Interlude
Exploratory Spacecraft 67(&%#@, Several Hundred Znargs Above the Teutoburg Forest
“I’ve confirmed that we’ve got his body going to where the others are,” Red informed Blossom. “At least I think I have. His mind is entirely somewhere else, in space, though not so distant in time. I’ve never heard of anything like this, Blossom. I wouldn’t be able to track his mind, I don’t think, if there wasn’t still a kind of link between body and mind.”
* * *
“Where am I?” asked Calvus. “And who the hell are you?”
The being to whom he spoke now, much like Rod, just a bit earlier, was so accepting of the intrusion of a stranger into his mind that Calvus wondered if, perhaps, he was not speaking to the conscious mind but to some kind of animus, something inside a man or woman with an existence independent of the body.
“Who am I? I am Jerome, a humble servant of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and, in good part, a translator of his words. As to where you are: apparently you are with me, and I am in what the Eastern Empire calls Bethlehem, the birthplace of my Lord and God. And you?”
“I am Calvus. As to the whats, whys, and wherefores: too hard to explain,” answered Calvus. “I don’t even know how to explain it. Last I knew I was in a rainy forest in Germany preparing to die. Suffice to say that I mean no one any harm.”
Calvus’ reticence stemmed from the realization that this “Christ” mentioned by Jerome probably meant that he was a Christian. Despite Rod’s earlier mental denunciation of the Christians, Calvus had no desire to offend. Changing the subject, he asked, “What are you doing? Rather, what were you doing when I was so rudely thrust upon you?”
“I was writing a letter to a widow, Ageruchia, a wealthy woman of Gaul, advising her not to remarry.”
“Kind of a busybody, then, aren’t you? And in what language were you writing? What languages can you write in?”
“I wonder, sometimes,” answered Jerome, “but in this case, no; the widow asked for my advice. As for languages, I speak, read, and write Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the language of the Jews. I can sort of get by in Aramaic by my accent is atrocious. This letter is in Latin.”
“Sate my curiosity, friend Jerome, and show me.”
“How?”
“From experience, I think that if you look at the letter, or read it to yourself aloud, I will see and hear.”
“Very well, then.”
Calvus paid limited attention to the advice to Ageruchia, but then the tone and message of the letter changed, with Jerome’s reading of, “The once noble city of Mogontiacum has been captured and destroyed. In its church many thousands have been massacred. The people of Vangionum after standing a long siege have been extirpated. The powerful city of Remorum, the Ambiani, the Altrebatæ, the Morini on the skirts, Tornacum, the Nemetæ, and Argentoratus have fallen to Germania: while the provinces of Aquitaine, and of Novempopulania, of Lugdunensis, and Narbonensis are, with the exception of a few cities, one universal scene of desolation. And those which the sword spares without, famine ravages within. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse, which has been kept from falling hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop, Exuperius. Even the Spains are on the brink of ruin and tremble daily as they recall the invasion of the Cymry; and while others suffer misfortunes once in actual fact, they suffer them continually in anticipation.”
“Gods!” said Calvus, “It is the death of the Empire.” Despite being incorporeal, the haruspex began to weep. “‘Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.’”
“Ah, Homer,” said Jerome.