Silverberg, Robert - Sailing To Byzantium

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Science Fiction

By Robert Silverberg

contemporary

Sailing to

Byzantium

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

Fictionwise Publications

www.fictionwise.com

This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely

coincidental.

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February

1985

NOTICE: This ebook is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or

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COVER DESIGN BY CHRIS HARDWICK

This ebook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

At dawn he arose and stepped out on to the patio for his first look

at Alexandria, the one city he had not yet seen. That year the five

cities were Chang-an, Asgard, New Chicago, Timbuctoo, Alexandria:

the usual mix of eras, cultures, realities. He and Gioia, making the

long flight from Asgard in the distant north the night before, had

arrived late, well after sundown, and had gone straight to bed. Now,

by the gentle apricot-hued morning light, the fierce spires and

battlements of Asgard seemed merely something he had dreamed.

The rumour was that Asgard's moment was finished, anyway. In

a little while, he had heard, they were going to tear it down and

replace it, elsewhere, with Mohenjo-daro. Though there were never

more than five cities, they changed constantly. He could remember a

time when they had had Rome of the Caesars instead of Chang-an,

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

and Rio de Janeiro rather than Alexandria. These people saw no

point in keeping anything very long.

It was not easy for him to adjust to the sultry intensity of

Alexandria after the frozen splendours of Asgard. The wind, coming

off the water, was brisk and torrid both at once. Soft turquoise

wavelets lapped at the jetties. Strong presences assailed his senses:

the hot heavy sky, the stinging scent of the red lowland sand borne

on the breeze, the sullen swampy aroma of the nearby sea.

Everything trembled and glimmered in the early light. Their hotel

was beautifully situated, high on the northern slope of the huge

artificial mound known as the Paneium that was sacred to the goat-

footed god. From here they had a total view of the city: the wide

noble boulevards, the soaring obelisks and monuments, the palace

of Hadrian just below the hill, the stately and awesome Library, the

temple of Poseidon, the teeming marketplace, the royal lodge that

Mark Antony had built after his defeat at Actium. And of course the

Lighthouse, the wondrous many-windowed Lighthouse, the seventh

wonder of the world, that immense pile of marble and limestone and

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

reddish-purple Aswan granite rising in majesty at the end of its mile-

long causeway. Black smoke from the beacon-fire at its summit

curled lazily into the sky. The city was awakening. Some temporaries

in short white kilts appeared and began to trim the dense dark

hedges that bordered the great public buildings. A few citizens

wearing loose robes of vaguely Grecian style were strolling in the

streets.

There were ghosts and chimeras and phantasies everywhere

about. Two slim elegant centaurs, a male and a female, grazed on

the hillside. A burly thick-thighed swordsman appeared on the porch

of the temple of Poseidon holding a Gorgon's severed head and

waved it in a wide arc, grinning broadly. In the street below the

hotel gate three small pink sphinxes, no bigger than house cats,

stretched and yawned and began to prowl the kerbside. A larger

one, lion-sized, watched warily from an alleyway: their mother,

surely. Even at this distance he could hear her loud purring.

Shading his eyes, he peered far out past the Lighthouse and

across the water. He hoped to see the dim shores of Crete or Cyprus

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

to the north, or perhaps the great dark curve of Anatolia. Carry me

towards that great Byzantium, he thought. Where all is ancient,

singing at the oars. But he beheld only the endless empty sea, sun-

bright and blinding though the morning was just beginning. Nothing

was ever where he expected it to be. The continents did not seem to

be in their proper places any longer. Gioia, taking him aloft long ago

in her little flitterflitter, had shown him that. The tip of South

America was canted far out into the Pacific; Africa was weirdly

foreshortened; a broad tongue of ocean separated Europe and Asia.

Australia did not appear to exist at all. Perhaps they had dug it up

and used it for other things. There was no trace of the world he once

had known. This was the fiftieth century. ‘The fiftieth century after

what?’ he had asked several times, but no-one seemed to know, or

else they did not care to say.

‘Is Alexandria very beautiful?’ Gioia called from within.

‘Come out and see.’

Naked and sleepy-looking, she padded out on to the white-tiled

patio and nestled up beside him. She fitted neatly under his arm.

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

‘Oh, yes, yes!’ she said softly. ‘So very beautiful, isn't it? Look,

there, the palaces, the Library, the Lighthouse! Where will we go

first? The Lighthouse, I think. Yes? And then the market place—I

want to see the Egyptian magicians—and the stadium, the races—

will they be having races today, do you think? Oh, Charles, I want to

see everything!’

‘Everything? All on the first day?’

‘All on the first day, yes,’ she said. ‘Everything.’

‘But we have plenty of time, Gioia.’

‘Do we?’

He smiled and drew her tight against his side.

‘Time enough,’ he said gently.

He loved her for her impatience, for her bright bubbling

eagerness. Gioia was not much like the rest in that regard, though

she seemed identical in all other ways. She was short, supple,

slender, dark-eyed, olive-skinned, narrow-hipped, with wide

shoulders and flat muscles. They were all like that, each one

indistinguishable from the rest, like a horde of millions of brothers

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

and sisters—a world of small lithe childlike Mediterraneans, built for

juggling, for bull-dancing, for sweet white wine at midday and rough

red wine at night. They had the same slim bodies, the same broad

mouths, the same great glossy eyes. He had never seen anyone who

appeared to be younger than twelve or older than twenty. Gioia was

somehow a little different, although he did not quite know how; but

he knew that it was for that imperceptible but significant difference

that he loved her. And probably that was why she loved him also.

He let his gaze drift from west to east, from the Gate of the Moon

down broad Canopus Street and out to the harbour, and off to the

tomb of Cleopatra at the tip of long slender Cape Lochias. Everything

was here and all of it perfect, the obelisks, the statues and marble

colonnades, the courtyards and shrines and groves, great Alexander

himself in his coffin of crystal and gold: a splendid gleaming pagan

city. But there were oddities—an unmistakable mosque near the

public gardens, and what seemed to be a Christian church not far

from the Library. And those ships in the harbour, with all those red

sails and bristling masts—surely they were medieval, and late

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

medieval at that. He had seen such anachronisms in other places

before. Doubtless these people found them amusing. Life was a

game for them. They played at it unceasingly. Rome, Alexandria,

Timbuctoo—why not? Create an Asgard of translucent bridges and

shimmering ice-girt palaces, then grow weary of it and take it away?

Replace it with Mohenjo-daro? Why not? It seemed to him a great

pity to destroy those lofty Nordic feasting-halls for the sake of

building a squat brutal sun-baked city of brown brick; but these

people did not took at things the way he did. Their cities were only

temporary. Someone in Asgard had said that Timbuctoo would be

the next to go, with Byzantium rising in its place. Well, why not?

Why not? They could have anything they liked. This was the fiftieth

century, after all. The only rule was that there could be no more

than five cities at once. ‘Limits,’ Gioia had informed him solemnly

when they first began to travel together, ‘are very important.’ But

she did not know why, or did not care to say.

He stared out once more towards the sea.

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

He imagined a newborn city congealing suddenly out of mists, far

across the water: shining towers, great domed palaces, golden

mosaics. That would be no great effort for them. They could just

summon it forth whole out of time, the Emperor on his throne and

the Emperor's drunken soldiery roistering in the streets, the brazen

clangour of the cathedral gong rolling through the Grand Bazaar,

dolphins leaping beyond the shoreside pavilions. Why not? They had

Timbuctoo. They had Alexandria. Do you crave Constantinople? Then

behold Constantinople! Or Avalon, or Lyonesse, or Atlantis. They

could have anything they liked. It is pure Schopenhauer here: the

world as will and imagination. Yes! These slender dark-eyed people

journeying tirelessly from miracle to miracle. Why not Byzantium

next? Yes! Why not? That is no country for old men, he thought. The

young in one another's arms, the birds in the trees—yes! Yes!

Anything they liked. They even had him. Suddenly he felt frightened.

Questions he had not asked for a long time burst through into his

consciousness. Who am I? Why am I here? Who is this woman

beside me?

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ScienceFictionByRobertSilverbergcontemporarySailingtoByzantiumSailingtoByzantiumbyRobertSilverberg2FictionwisePublicationswww.fictionwise.comThisebookisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,places,andincidentseitherareproductsoftheauthor’simaginationorareusedfictitiously.Anyresemblancetoactualeventsorloca...

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