Frankie consulted the phone, which called her a clumsy bitch before telling her to go into the city and find London Bridge.
Rhian gazed out over the swampy marshland of what would one day be the West End, the costliest real estate on Earth. Right now you couldn’t give it away. In front of them the River Thames meandered across the landscape. It was much wider than its modern equivalent and its banks were not well defined. Mudflat islands amongst riverlets that left and joined the main stream became increasingly drier and more grassy inland until they became marshy ground rather than muddy water. Small boats plied up and down the waterway. Some of the larger had single masts with square sails.
A small river on their right flowed down to the Thames. That, Rhian thought, must be the River Fleet, as in Fleet Street. The modern road was presumably located where a wooden bridge crossed the water just a few meters upstream from the Thames on the first truly dry ground. The Fleet was one of London’s lost waterways, subsumed into the sewage system of the modern city.
The women followed a dry, hard-packed path that followed the wall, deviating between pools protected by combat air patrols of thousands of midgies.
“I bet this place is riddled with malaria,” Frankie said darkly.
“Shouldn’t we have brought flyspray?” Rhian asked.
“It isn’t real, honey, remember that. Sure, we can be killed here and we really would die, but we can’t bring a disease home with us.”
“That is so reassuring, Frankie. Thank you for sharing.”
“Don’t mention it. Here’s Aldersgate.”
The city gate was much smaller than the one into the fort and was open and unguarded. They entered Londinium unchallenged.
With a little digging, Jamerson unearthed the research project application in economic psychology funded by Shternberg. Unfortunately, it was written in a torturous jargon that might as well have been ancient Hittite for all the meaning he could discern. He recalled an acquaintance at college who had read psychology and economics before securing a highly lucrative position in The City. What was his name, Wartly something? Wartly-Trumpton, that was it. His friends called him Tethers, for some reason. A few phone calls and he had tracked the fellow down. The Old Boy Network still counted for something.
They met over a staggeringly expensive lunch that his banking friend insisted on paying for. Jameson was inclined to let him, knowing it would probably be charged to expenses. This decision was confirmed when his companion ordered a bottle of wine costing a couple of thousand pounds. Eventually they came to the brandy and coffees, and societal norms allowed them to get down to the business at hand.
“So what are you doing these days, Jameson? I heard you had gone into Intelligence after leaving the army, spooks and all that.”
Which was surprisingly accurate, Jameson thought. The Old Boy Network cut both ways.
“Don’t answer that question,” Tethers said. “I wouldn’t want you to have to kill me.”
Tethers laughed uproariously at his own joke, making Jameson seriously wish he could kill him. The man stopped laughing and looked at him with sharp eyes that belied the hail-fellow façade. Wartly-Trumpton had been one of the shinier knives in Cambridge’s academic drawer. No doubt that was why he had risen so high in the bank.
“Business good?” Jameson asked politely, not giving a damn about the answer.
“Never better, sport, we have a new axis at the Bank to unload on the muppets before freefall. Lots of burning of the old midnight oil.”
“What?” Jameson asked, wondering whether Wortly-Trumpton had shoved too much white powder up his nose.
“Axes are shares we are pushing and muppets are potential investors,” Wortly-Trumpton replied. He saw that Jameson was still in the dark.
“Look, you buy up the derivatives of some asset, tangible or intangible. It could be the value of the euro or the price of tin. Currently we have cornered the market on wheat. That creates a shortage and drives up the price. At that point you dump the whole lot on your clients. The price drops faster than a tart’s knickers when you flood the market. Then you buy in again when the muppets panic and try to cut their losses.”
“Isn’t that what used to be called a pump-and-dump?” Jameson asked.
“Certainly not.” Wortly-Trumpton was affronted. “Pump-and-dumps are criminal, while derivative trading is perfectly legal. The art is to rip the other guy’s face off before he can do it to you.”
“And you still have clients?” Jameson asked.
“Certainly, they always hope to find a bigger fool to dump the crap on before it plummets. Often the little people with their over-mortgaged suburban semis fill this role, or, if all else fails, the taxpayer. Pretty much the same group, really.”
Jameson remembered something else about Wortly-Trumpton. Not only was he bright, but he was also a complete and utter four-letter shit. He was the sort of guy who follows you into a revolving door but comes out in front, who is first into the pub but the last to reach the bar and buy a round.
“Have a look at this, Tethers, old chap, and tell me what you think,” Jameson said, handing over the research application.
He indicated to the waiter for another coffee, while Tethers skimmed through the document.
“Clever, but it won’t work,” Tethers said, throwing the application on the table.
“Please explain.”
“They are trying to put together a model to predict movements in the markets. The approach is new but still pointless.”
“Go on.”
“Back in the eighties, natural scientists started using computer models to analyze and predict natural events. It occurred to the chaps in the city that these models might be able to predict when share prices were going to move up or down and how far. But it all went tits-up, of course.”
“How so?”
“Natural science models are probabilistic. They deal fine with large-scale events. They tell you nothing about small-scale events, which are not probabilistic but chaotic, and hence unpredictable—see?”
“No,” Jameson said.
“Okay, look at it this way. Ask a climatologist what the average temperature of London will be at midday over the course of a decade, he can give a pretty accurate estimate. Ask him what the temperature will be on midday on the first of June, 2020, and he can only make a wild guess. It depends on too many imponderables. A model can tell when the market is over-depressed or inflated and is ripe for correction, but anyone can do that. It can’t tell you when that correction will be triggered. That depends on unpredictable events, such as an earthquake in Japan, a terrorist attack in New York, or a war in the Middle East. And it’s the timing that is important, to know when to buy and sell. The trick is to sell to a bigger fool right at the peak of the market. Everyone knows a collapse is due but not when, you see. You don’t want to get left holding the baby when the music stops,” Tethers said, mixing his metaphors.
“I see.”
“This outline,” Tethers tapped the application, “tries a new approach of measuring the psychology of the investors. It is based on the observation that the market collapses when more investors take fright and try to sell, then hope to find a bigger fool and keep on buying.”
“You’re saying that the market crashes when traders unconsciously decide to crash it as a group.”
“Correct, and that depends on imponderables, as the trigger can be anything. Even something relatively unimportant, like a rumor, can start a crash.”
“You know what drives the financial markets, Commander, fear, fear and greed, but mostly fear,” Jameson muttered.
“What?”
“Just something someone said,” Jameson replied.
“Well, your friend is right, and Whitechapel University—strange place for a university—are trying to model mob psychology as it pertains to financial markets. Won’t work, they might as well try to predict the future. How could you know when something will happen that causes the market to take fright
?”
“Sounds like a plot for a thriller.”
“Yah, but not in real life, unless you can arrange an earthquake under London or the Great Storm of ’87 on cue.”
Jameson’s imagination lurched down a horrific route before common sense re-grounded him. Why would anyone bother playing the markets with that level of power at their disposal?
Tethers finished his brandy.
“Nice to see you again, Jameson, but I’ve got to go. There must be an old lady with some savings somewhere that the bank hasn’t yet stolen.”
And with that, Tethers Wartly-Trumpton was gone, leaving before Jameson realized that he had been stuck with the bill.
A huge cheer erupted from a large oval wooden structure that towered over the north of the city, just to the southeast of the fort.
“Tottenham Hotspur must be playing a game at home,” Rhian said.
“That’s the gladiatorial amphitheatre,” Frankie said. “The Romans didn’t play team games. They preferred blood sports.”
“I do know that, Frankie. I’ve seen Gladiator.”
“Sorry, I can be a bit didactic at times.”
Rhian would probably have agreed if she knew what didactic meant.
“And you’ve never seen Millwall play if you think football isn’t a blood sport.”
“I don’t know much about football. I did once have a boyfriend who took me to rugby matches. That was quite fun.”
That figured, Rhian thought. Football was the Welsh national sport, but in England it was the working-class sport. The upper classes played rugger. What was the English saying? Football is a gentlemen’s game for louts, and rugby is a louts’ game for gentlemen. Best change the subject.
“Did you see Gladiator, Frankie?”
“Certainly did. Not a bad movie but unhistorical, so unhistorical that I had to see it three times to confirm my first impressions.”
“Yeeees,” Rhian said. “Russell Crowe does look quite fit in a kilt and armor.”
Rhian was surprised how much wasteland the city walls enclosed. The area directly in front of them contained only badly built native roundhouses. Long thatched roofs hung almost to the ground like ill-fitting wigs. Animals grazed between them: goats, chickens, and a few sheep. A quick mental calculation suggested that St. Pauls Cathedral occupied this space in modern London.
They passed by a construction site where a building was going up. The main two-story section was complete except for the roof. A polyhedral tower with a cross section not unlike a fifty-pence coin was still being raised at the rear. Men worked, clad only in loincloths under the supervision of a foreman who wore a fawn short-sleeved tunic that reached to his knees. He had a sort of horizontal cross on a pole with weights hanging off on string that he was using to check wall alignments.
“Are those men slaves?” Rhian asked, slightly shocked.
“Yes, but in this place so are you, honey. Half the population of the city or more are slaves, including the doctors and clerks. Some of the latter will have bought themselves out and be freedmen, occupying the middle ground between the free and enslaved.”
They walked on in silence. The buildings were clustered more thickly towards the center of the city and along the river. These followed a pattern of white-plastered walls and red-tiled roofs but otherwise came in different sizes and shapes. Some had inverted V-sloped roofs while in others the roof fell only to one side. Most were two stories high and only had narrow slit windows on the upper floor. Each one was like a little fort. This was a frontier town on the edge of the civilized world.
“It must be gloomy inside these places,” Rhian said.
“They probably have central courts or light wells,” Frankie replied.
“It would be amazing to see an interior,” Rhian said wistfully.
“Not a good idea, honey. We should keep our interaction with the locals to a minimum to avoid being sucked into this reality. Did I tell you not to eat or drink anything?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m telling you now.”
Ahead of them was a large square structure. The northern wing towered over the rest of the city, being three or four stories high.
“That’ll be the Basilica and Forum on Lombard Street. It’s like the central market and town hall all in one complex. I think we’ll avoid that, too many people, too many chances of an incident.”
She took her bearings.
“If that’s Lombard Street, then we are on Cheapside, and that must be the Cheapside Public Baths.”
She gestured to a two-story building on her left inside a walled compound that had a rounded white roof like a Byzantine church. A large glass window on the end of the second floor added to the resemblance, although it was not colored.
“If we turn right at the bathhouse, we should hit the river at about the bridge.”
The streets were narrow, with people coming and going in tunics and yellow ochre cloaks. They had to stand to one side to allow an eight-man slave team in loincloths to carry a litter past them. Curtains stopped the curious peering in, but voices suggested at least two passengers.
“I had the Governor in the back of the litter once,” the foremost slave said to his opposite number on the front of the other pole. “He was a fat git and no mistake. I asked him when he was going to do something about paving the streets. How about putting a proper gutter in the middle for sewage like a civilized city instead of letting it run everywhere when it rained, I said. He told me to shut up or he’d cut out my tongue.”
“We’re in a culture with no motors of any kind, but human labor is cheap,” Frankie observed, watching the litter lurch up the street. “That was a London black cab.”
The ground floors of many of the buildings were shops. They sold clothes, leather, wooden and metal items, everything from jewelry to saws. Most of all there were food shops and what looked like bars selling wine, beer, and fast food that stank of fish, even when it wasn’t. Customers perched on stools at the bars or sat at tables, which spilled into the street.
In the middle of it all, Frankie’s phone rang.
CHAPTER 23
SAYING GOODBYE
Rhian moved back a few steps to give Frankie token privacy, as one would on a London street. The conversation grew quite animated, with much arm waving on Frankie’s side. This was largely ignored by those around her, although they tended to give the woman a wide berth. It seemed the citizens of Londinium were no more curious about their compatriots’ foibles than the citizens of London.
“Pssst.”
A hand tugged at Rhian’s sleeve, a hand attached to a short, thin man with dark hair and a goatee beard without the moustache.
“Your mistress is talking to her hand,” the beard said.
“She is highly creative and is often struck by one of the muses,” Rhian said, on slightly dodgy ground as she was not sure what a muse was. The Greek she appeared to be speaking guided the sentence for her.
“Ah yes, ladies and gentlemen of quality are often a little too creative,” Beard said.
It was, Rhian perceived, one of those irregular verbs in English. I am creative, you are eccentric, she is barking mad. Of course, class also played a part. When the members of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club got merry on champers and smashed up a restaurant, it was held to be high spirits. When youths from Scumbag College, Grimthorpe, got rat-arsed on lager and smashed up a pub, it was three weeks without the option in one of Her Majesty’s Holiday Camps. Still, anyone who expected life to be fair was destined for disappointment.
“My master, Paresseos, trained as a doctor in Alexandria and is well versed in treating highly strung gentlefolk. He has helped the wife of the Governor—not the old one, the new one,” the beard said hastily. “Tell your master, Paresseos, at the yellow house in front of the Forum.”
With that, he disappeared into the shifting bodies.
“What did he want?”
Frankie had finished her conversation.
“Nothing. Who was on the phone?”
“Max, who else, the signal strength isn’t good enough for a call from my mum,” Frankie said somewhat sarcastically. “Apparently Sefrina, the bitch, forgot to warn us that the phones will guide us to moments of high entropic release, as they use the energy to communicate.”
“Oh, right,” Rhian said.
“Entropic release is geek-speak for emotional hot spots, like when lots of people are terrified and die.”
“Excellent!”
Frankie looked around. “It seems peaceful enough.”
“The man I was talking to did imply that the governor had recently changed.”
Frankie shrugged. “Roman governors served fixed terms, so they were always changing. Let’s not hang around.”
Frankie seemed to know what she was talking about, so Rhian let it go. But she was uneasy nonetheless. The doctor’s slave had been quick to disown any connection with the old governor.
They moved through the winding streets heading for the Thames. An alley dumped them into a paved courtyard surrounded by the windowless backs of buildings and high walls. The path ran along the edge to an exit under an arch. At the back of the courtyard was a blocky flat-roofed building fronted by Doric columns like a Victorian city hall. The two tall, brilliantly white marble doors in the entranceway were firmly shut. A single engraving cut into the doors depicted a giant warrior, naked except for a helmet and holding a bull by the horns. Muscles bulged as the warrior strained to break the powerful animal’s neck.
The courtyard was empty of people and silent. The sparrows squabbling over spilt food had vanished. Rhian hadn’t consciously taken note of the friendly little birds until they were conspicuously absent. The sterility of the courtyard had a disquieting quality, like an empty, disused morgue.
Rhian and Frankie were halfway across the yard when the doors slowly opened with a noise like boulders being hauled across rock. The interior was dark and gloomy, lit only by flickers of deep red. The mouth of the temple expanded like a window on a smart screen except that it stayed the same size. Something propelled Rhian and Frankie inside—despite them not moving. The basic laws of space-time distorted under some powerful enchantment, and the temple enveloped them.
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