Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

Why did he go on? Some said he was a god in mortal flesh, and the ambitions of gods transcended those of men. Some said that he sought to ape the achievements of the great hero Achilles. There was curiosity too; a man who had been tutored by Aristotle could not help but grow up with a deep desire to know the world. But Eumenes suspected the truth was simpler. This King was his illustrious father’s creation, and it was no wonder that the new King had wanted to eclipse his father’s very ambitions, and so to prove himself the greater man.

At last, at the river Beas, the troops, exhausted from years of campaigning, had rebelled, and even the god-king could go no further. Eumenes believed that the men’s gut wisdom was sound. Enough was enough; they would do well to hold what had already been taken.

Besides, on a deep level of his sophisticated mind, Eumenes was subtly calculating his own advantage. He had always faced rivalries in the court: the Macedonian contempt for the Greek, the fighting man’s derision of mere “scribes,” and Eumenes’ very competence were enough to make him many enemies. Hephaistion particularly was notoriously jealous of anybody who had his lover’s confidence. Often the tensions among the King’s companions could be lethal. But Eumenes had survived—and he was not without his own ambitions. As the emphasis of the King’s reign turned from conquest to political and economic consolidation, Eumenes’ more subtle skills might find greater purchase, and he intended to be well placed to advance his own position beyond that of a mere Secretary.

After that reverse at the Beas, the King still had one grand ambition, though. Still deep in India, he built an immense fleet to be sailed down the Indus and then along the coast of the Persian Gulf, intending to establish a new trade route that might further unify his empire. He had split his forces: Hephaistion was to take the fleet to the mouth of the delta, followed by the baggage train and the King’s prized elephants; Eumenes and his staff had traveled with the fleet. The King himself stayed behind to campaign against rebellious tribesmen in his new Indian province.

All had gone well, until the King had taken on a people called the Malloi, and their fortress city of Multan. The King, with typical daring, had led the attack himself—but he had taken an arrow in the chest. The last dispatch Hephaistion had received had reported that the wounded King was to be placed on a ship and floated down the river to join the rest of the fleet, while his army followed later.

But that had been days ago. It was as if the world-conquering army upriver had utterly disappeared. And the sky had been full of unimaginably strange portents; some of the men muttered that they had seen the sun itself lurch across the sky. Such strange signs could only signify a huge and terrible event—and what could that be but the death of the god-king? Eumenes believed more in hard fact than any number of omens, but it was hard for him to decipher this information, or rather the lack of it, and unease grew steadily.

Still, the unrelenting routine of running the army was a distraction from the greater uncertainty of the situation. Eumenes and Hephaistion had to deal with contentious issues that could not be resolved at lower levels of the bureaucracy. Today they turned to the case of a commander of a division of Foot Companions who, on discovering his favorite prostitute in the bed of a fellow officer, had lopped off the man’s nose with his dagger.

“It’s a nasty little case,” said Eumenes, “which sets a bad example.”

“But it’s more complicated than that. This is a shameful act.” So it was; such disfiguring had been meted out, on the King’s orders, for example to an assassin of the defeated Darius, Great King of Persia. “And I know these men,” Hephaistion went on. “Rumor has it they were lovers too! Somehow this girl has come between them, perhaps hoping to profit by turning one against another.” He rubbed his long nose. “Who is the girl, by the by?”

It was a good question. It wasn’t impossible for members of resentful, defeated peoples to work their way into the command structure of the King’s army, to do as much damage as they could. Eumenes riffled through his scrolls.

But before he could find the answer Hephaistion’s usher came bustling in. “Sir! You must come … The strangest thing, the strangest people—”

Hephaistion snapped, “Is it news of the King?”

“I don’t know, sir. Oh, come, come!”

Hephaistion and Eumenes glanced at each other. Then they stood, carelessly toppling the table with its scrolls, and hurried out. Hephaistion snatched up his sword on the way.

Bisesa and de Morgan were brought to a grander collection of tents, though no less mud-spattered than the rest. Severe-looking guards armed with spears and stabbing swords stood at the entrance, glaring at them. Bisesa’s escort stepped forward and began to jabber in his fast Greek. One of the guards nodded curtly, stepped into the first tent and spoke to somebody within.

De Morgan was tense, edgy, excited—a state he got into, Bisesa had learned, when he sensed opportunity. She tried to keep herself calm.

More guards, in subtly different uniforms, came pouring out of the tent. They surrounded Bisesa and the others, their swords pointed at the travelers’ bellies. Then out came two figures, obviously more senior; they wore military-looking tunics and cloaks, but their clothes were clean. One of these commanders, the younger, came pushing through the guards. He had a broad face, a long nose, short dark hair. He looked them up and down and peered up into their faces—like his troops he was shorter than any of the moderns. He seemed tense, gaunt, unhappy to Bisesa, but his body language was so alien it was hard to be sure.

He stood before de Morgan and yelled in his face. De Morgan quailed, flinching from the rain of spittle, and stammered a reply.

Bisesa hissed, “What does he want?”

De Morgan frowned, concentrating. “To know who we are … I think. His accent is thick. His name is Hephaistion. I asked him to slow down. I said my Greek was poor—and so it is; the stuff I was taught to parrot at Winchester wasn’t much like this. ”

Now the other commander stepped forward. He was evidently older, bald save for a frosting of silver hair, and his face was softer, narrow—shrewd, Bisesa thought. He put his hand on Hephaistion’s shoulder, and spoke to de Morgan in more measured tones.

De Morgan’s face lit up. “Oh, thank God—a genuine Greek! His tongue is archaic but at least he can speak it properly, unlike these Macedonians …”

So, with a double translation through de Morgan and the older man, who was called Eumenes, Bisesa was able to make herself understood. She gave their names and pointed back up the valley of the Indus. “We are with an army detachment,” she said. “Far up the valley …”

“If that is true we should have encountered you before,” snapped Eumenes.

She didn’t know what to say. Nothing in her life had prepared her for an incident like this. Everything was strange, everything about these people from the depths of time. They were short, grimy, vigorous, powerfully muscled—they seemed closer to the animal than the human. She wondered how they saw her .

Eumenes stepped forward. He walked around Bisesa, fingering the fabric of her clothes. His fingers lingered over the butt of Bisesa’s pistol, and she tensed; but happily he left it alone. “Nothing about you is familiar.”

“But everything is different now.” She pointed to the sky. “You must have seen it. The sun, the weather. Nothing is as it was before. We have been brought on a journey against our will, without our understanding. As have you. And yet we have been brought together. Perhaps we can—help each other.”