by S. J. Ryan
The Emperor has been poisoned, she thought. She knew also the scent of sickness unto death. Unless quickly treated he would soon die.
She wondered how she could impart the news. Neither Archimedes nor the Emperor knew of her powers and so would automatically dismiss her fears. And openly mentioning the word 'poison' would bring interrogation by the Emperor's bodyguards after his death – which she knew could be any moment now.
Her gaze fell on the Wizard. Did it matter in this situation whether he was a charlatan? He had seen her powers back in Britan. He would believe her diagnosis now. He seemed to have impressed Archimedes, and so perhaps he could persuade Archimedes to examine the Emperor and come up with an antidote.
Archimedes and Hadron had lapsed into a discussion of where to move the telescope for public exhibition, and while they were distracted, Carrot drew up her resolve and tugged at Matt's sleeve. The Wizard turned and she tilted her head toward a far corner of the roof. He followed her out of earshot of the men.
"The Emperor is very ill," she said. "I think it's because of a poison."
"What?" Matt said. He read her eyes, observed the Emperor, and after a moment said quietly, "Stay here."
He walked to the telescope and pretended to adjust knobs while taking a long breath. His forehead wrinkled and he promptly returned.
“There are two poisons,” he said. “One is slow-acting, but the other is going to kill him within a few hours unless we do something first.”
His words forever undermined Carrot's conviction that he was only a fraud. She too had sensed there might be a second, much fainter dose of poison. For him to be so sure from only a whiff, his sensitivity had to be greater than hers.
She focused on the problem at hand. “I'm immune to poison, but I've never been able to cure a man hit by a poison arrow, and I don't think I'll be able to cure a poison intended for an Emperor either. Will you talk to Archimedes? He respects your opinion, and perhaps he has an antidote.”
The Wizard shook his head. “He won't have anything, not for this. Anyhow, doesn't matter, I can make an antidote myself.”
Carrot was about to scoff, but a side glance showed the Emperor was slumping more and looking about to faint. She really had no choice but to trust the Wizard.
“What ingredients will you need?”
“I've got the ingredients. What I need is a beverage to put it in, so he'll drink it.”
“There is lemonade in the cooler.”
"Right! Hurry!"
Carrot all but flew to the kitchen and back, bearing a platter with a pitcher and two glasses. While she held the platter, Matt poured. Then he stuck his finger into a glass and said, "Make sure he drinks from this one."
Carrot was amazed at her new-found gullibility. Despite the absurdity of what she had just witnessed, she carried the drinks over to the older men, offered the designated glass to the Emperor of the Roman Empire, and watched him sip.
His expression contorted into a deep frown. Carrot cringed.
"Very sour," the Emperor said. He took another sip. "But it grows on one."
He resumed his conversation with Archimedes. But after a moment, Carrot noticed that his complexion had become ruddier, he stood straighter, and his words came faster with more precision.
He held out his drained glass to Carrot. "I'll have another, please. Quite refreshing! You know, it must be the fresh air, but I haven't felt this clear-headed in some time now."
Archimedes sighed. "Your palace has seventeen gardens, yet you complain of lacking fresh air? And speaking of your palace, let me erect a crane on the wall and we'll finish the expansion in half the time."
"Have you no compassion?" Hadron snapped. "Then my workers would be unemployed in half the time!"
"Then maybe you could busy them with building homes for the poor."
"Archie, the poor will be with us always."
"Is that an observation, or a goal?"
Carrot finished the second pouring and Hadron stared somberly at the glass. He spoke calmly yet forcefully:
"If we allow the poor too much bread and comfort, they'll breed like rats and we'll be overrun. Archie, you have a reputation for giving food and shelter to those who lack. But would you take in ten at once? A hundred? We could have far more than that if we don't control the numbers of the poor."
He drained the glass and handed it to Carrot. "Enough philosophy. Decide where you want the telescope for viewing by the public, and I'll have it moved. And thank you for a lovely night." He bowed to Carrot and winked. "Especially to you, young lady."
Archimedes accompanied him to the door. Matt tended to the telescope, lowered the tube, placed a cover over the housing, and returned to Carrot.
"You saved his life," Matt said. "I wasn't expecting that."
"I would not have expected it either," she said. "When I was in Britan, I often wished for his death.”
"Well, it wouldn't have helped Britan to let him die. I've seen the Senate, and believe me, Hadron is the closest that Britan has got to a friend in the Roman government.”
Carrot knew that had nothing to do with her decision. The truth was that when she had looked down upon Hadron in the stairwell, she had seen a sickly old man. The man, not the Emperor, was who she had been moved to spare.
Matt added, "I think we did the right thing, but that doesn't mean I approve of him as a leader. Wow – comparing poor people to rats!"
"I – I – I don't know."
Perhaps it was witnessing how easily he had cured a dying man of a fatal poisoning. Perhaps it was the smile on his face. Whatever the reason, Carrot felt that she could trust the Wizard with at least some of her innermost thoughts. And so the dark words poured out as she gazed upon the cramped quarters of the city below:
“The older folk in Britan speak of how crowded the land has become. Not long ago, it was rare for one man's farm to border another. Now the village councils are filled with quarrels over boundary markers. It's plain to see that if a farmer has three sons and divides his land among them, and they have three sons each and divide their lands equally, soon every farmer will be plowing a field smaller than the floor of his hut. If our current rate of increase were to continue for two more generations, no tyrant could ever impoverish our children more than will their very numerousness. I wonder then, do people have more sense than rats when it comes to breeding? I want to deny the Emperor's words, but can there be an answer to the increase of population other than bloodshed?”
“I don't think war and oppression are the best answers,” Matt replied. He smiled at her, and it seemed genuine, but she knew there wasn't any cheer behind it. “You know, of all the things that I thought you'd think after meeting him, that wasn't one of them.”
“I've always had the habit of trying to see the other person's point of view.”
“Personally, I haven't had that impression of you.”
Their eyes locked, until finally Carrot laughed. “I guess for me it's easier to see things from an emperor's point of view than from a wizard's. And yes, after what I saw you do tonight, what I've seen you do all along if I had the sense to see what I was seeing, well – you are a wizard.”
“Well, I do have a few tricks, but you know, I'd prefer you didn't call me Wizard anymore. Could you please just call me Matt?”
"Okay . . . Matt. But then could you please call me Carrot?"
He frowned. "I have been calling you Carrot."
"No, almost all of the time to my face you've been calling me nothing at all."
He looked away, raised his eyebrows, and nodded. "I guess I have been doing that. Okay, Carrot."
"Thank you, Matt."
They stood facing each other. Then for a moment he was neither charlatan nor wizard. He was a boy who looked nervous. And she, to her surprise, found that she had become a girl who felt vulnerable.
“Uh, I'll take the stuff back to the kitchen,” he said, gathering trays and platters and departing hastily.
Alone on the roof,
Carrot gazed over the streets of Rome. The torches are so much like constellations of flame, she thought, and she admitted how beautiful the city was from above, at night. But she could not forget that down on the pavement in the glare of day, one saw beggars and crumbling facades and burgeoning sewers and parasitical patricians and legions of thieves, murderers, and rapists. Not all the evildoers prowled upon the streets. Some entered homes and took place at the heads of tables, while others sat on benches in the Senate. And to sustain that inequity, this one city had mired half the world in its corruption.
The Wizard – Matt – was right. Rome's wars and oppressions were not answers and in truth had only made the problems of the world all the worse. Whatever was the answer to the world's problems, it began with extricating the claws of Rome from the world's throat.
"Oh Rome," she whispered. "If that man is the best you have to offer, then better the world is overrun by rats than ruled by you!"
She faced the horizon in the northwest and tried, as she had numberless times, to think of a way to drive Rome from Britan. Then she remembered again Gwinol's flashing haddie.
32.
After finishing in the kitchen, Matt went to his room and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark. He didn't feel like sleeping. Much of his thinking concerned Carrot, but he kept those thoughts to himself. Instead he asked Ivan, “So you're sure the poisoning wasn't accidental.”
“The formula for the second poison is very complex and not found in nature nor in any industrial process. It would be impossible for traces of the compound to be found in a person's body through accident.”
Matt barely listened. He thought about Carrot's smile and the way the breeze had played with her hair that evening. Now that he had stopped regarding her as a mutant threat to life and limb, he realized that she didn't seem bad looking.
Kind of dark in her thoughts, though.
"Matt, a person has been standing outside your door for more than thirty seconds. Their location is approximately five meters to the left."
That would be by the stairwell. "Identification?"
"Analyzing . . . it is Carrot. Also, I now detect your elevated respiration and pulse rate."
Matt looked at his arm. It had reflexively reached for the dagger hidden in the drawer of the bedside table. He shook his head, wrapped himself in a bath robe, went to the doorway, and pulled aside the curtain. She had moved while he was moving, and was down the steps far enough that only her head remained above floor level.
"Carrot," he said.
She bobbed her head in a bow. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, Wi – Matt."
"Would you like to talk?"
She bowed her head again, folded her arms, returned to the landing, approached. She kept her gaze down submissively. They stood in silence.
"I wish to apologize," she said. "For thinking that you are a fool, or a liar, or anything negative."
"Okay . . . I guess I should apologize for what I thought about you."
"Which was?"
That you were a mutant sociopath. He decided not to share that.
“It's not important. What's important is that we both know that we're decent people.”
She raised her gaze to meet his eyes. “Thank you. I appreciate your regard.”
They stood in silence some more.
“Uh, how is the search for your friends coming?”
She sighed. "Not well."
"I wish I could help."
"I appreciate your offer. I am still very grateful, for you've helped us so much already – you cured the Plague. You really did cure the Plague, didn't you? With power that flows from your fingers. Just like you cured the Emperor tonight."
"It wasn't that big a deal." He saw the look on her face and realized that he had managed to belittle the people of Britan and arrogantly boast of his powers in one short sentence. “Uh, I mean, I have this ability, it's not really something I can take credit for, it was given to me – “
“I think I understand. You already know that I too am different.”
“Yes.”
They lapsed into another silence.
He added, “I'm not really good at talking to people.”
"You seem to do well with Archimedes."
"Most of our conversations are him asking me what's this number times that. He treats me like a calc – like an abacus."
She smiled, but only briefly. “Matt, may I ask a question that might seem outlandish?”
“Sure.”
“The star that fell from the sky in Britan, the one that stopped the battle. I have learned that it prevented the Romans from annihilating the rebel army. Also, I know that it was extremely improbable for a falling star to land at that specific place and time, which means that it was likely intended so by some personage. I have asked myself who that person might be. Therefore I must ask, Matt. Was it your power that caused it?”
“I, uh – “
“You did, didn't you? I can see it in your eyes. But how, Matt? How can you make a star fall from the sky? How is it possible for a mere man to accomplish such a thing? One would think that is something that could only be done by a god.”
His nervousness dissipated in his flare of annoyance. “I. Am. Not. A. God.”
She took a step back, and he saw something in her eyes that he had never seen before: Fear. He asked himself, What are you doing, idiot? And he took a breath and calmed.
“All right,” she said. “But . . . what then are you?”
“I don't know if I can tell you,” he said softly.
“You are forbidden to do so?”
“No, it's just that . . . it's hard to explain with words.”
“Let me start then. Do you come from the stars, from Aereoth?”
“Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“I will believe anything you say from now on. You saved my country twice. You deserve for me to trust you entirely.”
“I don't know if that much trust is a good thing to have for anyone, but . . . okay, yes, I come from Aereoth. But we call it Earth. Or we did call it Earth when I left. I don't know what they call it now.”
“So you left some time ago?”
“Yes, about seven hun – about eight hundred years ago.”
Her eyes widened. “You are eight hundred years old?”
“I'm not much older than you in terms of how much life I've lived in terms of waking experience. I was in a state of suspended animation during the trip, which means I was kind of sleeping without aging.”
“I don't know if I can believe such a – well, I said I would, and so I am going to. So . . . why did you embark on a voyage of eight hundred years to come here?”
“It was an accident. At least, I thought it was an accident. Now, I'm beginning to wonder – but put that aside. I was intending to go to a world around another star much closer to Earth, but I ended up here instead because something happened to my pod.”
“What do you mean by 'pod?'”
“Well, that's an example of why it's hard to explain. It's like I have to explain everything before I can explain anything, and it's difficult to communicate just in words, but – hold on, that gives me an idea!”
He excitedly subvocaled, “Ivan, you have a lot of auxiliary neural inputs, right?”
“Yes, Matt. I have considerable redundancy in case of damage.”
“Could you insert them into Carrot's brain so that she would be tapped into your matrix?”
“There is a procedure for integrating a person other than the host into a neural implant matrix.”
“Would it harm her?”
"There would be no damage to her neural pathways. However, there would be some risk to me, if she chose to physically disconnect during the procedure."
Matt had shifted his eyes to one side. He brought them back to her face and saw her staring at him and frowning.
“It is as if you are speaking to someone. Is it some form of telepathy?”
“That's another
thing that would be hard to explain. Carrot, you say you trust me. Well, would you trust me to do something to you that won't harm you, but will allow you to understand things about me?”
“What would this something be?”
“Well, that's hard to explain without doing it first.”
She said abruptly, “All right. I agree to it.”
“Well, then, I suppose we should sit down – “ He gestured toward the bed. Then he saw the look on her face. “Uh, it's not what you think. Definitely not! I mean, it's not that you're not unattractive – I mean not attractive – no, what I meant was it's not that you're not attractive, but – oh, hell – ”
“I will trust you.”
She entered his room and they sat together on the bed, facing one another. She looked at him expectantly.
“Okay, Ivan, tell me what we need to do.”
Ivan explained. Matt once more met Carrot's gaze.
“I need you to close your eyes. I'm going to touch your face. It won't hurt or harm you, but what happens next may surprise you. Be ready for that, because it may surprise you . . . a lot.”
She closed her eyes and waited. Matt raised and hovered his hands, realizing that this was going to be the first time he had touched her as a friend. Carrot was in fact the first time as a teen (in Earth years) that he had touched a girl his own age. I really am pathetic, he thought. But he knew he had no time at the moment to mope further. He had to do this just right . . . .
“Hold on,” he said.
He got up and pulled the doorway curtain shut. He returned to the bed and sat. He looked at her, took a breath, and touched her cheeks.
Ivan went to work. He extended his micro-tentacles from Matt's fingertips into Carrot's skin, then through the ocular cavities into her skull, and then into her brain, tapping into her audio and visual processing centers, then hesitantly probing elsewhere.
“Her brain is different than that of a baseline human,” Ivan said. “It will be necessary to revise the procedure.”