The Lotus Eaters

Anno Condita 471 Punta de Coco Airfield, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

Two Nabakov-21 jet transports awaited the party on the airfield, their engines turning the air over the concrete of the strip into a couple of blotches of wavering haze. Within the haze, surrounded by it, two double lines of sweating Pashtun, along with a dozen Balboan tutors, boarded, along with their families. The Pashtun wore the pixilated desert battledress of the Legion but with turbans atop their heads. The tack for the horses they would pick up in Pashtia. The impedimenta—personal baggage, tentage and supplies—was already aboard and strapped down under netting.

"Now listen to me carefully," said Carrera to Tribune Cano, wagging a finger a few inches in front of the latter's nose, "I don't care if these people think Hamilcar is Jesus Christ, himself, let alone a reincarnation of Alexander. There will be no bowing and scraping. None."

Carrera had to use his left index finger; his right arm was still immobilized.

"Easier to order than to enforce, Duque," said Alena, Cano's Pashtun wife, standing at her husband's side. "He is Iskandr, the avatar of God."

Carrera smiled then, thinking, Never underestimate the benefits of a classical education.

"Indeed," he said. "Let us suppose for the moment that that is so. Was Iskandr, the boy, told that he was a god? Did his people do proskynesis? Was he spoiled?"

Alena's smooth brow wrinkled. "Well . . . no, not so far as we know, anyway. His godhood wasn't made manifest until God himself spoke to him at the place called Siwah."

"Right. Has this happened, to the best of your knowledge, with Hamilcar, my dear?"

Wrinkled brow was joined by pursed lips. "Ummm . . . no," she forced out.

"Does it not then occur to you that that is the way it must happen, that the boy not be treated as a god until God himself decrees it?"

Brow and lips were then joined by narrowing eyes. "Perhaps."

Carrera looked from Alena to Cano and back again, while saying, "No perhaps about it. You will not ruin my boy. Though there is something . . . if I could speak with your wife privately, Tribune . . ."

* * *

I will not weep, Lourdes ordered herself. I will not; I will not; I will not! I will . . .

"Mom, stop crying," Hamilcar said. "You're embarrassing me."

"You don't understand," she sniffed. "You are my son. You are my life. Seeing you go is like having a piece of me cut away." The mother dropped to her knees on the scorching concrete and wrapped her arms around the boy.

"No, I understand," he whispered. "But you bore all of me in a small part of you. You, on the other hand, from beginning to now, are the only home I've ever known. I am sooo going to miss you, mother."

"But if you cry anymore you're going to make me cry too . . . and the guards will be upset if I do that."

* * *

Hamilcar, seated between Cano and Alena, crawled over Alena's lap to put his face to the window. He wanted one last glimpse of his mother. Yes, Alena was almost a mother to him and had been since they'd first met. Yet a boy could only have one real mother.

"Iskandr," Alena said, close to the boy's ear (for whatever name his worldly parents had given him, to her he was and only could be Iskandr), "Iskandr, it will be all right. You will like my people . . . your people, as you will like your new home."

"I know," he answered. "I already do. I always have. It still hurts."

"I know, my Iskandr," Alena said, reaching up to stroke the boy's hair. "But you will get over it. Your destiny demands it."

* * *

As the plane carrying Hamilcar gunned engines and began to taxi down the runway, Lourdes wailed aloud into Carrera's shoulder, "My baby, my baby!"

He held her tight with one arm, stroking her hair gently with the hand of the other. Weep, Lourdes, weep. I would join you if I could. I can't and so you must cry for the both of us.