The Far Arena (40 page)

I had slept in the ice of the North for nearly two milliennia. And they, through science, awakened me. All my friends were dead and so were my enemies. My son was dead and if he had issue, they were dead as were the children of their children, and their children's children: grown old and dead and decomposed so that not even their dust remained to mark their passing. No one was alive who knew their names, nor was anything they felt or thought or did remaining except by some artefact, if that. And even then, people would not know them, nor even their names.

The endless legions that ruled the world were gone. Time had done completely what no foreign general dared fancy in his wildest hopes. The senate was gone. The emperors were gone. There was no patrician class or plebeian class and, most of all, there were no more slaves. Only some stone remained.

Olava wanted to know about my daily life, the physician Semyonus about anything I might have eaten at the German Sea, and Lewus just wanted to know how I felt and kept advising me that I shouldn't speak to anyone but Olava. Both the physician Semyonus and Lewus spoke through Olava. Other women, those who did slave work but were not slaves because there were no more slaves, wore cosmetics. Olava did not.

My thigh healed well. It was not beyond belief that Semyonus had studied in Egypt. He said he had not, but in a workers' paradise where all men owned everything and there was justice and hope and security for all. I asked why he did not stay there, and Olava translated with a smile. Lewus's smile was a mask over worry. Even on a barbaric face, one could tell when a smile ended too quickly or stayed strong too long as though following orders.

In many different ways, the physician Semyonus kept asking me what I ate or drank the day before the German Sea. And I repeated how the cohort marched me to the sea, stripped me, and left me to fight the cold. He said he had found a poisonous substance within me. How did I get it?

'A man dying of cold does not record his menu of the day,' I said. 'It was legion food, not peacock's tongue.' If Macer chose to save me pain who was I to risk his career?

Of course, if I were to believe everything, Macer was centuries upon centuries dead. And today growling monsters in the sky are chariots with a new form of power, and the burning ceilings were another form of power. And waste was flushed away by the flick of a handle that sent it into a plumbing system superior to Rome's - for the barbarians no less. And there were no more slaves. Of course, I would believe what I would believe, and until then, less than a fortnight ago, a Roman tribune showed me mercy, and I would not betray him now.

They brought me to a porch with much glass and screens of iron, where the sun, blessed sun, unchanged, warmed me as it had always warmed me. We sat on chairs with supports that went up to the shoulder and I ate cheese and small hard cakes with salt and drank water.

'How did you feel about killing other people?' she asked. She always wore the black robe of her cult. She was a sort of virgin priestess.

'I didn't kill people,' I said.

'Didn't you say you killed more than twelve score in the arena
T
'In the arena, yes. If you want to call that killing.' 'What do you call it?' 'The arena.'

'You do not consider that killing?
’

'Where people make fortunes, where whole political groups stake their future, where entire legions scour the world for animals and captives, and where spectacles unimagined in more barbaric places occur. People died of course, but I would not call a good match killing, any more than I would call harvesting wheat stealing from the ground.'

'Are you angry?
’

'I am a bit annoyed suffering the stupidities of a barbarian who insists I am not a slave.' 'You are not a slave, Eugeni.' 'Then farewell. I go.'

'But no one here speaks your language but me.' 'One chain or another, this freedman sits here to do your bidding, master.' 'I wish you wouldn't do that.' 'I am sorry, but it is the truth,' 'Please don't do that.' 'Truth is truth.' 'No. What you're doing.'
‘
I am sitting.' 'No. That.' 'What?
’

She nodded to my loins. I removed my hand that had been stroking them. I wore tight white pants, fastened by a lever that pulled up, and a white shirt. The round latches on the blouse were called buttons, and when you learned to slip them into the hole sideways, they fastened easily.

'Good,' she said, but suddenly she looked perturbed again and asked that I stop stroking my loins. This I did not understand, since I could understand her objection if it were her I were touching, not me.

'I have slaves, or had slaves, they were sold, and they could touch whatever part of themselves they wished, Olava.'

She explained it was custom in her civilization not to touch certain parts in public. I asked if I could touch my knee. It was acceptable to touch the knee and face also.

I could see the chariot clearly through the glass. It was far off and made of shiny steel. Its steel wings did not move, and it made smoke behind it. People rode inside, like in a ship's hold, I was told. It stayed up without falling except when something went wrong. It always let the people out once they wanted to get out. It never let them out when it was high up. Men steered it from inside.

'You have not mentioned your early life, Eugeni. How did you become a gladiator?'

'I was a slave,' I said. The machine run by men that went through the air disappeared. It was not burned by the sun because it was too far away. The lights from the ceiling were operated by a lever that was very simple. I pulled it, and the ceiling lit, yet not so brightly because it competed with sunlight. Lest a slave be above the ceiling watching to manipulate a hidden torch,
I brushed my hand lightly over the lever not touching it. No light. Then appearing to walk away, I suddenly pushed the lever, and the light went on simultaneously. The light was not done with slaves.

'You said you knew how to read and write.'

'My mother was Greek,' I said.

'Was she born a slave?'

‘
No, and neither was I.'

'You sound angry.'

‘
I am not angry. Anger is a luxury no man can afford.
’
'How did you become a slave?'

She asked this as though she talked to while away the morning hours. I could not believe the presumption of the woman, unless of course a barbarian is a barbarian, never to understand. Then again, perhaps in her mind this question was just another one of a thousand questions asked me. It occurred to me then that Domitian might truly be a genius. Given a man with hidden fortunes, given my former political value in the cauldron of Roman politics, and given Domitian's cunning, why not this awesome charade just for me? That might be the key to all of this.

It was logical. Why waste a gladiator of my public worth in some petty vengeance at the German Sea? My death alone could be a fortune. Given that it was a charade, how did Domitian make all this work?

Probably I was in a drugged state. The poison given by the officer was on Domitian's orders. It made my mind susceptible to manipulation. I had seen a young girl lift a heifer under this sort of influence. It happened in Capua.

I concealed my excitement with a yawn. This would explain the interest of the physician Semyonus in what I ate before the German Sea. He wanted to make sure I was fully drugged lest I realize where I was. I could be in Rome for all
1
knew. The march to the German Sea could have been in my mind.

And why do all this, Domitian? To remove my cunning, to strip it away neatly so that I babble away as to what I love and hate and fear and as to where my secret monies are ? What a wonderful way to find out that I would trade it all for Miriamne and Petronius. What a wonderful way to make me a slave. What a brilliant thrust. Perhaps it was because I had acquired instant cunning or that, if I were not born with it, I would not have lived so long. But my attack against him should be instantaneous. And against it, Domitian had to be defenceless. The more he believed he succeeded against me, the deeper I would cut.

'How soon after I left Rome did they get Domitian?' I asked.

‘
Quite shortly,' said Olava.
‘I
see you know about Roman conspiracies. They murdered him with a sword kept under his pillow. Nerva succeeded him.'

'He must have outfoxed the real conspirators who had me not slay Publius. They were supposed to slay Domitian in the ensuing commotion. They failed but said if I disclosed their plots, I would die. They were my guards while the senate debated maies-tas. I trie
d to get word to Domitian, but h
is very emissary was one of them. There were so many against him, and they had so much power. So much power. Yet if Domitian had known them in time, poor man, he could have moved. They had so many weak links. That is why they did not succeed on the day I let Publius live.'

'So in the arena, in that fight that led to the charge of maiestas against you, your real motives were political. You failed to slay Publius as part of a plot'

'Correct'

‘I
see.'

I pushed the light lever. I always believed the mind could create paradise, just as it did the fearful places. I had seen too many disembowelled men calmly watch their life leave, contented as men after a woman and a good meal.

‘I
suppose there were many conspiracies,' said Olava.

'Rome is gone for centuries. Let us not talk of the dirt of conspiracies. They are vile things. There was even the woman close to Domitian who was going to cut off his penis with a knife and display the penis in the arena,' I said, with enough, but not too much, horror in my voice. If that didn't get the old purple suet, I did not know my emperor.

I let Olava know of three small hidden treasures, saying I wondered what had happened to them over the centuries. Then I was tired, I said, and needed my rest. My head felt funny. I could not remember names or places or specifics. Yes, I remembered the drug now. At the German Sea. The officer gave me something. As I had figured, the physician Semyonus arrived quickly and I gave him every detail through Olava of what I ate. And what the liquid tasted like. And all other things.

'He says you were poisoned, Eugeni. The thermal reduction -the sudden lowering of your body temperature - stopped the action of the poison. You have been kept at near death, in a suspended state. You were, in effect, in a solution. Medically, he saved you from poisoning. He pumped out your stomach. I don't think you know how lucky you are, Eugeni.'

Good fate, of course. One year ago I was one of the wealthiest men in the world, and today I was struggling to be free of an emperor's net.

'If you had been discovered at any other time more than fifty years ago, you simply would have died of the poisoning,' said Olava.

'You mean your miracles are only recent? They have not been built carefully, like Rome?'

And at this, the man who called himself Semyonus the physician became excited. Olava had to talk quickly and sometimes to interrupt Semyonus to keep up with him.

'There is no such thing as magic,' she translated. 'There are scientific principles, which scientists discover and write down, and these principles are followed by engineers who invent such things as what you call the flying monster or the electric lights. Scientists discover principles, engineers act on them. Yes?'

'Hail the priests of Science and their temple slaves the engineers,' I said. 'Truly the god Science is a great god. You worship a great god.'

'It is not worship. It is science.' Semyonus angry, Olava smiling.

'I am sorry to have given offence to the god Science but you must understand this is a strange land to me. Will your god understand?

Semyonus was very angry. Olava translated for him. 'Science, Eugeni, is immutable. It understands nothing and forgives nothing. It is what it is.'

⁴
A mysterious god, great for the Pantheon.'

'Science is not a god. It would not like you calling it a god. If you think of it as a god, it will never let you know its mysteries. You must approach it in the scientific manner, with an open mind. Men devote years of their lives to it, their entire lives. It has given us everything we have today.' Thus said Olava for Semyonus.

'Hail Science, giver of things,' I said. 'Let us sacrifice to it.'

Lewus joined us and there was much talk. There was gloom on his face. They brought me to what was Semyonus's laboratory. And they expected me to believe this was not a creation of a Roman mind. Oh, Domitian, too much. Too much Domitian. Who but a Roman would kee
p frogs frozen solid? These bar
barians?