New Pompeii

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New Pompeii Page 24

by Daniel Godfrey


  “We want to hand more control back to the town,” said Nick.

  “Oh, spare me, Pullus. This isn’t a town; it’s a prison. The ash cloud has gone. The roads are clear. But every time we send out riders, they are stopped by legionaries who send them back.”

  “Augustus…”

  “Ah, yes! Augustus! The first god-emperor! You know, Pullus; I once saw a man who called himself a god. He would argue with Jupiter in his temple. It was a fairly one-sided conversation, as you can probably imagine, but we would all just stand there and watch. No one dared say he was crazy. The Emperor Gaius killed people on a whim, you see. For his amusement.”

  Nick nodded, understanding. “You’re talking about Caligula?”

  The duumvir’s face twisted in anger. “Caligula?” His voice was now ice cold. “Only cocksuckers use that name now. Men who became brave the moment ‘Little Boot’ was safely in his mausoleum. Men who didn’t have to watch their wives and mothers raped, or their friends and brothers executed.”

  The academic side of Nick’s brain was ringing loudly – Barbatus met Caligula – but the rest of it was registering a slow pulling fear in the pit of his stomach. It was different to the immediate terror he’d felt in the bathhouse. Because the men around Barbatus were wearing armour and carrying swords. And the duumvir’s house looked like a fortress. Which meant they were going to war.

  But whatever he was meant to do for NovusPart, it was unlikely that they intended him to die here and now. There was still time. “We haven’t acted like the Emperor Gaius,” he said.

  Barbatus chuckled. “Tell me about Felix,” he said. “He was a good man, so I’d just like to know: did you have a reason to kill him, or was it done on a whim?”

  Nick’s mind blanked. Maybe dying wasn’t on the cards, but that didn’t mean he had to blindly follow a path leading nowhere. He needed to find a new tack. “The town stands,” he said, trying to keep his voice firm and controlled. He looked at the men around Barbatus. Most stood steadfast but some were looking distinctly nervous. Like they weren’t sure the duumvir was making the right call. After all, they didn’t know everything that had happened in the bathhouse. Whelan hadn’t left anyone to report the transportations. There was still some room for doubt.

  “Caligula was no god,” Nick said, trying to push home the point. “But, then again, he did nothing to prove it. But you each felt the heat of the mountain, didn’t you? The shaking of the ground? The wrath of Vulcan? And yet you all survived.”

  “Then take control of the town yourself,” Barbatus said. “What do you need me for?” The duumvir looked around at his men. His words seemed to have the necessary effect. The uncertainty had been brief.

  “Let me tell you a story from Rome,” the duumvir continued. “A Roman legion once brought a northern ‘king’ back to the city. The soldiers were expecting him to act just like all the other defeated barbarians. He’d see the majesty of Rome, compare it with his mud huts back home, and quickly fall to his knees. Quaking at the sight of Rome’s power. But this one didn’t. He stood in the centre of the forum, and told Emperor Claw-Claw-Claudius to fuck right off.”

  A few of the men behind Barbatus started to laugh; they’d clearly heard the tale before. But Nick hadn’t. He swallowed uncertainly. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he whispered.

  Barbatus took a few steps forward. He leant in close. “That’s right, Pullus. That barbarian king had no idea how we built our aqueducts. And I don’t know how you pull off your little miracles. But know this: I’m no barbarian. And I’m not awed. So you want control of this town? Too late. It’s mine. I didn’t leave when the earth shook twenty years ago, and I didn’t leave when the mountain pelted us with rock either. So if you want it, you’ll have to take it from me.”

  In the duumvir’s anger, Nick saw his new tack. Not money, or land. “When I last spoke with your daughter, I offered her something.”

  “What?”

  “I offered her the truth,” said Nick. “And somehow, I think we could find it together.”

  57

  NICK LET OUT a long, low whistle. It was clear Barbatus had acquired yet another neighbouring townhouse. What Astridge had designed as a neatly organised home for a modest Roman family was now a warren of rooms. All of which seemed to be alive with people and filled with chests of coins and swords.

  “We’ll leave by the back.”

  Nick nodded. The duumvir’s building work meant there were now several ways into and out of his stronghold. They could leave without passing the two NovusPart guards who’d escorted him there. And his trip around town would go unrecorded in other ways too; he’d given temporary charge of his belt to a household slave. However, it soon became clear they wouldn’t be heading straight to the House of Samson.

  Barbatus stepped down into the street and immediately took a road north. Nick hesitated before following, trying to get his bearings. Yes, they would miss the House of Samson by a few blocks. Unless Barbatus planned to make a late turn. But he didn’t. And the men with the duumvir didn’t allow him to catch up with his new host. For those watching, the symbolism was clear: they weren’t walking together. The duumvir was keeping the association between them light, not wanting to stand between the mob and the men of Augustus.

  They reached the Vesuvius Gate and Barbatus stopped as soon as he’d passed through the outer wall. He’d only brought a handful of his men with him, but most remained at a courteous distance. The only one the duumvir seemed to talk to at any length was his household slave, Cato.

  As Nick approached, he thought back to Caligula and his immediate predecessor, Tiberius. Both had promoted their slaves and freedmen to powerful positions. Some of them had been even more powerful than the senators. And they’d been extremely loyal because they owed their position to their master’s patronage. Even in the face of tyranny.

  So was Barbatus running Pompeii on the same model?

  Maybe he was. Because there was another group at the gatehouse, a rag-tag assembly of men carrying swords. The city watch were now guarding the main trade route into and out of the town. And in the distance, Nick could just about make out some horses approaching. Heading directly past the spot where there should have been a volcano.

  The duumvir started to walk into the long grass that butted up against the town’s northern wall. Nick didn’t want to follow. He hadn’t been told where they were going, and he’d seen enough movies to know bad things happened in lonely locations. But he’d made his decision. He followed. Within a few steps, he realised what he was going to be shown.

  The only clue he needed was the rancid stench of rotting meat. It seeped into his nostrils, and made his guts twist.

  A pile of bodies, none of them longer than a man’s forearm. Like small leathery dolls in the ash-covered grass. They looked like they’d known nothing but a few short days of terror and hunger. Some had been scavenged by animals; one was missing its limbs, its stomach open, its guts spilled.

  The traditional way Romans dealt with unwanted children.

  They left them outside the town walls to die.

  “You can understand it, of course,” said Barbatus, his voice low. Respectful of the graveyard around them. “They are poor, their future uncertain. So the people bring them out here.”

  Nick said nothing. He looked away from the crèche of empty eye sockets staring up at him.

  “You offer me a way to get to the truth,” Barbatus said. “But what I want to know is simple: why do you people keep bringing children here, when there are so many unwanted already? Why keep good homes empty, when people are living on the street? Why lock us in our town, and cut us off from Rome?”

  Nick nodded dumbly, but his mind was racing. The nursery in the control villa. The crying baby. NovusPart were bringing children here. And it solved a puzzle posed by the man known as Harris. It was all around him. The way NovusPart could take people from the timeline, and then hide them away without the
need to cut their throats: you took them while they were young. And you hid them where no one would look.

  Maybe some of the missing were out here with the unwanted Roman babies. Maybe others had been given to employees of NovusPart – like Noah and Julian. But whatever the answer, they’d been taken out of the equation. The political titans of the present, reduced to children.

  “So the empty townhouses,” continued Barbatus. “What do you suppose we’ll find there?”

  Nick turned to the duumvir, feeling his time was close. “Let’s go and see.”

  Barbatus smiled like he knew he’d won. “The closest is only a few blocks away. The people in the neighbouring buildings reported it to us. They thought it was unfair that such a fine property remained empty.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Nothing. Life’s unfair. I was going to give it to Calpurnia. Until some ignorant cocksucker tried to dig their way through the walls. Underneath the brick and plaster is a metal skin.”

  “Metal?”

  “Yes,” said Barbatus. “Not iron or bronze. Something new.”

  Nick nodded. Another question ticked off the list, and another explanation conveniently erased. The empty houses weren’t meant for the people of Pompeii. They’d been designed like the House of McMahon. Secure housing, for whomever McMahon invited to the town. Or forced here. He swallowed hard. “There’s a particular house I want to go to.”

  “Oh?”

  “There was a man who lived here. A few blocks south and east of your own home.”

  Again, the duumvir grinned. “You mean your predecessor?”

  Nick stared blankly ahead.

  “There have only been two men from your camp that have shown any real interest in this town. You, and an older man. He seemed like the big chief in the days after the calamity.”

  “Samson?”

  “Was that his real name? Anyway, it soon turned out he wasn’t such a big man. And then you arrived to pick up where he left off.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “He was murdered.”

  Nick faltered. Murdered. “You know this for sure?”

  “This is my town, Pullus. I know what goes on here.”

  Nick believed him. NovusPart had murdered Felix, and they’d killed Samson too. But why? It was time for a gamble. He looked towards the sky. The sand was falling. “I think there’s something in his house which could be useful.”

  Barbatus glanced back towards the gatehouse. “Then lead on.”

  58

  “WHEN WE LAST met,” Harris said, “you told me you saved Harold McMahon’s life. Would you care to elaborate?”

  Kirsten hesitated. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The memory was distant, almost dreamlike. And now she was starting to doubt herself. What had really been happening while she floated in the bath for all those years?

  She breathed in slowly. It hadn’t taken long for Harris to return to the office; his phone call with “Marcus” had been brief. “I was always late for work,” she said. The words came slowly, but then gathered pace as she let them form in her mind a piece at a time. She had to get this right. Had to make sure she got every detail correct. “Even though I lived in college, I struggled to get out of bed on time. The day I saved McMahon, I was late.”

  Kirsten stopped. Harris leant forward, and indicated she should continue with a roll of his hand. “I went to empty his bin. If they were in but didn’t want to be disturbed, the students left their bins outside their doors. But McMahon hadn’t done that. So I went in – and there he was. Sitting at his desk. Choking. He’d been eating peanuts, and one had got stuck.”

  “You helped him?”

  “I hit him hard on the back until he coughed it up.”

  Harris leant back. That flicker of a smile had returned. “That’s why McMahon wanted to remove you from the timeline,” he said. “That’s why you emerged as a paradox.”

  “Because I saved his life?”

  “Because if you’d been any other bedder, his bin would have been emptied on time – and he would have died at his desk.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No one knows about you, Kirsten. Nobody knows about that little incident with the peanut. You’re not even a footnote in history.” He paused, thinking. “I bet you took that bath not long after you helped him.”

  Kirsten nodded. It had been the evening of the same day.

  A look of triumph crossed Harris’s face. “He needed to take you out of history at a point just after you’d saved him, and before you told anyone about that incident, so that no one else would know to come along later and take you out just before you saved him. If he’d left you alive, you would forever be a gun pointed straight at his head.”

  Kirsten drew in a sharp breath.

  Tap – tap – tap.

  A knock at her door. He’d come to her room. Maybe to say thank you. So he’d known exactly where she was, on one of the most memorable days of his life.

  But now she was back. A gun. Forever pointed at McMahon’s head. She looked back at Harris. “So are you going to kill me now?”

  For the first time, Harris looked uncertain.

  “Kill me?” repeated Kirsten. “To kill McMahon?”

  “Oh, I see. You think we’d go to all this trouble to save you, only to go and kill you straight away?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Understandable. But no, that’s not our intention.”

  Kirsten shifted in her seat.

  “Relax,” he said. “We don’t have the technology to rip you from the timeline. Only NovusPart can move people forward, out of time, and McMahon keeps the company in the hands of a select few. And the tricky thing is that, when you move someone who had a future from the past, you make changes. The people of Flight 391 had no future. They all died, never to be seen again. So they appear and NovusPart knows what they did to bring them there. But when you move a person who wasn’t meant to have been moved, you create a paradox. You rip away the future, and the reason they were transported.”

  “In other words,” said Kirsten, filling in the blanks, “Harold McMahon may not know he ordered my transportation.”

  59

  “I’VE BEEN THERE before. There’s nothing of interest inside.” Nick nodded, but ignored what Barbatus was telling him. Cato and a couple of the duumvir’s guards walked behind them. “You’ve never been upstairs though, right?” he said.

  The duumvir didn’t answer. Nick turned a sharp corner into a narrow street, and found himself facing the House of Samson.

  Unlike McMahon’s base of operations, this townhouse didn’t have any shops built into its frontage. Instead, the cubicles on either side of the main door seemed to be small homes. Or rather, hovels. A flight of stairs led up from a side alley. Nick looked upwards. There were more cubbyholes in the building’s upper floors, accessed by a fragile wooden walkway. Each one was shuttered. Typically Roman. No space wasted. And it was an arrangement that meant Samson would have had plenty of real-life Romans living right on his doorstep. Enough study material to keep him going for years. He would never have just left voluntarily.

  Nick approached the shuttered front door. He pressed his hand against the solid wood. They wouldn’t be able to break through it. But they didn’t need to. Just like at the House of McMahon, a grid was etched into the doorframe.

  Nick tapped in the code. 391391. The door didn’t shift. Behind him, Barbatus seemed impatient. What code would Samson have chosen? He tried again.

  2

  The wood didn’t give any indication it had sensed his input. But could it really be this simple?

  4

  Whatever, it was the best place to start.

  0 8 79

  The twenty-fourth of August, AD 79. Doomsday.

  The door clicked open. But before he could smile in triumph, something sharp pushed into the base of his back. Nick felt hot breath in his ear. “If there’s anyone in there waiting for us,”
said the duumvir, “then the last thing you’ll see is my sword pushing out through your stomach.”

  Nick didn’t respond. He walked forward, pushing aside the heavy curtain that hung across the entrance. The atrium corridor was longer than that at the House of McMahon, and the light from the street was blocked out when the curtain fell back into place behind them.

  The house was empty. Looking around the atrium, Nick was unimpressed. The house was a shell, with only a thin layer of plaster on the walls. No mosaics, not even simple ones. And it smelt damp. The floor plan echoed that of the House of McMahon, a set of wooden stairs leading upwards from the corner of the atrium.

  Nick let his eyes follow them to the balcony, and noticed the opening above the pool was covered with a steel grate – presumably to stop intruders climbing in over the walls. Behind him, Cato and Barbatus started to whisper to each other. The slave was dabbing at his mouth with a corner of his tunic. Without lips, saliva dripped from his teeth. It wasn’t clear what they were saying to each other.

  “I wonder if they’re all like this?”

  Barbatus glanced at him, his eyes narrow. “You mean you really don’t know?”

  Nick didn’t reply. He walked around the pool to the tablinum. Plants were growing in the garden beyond, so at least some attention had been given over to getting the house ready for permanent occupation. He turned back to the duumvir.

  “I still think we’ll find the truth here.”

  Barbatus didn’t look convinced. “Do you remember what I said? Whichever direction you head out of town, soldiers turn you back. Most of the people accepted your story as a consequence of the disaster. It was Calpurnia who asked me, ‘What exactly are they hiding?’”

  Nick didn’t reply. He walked back into the atrium, scanning it for clues, but nothing was leaping out at him.

  “So we found the villa, and your giant metal mosquitoes.”

  Nick felt the ground shift beneath him. “They’re called ‘helicopters’.”

 

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