The First Science Fiction Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  “We’re in this for the money,” the fat man said.

  “We’re in it for the people of Terra Australis and for the freedom of peoples in every land.” Trux raised a hand as if he intended to strike the drinking mug from the fat man’s grasp, but he held himself back. “Don’t ascribe your own crass motives to others, Pinguis. There are still some idealists in this world.”

  Pinguis raised his drinking mug. He held it to his chin, then dipped his tongue into the dark wine like a great, fleshy cat sampling a puddle. “When the money arrives from our masters in Uwajima—“

  Now Trux did strike the mug from Pinguis’ hand. The mug smashed on the rough brick floor. The largest piece bounced into the fireplace. A trail of wine, like thin blood, led to the flames. “Our colleagues,” Trux barked. “Our only masters are the tyrants of Italia, lording it over all the globe, pretending that all men are citizens of Rome, or can earn citizenship by serving the eagles. And we believe them. Fools believe them.”

  Pinguis gazed mournfully at the fragments of his smashed drinking mug. He reached across the table and wrapped fat fingers around Trux’s empty mug. He filled it from the amphora and again dipped his oddly pointed tongue, catlike, into the wine. “Colleagues, masters, whatever. So long as their aurii are made of real gold. And so long as they pay up.”

  “They have so far, haven’t they?”

  “But once the deed is done, and they need us no longer, Trux? What then?”

  Trux shook his head. “They will pay.”

  Throughout the exchange Tenua had watched in silence, a cynic’s smile playing across her lips. Now she shook her head as if bemused by a pair of squabbling children. “Shall we go over the plan once more? Or shall we just sit here stifling while Caesar’s caelumvola arrives from Terra Nipponsis and the spatiumnavis returns from Martes?”

  The two men grumbled. Fat Pinguis, apparently satisfied that the wine was not poisoned, tilted his head back and drank deeply from his mug. A generous trickle of dark wine spilled over his chin and dripped onto his belly, adding a darker stain to the sweat-marked garment.

  Trux said, “You’re right, Tenua. Here, let’s review this once more.”

  Pinguis sighed. “All right. I could do this in my sleep. But if we must, we must.”

  The largest sheet was a map of Nova Ostia and the surrounding countryside. The caelumportis where both Caesar Viventius’ caelumvola and the spatiumnavis Isis would touch Roman soil this day was circled in red. The journey from Nova Ostia itself was not long. A ground vehicle could cover the distance in half an hour, easily.

  “The explosives are loaded,” Trux said. “If either of you have any doubts—Pinguis, Tenua—state them now. Once we cross the Pons Meretrix and head out the Via Brassica to the Pratum Grandis road and thence to the caelumportis...”

  “The die is cast,” Pinguis completed Trux’s sentence.

  “We have crossed the Rubicon,” Tenua added.

  “How apt, darling.” Trux grunted an unformed word. “The first Caesar crossed the Rubicon and entered Rome. And we shall cross the Pons Meretrix, cross the River Diamantina, and it shall be our own Rubicon.”

  “The plan, Trux, the plan.” Tenua’s tone was impatient. She watched Pinguis fill his drinking mug still again and tilt it and his head simultaneously.

  “The plan.” Trux lifted a pen and moved it across the map. Its point scratched dryly. He cursed, dipped the pen in the inkpot and cursed more violently when he saw that the ink had dried. He looked around but saw no water to add to the dried ink. Instead he tipped the amphora and dribbled a fine stream of wine into the dried ink. He stirred the concoction with his pen, then tested it on the edge of the map and grunted with satisfaction.

  Pinguis muttered, “A waste.”

  Trux traced the route that they would take from the shop on Via Fuligo, across the Pons Meretrix to the Pratus Grandis road and to the caelumportis. “Our friends from Uwajima will be represented at the ceremonies. Caesar wants this to be a celebration for all the world, but he wants all the world to remember that it’s a Roman world and a Roman triumph.”

  “All right,” Tenua put in. “We know that Caesar’s caelumvola reaches the caelumportis an hour before noon.”

  “And the tyrant will have a fancy feast, as usual, before anything else.” Pinguis managed a smirk.

  “Of course you would think first of that,” Tenua hissed.

  “Squab,” Pinguis said, as if he could taste the succulent bird. “Honeyed redfish. Quails’ eggs. Breads and cakes. And I’ll bet he’s got a miniature wine cellar right there on his caelumvola.”

  Tenua shook her head. “Don’t be a fool. He’ll be served from the local stores, or from the private stock of a Nova Ostian senator.”

  Trux growled, “Shut up and listen to me. The spatiumnavis Isis is expected at the middle of the afternoon, and Caesar wants to witness its landing personally.”

  “Who wouldn’t? It will be a great sight. There will be crowds there. I still worry about our being stalled in a jam on the road, or caught in a multitude at the caelumnavis.” Tenua’s voice had the odd tang of those born and raised in westernmost Terra Australis. Here in Novum Ostia she sometimes had trouble making herself understood, and had been taken more than once for some sort of outlandish barbarian.

  Trux shook his head. “Not to worry.” He spoke with the harsh simplicity of a native of the metropolis. He even pronounced the city’s name Novoscha, as if it were some village in northernmost Dacia.

  A knot in the burning eucalyptus wood on the hearth exploded with a violent report. Trux leaped as if prodded with a hot poker, reaching for the dagger at his waist. Scrawny Tenua lunged sideways, scrambling into a crouched position, her hands curled into claws like those of the rare marsupial tiger of Terra Australis’s eastern forests. Fat Pinguis shoved against the table. His chair tilted on its legs and toppled backwards. Pinguis’s weight landed atop the flimsy chair and smashed it to smithereens.

  Each of the three looked at the others, then Tenua permitted herself a nervous laugh.

  Trux completed his review of their plan. When Caesar’s guests from Terra Nipponsis created a distraction, Pinguis and Tenua would rush toward Caesar and the nautae, freshly emerged from Isis. Caesar’s guards were no fools. They would have remained undistracted by the Nipponsii, but would rush to halt Pinguis and Tenua. It was then that Trux himself would strike, hurling a concentrated bundle of Cathayan exploding powder at Caesar.

  If Trux failed, if the others remained captive, they were armed as well with explosive bundles. They could detonate them, taking their captives with them to Hades. but Trux would not fail. He could not fail. He must not.

  The assassination of the supreme tyrant would be the signal for uprisings throughout the world. The age of Rome would be at an end. No longer would arrogant Italia dominate the globe and all its lands and seas. People of every continent and country would determine their own destinies.

  By Mithras, a long overdue age of gold would dawn at last.

  The three plotters left their den by a rear exit, and made their way to a battered, grime-coated car. They climbed into it. Trux seated himself comfortably while Tenua took the steering yoke.

  Once Rome was dismembered, Trux thought, they might very well go back to the old system of slaves, a system abandoned by Rome hundreds of years ago. It would be very pleasant, Trux thought, to own men and women. To be able to command their every action, their very lives or deaths. With the machinery that existed today, slaves were not needed. For those tasks that could not be taken over by machinery, free workers were more efficient and productive. If anything, the problem was one of finding enough jobs for the available workers, not the other way around.

  All of that would change.

  Tenua pulled the vehicle around the building containing the boarded-up shop and
guided it through a littered alley. The morning sun blazed on the Via Fuligo. The vehicle accelerated from the mouth of the alley and turned toward the Pons Meretrix, toward the Pratus Grandis road, toward Caesar’s caelumvola and the spatiumnavis Isis and toward the events that would change the destiny of the world.

  The Via Fuligo intersected with the Via Brassica. Standing in an upstairs room, gazing into the bright morning on the Via Fuligo, Aelius watched the filthy, battered vehicle lurch by. It was headed toward the Pons Meretrix.

  Aelius nodded to himself. He jammed his light straw hat onto his head and spun on his heel. “All right,” he said, “let’s go, Avita. Celadus is already at the ‘portis, and if we don’t hustle out there we’ll miss the big show and he’ll roast our hides for his dinner.”

  “You’re so eloquent, Aelius.” Avita was short and busty, and favored costumes that permitted taller men to see the shadowed valley between her breasts. She wore a locket there, suspended by a chain of fine electrum. The contents of the locket she refused to divulge. No man was known to have seen those contents, though many had tried.

  They loaded their gear into an agency van. Heavier equipment, they knew, was already at the landing site, but they wanted to have their hand-held sight-and-sound recorders with them.

  “Isis is returning directly from Martes, isn’t she?” Avita asked.

  Aelius watched her out of the corner of his eye. This was information that Avita already had. Perhaps she was going over it just to refresh her mind. “That’s right.”

  Avita shook her head. She wore her hair longer than Dulcis. The perfect blue-black waves caught the morning sunlight like a flame. “I don’t see why. I’d thought they would dock at Luna and then shuttle down. Wouldn’t that be easier? And safer?”

  “Politics, everything’s politics. Caesar Viventius wants to be the first to welcome them. And he didn’t want to go to Luna to do it. He wanted it here in Terra Australis. The double jubilee, all of that.”

  “Right, just remind me, why don’t you?”

  Aelius shook his head. He steered the van around an immense industrial freighter powered by solar panels the size of a small playing field. Beneath its belly, Aelius knew, were the heavy batteries that were charged during the day and permitted the freighter to run all night if need be. The freighter carried the double jubilee logotype on its side. The intertwined D and M worked with laurel leaves and gilt were covered with dust and grime. Even before the jubilee celebration had reached its climax, the tawdry decorations were chipping and fading away. Aelius muttered a curse.

  “What was that?”

  Aelius grinned. “I was just wishing that they’d ban those things from city streets. Make ‘em unload in the suburbs, or at least get in and out of town at night. No matter.”

  “Did you ever wonder what the world would be like if the plot had succeeded?”

  Startled, Aelius gaped at Avita, then looked back just in time to avoid crashing into the back of a grimy, battered conveyance containing a woman and two men. They had reached the Pons Meretrix and the battered vehicle had stalled in the middle of the arching span.

  Aelius jumped out of the van and ran to the stalled passenger conveyance. The driver was a tall woman, almost skeletally gaunt. Beside her sat a powerfully built, square-jawed individual. A fat blob sprawled behind them.

  “What’s the matter?” Aelius demanded. “There ought to be a legionary here to keep traffic moving. Doesn’t anybody do anything right in this town any more?”

  The gaunt woman said, “The car’s been sluggish all morning. Now it’s stopped altogether.” Aelius could hear the vehicle’s motor humming feebly. Actually it sounded more like a moan.

  “Look at this, look at your panel! For Jupiter’s sake, when did you last clean the thing off?”

  The man seated beside the driver muttered something Aelius couldn’t make out. The man clambered from the car and peered at the panel. “Hades’ name, you’re right. Just a moment.” He opened a compartment and produced an old shirt. He rubbed it across the solar panel. Again, again.

  Aelius could hear the car’s motor hum more steadily.

  “Thank you, stranger.” The square-jawed man climbed back into the car and the gaunt woman pulled it away.

  Aelius muttered and climbed back into the van. Avita laughed. The van surged forward. Behind them, a row of vehicles had halted and their drivers had set up a clamor of complaint. The line now moved across the Pons Meretrix. Ahead, Aelius could see the ramp that carried vehicles from the Via Brassica onto the caelumportis road.

  Avita said, “You never answered my question.”

  “What question was that?”

  “If the plot had succeeded. If Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius and the rest had not been such incompetents. Or if Caesar Julius hadn’t been smart enough to plant a spy among them and have the plot smashed before it could get into play.”

  Aelius shook his head. “Historians and fantasizers have wondered about that for a thousand years, haven’t they?”

  “But what do you think, Aelius? What do you think?” she repeated. She laid her hand on his thigh, emphasizing her question. Maybe it was just the bright sun warming them both through the van’s glass, but Avita’s hand felt red hot on Aelius’ leg. Red hot, and yet not unpleasant.

  He said, “I don’t think history would have been much different and I don’t think the world would be much different today. History is moved by great forces. Individual men and women are merely the instruments of destiny. If one tool is broken or lost, the fates merely pick up another to do their work.”

  Avita shook her head. Her tresses swung with the motion. “I’m not so sure, Aelius. I think if the first Caesar had died, Rome would have followed a different course.”

  Aelius frowned. “How so?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I think the Republic would have failed. I think some strongman would have seized the reins of state, made himself the master of Rome.”

  “Maybe so.” The van was on the caelumportis road now. Legionaries lined the road, their metal accouterments polished so they reflected the sunlight like beacons, the variously colored crests on their glittering ceremonial helmets marking their units and rank.

  “Maybe so,” Aelius continued. “But even so, what if that had come about? Rome was already the greatest power in the world. Really the only power that towered above all others. Carthage was long gone. Egypt, Syria, Judaea were all vassals of Rome. The Cathayans might have proved rivals of Rome, but when our nations had their encounter the Cathayans proved accommodating. And of course the people of the western continents were more than willing to make peace with our ancestors.”

  Avita snorted. “What do you mean, our ancestors? Does this look like the skin of an Italian?” She held her hand before Aelius’ face. He saw the dark, sleek skin of one descended from the original inhabitants of Terra Australis.

  “You don’t have to be Italian to be Roman,” Aelius said. “That’s much of Rome’s greatness.”:

  Avita said, “Right. And when was the last time we had a Caesar who wasn’t Italian?”

  “It will come. It will come.”

  “Terra Australis has been a Roman province for 500 years. Most of us have been citizens for centuries. For what that may be worth.”

  “History will have its own way,” Aelius asserted. The traffic ahead was growing denser. In the distance he could see the buildings of Pratum Grandis where the caelumportis had been built more than a century earlier. Even they were decorated with the grant double jubilee logotype.

  Maybe Avita was tired of the subject, for she changed it. “What do you think the natae found on Martes? The government’s been tight-lipped about it. Even the likes of us who always know everything first...” She left her sentence hanging between them.

  Aelius shook his head.
“I’ll tell you one thing they didn’t find, and that was Etruscans.” He laughed scornfully at the notion that some of the wilder journalists of Novum Ostia had kicked around.

  “Don’t laugh, Aelius.”

  “You don’t take that guff seriously, do you?”

  “Well, I just don’t know. The Etruscans went somewhere. Unless you think they went to Atlantis.”

  “Oh, please.” Aelius snorted. “One silly legend on top of another.”

  “Well, what do you think, then?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find out.”

  But Avita wasn’t quite ready to let go of the subject. “Something got Amaterasu. Whatever you think of Rome and Italia, Roman engineering is reliable.”

  “Sure. That’s why that car stalled in front of us on the Pons Meretrix.”

  “You saw how they got started again, Aelius.”

  “And you think Etruscans destroyed Amaterasu but let Isis land and rescue the survivors and return safely to Tellus. That makes a lot of sense.”

  There was a glint high against the dazzling blue of morning. Aelius and Avita both saw it. Avita asked, “Do you think that’s Caesar Viventius’ caelumvola, coming in from Terra Nipponsis?”

  Aelius shook his head. “Might be. Might even be Isis herself. She has to circle Tellus several times, slowing all the while, before she can land.”

  From the cabin of Isis, Terra Australis looked like a great sandy map, with reddish-gray outcroppings of mountain ranges, green forests in the east and glittering blue lakes and rivers. Beyond the greatest of Roman provinces the great western ocean spread in silvery splendor.

  Lucius, Navicularis, stood with one hand against the metallic bulkhead, the other to his chin in characteristic pose. He had started the voyage four years before, launching with his crew from Luna. Isis had been constructed there, as had her sister spatiumnavis, Amaterasu. Lucius had been clean-shaven then. Now he sported a reddish beard like those his ancestors had worn in Terra Occidens.