Robert Silverberg: Getting to Know the Dragon

“Well, Pisander, what do you say? Has there ever been a building program like this in the history of the world?”

His face was shining. He is a very handsome man, is Demetrius Caesar, and in that moment, transfigured by his own megalomaniac scheme, he was a veritable Apollo. But a crazy one. What possible response could I have made to all that he had just poured forth? That I thought it was the wildest lunacy? That I very much doubted there was enough gold in all his father’s treasury to underwrite the cost of such an absurd enterprise? That we would all be long dead before these projects could be completed? The Emperor Lodovicus his father, when assigning me to the service of the Caesar Demetrius, had warned me of his volatile temper. A word placed wrongly and I might find myself hurled sprawling down the very steps up which I had just clambered with so much labor.

But I know how to manage things when speaking with royalty. Tactfully but not unctuously I said, “It is a project that inspires me with awe, Caesar. I am hard pressed to bring its equal to mind.”

“Exactly. There’s never been anything like it, has there? I’ll go down in history. Neither Alexander nor Sardanapalus nor Augustus Caesar himself ever attempted a public-works program of such ambitious size.—You, of course, will be the chief architect of the entire project, Pisander.”

If he had kicked me in the gut I would not have been more thoroughly taken aback.

I smothered a gasp and said, “I, Caesar? You do me too much honor. My primary field these days is historical scholarship, my lord. I’ve dabbled a bit in architecture, but I hardly regard myself as qualified to—”

“Well, I do. Spare me your false modesty, will you, Draco?” Suddenly he was calling me by my true name again. That seemed very significant. “Everyone knows just how capable a man you are. You hide behind this scholarly pose because you think it’s safer that way, I would imagine, but I’m well aware of your real abilities, and when I’m Emperor I mean to make the most of them. That’s the mark of a great Emperor, wouldn’t you say—to surround himself with men who are great themselves, and to inspire them to rise to their full potentiality? I do expect to be a great Emperor, you know, ten years from now, twenty, whenever it is that my turn comes. But I’m already beginning to pick out my key men. You’ll be one of them.” He winked at me. “See to it that that leg heals fast, Draco. I mean to start this project off by building the Tauromenium palace, which I want you to design for me, and that means that you and I are going to be scrambling around on the face of that cliff looking for the best possible site. I don’t want you on crutches when we do that.—Isn’t the mountain beautiful today, Pisander?”

In the space of three breaths I had become Pisander again.

He rolled up his scroll. I wondered if we were finally going to discuss the theater-renovation job. But then I realized that the Caesar, his mind inflamed by the full magnificence of his plan for transforming every major city of the island, was no more interested just now in talking about a petty thing like replacing the clogged drainage channel running down the hillside adjacent to this theater than a god would be in hearing about somebody’s personal health problems, his broken ankle, say, when his godlike intellect is absorbed with the task of designing some wondrous new plague with which he intends to destroy eleven million yellow-skinned inhabitants of far-off Khitai a little later in the month.

We admired the view together for a while, therefore. Then, when I sensed that I had been dismissed, I took my leave without bringing up the topic of the theater, and slowly and uncomfortably made my way down the steps again. Just as I reached the bottom I heard the Caesar call out to me. I feared for one dreadful moment that he was summoning me back and I would have to haul myself all the way up there a second time. But he simply wanted to wish me a good day. The Caesar Demetrius is insane, of course, but he’s not really vicious.

“The Emperor will never allow him to do it,” Spiculo said, as we sat late that night over our wine.

“He will. The Emperor grants his crazy son his every little wish. His every big one, too.”

Spiculo is my oldest friend, well named, a thorny little man. We are both Hispaniards; we went to school together in Tarraco; when I took up residence in Roma and entered the Emperor’s service, so did he. When the Emperor handed me off to his son, Spiculo followed me loyally to Sicilia, too. I trust him as I trust no other man. We utter the most flagrant treason to each other all the time.

“If he begins it, then,” said Spiculo, “he’ll never go through with anything. You know what he’s like. Six months after they break ground for the palace here, he’ll decide he’d rather get started on his Parthenon in Syracusae. He’ll erect three columns there and go off to Panormus. And then he’ll jump somewhere else a month after that.”

“So?” I said. “What business is that of mine? He’s the one who’ll look silly if that’s how he handles it, not me. I’m only the architect.”

His eyes widened. “What? You’re actually going to get involved in this thing, are you?”

“The Caesar has requested my services.”

“And are you so supine that you’ll simply do whatever he tells you to, however foolish it may be? Piss away the next five or ten years of your life on a demented young prince’s cockeyed scheme for burying this whole godforsaken island under mountains of marble? Get your name linked with his for all time to come as the facilitator of this lunatic affair?” His voice became a harsh mocking soprano. “‘Tiberius Ulpius Draco, the greatest man of science of the era, foolishly abandoned all his valuable scholarly research in order to devote the remaining years of his life to this ill-conceived series of preposterously grandiose projects, none of which was ever completed, and finally was found one morning, dead by his own hand, sprawled at the base of the unfinished Great Pyramid of Syracusae—’ No, Draco! Don’t do it! Just shake your head and walk away!”

“You speak as though I have any choice about it,” I said.

He stared at me. Then he rose and stomped across the patio toward the balcony. He is a cripple from birth, with a twisted left leg and a foot that points out to the side. My hunting accident angered him, because it caused me to limp as well, which directs additional attention to Spiculo’s own deformity as we hobble side by side through the streets, a grotesquely comical pair who might easily be thought to be on their way to a beggar’s convention.

For a long moment he stood scowling at me without speaking. It was a night of bright moonlight, brilliantly illuminating the villas of the wealthy all up and down the slopes of the Tauromenian hillside, and as the silence went on and on I found myself studying the triangular outlines of Spiculo’s form as it was limned from behind by the chilly white light: the broad burly shoulders tapering down to the narrow waist and the spindly legs, with the big out-jutting head planted defiantly atop. If I had had my sketchpad I would have begun to draw him. But of course I have drawn him many times before.

He said at last, very quietly, “You astound me, Draco. What do you mean, you don’t have any choice? Simply resign from his service and go back to Roma. The Emperor needs you there. He can find some other nursemaid for his idiot princeling. You don’t seriously think that Demetrius will have you thrown in jail if you decline to take on the job, do you? Or executed, or something?”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I want to take the job on.”

“Even though it’s a madman’s wet dream? Draco, have you gone crazy yourself? Is the Caesar’s lunacy contagious?”