by David Weber
The tribune turned sharply and strode back to his companions, willing his ears not to hear anything the dead man might call after him. When he risked a glance from the corner of his eye, he saw that Crescens had resumed his blank-eyed stance. His right hand continued to rumple the tunic over his wound in a slow massage.
"They, ah…" Vibulenus said, as Rufus and the file-closer carefully looked at the floor or the ceiling to avoid staring at him. "Well, I guess the Medic…" he tried but paused again.
"You will live forever," the Commander had said. Gaius Vibulenus Caper, eighteen years old, wondered how long forever really was.
"Hey, there's Niger," said Rufus, striding across the open space. He was willing to ignore the presence of the guards in order to reach the farther side of the hall, where he had glimpsed his cousin, in the shortest possible time. "Niger!"
"Your commander is about to address you," said the clear voice in everyone's ears. "Before he does so, the floor will shift so that everyone has a clear view. Do not be concerned."
Relatively few of the thousands of men in the Main Gallery listened to what their ears could not fail to have heard. Even those few, like Vibulenus, who didn't tune out the words as just another repetition of the summons, were still trying to process the information when the back of the gallery began to rise.
There would have been panic even if every one of the soldiers understood the statement, of course.
Clodius and Vibulenus, at the front of the long room, felt only a trembling through the soles of their bare feet. The tribune looked back over his shoulder, frowning in concentration, because he thought the voice had said that The floor of the Main Gallery was slanting upward, carrying legionaries with it. As their footing shifted, men bolted backward toward the- door by which they had entered. The screams were so loud and universal as to overpower the deadening effect of the gallery's acoustics.
The ceiling was lifting in synchrony with the floor, so there was no reason to fear that the surfaces would grind the men between them like millstones. Fear is emotional, not a matter of reason, however, and fear is the most human reaction to having solid become fluid underfoot. The door at the back did not open.
The only thing that kept the panic from being as lethally crushing as an actual mating of floor and ceiling was that the movement of the gallery lessened to zero in the front. Pressure from the crowd behind would have crushed men to death against the wall, as Vibulenus had once seen happen when a chariot crash started a rush for the stadium exits. Here, the men in the middle of the gallery poised, uncertain whether to rush the door or toward the front; and those nearest the front were more bemused than frightened by what they saw happening to others.
Over all the commotion, the disembodied voice kept calling angrily, "Everyone stop crowding! There is no need for concern! Stop this at once or there will be severe disciplinary measures!"
There had been a certain amount of crowding forward by men who closed their eyes so that they would not have to see that they were pushing their fellows closer to the guards. Clodius Afer, with a grimace that reflected his own distaste for the situation, thrust himself back into the press. Snapping, "Loosen up your ranks!" the file-closer slapped men alongside the head to get their attention.
The tribune took a deep breath. He had been trying to brace himself against the men pushing him from behind. Now he turned sideways, slipping back a rank or two, and shouted, "Stop this at once, you men!"
He tried to slap a grizzled legionary whose name he did not know. The man responded with a short punch that numbed Vibulenus' whole left side and blinded him with the pain. He couldn't fall down because the crowd was too tight, and when it loosened a moment later he had enough control of his body to stay upright.
The panic had ended itself in exhaustion and pointlessness. Men who had fought a grueling battle and undergone enervating rehabilitation in the Sick Bay simply did not have enough energy to long sustain a rush to nowhere. Sheepishly, shaking loose their tunics, legionaries drifted back to the center of the long room, leaving the front and rear to those who had preferred those extremes to the neutral median in the first place.
After all, there was nothing frightening about standing in a hall whose solid floor sloped toward the front at about the angle of the aisles of a theatre.
"What in Hades happened to you, sir?" Clodius Afer demanded, dusting his palms as he strode back to the tribune. The legion's front had advanced several feet as a result of the commotion, but the toadfaced guards had relaxed again and were no longer bracing their maces out in front of them as a physical bar to the humans.
"Somebody…" Vibulenus wheezed. He forced himself to stand fully upright, though his right shoulder was still an inch high to put less tension on the ribs and muscles of his other side. "I was going to help you," the young tribune went on with careful steadiness, "but somebody hit me. I don't see him."
He glared at the nearest soldiers. Some blinked in surprise and a few turned their eyes away, but the man who threw the punch had disappeared into the crowd.
"Umm," said the file-closer, sucking in his lips. He laid his hand on Vibulenus' shoulder; in comradeship, but also to face the younger man to the front again. "Gotta be careful about, you know, things like that, sir," the veteran said. "Saw a first centurion tossed right through an oak door, the once, when he broke his swagger stick on somebody and turned his back to fetch another one. You got enough people together, you can lead 'em when there's someplace to go… but you need be real careful if you're gonna push."
There was a series of crisp flashes from within the hexagon on the wall, light like the edge-glints of swords, drawn in the sun. The figure itself spun, momentarily circular with its velocity. Around it opened a rectangular doorway tall enough to have passed one of the giant spearmen.
The Commander looked even tinier in the doorway than he had when mounted on the carnivore.
"Brave warriors," said the voice in Vibulenus' ears, and the tribune was close enough to see that the sound now synchronized with the Commander's lip movements.
The door closed behind the figure in blue, and another glitter of light from the hexagon haloed his head. The door pivoted from one side, but it did not seem to be attached in any way to the lintel or jambs. Like the vehicles which roved the valley after the battle, the panel of shimmering metal appeared to float in the air until its edges merged again seamlessly with those of the bulkhead.
"Here, on a world far from your own," the Commander continued, "you have undertaken your first duties as assets of the finest trading guild in the Federation. Your success was beyond our expectation-and your reward will be beyond your dreams."
The Commander's chest rose and fell without affecting the words Vibulenus heard, so the pause was a rhetorical one before the voice continued, "You will never grow older. Throughout eternity, you will remain as strong and agile as your are now."
There was so general a buzz of sound from the assembled Romans that the Main Gallery hissed and popped like a fire in wet leaves. The young tribune glanced sharply at Clodius, knowing-presuming, at least-that the file-closer had heard this before, when they had confronted the Commander at the gate of the sacked camp.
Clodius' muscles were still, his eyes wide open and expressionless. His face was not so much blank as masked, and the knuckles of his right hand were grinding against the calloused palm of his left in proof of physical existence.
"This gift of immortality-so to speak," said the Commander, hushing the room with anticipation of what might come next, "is a very expensive boon, one which I myself received only upon being promoted to my present post. You have earned it by the technical skill which you displayed today."
"Have you seen anybody besides him and the Medic?" Clodius Afer whispered into the tribune's ear.
"Well, the guards," Vibulenus whispered back with a quick flutter of his hand that was all the gesture he was willing to make toward the creatures in plate armor.
"You will have no duties, n
o responsibilities," said the Commander, "save the duty for which you have proven yourselves so splendidly fitted: war against the enemies of my guild, the enemies of galactic progress."
"Them," sneered the file-closer, and it was a moment before Vibulenus remembered that the guards were the pronoun's referrent. "They don't run this place. They're dim as six feet up a hog's ass."
The word "war" had drawn a restive murmur from the legion and another pause from the Commander before he continued, "For reasons that do not concern you, the Federation has interdicted trading guilds, my own included, from the use of military technology higher than that of the natives who must be subdued. It is the ability that you have shown in using your pitiful technology which has enabled you to become assets of a trading guild envied by all its rivals."
"What's he mean?" a soldier behind Vibulenus whined to his fellow. "Them barbs, they wuz nekkid, the half of 'em and the rest warn't much."
And that was true… but the tribune realized that what the Commander had said was true also. The warriors dead on the slopes outside had metal weapons- even had iron, unlike the demigods of whom Homer had written. Nobody could fault the strength and individual skill with which they used their weapons either; Vibulenus brushed a hand across his temple in memory of the blow that had almost cracked his skull.
But the giant spearmen didn't know how to use their weapons as an army, as a Roman legion moving forward in ranks as implacable as the metal of their armor. They were barbarians, only barbarians, and therefore of course they died when they met Rome…
"During the period that some of you are convalescing from your wounds," chimed the Commander's crystal voice in Vibulenus' ears, "the ship is limited to proceeding in normal space. Therefore time will seem to pass normally, and you will be permitted to occupy it with recreation as well as training."
"Women!" called someone midway in the hall, loud enough that the tribune could understand.
The Commander's head swivelled minutely, and Vibulenus thought that his ears twitched beneath the fabric of his tight hood. The tribune remembered his own vain attempt to spot the man who had punched him in the crush. Perhaps there were ways other than floating doors and rooms that healed wounds in which the Commander's world differed from that of Rome…
"Yes, of course, women," said the blue figure with a smile that was as perfect as his Latin dictionand every bit as learnedly unnatural. "Not just now, I'm afraid; but they'll be provided for you in what will seem to be a very short time."
He threw the crowd another crisp, uncomfortable smile. "I wouldn't want you to think that my company doesn't prepare properly, but the fact is that we did not expect your success to be so complete you would deserve so high a level of expense, you warriors."
"Warriors," Clodius Afer echoed in a whisper. "We're soldiers. Warriors are meat on the table for soldiers with discipline."
Gaius Vibulenus thought of what they were being told and what it implied about the alternatives had the legion not demolished its opponents so hastily. Well, in Parthia the alternative had been working the quarries under a mind-blasting sun…
"Because you will be conscious and alert during the first portion of this voyage and the voyages that follow," said the Commander, "it is necessary that you observe certain limitations. Your skills, brave warriors, are extensive within the bounds of your technology-but your technology is very low in comparison to what is available to every officer of my guild."
There was a commotion on the far side of the room. Vibulenus thought at first it was a reaction to the statement, then that the floor must be shifting again because there was movement in the crowd both forward and back, like a ship's wake dividing a small pond.
The tribune set his palm on Clodius' shoulder and lifted himself on tiptoes, craning his neck to make the most of his height advantage over the bulk of the legionaries.
"There's no need to be alarmed," the Commander was saying. "This is only a demonstration of things you'll have to understand to make your voyage comfortable."
"It's not the floor moving," said Vibulenus to the file-closer who had gripped him unasked beneath the arms and lifted the tribune vertically, feet off the floor. The pressure of Clodius' hands made it hard to speak but not impossible, and the support the veteran offered was only peripherally physical. "There's another door opened in that wall."
If his feet had been on the ground, Vibulenus would have turned to see whether the wall on their side of the Main Gallery was also marked for an opening. Instead he squinted, his view aided by the way legionaries were clearing from the affected area.
"Okay, let me down," he muttered. Clodius obeyed by lowering, not dropping, the young tribune back to the floor. Vibulenus avoided massaging his ribs for fear that would look ungrateful.
"It's the rest of the bodyguards coming in," he said, indicating the line of armored toad-things. When the file-closer's eyes followed the gesture the tribune was able to quickly rub his chest where it ached. "Only half of them were here before. These must be the ones, you know, keeping an eye on things with the Medic."
They had entered the gallery by a side door near the front rather than marching all the way through the assembly. Nothing surprising about that. The fact that the previously-hidden portal had opened without the sparkle of light which accompanied the Commander's entry was just another datum, another scrap of information that might someday help Vibulenus again understand the world as clearly as he had until-he entered the here and now in which he had just started to live.
"Hercules!" he gasped as he saw what his eyes had been receiving while his mind dealt with other things. "They've got Rufus and Niger!"
"By Death and Hades…" muttered Clodius Afer in a voice without emotion.
Vibulenus did not notice the file-closer's arms move; in fact, he noticed nothing but his one-time schoolmates, each of them gripped by the elbows in the articulated iron gloves of two bodyguards. When the tribune's legs thrust him forward, toward the creatures who held his men, Clodius Afer's hands anchored him as solidly as they had lifted Vibulenus for a look only moments before.
"Now just hold on," said the file-closer in a voice that was soothing despite its raspy tone because it was totally controlled. "Let's see what's happening before we decide we're what's happening ourselves."
"Do not be concerned," the Commander's voice said coolly. "You will believe the evidence of your fellows where you would not accept another sort of demonstration."
In the instant before his reasoning mind took over again, Vibulenus would have lashed out with his fists and elbows to free himself if Clodius Afer had not dealt too often with men driven by a single emotion-hate or fear or fury-to give the younger man that play: His bear hug enwrapped the tribune's forearms so that Vibulenus' thrashing had no physical effect. The tribune's blood pressure shot up momentarily, and the crystal matrix in which he saw the Pompilu cousins became a blood-red haze.
But that passed: Clodius was right as well as being incomparably stronger, and the Commander was-in charge.
When he relaxed, Vibulenus saw the Pompilu were not being severely treated by the guards who had stepped out of the wall behind the foremost legionaries, grabbing the cousins as the two closest Romans before the men realized what was happening. For a moment, Rufus lifted both his feet and was carried, without slowing or otherwise affecting what the toad-things were doing with him.
Vibulenus noticed also that no Roman but himself seemed to have tried to rescue the cousins. Maybe they all had cold common sense like Clodius; maybe nobody knew the boys; and maybe Gaius Vibulenus Caper was a bigger fool than he'd felt since blubbering in fear while Parthian arrows whistled down. At least he knew this time that he was proud of his instinct-and that the file-closer's judgment had kept that instinct from getting him killed.
"Now what, by the Mother's tits," said Clodius Afer, releasing the tribune but not so completely that his hands did not hover near enough to regain their previous grip, "are they doing with a shield?"
<
br /> The ten bodyguards marched with stiff deliberation to join their fellows already standing in front of the bulkhead. They clumped along two by two, the leading pairs carrying Niger and Rufus; and one of the last pair carried a shield, just as the file-closer had said.
It seemed to be an ordinary legionary's scutum of leather-covered plywood, twice as high as it was wide and slightly convex on the side toward the enemy. The rim was bound with bronze strips, and there was a rectangular boss of the same metal bulging out sharply to give room for the hand of the man carrying it.
Neither the boss nor the shield-facing had any of the fancy work, heraldic engraving and appliqued geometric designs, which distinguished the equipment Crassus' army carried into Parthia. Structurally the shield appeared to be the same, and the way Niger's arms flexed when the guard handed it to him showed that the piece was of at least the usual weight.
The guards who held Niger released the young Roman's arms so that he could take the shield. One of them boomed something to him, probably in Latin, but Vibulenus heard it only as a rumble of sound. Niger's brow knitted as he tried vainly to make sense of the order.
Clodius Afer's hand was back on the tribune's shoulder in a gesture of comradeship rather than control. The two men were blank-faced because they had dissociated their intellects as completely as possible from their bodies and from the memory that would flesh out the data their eyes were receiving.
Two of the armored guards stood close to Niger, near the corner formed with the front wall. Legionaries on that side of the room shifted so they were farther from the comrade snatched from among them than they had been from the original line of guards.
"There's five thousand of us, aren't there?" said Vibulenus softly, rationally. "Well, less after this morning, maybe." But Arrius Crescens stood, open-eyed and stolid, no longer a subject of fear in the midst of newer uncertainties…
"And there's twenty of them," the tribune went on. "Twenty-one, yes…"
The file-closer's hand tightened enough to remind Vibulenus that they would wait and watch, the two of them.