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 FOR EARTH DAY

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it,

the world, and all who live in it.
—Psalm 24:1

The sea is his, for he made it.

—Psalm 95:5
 PREFACE

I ’m a linguist by nature and an environmentalist by calling. It was the media that crowned
me “Mother Earth,” a mantle I never asked for but have never been able to shake.
The title was, in truth, a disparagement bestowed upon me by a few anonymous members
of the College of the Cardinals after I called out the Vatican for refusing to pay its water bills.
Vatican City was hiding behind its status as a sovereign state and waving an obscure
agreement known as the Lateran Treaty of 1929. The treaty established that Italy must
provide water for the 107-acre enclave of Vatican City, but it made no provision for sewage
fees. All I said was, “We neither render unto Caesar the taxes we owe Caesar, nor render unto
God the honor we owe God as his stewards of Creation.”
Today the “Serena Serghetti” I see in bestselling adventure thrillers and video games is
unrecognizable to me. She is somebody else, an action heroine skilled with small weapons
and boasting a bra cup two sizes bigger than mine. But if that’s the only cross I must bear in
this world, then I carry it lightly, gratefully, because now I can better appreciate the far
heavier burdens others must carry with truly disfiguring labels.
Like my friend, Moby Dick. If there’s one thing they got right, it’s that I do indeed talk to
the animals. Or at least listen to them.
I offer no explanation how this confession came to me, except to note that sperm whales
have very little to say. The strong silent types of the seas, they let their actions speak and only
use words when necessary. Novelists such as Herman Melville may write voluminous novels
like Moby Dick. But what the brave and noble Moby says here for Earth Day, however
briefly, speaks volumes.
The publisher has asked me to include a few words of my own. So, in addition to Call Me
Moby, you’ll find Shapers, a brief address I gave to members of the American media at their
annual dinner in Washington, D.C; and, finally, Cloaca Maxima, an excerpt from the famous
“Chiron Confession” scroll that I translated from the ancient Greek.

SERENA SERGHETTI, PhD

VATICAN CITY
 CALL ME MOBY
Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a
speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is
moreover declared in his pyramidical silence.

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

C all me Moby. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no
money in my purse (nor need of it), and certainly nothing in particular to interest me on shore,
I thought I would exercise my sole option and swim about a little and see the watery part of
the world.
No, taking to the sea is not a way I have of driving off the spleen, nor regulating the
circulation. Nor is the ocean my haven whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth
or whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul (which is more often than I would like
to admit), nor whenever my “hypos” get the upper hand of me. No, the sea is not the simple
vice for me that it is for others; it is not that same refuge for those humans who flee from the
strife they have created and cannot cope with on shore.
Quite simply, the sea is my home, my only home. I am a whale, only a whale. And my
purpose—part of it, anyway—is to swim about and inhabit my home and thus defend my role
in Nature’s order. This function, at minimum, requires my survival. In any case, it was some
years ago that I infamously encountered the whaling vessel called the Pequod and my part in
the universe was challenged.
From beyond the horizon it came, like all the other, an alien vessel constructed by men to
ride upon unknown waters, propelled by uncertain winds. This ship, however, was not driven
by the elements but by a captain whose only excuse for living was to kill me. One by one my
brothers of the deep were mercilessly slaughtered in their own home as the Pequod made her
journey into destruction. How unfortunate it is that shipmate Ishmael’s description of my
brother’s heinous death must exemplify the cruelty of man:
It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now going head out,
and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his
side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawned in his faltering flight, and
still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled
towards the sky his one beating fin. So I have seen a bird with clipped wing, making
affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird
has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb
brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in his: he had no voice, save that choking
respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while
still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appall the
stoutest man who so pitied.
Poor Rehmar! Struck down, stripped of life, and sold to service civilization’s insatiable
illuminary wants. It is for him I speak. It is for all those who cannot speak that I voice my
knowledge of the torture of mammal at the hands of mammal. Although there were many
aboard the Pequod, only one was to blame for the death of my brother, the Pequod’s crew,
and his own: Captain Ahab.
Quoting from Mr. Melville’s official chronicle of events:
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put
together of all contrasting things…even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s
valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltlessness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and
were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.
It was Ahab who controlled the crew as one’s mind controls one’s body. He was
responsible for it—death, destruction, and doom, for dozens of other whales, too, according to
information I have received at a variety of Gumps (the whale equivalent of a Gam). It was he
who invoked his crew to strive through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might
destroy them.
In other words, me.
Before explaining further how I feel about Ahab and defending my actions, I believe it is
important to examine the object of his pursuit (me, again) and how it is depicted in Mr.
Melville’s book. Upon analysis, one finds an interesting paradox about myself: On the one
hand I am called a big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness. On the other hand I
seem possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. Which am I? An eternal son of heaven
or an infernal son of hell? Mr. Melville, unfortunately, provides enough material to support
either depiction, leaving his readers to distinguish the true from the false when, in fact, neither
is totally true nor false.
In describing me, Ishmael says, Not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! Did surpass the
glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam. This is quite a compliment. But it really pays
tribute to the Creator who made me and not the creation itself. Speaking of white, Ishmael
says, It is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the
Christian’s Diety. I will not make an issue of it since Mr. Melville insists on writing page
after page about the virtues of the color white, but, in truth, my color is really silver. What can
I do to stop him from taking literary license and writing such beautiful prose, even if it is not
true? It sounds pleasant enough, although I am sure he could write just as many pages about
the merits of silver. Again, I am only a whale, nothing more—and certainly nothing less, as
some critics would have you believe.
There is another view of me, a very disturbing view, one that portrays me as stupid,
insensitive, and even evil. This view comes not so much from Mr. Melville, but from critics
of his work who wish to distort the meanings of his verse. It was indeed the conceit of the
Pequod’s chief harpooner Queequeg that nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent,
ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort could kill him. But even this assault upon
my sensibilities is not as bad as the critics who describe me as half whale, half devil and
accuse me of pursuing Captain Ahab when it was the other way around.
At least first mate Starbuck’s putdowns contain some seed of truth: Vengeance on a dumb
brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with such a
dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous. Despite delivering a blow to my intelligence,
Starbuck points out the real issue at hand: Ahab’s obsession with my destruction. Even
though I am not a dumb brute, I am just a whale, no matter how physically stunning or
appalling I may seem. All I want to do is swim in peace. But Ahab would not allow.
In describing Ahab, many words come to mind, including “selfish,” “conceited” and
“cruel.” I have no regard for those critics who choose to elevate that man to the status of a
tragic hero. They overlook that it was Ahab himself who destroyed the Pequod and not me.
Once again it is the perceptive Starbuck who informed Ahab of his folly: See! Moby Dick
seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!
You must not forget that simple fact. I cannot stress the point enough.
It was Ahab who was as proud as Lucifer. It was Ahab who confessed his own mental
illness when he said, I am madness maddened! It was also Ahab, claiming to be gifted with
high perception, who supervised the twisted perversions of the sacraments of communion and
baptism, and who even had the audacity to compare himself to Christ, wondering if he would
bear the burden of his mission. Mr. Melville described more than enough to reveal Ahab’s
sickness.
As I told you in the beginning of this confession, I am a whale, only a whale, and the sea is
my home, my only home. The same is the case for man. Man is man, only man, and nothing
more for now. And the land is his home. In short, each of us has his own place in Creation.
Admittedly, man’s is more important. Originally, man was given dominion over every fish in
the sea and every other thing as well. But man cannot be allowed to forget that there is a
Power even greater than he, lest he grow proud and someday even get the impression that the
world he sees before him was something he created.
Tragically, Ahab wanted to upend the natural order. That is why he was killed. That spirit
of man—that determined pride to master what is not really his—had to be checked. How
could Ahab expect to be master of other men and nature when he could not even master his
own lawless nature?
Yes, there must be a witness in this world to remind man of his place in creation and to
testify to the authority of the Creator. I guess that witness, one of them at least, is me.
 SHAPERS
Excerpted from an address by Serena Serghetti before the Annual Media Dinner on the
eve of the National Prayer Breakfast at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.

W hat an honor to be here tonight at this media dinner before tomorrow’s prayer
breakfast. Now that the Secret Service has locked us down overnight with no entry or exit, I
have a captive audience. But I love coming to these things, because it’s the only time politicos
in Washington acknowledge a higher power than themselves.
Even popular video games know that.
By some strange misfortune, I’m an actual character in some of these games, so I know a
bit about them. Many of these games split the world into two competing factions, much like
Washington divides itself along party lines. One augmented reality game I’m in is divided
into Enlightened and Resistance factions. In another one, based on the bestselling Raising
Atlantis novels of Thomas Greanias, it’s the Atlanteans versus the Alignment.
In short, these games acknowledge what we all already know: We live in a divided world.
None more than today’s political world of Washington, D.C.
These competing factions also acknowledge a third, higher faction. They go by mysterious
names, like the so-called “Shapers” in the game Ingress. These angelic or alien beings
allegedly have been shaping human events for millennia toward either a benign or sinister
purpose, take your pick.
And it is the reaction to this third or higher “reality” that has split the factions on earth in
these fictional worlds. The Atlanteans/Enlightened welcome and seek the ascended masters of
the universe, these gods, for illumination, progress, and evolution. The Alignment/Resistance
oppose surrendering ourselves to these outside forces, however benevolent they may appear,
until their true nature and motives are revealed.
Allow me to suggest that this same dynamic is at play in the current war over the role of
government and globalization in today’s geopolitics. We are witnessing in the U.S. and
Europe—the Brexit, in particular—a rejection of the promise of globalization and this idea
that elites in D.C. or Brussels or even Rome can really tell us all how to live our lives.
Allow me also to suggest that you in the media gathered here tonight, the Fourth Estate,
play the role of these Shapers in helping to shape our perception of political reality, even as
you are being shaped by it. And allow me to suggest a few insights and tips to help you, help
all of us, become an informed and enlightened electorate, to support or resist certain politics
that shape our society.
Now it used to be that news organizations would doggedly pursue the facts to wherever
they would lead in a story before drawing a conclusion. And some still do. But many other
news organizations have what they like to call “narratives” or strong editorial policies and
news assignments to dig up stories that support their narrative.
The result is that the mantra “all the news that’s fit to print” has become “all the news that
fits we print.” So the news or “facts” that don’t fit our paradigm—whoever “we” may happen
to be—don’t make it into the stories, let alone the headlines to inform the world at large. We
have a media rule or reality with one fact, not two. Which is a tragedy. As one Silicon Valley
tech titan told me with amazement after something dawned in him in our conversation,
“Wow, there is another side.”
It’s the sin of omission that plagues the news media, not the sin of commission.
The media needs to give voice to both sides, preferably in the same story. Even the devil
gets his due. And yet we have the editor of the New York Times claiming he just “doesn’t get
religion.” Actually, religion is easy to understand. Most religions, even the bad ones, grasp
that there is more to this life than birth, work and death. That’s where our orphanages,
schools, and hospitals came from. That’s where social justice and LOVE come from. Not just
holy wars and crusades. That’s where the United States Constitution comes from, even though
it’s not a religious document and favors no one religion over any other.
The whole point of “one nation under God” in the American pledge of allegiance is
recognition that the government isn’t God. Individual rights are the basis for the foundation of
the United States. Much of this philosophy came from American preachers like Thomas
Hooker, who argued for the “priesthood of believers,” insisting that since the Holy Spirit
resides in the heart of every person, each person should be able to vote and live their
conscience. In short, we’re the government. You and me and all the people.
Anarchy? No. Democracy.
Sometimes I wonder if my evangelical friends in America have forgotten this. Are we
people of faith in the halls of power? Or are we people who have faith in the halls of power?
It’s an important distinction. One leads to an open, diverse society. The other leads to
something like we have in Russia today, where the former KGB spy agency has effectively
taken over the government. One begins to wonder if something like that could even happen
here.
Or maybe it already has and we haven’t noticed. The Romans had bread and circuses.
Americans have TV and the Super Bowl. As members of the “chattering class,” you in the
media gathered here in this room are part of this Great American Conspiracy. But you also
report on it and thus help to shape it. Which is why I accepted this invitation in the first place.
But this idea is beyond politics or profession. It’s personal for each of us as well.
The old Oxford don C.S. Lewis went beyond even that, noting that our choices in life
aren’t just determinism, racial identities or socio-economic math. Our choices change us. Not
just our circumstances. But our characters, our souls. We become other people, sometimes
without realizing it.
So be Shapers – and work both sides of the issues.
Most of all, remember what Blaise Pascal once said: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in
all of us.” So, leave a little room for that in your stories, a little mystery and an acceptance
that the world is not all as it seems. We don’t have all the answers. There just might be a
much bigger reality all around us.
 CLOACA MAXIMA

O ur brief journey from the depths of the sea in Call Me Moby to the swamp of
Washington, D.C., in Shapers now comes to an end in the sewers of Ancient Rome. Cloaca
Maxima basically means “great drain.” So we’ve come full circle from the big blue oceans of
our planet to the dark sludge of our own human waste.
It was during my investigation of the Vatican’s refusal to pay its water bills that I first
explored the Cloaca Maxima. But its use as a secret escape route grabbed me when I first
translated an ancient Greek scroll years later in a cave deep beneath Cappadocia in modern-
day Turkey.
The famous “Chiron Confession” remains one of the bigger discoveries I’ve had the
privilege to be associated with. It’s the alleged confession of the fourth pope of Rome,
Clement, at the end of the first century. The Book of Revelation has just come out, penned by
the last apostle John from his island prison on the island of Patmos. Everybody thought the
world was going to end, including Caesar, who instituted a sweeping reign of terror across the
empire.
My translation of the text since became the primary source material for the novel The
Chiron Confession by bestselling author Thomas Greanias. Mr. Greanias, like Mr.
Melville in Moby Dick, took some literary license in his embellishments. Still, The
Chiron Confession is as factual an account of real people and events of those as history is
likely to afford us. For reasons mentioned above, I found set piece where the hero escapes
death through the sewers of Rome particularly dramatic, and am pleased to be able to have
the permission to share it below.
 Excerpt from The Chiron Confession

A thanasius ran on through the tangled streets in the dark, racing past the archways of the
booths and shops boarded up and bolted shut for the night. The apartment slums above the
tabernae on either side rose up six stories tall. He could easily lose himself in this jumbled
maze of alleys until morning, blowing any hope of making his rendezvous with the Ferryman.
Even if he reached the Cloaca Maxima beneath the Basilica Julia, he doubted the Ferryman
would still be waiting for him. But if he didn’t try, he was dead already.
He looked up for breaks along the seemingly endless ridge of black rooftops for a clear
line of sight to the Temple of Jupiter and the Arx atop Capitoline Hill to orient himself. He
couldn’t go back the way he came, so he would have to circle around the northern base of the
hill to reach the west side of the Forum—through these infernal alleys with their forgotten
denizens, the hundreds of thousands of people who were born, lived and died in this cesspool
of human misery.
And now he was one of them.
All of a sudden the blood-chilling blare of the First Spear horn thundered across the skies.
It was the official signal from the Urban Cohorts headquarters to the roaming gangs of the
district that there was a fugitive on the loose, and a reward for his capture, dead or alive. Even
the official urbani patrols avoided this graveyard of danger at night.
Almost immediately shouts and torches burst forth from all directions. He heard the crash
of pots and cursing and looked over his shoulder to see a gang of four shadowy figures
floating toward him like malevolent spirits in their odd, mismatched pieces of old infantry
armor. The gruesome sight made him recall one of Juvenal’s few good jokes about life in
modern Rome: that only the careless dared venture out after supper without having first made
their will.
I am not going to die in this piss pot tonight, Athanasius vowed to himself, breaking into a
sprint. Better to go out in a blaze of faux glory in the arena than go face down here in some
ditch.
The apartment slums on either side of him closed in like walls, the snaking alley
narrowing into a dirt path. Now he was splashing through an open cess trench that reeked
with the foul stench of human waste, dumped from the pots of the inhabitants in the insulae
above him. The goo caked his aching calves, and it was all he could do to keep his heavy legs
moving and not turn his face up toward the windows.
The muck had slowed the ill-clad gangs behind him, however, and he could no longer hear
their shouts. But at the end of the alley was a veritable bonfire of thugs at an intersection
waiting for him. He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t move forward. He looked around
frantically until he found an open laundry pit between two buildings. It was filled with
sanitizing urine.
There was no way around it, he realized. This was his only exit.
He waded through the knee-deep pool, stopping only to untangle soaked garments that
wrapped themselves around his legs, like the long tentacles of some sea creature sent to pull
him under, and for a moment he entertained the vision of being found face down in the very
piss pot he feared. But he made it out the far end of the pool and emerged atop a weed-
infested ridge.
There below was Jugarius Street, and on the other side the warehouse district that linked
the Forum to the Tiber. The boulevard was filled with carts and slaves of the night. No
daytime traffic was allowed in Rome except pedestrians, horses, litters and carrying chairs.
Nighttime was for transport carts of all sizes, loading and unloading goods from barges at the
port on the Tiber. Like magic, all the stores, stands and markets of Rome would be filled with
the treasures of the world by morning. And, with luck, he would be gone with all the garbage
from the previous day.
Athanasius slid down the hill to the shoulder of Jugarius Street. He waited for a break in
the traffic and then ran across the street and made an immediate left toward the Forum,
slipping between two convoys of full wagons. He had just permitted himself to take a breath
when the wagon in front of him slowed down and skirted to the right to reveal a line of two-
dozen heavily armed urbani coming out through the Arch of Tiberius. They were marching
straight toward him, their swords and spears at the ready.
Athanasius slowed down as the unit’s commanding officer, a centurion, saluted as he
passed by. Athanasius nodded and looked back as the troops marched on toward the Tiber, no
doubt to take up positions on the Sublicius Bridge and close off that exit.
Athanasius passed under the Arch of Tiberius into the Forum, turned right on Sacred Way
and hurried along the portico of the Basilica Julia to the end. There, at the intersection at Titus
Street, he heard the sound of running water and found the sewer grating at the base of the
courthouse’s marble steps.
Quickly glancing both ways to make sure he hadn’t been seen, he pulled at the heavy
grating. It lifted to reveal an iron ladder that led down to a lead door. The air was foul, ranker
than the alleys of the slums. He lowered himself down a few steps, slid the grating back into
place over his head, and then pushed the door open.
It was dark inside, the damp air wrapping around him like a wet blanket. He heard the
lapping of water and took another step forward. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his chest as a
voice said, “Hands up.”
Athanasius squinted in the dark, and a moment later his eyes had adjusted enough for him
to barely make out a short but muscular young man in a tunic pointing a crossbow at him.
Beyond him a small boat bobbed in the water against the stone ledge inside the great tunnel.
“Ferryman, is that you?”
“Chiron?” The Ferryman lowered his crossbow.
Athanasius then saw the bodies of two auxiliary urbani on the stone ledge, both with
arrows in their chests. “You know where we’re going?”
“Out the drain to the Tiber, then down to Ostia and your ship, the Pegasus. Pier 34.”
Athanasius nodded. This was more than Marcus had told him. “They’re locking down the
city topside. Units are moving into position at the Sublicius, where the sewer lets out into the
river.”
“Then we’ll have to beat them,” the Ferryman said as he launched them off down the
tunnel.
The underground river of filth was a good fifteen feet across under the semicircular arch of
the vaulted stone roof. And the current was faster than he expected, powered as it was by the
confluence of the city’s eleven great aqueducts flowing into this section at once. It all came
together here, this churning cesspool of waste being pushed out to the river.
 “Hold on,” the Ferryman said as they picked up speed and shot through the dark.
The tunnel began dropping the closer they got to the outlet, the current churning with such
force that they were careening into all kinds of debris and against the stone walls and had to
use paddles as bumpers. Several stadia ahead Athanasius could see the half-dome light of the
end of the tunnel, the moonlit Tiber beyond. They crashed through the open grating gates and
were suddenly into the river, paddling frantically to avoid the wakes of the big barges passing
under the towering arches of the Sublicius Bridge.
Athanasius looked back in time to see the Urban Cohort units come to a halt atop the
bridge. Archers jumped out and began to take their positions, but by then they were long gone
down the river and into the night fog.

• •

“The Lord is with you, Athanasius,” said the Ferryman as he maneuvered into the downriver
traffic of empty barges to Ostia, doing his best to keep their little boat from getting crushed
between them in the dark.
Athanasius reached behind his back and felt for his knife. “So you know who I am?”
“My name is Stephanus. I’m the servant of Flavius Clemens, whose life was cut short by
the antichrist Domitian who wants you dead too.”
Athanasius eyed him. “Then you must know I cannot be Chiron, and that Clemens could
not possibly have named me in his confession.”
“I know that the Lord has plans for you, Athanasius. Plans for good and not for evil, to
give you and all of us a future and a hope.”
Athanasius loosened his hold on his dagger and brought his empty hands forward. “I have
no future, Stephanus. I have no hope.”
“You have stood up to the gods of Rome tonight, Athanasius. You are the one who will
lead us to topple the empire and create a new Christian world.”
“I thought Jesus is supposed to do that,” Athanasius said.
“We must prepare the way.”
“Isn’t Jesus The Way?”
Stephanus nodded. “You are very clever, like Paul was. Jesus is indeed The Way, and He
is not willing that any perish but all come to repentance.”
Athanasius felt a bump and looked into the waters to see the corpse of some slave who had
likely fallen off a barge. “Too late for him, I suppose.”
“But not for the millions of souls under the boot of Rome.”
Athanasius could barely see straight in the fog, let alone think with all this madness.
Didn’t Stephanus understand that he was leaving Rome, never to return because there was
nothing for him left to return to? Domitian had stolen his future. “A million died in the Judean
War, Stephanus, and a Christian war would cost tens of millions of lives.”
“It need only cost one,” Stephanus said with shining eyes. “September 18 is not so far
away. Imagine Domitian gone and Young Vespasian succeeding him. We’d have a Christian
emperor. A Christian Rome. A Christian world. No slave or free. Male or female. Jew or
Gentile. All would be equal. There would be peace on earth. No more fears. No more tears.”
No more tears? What naïve nonsense, Athanasius thought. Surely Domitian would have
something to say about that, and about September 18. And if not Domitian, he realized, then
Dominium Dei. Athanasius had seen the reach of the organization tonight with Maximus.
What good would it do the Christians to cut the head off a Hydra when another would simply
take its place and make short order of any so-called Christian emperor, which itself was an
oxymoron clearly beyond this simpleton’s grasp.
Domitian, and Rome with him, was simply too powerful to fight.
Athanasius saw no future hope in this river fog down the Tiber to Ostia, only a glimpse of
the harbor’s great lighthouse at the end. The bonfire at the top of its towering edifice seemed
to watch them like a great eye as they floated silently past the travertine piers toward the
hulking Pegasus docked at Pier 34. Athanasius said goodbye to Stephanus, who prayed for his
return to Rome and said that he and others would be awaiting his orders.
Athanasius wondered if he’d survive the night, let alone ever return to Rome. But at this
point Stephanus was his only friend in Rome. So to amuse him he played the role of Chiron
and said, “Tell your friends that Chiron lives and Domitian shall die.”
“Amen,” Stephanus said with gusto as Athanasius shoved him off.

• •

As Athanasius crossed the rows of warehouses and winches to Pier 34, he took in the slaves
and dockworkers loading and unloading the great ships. They were the true cogs of the
Roman machine that worked around the clock to keep the empire going. Straight ahead of
him a centurion stood at the gangway to the Pegasus. Athanasius realized he had no
identification papers and tensed up as he approached. He had to instantly establish his identity
before there could be any doubt.
“Centurion, is my trunk on board?” he said with a token salute that flashed his ring.
The centurion didn’t have to look, transfixed as he was on the ranking shoulder straps.
“Tribune, we were beginning to wonder.”
“I’m here, let’s go,” Athanasius said gruffly.
Athanasius marched up the gangway to find a deck full of Roman soldiers waiting for him.
He started, and then saw they were at attention, along with the ship’s captain, a Greek who
introduced himself as Captain Andros.
“Tribune, we have 80 troops, and a crew of 180 oarsmen, sailors and marines at your
command.”
Athanasius decided that in his present company the less he said the better. “Anchors away,
Captain. I will retire to my quarters and will not be disturbed until morning.”
“At your orders, Tribune. Your belongings have already been stored on board. Galen here
will show you to your quarters.”
Athanasius followed the wiry steward across the long deck, taking in the sea air, aware of
the captain barking orders, of shouts returned, anchors pulled and the sudden quake of the
wooden planks beneath his feet as two hundred oars hit the water. The Pegasus lurched
forward.
His quarters were at the sterncastle, reached by two wooden steps and an outside door.
There was a bed inside along with a built-in desk beneath a small window. On the desk was a
tray with bread, cheese and a pitcher of wine. Beside it were shelves and a personal locker.
The locker was open, and he could see a locked trunk. Athanasius looked up to see Galen
staring at the ring on his finger.
“That will be all, Galen.”
Galen nodded and left, shutting the door behind him.
At last alone, Athanasius exhaled and immediately poured himself a cup of wine and
gulped it down. Then he took two big bites of the bread, almost choking on the mouthful as
he did, and looked out his little window. He could see several chariots and units converging
on the shrinking docks. But they were too late. The anchors were up and the loaded ship was
pulling away from the pier, already out by three lengths of the Circus Maximus, clearing the
stone breakers and entering the Tyrrhenian Sea into the gathering fog of darkness.
Jupiter, he had made it, he thought, as he watched the nightmare of this tragic day fade like
the lighthouse of Ostia in the fog. He felt his lips tremble. He wiped his mouth and saw blood,
not wine. Then he stared into the wine cup and watched it fall as if in slow motion from his
loosening hand and crash to the floor. And then he plunged into darkness.

Excerpted from THE CHIRON CONFESSION

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 Table of Contents
PREFACE
CALL ME MOBY
SHAPERS
CLOACA MAXIMA
Excerpt from The Chiron Confession