Come to that, he was nervous of her. Her fear had long burned away, and as the days wore by, and she pushed against one barrier or another with impunity, she grew in confidence and determination. It was as if her stranding in this bit of the thirteenth century had liberated something primeval inside her.
Kolya, meanwhile, spent his time with Yeh-l, the empires chief administrator.
Born in one of the neighboring nations, Yeh-l had been brought into the Mongol camp as a prisoner; an astrologer by training, he had quickly risen in this empire of illiterates. Yeh-l and other educated men in the court had been appointed by a farsighted Genghis Khan to administer the growing empire.
Yeh-l had used China as his model for the new state. He selected the most able of the prisoners the Mongols brought back from their raids into northern China to help him in this project, and extracted books and medicines from their booty. Once, he said modestly, he had been able to save many lives during an epidemic in Mongolia by using Chinese medicines and methods.
Yeh-l sought to moderate the Mongols cruelty by appealing to higher ambitions. Genghis Khan had actually considered depopulating China to provide more pasture for his horses, but Yeh-l had deflected him. The dead dont pay taxes, he had said. Kolya suspected his long-term ambition was to civilize the Mongols by allowing the sedentary cultures they conquered to assimilate themjust as China had absorbed and acculturated previous waves of invaders from the northern wastes.
Kolya had no idea how his personal adventure would turn out. But if he was stuck here on Mir, in people like Yeh-l he saw the best hope for the future. And so he was happy to consult with Yeh-l about the nature of the new world, and to draw up plans for what to do about it.
Yeh-l had been taken by Sables first attempt to sketch a world map on the dirt floor. He and Kolya now assembled a detailed map of the entire world, based on Kolyas memories and charts from the Soyuz. Yeh-l was an intelligent man who had no difficulty accepting that the world was a spherelike the Greeks, Chinese scholars had long ago pointed out the curving profile of the Earths shadow, cast on the Moon during a lunar eclipseand it was easy for him to grasp the mapping of a globes surface to a flat sheet.
After some preliminary sketching Yeh-l assembled a team of Chinese scribes. They began work on an immense silk version of the world map. When finished it would cover the floor of one of the yurts in the emperors great pavilion.
Yeh-l was fascinated by the emerging image. He was intrigued how little remained of Eurasia for the Mongols to conquer; from the Mongols continent-spanning point of view, it seemed a short step from Russia through the countries of western Europe to the Atlantic coast. But Yeh-l worried about how he would present the map to Genghis Khan, with so many territories in the New World, the Far East and Australasia, Southern Africa and Antarctica, of which Genghis Khan had had no knowledge.
The scribes work was truly beautiful, Kolya thought, with the ice caps picked out in delicate white threads, spun gold following principal rivers, precious stones marking major cities, and the whole covered with careful Mongol letteringalthough Kolya learned to his surprise that the Mongols had had no written script at all before Genghis Khan, who had adopted the script of his neighbors the Uighurs as his standard.
The laboring clerks clearly took pride in their work, and Yeh-l treated them well, congratulating them on their prowess. But the clerks were slaves, Kolya learned, captured during the Mongols raids on the Chinese nations. Kolya had never met slaves before, and he couldnt help but be fascinated by them. Their posture was always submissive, their eyes dropped, and the women especially cringed from any contact with the Mongols. Perhaps they were favored in the presence of Yeh-l, but they were defeated, owned.
Kolya missed his home: his wife, his children, lost in the time streams. But each of these wretched slaves had been ripped from her home, her life trashed, and not by a godlike manipulation of time and space but simply through the cruelty of other human beings. The slaves plight didnt make his own loss any easier to bear, but it warned him against self-pity.
If he found the presence of the slave clerks difficult to accept, Kolya took comfort in the civilized intelligence of Yeh-l. After a time it seemed to him that he was finding it easier to trust Yeh-l, a man from the thirteenth century, than Sable, a woman of his own time.
Sable grew impatient with the careful mapping sessions. And she was not impressed with the plans Yeh-l was tentatively assembling to present to Genghis Khan.
The first priority ought to be consolidation, in Yeh-ls view. The Mongols had come to rely on the import of grain, cloth and many other essentials, and so trade had become important to them. As there were few working links left with China, the first and richest part of Genghis Khans Asiatic empire ought to be explored first. At the same time, Kolya urged, a party should be sent to the valley of the Indus, to seek out Casey and the other refugees from his own time.
But this wasnt bold enough for Sable. After a week she walked into Yeh-ls chamber and stabbed a knife into the world map. The slave clerks fluttered away like frightened birds. Yeh-l regarded her with cold interest.
Kolya said, Sable, we are still strangers here
Babylon, she said. She pointed to her knife, which quivered at the heart of Iraq. Thats where the Khan should be directing his energies. Grain stores, trade routes, the cowing of Chinese peasantsall these are dirt compared to that. Babylon is where the true power behind this new world liesas you know as well as I do, Kolyaa manifestation of a power that has torn up space and time themselves. If the Khan gets hold of that, then his divine mission to rule the planet might come about after all, even in his lifetime.
In English, incomprehensible to any of their interpreters, Kolya said, Power like that, in the hands of Genghis Khan? Sableyoure crazy.
She looked at him, eyes blazing. Were eight centuries ahead, remember. We can harness these Mongols. She waved her hand over the world map, as if laying claim to it. It would take generations for anything like a modern civilization to be built on the fragments of history we have inherited. With the Mongols behind us we could shortcut that to less than a lifetime. Kolya, we can do this. In fact its more than an opportunity. Its a duty.
Before this fierce woman, Kolya felt weak. But this is a raging horse youre trying to ride
Yeh-l leaned forward. Through Basil he said, You will speak in the common tongues.
They both apologized, and Kolya repeated a sanitized version of the cosmonauts discussion.
Delicately Yeh-l plucked the knife out of the gleaming map, and picked at the damaged threads. To Sable he said, Your case is not made. Perhaps we could close our hand on the beating heart of the new world. But we cannot maintain that grip if we starve.
She shook her head. I will take this to the Khan. He would not be so timid as to pass by an opportunity like this.
Yeh-ls face closed up, the nearest Kolya ever saw to him growing angry. Emissary of Heaven, you do not yet have the ear of Genghis Khan.
Just wait, Sable said in English, and she grinned defiantly, apparently without fear.
23. Conference
Answering Alexanders summons they headed for the Kings tent: Captain Grove and his officers, Bisesa, Abdikadir, Cecil de Morgan in his role as interpreter, and Ruddy and Josh, who would record this astonishing conference in their notebooks. On the Macedonian side there would be Alexander himself, Eumenes, Hephaistion, the Kings doctor Philip and an inordinate number of courtiers, advisors, chamberlains and pages.