Laughing Wolf

by Nicholas Maes

  “So we did it,” she said, “The world is back to normal.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “And I suppose we live happily ever after? Everybody returns to their routines, and forgets the fact that we were on the brink of extinction?”

  “Do you really think people will forget so quickly …?”

  “They will. You’ll see. We belong to the future and always blank out the past. A week from now there will be no reference to the plague, not in the news, not from the president, and not in people’s conversations. It will be as if the crisis never happened.”

  “But it did happen. That’s all you have to tell yourself. The past is always there, underpinning the present, whether we absorb it or not.”

  “I guess that’s a comforting thought.” She paused, as if nervous to continue. “Look. I want to see you.”

  “I want to see you too.”

  “Can we meet this Sunday? We’ll go to Pompeii and tour the ruins. And maybe …”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you can teach me Latin.”

  “Really?”

  “I keep thinking of the time we spent together. And, well, I keep thinking of you. I’ll see you Sunday, maybe?”

  “You bet. Bright and early. And …”

  But she’d broken off contact. Felix glanced at Stephen Gowan, who caught his gaze and snickered to himself. Almost feeling sorry for him, he looked out the window at the scene below. By now the shuttle was cruising over Labrador, whose landscape looked gorgeous in the morning light. If he’d been glad before, that was nothing compared to his happiness now in the wake of Carolyn’s call.

  He couldn’t wait for Sunday to arrive.

  He was perspiring heavily. Despite the forecast for rain that afternoon, the temperature was eighty five degrees, true to the Automated Weather Bureau’s forecast. He could have avoided this heat by using the Dispersion Portals, but had wanted to reach his destination on foot. That was why, after he’d landed in Rome and taken two shuttles to the town of Laura, a centre known for its beef-cloning farms, he had proceeded to walk. From Laura he had travelled three miles on Route 21 (formerly Poseidonia Street), and two more miles on Route 46 (the old Neptune Road), which was taking him due east, exactly as planned.

  He was getting close, he thought, passing a hand across his brow. Despite the alterations the terrain had undergone, to accommodate the pipes that ran for hundreds of miles, each bearing nutrients for the cloning process, he felt the landscape looked vaguely familiar. This suspicion only mounted when he reached Route 63 (Magna Graecia Lane) where, directly north, he saw two ancient temples. Despite his fatigue, he broke into a run.

  There. Standing by the side of the road, where the remnants of a wall were visible, he grasped exactly where he was. Twenty-three hundred years before (or four weeks ago if the TPM were factored in), Pompey’s soldiers had almost killed him on this spot. Walking past the wall — and disturbing a small lizard — he approached the open precinct where Neptune’s temple greeted him, its columns still miraculously standing, even though they’d eroded since he’d seen them last. He climbed the stairs to the stylobate, expecting to see Pompey hovering nearby. It was from this place that he’d addressed the general, warning him Rome’s prowess would inevitably fail. And indeed it had, in the intervening month.

  He walked toward the temple’s interior. Much as he’d expected, the cella had collapsed and its blocks of stone had long been carted off. By studying the floor, he could easily make its outline out. It was the traces of its back wall that interested him most. He crouched and inspected these cracks in the floor.

  There was a lot of dirt, much of it hard-packed, and it concealed the joins between the marble paving stones. For the next few minutes he brushed it with his fingers. He also took a knife from his pocket and poked its blade into a multitude of cracks.

  Nothing. It was too much to hope that in the intervening centuries, given the thieves and archeologists who’d visited this region, his “deposit” had survived.

  The sweat was pouring freely from his scalp. He shook his head and half climbed to his feet, frustrated and ready to admit defeat. But it was then he noticed a thin line of mortar that was almost, but not quite, the same colour as the stone. He frowned. It had been poured between the original blocks three hundred years earlier to fortify the temple. He used his knife to scrape at this mortar. It crumbled easily, weakened by repeated heat and rain. Pushing his blade as far it would go, he ran it slowly the length of that join and almost choked when he heard a faint metallic “ping.”

  He excavated a hole wide enough for one finger. He stuck his index in, groped about and finally extracted … a metal ring. Its surface was covered with greenish mould but, here and there, a spot of gold shone through. Feeling hot and cold at once, he rubbed its signet and peered at the pattern that emerged: it showed a warrior mounted on a horse. Tears stealing from his eyes, he raised his face toward the sun.

  “I remember,” he whispered. “I’ll never forget.”