Time’s Eye

Illuminated by a single oil lamp, Bisesa, Abdikadir and Casey sat close to each other on expensive couches, a small fire burning in a hearth between them.

Casey was drinking from a tall glass beaker. He held it out to Bisesa. “Babylonian wine. Better than that Macedonian rotgut. You want some?”

She smiled and passed. “I think I ought to be sober tomorrow.”

Casey grunted. “From what I hear of Josh, one of you needs to be.”

Abdikadir said, “So here we are, the last survivors of the twenty-first century. I can’t remember the last time the three of us were alone.”

Casey said, “Not since the day of the chopper crash.”

“That’s how you think of it?” Bisesa asked. “Not the day the world came apart at the seams, but the day we lost the Bird!”

Casey shrugged. “I’m a professional. I lost my ship.”

She nodded. “You’re a good man, Casey. Give me that stuff.” She grabbed the beaker from him and took a draft of wine. It was rich, tasting very old, almost stale, the produce of a mature vineyard.

Abdikadir was watching her, his blue eyes bright. “Josh spoke to me this evening, before he got too drunk to speak at all. He thinks you are keeping back something from him—even now—something about the Eye.”

“I don’t always know what to tell him,” she said. “He’s a man of the nineteenth century. Christ, he’s so young .”

“But he’s not a child, Bis,” Casey said. “Men no older than him died for us facing the Mongols. And you know he is prepared to give up his life for you.”

“I know.”

“So,” Abdikadir said, “what is it you won’t tell him?”

“My worst suspicions.”

“About what?”

“About facts that have been staring us in the face since day one. Guys, our little bit of Afghanistan—and the slab of sky above it, that preserved the Soyuz —is all that came through the Discontinuity from our own time. And, hard as we’ve looked, we’ve found nothing from any era later than our own. We were the last to be sampled. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Why would a two-million-year history project end with us?”

Abdikadir nodded. “Ah. Because we are the last. After us there is nothing to be sampled. Ours was the last year, the last month—even the last day.”

“I think,” Bisesa said slowly, “that something terrible must happen on that final day—terrible for humanity, or the world. Maybe that’s why we shouldn’t worry about time paradoxes. Going back and changing history. Because after us, Earth has run out of history to change …”

Abdikadir said, “And perhaps this answers a question that occurred to me when you described your ideas on space-time rips. It would surely take a stupendous amount of energy to take space-time apart like that. Is that what faces the Earth?” He waved his hands. “Some immense catastrophe: a great outpouring of energy, in the face of which Earth is like a snowflake in a furnace—an energy storm that disrupts space and time itself …”

Casey closed his eyes and drank more wine. “Christ, Bis. I knew you’d bring the mood down.”

“And maybe that’s why the sampling happened in the first place,” Abdikadir said.

She hadn’t thought it through that far. “What do you mean?”

“The library is about to burn down. What do you do about it? You run through the galleries, grabbing what you can. Maybe the construction of Mir is an exercise in salvage.”

Casey said, eyes still closed, “Or looting.”

“What?”

“Maybe these Firstborn aren’t just here to record the end. Maybe they caused it. I bet you hadn’t thought of that either, Bis.”

Abdikadir said, “Why couldn’t you tell Josh this?”

“Because he’s full of hope. I couldn’t crush that.”

They sat in tense, brooding silence for a while. Then they started to talk about their future plans.

Abdikadir said, “I think Eumenes sees me as a useful tool in his endless quest to distract the King. I’ve proposed an expedition to the source of the Nile. The Firstborn seem to have preserved fragments of humanity perhaps from the first divergence from the chimps—but what were the very first? What quality about those deepest, hairiest ancestors did the Firstborn recognise as human? That’s the prize I want to dangle before Alexander …”

“It’s a fine ambition,” Bisesa said. Privately, though, she doubted if Alexander would be sold on it. It was Alexander’s worldview that was going to shape the near future—and that was a dream of heroes, gods and myths, not a quest for resolving scientific questions. “I have a feeling you will find a place wherever you go, Abdi.”

He smiled. “I have always inclined to the Sufi tradition, I think. The i

“I wish I felt the same,” she said earnestly.

Casey said, “As for me I don’t want to live out my life in a James Watt theme park. I’m trying to kick-start other industries—electricity, even electronics maybe …”

“What he means,” Abdikadir said dryly, “is that he’s becoming a schoolteacher.”

Casey squirmed a little, but he tapped his broad cranium. “Just want to make sure that what’s up here doesn’t die when I do, so generations of poor saps have to rediscover it all.”

Bisesa squeezed his arm. “It’s okay, Case. I think you’ll be a good teacher. I always did think of you as a surrogate father.”

Casey’s swearing, in English, Greek and even Mongolian, was impressive.

Bisesa stood. “Guys—I hate to say it, but I think I should get some sleep.”

With one instinct, they pulled together, and wrapped their arms around each other, heads together, huddling like players in a football game.

Casey said, “You need a Blue Bomber?”

“I have one … One more thing,” Bisesa whispered. “Let the man-apes go. If I can break out of the cage, so should they.”

Casey said, “I promise … No good-byes, Bis.”

“No. No good-byes.”

Abdikadir said, “Why is life given / To be thus wrested from us? …”

Casey grunted. “Milton. Paradise Lost, right? Satan’s challenge to God.”

Bisesa said, “You never cease to amaze me, Case. The Firstborn are no gods.” She gri

“Fuck that,” said Casey. “The Firstborn have to be stopped.”

After a final, long moment, she pulled away, and left them with their wine.

Bisesa sought out Eumenes, and asked permission to leave the banquet.

Eumenes was upright, contained and apparently sober. He said in his stilted, heavily accented English, “Very well. But, madam, only on condition I am allowed to accompany you for a while.”

With a few guards, they walked up Babylon’s ceremonial way. They called at the town house commandeered by Captain Grove. Grove embraced her and wished her luck, in his clipped Noel Coward accent. Bisesa and Eumenes walked on, out of the city walls through the Ishtar Gate, and into the tent city of the army beyond.

The night was clear and cold, with the unfamiliar stars and a bony crescent Moon showing through high, yellowish clouds. When Bisesa was recognized she was greeted with cries and waves. The troops and their followers had been given gifts of wine and meat by the King in Bisesa’s honor. The whole camp seemed to be awake: the tents glowed from lamps lit inside, and music and laughter rose up like smoke.

“They are all sorry to see you go,” Eumenes murmured.

“I just gave them an excuse for a party.”

“You should not—um, underestimate your contribution. We were all pitched together into this fractured new world. There was great suspicion, even incomprehension, between our various parties—and the three of you from the twenty-first century were the fewest and most isolated of all. But without you to help us, even Alexander’s wiles might not have prevailed against the Mongols. We have become an unlikely family.”

“Yes, we have, haven’t we? I suppose that says something about enduring qualities of the human spirit.”