Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

“Of course,” Abdikadir muttered. “The Babylonians kept careful records of the sky for millennia. They based their philosophy and religion on the great cycles in the sky. It’s a strange thought that a less advanced people mightn’t have been so terrified …”

But that first astronomical trauma, really perceptible only to a religious elite, was just the precursor. For at the end of that night the sun was late rising, by six hours or more. And by the time it did rise, a strange hot wind was washing over the city, and rain fell, hot salty rain of a type nobody had known before.

The people, many still dressed in their nightclothes, fled to the religious district. Some ran to the temples and demanded to be shown that their gods had not abandoned them on this, the strangest dawn of Babylon’s history. Others climbed the ziggurat, to see what other changes the night had brought. The King was away—it wasn’t clear to Bisesa whether the priest meant Nebuchadnezzar himself, or perhaps a successor—and there was nobody to impose order.

And then the first panicked reports came of the erasure of the western districts. Most of the city’s population had actually lived there; for the priests, ministers, court favorites and other dignitaries left on the eastern side, the shock was overwhelming.

The last vestiges of order quickly broke down. A mob had stormed the Temple of Marduk itself. As many as could force their way in had rushed to the innermost chamber, and when they saw what had become of Marduk himself, king of the ancient Babylonian gods—

The priest could not complete his sentence.

After that final shock, a rumor had swept through the city that the eastern half would be rubbed into dust as had the western. People flung open the gates and ran, screaming, out of the city and into the land beyond. Even government ministers, army commanders and the priests had gone, leaving only this poor wretch, who had huddled in his defiled temple.

Around mouthfuls of food the priest described the nights since, as he had heard looting, burning, drunken laughter, even screaming. But whenever he had dared to poke his head out of doors in the daylight he had seen nobody. It was clear that most of the population had vanished into the parched land beyond the cultivated fragment, there to die of thirst or starvation.

Eumenes ordered his men to clean up the priest and present him to the King. Then he said, “This priest says the old name of the city is ‘the gate of the Gods.’ How appropriate, for now that gate has opened … Come.” Eumenes strode forward.

The others hurried after him. Ruddy gasped, “Where are we going now?”

Bisesa said, “Why, to the Temple of Marduk, of course.”

The temple, another great pyramidal pile, was like a cross between a cathedral and an office building. Hurrying down corridors and climbing from level to level, Bisesa passed through a bewildering variety of rooms, each elaborately decorated, containing altars, statues, friezes, and obscure-looking equipment like crosiers, ornate knives, headdresses, musical instruments similar to lutes and sackbuts, even small carts and chariots. In some of the deeper rooms there were no windows, and the light came from oil lamps burning smokily in little alcoves in the walls. There was a powerful smell of incense, which de Morgan told her was frankincense. There was some evidence of minor damage: a door smashed off its heavy wooden hinges, broken pottery, a tapestry ripped off one wall.

Ruddy said, “More than one god is worshiped here, that’s for sure. This is a library of worship. More gaudy polytheism!”

De Morgan muttered, “I can barely make out the gods for the gold. Look at it—it’s everywhere …”

Bisesa said, “Once I visited Vatican City. It was like this—wealth plastered to every surface, so dense you could barely pick out details.”

“Yes,” Ruddy said. “And the same causes: the peculiar hold religion has on the mind of man—and the accumulation of wealth by an ancient empire.”

There was some evidence of looting, though: the smashed doors, a few sockets where gems might have been lodged. But it seemed to have been half-hearted.

Marduk’s own chamber was at the very apex of the complex. But it was ruined, and they stood at the doorway in shock.

Bisesa learned later that the great statue of Marduk that had stood here had consumed twenty tonnes of gold. The last time Eumenes had been in this temple the statue had gone: centuries before Alexander’s visit, the conqueror Xerxes had looted these buildings and had taken away the great golden statue. Well, the statue had been here— but it had been destroyed, melted to a puddle of gleaming slag on the floor. The walls had been reduced to bare brick, scorched by some intense heat; Bisesa saw ashen fragments, the remains of tapestry or carpet. Only the statue’s base remained, softened and rounded, with perhaps the faintest trace of two mighty feet.

And, hanging in the air at the center of the burned-out temple, mysterious, unsupported, perfect, was an Eye—immense, much bigger than any others they had seen, perhaps three meters across.

Josh whistled. “Abdi, you’re going to need a big bucket to dunk that.”

Bisesa walked toward the Eye. In the uncertain light from the oil lamps, she could see her own distorted reflection looming larger, as if the other Bisesa, contained in the Eye like a fish in a bowl, was swimming to the glass to see her. She felt no heat, no sign of the great energies that had gutted this chamber. She lifted her hand and held it close to the Eye. She felt as if she was pushing against some invisible but resilient barrier. The harder she pushed, the more she was repelled, and she felt a subtle sideways pull.

Josh and Abdikadir were both watching her with some concern. Josh came up to her. “Are you all right, Bis?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

“What?”

She looked into the sphere. “A—presence.”

Abdikadir said, “If this is the source of the electromagnetic signals we have been monitoring—”

“I can hear them now,” her phone whispered from her pocket.

“More than that,” she said. There was something here, she thought. An awareness—yes. Or at least a watchfulness, a huge cathedral-like watchfulness, which drew her up helplessly. But she didn’t even know how she knew this. She shook her head, and something of that mysterious sense of presence dissipated.

Eumenes’ face was like thunder. “So now we know how Babylon was destroyed.” To Bisesa’s astonishment he picked up a golden staff from the floor. He wielded it over his head like a club, bringing it down on the unresponsive hide of the Eye. The club was left bent over, the Eye unmarked. “Well, this arrogant god of the Eye may find Alexander, son of Zeus-Ammon, a tougher opponent than Marduk.” He turned to the moderns. “There is much to do. I will need your help and insight.”

Abdikadir said, “We should use the city as a base—”

“That much is obvious.”

“Move the army in. We have to think about the water supply, food. And we need to set up routines like fire watches, guard patrols, repair crews.”

Josh said, “If the residential half of the city has gone we’ve a lot of building to do.”

“I think we will all be under tents for a while yet,” Abdikadir said ruefully.

“We will send out scouts to map the countryside,” Eumenes said. “And we will coax the farmers from their mud huts—or we will take their farms and run them for them. I don’t know any more if it is summer or winter, but here in Babylonia we can grow crops all year round.” He gazed up at the impassive Eye. “Alexander was to make this his imperial capital. Well, so it will become—the capital of a new world, perhaps …”