Because I used to be a secretary on the staff of the proconsul to the Cherokee Nation, I have friends in Rome. Because I hadn’t had the good sense to call ahead, none of them were home. I had no choice. I had to take a room in a high-rise inn on the Palatine.
It was ferociously expensive, of course. Everything in Rome is—that’s why people like to live in dreary outposts like London—but I figured that by the time the bills came in I would either have found something to satisfy Marcus and get the rest of the advance, or I’d be in so much trouble a few extra debts wouldn’t matter.
Having reached that decision, I decided to treat myself to a servant. I picked out a grinning, muscular Sicilian at the rental desk in the lobby, gave him the keys for my luggage, and instructed him to take it to my room—and to make me a reservation for the next day’s hover-flight to Alexandria.
That’s when my luck began to get better.
When the Sicilian came to the wine shop to ask me for further orders, he reported, “There’s another citizen who’s booked on the same flight, Citizen Julius. Would you like to share a compartment with him?”
It’s nice when you rent a servant who tries to save you money. I said approvingly, “What kind of a person is he? I don’t want to get stuck with some real bore.”
“You can see for yourself, Julius. He’s in the baths right now. He’s a Judaean. His name is Flavius Samuelus.”
Five minutes later I had my clothes off and a sheet wrapped around me, and I was in the tepidarium, peering around at everybody there.
I picked Sam out at once. He was stretched out with his eyes closed while a masseur pummelled his fat old flesh. I climbed onto the slab next to his without speaking. When he groaned and rolled over, opening his eyes, I said, “Hello, Sam.”
It took him a moment to recognize me; he didn’t have his glasses in. But when he squinted hard enough his face broke out into a grin. “Julie!” he cried. “Small world! It’s good to see you again!”
And he reached out to clasp fists-over-elbows, really welcoming, just as I had expected; because one of the things I like best about Flavius Samuelus is that he likes me. One of the other things I like best about Sam is that, although he is a competitor, he is also an undepletable natural resource. He writes sci-roms himself. He does more than that. He has helped me with the science part of my own sci-roms any number of times, and it had crossed my mind as soon as I heard the Sicilian say his name that he might be just what I wanted in the present emergency.
Sam is at least seventy years old. His head is hairless. There’s a huge brown age spot on the top of his scalp. His throat hangs in a pouch of flesh, and his eyelids sag. But you’d never guess any of that if you were simply talking to him on the phone. He has the quick, chirpy voice of a twenty-year-old, and the mind of one, too—of an extraordinarily bright twenty-year-old. He gets enthusiastic.
That complicates things, because Sam’s brain works faster than it ought to. Sometimes that makes him hard to talk to, because he’s usually three or four exchanges ahead of most people. So the next thing he says to you is as likely as not to be the response to some question that you are inevitably going to ask, but haven’t yet thought of.
It is an unpleasant fact of life that Sam’s sci-roms sell better than mine do. It is a tribute to Sam’s personality that I don’t hate him. He has an unfair advantage over the rest of us, since he is a professional astronomer himself. He only writes sci-roms for fun, in his spare time, of which he doesn’t have a whole lot. Most of his working hours are spent running a space probe of his own, the one that circles the Epsilon Eridani planet, Dione. I can stand his success (and, admit it! his talent) because he is generous with his ideas. As soon as we had agreed to share the hoverflight compartment, I put it to him directly. Well, almost directly. I said, “Sam, I’ve been wondering about something. When the Olympians get here, what is it going to mean to us?”
He was the right person to ask, of course; Sam knew more about the Olympians than anyone alive. But he was the wrong person to expect a direct answer from. He rose up, clutching his robe around him. He waved away the masseur and looked at me in friendly amusement, out of those bright black eyes under the flyaway eyebrows and the drooping lids. “Why do you need a new sci-rom plot right now he?” asked.
“Hells,” I said ruefully, and decided to come clean. “It wouldn’t be the first time I asked you, Sam. Only this time I really need it.” And I told him the story of the novel the censors obstatted and the editor who was after a quick replacement—or my blood, choice of one.
He nibbled thoughtfully at the knuckle of his thumb. “What was this novel of yours about?” he asked curiously.
“It was a satire, Sam. An Ass’ Olympiad. About the Olympians coming down to Earth in a matter transporter, only there’s a mix-up in the transmission and one of them accidentally gets turned into an ass. It’s got some funny bits in it.”
“It sure has, Julie. Has had for a couple dozen centuries.”
“Well, I didn’t say it was altogether original only—”
He was shaking his head. “I thought you were smarter than that, Julie. What did you expect the censors to do, jeopardize the most important event in human history for the sake of a dumb sci-rom?”
“It’s not a dumb—”
“It’s dumb to risk offending them,” he said, overruling me firmly. “Best to be safe and not write about them at all.”
“But everybody’s been doing it!”
“Nobody’s been turning them into asses,” he pointed out. “Julie, there’s a limit to sci-rom speculation. When you write about the Olympians you’re right up at that limit. Any speculation about them can be enough reason for them to pull out of the meeting entirely, and we might never get a chance like this again.”
“They wouldn’t—”
“Ah, Julie,” he said, disgusted, “you don’t have any idea what they would or wouldn’t do. The censors made the right decision. Who knows what the Olympians are going to be like?”
“You do,” I told him.
He laughed. There was an uneasy sound to it, though. “I wish I did. About the only thing we do know is that they don’t appear to be just any old intelligent race; they have moral standards. We don’t have any idea what those standards are, really. I don’t know what your book says, but maybe you speculated that the Olympians were bringing us all kinds of new things—a cure for cancer, new psychedelic drugs, even eternal life—”
“What kind of psychedelic drugs might they bring, exactly?” I asked.
“Down, boy! I’m telling you not to think about that kind of idea. The point is that whatever you imagined might easily turn out to be the most repulsive and immoral thing the Olympians can think of. The stakes are too high. This is a once-only chance. We can’t let it go sour.”
“But I need a story,” I wailed.
“Well, yes,” he admitted, “I suppose you do. Let me think about it. Let’s get cleaned up and get out of here.”
While we were in the hot drench, while we were dressing, while eating a light lunch, Sam chattered on about the forthcoming conference in Alexandria. I was pleased to listen. Apart from the fact that everything he said was interesting, I began to feel hopeful about actually producing a book for Mark. If anybody could help me, Sam could, and he was a problem addict. He couldn’t resist a challenge.