by John Barnes
Of course he was a first-class jerk, but if I went around shooting all of those, I’d never have to leave my own timeline, and I’d still never get finished. And then again orders were orders … but they hadn’t told me where or when to shoot him. In fact Chief Tribune Scipio had told me that there was a certain amount of historical confusion about the whole thing and thus they figured it would be better not to tell me, because I could easily end up staking out a place where it didn’t happen.
When he had told me that, my judgment had been that he was lying. But he had told me in front of General Malecela, and when I tried to talk to Malecela about it later, Malecela had strongly discouraged the question.
Now I wondered why, and more than that, I wished I had extorted everything they knew from Scipio and Malecela—because I was sure that was much more than they had told me.
And just when had I started distrusting Malecela? It had been a relief to have him show up in the timeline to which we had been carried off, but by a few days later when our party left to come here, I had already begun to wonder what was up. Whatever it was, Malecela was in on it, and something smelled really bad when an agent with a record as long and as good as mine—I had known him back when he was a captain—couldn’t be trusted with whatever the secret was.
I tried to remind myself to cool down, after all, it may be something that mustn’t fall into enemy hands, and if you don’t know it, they can’t get it out of you. For that matter there could easily be a good reason I hadn’t thought of, or maybe there was a reason why they couldn’t tell me why they couldn’t tell me … my thoughts were beginning to go in circles.
Naturally I was trying to have that argument with myself while I also listened to Caesar and attempted not to drop all of the food onto my chest, eating lying down. It’s not as easy as it looks, at least not if you don’t want to end up shaking dinner out of your toga for the next three days.
The real trouble was that I knew Malecela well enough to figure that in any normal circumstances he’d at least have told me that there was something he couldn’t tell me. That would have been enough.
But just to try to hide it from me entirely … that didn’t sit well. It made me think that what he was up to was something I wouldn’t have liked, and he knew it.
I did my best to distract myself by paying attention to the conversation. After a while I noticed that Caesar was paying a lot of attention to Porter, which might have worried me for a second—technically we were all spoils of war and she, like all of us, was his slave—except it was mostly her music that interested him. She, in turn, had never seen a lyre; he had one brought in, along with a Roman version of a flute, and she spent the rest of the time softly noodling around over in the corner, getting the feel for the instruments. I guess when your setting is totally unfamiliar, the most comforting thing possible is a familiar task, one you find easy—and for Porter nothing was easier than learning a new instrument.
At last the wine came in, and the conversation turned serious. Caesar was a blunt man by nature, but capable of subtlety when he needed it; this time bluntness suited him. “So this timeline in which I live is to be a very important one,” he said. “The Republic will flourish, the tribunes will gain power, and the Senate and consuls lose power, and eventually Rome will rule the entire Earth, even the two whole continents across the sea, that Caldwell led us to sail to, where the colony of Terra Elastica was planted. And in a few thousand years we will be the most advanced timeline of all.
“This interests me. It has always seemed to me that my destiny and Rome’s are intertwined to our mutual benefit. You say that in your timeline, I became dictator after taking Rome—”
“And emperor for all practical purposes, until you were assassinated in 709 A.U.C.,” I said. “March 15. I would suggest that on that day, you don’t go to the Senate house, and listen to the soothsayers.” What the hell, it was five years in the future; by that time either I’d have done it, or things would be drastically changed.
Caesar nodded. “Though of course all things have been changed by your intervention, and the Closers’.”
“Things that have been changed have a way of turning out the same,” I said. I was thinking of the fact that twice I had seen John Glenn be the first American to orbit the Earth.
“I see. Well, then, 709 A.U.C. And the conspirators—”
“Mostly are your allies nowadays,” I said. “They turned against you when you became dictator.”
He nodded. “I see more and more advantage in working behind the scenes. And young Marcus Antonius is a fine tribune; through him I can exert more than enough control. I think I will avoid the step of becoming dictator. Yes, once we are off to a good start here, I think much can be done.” The general sat up a bit more and poured himself some wine. “And there is something wonderful about it, you know. That silly old Pompey has a tendency to think he is Alexander reincarnated, merely because he has some flair for tactics and logistics, but then what Roman general doesn’t dream of just extending conquest till we have the whole Earth sworn to alliance? And then, of course, we realize that if we were to accomplish that, men like Pompey and I would be nothing again … and much like Alexander, we would be left weeping because there would be no more worlds to conquer.
“But what you describe is wonderful. Not just more worlds to conquer, but an unlimited number of worlds with an unlimited number of challenges. Room for the biggest heart, spirit, and intellect. A man with the right genius could go farther than most men could imagine.” It took me a moment to realize that he had said “genius,” because the word came out with a hard g, like GENN ee oose, and the translator in my ear just let it through because there’s no such word in English. Your genius, if you’re a Roman, is the god you’re assigned at birth, who looks after you and your interests as long as you’re careful to say the right prayers and do the right rituals. Which means if you’ve got a real hotshot genius, and you take care of him, you’re going places.
Caesar seemed to just sit and watch quietly while I thought. I don’t think he realized that I had had to take a moment to figure out what he had said. When my expression cleared, and I stopped looking confused, he smiled and explained further that, “It was just the thought—the question really … well, if it should happen that the world is unified during my lifetime, or that there is no longer an urgent need for me here … do you suppose your ATN might want a general or an administrator of some kind?”
I was startled, and Chrys looked like she’d choke. “We do sometimes recruit from other timelines,” I said. “The founding leader of my nation—which only exists in some timelines—became an ATN agent in one timeline where there was nothing much for him to do. So it is not impossible. But we do know that contact was lost for a very long time, so the odds of your being able to cross over are small.”
Caesar shrugged. “It was a thought, only. I’ve got at least twenty vigorous years left, if I can contrive not to be shot or stabbed, and chances are that the possibilities of this world will not be exhausted at all by that time. But I hate limits of any kind, you know. The Senate was very foolish to draw a line and tell me not to cross it—I can’t imagine anything that would make me want to defy them more.” He sighed and stretched. “I’m looking forward, one of these days, to having a villa on the Bay of Naples, and sitting there warm and comfortable, with no bigger question in mind than what book to read that day. All in the sun. The Gaulish winters are horrible, and the British winters make them seem bearable by comparison.
“Meanwhile, however, there’s a delicate question that I’ve refrained from asking for some time. When this Caldwell person set himself up as a business partner with Crassus, it seemed of very minor interest to me. He had come in with his strange ‘rubber,’ showing off how many uses it had like any vulgar tradesman, and only a complete boor like Crassus would have been taken with him. We all thought it was the end of Caldwell when he set sail in his ten ships with all those free craftsmen and skilled slaves—w
e figured Crassus had truly thrown the money down a rathole—and yet just three years later, back he came with a load of rubber and requests for more colonists. Even then, we just thought, ‘Well, no matter, a plebeian is growing wealthy. They have grown wealthy before.’ Even when he introduced his firearms and his bicycles, and suddenly all of us had to relearn the art of war, we thought only, ‘Now that Rome has these things, we are truly invincible.’ But now I see how much he has changed us, and how much Hasmonea has changed us as well.”
“Did you know him well?” I asked.
“Too well. He disgusted me; his worship of Moloch was the least of it. He was a coward when he could get away with it, soft in the worst ways to be soft, and hard-hearted where any real man ought to have some compassion.”
“Then why did you have him—”
Caesar made an irritated chopping gesture with his hand. I’m not easily intimidated but I stopped, right then, with my mouth open. “Because,” the general said, “I knew that eventually I would have to contend with Crassus for leadership of Rome, and that might well mean fighting. And Crassus has your Walks-in-His-Shadow Caldwell advising him, or did until recently, anyway—my spies tell me he has disappeared, and Crassus seems to be frantic with worry. At any rate, having seen what one man could bring with him, I had to have an advisor of my own. It took me no time at all to realize this was a real Carthaginian, a truly unrepentant child-sacrificer, and all the rest, but I had absolutely no other choice, as a practical matter. As soon as I had another option, I took it; I had no doubt at all that you would win, and thus Caesar disposed of an unpopular person in favor of one who could do him more good.”
I had another moment to think, and what I thought was that his reasoning was cold, logical, and exactly the kind of thing Thebenides might have said.
On the other hand I wasn’t supposed to shoot Thebenides.
“What are you hoping, exactly, to arrange with us?” I asked Caesar. “And you should be aware that Chrysamen is fully my partner; if you’re going to deal with ATN, you should learn that we practice equality of the sexes.”
“Mostly,” Chrys said.
Caesar appeared slightly amused, though whether at Chrys’s comment or at the notion of “equality of the sexes” I couldn’t tell. “Very well, then. Let me make a suggestion as to our course of action. Clearly ATN wishes this timeline to succeed, and will want to deal with whoever is in charge of it. It so happens that both Crassus and I also want this timeline to succeed—I doubt his competence but not his patriotism. So in a real sense it is a matter of indifference to you which of us eventually emerges on top. Thus my suggestion is only that you and your wife act as advisors to me in exactly the same way that this Caldwell acts as advisor to Crassus.” I started to speak, but he held up a finger. “I understand fully that you cannot be expected to assist in injuring the agent you came here to rescue. Thus I offer this—if you take my offer, I shall do my utmost to see that Caldwell goes unharmed, even at peril to my personal safety, and even at some peril to my potential victory. If I know he is present on the battlefield, my orders will be that he is to be captured unharmed, and permitted to escape if there is the slightest potential he may be harmed.
“Thus ATN will secure the relations it wants with this timeline, I will secure an even footing against Crassus—and believe me, no one knows Crassus better than I, and with an even footing I cannot lose. ATN will have Caesar as its ally, and surely you know—from what you know of my many timelines—that this is no bad thing?”
As a matter of fact, I knew Caesar’s record was so mixed that nobody in his right mind would try to sum the man up. He accepted surrenders on easy terms, then turned around and plundered the cities and enslaved their inhabitants. But he also systematically forgave and forgot once he took power. He used his admitted military brilliance to smash the armies of his own nation on his way to power—but then he treated the veterans of both sides of the conflict with tremendous generosity and fairness. He was known to be ruthless, but he could be very kind; known to care passionately what people thought of him, but able to completely ignore public opinion when it disapproved of something he wanted to do.
In short, he was utterly his own man. If he was inconsistent, it was because he chose to be; he didn’t live his life with an eye to the history books, the way that a lot of recent presidents had. That was about all you could say. And compared to a lot of my own timeline’s pussyfooting, PR, spindoctoring, and other forms of lying, it was sort of refreshing to run into a guy whose two interests were 1) ruling the world, and 2) ruling it better than anyone else possibly could.
“And what if I don’t take the offer?” I said. “Let me say first of all I find it attractive, but I also want to know every option you are offering us.”
“If you don’t take the offer,” Caesar said, taking a sip of his wine and staring off into space, “then what I would say is that after all, whatever ATN’s rules might be, you are among Romans now, and among Romans you will live by Caesar’s rules. And under those rules, my dear Marcus, all four of you are slaves. That would mean you will do what I say or you will suffer punishment—and I remind you that in our law, I may kill my slaves at any time I wish. But you did say you found the offer attractive? Surely I don’t need to speak of such terribly unpleasant things?”
The strangest part, I realized, was that he was sincere; he really wanted to have our loyalty and service because it was what we thought best, and he really didn’t want to have to talk about what he would do if we didn’t offer it to him. It was part of that strange inconsistency that ran through his character like hot lava pouring through a forest; on either side it was familiar, and in the center of it all, it looked like the dark side of the moon.
I had never been quite so afraid on a mission before—but I also felt oddly comfortable. “We’ll take the deal, then,” I said.
Gaius Julius Caesar’s face broke into a real, honest-to-all-the-gods grin of pleasure; I’m sure he had not forgotten his threat, and neither had we, but the business was settled, and that was all he cared about.
We went back to our quarters soon after; he told us that he would make arrangements for us to travel with him, and as the merest afterthought, presented Porter with the lyre and flute, suggesting that she continue to practice.
At least I wouldn’t have to amuse a teenager along with all the other things we needed to do.
The next morning, we found out what the difference was between a day Caesar spent in camp and a day Caesar spent on campaign. Servants came and woke us two hours before the cold winter dawn, gave us five minutes to wash with the pitchers of warm water they had brought, fed us bowls of warm gruel with beef chips, and stuffed us, our clothing, and our baggage out the door and into a spitting predawn rain, all within seemingly no time at all.
By the time we were out there, Caesar had been up for two hours, and the legions, allies, and auxiliaries were all there in full array, on their bicycles. While we waited for it to be light enough to start, the centurions and legates roamed back and forth, shouting at men and getting the units together.
“How do you tell what rank everybody is, and why aren’t there any uniforms?” Porter asked, shivering beside me.
“They have a pretty flexible notion of rank,” I said. “A legion is sixty centuries, and a century is one hundred men. A century is commanded by a centurion—see, it’s easier to remember than you thought, right?”
“Wise-ass,” Paula muttered, but I noticed that she, too, was leaning in to hear. I suppose nobody wants to go to a battle without a scorecard.
“The centurions have a mixture of power and authority that sort of ranges from what in a modern army would be a sergeant, all the way up to what might be a captain. A legate is any guy who can speak for the commander. He sort of assigns them any way that makes sense to him—kind of like a free-floating officer corps. So a very respected and experienced legate might command a legion, but a very young and inexperienced one might be assigned to
run alongside an experienced centurion until he got some idea of what was going on.”
“Then there aren’t any real tight rules about that?” Porter asked.
“There are Caesar’s rules. You can’t get any tighter than that,” Chrysamen said.
Paula nodded. “I understand that. Okay, boss, that’s legions. Who are the other guys?”
“Well, the auxiliaries are cavalry, or sometimes other specialty troops like archers, slingers, and that kind of tiling. It looks like Caesar’s guys are equipped with stirrups, which weren’t invented for a few more centuries in our home timeline. So they’re probably a lot more effective than Caesar is used to.”
“Because they have stirrups?”
I nodded. “Think about a knight jousting. If he has no stirrups, what happens when his lance hits something?”
“He lands flat on his ass. Got you, boss. And I suppose that applies to almost anything else he could use; the stirrups would give him firmer footing for using a pistol or a bow, too.”
Another troop of auxiliaries rumbled by, and I turned and then stared.
“What is it, Mark?” Porter asked.
Chrysamen sighed, then spoke before I could. “It’s a field gun. I don’t think they were supposed to have anything more than big siege guns at this point in their accelerated development. The idea was supposed to be to get the world politically unified, technologically progressive, and sympathetic to ATN, as far back in history as they could go. The weapons that were introduced here were bound to accelerate the killing, too, but we were trying to hold that in check. Unfortunately I bet Hasmonea wasn’t … so he gave Caesar the neat idea for how to kill a whole bunch of people at once. Those field guns are going to send the death rate sky-high.”
“What’s the difference?” Porter asked. “Doesn’t any cannon kill a lot of people?”