Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

There was much debate about what to do with the region on the western bank, reduced to rubble by time. To the Macedonians it was a wasteland; to the moderns it was an archaeological site that could perhaps one day offer up some clues about the great displacement in time that had split this city in two. To leave it alone for now was the obvious compromise.

But downstream of the city walls, Alexander’s army had dug out a huge natural harbor, deep enough to take oceangoing ships, which were being constructed from local timber in hastily assembled dry docks. There was even a small lighthouse, illuminated by oil lamps with polished shields as mirrors behind them.

“This is magnificent,” Abdikadir said. They were standing on the new harbor’s wall, which towered over the small vessels that already ventured onto the water beneath it.

Eumenes said that Alexander knew that fast transport and effective communications were the key to holding together an empire. “The King learned that lesson the hard way,” Eumenes said dryly. In five years he had learned some halting English, Abdikadir some uncertain Greek; with a little cooperation they could communicate without interpreters now. Eumenes went on, “Alexander’s progress through Persia owed much to the quality of the imperial roads. When we reached the end of the Persian roads, far to the east, his infantrymen knew they could go no further, no matter what his vaulting ambition desired. And so we had to stop. But the ocean is the road of the gods, and requires no labor to lay it.”

“Even so, I can’t believe you’ve achieved so much so quickly …” Abdikadir, viewing all this industry, felt faintly guilty. Perhaps he had been away too long.

He had enjoyed his explorations. In India Abdikadir and his party had hacked a path through dense jungle, encountering all manner of exotic plants and animals—though few people. Similar expeditions were being sent out to east, west, north, south, across Europe, Asia, Africa. To map out this new and rich world seemed to fill a void in Abdikadir’s heart left by the loss of his own world—and the trauma of the great killing during the Mongol assault. Perhaps he was exploring the outer world in order to distract himself from the turmoil of the inner—and perhaps he had been evading his true responsibilities too long.

He turned away from the city and gazed toward the south, where the glistening tracks of irrigation canals lanced across fields of green. Here was the real work of the world: growing food. This was the Fertile Crescent, after all, the birthplace of organized agriculture, and once its artificially irrigated fields had provided a third of the food supply for the Persian empire. There surely couldn’t have been a better place to start farming again. But Abdikadir had already inspected the fields, and he knew that things weren’t going well.

“It is this wretched cold,” Eumenes complained. “The astronomers may call this midsummer, but I have known no summer like it … And then there are the locusts, and other plagues of insects.”

The recovery program was indeed impressive, even if it had been slow starting. The quest to save Babylon from the Mongols was long over, and there seemed no real prospect of a revival of the Mongol threat in the near future. Alexander’s ambassadors reported that the Mongols seem stunned by the sudden emptying of China, to their south—fifty million people, vanished into thin air. The war with the Mongols had been a great adventure—but it had been a diversion. With the battle won, there had been a deep sense of anticlimax among the British, Macedonians, and Little Bird crew alike, and everyone in Babylon was suddenly left to face the unpleasant truth that this was one campaign from which none of them was ever going home.

It had taken some time for them to discover a new purpose: to build a new world. And Alexander, with his energy and indomitable will, had been central to establishing that sense of purpose.

“And what is the King working on himself?”

“That.” Eumenes pointed grandly to the ceremonial heart of the city.

Abdikadir saw that a broad area had been cleared, and the lower levels of what looked like a new ziggurat had been laid out. He whistled. “That looks like it will rival Babel itself.”

“Perhaps it will. Nominally, it is a monument for Hephaistion; its deeper purpose will be to commemorate the world we have lost. These Macedonians always did treasure their funerary arts! And Alexander, I think, has an ambition to rival the massive tombs he once saw in Egypt. But with things as they are in the fields, it is hard for us to afford the manpower for such a venture, no matter how magnificent.”

Abdikadir studied the Greek’s finely chiseled face. “I have a feeling you’re asking me for something.”

Eumenes smiled. “And I have a feeling you have a little Greek in you too. Abdikadir, although the King’s wife Roxana delivered a son—a boy who is now four years old—so that we have an heir, Alexander’s continued well-being over the next few years is essential to us all.”

“Of course.”

“But this ,” Eumenes said, meaning the dockyards and fields, “is not enough for him. The King is a complex man, Abdikadir. I should know. He is a Macedonian, of course—and he drinks like one. But he is capable of cold calculation, like a Persian; and he can be a statesman of startling insight—he is like a Greek of the cities!

“But for all his wisdom, Alexander has the heart of a warrior, and there is a tension between his warmongering instincts and his will to build an empire. I don’t think he always understands that himself. He was born to fight men, not locusts in a field, or silt in a canal. Let’s face it, there are few men to be found out there to fight!” The Greek leaned toward Abdikadir. “The truth is, the running of Babylonia has devolved to a handful of those close to him. There is myself, Perdiccas, and Captain Grove.” Perdiccas was one of Alexander’s long-serving officers, and among his closest associates; Perdiccas, a commander of the Foot Companion infantrymen, had been formally given the title Hephaistion had enjoyed before his death, which meant something like “Vizier.” Eumenes winked. “They need my Greek cleverness, you see, but I need Macedonians to work through. Of course we each have our own followers—especially Perdiccas! There are cliques and conspiracies, as there always have been. But as long as Alexander towers over us, we work together well enough. We all need Alexander; New Babylon needs its King. But—”

“It doesn’t need him hanging around here with nothing to do, soaking up manpower on monuments while there are fields to be tilled.” Abdikadir grinned. “You want me to distract him?”

Eumenes said smoothly, “I wouldn’t put it like that. But Alexander has expressed curiosity to know if the greater world you described to us is still there to be had. And I think he wants to visit his father.”

“His father?”

“His divine father, Ammon, who is also Zeus, at his shrine in the desert.”

Abdikadir whistled. “That would be quite a tour.”

Eumenes smiled. “All the better. There is the question of Bisesa, too.”

“I know. She’s still locked away with that damn Eye.”

“I’m sure it’s invaluable work. But we don’t want to lose her to it: you moderns are too few to spare. Take her with you.” Eumenes smiled. “I hear that Josh is back from Judea. Perhaps he might distract her …”

“You’re a wily devil, Secretary Eumenes.”

“One does what one must,” said Eumenes. “Come. I’ll show you round the shipyards.”

The temple chamber was a rat’s nest of cables and wires and bits of kit from the crashed chopper, some of them scarred where they had been crudely cut from the wreck, or even scorched by the fires that had followed the crash. This tangle enclosed the Eye, as if Bisesa had been seeking to trap it, not study it. But she knew that Abdikadir thought it was she who had become trapped.