gold against our avarice, buying us inch by inch until we have sold ourselves

  entirely. We are a shrewd folk, but they are much shrewder, and they will bind

  us in silken knots, and one day we will find that we are altogether owned by

  Greek traders and Greek usurers and Greek ship-owners. It is what the Hebrews

  would have done to us, if they were more numerous and more powerful; but the

  Greeks have an entire empire behind them. Or half an empire, at least." His face

  was suddenly aflame with that extraordinary animation and excitability, to the

  point almost of frenzy, that rose in him so easily. He clapped his hand down on

  mine. "But it will not be. I will not allow it, good Corbulo! I will destroy

  them before they can ruin us. Tell that to your Emperor, if you like: Mahmud son

  of Abdallah will take his stand here before the Greeks who would steal this

  land, ad he will march on them, and he will drive them back to Byzantium."

  It was a stunning moment. He had told me on the very first day that he intended

  to bring Arabia under the rule of a single god and of a single invincible king;

  and now I knew who he expected that invincible king to be.

  I was put in mind of Nicomedes' mocking words of the week before: Consorting

  with madmen, are you, now, Corbulo?

  This sudden outburst of Mahmud's as we sat quietly together at my table did

  indeed have the pure ring of madness about it. That an obscure merchant of this

  desert land should also be a mystic and a dreamer was unusual enough; but now,

  as though drawing back a veil, he had revealed to me the tumultuous presence of

  a warrior-king within his breast as well. It was too much. Neither Alexander of

  Macedon nor Julius Caesar nor the Emperor Constantinus the Great had laid claim

  to holding so many selves within a single soul, and how could Mahmud the son of

  Abdallah?

  A moment later he had subsided again, and all was as calm as it had been just

  minutes before.

  There was a flask of wine on the table near my elbow, a good thick Tunisian that

  I had bought in the marketplace the day before. I poured myself some now to ease

  the thunder that Mahmud's wild speech had engendered in my forehead. He smiled

  and tapped the flask and said, "I have never understood the point of that stuff,

  do you know? It seems a waste of good grapes to make it into wine."

  "Well, opinions differ on that," said I. "But who's to say who's right? Let

  those who like wine drink it, and the rest can leave it alone." I raised my

  glass to him. "This is really excellent, though. Are you sure you won't try even

  a sip?"

  He looked at me as though I had offered him a cup of venom. He will never be a

  drinker, I guess, will Mahmud son of Abdallah, and so be it. Yea and verily,

  Horatius, it leaves that much more for the likes of thee and me.

  "And how is your friend Mahmud?" asked Nicomedes the Paphlagonian, the next time

  he and I dined together. "Does he have you bowing down to Allah yet?"

  "I am not made for bowing before gods, I think," I told him. And then, warily:

  "He seems a little troubled about the presence of you people down here."

  "Thinks we're going to attempt a takeover, does he? He should know better than

  that. If Augustus and Trajan couldn't manage to invade this place successfully,

  why does he think a sensible monarch like Maurice Tiberius would try it?"

  "Not a military invasion, Nicomedes. Commercial infiltration is what he fears."

  Nicomedes looked unperturbed. "He shouldn't. I'd never try to deny to anybody,

  Corbulo, that we're looking to increase the quantity of business we do here. But

  why should that matter to the likes of Mahmud? We won't cut into his slice of

  the pie. We'll just make the pie bigger for everybody. You know the thing the

  Phoenicians say -- 'A rising tide lifts all boats.'"

  "Don't they teach rhetoric in Greek schools anymore?" I asked. "Pies? Boats?

  You're mixing your metaphors there, I'd say. And Arabia doesn't have any boats

  for the tide to raise, or any tides either, for that matter."

  "You know what I mean. Tell Mahmud not to worry. Our plans for expansion of

  trade with Arabia will only be good for everyone involved, and that includes the

  merchants of Mecca. -- Maybe I should have a little talk with him myself, eh?

  He's an excitable sort. I might be able to calm him down."

  "Perhaps it would be best to leave him to me," I said.

  It was in that moment, Horatius, that I saw where the true crux of the situation

  lay, and who the true enemy of the Empire is.

  The Emperor Julian need not fret over anything that the Greeks might plan to do

  here. The Greek incursion into Arabia Deserta was only to be expected. Greeks

  are businessmen by second nature; Arabia, though it is outside the Empire, lies

  within the natural Eastern sphere of influence; they would have come down here

  sooner or later, and, well, here they are. If they intend to try to build

  stronger trade connections with these desert folk, we have no reason to get

  upset about that, nor is there the slightest thing that the West can do about

  it. As Nicomedes has said, the East already controls Aiguptos and Syria and

  Libya and a lot of other such places that produce goods we need, and we don't

  suffer thereby. It really is a single empire, in that sense. The Greeks won't

  push up prices on Eastern commodities to us for fear that we'll do the same

  thing to them with the tin and copper and iron and timber that flow to them out

  of the West.

  No. The soft and citified Greeks are no menace to us. The real peril here comes

  from the desert prince, Mahmud son of Abdallah.

  One god, he says. One Arabian people under one king. And he says, concerning the

  Greeks, I will destroy them before they can ruin us.

  He means it. And perhaps he can do it. Nobody has ever unified these Saracens

  under a single man's rule before, but I think they have never had anyone like

  Mahmud among them before, either. I had a sudden vision of him, dear Horatius,

  as I sat there at Nicomedes's nicely laden table: Mahmud with eyes of fire and a

  gleaming sword held high, leading Saracen warriors northward out of Arabia into

  Syria. Palaestina and Mesopotamia, spreading the message of the One God as he

  comes and driving the panicky Greeks before his oncoming hordes. The eager

  peasantry embracing the new creed everywhere: who can resist Mahmud's persuasive

  tongue, especially when it is backed by the blades of his ever more numerous

  followers? Onward, then, into Armenia and Cappadocia and Persia, and then there

  will come a swing westward as well into Aiguptos and Libya. The warriors of

  Allah everywhere, inflaming the souls of men with the new belief, the new love

  of virtue and honor. The wealth of the temples of the false gods divided among

  the people. Whole legions of idle parasitic priests butchered like cattle as the

  superstitions are put to rout. The golden statues of the nonexistent gods melted

  down. A new commonwealth proclaimed in the world, founded on prayer and sacred

  law.

  Mahmud can say that he has the true god behind him. His eloquence makes you

  believe it. We of the Empire have only the statues of our gods, and no one of

  any intelligence has taken those gods seriously for hundreds of years. How can

  we withstand the fiery onslaught of the new faith? It will roll down upon us

  like the lava of Vesuvius.

  "You take this much too seriously," said Nicomedes the Paphlagonian, when, much

  later in the evening and after too many more flasks of wine, I confided my fears

  to him. "Perhaps you should cover your head when you go out of doors at midday,

  Corbulo. The sun of Arabia is very strong, and it can do great injury to the

  mind."

  No, Horatius. I am right and he is wrong. Once they are launched, the legions of

  Allah will not be checked until they have marched on through Italia and Gallia

  and Britannia to the far shores of the Ocean Sea, and all the world is Mahmud's.

  It shall not be.

  I will save the world from him, Horatius, and perhaps in so doing I will save

  myself.

  Mecca is, of course, a sanctuary city. No man may lift his hand against another

  within its precincts, under pain of the most awful penalties.

  Umar the idol-maker, who served in the temple of the goddess Uzza, understood

  that. I came to Umar in his workshop, where he sat turning out big-breasted

  figurines of Uzza, who is the Venus of the Saracens, and bought from him for a

  handful of coppers a fine little statuette carved from black stone that I hope

  to show you one of these days, and then I put a gold piece of Justinian's time

  before him and told him what I wanted done; and his only response was to tap his

  finger two times against Justinian's nose. Not understanding his meaning, I

  merely frowned.

  "This man of whom you speak is my enemy and the enemy of all who love the gods,"

  said Umar the idol-maker, "and I would kill him for you for three copper coins

  if I did not have a family to support. But the work will involve me in travel,

  and that is expensive. It cannot be done in Mecca, you know." And he tapped the

  nose of Justinian a second time. This time I understood, and I laid a second

  gold piece beside the first one, and the idol-maker smiled.

  Twelve days ago Mahmud left Mecca on one of his business trips into the lands to

  the east. He has not returned. He has met with some accident, I fear, in those

  sandy wastes, and by now the drifting dunes have probably hidden his body

  forever.

  Umar the idol-maker appears to have disappeared also. The talk around town is

  that he went out into the desert to collect the black stone that he carves his

  idols from, and some fellow craftsman with whom he was feuding followed him to

  the quarry. I think you will agree with me, Horatius, that this was a wise thing

  to arrange. The disappearance of a well-known man like Mahmud will probably

  engender some inquiries that could ultimately have led in embarrassing

  directions, but no one except the wife of Umar will care about the vanishing of

  Umar the idol-maker.

  All of this strikes me as highly regrettable, of course. But it was absolutely

  necessary.

  "He's almost certainly dead by this time," Nicomedes said last night. We still

  dine together frequently. "How very sad, Corbulo. He was an interesting man."

  "A very great one, in his way. If he had lived, I think he would have changed

  the world."

  "I doubt that very much," said Nicomedes, in his airy, ever-skeptical Greek way.

  "But we'll never know, will we?"

  "We'll never know," I agreed. I raised my glass. "To Mahmud, poor devil."

  "To Mahmud, yes."

  And there you have the whole sad story. Go to the Emperor, Horatius. Tell him

  what I've done. Place it in its full context, against the grand sweep of

  Imperial history past and present and especially future. Speak to him of

  Hannibal, of Vercingetorix, of Attila, of all our great enemies of days gone by,

  and tell him that I have snuffed out in its earliest stages a threat to Roma far

  more frightening than any of those. Make him understand, if you can, the

  significance of my deed.

  Tell him, Horatius. Tell him that I have saved all the world from conquest: that

  I have done for him a thing that was utterly essential to do, something which no

  one else at all could have achieved on his behalf, for who would have had the

  foresight to see the shape of things to come as I was able to see them? Tell him

  that.

  Above all else, tell him to bring me home. I have dwelled amidst the sands of

  Arabia long enough. My work is done; I beg for surcease from the dreariness of

  the desert, the infernal heat, the loneliness of my life here. This is no place

  for a hero of the Empire.

  ======================

  A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING

  by Robert Silverberg

  ======================

  Copyright (c)First Published in Playboy Magazine, 1989

  Fictionwise Contemporary

  Science Fiction and Fantasy

  ---------------------------------

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  "Channeling?" I said. "For Christ's sake, Joe! You brought me all the way down here for dumb bullshit like that?"

  "This isn't channeling," Joe said.

  "The kid who drove me from the airport said you've got a machine that can talk with dead people."

  A slow, angry flush spread across Joe's face. He's a small, compact man with very glossy skin and very sharp features, and when he's annoyed he inflates like a puff-adder.

  "He shouldn't have said that."

  "Is that what you're doing here?" I asked. "Some sort of channeling experiments?"

  "Forget that shithead word, will you, Mike?" Joe sounded impatient and irritable. But there was an odd fluttery look in his eye, conveying -- what? Uncertainty? Vulnerability? Those were traits I hadn't ever associated with Joe Hedley, not in the thirty years we'd known each other. "We aren't sure what the fuck we're doing here," he said. "We thought maybe you could tell us."

  "Me?"

  "You, yes. Here, put the helmet on. Come on, put it on, Mike. Put it on. Please."

  I stared. Nothing ever changes. Ever since we were kids Joe's been using me for one cockeyed thing or another, because he knows he can count on me to give him a sober-minded common-sense opinion. Always bouncing this bizarre scheme or that off me, so he can measure the caroms.

  The helmet was a golden strip of wire mesh studded with a row of microwave pickups the size of a dime and flanked by a pair of suction electrodes that fit over the temples. It looked like some vagrant piece of death-house equipment.

  I ran my fingers over it. "How much current is this thing capable of sending through my head?"

  He looked even angrier. "Oh, fuck you, you hypercautious bastard! Would I ever ask you to do anything that could harm you?"

  With a patient little sigh I said, "Okay. How do I do this?"

  "Ear to ear, over the top of your head. I'll adjust the electrodes for you."

  "You won't tell me what any of this is all about?"

  "I want an uncontaminated response. That's science talk, Mike. I'm a scientist. You know that, don't you?"

  "So that's what you are. I wondered."

  Joe bustled about above me, moving the helmet around, pressing the electrodes against my skull.

  "How does it fit?"

  "Like a glove."

  "You always wear your gloves on your head?" he asked.

  "You must be goddamn nervous if you think that's funny."

  "I am," he said "You must be too, if you take a line like that seriously. But I tell you that you won't get hurt. I promise you that, Mike."

  "All right."

  "Just sit down here. We need to check the impedances, and then we can get going."

  "I wish I understood at least a little bit about -- "

  "Please," he said. He gestured through a glass partition at a technician in the adjoining room, and she began to do things with dials and switches. This was turning into a movie, a very silly one, full of mad doctors in white jackets and sputtering electrical gadgets. The tinkering went on and on, and I felt myself passing beyond apprehension and annoyance into a kind of gray realm of Zen serenity, the way I sometimes do while sitting in the dentist's chair waiting for the scraping and poking to begin.

  On the hillside visible from the laboratory window yellow hibiscus was blooming against a background of billowing scarlet bougainvillea in brilliant California sunshine. It had been cold and raining, this February morning, when I drove to Sea-Tac Airport thirteen hundred miles to the north. Hedley's lab is just outside La Jolla, on a sandy bluff high up over the blue Pacific. When Joe and I were kids growing up in Santa Monica we took this kind of luminous winter day for granted, but I had lived in the Northwest for twenty years now, and I couldn't help thinking I'd gone on a day-trip to Eden. I studied the colors on the hillside until my eyes began to get blurry.

  "Here we go, now," Joe said, from a point somewhere far away behind my left shoulder.

  * * * *

  It was like stepping into a big cage full of parakeets and mynahs and crazed macaws. I heard scratchy screeching sounds, and a harsh loony almost-laughter that soared through three or four octaves, and a low ominous burbling noise, as if some hydraulic device was about to blow a gasket. I heard weird wire-edged shrieks that went tumbling away as though the sound was falling through an infinite abyss. I heard queeblings. I heard hissings.