New Pompeii

by Daniel Godfrey

  “Contact your people,” the duumvir said, handing the tablet to Nick.

  Nick turned it on and activated the communications app. He figured the best person to try was Whelan.

  The COO didn’t answer the first time. Or the second. But on the third try, his brawny face appeared on the screen. The background of the image indicated he was in his room in the House of McMahon. If Whelan was surprised to see him, then he hid it well. “Nick,” he said, almost casually. “You have news?”

  “Yes,” Nick said, in English. “I think I’m making progress.”

  “And just how did they get hold of a tablet?”

  “I told you these people weren’t stupid.”

  Whelan grunted. “Barbatus is with you?”

  Nick nodded, and tilted the tablet towards the duumvir. Ready to translate.

  “I hope you’ve had time to consider our offer.”

  The duumvir glared down at the screen. “I have.”

  “And your answer?”

  “I think we need to discuss the terms in more detail.”

  “We have nothing to talk about. You can either join us, or we cut off your supply of cash. This isn’t a negotiation. Perhaps Nick – Pullus – didn’t explain it to you properly. We want you to help us take back control of the town.”

  Barbatus gave a shallow grin. Like a wolf baring his teeth. “Really? You wouldn’t like to discuss your villa? Where your metal mosquitoes land?”

  Whelan shook his head, remaining calm. “No. They’re none of your concern. And I’m very disappointed you’ve been told about them.”

  Nick hesitated, then completed the translation. Barbatus listened to his words carefully, but didn’t register any discomfort. “No, I disagree,” replied the duumvir. “Because right now my men are taking control of your villa. So maybe they’ll soon fly one of those mosquitoes into town.”

  Emotion registered on Whelan’s face. It was brief, but Nick saw it. Whelan’s eyeballs bulged. “You’re making a serious mistake.”

  “Really?” answered Barbatus. “Because a bird can only tease the cat when he’s out of reach. And you’re flying very low, Mark Whelan of NovusPart. Very low indeed.”

  64

  WHELAN CALLED BACK ten minutes later. Barbatus held up his hand – a clear signal not to answer.

  “You think me foolish.”

  Nick felt the urge to nod. “I’m not sure you have all the facts,” he said. “Whelan is a dangerous man.”

  Barbatus shrugged. “He doesn’t look it. He looks soft.”

  The tablet started buzzing again. Once again, Barbatus indicated he shouldn’t answer. “What do you think he’s been doing? In between finding out his villa is under attack, and calling us back?”

  “Probably checking out your story,” said Nick.

  “I’d ask you to contact the villa, but my men won’t know how to use these devices. And I don’t know how many of your men are alive, or in a position to help. Which means Whelan is either calling to tell us my attack failed, or else he wants to meet.”

  Nick tried to run through the scenarios in his mind. If Barbatus was worried about the outcome, he didn’t look it. “The men at the villa were armed. It wouldn’t have been easy for your watch.”

  “I didn’t send the city watch,” replied Barbatus. “I sent fifteen gladiators.”

  Nick felt himself go pale. Gladiators. Men trained to kill. Another thought hit him. “You must have sent them before I got here.”

  Barbatus seemed pleased that his tactics had been understood. “The bonus prize is that Whelan sent the woman and her boy back there. Probably to get them away from the riots.”

  Nick felt his stomach clench. Maggie and Noah had been sent to the villa? He glanced down at the tablet, and saw himself reflected in the screen.

  He looked a mess. Stubble, grease and fear. “The woman, Maggie,” he said. “Will she be safe?”

  “Of course. I’m counting on it.” Barbatus pointed to the tablet. “The next time that thing goes off, I want you to answer.”

  The tablet suddenly seemed heavier. Should he try to explain? Warn them?

  Calpurnia appeared in the doorway. Not wanting to intrude, but clearly curious. He’d offered her the truth, and then not provided it. What would become of her if Barbatus lost? A woman on her own, with no way of inheriting her father’s estate. Her future so uncertain, and yet her resolve so firm.

  Nick cleared his throat. “You saw Whelan at the Temple of Jupiter,” he said. “You saw what he can do.”

  The duumvir didn’t respond.

  “Whelan doesn’t just have the power to control lightning,” Nick continued. “He can also control time.”

  Barbatus looked at him sceptically, and then rubbed his chin. “I heard a man once say that time is a sort of river of passing events,” he said. “I think its current is too strong for men like McMahon or Whelan to take a swim.”

  “But what if a man was swimming in the river,” said Nick, “and he was scooped up and brought upstream?”

  Barbatus didn’t reply.

  “That’s what happened to my friend, Canus, at the bathhouse. He was taken into the future. He is safe.”

  Calpurnia edged into the room. Barbatus didn’t seem to have noticed her. She looked like she wanted to say something.

  “McMahon and Whelan won’t be threatened,” continued Nick, “because they have the ultimate escape route. They can be sucked into the future, and out of harm’s way.”

  “No,” said Calpurnia, quietly. “No, that won’t happen.”

  Barbatus studied his daughter, then turned back to Nick. “I agree. Your friend Canus was a nobody; very different to your leaders.”

  “I think you’re missing my point.”

  “No, you’re missing my daughter’s. Do you think that if Jupiter had granted Nero this power, Nero would have saved the Emperor Gaius?”

  Nick hesitated. “No.”

  “No,” repeated Barbatus. “Of course he wouldn’t.”

  “Because what circumstance would create the greatest catastrophe among men?” asked Calpurnia. “‘If the dead were to rise and demand back their property’?”

  Nick recognised the Aesop quote. He was about to respond, but the duumvir interrupted him. “And if your friends were going to use this power against me, they would have done so already. As soon as I revealed my hand.”

  Nick’s mind blanked. Thirty years. If anyone in charge of NovusPart wanted to stop Barbatus thirty years from now, then they weren’t showing it. But why?

  And then it hit him.

  He was about to clear their path to power.

  Nick looked at the duumvir, knowing his expression must have been grim. The progressing coup also explained why he hadn’t been transported from the British Museum, or the bathhouse. Which meant he’d been right: he was the key to it all. The man who’d moved the pieces into position. The man who’d allowed the current NovusPart regime to fall.

  The man who’d deposed McMahon.

  The man who’d killed Hitler.

  He just needed to hold his nerve.

  In his hands, the tablet started to buzz. Nick answered the call and Whelan’s face appeared.

  “It seems you have control of our villa,” said the operations chief. His tone remained neutral, but the muscles in his face were strained. “I want a guarantee that you will not harm our people, especially the woman and her boy.”

  “You have it,” said Barbatus. “Of course, some may have been injured during our arrival.”

  “Casualties of war?”

  “We’re not at war,” replied the duumvir. “Indeed, I hope we can turn this situation to our mutual benefit.”

  “How so?”

  “You have a lot of resources, but don’t understand how to wield them. I can provide you with the muscle to run this town effectively. Stop you becoming the victim of kidnappers and murderers.”

  Whelan looked amused. “You would give us your protection?”

 
; “I would.”

  Whelan said nothing.

  “What do you say?” said Barbatus.

  Whelan’s face was screwed up in silent frustration.

  “We should meet,” insisted the duumvir. “Cement our new alliance.”

  Nick looked down at the tablet. Whelan wasn’t on his own. He could see a shadow thrown on the wall behind Whelan, probably Astridge’s. He couldn’t see McMahon. With Patrick gone, Nick was now the only channel of communication between Whelan and Barbatus.

  “He’s worked it out,” said Nick, in Greek. Just in case there was someone listening he didn’t know about. “He’s worked out that he’s in danger because you haven’t been transported. And he doesn’t know how to react.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  Nick felt his cheeks burn. Barbatus hadn’t been transported. And the duumvir had Maggie and Noah. There was only one logical answer. They needed to give Whelan some leverage of his own. Something to encourage him to come to a meeting.

  Instinctively, he looked at Calpurnia.

  “We will send you my daughter as collateral,” said Barbatus, understanding all too well. Or maybe coming to the same conclusion. Either way, it didn’t lessen Nick’s guilt. But Calpurnia remained quite calm, her expression not betraying doubt or anger. Almost as if she knew how her father’s style of politics would play out. As if she’d seen it before.

  Nick cleared his throat, trying to focus on Whelan. “I don’t believe he’s tricking you,” he said, in English.

  Onscreen, Whelan growled. “Very well. Where do you want to meet?”

  “The forum, tomorrow at midday,” said Nick, repeating Barbatus’ words. “Where better to make a public statement of our new alliance?”

  “Fine. But I suggest we each allow the other only one armed guard. And limit the total numbers to no more than three.”

  “It’s agreed. My daughter will go to your House of McMahon. As a gesture of good faith.” Barbatus grunted and disconnected the call – using the device as instinctively as someone who’d been using it all their life.

  “You will need to teach us how to use these properly.”

  Nick quickly checked the call had indeed been ended. He needed to be careful. He thought about what Calpurnia had told him about Carthage, and wondered who’d shown the Romans how to build their first ships.

  “Whelan will want the villa back,” he said.

  “Your Whelan is a fool. He shouldn’t have told me anything about the villa. We were blind, and yet he told us everything we needed to know. He could have bluffed. Said our takeover had failed. Given me something to think about. Given himself some time.”

  But Whelan was used to instantaneous communication, thought Nick. And used to dealing with people who also knew all the facts. He was a man out of time, fighting people he didn’t understand. “Still,” he said, his mind whirring even as the penny dropped, “Whelan will be plotting his next move. He won’t accept losing control of the villa.”

  “Of course he won’t.” Barbatus laughed, and slapped him hard on the shoulder. “You wouldn’t make a good soldier, Nick. Or a politician. Don’t mistake a cessation in hostilities for peace. Tell me, what happened after Octavian made a deal to rule with Mark Antony?”

  65

  CALPURNIA HAD BEEN gone for several hours – escorted to the House of McMahon by three of Barbatus’ men – when the duumvir entered Nick’s room and held out the tablet.

  “It wasn’t like the last time,” said Barbatus. “It just buzzed once. And not for long.”

  Nick took it wordlessly. The screen was black but when he tapped it into life he saw there was a message from Whelan. He tried to explain the concept to the duumvir.

  “Why do you think he no longer wishes to show his face?” asked Barbatus. Nick shrugged and kept quiet. He could tell that Barbatus already knew the answer. “He wants time to think through each response,” continued the duumvir. “He probably regrets being put on the spot earlier. He doesn’t want us to see him react. So what does he say?”

  Nick didn’t read the first part of the message out loud. Your helicopter will arrive tomorrow. He hesitated for a second, considering the implications but knowing it meant he was running out of time. Barbatus stirred, waiting for the translation. Whelan had been wise enough to add another unrelated section to the message. Directly after we meet, we want to put on a show at the amphitheatre. Jointly hosted.

  Barbatus inhaled loudly as Nick read it out. “Your Whelan is a better tactician than I thought.”

  “I don’t see what’s changed.”

  “Games,” replied Barbatus. “The people love games, and they love the people who put them on.”

  “They’re not going to suddenly fall in love with Whelan and McMahon.”

  “No. But if they’re jointly hosted, then they’re jointly advertised. Possibly as a joint gift. Which would make your people’s sudden demise… unfortunate.”

  Nick kept silent.

  “Send a message back,” continued the duumvir. “Tell him it’s too late. My gladiators aren’t ready.”

  Nick typed the message. Whelan would barely have been able to read it before the tablet signalled his response: We’ll supply some animals to act as grist to the mill. Let me know how many you need.

  Nick snapped his attention back to Barbatus. The old Roman was smiling to himself. “It may be that your man thinks I’ll have to withdraw my men from his villa in order to allow them to compete in the arena. He would be mistaken.” Barbatus paused again, as if checking his plan for errors. “Tell him it’s a deal. I’ll supply five pairs of gladiators if he can supply a lion or two. That’ll test the cocksucker. In the meantime, I’ll send out the news regarding the town’s games.”

  66

  KIRSTEN LOOKED AT the photograph but hardly recognised the face staring back at her. The caption told her it was Joe Arlen. But his cheeks – Octo’s cheeks – had none of the youthful enthusiasm she remembered. Instead, he looked at the camera with resignation. Pain. Anger.

  “What happened to him?”

  Harris raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t seem able to cope with the complexity of what he’d unleashed.”

  Kirsten pulled her attention away from the tablet. “Pardon?”

  “How do you create something that could unravel the timeline and be comfortable with what you’d done?” Harris paused as Kirsten looked back to the newspaper article. “Very few people in history have had to cope with that sort of pressure. Oppenheimer, perhaps, is the closest example. Anyway, Arlen became obsessed with what he called ‘intersections’. Where people were and at what time. Tracking and researching people who had influenced his own personal timeline with the same rigour and obsession with which some people trace their family tree.”

  Kirsten scrolled down the article. “It says here he spends hours researching who he’s been in contact with.”

  “Yes, but as I said: no one’s seen him for quite some time. It seems he doesn’t want to create any new intersections.”

  She looked up. “What if I told you I could kill Harold McMahon?”

  “I doubt you’d have the stomach for it.”

  Kirsten shook her head. Once she’d got the hang of the tablet, she’d been using her time between interviews carefully, reading up on NovusPart, and absorbing everything she could about the potential threats to the timeline. How it was thought it could be manipulated. The dangers of splintering and fragmentation.

  And it always came back to the same thing. Nothing would change, as long as they only took people who were already dead. Except she hadn’t been dead. She’d been taking a bath. And because of what McMahon had done to her, she’d lost thirty years.

  “NovusPart seem to be comfortable with creating paradoxes,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Because despite what Arlen may have thought, it would appear the timeline is difficult to break.”

  “So why don’
t we give them a paradox big enough to make them choke?”

  Harris didn’t respond at first. But she could see the calculations running through his mind. A smile started to flicker across his lips as he came to the same conclusion as she had. “They would have to be tricked into removing you at birth. You would die.”

  “And so would McMahon. Which would be a hell of a paradox, don’t you think? At the very least, I wouldn’t have to spend a lifetime lost in that godforsaken college.”

  Harris stared at her. “It could be dangerous. I need to talk to Marcus first. There may be unexpected consequences.”

  67

  THEY REACHED THE forum’s northern triumphal arch well before Whelan. Nick hadn’t been surprised to be asked to join the group, given his role as a translator. But Barbatus had brought Cato along, rather than one of his thugs. And despite Cato carrying a sword, Nick couldn’t help but feel they were arriving a bit light.

  With time to kill, it didn’t take long before Barbatus started to greet passers-by as if they were old friends, the consummate politician. He probably barely knew them, but they returned the duumvir’s attention enthusiastically, and their sense of anticipation was already palpable. It certainly hadn’t taken long for news of the games to circulate.

  Nick looked up at the Temple of Fortuna Augusta. It seemed long ago that he’d spoken with Calpurnia there. Her concerns at the time now seemed inconsequential. Bare tremors against the coming eruption.

  She’d better be okay.

  “He’s here,” Barbatus said, his voice low. “And he’s got more than two men.”

  Nick turned quickly to look up the via. Bizarrely, Barbatus didn’t seem concerned. He was just noting the lack of basic arithmetic. But he was right. Whelan was striding towards them with Astridge, and one of the NovusPart security guards. Behind them a wagon was being driven by another guard. Nick squinted. He recognised neither of them, but both guards were clearly carrying handguns. And maybe because of it, Whelan had ventured out without his Taser-enhanced, leather wrist-guard.