Sean Gabb: The Break

This was the following day—or the day after that—and the two ambassadors had been allowed to wash themselves under a jet of water and given clean orange clothes. They now stood beside a vehicle of black and shiny metal that had arrived beside them with no apparent human or animal force to move it. The director of this vehicle was a young black man, who stood before them in clothes similar to, though less creased than, the ones that Jessup had put on. He grinned at them and chewed endlessly on something that he neither swallowed nor added to.

Simeon gave a little speech of thanks. Jessup said, when he’d finished interpreting, that it was a model of grace and clarity, though it had obviously gone on too long for the officials who stood away from the group and kept staring at the bracelets on their left wrists. Jessup ignored every hint to hurry things along. “Your driver has no Latin, let alone Greek,” he said with a nod at the young man. “But you will be met in London by men of greater learning than I. They will be able to speak fluently with you in your own language.” He paused and looked through his lenses before polishing them again. “They will ask you many questions that you may find unusual. Take my advice and answer truthfully. They know many things about your world that will surprise you.” He stood forward and shook hands with Simeon and then with Michael. “God go with you,” he said with a final tone. “If I can ever be of genuine service to you, I promise that I will do whatever I must.” With that, he nodded to the young man, who opened one of the back doors in the vehicle.

Michael leaned closer to the darkened window of the vehicle and looked out again at scenery that was flashing past at inconceivable speed. In Constantinople, Simeon had got an ancient map of Britain dug out of the archives. It was copied from an original that had been made when Britain was still a province of the Empire. This had told them that Dover was about eighty Roman miles from London. Assuming two, or possibly three, days on the road, Simeon had tried to ask about warmer clothing for the nights. At this speed, however, they would surely be in London before dark. Michael could see that the width of this long and straight road wasn’t far off that of the great Hippodrome in Constantinople. Despite this, he’d so far seen no more than a few dozen vehicles of the same kind as the one in which he was travelling. On each edge of the road, there was a long stream of much slower traffic—people walking about their business, and carts pulled mostly by people or sometimes by horses or other beasts of burden. For all it made a thin stream on this immensely wide road, it was a stream that would easily have blocked any road in the Empire.

Further evidence for the great wealth of this country could be seen in the fields. Every piece of England appeared to be under cultivation. Every piece that he saw was filled with gangs of men—and possibly also of women—hard at work. Once, when the car was slowed by a spilling of foot travellers across this lane of the road, he’d caught sight of a man trussed up in a field for flogging. Other men had been dancing round the unfortunate, throwing their arms in the air. A useful thing to have seen. That, plus the size of the fields, suggested this was a slave society on the ancient pattern. The free peasantry of the Empire tended much smaller and narrower fields.

“What do you suppose the population is of this country?” he asked. Simeon opened his eyes and looked past Michael out of the left window. Together, they watched as the vehicle caught up with a group of what looked like the Norman poor. A large wooden cross carried before them, they were trudging slowly in the direction of London. They were no sooner seen than the vehicle was past them, and was approaching a bridge across the road that was suspended in ways that would have excited any engineer.

“You know of the report, made three years ago,” Simeon answered, his voice carefully neutral, “that described this whole island as a desolation of ruins and barbarian settlements. Yet many of these structures have a solidity that suggests decades or even centuries of endurance. How long do you think it took to build even this road? A hundred years? Two hundred?” He sat back and closed his eyes again. Though sealed, this vehicle was noticeably cooler than the air outside. Yet Simeon’s clothing was wet through. It must be the start of a fever. But he made an effort and sat up. “Your mind has always been fertile of hypotheses,” he said with a little smile. “Would you care to explain what we are seeing in terms of human reason? Or will you join me in supposing it is all one Act of God for a purpose that is yet to be revealed?”

Michael’s attention was drawn by a renewal of the driver’s rhythmical grunting. Once out of Dover, the young man had put on a pair of ear plugs joined by a thin cord. They conveyed a buzzing sound of drums and what may have been stringed instruments. Since he appeared to know only his own language, there was nothing lost by the absence of any ability to communicate with him. But Michael was interested by the motions of his feet and hands. However it was that the vehicle was propelled, the workings of its guiding wheel were comprehensible. The pedals spoke of some braking and gearing system. Assuming it might one day be required, could Michael direct one of these vehicles by himself?

The pilot of their boat had spoken grandly of magic. Until now, apart from the usual prayers that kept him half the night from his bed, Simeon had refrained from comment. From the first encounter, Michael had set aside any thoughts of the supernatural. So far as he could tell, these people ranged between the moderately intelligent and the slow-witted. There was an impenetrable mystery in how they had so far evaded the notice even of visitors to their island. An equal mystery was how a people of such manifestly low grade could have acquired these machines and facility in their use. It was plain that no answer would come from asking. But it was for what the Emperor himself had called “an unusual quickness of the intellect” that the seniority rules had been set aside for Michael’s advancement. He’d observe. He’d remember. He’d hypothesise. Sooner or later would come a degree of understanding. It always had so far.

“This must be the centre of London,” Michael insisted for the third or fourth time since coming off the big road. Each time he had insisted, though, they’d continued through an endless network of streets overshadowed by high buildings and crowded with people and carts drawn in various ways. You could take the whole of Constantinople and Baghdad—and Alexandria and Rome as well—and drop them into the suburbs alone of this megalopolis, and they’d all be lost within it.

Simeon looked out of the window at a river crowded with barges and other shipping. “A big city indeed, if it needs so many bridges,” he observed. “But look at the air outside. Either London is covered in brown fog, or these people burn more coal every day than we do in a year.” He smiled wearily and turned from the window. He looked at Michael and sat up straight, all weariness gone. “Michael, are you all right?” he asked with urgent concern. Michael wasn’t. The blackness that he’d hoped would never return was passing over him in waves of increasing power. He tried to sit up and smile. But his teeth chattered, and he began to shake. He pressed his teeth together and closed his eyes. He tried to relax all the muscles that had gone tight in his upper body.

“Not here—not now!” he told himself with furious intensity. There was no epilepsy in the family, everyone had agreed the year before, when Michael went into his two days of nearly continuous seizures. Whatever his other merits, you can’t have an Imperial envoy subject to epileptic fits, and the family had conspired to cover things up with a story about a chill brought on by swimming in an unheated pool. Then, as quickly and inexplicably as they’d come on, the seizures had gone away. “It happens,” was the best explanation anyone had found. This was from the old servant whose job it had been to sponge cold water over Michael while he’d raved in a dozen unknown languages. “It happens,” was all the man had been willing to say when Michael asked about the dreams he’d reported in the intervals between his raving—dreams that had passed out of his memory even as the force of the seizures relaxed. If the driver stopped listening to his drum music, and looked round, he’d see a Michael unfit for any of the trust reposed in him by the Emperor. It wouldn’t do! he screamed inside his head. Simeon squeezing his hand, and helping to keep his body from rocking out of control, Michael held his breath and tried to focus his mind on the beat of the driver’s music.