The Emperor Awakes (61 page)

‘It was this rogue but smooth operator who tricked this avalanche to come down crashing on us. He lit the match under our feet, set in motion a series of events that led to the breakdown of our society.

‘We watched our world crumbling around our ears, powerless to stop it. In the meantime, once his “good” deed was done, he left and went to the neigh-bouring realm where he caused considerable excitement with news of our realm’s disarray.

‘But he did not stop there. He had to feed this monster inside him, this manic obsessive sadistic streak for destruction and infliction of pain on innocent unsuspecting and carefree souls.

‘He played those poor souls like a professional, saw them as one instrument to be mastered and, like an expert puppeteer, he pulled their strings to the tune he had used in the past against us and probably others as well. He played us all so well until we could take no more stress and in the end snapped.

‘He preyed on our neighbours’ ambitions and cultivated their savage streak, suppressed till then, with horrific consequences for all of us. He gave our erst-while friends and neighbours new technology to use against us. Our neighbours were complacent, until they too realised, a little too late, what had happened to them was not what they desired at all.

‘They paid the ultimate price for a few precious seconds of celebration of their superiority over us. For many centuries we have been at war with the neighbouring realm and with ourselves.’

Katerina sensed the flow of words was ebbing away and decided to interrupt the excruciating monologue to ask the question that had been bugging them for a while.

‘What was the incident that the rogue caused to bring all this to a head, to cause the opening of those rifts in your society?’

‘It was innocent things at first, things like small thefts of grain, innocuous objects and other items, gradually increasing in frequency and significance. The result was petty jealousies becoming monsters, skirmishes, minor duels and catfights.

‘We ignored it. We thought it might be children, bent on mischief, but there were no leads and we unearthed nothing to back it up. He …’ The old man’s emotions began to rise to the surface. ‘First he charmed us and then he turned us against each other. We were desperate, you see, and when he had done his evil deed, he disappeared. When we could not catch him, it became worse and the civil war started.

‘We went to our neighbours who refused to help. They were going through a similar evil and devastation. We were inventing more and more terrible weapons, including biological ones, till we got an idea through an opportunity that opened up a door to us, a new world, a means of escape.

‘In a horrible twist of fate, which we now regret, we took the ruinous decision, by design for profit by some and by accident through immigration, to begin exporting our biological weapons and our people, to the other side, to other worlds, through the portal and portals that randomly opened up.

‘We were only trying to save our people, you see, and we started sending them to Athens through the portal. Some we sent to Sparta and Corinth. I cannot understand why the portal opened up at the time of the Peloponnesian War, which lasted between 431 B.C. and 404 B.C.

‘Perhaps by design of a higher force or for its amusement, that war that had similar overtones to ours was meant by that higher force to act as reminder of the consequences, like a weird parallel universe, nature’s way of trying to tell us something, a strong message that not only did we not heed, but we ended up making things worse there.

‘We may have caused a deterioration in Athens’ ability to cope. The Athenian plague during the war ended up becoming much worse than it would otherwise have been. They didn’t stand a chance. We changed events by, maybe inadvertently in some way, boosting Sparta.

‘The Spartans seemed to have been immune to our plague. I don’t know whether it was their diet, that disgusting black soup, the “melas zomos”, or something else, something in their genes, but, whatever it was, it worked for them, and the plague had no effect on them at all.

‘Do you think it had to do with Spartan appreciation of nature at a more rudimentary and honest level, and thus being closer to its secrets, compared to the delicate elegant Athenian love affair and its use of nature as inspiration for art?

‘Even though they had no way of analysing the bug to establish whether it was the same strain affecting both cities, the Athenians found out about the Spartans’ mysterious immunity to it and tried to contact the Spartans to get some help, a cure maybe.

‘Representatives from both sides had a secret meeting and found similarities in the intruders and their actions and symptoms. That is when they suspected that they were being afflicted by the same thing and realised that the Spartans could be their only hope to combat it and maybe cure it. How to isolate and extract whatever it was that gave the Spartans that edge, was beyond their medical capabilities, but they sure would have tried anything, even the transfusion of blood from Spartans to Athenians.

‘How, though, to isolate what you don’t know, the enemy within you cannot see? How could you bind back together the lost vestiges of soul and body that had been scattered to the far corners of the earth?

‘The Spartans, ignoring the politics of war, without asking anything in return, no “conceding-ignominious-defeat” concessions and terms demand put forward, were ready to help the Athenians, even with the advent and tension of the war, but events intervened and they failed to do so.

‘They were halfway through the process, as we tried to help them with our technology, and knock our heads together, to work on a cure, when we had to abort the process, because of some horrific side effects. The ceasing of the experiments led to even more terrifying consequences for both cities’ populations and their allies. Of course history never did seem to record any of this.

‘And we did more, more for which to be proudly ashamed. In our mad, disconcerted state of self, our distorted world, we didn’t know what we were doing. We committed sacrilege. It was us that caused the mutilation of the “stile”, the stone phallic symbols of fertility, standing sentinels outside the entrances to Athenian homes.

‘Don’t you see? We were responsible for the accusations against Alcibiades for the committal of that sacrilegious offence and the crucifixion of the Sicilian expedition. We accidentally triggered, fed and fired up the flames of resentment and scheming of the brilliant general’s demagogue accusers and their rise in the perfect democratic environment. You need to help us go back there and then and fix what we’ve done.’

Katerina was patiently listening and, as the self-appointed representative of the four visitors, leaned in close to reply. ‘Well, it may be a little too late for that. That will change too many of the events that followed in the last two and a half thousand years.’

The old man had more to say. He must have been saving for a long time the urge to, at long last, tell his story, this torrent of words that had now broken the dam holding them back and was flowing freely on a mission to incite compassion, a reaction, help, a solution.

‘What we did, in response to the vicious assault on our way of life, on our life itself, was a terrible thing, but we could not see any other way out of our predicament. But we lost everything. We need your help to put it right. For all our sakes.’

‘How can we help you? And how will that help us?’

‘The war with our neighbours, compounded with the plague, ravished and decimated my people. The only survivors, apart from me and my companion, are two children in a laboratory close by.’

‘So there are more? And they are alive?’ Katerina asked surprised but hopeful. Her sadness was beginning to lift, if even a little.

‘In a way.’ The man saw Katerina’s mouth about to move and anticipated her question. ‘Later.’

Katerina asked the question she had been meaning to ask since they first saw them. ‘Tell me, what is this state you are in, the flashing in and out of consciousness? We have not seen that before. Why is it happening to you? Are these the side effects of the experiment you talked about?’

‘I suspect there will be a lot here you have not seen before. This is a kind of stasis. It was the only way to do it for our survival. We managed to do it just in time, before the evil claimed us too. Everybody else perished, gone forever. I’m all that’s left.’ He indicated his companion. ‘This child was conjured up to keep me company and protect me from intruders, enemies and alien invaders, until he deemed it safe for me to come out and reveal myself.’

There were hostile noises behind them that were becoming progressively louder. The Ruinands were approaching. Katerina, Vasilis, Lara and Aristo had to move on, but not before they tried to help these people if they could, even though it might have looked like there was no hope.

‘I’m afraid we may have brought in some trouble with us.’ Katerina said, her face a picture of apology and shame with a bit of a frown born of fear thrown in as honest seasoning. She was in the mood to hide her feelings at this time.

The old man smiled at Katerina. ‘Don’t worry. It can’t be any worse than what we have faced already. We have suffered more than our fair share of pain in our time. Please forgive my companion’s brashness and audacity. You may join us for a meal and some local entertainment should you so wish.’

The feast organised in honour of Katerina, Vasilis, Lara and Aristo was splendid, made all the more so by the splendour of the hall they were in. The amount and variety of the dishes on display was impressive for such a lack of hands to prepare them.

One did not know where to look, what to taste first. The dishes were causing the table carrying them to slightly sag from their combined weight to the point of precipitating a near collapse. The four visitors felt supremely pampered. However, the feeling of ecstasy did not last long.

The old man saw the suspicion by which the four visitors were studying the various dishes. ‘Don’t be afraid of the food. It’s like what you might have in your own world. We have made it our mission to find out in preparation for this moment.’

That simple comment, that humility, gave no warning about the experience the four visitors were to embark on. With every mouthful they could see the history of this place unfolding before their eyes and fill their minds.

Katerina, Vasilis, Lara and Aristo were in the first stages of a trance. They kept shaking their heads with every mouthful.

The old man decided to make an announcement and he clanked on his glass with a spoon. It was hardly necessary as one could hear a pin drop in the silence that had descended on the visitors, faced as they were with this splendid feast. Yet, out of respect for their host, the visitors’ good manners forced them to cease eating.

Once the clinking of cutlery on plate paused and a hush fell on the table, the old man, satisfied that he had everybody’s attention, as four pairs of eyes zoomed on him, made his announcement with a flourish and a hint of irony.

‘Edible, but not without a twist. Please remember, you can all stay here for as long as you wish. Please enjoy all on offer and remember to rest too. Time in here has almost ground to a halt. So at least you won’t have to worry about anything you may miss in your world. The delay will be negligible, barely a thousandth of a second.’

Out of nowhere a figure appeared, an odd-looking half furry animal, half humanoid, apparently from the neighbouring realm, and asked for food. His plea fell on deaf ears. He asked again and then he begged and begged.

The figure was completely ignored by the old man and pushed away by his companion. The figure, feeling desperate for being ignored, vanished in a puff of smoke. Was it dead or just gone?

Katerina and the others could not understand why the figure was receiving this brutal treatment at the hands of their host and his companion, a treatment that resembled that of brutal master to slave or beggar in desperate need, for that was what the figure was, or bothersome dog, but they were reluctant to ask.

The old man, though, saw the puzzlement on the faces of his guests. He knew he had to address the matter. His expression was harsh and unforgiving. His words when they came were delivered in a soft and sad tone, as a drone’s droll.

‘That creature was one of the few remaining inhabitants of our neighbouring realm. They are desperate too, in some ways more so than we are.’ Two children appeared next to the old man as if by magic. ‘These two children are for you to take away and to raise as your own.’ Katerina and the others shared the thought that that was a quick trip from the laboratory, however nearby that may have been. ‘We will also need an infusion of blood from all four of you. You are the first visitors we have ever had. You are the ones we have been waiting for for generations.’ He paused.

When he resumed, the droning droll theme unashamedly continued unabated. ‘We need your blood to refresh our own blood and cure the sickness brought by inbreeding as our numbers dwindled. And if you help us you will lift the curse put on us by our neighbours that bounced back at them. And then hopefully both we and they may finally, after all this time, return to our normal lives.’

His eyes connected with Katerina’s, transferring their plea before the connection was severed. Katerina turned to their host and nodded, accepting the challenge on behalf of the four of them. That was the test. By their acceptance of the task they had overcome the risk and the fear of the unknown. They had passed the test.