Caesar's Bicycle (The Timeline Wars, 3)

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Caesar's Bicycle (The Timeline Wars, 3) Page 19

by John Barnes


  Porter nodded. “You’ve worked that way before.”

  “Yeah, by myself or with Chrys. Paula, I think, has had some relevant practice. But I’m afraid we don’t know whether you have any talent for all this, Porter. How’d you feel about the guys you shot after Robbie got hit?”

  “I threw up a lot, and I was pretty upset.”

  “And you know you have the same habit any musician does, worrying about hurting your hands. Could you forget about your hands for the duration, and just figure ATN would fix them afterward? They have the medical tech to do anything up to and including growing you new ones.”

  “Looking out for my hands is kind of a habit by now.” She sighed. “I’m a little scared of Caesar, but I guess the advantages are all that way. And besides, I’m sorry, but I have a pretty good memory for what sleeping rough was like—and it’s not a good memory.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t comfortable myself with those months she had spent on the street at age thirteen. “All right, mixed bag on that side, leaning toward going with Caesar. Paula?”

  “Caesar makes me nervous, too, but if we leave him, the first thing we will have to come up with is some way to keep track of him,” Paula said. “And we have no idea which side is the most desirable; no reason to think Crassus is any better, except maybe that he’s old and fat and couldn’t rape kids if he wanted to. So we might as well stay put; right now nobody is mad at us, and Caesar would be a bad person to have mad at us.”

  “Then it’s unanimous,” I said. “Let’s cut through this alley to the next major street, head out the gate, and see what we can find; for all we know, Chrys is standing around waiting for us to be smart enough to leave a burning city.”

  The big square we were in was a lot safer than most other places—Falerii was neither large enough nor built high enough to have a firestorm like a modern city might—and the real problem was figuring out the safest way to get from it to a gate. We finally settled on walking through an alley that was already burned out to the next large street over; that turned out to be unblocked, so we walked up it toward the city gate.

  There were a few bodies in the street; most of them were probably disguised crime, people bashing a rich guy to get the jewels or gold he was carrying. In the age before plastic, credit cards, or banks, disasters were the best possible time for robbery.

  We emerged from the gate. There was no trace of Chrys, so we walked toward the side of the city on which the battle had been fought. We might as well have been all alone on the planet.

  Now that we were out of the burning town, it was very suddenly clear just how cold the day really was, and that evening was coming on. The sun was just barely above the dark blue of the western hills, the sky had turned a deep blue smudged with a little black, and the cold air was finding its way through the holes in my clothes. I shivered; this would be a bad night to spend in the open, with as little gear as we had. We might end up going back into the city just to find a fire to sleep next to.

  I glanced back behind us. Falerii’s walls still stood; no shot or ram had touched them. But from behind them, there were columns of whirling sparks, streams of ink black smoke, and occasional still-rising flames. The city’s gates were thrown open, and through them there was only the flickering light of fire; the arched gates in the white walls of the city looked like the eyeholes of a skull, and the fire was like the delusion of a madman, capering and dancing visibly in that empty city, through those empty eyes.

  I shivered, and we continued on around, aiming to join the Via Flaminia as it ran toward Rome, for surely Caesar would be on it or near it.

  “You!” a voice shouted.

  I turned. A legate was riding up on a bicycle. “Are you speaking to us?” I asked.

  He stood very straight and erect. “I am ordered by Caesar himself to bring you to Caesar; he has need to confer with you. I am ordered not to harm you, but to use force if necessary.”

  “It won’t be necessary,” I said, “but I’d like to know how you would have used it without harming us, if it had been.”

  There was a faint twitch in the legate’s stiff upper lip, which he contained, and then he said, “Best, then, that we don’t try. I am not sure what I would do either, sir. But I was instructed to find four of you; where is the fourth?”

  “Gods, I wish we knew,” I said.

  13

  “So she has simply vanished,” Caesar said, that evening. We had only a few minutes to meet with him, for the victory celebration was extensive, and he was expected to put in an appearance at many different parts of it. He had dropped by the tent where they quartered us; little more than a pup tent, it was originally intended for two people at most, but the army’s supply of shelter had been severely stressed by the need to get the town in out of the weather.

  “That’s about it,” I agreed. “If she were nearby, she’d have contacted me by now.”

  Caesar nodded. “I’ve given orders that any body looking at all like hers is not to be buried; we’ll let you check for her among the dead. But from what you say, it seems terribly unlikely that she was killed.”

  There was something deeply reassuring in the way he said that; it made me feel, at once, that he believed it, too. I don’t know if that was just his amazing political sense, or if it was just Caesar facing facts as he always did. Either way I was comforted.

  And that kindness he had just shown made the next thing I had to do all the more difficult. “You realize,” I said, “that since it is ineffective to upbraid you, I won’t, but I’m quite annoyed by your appropriation of our weapons to your cause this morning.”

  Caesar nodded. “I can understand that you might be. I ask only that you understand that I am a general; men’s lives depend on what I do. It is my job to keep my men alive, and to make sure that the dying is done by the enemy. I could not and would not do things any differently. I can also imagine that you will be in some trouble over having allowed those weapons to fall into my hands. You have my sympathy, but I think an apology unwarranted.”

  “I understand,” I said. And strangely enough, I no longer seemed to be angry. I even thanked him. He asked if Porter had been able to save her flute or lyre, and when it turned out she hadn’t, he told her he’d have new ones sent around in the morning. Then he smiled, said that this stop was more interesting than most of the others, and was out the door. I heard later that he visited everywhere that night, from enlisted men drinking around a bonfire to officers throwing orgies with slaves, and at every one he was friendly, polite, a little distant, and warmly appreciative of what the legion, century, cohort, or tribe of Gauls or Britons had done that day.

  I suppose you can never really explain how someone has that kind of effect. You can only note that they do, and marvel at it.

  Meanwhile, Chrysamen was still missing, possibly staying loose but nearby, possibly off on some promising tangent of her own, and possibly in real trouble. The bed was pretty lonely that night; you can remind yourself a lot of times how professional someone is, and how many bad spots she’s been in, but at three in the morning the thought that she could be dead in a ditch tends to keep coming back anyway.

  Even though it was terribly cold, I was glad to see the sun come up the next morning—and I rolled out of the too-big bed at the first sign of light through the fabric of the tent. At last I could stop pretending that I could sleep, get up, get moving, and see what I could do about the problem.

  The attendant, a little British kid who spoke some Latin, went to grab me some breakfast from a legion mess, as I hastily dressed. He came back with a heavy, brownish glop that was made by boiling wheat and rye flour, a small pitcher of scalding-hot milk, two hard-boiled eggs, and a fistful of prunes. I wolfed most of it down in just a few minutes, and gave the rest to the kid, who was just hitting that age when you can’t possibly get too many calories.

  “Are they feeding you?” I asked, wondering how the remnants had vanished so quickly.

  “Oh, yes, they are, I’m j
ust hungry all the time, master,” the boy said. “Is the lady going to come back? Is she all right?”

  “I’m working on that,” I said.

  “She’s very kind,” he said.

  This didn’t surprise me; Chrys wants to keep every stray kitten that finds its way to our doorstep back home in Pittsburgh.

  “She is,” I agreed. “I’m doing what I can for her. When the others rise, tell them I’ll be back for the midday meal, unless something comes up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Soldiers get up early for a lot of reasons, and in wintertime anyone who works outdoors gets up early because there’s only so much time that the lights are on and you don’t want to waste it. So the camp was already bustling and busy, with legion messes going full blast, legates drafting orders for the day, centurions checking on the readiness of their centuries, farmers driving in livestock that they hoped to sell to Caesar. Even as worried as I was, it’s pretty hard not to crack a grin when a guy in a big straw hat, which looks sort of like a sombrero with a pointy top, cuts across your path herding a dozen squalling geese.

  I hadn’t gone far when the little British attendant came running up behind me, gasping, “Word from Caesar, sir. He says he’s heard something about the lady, and he will see you in his tent as soon as you can get there.”

  I tipped him five times what you’re supposed to and got to Caesar’s tent at a dead run.

  Caesar wasn’t a guy who lived cheap, or who roughed it on purpose. That tent was a lot more comfortable than most of my student apartments, or than Marie’s and my first apartment. They had spread ground cloths and put heavy carpets over them; there was a second, inner tent to hold the warmth, and slaves brought in heated rocks from the fire outside to keep the place warm—indeed they ran in and out constantly, always careful to pull flaps closed behind them so that hot air didn’t escape.

  The rocks were great big thirty-pounders, so hot that you could see that most of the slaves had a lot of little burns from wherever the cloth in which the rocks were wrapped had slipped; they ran frantically, and I knew they were probably scared to death of what might happen if they screwed the job up.

  It might be a hell of a place to be a slave, but it was pretty comfortable to be Caesar. He was naked when I got there, just stepping into his tub, which was steaming hot and perfumed with dried rose petals. (I could just imagine Generals Patton, Washington, Gordon, Giap, Crazy Horse, Sherman, or Marlborough—all of whom I had known fairly well in one timeline or another—having “rose petals,” “perfumed soap,” and, for that matter, a “large bathtub” in the baggage train. It was a bad century to be a grunt, and a pretty good one to be a general—but then most centuries are that way.)

  Over in the corner, I saw a couple of slave women tending to the little girl that seemed to be Caesar’s current favorite victim; she was crying, but all they were doing was first aid. I thought seriously, then, about a way the world would be better if I pulled the trigger on Gaius Julius Caesar, and that might have been a great moment to do it, but if there was news of Chrys …

  “Thank you for your promptness,” Caesar said, lowering himself into the tub. I noted abstractly that, at least in the light of the little oil lamps, he looked pretty good for his age; his body was still hard and lean, with little extra flesh, and though he was almost entirely bald now and his skin was lined and wrinkled from all the time he spent outside, still the muscles underneath would have looked good on a man twenty years younger than he was. It was the kind of body that fascinates a modernist sculptor, not classically beautiful or perfectly proportioned, but worn and shaped by its work and habits until the body becomes a perfect expression of the character, until if you can capture what he really looks like, you’ve captured the man’s soul.

  I thought about what it would be like to pull out Paula’s .38, jam it behind that lean jaw just by the ear so that the round would cut the carotid on its way in, and pull the trigger. The little girl in the corner started to sob, and one of the slave women slapped her silent.

  It would feel pretty good to shoot Caesar, on the whole. Just as soon as I found out about Chrys.

  “We received a message earlier today,” Caesar said, “from Pompey. I have never been very fond of Cnaeus Pompeius ‘Magnus.’ ” The way he said “magnus,” which means “the great” and was a name awarded to Pompey by the Senate, was loaded with such vicious bitterness that you’d have thought Caesar was spitting out rat turds. “And I think you and I may share this opinion.” A slave brought up a small silver salver, on which was a written note and something else. He held it out to me, and Caesar said, “Read.”

  I lifted the message and read:

  To Gaius Julius Caesar from Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, greetings.

  I have something here, the evidence of which I enclose, which will be of great interest to one who travels with you. I shall await you in Rome, and there I will treat with you for whatever terms you care to offer me for the safe return of this thing.

  That is, if Great Caesar is still his own master, and not the lackey of the one he travels with. I offer the thing I have to either of you, indifferently; I wish terms, and honorable terms, and will hold this thing only so long as is needed. While I hold it, however, you will neither enter Rome, nor fire upon the city, nor surround it or blockade it, upon pain of losing this much-valued thing forever.

  I await your reply.

  The “Great Caesar” was a calculated insult; Caesar had not been granted such a title as Pompey had. The message seemed alarmingly clear, and when I looked back at the salver, it confirmed my worst fears—there was a hank of Chrysamen’s dark, curly hair. I looked closely, but, speaking as her husband, friend, and lover of many years, I was quite certain it was hers.

  Then I looked again, peered closely, and hissed with fury.

  “Yes,” Caesar agreed, “it looks very much as if it has been pulled out by the roots.”

  “I don’t know how he could have—”

  “Quite. But I am told that when his damned rockets flew yesterday, he was quite near the point of launch, and when my men closed in to overthrow the launchers, Pompey escaped on his bicycle, back through my lines, into the confusion between my army and the city. We would guess he hid among the refugees after dark—”

  “But he’s one of the most widely known faces in Roman territory!” I protested.

  “Just so and part of that boldness of his,” Caesar said. “I’ve never faulted his manhood or his guts. He is, after all, Rome’s second-best general. At any rate, one of my agents thought he saw Pompey in the city, shortly after the rockets fell and the fires began, but unfortunately failed to take steps because it seemed too impossible to him. It’s the sort of disaster that happens whenever a slave attempts to think.

  “At any rate, I have learned a few things from this. One is that, as I should have anticipated, Pompey’s intelligence is first-rate, and he already knew the significance of you and your party, including knowing enough to be able to recognize all of you. Probably he struck within minutes of your being separated.”

  “He’d have to be hell on wheels at hand-to-hand,” I said. “In a fight to the death between Chrys and me, you’d have to bet it fifty-five me forty-five Chrys, but that’s just based on difference in body size. She’s a bit faster and a little more skilled than I am.”

  Caesar scratched his head. “It doesn’t entirely make sense, I admit; I had thought of that myself. But his evidence does look like evidence—and we hardly want him to produce anything more convincing, after all.”

  I shuddered. “Right. So we at least have to assume he’s captured her and is taking her to Rome with him. I’d call that more than enough bad news. Now what can be done about it?”

  Caesar smiled grimly. “Exactly the question to be discussed. It seems to me that you are used to operating by yourself, that you have a notable ability to improvise, and so forth. That’s my first reason for sending you after her.”

  “You have others?”<
br />
  “I doubt you’ll be any use to me until she is rescued.”

  I had to admit, silently, that he had a point.

  “Therefore,” he went on, “I am deputizing you to go rescue Chrysamen, and you are authorized to do whatever you think fit for the purpose. If by some accident a few of Caesar’s enemies should die—” Caesar said, grinning, “—do remember that I am currently the most popular author of histories, and, moreover, that most of Rome’s better-known prosecutors, notably that prissy prude Cicero, are on the other side and will have no authority. So little harm will come to you from such circumstances.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Now, there’s the matter of armament,” he said. “If you would like to reload one of the weapons I used yesterday, and take it with you, then—”

  I had been thinking ahead of him, and I said, “I’m sorry, but there’s no way to reload them in this timeline. We don’t normally use them on full auto, so the number of shots in the magazine is far in excess of what we can be expected to need—but now that it’s drained, it’s drained. It would have to go home for a refill.”

  I was lying to him. If he knew that, he would probably kill me right now. If not, then he wouldn’t be able to use the SHAKKs again, and his plan of world conquest would take a big step backward. It seemed worth the gamble.

  The fact is that the “ammo powder” we feed into SHAKKs is merely a carefully balanced mixture of the chemical elements needed, so that the elemental separator won’t have to spend any time or power pulling out the excess of things it doesn’t need to make ammunition. But in fact you can load them with anything that will go into the hopper—sand, rocks, bugs, scrap metal, seawater (sea salt, rusty nails, and sawdust works pretty well), hot fudge sundaes. It really doesn’t care as long as it gets enough of each element.

  If Caesar merely stuffed some miscellaneous junk into the reload slot of each SHAKK, in very little time they’d be as deadly as ever, with thousands of fresh shots in each magazine. This was the last thing I wanted him to know.

 

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