Science Fiction: Welcome to my Worlds

table, then his gaze calmly swept the room. Her eyes widened in shock. “These worthless texts were taken from a Roman galleon. You will return them. Now.”

The sharp steel piercing her arm hurt terribly, but it was as nothing compared to the Vision imposed by contact with the soldiers’ knife. In a distant time, she saw the soldier laughing as the library burned. But overlaying that, she saw herself married to this hard-eyed oaf before the moon changed phase.

do the same—preferably on documents dealing with magic and the arcane, but nearly any subject would be of some interest. Patiently, she waited for Tellus to notice her.

“Yes, what is it boy?”

“Diokles sent me to help with the translations sir.”

Tellus raised his bushy brows. “You are familiar with Sumerian?”

“Yes sir.” She might be only nineteen but she had no doubt her gift with language would soon put her far ahead of most of those here.

Tellus gaze swept the pile available, pulled out one of the smaller volumes and handed it to her. A quick glance showed her it was a book of children’s stories. Certainly not what she would have chosen, but it was a place to start. She settled into an empty desk by the doorway and began immediately writing the Greek version into a blank codex that had been provided. Intermediate notes would not be required for this. She settled into a routine of the translation and could not keep the smile from her face. She was home.

She was so deeply engrossed in transforming the Sumerian tales to her native Greek that she didn’t hear the heavy footfalls in the corridor until it was too late. A Roman soldier entered the room, his arms bigger around than her thighs and his eyes cold and contemptuous. He pulled a dagger from his belt and drove it through Calixta’s arm, pinning her to the

like and none of those she had seen so far looked likely.
By now she must be far outside the walls of the Library building above. Down another corridor, she saw workers removing dirt and stone, hauling it up to the street above in baskets attached to a long rope. Moles building a maze of muddled meandering, she marveled.

She slowed as the corridor ahead became dark. One of the torches placed at regular intervals had gone out and no one had, as yet, come to replace it. She picked up her pace and stayed to the center, not liking the feel of that section at all. Great Athena, she had watched Heropholus cut open a living man and now she was letting a little darkness spook her!

Still, she felt better once she reached a lighted section once more. Ahead, she recognized the familiar face of Tellus and heaved a small sigh of relief. He was moving among several small tables offering advice on particularly tricky bits of translation. The bins here contained no papyrus scrolls but were stuffed and piled with bound vellum codex’s.

Each of the translators at the tables—all older than her and at least in their late twenties, she noted-- had a codex they were poring over and making notes on scraps of papyrus. Some of those further along in the process were already meticulously transferring their Greek translations of the Sumerian texts to another codex. This looked like home to Calixte and she wanted nothing more than to settle in here and

Leonides behavior was still an open wound, but the other was probably one of those who felt strongly women should be kept as cattle. He would be a problem even if Herophilus decided to keep silent.

Herophilus noticed her gaze on the guard. “I will speak nothing of your secret, little one.” He raised his voice and a steely note of threat crept in. “Neither will they, if they don’t wish to become the next subjects on my dissection table.” They didn’t move physically but their expressions changed to blank masks and Calixte could feel them cringe inside. She could feel Herophilus’ gaze on her again. “Perhaps you should move along now. You wouldn’t want to be tardy for your appointment with Tellus.”

Grateful for the escape, Calixte moved quickly down the hall away from Herophilus and the stench of his experiments. She had never met anyone she’d felt so ambivalent toward. It was probably stupid of her but she preferred bad people to be just plain bad.

The Archive was beginning to come alive now as others woke and resumed their studies or research in the tunnels below the main library. Several times she noticed things of interest in rooms along the way. One had wooden models of buildings and odd machines—she recognized a sort of catapult—and she was sorely tempted to stop and investigate, but she vigorously resisted the impulse and kept going. She had an idea of what Tellus looked

naked, exposed also in heart and mind. “How did you know?”
He smiled, and Calixte was surprised to see genuine warmth reflected there. He might be crazy, but she thought he wasn’t evil—exactly. “I search for the secrets of the human body child. I wouldn’t be much good at it if I couldn’t tell a girl from a boy, now would I?”

She decided to beg. “Please don’t tell the others, sir. This library… I need to be here…” She caught herself short of saying she would do anything. Most men would just ask for her virgin body, but this one might insist she inflict unspeakable horrors on others.

He put a finger to her lips. “I know. I see it in you. We are not so unlike, you and I. You feel the burning need to know as well. And some day, I think, you will find you are prepared to go further to satisfy that urge than you now think.”
She started to deny that she would ever go as far as he had in his quest, then stopped. The thought of killing this man, and his body guards, to keep her secret had occurred. That she had no idea how she might have done that was not relevant. It showed there might be more truth to what he was saying than she would like to believe.

Calixte noticed both of Herophilus’ body guards staring at her. One had a look of disgust on his face and the other open lust. She wasn’t worried by the lust, she’d seen that often enough before she was pretending to be a boy—and after too,

The man named as Herophilus looked up from making another cut. “It’s not torture child. We are trying to learn how the body works. And what would a scribe know of torture anyway?”

Calixte knew far more of it than she wanted. She had many uncles and one had a job in that very profession. He extracted confessions from suspected criminals, many of whom, she thought, would probably say anything just to get the torture to stop. Then there were her Visions, too, which often showed her things from contact with others that she would rather not have seen.

The two large men standing to either side of Herophilus—body guards, she supposed—moved toward Calixte menacingly. “No, no, leave her alone. She has done nothing wrong. Compassion is a positive quality. My dear, this work is born of compassion. One day you and the other nay-sayers will thank me for my curiosity and devotion to unraveling the nature of the human body. We shall be able to fix untold ailments and, yes, even extend the span of human life. Perhaps indefinitely.” He paused and looked at her thoughtfully. “You know, I could use an assistant. Someone with intelligence, smaller hands, and a delicate touch, like you. Would you be interested?

Violently she shook her head. “No, no, I couldn’t,” she managed to get out through teeth clenched to shut off the gorge rising in her throat. “I’m to work with Tellus on the Sumerian… Then she realized what he’d said. She. The fanatical light of his gaze pierced her and she felt completely naked. Worse than

might have just offended someone who could have her drawn and quartered without a second thought. “I, I, was sent here by Master Diokles, sir. No offense intended. I am to help Tellus with the Sumerian translations.”

The old man showed a brief spark of surprise but his gaze was quickly recaptured by the open pages beckoning. “Well, off with you then.” He waved vaguely in the direction she’d been traveling. “He’s down there somewhere.”

Calixte let her breath out, not realizing she’d been holding it. He was so absorbed he wasn’t likely to notice her further, so she slipped quietly away down the wide corridor. She hadn’t realized the Archive was so big. And had so many odd smells. Her nose wrinkled as she tried to shut out a sharp sour stench that drifted from a doorway ahead. Curiously she peered in, then gasped in dismay. A naked man lay tied to a table moaning in agony.

“Curses on you Herophilus and your ancestors to the end of time,” the man on the table gasped in Egyptian. “Plagues and poxes aplenty, though even that is too good for the likes of you who would defile the human form and cut it open like a sow to be slaughtered.”

Now she could see that the chest of the man on the table was sliced and torn and his ribs were held apart by wooden sticks, exposing his beating heart. Calixte couldn’t help herself. “Why have you done this? Such torture is barbaric!”

Calixte found the cool stones of the underground stairway soothing under her feet, in contrast to the heated whirl of her thoughts. The workmanship was good and the stones were smooth but not as smooth as they would be, she knew, after the passage of years and many feet polished them further. She was not surprised the Archive halls were nearly deserted at this early hour of the morning. This was not the usual domain of scribes and philosophers of status were not known to be early risers.

She couldn’t help taking a peek into the open doorways as she went along. There were rooms much like those in the main library above where scrolls were pigeonholed in bins and labeled in meticulous script. She noticed that most of the scrolls seemed much older, some almost crumbling with the effects of time, and none were written in Greek.

She passed another room that had no scrolls but there were tomes with pages of beaten gold and even fragile looking clay tablets with a curious form of writing she’d heard about only in legend. This, she knew, was where she belonged. Calixte’s excitement blotted out her reason. She reached for one of the clay tablets sprawled open on the table.

“Don’t touch that!” barked a grey-haired man whose toga bore an interlaced pattern of ink stains and, from the look of it, yesterday’s lunch. “What are you doing in the Archive boy?”

Calixte kept her eyes on the floor. She didn’t recognize the man and the great library drew people from all around. She

lanky form watching her from across the room. Perhaps she was a bit too pretty a boy, she thought uneasily.

"Report to Tellus in the Archive then; he's heading the Sumerian translation," Diokles said, then bent down to scold one of the boys for making a smudge.

"Thank you sir!" She couldn't wait to see what the Sumerian scrolls had in them. Calixte turned and started to dash toward the stair leading down to the Archive then skidded to a halt as Leonides boney form stepped in front of her.

Leonides reached out a hand to steady her and touched her arm. Then the world fell apart and the Vision took Calixte’s sight. She saw him writhing, entwined naked with another boy. She really didn't want to see this. Somehow she reached back to her physical self and jerked her arm from Leonides grasp. "What's the matter?" he asked looking hurt.

"I have to go. I'm needed in the Archive." She knew she mumbled the words but she didn't care. She had to get away. Leonides seemed so nice. He was the only one who'd welcomed her to the library and tried to make her feel at home. She'd avoided spending much time with him because she was afraid he might suspect she was a girl. But now she knew the truth. His was more than a friendly interest; he lusted for the pretty boy he thought she was! She probably wouldn't have given it a second thought if it was someone else, but she liked him. To think of him.... it was too much.

vellum copy of some ribald verses that needs to be finished by the end of the week. Can you do it and not make a mess of it?"

"Of course sir, but..."

"But what, boy? Out with it."

"It's just that I was hoping to get to help with the texts from Samaria."

"You can translate Sumerian?"

Calixte heard the disbelief in Diokles voice and added a small lie quickly. "My uncle taught me. I'm quite good really." Her uncle could barely speak Greek, but Calixte had a knack for languages and was certain she could pick it up quickly from the scraps of knowledge she already had. She'd heard some of the Sumerian documents were about magic and she itched to read them.

"Really? I suppose that would be a better use of your time then, though I can't imagine a young boy who'd rather translate dry foreign philosophy when they could be copying raunchy verse." He shrugged then squinted at Calixte. "Any more hidden surprises I should know?”

Caliste's breast flattener band itched under her tunic and it was all she could do not to scratch. It was uncomfortable, but not too high a price to pay to have access to the Library. She smiled at Diokles brightly. "No sir. No surprises." She was nineteen now but with the band she could easily pass as a slightly built fourteen year old boy. She noticed Leonidas tall

Alexandrian Visions
by Don

Chapter One

"Calix. Calix! Are you deaf boy?"

Calixte looked up from the scroll she was copying to see the red face of scribe master Diokles glaring at her. "No Sir." Sometimes the male form of her name just didn't register yet. She'd have to be more careful; if they discovered she was a woman she'd be sent home in disgrace. Some of the great ladies might enter the Library, but no one expected them to actually read anything. Ironic, she thought, when Athena was the patron of knowledge.

"Pay attention when I'm talking to you then. I'll get someone else to finish what you're working on. I've got a fancy