The Far Arena (39 page)

Olava brings me dinner in my food bowl. For light, she uses hardened oil with a strand of cloth in it instead of normal oil with the wick floating in it She says the physician Semyonus finds me in good health and surprisingly good condition, that my exercises have produced truly amazing results. 'You wish to match me?'

'We don't have arenas where men fight to the death. We are glad that you become strong so we can tell you something that we understand will be very hard for you to hear.
’

'What is that?'

'In a few days, Eugeni.'

I tell her the lamp with hardened oil is a fine product. She says she uses it because I am not ready to see a better product. I ask her if she is free or slave. She says she is most free. She has not known men.

'You are a virgin then?'

'Yes.'

"Then where are the games?' 'We have no games.'

"Then why do you bother with virginity if not to decide life or death? What is the name of your people?'

'Norwegians,' she says, it is time to tell you more.'

And then the terror begins. She takes a rod from her tight tunic, which she claims is a stylus, and on some incredibly uniform parchment, runs the rod, leaving a trail of thick blue blood. The rod makes the form of a map. I see Rome. I see Latium. I see Gaul and the Helvetian lands. There is the blob of Britannia. With as much authority as she has outlined the world, she outlines the German Sea in the north place. She makes a circle in the northernmost part of the German wilds.

'We are here,' she says.

'The most northern Germans,' I say. How pale she is. How smooth is the skin. What flesh of child went into the grooming of her body? What mother's liver eaten raw gave her size and strength ? I smile politely. If I must eat human flesh to live among these people, I will eat human flesh. I have taken it with the sword to preserve myself, now I will take it with the spoon. I will live.

The gentle of dusk comes and she talks about life and asks about the cohort and Domitian and the senate and where my house is in Rome. I am careful with her, saying that while I remember most things, my mind does not hold things perfectly, yet each day I remember more. She asks about a Jewish sect. As she asks about it again, she draws the fish with that rod. And just as she is completing the design, the room lights in flame. Bright bonfires of roaring intensity blind me. They are cooking me. That was the preparation. She screams in her howling bark. T
hey cook her, too. The rooms burn
s. And just as suddenly as it burned, it becomes darker than it was before, the solid oil lamp giving less light.

'Eugeni, it is safe. It is safe. It is correct. It is safe. Don't scream. Don't scream. Don't scream. You are safe. It is a product. We produce that light. It is a product. A safe product. Don't scream, Eugeni.'

I slam an elbow into her giant stomach. It surrenders quickly, unlike a barbarian. There is someone standing at the door: a cannibal priest. And he is joined by another cannibal priest in white. They may be savage, but they cannot fight. One drops with a kick into his groin. I push it hard for he is so big. One would think he is unprepared. They will not get this fattened dinner without combat.

They moved slowly for those who like human flesh. I lunge upward to smash him in the face. The bone breaks under my hand. The other throws his own yellow-haired hands in front of his big-toothed face.

I am in a corridor with the entire ceiling aflame. Yet the people do not burn. I hobble through it, my bare feet on marble, the coarse, white toga flying about me. Marble, blessed marble for my bare feet. Stone I know of, touch I remember, feel that is mine, of my life.

The corridor smells strange of that sharp incense. Suddenly, a metal door with no hands or pulleys opens like a giant mouth. Inside are people held in a small cubicle. They look strange in multicoloured tight tunics, some priests with cloth badges around their necks. And then something stranger up ahead.

I had seen writing in strange language on Olava's parchment The forms of the letters were Roman, but the words had not been. Yet this word on a red board above a portal was in Roman language. It said, as clearly as though inscribed in the stone of the very Forum itself, 'He leaves'.

I go through it. Strange iron stairs going up and down. I go down. More stairs. I go down. More stairs and more stairs and these I go down. These barbarians are awash in iron. Iron for stairs. What wealth! At last there is a portal with a door that has a square of glass in it.

I push through this door into a large room with very bright flames. Light... like limbs of brightness on the ceiling. People in strange non
-
white vestments stare at me.

I see a tree. Through a portal with doors of glass, entire doors of glass, I see a tree. I run to it, careful that the glass of the doors does not cut me. Across a smooth road I run, and my feet touch grass in the cool dusk. The bitter incense is gone and I feel cold in my loose, white robe, but I feel good.

A low roar from above. A giant fat pilum with iron wings and iron body comes down from the sky, bellowing like bulls. It breathes fire from its wings. I run to the tree and cling to the bark of the trunk, making my body small beneath the bare boughs with their beginning buds. I will hold. If it takes me in its mouth, yet I will hold. I will hold as it swallows me, and all I shall remember will be holding.

It passes over me and goes away. And I cling to the tree, even as I get cold out here in the coming night.

'Eugeni. Do not be afraid.' It is Olava. She is behind me and above me.

Nineteen

Lew had the answer, but, even as he explained it, he knew it was only a matter of time before he would not be able to sustain the scientific seclusion he needed most of all.

'You see,' said Lew,
‘
what we hope to achieve is a physical, low-temperature cure for emotional illness.'

'Cure, Dr McCardle?' a university official asked suspiciously.

'Not exactly a cure, but a treatment rather. You have physical surgery on the brain, you have analysis and various other therapies, this is cryonic therapy. Cure was an inappropriate term.'

‘
I have heard stories.'

‘
You mean sexual excesses by a Houghton executive?' 'Things to that effect, and also that he came in frozen in a block of ice.'

Lew laughed. 'As for being frozen in a block of ice, you can touch him yourself. He's living. So much for that story. As for the sex story, back in America they think of Scandinavians as being sexually promiscuous. This whole story came about because indeed he was undressed, suffering frostbite in major portions of the body. What Dr Petrovitch found was a simultaneous altering of the mental state. We at Houghton think this might be an important breakthrough. That's why we fund it. That's why we give it support. That's why we support you. It's no secret that today oil companies, because of the energy crisis, are considered in some quarters as scavenger ghouls. We need to be involved in the betterment of all mankind, and we at Houghton think mental illness is the great crippler of man.'

Lew paused for proper solemnity.

'Perhaps someday, because of the work we do here, people won't go nmning around exposing their entire bodies to the snow. Some may think it amusing that a person is so mentally disturbed he will disrobe in winter weather. I don't. Neither does my company.'

'I don't either,' said the university official. 'Not at all. I hear he speaks a strange language.' 'No,' said Lew. 'Italian. A dialect.'

'Yes. Well, of course. Of course. Good. And continue the good work. We hope the work, uh, continues. Yes. Thank you,' said the official. It had gone down. This time.

Lew found Semyon on the sun porch, exulting, describing the damage done to the hospital attendant.

'Do you know what it took to throw a punch like that, Lew, twenty-two days after consciousness and thirty-seven days after the first brain wave? Lew, our Eugeni is beautiful. I was so proud, Lew.'

'Our scientific seclusion is being jeopardized, Semyon. Severely. I have only one solution.'

'If only I could smoke, I'm so excited. I feel sorry for the injured attendant but, Lew, do you know what goes into throwing a punch like our Roman did? Eh? Are you aware of the human body? Everything has to work.'

'Go ahead and smoke.'

'Here? We have agreed this is forbidden.'

'He's seen electric lights and an airplane. Do you think it's going to shock him to see you smoking?'

Petrovitch lit up, inhaling with deep satisfaction. Outside it was dark, but for the blinking lights of the airplanes coming into the nearby airport. Now he noticed them. Now everyone noticed them. Now he realized they should have taken out the light switch instead of taping it over. Now everything was clear.

'What we need now, Semyon, is total seclusion. We can get a cabin with everything you need. He's physically perfect, you've got to admit that. Then we continue our research in proper seclusion.'

'I don't know. I don't like to be spread out. Thanks to you, we're just beginning to enjoy having everything in one building.'

'What about the blood? Have you isolated the poison yet? What happens when people start hearing about the eternal life fluid you've got here? If you think people acted funny about cryonics before, I'll wager you can't keep a sample free and clear. And then you'll never find out what it is.'

'We know what it is. It's a glycerol compound. I've had that for days. It's a sort of cellular antifreeze.' ' 'I thought it was poison.
’

'Absolutely. They would use this as a drug in ancient days, as a very effective poison. I want our Roman to verify he was given poison. But he was reluctant to talk about it, and we decided not to press the issue.'

'Do you want the storm of publicity while you delicately try to determine the exact compound, the exact formula used in the ancient world?'

'We know it better than they do. We know exactly what glycerol compound was used. That's not what remains to be discovered. What we're doing now, and with discretion I can assure you that, is having various laboratories check out the rate of thermal reduction. In other words, at what exact point does the temperature stop the killing process. This is being done with organs, cells, et cetera. Sort of farming it out, so to speak, with, of course, discretion. No one knows the magnitude of our achievement. When the results come in, we feed it into our computer, and we get the probable time and temperature. You see, there is a point at which different cells will accept this formula. It is the point we are looking for. It is not the solution. It is the point. I don't think notoriety could hurt us now. I don't want it, but it is beyond the stage of damage.'

'That's too bad for Olava,' said Lew.

'Why?' asked Semyon, a sudden chilling to his warm glow.

‘I
thought that in a cabin, Olava might let her hair down a bit. I think she likes you, but living at Saint Sabina's with all those nuns feeding her horror stories about Russians ...'

'How do you know she likes me?'

'I don't. I just sort of sensed something.'

'What did you sense?'

'Nothing, Semyon. Look, she's a nun. She's probably a lesbian as you said.'

'No. No. Many normal people are nuns. Olava is a nun. What makes you think she likes me? I know professionally she respects me.'

'Sort of a feeling, Semyon.'

'No,' said Petrovitch. He dismissed this with all the finality of a beggar with his hand open saying it was the last chance to give.

‘I
think so, Semyon, and I think she could use a vacation. She hardly sleeps. She works all the time. She's all business. I think that poor girl needs a rest, or we may have a mental patient for real.'

'You didn't say why you specifically thought she liked me,' said Petrovitch. it's no on the cabin?'

if Olava thinks it would be a good idea, I could go along with it. Exactly why do you think she is attracted to me?'

With Petrovitch's conditional approval, McCardle broached the idea to Sister Olav and got a wall thicker, harder, and more impenetrable than anything even a Roman engineer could build.

It was impossible at this time to expose the patient to any further confusion such as moving.

'Dr McCardle,' whispered Sister Olav, who had dismissed the nurse and taken over the night attendancy herself, 'our cultural parachute has broken. I am going to explain everything as soon as he wakes. This is not time to go gallivanting about. Impossible.'

The building was called a hospital where people went to get well from diseases. Yet there was no wine or cheer here, only whiteness I was not to go anywhere without Lewus or Semyonus or Olava. But if I did, I should show people a plaque pinned to me when I got lost. They assured me I was not a slave. There were no slaves any more. I should answer questions as well as I could.
I could have whatever I wanted. But I should not wander alone and, if I felt any illness, I should tell them immediately, especially the physician Semyonus.