The Dance of Time

Belisarius tried to keep from scowling, but. . couldn't, quite. Given that the Romans controlled the Indus south of the Iron Triangle and their Persian allies were rapidly bringing agricultural production in the Sind back up to normal, he wasn't really worried about running out of food. Still, rations were tight, and. .

He sighed, audibly. There wasn't much point trying to keep anything from Justinian, as smart as he was. 'It's a problem, I admit. Not the food, just the endless headaches. I'm beginning to think-'

'Forget it! I'm the Grand Justiciar of the Roman Empire. There's no way I'll let you wheedle me into adjudicating the endless squabbles you're having with the damn natives here. Bunch of heathens, anyway.'

'Actually, they're not,' said Belisarius mildly. 'A good portion of them, at least. You'd be surprised how many are converting to Christianity.'

Justinian's eye sockets were too badly scarred for him to manage the feat of widening them with surprise. Perhaps thankfully, since they were horrible-enough looking as it was. Justinian, naturally, refused to cover them with anything.

Calopodius did the same, but in his case that was simply a young man's determination to accept adversity squarely. In Justinian's, it was the ingrained, arrogant habit of an emperor. What did he care if people flinched from his appearance? They'd done so often enough when he'd still been sighted. More often, probably. Justinian had never been famous for his forbearance.

'It's true,' Belisarius insisted. 'Converting in droves. By now, the priests tell me, at least a fourth of the Punjabis in the Triangle have adopted our faith.'

Justinian's head swiveled toward the bunker's entry, as if he could look out at the terrain beyond. Out and up, actually, since the bunker was buried well beneath the soil.

'Why, do you think?'

'It might be better to say, why not?' Belisarius nodded toward the entrance. 'Those are all peasants out there, Justinian. Low caste and non-Malwa. It's not as if the Malwa Empire's mahaveda brand of Hinduism ever gave them anything.'

Justinian was almost scowling. He didn't like being puzzled. 'Yes, yes, I can see that. But I'd still think they'd be afraid. .'

His voice trailed off.

Belisarius chuckled harshly. 'Be afraid of what? That the Malwa will slaughter them if they overrun the Triangle? They will anyway, just as an object lesson-and those Punjabi peasants know it perfectly well. So they're apparently deciding to adhere to Rome as closely as possible.'

Still looking at the heavily timbered entrance to the bunker, Belisarius added: 'It's going to be a bit of a political problem, in fact, assuming we win the war.'

He didn't need to elaborate. Emperor he might no longer be, but Justinian still thought like one-and he'd been perhaps the most intelligent emperor in Rome's long history.

'Ha!' he barked. 'Yes, I can see that. If a fourth have already converted, then by the time'-his scowl returned briefly-'you finally launch your long-delayed offensive and we hammer the Malwa bastards-'

'I'm glad you're so confident of the matter.'

'Don't be stupid!' Justinian snapped impatiently. 'Of course you will. And when you do-as I was saying before I was interrupted-probably two-thirds of them will be Christians. So what does that leave for Khusrau, except a headache? Don't forget that you did promise him the lower Punjab as Persian territory.'

Belisarius shrugged. 'I didn't 'promise' the Emperor of Iran anything. I admit, I did indicate I'd be favorable to the idea-mostly to keep him from getting too ambitious and wanting to gobble all of the Punjab. That would just lead to an endless three-way conflict between the Persians, the Kushans and the Rajputs.'

'You'd get that anyway. You want my advice?'

Naturally, Justinian didn't wait for an answer before giving it. 'Keep the Iron Triangle. Make it a Roman enclave. It'd be a good idea, anyway, because we could serve as a buffer between the Persians, the Kushans and the Rajputs-and now we could justify it on religious grounds.'

He made an attempt to infuse the last phrase with some heartfelt piety. A very slight attempt-and even that failed.

Belisarius scratched his chin. 'I'd been thinking about it,' he admitted. 'Kungas won't care.'

'Care? He'd be delighted! I never would have thought those barbarous Kushans would be as smart as they are. But, they are that smart. At least, they're smart enough to listen to Irene Macrembolitissa, and she's that smart.'

In point of fact, while Belisarius knew that the king of the Kushans listened carefully to the advice of his Greek wife, Kungas made his own decisions. He was quite smart enough on his own to figure out that getting his new Kushan kingdom embroiled in endless conflicts with Persians and Rajputs over who controlled the Punjab would just weaken him. A Roman buffer state planted in the middle of the Punjab would tend to keep conflicts down-or, at least, keep the Kushans out of it.

'The Rajputs. .'

'Who cares what they think?' demanded Justinian. 'All of this is a moot point, I remind you, until and unless you finally get your much-delayed offensive underway-at which time the Rajputs will be a beaten people, and beaten people take what they can get.'

That was Justinian's old thinking at work. Shrewd enough, within its limits. But if nothing else, the years Belisarius had spent with Aide's immense knowledge of human history in his mind had made him highly skeptical of imperialism. He'd been able to scan enormous vistas of human experience, not only into the future of this planet but on a multitude of other planets as well. Out of that, when it came to the subject of empires, Belisarius had distilled two simple pieces of wisdom:

First, every empire that ever existed or would exist always thought it was the end-all and be-all.

Second, none of them were. Few of them lasted more than two hundred years, and even the ones that did never went more than a couple of centuries without a civil war or other major internal conflict. The human race just naturally seemed to do better if it avoided too much in the way of political self-aggrandizement. The notion that history could be 'guided'-even by someone like Belisarius, with Aide to serve as his adviser-was pure nonsense. Better to just set up something workable, that contained as few conflicts as possible, and let human potential continue to unfold within it. If the underlying society was healthy, the political structure tended to sort itself out well enough to fit whatever the circumstances were.

In short, not to his surprise, Belisarius had come to conclude that the ambitions and schemes of his great enemy Link and the 'new gods' who had created the monster were simply the same old imperial folly writ large. Belisarius didn't really know exactly what he believed in. But he knew what he didn't-and that was good enough.

'Agreed, then,' he said abruptly. 'We'll plan on keeping the Triangle. Who knows? Khusrau might even be smart enough to see that it's in his benefit, too.'

'Might be,' grunted Justinian skeptically. 'I doubt it, though. Don't forget he's an emperor. Wearing the purple automatically makes a man stupider.'

The scarred, savaged face grinned. 'Take my word for it. I know.'

* * *

Their conversation was interrupted by a particularly loud ripple in the never-ceasing exchange of barrages between the Romans and the Malwa. Some of the enemy shells even landed close enough to make the bunker tremble.

Not much. But enough to bring Justinian's scowl back.

'I'm getting tired of that. When in the name of all that's holy are you going to stop lolling about and start the offensive?'

Belisarius didn't bother to answer.

When the time is right, came Aide's voice. Then, a bit plaintively: Which is when, by the way? I'd like to know myself.

Et tu, Aide? The answer is that I don't know. When it feels right. Which it doesn't yet. Things have to keep brewing for a while, in the Hindu Kush-and most of all, in Majarashtra.

You don't have any way to get in touch with Rao by radio, Aide pointed out. Or