Through his amulet, Christian understood the cry. “Help, in God’s name, sir, help!” Fleetingly he thought the language must be a debased Greek. The other man snarled at him and brought weapon to shoulder.
Christian had no time to unlimber his. While the stranger was in motion, he bent, snatched up a rock—a fragment of a marble head—and cast. It thudded against the stranger’s nose. He lurched back, his face a sudden red grotesque. His gun clattered to the stairs. He howled.
With the quickness that was his in emergencies, Christian rejected grabbing his own firearm. He had seen that its lock was of peculiar design. He might not be able to discharge it fast enough. He drew his knife and lunged downward. “Get away, you swine, before I open your guts!” he shouted. The words came out in the woman’s language.
The other man retched, turned, and staggered off. Well before he reached the bottom of the hill, smoke had swallowed sight of him. Christian halted at the woman’s huddled form and sheathed his blade. “Here, sister,” he said, offering his hand, “come along. Let’s get to shelter. There may be more of them.”
She crawled to her feet, gasping, leaned heavily on his arm, and limped beside him up to the broken gateway. Her features Mediterranean, she was doubtless a native. She looked half starved. Laurinda came to her other side. Between them, the visitors got her into the portico of the Parthenon. Beyond a smashed door lay an interior dark and empty of everything but litter. It would be defensible if necessary.
An afterthought made Christian swear at himself. He went back for the enemy’s weapon. When he returned, Laurinda sat with her arms around the woman, crooning comfort. “There, darling, there, you’re safe with us. Don’t be afraid. We’ll take care of you.”
The fugitive lifted big eyes full of night. “Are … you … angels from heaven?” she mumbled.
“No, only mortals like you,” Laurinda answered through tears. That was not exactly true, Christian thought; but what else could she say? “We do not even know your name.”
“I am … Zoe … Comnenaina—”
“Bone-dry, I hear from your voice.” Laurinda lifted her head. Her lips moved in silent command. A jug appeared on the floor, bedewed with cold. “Here is water. Drink.”
Zoe had not noticed the miracle. She snatched the vessel and drained it in gulp after gulp. When she was through she set it down and said, “Thank you,” dully but with something of strength and reason again in her.
“Who was that after you?” Christian asked.
She drew knees to chin, hugged herself, stared before her, and replied in a dead voice, “A Flemic soldier. They broke into our house. I saw them stab my father. They laughed and laughed. I ran out the back and down the streets. I thought I could hide on the Acropolis. Nobody comes here anymore. That one saw me and came after. I suppose he would have killed me when he was done. That would have been better than if he took me away with him.”
Laurinda nodded. “An invading army,” she said as tonelessly. “They took the city and now they are sacking it.”
Christian thumped the butt of his gun down on the stones. “Does Gaia let this go on?” he grated.
Laurinda lifted her gaze to his. It pleaded. “She must. Humans must have free will. Otherwise they’re puppets.”
“But how did they get into this mess?” Christian demanded. “Explain it if you can!”
The amulet(s) replied with the same impersonality as before:
“The Hellenistic era developed scientific method. This, together with the expansion of commerce and geographical knowledge, produced an industrial revolution and parliamentary democracy. However, neither the science nor the technology progressed beyond an approximate equivalent of your eighteenth century. Unwise social and fiscal policies led to breakdown, dictatorship, and repeated warfare.”
Christian’s grin bared teeth. “That sounds familiar.”
“Alexander Tytler said it in our eighteenth century,” Laurinda muttered unevenly. “No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” Aloud: “Christian, they were only human.”
Zoe hunched lost in her sorrow.
“You oversimplify,” stated the amulet voice. “But this is not a history lesson. To continue the outline, inevitably engineering information spread to the warlike barbarians of northern Europe and western Asia. If you question why they were granted existence, reflect that a population confined to the littoral of an inland sea could not model any possible material world. The broken-down societies of the South were unable to change their characters, or prevail over them, or eventually hold them off. The end results are typified by what you see around you.”
“The Dark Ages,” Christian said dully. “What happens after them? What kind of new civilization?”
“None. This sequence terminates in one more of its years.”
“Huh?” he gasped. “Destroyed?”
“No. The program ceases to run. The emulation stops.”
“My God! Those millions of lives—as real as, as mine—”
Laurinda stood up and held her arms out into the fouled air. “Does Gaia know, then, does Gaia know this time line would never get any happier?” she cried.
“No,” said the voice in their brains. “Doubtless the potential of further progress exists. However, you forget that while Gaia’s capacities are large, they are not infinite. The more attention she devotes to one history, the details of its planet as well as the length of its course, the less she has to give to others. The probability is too small that this sequence will lead to a genuinely new form of society.”
Slowly, Laurinda nodded. “I see.”
“I don’t,” Christian snapped. “Except that Gaia’s inhuman.”
Laurinda shook her head and laid a hand on his. “No, not that. Posthuman. We built the first artificial intelligences.” After a moment: “Gaia isn’t cruel. The universe often is, and she didn’t create it. She’s seeking something better than blind chance can make.”
“Maybe.” His glance fell on Zoe. “Look, something’s got to be done for this poor soul. Never mind if we
