Belisarius shrugged. “I’m going to keep doing it, and you’re going to keep doing it. Sooner or later—sooner, probably—I’ll give up the effort and retreat to Peroz-Shapur. Maybe Ctesiphon. Maybe somewhere else. Then we’ll fight it out in the open. I imagine you’re looking forward to that. But you won’t enjoy it, when the time comes. So much, I can promise.”
Damodara shook his head, still smiling. “I did not ask for this parley in order to discuss military affairs. As you say, the matter is moot.”
Still smiling; very cheerfully, in fact: “And I don’t doubt for a minute that you’ll make it just as tough for us on flat ground as you have in the mountains.”
Sanga snorted, as a man does when he hears another man announce that the sun rises in the east.
“I asked for this parley, Belisarius, simply because I wanted to meet you. Finally, after all these months. And also—”
The Malwa lord hesitated. “And, also, because I thought we might discuss the future. The far future, I mean, not the immediate present.”
Bull’s-eye. Am I a genius, Aide?
A true and certain genius, came the immediate response. But I still don’t understand how you figured it out.
Belisarius leaned forward, preparing to discuss the future. Because Lord Damodara is a man. The best man of the Malwa, because he’s the only one who doesn’t dream of being a god. He follows the Malwa gods, true. But he is beginning to wonder, I think, how well his feet of clay will stand the march.
“Lord Damodara—” began Belisarius. The general reached up and began unlacing his tunic. Beneath the cloth, nestled in a leather pouch, the future lay waiting. Like a tiger, hidden in ambush.
You’re on, Aide.
There was no uncertainty in the response. Neither doubt, nor puzzlement.
I’ll clean their clocks. Scornfully: Polish their sundials, rather.
* * *
Damodara—almost—took Aide in his hand when Belisarius made the offer. But, at the end, the Malwa lord shied away from the glittering splendor. Partly, his refusal was based on simple, automatic distrust. But not much. He didn’t really think Belisarius was trying to poison him with some mysterious magical jewel. He believed, in his heart of hearts, that Belisarius was telling the truth about the incredible—gem?—nestled in his hand.
No, the real reason Damodara could not bring himself to take the thing, was that he finally realized that he did not want to know the future. He would rather make it himself. Poorly, perhaps; blindly, perhaps; but in his own hands. Pudgy, unprepossessing hands, to be sure. Nothing like the well-formed sinewy hands of a Roman general or a Rajput king. But they were his hands, and he was sure of them.
Sanga was not even tempted.
“I have seen the future, Belisarius,” he stated solemnly. “Link has shown it to me.” The Rajput pointed to Aide. “Will that show me anything different?”
Belisarius shook his head. “Not at all. The future—unless Link and the new gods change it, with Malwa as their instrument—is just as I’m sure Link showed it to you. A place of chaos and disorder. A world where men are no longer men, but monsters. A universe where nothing is pure, and everything polluted.”
Belisarius lifted his hand, his fingers spread wide. Aide glistened and coruscated, like the world’s most perfect jewel.
“This, too, is a thing of pollution. A monster. An intelligent being created from disease. The worst disease which ever stalked the universe. And yet—”
Belisarius gazed down at Aide. “Is he not beautiful? Just like a diamond, forged out of rotting waste.”
Belisarius closed his fingers. Aide’s glowing light no longer illuminated the pavilion. And a Roman general, watching the faces of his enemies, knew that he was not the only one who missed the splendor.
He turned to Damodara. “Do you have children?”
The Malwa lord nodded. “Three. Two boys and a girl.”
“Were they born perfectly? Or were they born in blood, and your wife’s pain and sweat, and your own fear?”
A shadow crossed the Roman’s face. “I have no children of my own. My wife Antonina can bear them no longer. In her days as a courtesan, after she bore one son, she was cut by a man seeking to become her pimp.”