Empire of Time
Page 7
Pullus tried to smile as he backed out of the room and closed the door. Perhaps he should have said something. But he didn’t yet understand what the voice on the phone had been trying to tell him.
“Pullus!”
He turned. Calpurnia and Habitus were walking towards him, their faces angry. Calpurnia had her hand held out as though she was expecting him to offer something. He looked at her blankly, before realising what she meant. She’d figured it out. He still had the phone, and she now understood the implications.
“Don’t make me ask for it.”
Pullus reached into his tunic, and took from it the mobile phone. It remained unpowered. He hadn’t yet had chance to find its number.
“The Greek explained it to us,” Calpurnia said.
Of course, Pullus thought bitterly as he passed across the phone. The Greek.
Whoever had called them from the future had known which device to call. They perhaps still owned it. Pullus didn’t want to wait for Habitus to compel him. “Funny how the most unexpected thing can become an oracle,” he said.
Calpurnia didn’t answer. She pressed the power button but nothing happened. It still needed a recharge before she’d get anything useful from it.
“Has the Greek worked out what went wrong?” he asked.
Habitus grunted, which was an answer of sorts.
“Whelan told us enough to get the tracking systems working,” Pullus said. “And now Harris brings us information that allows us to transport people.”
“It didn’t work,” Calpurnia said. She glared at him and put the phone away. Pullus felt a prickle across the back of his neck. He’d already been back and forth over his exchanges with Harris, and the man on the phone who’d called himself Marcus, every word of their conversations, whether initially translated or not, looking for any mistake or hidden meaning. And even though the string of numbers and letters was long, he’d called them as he’d heard them. There was no error. It simply hadn’t worked.
“We got further than before,” Habitus said. “This time, at least something came through.”
Pullus grimaced. Something. Harris had said he’d lost his brother when they were both still children. Fuck.
“We know the device works,” Calpurnia said. “And we know we make it work. After all, Pullus, you were saved in the amphitheatre.”
“We know the device works at some point,” Pullus replied, keeping his voice calm. “All the rest is speculation.”
“We need it to be for us, Pullus.” Calpurnia took hold of his arm. “We need the NovusPart device to be in our hands.”
Pullus nodded, but pulled his arm away. It may have been only the slightest ghost of affection, but he didn’t want it. Not now. Not standing outside her son’s bedroom, when inside doubt was beginning to grow.
“The man on the phone,” Calpurnia continued. “You said he mentioned Arlen’s research. He said it was here, in Pompeii?”
“Yes.”
“We should instigate a search,” Calpurnia said. “Information like that could be stored on something the size of a thumbnail, yes?”
Habitus snorted, stopping Pullus from answering. “The Greek’s already been through all the NovusPart stuff. We’ve checked all the tablets and datacards.”
“Property always goes missing at times of change,” Calpurnia replied, calmly. “It’s why they call it looting. Make the necessary arrangements, Habitus. Tear the place apart if you have to. We need to find what’s left of Arlen’s work.”
16
Ancient Roman Empire, the road to Pompeii, AD 62
“WHERE DID YOU find her? Where the fuck did you find her?!”
Achillia didn’t hear Trigemina answer the driver. Her mistress returned to the carriage, seemingly unable to speak. Achillia followed and snapped the short-sword back into position above the door. The blade was now covered in blood. She wiped her hands on her stola, and found it already slick and damp.
“She found me in a ludus,” Achillia said, her brain still whirring as she tried to track back over the events of the last few minutes. She’d been thinking about the voice. Sitting in the carriage thinking about the Sibyl’s voice when the men had come out from between the trees. And after that: just a blur.
She could just about remember reaching for the sword. Approaching the first man and killing him. She’d spoken to the second one before thrusting the sword flat through the bridge of his nose.
Had he been on his knees? Maybe. She hadn’t truly noticed because by then she’d already started after the third man. The man who’d already given up and was trying to get away. The man who’d stopped to beg her, even though she hadn’t listened. Because her ears were still ringing with the sound of the Sibyl’s voice.
The wagon moved forward. The sudden jolt brought Achillia back to the present. She blinked, then looked at the blood on the blade and her clothes and her hands. She felt specks of it on her face. She’d stabbed the last man so many times he’d fallen in several pieces.
Fuck, she’d enjoyed that.
“This is what you paid for,” Achillia said.
“You didn’t even ask them…”
“Bandits,” she replied. “They wanted your money. They wanted you.”
Trigemina didn’t say anything.
“Two men were arguing in a taberna,” Achillia started, slowly, raking the joke up from her memory, trying to ease the atmosphere. “‘I fucked your wife,’ said the first. ‘I’m her husband and have no choice,’ said the second. ‘What in Jupiter made you do it?’”
Trigemina didn’t even smile. “What did the Sibyl tell you?”
Achillia stared back at her mistress. The words had been so clear, so loud. You will go to Pompeii, and you will find Manius Calpurnius Barbatus! You will seek his daughter, and you will save her husband Marcus Villius Denter by taking him to meet Balbus in Herculaneum. “Didn’t you hear?”
Trigemina shook her head.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Achillia replied. “As you told me, the Sibyl’s words are private.”
17
Naples, two weeks prior to the death of Harris
“Whether through incompetence or selfishness, Nick Houghton’s insistence on keeping the people of Pompeii confined behind their city walls has wasted the key archaeological event of our lifetime. It is the equivalent of opening the tomb of Tutankhamun, and then simply closing the doors and walking away.”
Professor Hayden,
Lead Archaeologist, Herculaneum
World Archaeology News Message Board
SHE WAS LATE.
Nick Houghton surveyed the arrivals lounge of Naples airport. The dirty glass-panel doors leading to the “drop-off” zone remained firmly closed.
He tried to relax his shoulders. He’d attracted no unwelcome attention on the short hop over from Tehran, and most of the other passengers on his flight had already grabbed their bags and departed the arrivals hall. Where was his ride? He glanced at his wrist. He wasn’t wearing a watch, but the tic had re-emerged almost as soon as he’d changed back into modern clothing. He pulled at his collar.
A cleaner with a small handcart edged into view at the far side of the hall. A few minutes later, another female figure appeared and propped open a side door and started to sort through a collection of unclaimed baggage. Neither woman paid him much notice.
Chloe hadn’t let him down before. And being on time wasn’t exactly one of her traits, he reminded himself. Never had been, and he’d known her since university, and she’d no doubt arrive soon enough and full of apologies. Even so, if this had been the old days then his loitering would have already attracted attention from what remained of the press. They’d want to know why he’d come back, and who he was meeting. Want to see if they could discover any more details about what had happened to NovusPart, McMahon and Whelan. Fortunately, the news business now seemed to have other priorities. Maybe if they knew why he was really here, things would be different.
“Decimus Pullus?�
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Nick turned. A woman carrying a large holdall was approaching from the direction of baggage claim. At first he was puzzled; the other passengers had long since dispersed. Her bag looked heavy, pulling her right shoulder down into a pronounced, lopsided stoop. Had she been on his flight?
“Decimus Horatius Pullus?”
The woman wasn’t wearing a facemask. His own hung limply around his neck. He tugged it back over his nose. Not only did it provide a handy disguise, but it was also a useful defence against the dual airborne threats of pollution and disease. In the fifteen years of travelling back and forth between Naples and New Pompeii, he’d noticed many things change as the outside world continued to slip away from him. The economic depression pushing down on the old states of Europe and the US showed no sign of abating, their economies finding themselves unable to compete with the millions of highly educated graduates from China and India. And for all the technology being displayed on the brightly lit advertising hoardings of the arrivals hall, did any of that matter when the burgeoning middle classes from those same countries could buy up all of life’s niceties? It was the inverse of the Crassus brainteaser: if the richest man in ancient Rome couldn’t afford a computer, then was he really rich? But what if the richest man in modern-day Italy could afford a computer, but not a nice glass of red wine? Would he, in fact, prefer to be Crassus?
“Decimus Pullus…?” The woman stared at him. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“No,” he said, looking away. Habitus had once told him the best route to anonymity was not to make eye contact. “I think you’ve made a mistake.”
The woman dropped her bag next to his, and beamed at him as she straightened. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, her voice a little too chirpy. “I noticed you by the conveyors.” She pointed at her bag. “Took them a while to get mine off the plane, didn’t it? I thought they’d lost the damn thing.”
The woman was probably in her mid-thirties, with a bob of black hair that matched her olive skin. She wore a lime-green strappy top and khaki trousers. She clearly recognised him. But that didn’t mean he had to encourage her.
“My name’s Nick Houghton,” he said. “Here it’s Nick Houghton, not Decimus Horatius Pullus.”
The woman nodded. “Oh, okay.” She paused. The silence immediately became awkward, but she kept grinning, like she’d met a celebrity. “I studied classics under Professor Turner at Durham,” she said. “That’s where you were, wasn’t it?”
Nick frowned. Professor Turner? He didn’t recognise the name, but still nodded. Where was Chloe? “Yes,” he said. He thought about mentioning his own tutor, Webster, and asking if he was still there. He silently prayed this woman would go away and not post anything on the boards about meeting him. He needed at least a few days off the radar.
“Well, I just wanted to say hello,” she said, her grin starting to crumble. “I think what you’ve done out there is really great. Not like people are saying…”
It was definitely now awkward. He glanced towards the glass doors and felt a flood of relief; Chloe was hurrying towards him. He’d only have to string this out a few moments longer. “Look,” he said, “it’s been a long flight.”
“Sure. Well, it was nice to meet you.”
With some effort the woman lifted her bag onto her shoulder and walked towards the exit. Nick smiled at Chloe as she reached him.
“Hello, Mr Pax Romana!”
Nick scowled. “Don’t you mean Mr Ambassador?”
“Don’t push it,” Chloe replied, smiling. Then her face became serious. “Do you want to go there straight away?”
Nick nodded. “We might as well get it over with.”
18
NICK SHUDDERED. WHAT remained of his dad lay on a bed inside a clear plastic tent. The only other person present was a female nurse. She wasn’t wearing a bio-hazard suit, but it was pretty damn close; an almost-invisible muslin covered her face, head and shoulders. The woman’s hands and forearms were protected by long latex gloves. The rest of her uniform looked thin and stiff, almost like paper, and was probably designed to be stripped off and thrown away, rather than be put through the laundry. It was a uniform designed to be incinerated rather than cleaned.
Nick watched in silence as the nurse moved around to the other side of the tent. His father’s head didn’t shift to follow her movement, and he knew it couldn’t. The muscles in most of his body were frozen. Immobile. Only his eyes moved. And they were focused upwards and towards the extraction fans as they pulled and pumped the air. Nick found himself following his father’s gaze. Maybe the air was being incinerated too.
“The nurses say he’s conscious,” said Chloe, keeping her voice barely above a whisper. “But you’ll need to get closer so he can see you.”
Nick didn’t move. When Chloe had described the sanatorium to him, he’d pictured something between an old Victorian workhouse and a health spa. Two ends of a spectrum maybe, but this place wasn’t even on the same scale. As they’d approached, he’d mistaken it for a business park. It had probably been an office block at some point in the not-too-distant past. He could easily imagine the “ward” filled with open-plan dividers and laminated beige desks, perhaps all sitting under a multitude of meaningless corporate slogans. Now the desks had been replaced by tents.
“It’s okay, Nick,” Chloe said. “Just take your time.”
“The Bureau didn’t tell me it was this bad,” he said.
Chloe didn’t respond. Nick saw she was struggling to find the right words. He waved towards the rest of the floor, to the nurses milling around them. “I meant the rest of it,” he said. “Not him.”
“Despite what you might think, it’s better than it looks.”
“Really?”
“The strength of the symptoms seems to relate to several factors: past medical history, genetic make-up… Your father’s been unlucky. Most people just become disabled.”
“Turned to stone,” Nick whispered. The last time he’d been in Naples he’d provided a blood sample. It had classified him into one of the higher risk categories, which was unsurprising given his father’s biology had found itself so susceptible, and the Bureau had then insisted on him getting airway filters. Despite the tent and all the other precautions, those same filters were the only reason he’d been allowed inside to visit.
“…it’s a small outbreak,” Chloe said, finishing a sentence of which Nick hadn’t heard the start.
It didn’t look small. The nurse seemed to have finished whatever she was doing, and was now leaving the tent. She pushed out through a series of overlapping plastic flaps, but didn’t approach them, instead following a thick red line painted on the floor, one that took her to the rear of the ward, away from the orange line on which both Chloe and he were standing.
Nick noted the orange floor paint extended to the other side of his father’s tent, away from the entry flap. There was no way he’d be allowed to enter. “I didn’t think it was airborne?”
“It isn’t,” Chloe replied. “Spit and saliva. But with the way things are mutating, no one’s willing to take many risks.”
“They say it’s similar to tetanus.”
“Only in the symptoms – it impacts the nervous system in much the same way.”
“I had tetanus when I was a child,” Nick said. “The treatment was… nothing like this.”
He let out a deep, pent-up breath. The economic challenges being faced in Europe were one thing; the emergence of new disease and the strengthening of old illnesses in the face of antibiotic resistance were something else entirely. When he’d first gone to New Pompeii, infections like this were being wiped off the planet. Each time he came home now though, there seemed to be something else to worry about. Bubonic plague in the States, polio in Russia. New types of cancer to replace the ones that had been cured…
He turned to leave. His friend just about got ahead of him before he could start walking away. “You might not get another chance,” she said.
“I don’t have anything to say to him,” Nick replied.
“You came a long way.”
Nick left a long silence. “He never wanted me to leave, you know. He just wanted me to help pull his academic career out of the quagmire.”
“That’s not fair, Nick.”
“Isn’t it? Why do you think he moved to Naples? To get closer to me, or to get closer to the tourist circus outside the gates of the real Pompeii?”
“Your father moved to Naples,” Chloe replied, her voice stern now, “because most civilised states don’t provide visas to men who own slaves. You appear rarely – and only ever here. What did you expect him to do? Remain in England whilst his son jetted into Naples for the occasional meeting with the Bureau?”
Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t want to rake over it all again, and certainly didn’t want to have to explain. Chloe wouldn’t have understood anyway. The individual arguments all seemed petty, never quite expressing the weight of resentment that had built up. Maybe their relationship could have been fixed in the past, but not now.
“The last thing he said to my face was that he was ashamed of me.”
“He’s very proud of you, Nick.”
“He said he’d never forgive me for joining NovusPart.”