[What Might Have Been 02] Alternate Heroes Read online

  His hands tightened on the figure of flesh; the splintered wood dug into his palm.

  “We nailed Him to the bars of a cross, borrowing an idea that pleased us greatly from your own religion.”

  The brown hand shook. The image rose to the golden mouth.

  “First, we scalped Him. The powdered hair was slung from a warrior’s belt. His flesh was pierced with thorns and knives. And then we flayed Him alive.”

  “Flayed…”

  Grant winced as golden teeth nipped a shred of jerky and tore it away.

  “Alive … ?”

  “He died bravely. He was more than a man. He was our deliverer, saviour of all men, white, red, and black. And we murdered Him. We pushed the world off balance.”

  “What is this place?” Grant asked. “It’s more than a museum, isn’t it? It’s also a school.”

  “It is a holy place. His spirit lives here, in the heart of the city named for the man who betrayed Him. He died to the world two hundred years ago, but He still lives in us. He is champion of the downtrodden, liberator of the enslaved.” The jeweller’s voice was cool despite the fervour of his theme. “You see … I have looked beyond the walls of fire that surround this world. I have looked into the world that should have been, that would have been if He had lived. I saw a land of the free, a land of life, liberty, and happiness, where the red men lived in harmony with the white. Our plains bore fruit instead of factories. And the holy cause, that of the republic, spread from the hands of the Great Man. The king was dethroned and England too made free. The bell of liberty woke the world; the four winds carried the cause.” The jeweller bowed his head. “That is how it would have been. This I have seen in dreams.”

  Grant looked around him at the paintings, covered with grime but carefully attended; the people, also grimy but with an air of reverence. It was a shame to waste them here, on these people. He imagined the paintings hanging in a well-lit gallery, the patina of ages carefully washed away; saw crowds of people in fine clothes, decked in his gold jewellery, each willing to pay a small fortune for admission. With the proper sponsorship, a world tour could be brought off. He would be a wealthy man, not merely a survivor, at the end of such a tour.

  The Indian watched him, nodding. “I know what you’re thinking. You think it would be good to tell the world of these things, to spread the cause. You think you can carry the message to all humanity, instead of letting it die here in the dark. But I tell you … it thrives here. Those who are oppressed, those who are broken and weary of spirit, they are the caretakers of liberty.”

  Grant smiled inwardly; there was a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I think you underestimate the worth of all this,” he said. “You do it a disservice to hide it from the eyes of the world. I think everyone can gain something from it.”

  “Yes?” The Indian looked thoughtful. He led Grant towards a table where several old books lay open, their pages swollen with humidity, spines cracking, paper flaking away.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said, turning the pages of one book entitled The Undying Patriot, edited by a Parson Weems. “It may be as Doctor Franklin says…”

  Grant bent over the page, and read:

  Let no man forget His death. Let not the memory of our great Chief and Commander fade from the thoughts of the common people, who stand to gain the most from its faithful preservation. For once these dreams have fad’d, there is no promise that they may again return. In this age and the next, strive to hold true to the honor’d principals for which He fought, for which he was nail’d to the rude crucifix and his flesh stript away. Forget not His sacrifice, His powder’d wig and crown of thornes. Forget not that a promise Ï can never be repair’d.

  “I think you are right,” said the jeweller. “How can we take it upon ourselves to hide this glory away? It belongs to the world, and the world shall have it.”

  He turned to Grant and clasped his hands. His eyes were afire with a patriotic light. “He brought you to me, I see that now. This is a great moment. I thank you, brother, for what you will do.”

  “It’s only my duty,” Grant said.

  Yes. Duty.

  And now he stood in the sweltering shadows outside the warehouse, the secret museum, watching the loading of several large vans. The paintings were wrapped in canvas so that none could see them. He stifled an urge to rush up to the loading men and tear away the cloth, to look once more on that noble face. But the police were thick around the entrance.

  “Careful,” said David Mickelson at his elbow.

  News of the find had spread through the city and a crowd had gathered, in which Grant was just one more curious observer. He supposed it was best this way, though he would rather it was his own people moving the paintings. The police were unwontedly rough with the works, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  Things had got a little out of hand.

  “Hard to believe it’s been sitting under our noses all this time,” said Mickelson. “You say you actually got a good look at it?”

  Grant nodded abstractedly. “Fairly good. Of course, it was dark in there.”

  “Even so … what a catch, eh? There have been rumours of this stuff for years, and you stumble right into it. Amazing idea you had, though, organizing a tour. As if anyone would pay to see that stuff aside from ruddies and radicals. Even if it weren’t completely restricted.”

  “What … what do you think they’ll do with it?” Grant asked.

  “Same as they do with other contraband, I’d imagine. Burn it.”

  “Burn it,” Grant repeated numbly.

  Grant felt a restriction of the easy flow of traffic; suddenly the crowd, mainly black and Indian, threatened to change into something considerably more passionate than a group of disinterested onlookers. The police loosened their riot gear as the mob began to shout insults.

  “Fall back, Grant,” Mickelson said.

  Grant started to move away through the crowd, but a familiar face caught his attention. It was the Indian, the jeweller; he hung near a corner of the museum, his pouchy face unreadable. Somehow, through all the confusion, among the hundred or so faces now mounting in number, his eyes locked onto Grant’s.

  Grant stiffened. The last of the vans shut its doors and rushed away. The police did not loiter in the area. He had good reason to feel vulnerable.

  The jeweller stared at him. Stared without moving. Then he brought up a withered brown object and set it to his lips. Grant could see him bite, tear, and chew.

  “What is it, Grant? We should be going now, don’t you think? There’s still time to take in a real museum, or perhaps the American Palace.”

  Grant didn’t move. Watching the Indian, he put his thumb to his mouth and caught a bit of cuticle between his teeth. He felt as if he were dreaming. Slowly, he tore off a thin strip of skin, ripping it back almost down to the knuckle. The pain was excruciating, but it didn’t seem to wake him. He chewed it, swallowed.

  “Grant? Is anything wrong?”

  He tore off another.

  DEPARTURES

  Harry Turtledove

  The monks at Ir-Ruhaiyeh did not talk casually among themselves. They were not hermits; those who wanted to be pillar-sitters like the two Saints Symeon went off into the Syrian desert by themselves and did not join monastic communities. Still, the Rule of St. Basil enjoined silence through much of the day.

  Despite the Cappadocian Father’s Rule, though, a whispered word ran through the monastery regardless of the canonical hour: “The Persians. The Persians are marching toward Ir-Ruhaiyeh.”

  The abbot, Isaac, heard the whispers, though monks had to shout when they spoke to him. Isaac was past seventy, with a white beard that nearly reached his waist. But he had been abbot here for more than twenty years, and a simple monk for thirty years before that. He knew what his charges thought almost before they thought it.

  Isaac turned to the man he hoped would one day succeed him. “It will be very bad this time, John. I f
eel it.”

  The prior shrugged. “It will be as God wills, father abbot.” He was half the abbot’s age, round-faced and always smiling. What would from many men have had the ring of a prophecy of doom came from his lips as a prediction of good fortune.

  Isaac was not cheered, not this time. “I wonder if God does not mean this to be the end for us Christians.”

  “The Persians have come to Ir-Ruhaiyeh before,” John said stoutly. “They raided, they moved on. When their campaigns were through, they went back to their homeland once more, and life resumed.”

  “I was here,” Isaac agreed. “They came in the younger Justin’s reign, and Tiberius’s, and Maurice’s. As you say, they left again soon enough, or were driven off. But since this beast of a Phokas murdered his way to the throne of the Roman Empire—”

  “Shh.” John looked around. Only one monk was nearby, on his hands and knees in the herb garden. “One never knows who may be listening.”

  “I am too old to fear spies overmuch, John,” the abbot said, chuckling. At that moment, the monk in the herb garden sat back on his haunches so he could wipe sweat from his strong, swarthy face with the sleeve of his robe. Isaac chuckled again. “And can you seriously imagine him betraying us?”

  John laughed too. “That one? No, you have me there. Ever since he came to us, he’s thought of nothing but his hymns.”

  “Nor can I blame him, for they are a gift from God,” Isaac said. “Truly he must be inspired, to sing the Lord’s praises so sweetly when he knew not a word of Greek before he fled his horrid paganism to become a Christian and a monk. Romanos the Melodist was a convert too, they say—born a Jew.”

  “Some of our brother’s hymns are a match for his, I think,” John said. “Perhaps they love Christ the more for first discovering Him with the full faculties of grown men.”

  “It could be so,” Isaac said thoughtfully. Then, as the monk in the garden resumed his work, the abbot came back to his worries. “When I was younger, we always knew the Persians were harriers, not conquerors. Sooner or later, our soldiers would drive them back. This time I think they are come to stay.”

  John’s sunny face was not well adapted to showing concern, but it did now. “You may be right, father abbot. Since the general Narses rebelled against Phokas, since Germanos attacked Narses, since the Persians beat Germanos and Leontios—”

  “Since Phokas broke his own brother’s pledge of safe-conduct for Narses and burned him alive, since Germanos was forced to become a monk for losing to the Persians—” Isaac took up the melancholy tale of Roman troubles. “Our armies now are a rabble, those that have not fled. Who will, who can, make king Khosroes’s soldiers leave the Empire now?”

  John looked this way and that again, lowered his voice so that Isaac had to lean close to hear him at all. “Perhaps it would be as well if they did stay. I wonder,” he went on wistfully, “if the young man with them truly is Maurice’s son Theodosios. Even with Persian backing, he would be better than Phokas.”

  “No, John.” The abbot shook his head in grim certainty. “I am sure Theodosios is dead; he was with his father when Phokas overthrew them. And while the new Emperor has many failings, no one can doubt his talent as a butcher.”

  “True enough,” John sighed. “Well, then, father abbot, why not welcome the Persians as liberators from the tyrant?”

  “Because of what I heard from a traveler out of the east who took shelter with us last night. He was from a village near Daras, where the Persians have had a couple of years now to decide how they will govern the lands they have taken from the Empire. He told me they were beginning to make the Christians thereabouts become Nestorians.”

  “I had not heard that, father abbot,” John said, adding a moment later, “Filthy heresy!”

  “Not to the Persians. They exalt Nestorians above all other Christians, trusting their loyalty because we who hold to the right belief have persecuted them so they may no longer live within the Empire.” Isaac sadly shook his head. “All too often, that trust has proven justified.”

  “What shall we do, then?” John asked. “I will not abandon the true faith, but in truth I would sooner serve the Lord as a living monk than as a martyr, though His will be done, of course.” He crossed himself.

  So did Isaac. His eyes twinkled. “I do not blame you, my son. I have lived most of my life, so I am ready to see God and His Son face to face whenever He desires, but I understand how younger men might hesitate. Some, to save their lives, might even bow to heresy and forfeit their souls. I think, therefore, that we should abandon IrRuhaiyeh, so no one will have to face this bitter choice.”

  John whistled softly. “As bad as that?” His glance slid to the monk in the garden, who had looked up at the musical tone but went back to his weeding when the prior’s eye fell on him.

  “As bad as that,” Isaac echoed. “I need you to begin drawing up plans for our withdrawal. I want us to leave no later than a week from today.”

  “So soon, father abbot? As you wish, of course; you know you have my obedience. Shall I arrange for our travel west to Antioch or south to Damascus? I presume you will want us safe behind a city’s walls.”

  “Yes, but neither of those,” the abbot said. John stared at him in surprise. Isaac went on, “I doubt Damascus is strong enough to stand against the storm that is rising. And Antioch—Antioch is all in commotion since the Jews rose and murdered the patriarch, may God smile upon him. Besides, the Persians are sure to make for it, and it can fall. I was a tiny boy the last time it did; the sack, I have heard, was ghastly. I would not want us caught up in another such.”

  “What then, father abbot?” John asked, puzzled now.

  “Ready us to travel to Constantinople, John. If Constantinople falls to the Persians, surely it could only portend the coming of the Antichrist and the last days of the world. Even that may come. I find it an evil time to be old.”

  “Constantinople. The city.” John’s voice held awe and longing. From the Pillars of Herakles to Mesopotamia, from the Danube to Nubia, all through the Roman Empire, Constantinople was the city. Every man dreamed of seeing it before he died. The prior ran fingers through his beard. His eyes went distant as he began to think of what the monks would need to do to get there. He never noticed Isaac walking away.

  What did call him back to his surroundings was the monk leaving the herb garden a few minutes later. Had the fellow simply passed by, John would have paid him no mind. But he was humming as he walked, which disturbed the prior’s thoughts.

  “Silence, brother,” John said reprovingly.

  The monk dipped his head in apology. Before he had gone a dozen paces, he was humming again. John rolled his eyes in rueful despair. Taking the music from that one was the next thing to impossible, for it came upon him so strongly that it possessed him without his even realizing it.

  Had he not produced such lovely hymns, the prior thought, people might have used the word possessed in a different sense. But no demon, surely, could bring forth glowing praise of the Trinity and the Archangel Gabriel.

  John dismissed the monk from his mind. He had many more important things to worry about.

  “A nomisma for that donkey, that piece of crowbait?” The monk clapped a hand to his tonsured pate in theatrical disbelief. “A goldpiece? You bandit, may Satan lash you with sheets of fire and molten brass for your effrontery! Better you should ask for thirty pieces of silver. That would only be six more, and would show you for the Judas you are!”

  After fierce haggling, the monk ended up buying the donkey for ten silver pieces, less than half the first asking price. As the trader put the jingling miliaresia into his pouch, he nodded respectfully to his recent opponent. “Holy sir, you are the finest bargainer I ever met at a monastery.”

  “I thank you.” Suddenly the monk was shy, not the fierce dickerer he had seemed a moment before. Looking down to the ground, he went on, “I was a merchant once myself, years ago, before I found the truth of Christ.”


  The trader laughed. “I might have known.” He gave the monk a shrewd once-over. “From out of the south, I’d guess, by your accent.”

  “Just so.” The monk’s eyes were distant, remembering. “I was making my first run up to Damascus. I heard a monk preaching in the marketplace. I was not even a Christian at the time, but it seemed to me that I heard within me the voice of the Archangel Gabriel, saying, ‘Follow!’ And follow I did, and follow I have, all these years since. My caravan went back without me.”

  “A strong call to the faith indeed, holy sir,” the trader said, crossing himself. “But if you ever wish to return to the world, seek me out. For a reasonable share of the profits I know you will bring in, I would be happy to stake you as a merchant once again.”

  The monk smiled, teeth white against tanned, dark skin and gray-streaked black beard. “Thank you, but I am content and more than content with my life as it is. Inshallah–” He laughed at himself. “Here I’ve been working all these years to use only Greek, and recalling what I once was makes me forget myself so easily. Theou thelontos, I should have said—God willing—I would have spent all my days here at Ir-Ruhaiyeh. But that is not to be.”

  “No.” The trader looked east. No smoke darkened the horizon there, not yet, but both men could see it in their minds’ eyes. “I may find a new home for myself as well.”

  “God grant you good fortune,” the monk said.

  “And you, holy sir. If I have more beasts to sell, be sure I shall look for a time when you are busy elsewhere.”

  “Spoken like a true thief,” the monk said. They both laughed. The monk led the donkey away toward the stables. They were more crowded now than at any other time he could recall, with horses, camels, and donkeys. Some the monks would ride, others would carry supplies and the monastery’s books and other holy gear.

  Words and music filled the monk’s mind as he walked toward the refectory. By now the words came more often in Greek than his native tongue, but this time, perhaps because his haggle with the merchant had cast memory back to the distant pagan days he did not often think of anymore, the idea washed over him in the full guttural splendor of his birthspeech.