The Far Arena (32 page)

He put his head in a position of attentiveness and tried not to move it too much. The sun beat into his left eye. Semyon wore a blue blazer with a dashing white cravat. He assumed Sister Olav's gravity.

'Please explain,
’
said Petrovitch.

Sister Olav sat between them on a pea green couch without a back, but with two curving padded arms.

Semyon and Lew sat on backless chairs. Semyon had said how much healthier a chair like this was for the spinal column. Sister Olav had said it was not for them but for the patient. He would find this sort of chair more familiar.

'I have done the transcripts of his talkings, mumblings, ravings if you will, whatever. I agree with you, Dr Petrovitch. There can be no question now of a link between his physical health and what he is thinking. In Rome of his time there were violent games, one of the less commendable, perhaps least commendable, aspects of that civilization. Our patient at the time of his severe shock, the one that almost took him, was at these games. Either as a slave or a soldier or a gladiator or whatever capacity he had.'

'He has
scars, healed by cauterization’
said Petrovitch. 'Do you remember me pointing that out, Lew?'

'Um
mmmrr
m
,'
said Lew in agreement because he had to answer. His hands lay on his lap and his back hurt. Semyon leaned forward, his left forearm against his thigh. He was so close to being on his knees, Lew would not have been surprised if he dropped to one and proposed.

The patient is reliving. And he is highly susceptible, physically, to his emotions. I believe that discovering what has happened to him might send him into shock again, and this time, Dr Petrovitch's genius and commitment might not prevail.'

'You might be right, Sister Olav,' said Dr Petrovitch. 'What do you think, Lew?'

'Urnmm,' said McCardle.

'What we are going to do is, if at all possible, to soften his fall from the cliff- provide a cultural parachute so to speak. We won't impose anything more strange on him than we have to.'

'Very good,' said Semyon.

'Ummm,' said Lew.

'I have prepared some suggested guidelines as to how we should treat our patient,' said Sister Olav, giving Dr Petrovitch twenty-two typewritten pages, and Dr McCardle the same. Petrovitch, too, had brought materials - X-rays, his abbreviated daily reports (three days omitted during the period of shock), bis lengthier reports that lacked final analyses of the blood that, he had explained, had retarded crystallization in the remarkable physical specimen which Dr McCardle had so thoughtfully saved for science. Lew McCardle had brought only a package of gum, which no one else chewed, and the sweetness of which proved too much even for him. His stomach told him that if he continued to keep that sweet taste in his mouth it would come up with everything from the night before, and then some. He put the wet stick in his pocket.

As he silently prayed for a beer, Sister Olav went point by point over how they would provide their cultural parachute, looking to him for his assent.

'I would suggest that we change our names for use with and in front of the patient. Dr Petrovitch, I think Semyonus, a Latinized name I made up, would do well, if you would agree. Lewus for Dr McCardle and Olava for myself.'

'Olava, Olava is beautiful,' exclaimed Petrovitch. 'Olava, Olava, Olava. I love it. Love it. I never felt comfortable with Sister Olav. It sounded so, so, well some might say masculine. Olava is beautiful and fits you. Pure Roman.'

'No,' said Sister Olav. 'Lewellyn is Welsh, Olav is Germanic, and Semyon, Slavic. But he will be able to talk to us more easily, because he can treat the endings more easily in his language knowing how to say "to us" and "from us" and "for us" and things like that.'

Then there was the problem of what everyone wore. No watches, no lighters, no gadgets. Pens would be allowed because they contained ink, as had styluses then. Semyon would have to give up his cigarettes in front of the patient for a while.

'It's going to be hard,' said Petrovitch.

This too is hard,' said Sister Olav, and she removed the crucifix and rosary beads from her waist. This is very hard. I would like to wear a fish to replace them, but that would attract the sort of attention we deal with in section five which I will talk about later.'

'No. No. You may wear all your religious trappings. I would fight to my death for your right to wear these things as long as you wish. I would never request that.'

'Not for you, but for our patient. The crucifix, as an object of Christian symbolism, came into public veneration centuries after the probable life period of our subject. At his time it was an ugly execution device. The Christian symbol was the fish. But I forgo even that. And I must recommend to both of you here and now, from the bottom of my heart, that neither of you seek publicity and that you forgo on behalf of your government, Semyonus and your corporation, Lewus, the fame and approval of the world.

Petrovitch accepted this admonition with a nod and visible rising of his chest.

'Ummm,' said Dr Lewellyn McCardle, vice-president of Houghton Oil Corporation, Houston, Texas, USA. It was hard to tell his ringing ears from the occasional jet engines of the nearby airport.

From now on, it was agreed, no nurse was to be allowed to bring a radio or television set into the room, which had not happened so far, but might. While the working language could not be Latin, because all three had only English in common, everyone would try to limit conversation around the patient, although, if he were from Rome itself, he would not be shocked by different languages, since Rome was the centre of the world and had many peoples as guests and residents. The windows would be shaded.

'He would be shocked by glass?' asked Dr Petrovitch.

'Not at all. They had glass in Rome, but he would be shocked by a window facing outside. The Roman house faced in. It kept the world out. Just a little thing we're doing here, too, with our imitation peristilium. Now the diet, when he gets off intravenous, is all wrong. I see meat scheduled once a day. A regular diet with meat was not considered healthy. The Roman wouldn't even like it. If our Roman is typical, he covered everything with a sauce called garum or alum, types of a fermented fish product which they used on almost everything. Like you, Lew, might use ketchup.'

'I don't use ketchup,' said Lew. He took a big drink of water. And he readjusted his position on his backless chair, which he knew was a sella.

'I meant it was a common sauce,' said Sister Olav.

'That's what I meant, too,' said Lew. He wanted to yell out he not only knew everything she had mentioned but just might, if he had put in as much time intensively as she had, if he didn't have to earn a living, just might know her subject better than she did. But somehow, that she did not know that he knew, no matter how grating this was proving, could well help him. Lew felt this in his bones. But it did not make the cup he drank much tastier.

‘
I didn't mean to offend, just explain.'

'Do we have the recipe for the sauce?' asked Petrovitch, trying to muffle conflict.

'Not that I know of, but I think if we give him wheat and barley products with plenty of fruit and cheese, and, of course, the staples of the ancient world, olives and olive oil, we will provide an adequate diet.'

'Possibly even better than ours,' smiled Petrovitch. 'But what about our ties?'

'Leave them on. He will think you won them. They didn't have medals but they did have necklaces called torques. He will think your ties are some kind of badge, especially since they have no use. And if you want to, wear white and let the nurses wear white, also. He will think he is among the established class. My habit will remind him of a stola, but black like Lewus's dark clothes would make him think we are the lower class. They were not all that different in judging people by clothes.'

'Us ketchup dunkers sure do dress right peculiar, ma'am,' said McCardle.

'If I have offended you, Lewus, I am sorry. I really do appreciate your contribution to this project. There is a need for someone to get things done. I appreciate your arranging for a replacement for me at the school in Ringerike. It's not easy to find a civil Latin teacher so readily.'

'It was very easy,' said McCardle. 'I phoned our public affairs people back in Houston, and I said fly one in. And they did. In a day.'

'Yes, well, that's fortunate.'

They just had one of our vendors go to an employment agency in Great Britain. They're plentiful. No difficulty whatsoever. No one even knows Houghton did it. Because no one cares.'

'Lewus!' said Petrovitch angrily.

'Please. Please,' said Sister Olav. 'We have important work to do. What was the structure the patient was found in ? I don't see your report on that, which is important, because there might be other artifacts in the frozen cave, although none could be as important as our patient.'

'No cave, glacial ice. Eight point two metres down. I'm working on it. I had things to do last night. I had to phone home last night,' he said, remembering how he had reached his wife, Kathy, who said Tricia, their daughter, was now planning to do something violent to change the world, and he had asked if that meant sleeping with a triggerman instead of a philosopher, and his wife had said he should rise above his beginnings sometime, and he had hung up. He had drunk quite a bit and met someone in the lobby. In his hazy stupor, he finally realized she was a prostitute, and that her airfare back home was not a friendly gift from a beautiful, sexy older man to a helpless woman, but a pay-off for a screw. To be exact.

So, today, Sister Olav asked him if everything was all right, and he said yes and wondered whether he could get a drink this early in the morning without arousing curiosity or contempt.

'We have another curious fact here,' continued Sister Olav. 'Romans didn't come this far. Never did. The empire ended in Germany, which was considered wild, barbarian country, and farther north here was even more frightening to Romans. There was cannibalism through what we know now as Scandinavia.'

'Maybe he walked alone. A great trek,' said McCardle. 'He's a tough little bugger by the looks of things.'

'I doubt it. Nude, at least hundreds of miles beyond the borders of his civilization. I doubt if he walked alone. I don't care who he was, he just would not be going to make this sort of trek through this area. You're looking now at what is the more civilized part of the world, that is, in the sense of safety. Africa in your most extreme thoughts was never as wild, though, as this part of the world at his time.'

'What were Roman methods for freezing things?' Petrovitch asked. 'Maybe that's a key.'

'They didn't have freezing, to the best of my knowledge, and if there were evidence they could have frozen things, I would have known. No, they could cool things and warm things, and their baths had a frigidarium for cooling and a caldarium for heating. But they never froze things. The closest they came to using ice was having runners bring it down from the mountains for banquets.'

'Cooling would not do,' said Petrovitch. 'The action had to be immediate. Both in bloodstream and thermal reduction. Immediate. No one ever had these sorts of things until recent history. I don't know how it was done.'

'We'll find out, Semyon,
’
said Lew. 'Semyonus,' said Petrovitch. 'Yea
h,' said
Lew.

Sister Olav suggested that they continue on the morrow because Lewus seemed a bit under the weather, so to speak, or as the Romans would say, his liver was acting up.

'I second the motion and vote yes,' said Lew and got up, his mind somewhat relieved by the thought of a cold beer, followed by a cold beer, followed by a cold beer.

'One more thing,' said Sister Olav. 'When do you think the patient will recover complete consciousness?' She asked this of Dr Petrovitch.

'Any day now. It might come in bits. He might just open his eyes and say hello.'

'Now I have a problem,' said Sister Olav. 'What are my first words to the man who might have spoken with Virgil or Juvenal ? What do I say to the man who knew Saint Peter or Saint Paul, as we know each other? This man, who may have personally known those who administered their known world. What will be his thoughts when he sees us? I sometimes feel it is beyond me.'

There was little question what the patient was thinking in his deep sleep when all three visited the room on their way out. It was visibly apparent. Petrovitch and McCardle looked away in embarrassment. Rising underneath the light covering blanket, like a pole under a tent, from the horizontal form, was a full erection. Lew withheld the comment that if the patient were reliving something, he certainly wasn't suffering.