your right is the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, who was Babylon’s greatest ruler. The Euphrates cuts the city in two, north to south. This eastern monumental sector is apparently a survival from Nebuchadnezzar’s time, a couple of centuries before Alexander. In fact this isn’t Alexander’s Babylon any more than it is ours, if you see what I mean. But the western bank, which had been residential, was a ruin, a time slice from a much later century, perhaps close to our own. Alexander has been restoring it for three decades now…”

The roads were crowded, with people rushing here and there, mostly on foot, some in carts or on horseback. Some wore purple robes as grand as Bloom’s, or grander, but others wore more practical tunics, with sandals and bare legs. One grand-looking fellow with a painted face proceeded down the street with an imperious nonchalance. He was leading an animal like a scrawny chimp by a rope attached to its neck. But then it straightened up, to stand erect on hind limbs very like human legs. It wore a kind of ruff of a shining cloth to hide the collar that enslaved it. Nobody Emeline could see wore anything like western clothes. They all seemed short, compact, muscular, dark, another sort of folk entirely compared to the population of nineteenth-century Chicago.

There was an air of tension here, she thought immediately. She was a Chicagoan, and used to cities, and to reading their moods.

And the more senior the figure, the more agitated and intent he seemed. Something was going on here. If they were aware of this, Bloom and Grove showed no signs of it.

The processional way led them through a series of broad walled plazas, and brought them at last to the pyramid-like structure that Emeline had glimpsed from outside the city. It was actually a ziggurat, a stepped tower of seven terraces rising from a base that must have been a hundred yards on a side.

Bloom said, “The Babylonians called this the Etemenanki, which means ‘the house that is the foundation of Heaven and Earth’…”

This ziggurat was, astonishingly, the Tower of Babel.

South of the tower was another tremendous monument, but this was very new, as Emeline could see from the gleam of its finish.

It was an immense square block, perhaps two hundred yards on a side and at least seventy tall. Its base was garlanded with the gilded prows of boats that stuck out of the stone as if emerging from mist, and on the walls rows of bright friezes told a complicated story of love and war. On top of the base stood two immense, booted feet, the roots of a statue that would some day be even more monumental than the base.

“I heard of this,” Grove said. “The Monument of the Son. It’s got nothing to do with Babylon. This is all Alexander…”

The Son in question had been Alexander’s second-born.

Through the chance of the Discontinuity the first son, by the captured wife of a defeated Persian general, had not been brought to Mir. The second was another Alexander, born to his wife Roxana, a Bactrian princess and another captive of war.

Bloom said, “The boy was born in the first year of Mir. We celebrated, for the King had an heir. But by the twenty-fifth year that heir, grown to be a man, was chafing, as was his ambitious mother, for Alexander refused to die.” The War of Father and Son raged across the empire, consuming its stretched resources. The son’s anger was no match for his father’s experience — or for Alexander’s own calm belief in his own divinity. The outcome was never in doubt. “The final defeat is remembered annually,” Bloom said.

“Tomorrow is the seventh anniversary, in fact.”

“Here’s the way I see it, Mrs. White,” Grove said. “That war made Alexander, already a rum cove, even more complicated. It’s said Alexander had a hand in the assassination of his own father. He was definitely responsible for the death of his son and heir — and his wife Roxana come to that. Now Alexander has become even more convinced that he’s nothing less than a god, destined to reign forever.”

“But he won’t,” Bloom murmured. “And we’ll all be heading for a mighty smash when he finally falls.”

South of the Monument of the Son they came at last to a temple Bloom called the Esagila— the Temple of Marduk, the national god of Babylonia. Here they clambered off the phaeton. Looking up, Emeline saw a dome planted on the temple’s roof, with a cylinder protruding from it like a cannon. It was an observatory, and the

“cannon” was a telescope, quite modern-looking.

A dark young man ran up to them. He wore a drab, monkish robe, and twisted his hands together.

“My God,” Grove said, coloring. “You must be Abdikadir Omar. You’re so like your father…”

“So I am told, sir. You are Captain Grove.” He glanced around the party. “But where is Josh White? Mr. Bloom, I wrote for Josh White.”

“I am his wife,” Emeline said firmly. “I’m afraid my husband died.”

“Died?” The boy was distracted and barely seemed to take that in. “Well — oh, you must come!” He headed back toward the temple. “Please, come with me, to the chamber of Marduk.”

“Why?” Emeline asked. “In your letter you spoke of the telephone ringing.”

“Not that.” He said, agitated, almost distressed with his tension. “ That was just the start. There has been more, more just today — you must come to see—”

Captain Grove asked, “See what, man?”

“She is here. The Eye — it came back — it flexed —she !” And Abdikadir broke away and sprinted back into the temple.

Bewildered, the travelers followed.

It wasn’t like waking. It was a sudden emergence, a clash of cymbals. Her eyes gaped wide open, and were filled with dazzling light.

She dragged deep breaths into her lungs, and gasped with the shock of selfhood.

She was lying on her back. Her breath was straining, her chest hurting. When she tried to move, her arms and legs were heavy.

Encased. She was trapped, somehow.

Her eyes were open, but she could see nothing.

Her breathing grew more rapid. Panicky. She could hear it, loud in an enclosed space. She was locked up inside something.

She forced herself to calm. She tried to speak, found her mouth crusted and dry, her voice a croak. “Myra?”

“I’m afraid Myra can’t hear you, Bisesa.” The voice was soft, male, but very quiet, a whisper.

Memories flooded back. “Suit Five?” The Pit on Mars. The Eye that had inverted. Her pulse thudded in her ears. “Is Myra okay?”

“I don’t know. I can’t contact her. I can’t contact anybody.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” the suit said miserably. “My primary power has failed. I am in minimum-functionality mode, operating on backup cells. Their expected operating life is—”

“Never mind.”

“I am broadcasting distress signals, of course.”

She heard something now, a kind of scratching at the carapace of the suit. Something was out there — or somebody. She was helpless, blind, locked in the inert suit, while something explored the exterior. Panic bubbled under the surface of her mind.

“Can I stand? I mean, can you?”

“I’m afraid not. I’ve let you down, haven’t I, Bisesa?”

“Can you let me see? Can you de-opaque my visor?”

“That is acceptable.”

Light washed into her field of view, dazzling her.

Looking up, she saw an Eye, a fat silvered sphere, swollen with mystery. And she saw her own reflection pasted on its face, a Mars suit on its back, a helplessly upended green bug.