The Twice and Future Caesar
Page 13
Nox looked left and right. No one else in this compartment but Cinna and Orissus.
Orissus was talking about him, Nox.
“What?” Nox said.
Orissus snarled. “What do you mean what? Art thou mad?”
“He is,” Cinna told Orissus. Mad, Cinna meant.
“I am?” Nox said. “Why do you think so?”
“Night terrors,” Cinna said. “You’ve been having them. Hysterical screaming for five minutes then you go back to sleep.”
“He goes back to sleep!” Orissus shouted. “I don’t!”
“Sorry,” Nox mumbled and moved apart to a compartment where no one was. This chamber used to be the ambassador’s office.
Nox didn’t so much sit down as he crumpled to the deck.
He pulled a dagger.
What is a conscience and can I cut it out?
He found tears on his face. “Am I dying, Bagheera?”
The ship heard him. Advised him that it did not understand the question. Bagheera told Nox the question was ambiguous, as all things that live can be said to be dying. “Please restate query,” the ship said.
“Forget it,” Nox said.
“Query deleted,” Bagheera said.
Bagheera operated in full stealth, orbiting the artificial world of Beta Centauri, where Romulus was celebrating his return.
Numa Pompeii wanted his assassins close to Romulus.
Nox got up from the deck. He dyed his hair, his skin, and his eyes brown. He displaced down to the planet. He could see the coliseum from here. Could hear the crowd.
The games hadn’t paused in mourning for the tragedy at Terra Rica. The flag over the coliseum flew at full staff.
Nox had known a Terra Rican, a famous one. Jose Maria de Cordillera. Very important, so naturally he’d been a guest at Chief Justice John Knox Farragut Senior’s house. Nox remembered Don Cordillera as a gracious man. Nox would’ve liked Jose Maria if he hadn’t been such a good friend of that other man named John Farragut.
Nox wasn’t mourning Terra Rica either. Not a lot. Most of the people had got out. They lost everything, but they got out. The loss was mostly a whole lot of expensive real estate owned by a few overprivileged people.
Nox had grown up overprivileged. He didn’t really pity them.
The coliseum on Beta Centauri was filled to climbing-room-only, even though Romulus wasn’t there in person. Romulus had flooded the arena and was staging sea battles in it. There were live sharks in the water.
Nox fell into a tavern to watch the battles on the monitors, drink a lot, and lose money.
He walked out of the tavern late.
As he was losing consciousness, he hoped that these were his brothers snatching him off the street and bundling him into the back of a transport.
No such deal.
When he was hauled out of the transport, Nox was either still really really drunk and having hallucinations or he actually was in the presence of Romulus, Caesar Pretender of the Roman Empire.
Nox stumbled as he was pushed into the Presence.
Romulus Julius was the finest looking man that bioengineers could possibly design. His deep brown eyes and full indulgent mouth stopped just short of being sybaritic. His build was athletic. He looked butch and lordly, even dressed up in that big lacy Elizabethan collar and those voluminous sleeves with lace cuffs.
Romulus greeted Nox, “Ave.”
Nox was not intimidated by emperors. His own father was a Zeusly being, and Nox currently took orders directly from Caesar Numa Pompeii. Nox wasn’t in a groveling mood for this guy.
Guards scanned Nox for weapons. They took his daggers, then they withdrew, leaving Nox facing Romulus.
Nox looked left and right, then squinted at Romulus. It seemed impossible that they should be alone together. There had to be a force field between them, but he couldn’t see its shimmer. “Did you know I have orders to assassinate you?”
Romulus said, “And did you know that you are about to get blinded on the road to Damascus?”
For a moment Nox feared he was about to have his eyes gouged out. But Nox had a Bible-thumping father, so he recognized the reference.
Saul of Tarsus had been blinded by the glory of the true God on the road to Damascus and transformed from Christian-killing Roman zealot into epistle-writing Christian zealot.
So Nox was about to receive a revelation.
Romulus said, “I want Cinna.”
“No,” Nox said.
“I intend no harm. I need Cinna alive and well. He needs me. You need me.”
“Do I?”
“How do I say it in Americanese: You been done wrong. Very wrong, Nox Antonius.”
Something reverberated inside Nox. His face felt hot. It tore Nox up to correct Romulus, “That’s not my name.”
Antonius, Nox’s Roman family name, had been stripped from him. He was outcast now. He was no one.
“I am Caesar, and you are who I say you are, Nox Antonius.”
The sound of his Roman name filled Nox with a warmth like a hot drink to one too cold even to shiver.
Romulus went on, “You were not made damnati under a legitimate Caesar.”
Oh, the snake in Eden wasn’t this seductive.
Romulus said, “I need your patterner.”
That woke Nox up cold from his pretty, pretty dream. “No. I won’t betray my brothers.” He spread his arms, offering himself. “Do your worst.”
“I tell you I mean Cinna only the best. We have a bond. Cinna and I.”
Romulus unlaced his wide collar and pushed up his full sleeves.
Patterner cables extended from Romulus’ neck and forearms.
Afraid he was gawking, Nox cried, “Can’t be!”
“Am,” said Romulus, calmly smoothing his sleeves back down. “Now, I shall tell you what you believe happened on the morning you hazed Cinna.”
“I know what happened,” Nox said. “I was there.” Didn’t want to relive it.
“Do not interrupt. On that morning, you and your squad took Cinna to the top of Widow’s Edge. You told him to jump off the cliff. It was a ritual hazing. Of course Cinna jumped. The net that was meant to catch him failed to deploy. The incident was caught on satellite surveillance. Funny that a satellite camera just happened to be focused on Widow’s Edge at the precise moment on the single instance that the net ever failed.”
Nox nodded, sour. “Funny.”
“For Cinna’s supposed death, you and your squad were drummed out of Legio Persus, stripped of your Roman citizenship, and declared damnati. Cinna was salvaged from the bottom of the cliff and fashioned into a patterner. Or that’s what you believe.”
Nox’s throat was tight. He squeezed out words. “That’s pretty much what happened.”
“No. You’re wrong. The failure of the net to deploy was not an accident.”
“I know,” Nox said wearily. And merda, tears were pushing their way out. “Some jackaster jammed a rock in the net mechanism for the hell of it.” He had to sniffle. That was weak.
Romulus said, “The rock was definitely jammed in there, but no, it was not the random act of a vandal. It was the very deliberate act of a slave named Baucus on orders from his master, Numa Pompeii.”
Wet eyelids opened wide. “Caesar Numa?”
“Pretender Numa. That criminal slug is not Caesar.”
Romulus was speaking terrible, amazing things. “Numa required a young Roman of unquestioned loyalty. Cinna’s willingness to take the fatal step proved that he valued honor over life. Numa needed Cinna to appear to die so Numa wouldn’t be caught carving up one of his own loyal citizens. And Numa also wanted you—you specifically, Nox Antonius—to take the blame for Cinna’s death.”
“Me?”
Nox had been no one remarkable back then.
Just another ephebe, a young new soldier in Legio Persus. Okay, that was what Nox wanted to think he was. Nox was different. He’d been born in America. He’d been born a Farragut.
Romulus went on. “Squads are always formed in eights. Tell me how was it that there happened to be an opening in your squad for Cinna?”
Nox opened his mouth. He couldn’t say it. And he got the idea that Romulus already knew. Nox’s squad had numbered seven because Rubeus Tunica Antonius had been stung by a sand needle. Rubeus Tunica hadn’t felt it. The brothers hadn’t known it happened until Rubeus failed to wake up and the medici found the sand needle in his foot.
“Remarkable that your brother Rubeus Tunica didn’t feel the sting,” Romulus said. “Sand needles are ungodly painful.”
Nox was stunned. He knew he was supposed to ask the next question. “Why didn’t Rubeus Tunica feel the needle?”
“Anesthetic.”
“Why?”
“Because it was murder.”
Nox sputtered. “Why?”
“To create an opening in your squad to fit in a new ephebe to be hazed. Are you not picking up the pattern here yet? Your squad, Nox Antonius. Yours. Numa wanted you out. Because you used to be John Farragut’s brother.”
Nox appreciated the past tense. He still cringed at the name. “Why not just kill me!”
“Too late. You were already Roman. Numa never wanted you to have Roman citizenship, and he couldn’t renounce your citizenship once it had been bestowed by me. You came to Rome in my reign.
“Numa maneuvered you into a circumstance to have you drummed out of the Empire—my Empire—in disgrace. The same stroke also gave him a loyal, young, and nearly dead Roman to fashion into a patterner. Did you not think it odd that Cinna survived that fall at all let alone that he survived in any state to be made into a logical mastermind?”
Nox couldn’t answer. It had seemed unbelievable. But it had happened, so that had been the end of disbelieving.
And a satellite just happening to record Cinna’s jump—that had always gnawed at him. There was something cosmically unfair about that.
Romulus was telling him now that the satellite had been positioned there specifically to record that instant when Cinna went over the edge.
Nox recognized his cue to ask the question. His throat was dry. He cleared it. Rasped, “How did Cinna survive?”
“There was an arrester hook from another satellite prepositioned and standing by to keep the jumper’s skull from hitting the ground. Numa expected you to run home to the United States and pick up your life as John Knox Farragut Junior.”
With a chill, Nox remembered the option had been offered to him.
“But instead of running away home, you stood damnation with the rest of your squad. I admire that. And then you got creative. You attempted to acquire the specs to a Xerxes class ship.”
Attempt? “I did acquire them.”
“Amazingly easy, wasn’t it?”
Nox drew in a breath. “Yes,” he whispered, cold. His skin felt to be crawling.
“You must know you only acquired those specs with imperial knowledge and permission. When you actually succeeded in hijacking a Xerxes—astonishing fact, that—Numa made you his own tool. And he inserted his patterner back into your damned squad to monitor you. Oh. About that. Have a care for your brother. Cinna has a resonant off switch. He doesn’t know it. He is programmed not to be able to detect it. Numa could have terminated Cinna at any moment.”
Nox felt cold. “Can he? Terminate Cinna?”
“Not any more. I took the liberty of whiting out the trigger harmonic.”
A resonant harmonic and its complement canceled each other out.
“Cinna should have been able to figure out this plot, but Cinna is hard-coded not to be able to see it. But you, Nox Antonius, you should have known that Numa would not send a patterner into the field with a band of outlaws without a means to shut him off.”
Nox couldn’t talk. Yes, he should have known.
“You are a dedicated man,” Romulus said. “I am not asking you to break your vow to serve Rome. But you must recognize that you are not actually serving Rome now. You’re serving Numa. Not the same thing at all. He used you. I notice that once he brought you and your brothers under his command he never restored your citizenship, your gens, your name. You and your brothers are all still damnati. How does that feel?”
Nox was reeling as from body blow after body blow after head shot. He felt about to vomit.
Romulus hit him again with another question. “Do you like your life?”
The question landed like an upper cut.
Winded, in blinding pain, Nox fish-mouthed, open and shut. He pictured all the men he’d murdered. He choked out, “No.”
“Ever wish you could do it all over differently?”
Nox coughed. Blurted, “Only when I’m breathing. You know we do! Wishing is useless merda! You can’t change what is!”
“I can,” Romulus said.
Nox stared at him.
“I can change what is. I can change what was.”
“Are you offering to restore our citizenship?”
“I can do better. I can make it so you never lost it. Get Cinna in on this interview.”
“This is a trap.”
“Of course it’s a trap. You want to be in it. It serves you. It serves your brothers. It serves me. It serves Rome.”
“Why does a patterner need another patterner?”
Romulus smiled. “I am told that there is something to be said in favor of redundance. As you might guess, there is no margin for error on this quest of mine.”
Not sure at all, Nox contacted Cinna.
Cinna consented to come.
And Romulus spun them a dream. A life in which Cinna didn’t fall, and the brothers were not driven out of Rome, and the Ninth Circle never formed.
It required Romulus to go back in time.
Nox watched Cinna getting angry. Finally Cinna interrupted Romulus. “You’re suggesting it can be done. It can’t.”
“I told him that,” Nox said.
“You’re not a patterner,” Romulus told Nox.
“I am,” said Cinna. “It can’t be done. It would be a time loop. If I go back and prevent myself from becoming a patterner, then how do I know how to go back? It’s a paradox. You are full of shit.”
“You are not a patterner at the moment. You’re not connected. You’re speaking as a simple man without all the information.”
A tremor. A hesitation. “I could be,” Cinna allowed. “I am listening, domni.”
“I have located a break point. Something happened then and there. A definite break in temporal continuity. The universe pulled the figurative blinds on it.”
“Meaning what?” Cinna said. “Literally?”
“There is a star system where a time break occurred. A black hole masked over the break.”
“The Myriad,” Nox heard himself saying.
“Yes. You would have heard of it,” Romulus said.
Well, yeah, John Alexander Farragut exists at the center of the universe, so why not, Nox thought. Refrained from saying that part aloud.
Instead Nox said, “You think that when the Arran spaceship went through the Rim Gate in the Myriad it changed something other than forming the black hole.”
“I know it did. If I get to that break point in 2443 then I can rewrite everything going forward.”
“If you get back to—!” Nox lost control. He was shouting at Romulus. “That’s the whole colossal trick, isn’t it? HOW DO YOU GO BACK IN TIME?”
“I recognize your inability to grasp the concept. I will be tolerant,” Romulus said. “When the Arran went through the Rim Gate, the Rim Gate collapsed. But the back door is still open. The other end of that wormhole is still there. It’s i
n the 82 Eridani system, near a planet known as Xi.”
“It’s there? You mean no one else noticed?”
“The wormhole in the 82 Eridani system is a known oddity. There is a LEN observation station positioned near it, left over from a study that ran out of funding. The LEN sent a probe into the Xi gate. The probe ceased registering the instant it entered the anomaly. Organizations who fund such things don’t like it when their funding disappears into unreadable holes. The observation station is still there, observing nothing.”
“I will go through the wormhole at 82 Eridani and come out in 2443. Events flowing forward from the seventh of June 2443 will fall differently. Numa will not become Caesar, and he will not cause a slave to jam a rock into the mechanism in the cliff. You, Cinna, will not fall from Widow’s Edge. You will not be butchered into a patterner. You and your brothers will not be drummed out in disgrace and disowned. You will be honorable Romans in my Empire.”
There was no expression on Cinna’s face but for tears streaming from his eyes. “Caesar, that is a lovely fairy tale, but I know you won’t succeed because you are here talking to me now. If you tried, you failed.”
“The fact that we are talking now means only that I haven’t done it yet in this time stream. Once I go, this conversation will exist only as a memory of mine. The events of the past five years will persist like a phantom limb of mine that’s been removed. Your life will have had a different course. Your nightmare will never materialize. You will have the proverbial clean slate.”
Romulus offered a data reservoir to Cinna. “View this as only you can.”
Cinna regarded the data reservoir as he might a poison pill.
Romulus saw his fear. “Have you something to lose?”
Cinna plugged in.
Nox saw Cinna’s eyes get that empty look of a patterner adrift in an ocean of information. Cinna murmured as from a great depth, “It’s a game of moebius chess. Dangerous.”
“Dangerous,” Nox echoed, for Romulus to note.
“Then we play carefully,” Romulus said.
“How will Cinna get you back in time if he never becomes a patterner? Cinna?”
“Don’t speak to him,” Romulus said. “Your words are glaciers.”