Robert Silverberg by With Caesar

Author:With Caesar
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-08-31T01:39:43+00:00

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Indeed the wine, vile though it was, calmed Maximilianus rapidly, and soon he was laughing and shaking his head over the impudence of the ratty little man. "A hero of the realm! Me! And Emperor, too? Was there ever a soothsayer so far from the truth in his auguries?"

"If they are al like that one," said bar-Heap, "then I think there's no need to fear the coming fiery destruction of the universe, either. These men are clowns, or worse. Al they provide is amusement for fools."

"A useful function in the world, I would say," Menandros observed. "There are so many fools, you know, and are they not entitled to amusement also?"

Faustus said very little. The episode among the sorcerers and soothsayers had left him in a mood of uncharacteristic bleakness. He had always been a good-humored man; the Caesar prized him for the jol y companionship he offered; but his frame of mind had grown steadily more sober since the coming to Roma of this Greek ambassador, and now he felt himself ringed round with an inchoate host of despondent thoughts. It was spending so much time in this underground realm of darkness and flickering shadows, he told himself, that had done this to him. He and the prince had found only pleasure here in days gone by, but their time these two days past in these ancient tunnels, this mysterious kingdom of inexplicable noises and visitations, of invisible beings, of lurking ghosts, had made him weary and uncomfortable. This dank sunless underground world, he thought, was the true Roma, a benighted kingdom of magic and terror, a place of omens and dread.

Would the world be destroyed by flame in eighteen years, as the old man said? Probably not. In any case he doubted that he would live to see it. The universe's end might not be approaching, but surely his own was: five years, ten, at best fifteen, and he would be gone, wel before the promised catastrophe, the--what had the Greek cal ed it?--the great ekpyrosis.

But even if no flaming apocalypse was real y in store, the Empire did seem to be crumbling.

There were symptoms of disease everywhere. That the man second in line for the throne would react with such fury at the possibility that he might be cal ed upon to serve the realm was a sign of the extent of the il ness. That the barbarians might soon be battering at the gates again, only a generation after they supposedly had been put to rout forever, was another. We seem to have lost our way.

Faustus fil ed his cup again. He knew he was drinking too much too fast: even his capacious paunch had its limits. But the wine eased the pain. Drink, then, old Faustus. Drink. If nothing else, you can al ow your body a little comfort.

Yes, he was getting old. But Roma was even older. The immensity of the city's past pressed down on him from al sides. The

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