The Centurion's Empire

by Sean McMullen

  Burgess whistled. "Icekeepers are dangerous where the Centurion's welfare is concerned, that's a Durvas tradition, but this is the worst example of it that I've ever seen. All the Icekeepers I've known have been a bit strange, maybe it's in the job outline."

  "Maybe I'd make a good Icekeeper," Lucel responded. "You male chauvinists have never appointed a woman in two thousand years. Anyway, by November both overlays were complete, but Vitellan's body was close to death. McLaren contacted the local Luministe operative—me— and said that if we were quick we could abduct Bon-homme's greatest potential rival. We acted without authority and attacked. If we'd asked for authority it would have been refused because Lord Wallace was pulling the Luministe strings all along, but we were not to know that—officially."

  "I—ah, go on."

  "There's a funny thing about that attack. We did not let off the bomb that brought down the building and crushed Vitellan's body—"

  "So that's when it happened!"

  "Yes, and it must have been McLaren destroying evidence. I do know one thing for a fact: McLaren did not intend us to take Robert's body. That was just an accident. My group leader was confused, she thought she had abducted the Centurion. My own role in this was . . . covert. There was a lot of confused and secret dealing with the body of the Centurion in Durvas, and I found that the best way to keep tabs was to work for the enemy. I wanted Vitellan safe, so I rescued him from the Luministe hospital in Paris. Knowing all that I did, though,I was reluctant to return him to Durvas."

  "So, the pieces are fitting into place with the exception of you, Ms. Lucel Hunter. Who are you? What is your interest in all this?"

  "Ah, now that would be telling."

  Burgess got up from the chair and walked across to his desk. He waved a recorder into life, then realized that Lucel was still there and might not approve. He killed the recorder with another wave.

  "So what now?" he asked.

  Lucel stood up and took the rail pistol from her jacket, then walked across to the portrait of Guy. She loaded another shot into the magazine while looking up at Vitellan's old friend and servant, then put the gun away.

  "I had to make sure that your standard of care was back up to the standard of 1358," she said with a gesture to the portrait. "The Centurion is alive, as a t6tal overlay on a host brain."

  "So, the overlay was the man I met at a meeting of the Corporate. Nice chap, very charismatic and sensible, I thought. Nevertheless, I repeat: what now? The Village has failed him, Lord Wallace failed him, I failed him, every stupid bastard in Durvas employment has failed him. Only Icekeeper McLaren and you haven't failed him, and I'm surprised that you even bothered to come here and talk to us. We're no use to Vitellan."

  Lucel leaned against the desk and shook her head. 'Try asking why I'm here again." - Burgess exhaled loudly. "If the Centurion is alive . . .

  you would probably want the resources of the Village to protect him. That's fairly silly of you, given our track record, but—"

  "Precisely!" cried Lucel, turning and smashing a fist down on his desk. "If Vitellan is to come back here, there must be

  no petty power struggles and disputes, every single file and database must be opened and decrypted, every account must be scrutinized. Durvas betrayed Vitellan, now Durvas must make it up to him."

  "Now just a minute, I had no part in any of that!" the marshal exclaimed angrily.

  "Maybe not, but the Village Corporate needs to be restructured so that secret plots cannot ever happen again. There is more at stake than just Vitellan."

  "Allow me to congratulate you on your nomination to the Village Corporate of Durvas," Burgess responded.

  "I—I'll take that seriously, Mr. Burgess," responded Lucel, caught off-guard.

  "It was meant to be taken seriously, Ms. Hunter."

  Los Angeles: 18 February 2029, Anno Domini

  Lucel sauntered slowly down the soiled, stained concrete LA sidewalk. A drab bundle of rags held up a grimy foam cup without raising his head as she passed.

  "Spare change lady?" he asked in a servile wheeze.

  "Stop waving that filthy thing at me and get to your feet, Vitellan."

  Vitellan looked up, suspicious and alert. His left hand slid to a well-maintained Ruger under his jacket. "You makin'

  mistake, lady."

  "My dataspex show the IR profile of that gun under your coat. You will notice that my hands are on my hips and not anywhere near a weapon. Come on, I know it's you."

  "How?"

  "You've got an implant." "Lie. Try again."

  "Ah, shit. Look, okay, I'm sorry about before. Your camo is good, I couldn't have picked it, except that you have an implant."

  "Not so," said Vitellan. "Had scanning. Cost of ninety dollars at Angelo's EM and Pulse."

  "Angelo would not have found mine. I implanted it as a biosleeper on the way to Moscow."

  "Where?"

  "Remember when I pinched the nerve in your wrist, back in the clinic in Houston? It set off an enzyme-clocked timer. It cycles every few hours with randomly timed activations and a preset frequency progression. The implant forms up into conductors and circuits, pumps out a couple of pulses, then closes down and dissolves its conductors. You could catch it in a scan shop if you were lucky, but you'd have to be very lucky. I found you nine days after you made a break at the airport in Houston—that was clever, I was impressed."

  By now perhaps two dozen other homeless men and women were shambling slowly over, converging toward them. Lucel noticed glints here and there from beneath the drab overcoats and ragged blankets of the sun bears. They stopped, in a semicircle of five groups: each group could target Lucel without hitting another sun bear in the background.

  " 'Bout time you moved on, lady."

  A polite but firm voice, all authority with none of the bravado of the gang cells. The speaker's coat hung open, displaying a worn but clean MK-760 that was old enough to have seen action in the Vietnam War.

  Lucel looked back to Vitellan. "Well?"

  "She's okay," he said as he slowly, stiffly got to his feet. He nudged a bundle with his foot. "Div my gear."

  "You sure she's cool, Vince?" asked the sun bear with the submachine gun.

  "If not, be back. You lead, Wes."

  Lucel had parked her hire van around the corner. A sun bear cell lounged nearby, alert but looking at ease. One raised his thumb to Lucel as she pulsed the wing doors open, and she nodded back. Vitellan laughed softly as they drove away.

  "You hire my sun bears to guard your car," he said without prompting.

  "I just don't believe you, Vitellan. I let you out of my sight for a day or two and you skip town and set up as a street gang leader in LA."

  "Like Cutty Wren gang in Londinium. I had dealings with them. Black market for conversion of booty into sesterces."

  "Oh, great. Ancient Rome can even teach LA gangs how to operate better." "Where we going?"

  "To get you a shower and some decent clothes, then give you a suite of imprints to—"

  "No. Don't want evasion imprint shit. I liked with sun bears. Was safe. Full story now or stop, go back." Lucel had stopped at a traffic light. She hunched over the steering wheel, squeezing until her knuckles turned white.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The Luministes know that you are still alive, and my cover as a Luministe double agent is gone. Their agents are still after you."

  The lights changed and Lucel drove off. Vitellan noticed that she kept glancing at a cream and gold box Velcroed to the carpet in front of the power select. All of its displays glowed a steady green.

  "You spoil my cover. Why?"

  "Because they were close behind. They found a crushed roadspike in the quarry. Your work?" "My work."

  "They've switched their search to LA. That is all I know, but they are on to you, make no mistake about that." "I repeat, where are going?"

  "Where are we going, don't forget your subjects and objects. We're going to a motel about fifteen miles
from here by freeway. Did you learn English without an imprinter?"

  "Used—I used imprinter minimally. Dangerous to depend."

  "On them."

  Vitellan watched the LA streetscape pass, his eyes blank.

  "Of everyone, you not lie. Conceal truth, yes, but lie, no. Apologies required."

  "Think nothing of it. Whooo! You have a great whiff going."

  "Profession," said Vitellan proudly. "Good sun bear."

  "I thought I'd lost you when the ramjet took off. I was all set to get to Luministes to hold the attack when I saw Baker's security guards dashing about and looking worried. That was when I knew you had managed something on your own. How did you get all the way here? You were spotted leaving the airport carpark with a roadspike."

  "Killed roadspike in quarry. Self-defense."

  "Not guilty on that charge. Go on."

  "Stole, ah, his bike and guns. Hard to talk and ... be mobile. Imprints you did faded. SkyPlaz doctors tampered with unit, maybe. Lord Wallace had bribed them. Perhaps."

  "No perhaps, I saw his records after he died."

  "He died?"

  "He died. It's a messy story, I'll tell you later. He bribed Hall and Baker to give you blank imprint boosters so that you would think you were experiencing large-scale imprint attenuation symptoms. They weren't bad folk, but they got theirs. Hall is char on a Houston roadway and Baker is at the bottom of the North Atlantic food chain right now. How did you learn to ride roadspike wheels?"

  "Crashed and fell off until stable. Rode to Los Angeles. Very hard going."

  "Hard going? I'll say. Sixteen hundred miles plus, and the PsychoSpikes hang out near El Paso. How did you cope with them?"

  "Killed two, lost patience. Or is it lost patience, killed two?"

  "No matter, I'm impressed. You say you did it all with your commercial imprints faded out?" "Yes. Very exciting—it was."

  At the motel Lucel examined Vitellan's Ruger. It was clean and smelled of oil. The slide moved smoothly and the magazine held its full fifteen rounds.

  "This is a P-85 combat pistol, it's about forty years old," she called to him. "Did you kill the PsychoSpikes with it?"

  "Shotgun I used for that. Always dispense—no, discard weapon after killing."

  "I was about to suggest just that. Would you prefer me to speak in Latin?"

  "English, okay. What now?"

  Til give you imprints for better English and the cyclopedia imprint." "No. Imprints betray me."

  "Not so, Vitellan. Your doctors betrayed you, the imprints are just a tool. You need English, you really do. Every time you open your mouth you draw attention to yourself."

  "No! Speak English like Chaucer telling Canterbury Tales if not make deliberate mistakes. Train myself to make mistakes. Luministes not dumb. Assassins vector on man with fourteenth-century accent Stand out like balls on dog unless make mistakes. Work damn hard to speak English badly!"

  "Yes, now that I think about it, even after the imprint Norton gave you on the maglev your English was perfect but your accent was very unusual. A real Old English accent. Fascinating."

  "Get point?"

  "Yes, but ... I could arrange an English imprint customized to overlay an American accent." "Accent? You sure?"

  "Positive. Most imprints teach words only. Accents are very expensive, so most people don't bother. How would you like to sound like a Californian?"

  "Maybe ... but no cyclopedia."

  "Deal! You seem to have picked up enough modern living not to need Streetwise or a cyclopedia anymore. I'll disable your implant and give us both masks, then we'll do Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, together, like lovers. I'm using you for bait, Vitellan. The Luministe assassin behind my own suite of terrorist imprints is after you. I want to lure her here, then force her to become visible."

  "What lovers doing, ah, . . . damnshit, what English for feriatus?"

  " 'On vacation' is American usage, 'on holiday' if you're British. You were saying?"

  "Never mind, too hard. Take imprint, talk later."

  Vitellan lay down to take the vocabulary and grammar imprint while Lucel ordered a fashionable outfit to fit his size and downloaded an accent imprint. Several hours later

  the imprints were sufficiently stable for a few days of use, and he stripped off the last of his sun bear clothing and took a long, hot shower. He emerged wearing a towel around his waist and drying his hair with another. Lucel noticed several new scars, all roughly stapled but healed.

  Lucel was lying across the double bed, propped on one elbow. The expression on her face puzzled Vitellan, it did not fit his image of Lucel Hunter. The top three buttons of her blouse were undone, and even though he had seen her naked in the surgical unit at SkyPlaz, his eyes were still drawn to the V of burgundy polygloss over white skin. She was a big-boned but lean girl, almost all muscle and no fat. He kept wondering why she disturbed him now. Perhaps it was her motivation, rather than her appearance.

  "I've got a feeling that you're going to make some more helpful suggestions about what modern lovers do on vacation," he said with a newly imprinted American accent.

  "I've been looking forward to being lovers feriatus with you for a long time, Vitellan." For all that they had been through, Vitellan had somehow never suspected that seduction would ever feature in their relationship. He had seen professional warriors as dedicated as Lucel in past centuries, and they tended to be suspicious of sex. To them it was a distraction and a vulnerability, to be treated as a mechanical release if indulged in at all. He also had his own emotional baggage to carry from 1358.

  "Mixing business with pleasure . . ." He shook his head. "It's dangerous. You are beautiful, Lucel, without doubt. But..."

  "But?"

  "But dalliance is what it would be. I—ah, hurt my heart badly in 1358. I was forced to leave a loving, beautiful woman because I would . . . what are the words? I would bring disgrace upon her."

  'The Countess de Hussontal," said Lucel, expressionless.

  "Yes. You must have imprint of Durvas Chronicles, of course."

  "No, I studied the Chronicles when I was a little girl in 2008, before imprinting had been invented and before you had been 'announced.' I am impressed with you, as always.

  You are still being faithful to a woman whose very grave is little more than a mound of earth and broken marble." Vitellan sat on the other side of the bed and put his hand over Lucel's.

  "Then you must understand. My lover of 1358 is still alive to me, I saw her only a few months ago." Lucel's fingers twisted around and stroked the palm of Vitellan's hand. The first affection she has shown to me, he thought, but he began to slowly withdraw his hand. She firmly but gently grasped him by the wrist.

  "Vitellan, ch6ri, I have been faithful to you as well," she said, staring straight into his unblinking eyes. "I have been waiting six hundred and seventy years to see you again."

  The motel suite had been designed for lovers in search of privacy, whatever their circumstances. There was no danger, as Lucel's contract security was on patrol, and she had five other rooms booked in the motel, all with decoy couples passing the hours in much the same way as she and Vitellan. They did not emerge as the afternoon became evening, and the tickets to Disneyland lay unused in Lucel's pocket.

  When they did talk, Lucel told him of how the 1358 Countess of Hussontal had unwittingly started a tradition of love for her frozen rescuer on her deathbed. Her brother had finally confessed that Vitellan had not been killed in the hunt for Jacque Bonhomme, but safely frozen in one of Tom Green-helm's earlier experimental ice chambers. She had in turn told her daughter Louise, whom Vitellan had rescued. For a time both the men and women of the Hussontals had shared the secret of Vitellan's existence and resting place, but when one of the men had died without passing on the family secret to his son, the women decided upon silence henceforth. Jealousy involving the frozen man in the Alps had already surfaced several times and soured three marriages.

  The oral traditi
on of Vitellan's story had thus been passed down through the Hussontal family's women in spite of wars, invasions, revolutions, and changes in society. The family had been genetically predisposed to girls, and there had been many daughters to carry the story through the centuries. Women marrying into the family turned out to be just as enthusiastic for the ancient hero of Meaux and Marlenk. Some had merely passed the story of their ancestors' hero down to their own daughters without feeling any real affection for him, others had cherished him as an exiled lover who was still alive somewhere. Some even told their husbands, but the tale never seemed to catch the imagination of the men. The French map to Vitellan's sanctuary was preserved in the family library's archives, but it was burned in the revolution that burst upon France in 1789. Through the following seventy years of exile the women of the Hussontal family preserved their secret story while living in Italy, Scotland, and England. They even tried to obtain a copy of the map held in Durvas, but the Icekeeper of the time made it clear to the Hussontal exiles that they had failed as primary keepers of Vitellan's trust, and that Durvas had now taken back the honor of watching over the Master. The Hus-sontals had fled the French Revolution with a large part of their fortune, however, and they invested wisely and prospered during their decades abroad.

  "The family returned to France in 1858," Lucel whispered as they lay together in the darkness and the unsleeping rumble of Los Angeles continued outside. "The women of the time organized themselves to return separately, as a secret pilgrimage. A grandmother, mother, and two daughters started off from Durvas in spring, and rode in a carriage to Dover, then took a steamboat to Calais. They had an early camera, and I have the pictures in a card in my slacks."

  "I'd like to see them . . . tomorrow," mumbled Vitellan dreamily.

  "They traveled past Paris, followed the River Marne for a while, and even spent a night in Meaux." "It was burned."

  "It's been rebuilt. They stopped at the site of the Hussontal family castle where two of their menfolk had already returned to buy back parts of the old estate and the ruins of the castle. In early winter the whole family traveled on to Marlenk in Switzerland for what was supposedly a holiday."