The Dance of Time

Her husband grinned. "I can imagine the consequences if I didn't! But I agree, anyway. It's a good idea."

He hesitated a moment. Then:

"We'd have to live there ourselves, you understand."

"Yes, of course. Perhaps it would be best if we asked Antonina to find us a villa..."

"Yes." He instructed the operator to send that message.

A few minutes later, listening to the reply, Calopodius started laughing softly.

"What's so funny?" asked Anna. "I can't make any sense out of that bzz-bzz-bzz."

"Wait. You'll see in a moment, when you can read it yourself."

The radio operator finished recording the message and handed it to Anna. After she skimmed through, she smiled ruefully.

"Well, that's that."

MUST BE JOKING STOP WHY GET VILLA WHEN CAN HAVE PART OF GOPTRI PALACE STOP WILL SET ASIDE CHOICE SUITE FOR YOU STOP PREFER RUBY OR EMERALD DECOR STOP

* * *

Reading the same message, Lord Samudra's gloom deepened. The Romans weren't even bothering to hide their communications any longer. Using the radio openly, when they could have used the telegraph!

"They're already carving us up," he muttered.

"Excuse me, Lord? I didn't quite hear that," said one of his lieutenants.

Samudra shook his head. "Never mind. What's the situation at Multan?"

"We just got a telegraph message from the garrison commander. He says the refugees are still pouring into the city. Much more, he says, and the city's defenses will be at risk."

The Malwa commander took a deep breath; then, slowly, sighed it out. "We can't hold Multan," he said quietly, speaking more to himself than the lieutenant.

Shaking his head again, he said more loudly: "Send orders to the garrison commander to evacuate his troops from Multan and bring them south. We'll need his forces to reinforce our own down here. And start building fortification across our northern lines. The Persians will be attacking us, soon enough."

"Yes, Lord. And the city's residents? The refugees?"

"Not my affair!" snapped Samudra. "Tell the commander to abandon them—and if any try to follow his army, cut them down. We do not have room for those refugees here, either. Soon enough, we'll be fighting for our lives."

* * *

The next morning, the group of priests left behind by Link forced their way into Samudra's bunker.

"You cannot abandon Multan!" shouted the head priest.

But Samudra had known they would come, and had prepared for it. By now, all of his officers were as sick and tired of the priests as he was.

"Arrest them," he commanded.

It was done quickly, by a specially selected unit of Ye-tai. After the squawking priests were shoved into the bunker set aside for them, the commander of the Ye-tai unit reported back to Samudra.

"When, Lord?"

Samudra hesitated. But not for long. This step, like all the others he had taken, was being forced upon him. He had no choices, any longer.

"Do it now. There's no point in waiting. But make sure—certain, you understand—that there is no trace of evidence left. When"—he almost said if—"we have to answer to Great Lady Sati, there can be no questions."

"Yes, Lord."

* * *

The Ye-tai commander got promoted that evening. The explosion that destroyed the bunker and all the priests in it was splendidly handled. Unfortunate, of course, that by sheer chance a Roman rocket had landed a direct hit on it. Still more unfortunate, that the priests had apparently been so careless as to store gunpowder in the bunker.

The mahamimamsa who might have disputed that—which they would have, since they would have been the ones to handle the munitions—had vanished also. Nothing so fancy for them, however. By now, the open sewers that had turned most of the huge Malwa army camp into a stinking mess contained innumerable bodies. Who could tell one from the other, even if anyone tried?

* * *

By the following day, in any event, it was clear that no one ever would. The epidemic Samudra feared had arrived, finally, erupting from the multitude of festering spots of disease. Soon, there would be too many bodies to burn. More precisely, they no longer had enough flammable material in the area to burn them. The sewers and the rivers would have to serve instead.

Perhaps, if they were lucky, the bodies floating down the Indus and the Chenab would spread the disease into the Roman lines in the Iron Triangle.

* * *

By the time Link and its army returned to the banks of the Ganges, the cyborg that ruled the Malwa empire was as close to what humans would have called desperation as that inhuman intelligence could ever become. It was a strange sort of desperation, though; not one that any human being would have recognized as such.

For Link, the universe consisted solely of probabilities. Where a human would have become desperate from thinking doom was almost certain, Link would have handled such long odds with the same uncaring detachment that it assessed very favorable probabilities.