Time’s Eye

The temple, another great pyramidal pile, was like a cross between a cathedral and an office building. Hurrying down corridors and climbing from level to level, Bisesa passed through a bewildering variety of rooms, each elaborately decorated, containing altars, statues, friezes, and obscure-looking equipment like crosiers, ornate knives, headdresses, musical instruments similar to lutes and sackbuts, even small carts and chariots. In some of the deeper rooms there were no windows, and the light came from oil lamps burning smokily in little alcoves in the walls. There was a powerful smell of incense, which de Morgan told her was frankincense. There was some evidence of minor damage: a door smashed off its heavy wooden hinges, broken pottery, a tapestry ripped off one wall.

Ruddy said, “More than one god is worshiped here, that’s for sure. This is a library of worship. More gaudy polytheism!”

De Morgan muttered, “I can barely make out the gods for the gold. Look at it—it’s everywhere …”

Bisesa said, “Once I visited Vatican City. It was like this—wealth plastered to every surface, so dense you could barely pick out details.”

“Yes,” Ruddy said. “And the same causes: the peculiar hold religion has on the mind of man—and the accumulation of wealth by an ancient empire.”

There was some evidence of looting, though: the smashed doors, a few sockets where gems might have been lodged. But it seemed to have been half-hearted.

Marduk’s own chamber was at the very apex of the complex. But it was ruined, and they stood at the doorway in shock.

Bisesa learned later that the great statue of Marduk that had stood here had consumed twenty tonnes of gold. The last time Eumenes had been in this temple the statue had gone: centuries before Alexander’s visit, the conqueror Xerxes had looted these buildings and had taken away the great golden statue. Well, the statue had been here— but it had been destroyed, melted to a puddle of gleaming slag on the floor. The walls had been reduced to bare brick, scorched by some intense heat; Bisesa saw ashen fragments, the remains of tapestry or carpet. Only the statue’s base remained, softened and rounded, with perhaps the faintest trace of two mighty feet.

And, hanging in the air at the center of the burned-out temple, mysterious, unsupported, perfect, was an Eye—immense, much bigger than any others they had seen, perhaps three meters across.

Josh whistled. “Abdi, you’re going to need a big bucket to dunk that.”

Bisesa walked toward the Eye. In the uncertain light from the oil lamps, she could see her own distorted reflection looming larger, as if the other Bisesa, contained in the Eye like a fish in a bowl, was swimming to the glass to see her. She felt no heat, no sign of the great energies that had gutted this chamber. She lifted her hand and held it close to the Eye. She felt as if she was pushing against some invisible but resilient barrier. The harder she pushed, the more she was repelled, and she felt a subtle sideways pull.

Josh and Abdikadir were both watching her with some concern. Josh came up to her. “Are you all right, Bis?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

“What?”

She looked into the sphere. “A—presence.”

Abdikadir said, “If this is the source of the electromagnetic signals we have been monitoring—”

“I can hear them now,” her phone whispered from her pocket.

“More than that,” she said. There was something here, she thought. An awareness—yes. Or at least a watchfulness, a huge cathedral-like watchfulness, which drew her up helplessly. But she didn’t even know how she knew this. She shook her head, and something of that mysterious sense of presence dissipated.

Eumenes’ face was like thunder. “So now we know how Babylon was destroyed.” To Bisesa’s astonishment he picked up a golden staff from the floor. He wielded it over his head like a club, bringing it down on the unresponsive hide of the Eye. The club was left bent over, the Eye unmarked. “Well, this arrogant god of the Eye may find Alexander, son of Zeus-Ammon, a tougher opponent than Marduk.” He turned to the moderns. “There is much to do. I will need your help and insight.”

Abdikadir said, “We should use the city as a base—”

“That much is obvious.”

“Move the army in. We have to think about the water supply, food. And we need to set up routines like fire watches, guard patrols, repair crews.”

Josh said, “If the residential half of the city has gone we’ve a lot of building to do.”

“I think we will all be under tents for a while yet,” Abdikadir said ruefully.

“We will send out scouts to map the countryside,” Eumenes said. “And we will coax the farmers from their mud huts—or we will take their farms and run them for them. I don’t know any more if it is summer or winter, but here in Babylonia we can grow crops all year round.” He gazed up at the impassive Eye. “Alexander was to make this his imperial capital. Well, so it will become—the capital of a new world, perhaps …”

Casey came bustling into the chamber. His expression was grim. “We’ve had a message.”