Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

“Just thinking of home.”

She nodded. “None of us talks much about home, do we?”

“Perhaps it’s too painful.”

“Tell me anyhow, Josh. Tell me about your family.”

“As a journalist I’m following my father. He covered the War between the States.” Which was, Bisesa reflected, only twenty years in the past for Josh. “He took a bullet in the hip. Eventually got infected—took him a couple of years to die. I was only seven,” Josh whispered. “I asked him why he had become a journalist, rather than go fight. He said that somebody has to watch, to tell others. Otherwise it’s as if it never really happened at all. Well, I believed him, and followed in his footsteps. Sometimes I resented the fact that the pattern of my life was somewhat fixed before I was born. But I suppose that’s not uncommon.”

“Ask Alexander.”

“Yeah … My mother is still alive. Or was. I wish I could tell her I’m safe.”

“Maybe she knows, somehow.”

“Bis, I know who you would be with, if—”

“My little girl,” Bisesa said.

“You never told me about her father.”

She shrugged. “A good-looking bum from my regiment—think of Casey without the charm and sense of personal hygiene—we had a fling, and I got careless. Drunkenness, against which there is no prophylactic. When Myra was born, Mike was—confused. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I didn’t care by then. I wanted her, not him .And then he got himself killed anyhow.” She felt her eyes prickle; she pressed the heel of her palm into their sockets. “I was away from home for months at a time. I knew I wasn’t spending enough time with Myra. I always promised myself I’d do better, but could never get my life together. Now I’m stuck here, and I have to deal with Genghis fucking Khan, when all I want is to go home.”

Josh cupped her face with his hand. “None of us wants this,” he said. “But at least we have each other. And if I die tomorrow—Bis, do you believe that we will come back? That if there is some new chopping-up of time, we will live again?”

“No. Oh, there may be another Bisesa Dutt. But it won’t be me.”

“Then this moment is all we have,” he whispered.

After that it seemed inevitable. Their lips met, their teeth touched, and she pulled him under her blanket, ripping at his clothes. He was gentle—and fumbling, a near-virgin—but he came to her with a desperate, needy passion, which found an echo in herself.

She immersed herself in the ancient liquid warmth of the moment.

But when it was over she thought of Myra, and probed at her guilt, like a broken tooth. She found only emptiness inside, like a space where Myra had once been, and was now vanished for good.

And she was always aware of the Eye, hovering above them both balefully, and the reflections of herself and Josh like insects pinned to its glistening hide.

At the end of the day Alexander, having completed his sacrifices in advance of the battle, gave orders that his army should be assembled. The tens of thousands of them drew up in their squads before the walls of Babylon, their tunics bright and shields polished, their horses whinnying and bucking. The few hundred British, too, were drawn up by Grove in parade order, their khaki and red serge proud, their arms presented.

Alexander mounted his horse and rode before his army, haranguing them with a strong, clear voice that echoed from Babylon’s walls. Bisesa would never have guessed at the wounds he carried. She couldn’t follow his words, but there was no mistaking the response: the rattle of tens of thousands of swords against shields, and the Macedonians’ ferocious battle cry: “Alalalalai!Al-e-han-dreh! Al-e-han-dreh! …”

Then Alexander rode to the small section of British. Holding his horse steady with his hand wrapped in its mane, he spoke again—but in English. His voice was heavily accented, but his words were easily comprehensible. He talked of Ahmed Khel and Maiwand, battles of the British Empire’s Second Afghan War that loomed large in the barrack-room mythology of these troops, and the memory of some of them. And Alexander said: “From this day to the ending of the world, but in it we shall be remembered; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother …”

The Europeans and sepoys alike cheered as loud as any Macedonian. Casey Othic bellowed, “Heard! Acknowledged! Understood!”

When the parade broke up Bisesa sought out Ruddy. He was standing on the platform of the Ishtar gate, looking out over the plain, where the fires of the soldiers’ camp were already alight under a darkling slate-gray sky. He was smoking, one of his last Turkish cigarettes—saved for the occasion, he said.

“Shakespeare, Ruddy?”

“ Henry V, to be exact.” He was puffed up, visibly proud of himself. “Alexander heard I was something of a wordsmith. So he called me to the palace to concoct a short address for him to deliver to our Tommies. Rather than something of my own, I turned to the Bard—and what could be more fitting? And besides,” he said, “as the old boy probably never even existed in this new universe he can hardly sue for plagiarism!”

“You’re quite a package, Ruddy.”

As the light faded, the soldiers had begun singing. The Macedonian songs were the usual mournful dirges about home and lost loved ones. But tonight Bisesa heard English words, an oddly familiar refrain.

Ruddy smiled. “Do you recognize it? It’s a hymn—‘Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven.’ Given our situation, I think one of those Tommies has a sense of humor! Listen to the last verse …”

“Angels, help us to adore Him / Ye behold Him face to face; / Sun and Moon, bow down before Him / Dwellers all in Time and Space. / Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise Him! / Praise with us the God of grace …”

As they sang, the accents of London, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool and the Punjab merged into one.

But a soft wind blew from the east, wafting the smoke of the fires over the walls of the city. When Bisesa looked that way she saw that the Eyes had returned, dozens of them, hovering expectantly over the fields of Babylonia.

The dust: that was what Josh saw first, a great cloud of it kicked up by racing hooves.

It was about midday. For once it was a clear, bright day, and the rolling bank of dust, perhaps half a kilometer wide, was filled with smoky light, elusive shapes. Then, in Josh’s clear view, they emerged from the dusty glow, shadows at first, coalescing into figures of stocky menace. They were Mongol warriors, identifiable at a glance.

Despite all that had happened to him Josh had found it hard to believe that a Mongol horde, under the control of Genghis Khan himself, was really and truly approaching, intent on killing him. And yet it was so; he could see it with his own eyes. He felt his heart beat faster.

He was sitting in a cramped guard position on the Ishtar gate, looking out over the plain to the east, toward the Mongol advance. With him were Macedonians and a couple of British. The British had decent pairs of binoculars, Swiss-made. Grove had impressed on them the importance of keeping the lenses shielded: they had no idea how much information Genghis Khan had about their situation here in Babylon, but Sable Jones would surely understand the significance of a glinting reflection. The best-equipped of all was Josh, though, for Abdikadir—who had gone off to fight—had bequeathed him his precious NODs, the farsighted night-vision glasses that one wore like goggles.

At the first glimpse of the Mongols, among Macedonians and British observers alike there was an air of tension, and yet of excitement, a palpable thrill. On the next gate, Josh thought he saw the brightly colored chestplate of Alexander himself, come to view this first clash.