[What Might Have Been 02] Alternate Heroes Read online

  I beckoned for notepaper. Need printout of world historical background late twelfth century, I scrawled, without interrupting my conversation with Temujin. Esp. Byzantine history, Crusades, etc.

  The kings of England and France, said Temujin, were talking about launching a new Crusade. But at the moment they happened to be at war with each other, which made cooperation difficult. The powerful Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany was also supposed to be getting up a Crusade, but that, he said, might mean more trouble for Byzantium than for the Saracens, because Frederick was the friend of Byzantium’s enemies in the rebellious provinces, and he’d have to march through those provinces on the way to the Holy Land.

  “It is a perilous time,” I agreed.

  Then suddenly I was feeling the strain. Temujin’s rapid-fire delivery was exhausting to follow, he spoke Mongolian with what I took to be a Byzantine accent, and he sprinkled his statements with the names of emperors, princes, and even nations that meant nothing to me. Also there was that powerful force of him to contend with—it hit you like an avalanche—and beyond that his anger: the whip-crack inflection that seemed the thinnest of bulwarks against some unstated inner rage, fury, frustration. It’s hard to feel at ease with anyone who seethes that way. Suddenly I just wanted to go somewhere and lie down.

  But someone put printout sheets in front of me, closely packed columns of stuff from the Britannica. Names swam before my eyes: Henry II, Barbarossa, Stephan Nemanya, Isaac II (Angelos), Guy of Jerusalem, Richard the Lion-Hearted. Antioch, Tripoli, Thessaloniki, Venice. I nodded my thanks and pushed the sheets aside.

  Cautiously I asked Temujin about Mongolia. It turned out that he knew almost nothing about Mongolia. He’d had no contact at all with his native land since his abduction at the age of eleven by Byzantine traders who carried him off to Constantinople. His country, his father, his brothers, the girl to whom he had been betrothed when he was still a child—they were all just phantoms to him now, far away, forgotten. But in the privacy of his own soul he still spoke Khalkha. That was all that was left.

  By 1187, I knew, the Temujin who would become Genghis Khan had already made himself the ruler of half of Mongolia. His fame would surely have spread to cosmopolitan Byzantium. How could this Temujin be unaware of him? Well, I saw one way. But Joe had already shot it down. And it sounded pretty nutty even to me.

  “Do you want a drink?” Hedley asked. “Tranks? Aspirin?”

  I shook my head. “I’m okay,” I murmured.

  To Temujin I said, “Do you have a wife? Children?”

  “I have vowed not to marry until Jesus rules again in His own land.”

  “So you’re going to go on the next Crusade?” I asked.

  Whatever answer Temujin made was smothered by static.

  Awkkk. Skrrkkk. Tsssshhhhhhh.

  Then silence, lengthening into endlessness.

  “Signal’s gone,” someone said.

  “I could use that drink now,” I said. “Scotch.”

  The lab clock said it was ten in the morning. To me it felt like the middle of the night.

  An hour had passed. The signal hadn’t returned.

  Hedley said. “You really think he’s Genghis Khan?”

  “I really think he could have been.”

  “In some other probability world.”

  Carefully I said, “I don’t want to get you all upset again, Joe.”

  “You won’t. Why the hell not believe we’re tuned into an alternate reality? It’s no more goofy than any of the rest of this. But tell me this: is what he says consistent with being Genghis Khan?”

  “His name’s the same. His age. His childhood, up to the point when he wandered into some Byzantine trading caravan and they took him away to Constantinople with them. I can imagine the sort of fight he put up, too. But his life-line must have diverged completely from that point on. A whole new world-line split off from ours. And in that world, instead of turning into Genghis Khan, ruler of all Mongolia, he grew up to be Petros Alexios of Prince Theodore Lascaris’s private guards.”

  “And he has no idea of who he could have been?” Joe asked.

  “How could he? It isn’t even a dream to him. He was born into another world that wasn’t ever destined to have a Genghis Khan. You know the poem:

  “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our lift’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting,

  And cometh from afar.”

  “Very pretty. Is that Yeats?” Hedley said.

  “Wordsworth,” I said. “When’s the signal coming back?”

  “An hour, two, three. It’s hard to say. You want to take a nap, and we’ll wake you when we have acquisition?”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “You look pretty ragged,” Joe said.

  I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “I’m okay. I’ll sleep for a week, later on. What if you can’t raise him again?”

  “There’s always that chance, I suppose. We’ve already had him on the line five times as long as all the rest put together.”

  “He’s a very determined man,” I said.

  “He ought to be. He’s Genghis fucking Khan.”

  “Get him back,” I said. “I don’t want you to lose him. I want to talk to him some more.”

  Morning ticked on into afternoon. I phoned Elaine twice while we waited, and I stood for a long time at the window watching the shadows of the oncoming winter evening fall across the hibiscus and the bougainvillea, and I hunched my shoulders up and tried to pull in the signal by sheer body english. Contemplating the possibility that they might never pick up Temujin again left me feeling weirdly forlorn. I was beginning to feel that I had a real relationship with that eerie disembodied angry voice coming out of the crackling night. Toward midafternoon I thought I was starting to understand what was making Temuijin so angry, and I had some things I wanted to say to him about that.

  Maybe you ought to get some sleep, I told myself.

  At half past four someone came to me and said the Mongol was on the line again.

  The static was very bad. But then came the full force of Temujin soaring over it. I heard him saying, “The Holy Land must be redeemed. I cannot sleep so long as the infidels possess it.”

  I took a deep breath.

  In wonder, I watched myself set out to do something unlike anything I had ever done before.

  “Then you must redeem it yourself,” I said firmly.

  “I?”

  “Listen to me, Temujin. Think of another world far from yours. There is a Temujin in that world too, son of Yesugei, husband to Bortei who is daughter of Dai the Wise.”

  “Another world? What are you saying?”

  “Listen. Listen. He is a great warrior, that other Temujin. No one can withstand him. His own brothers bow before him. All Mongols everywhere bow before him. His sons are like wolves, and they ride into every land and no one can withstand them. This Temujin is master of all Mongolia. He is the Great Khan, the Genghis Khan, the ruler of the universe.”

  There was silence. Then Temujin said, “What is this to me?”

  “He is you, Temujin. You are the Genghis Khan.”

  Silence again, longer, broken by hideous shrieks of interplanetary noise.

  “I have no sons and I have not seen Mongolia in years, or even thought of it. What are you saying?”

  “That you can be as great in your world as this other Temujin is in his.”

  “I am Byzantine. I am Christian. Mongolia is nothing to me. Why would I want to be master in that savage place?”

  “I’m not talking about Mongolia. You are Byzantine, yes. You are Christian. But you were born to lead and fight and conquer,” I said. “What are you doing as a captain of another man’s palace guards? You waste your life that way, and you know it, and it maddens you. You should have armies of your own. You should carry the Cross into Jerusalem.”

  “The leaders of the new Crusade are quarrelsome fools. It will
end in disaster.”

  “Perhaps not. Frederick Barbarossa’s Crusade will be unstoppable.”

  “Barbarossa will attack Byzantium instead of the Moslems. Everyone knows that.”

  “No,” I said. That inner force of Temujin was rising and rising in intensity, like a gale climbing toward being a hurricane. I was awash in sweat, now, and I was dimly aware of the others staring at me as though I had lost my senses. A strange exhilaration gripped me. I went plunging joyously ahead. “Emperor Isaac Angelos will come to terms with Barbarossa. The Germans will march through Byzantium and go on toward the Holy Land. But there Barbarossa will die and his army will scatter—unless you are there, at his right hand, taking command in his place when he falls, leading them onward to Jerusalem. You, the invincible, the Genghis Khan.”

  There was silence once more, this time so prolonged that I was afraid the contact had been broken for good.

  Then Temujin returned. “Will you send soldiers to fight by my side?” he asked.

  “That I cannot do.”

  “You have the power to send them, I know,” said Temujin. “You speak to me out of the air. I know you are an angel, or else you are a demon. If you are a demon, I invoke the name of Christos Pantokrator upon you, and begone. But if you are an angel, you can send me help. Send it, then, and I will lead your troops to victory. I will take the Holy Land from the infidel. I will create the Empire of Jesus in the world and bring all things to fulfillment. Help me. Help me.”

  “I’ve done all I can,” I said. “The rest is for you to achieve.” There was another spell of silence.

  “Yes,” Temujin said finally. “I understand. Yes. Yes. The rest is for me.”

  “Christ, you look peculiar,” Joe Hedley said, staring at me almost fearfully. “I’ve never seen you looking like this before. You look like a wild man.”

  “Do I?” I said.

  “You must be dead tired, Mike. You must be asleep on your feet. Listen, go over to the hotel and get some rest. We’ll have a late dinner, okay? You can fill me in then on whatever you’ve just been jabbering about. We’ll have a late dinner, okay? But relax now. The Mongol’s gone and we may not get him back until tomorrow.”

  “You won’t get him back at all,” I said.

  “You think?” He peered close. “Hey, are you okay? Your eyes—your face—” Something quivered in his cheek. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were stoned.”

  “I’ve been changing the world. It’s hard work.”

  “Changing the world?”

  “Not this world. The other one. Look,” I said hoarsely, “they never had a Genghis Khan, so they never had a Mongol Empire, and the whole history of China and Russia and the Near East and a lot of other places was very different. But I’ve got this Temujin all fired up now to be a Christian Genghis Khan. He got so Christian in Byzantium that he forgot what was really inside him, but I’ve reminded him, I’ve told him how he can still do the thing that he was designed to do, and he understands. He’s found his true self again. He’ll go out to fight in the name of Jesus and he’ll build an empire that’ll eat the Moslem powers for breakfast and then blow away Byzantium and Venice and go on from there to do God knows what. He’ll probably conquer all of Europe before he’s finished. And I did it. I set it all in motion. He was sending me all this energy, this Genghis Khan zap that he has inside him, and I figured the least I could do for him was turn some of it °around and send it back to him, and say, Here, go, be what you were supposed to be.”

  “Mike—”

  I stood close against him, looming over him. He gave me a bewildered look.

  “You really didn’t think I had it in me, did you?” I said. “You son of a bitch. You’ve always thought I’m as timid as a turtle. Your good old sober stick-in-the-mud pal Mike. What do you know? What the hell do you know?” Then I laughed. He looked so stunned that I had to soften it for him a little. Gently I touched his shoulder. “I need a shower and a drink. And then let’s think about dinner.”

  Joe gawked at me. “What if it wasn’t some other world you changed, though? Suppose it was this one.”

  “Suppose it was,” I said. “Let’s worry about that later. I still need that shower.”

  THE OLD MAN AND C

  Sheila Finch

  Light sprang to the wall when his wife opened the casement window to let in a little breeze from the lake. It shattered, sparkling over bookshelves and wallpaper, as his young student’s bow scraped across the E string and the fingers of her left hand searched for high C.

  She still could not seem to get it right. The note must sing, not screech! He had shown Rosa over and over, patiently correcting her fingering, the pressure of the bow across the string, explaining to her how the sound was produced in the hope that if she understood perhaps she could improve. She was so brilliant in every other respect.

  “Kaffee, Papa?” his wife whispered in his ear.

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t lose sight of the time. Eddie comes this afternoon. And Lisl will want to go with her Opa on the boat!”

  Rosa had progressed to the Arabesque, a passage she played excellently, her fingers flying like the scintillating reflection of water on the wall.

  His wife left him to his pupil and the music lesson, closing the music room door quietly behind her. He gazed at Rosa. Eyes closed, she bit her lower lip in concentration. Wisps of fair hair escaped from braids trailing over her shoulders. She was a good girl, the best student he had ever had. If she mastered this one note, she should easily take the gold medal—perhaps the last he would see a pupil take. She had more natural talent than any of his previous medalists.

  But the other students in the competition, children who came from the wealthy suburbs of Zurich where they had Waschmaschinen and Fernsehappara ten, they could afford to spend all day practising, whereas Rosa got up at first light and helped her father milk the cows. Time for the violin had to be sandwiched between farm chores and schoolwork. Now she was approaching sixteen; her father had begun to think of the day she would marry a solid farm lad and give him one less mouth to feed. This was her last chance, too. He had worked hard with Rosa, giving long lessons and extra lessons that her family had paid for with cream and eggs. Who could say if it would be enough?

  Rosa finished the piece with a flourish, the notes sparkling almost visibly in the air between them.

  “So, Herr Professor, are you pleased?” Triumph shining on her round face showed what answer she expected.

  “I’m very pleased,” he agreed.

  “We’re going to win the medal,” she promised.

  It was important to him that this little farm girl take the very last gold medal. Yet he knew he should not allow his own sense of self-worth to become bound to a pupil’s performance in a competition. How had it happened? When one is young, he thought, how many choices lie at one’s fingertips? How many roads beckon the eager traveler? Time spreads out before the young man like a map of a marvelous sunlit country. He knows he can write symphonies, build castles, discover the secrets of the universe—which will it be? He does not know (for God is merciful) that the choice of one road shuts out the possibility of another. Who can guarantee which is right to take?

  His mother had always wanted him to play the violin. And he had been an indifferent scholar in school.

  “Herr Einstein?” Rosa said, her young face creased in a frown. “Aren’t you well?”

  He discovered that he was sweating and took out a linen handkerchief to mop his brow. “I’m well, Rosa. It’s hot today, that’s all. What else should we expect of July?”

  “If I get my chores done early enough, my mother says I can take my little brothers swimming.” She looked up at him, blue eyes innocent as infinity. “Do you wish me to play something else, Herr Professor?”

  He patted her hand. “Enough for today, Liebchen. Enjoy the lake!”

  And the light, he thought, the vast potential of the realms of light.

  Rosa
put the violin away in its case, gathered up her music, dropped him a hasty curtsy, and scurried from the room. The dancing light, fragmented by her departure, gathered itself together again, settling back on the walls and the Turkish rug and the dark wood of the grand piano.

  The day’s post lay on the floor by the armchair under the open window where he had left it at the beginning of Rosa’s lesson. Sunshine fell on the fat pile, a correspondence he carried on with old friends, poets, pacifists and Zionists, people he had met all over Europe when he had still been touring with the orchestra. They sent letters full of music and philosophy and grand theory, wonderful talk. It was like a rich, festive meal that today he did not feel like eating. He set most of the letters aside, unopened. There had been a time when he had shared his friends’ sense of holding the universe in the palm of his hand, a gift of a benign God who revealed His existence in the harmony of His creation.

  He shook his head mutely. It was a young man’s belief. The world had fought two terrible wars since then. Now it was enough to sit quietly and look at what had become of the promises.

  He was so tired today.

  One letter was from his widowed cousin Elsa, full of news about her daughters, no doubt; he had always liked Elsa. He tore the stamps off the envelope carefully, saving them for his granddaughter, Lisl.

  “Papa?” His wife appeared in the doorway, her hands still floury from making Dampfnudeln. “Are you coming to lunch?”

  “Ah, Millie,” he said. “I’m getting old.”

  “Seventy-five isn’t old!”

  “And what have I accomplished?”

  Millie spread her arms wide. “This house, two fine sons, your sailboat down there on the lake, your pupils—perhaps Rosa gets the gold this year. How many will that make for you? And you ask what you’ve accomplished?”