"Have I really been a party to six centuries of simulated adultery?" asked Vitellan. Lucel rolled on top of him, pinning his arms as if to pre-
vent him from escaping. He could not help but notice how similar her mannerisms were to those of his original Countess of Hussontal, and he wondered if it was something genetic. With his cyclopedia faded, his knowledge of genetics was patchy.
"Think of us as the backup infrastructure of your time boat," she said gravely. "As it turned out, you needed a backup."
"Your personal dedication to me begins to make sense now."
"It nearly didn't happen. My mother was a dedicated feminist and never breathed a word of your story to me. She told my grandmother that she did not want me to be a slave to some sexist tradition of emotional enslavement and that I should be free to choose my own destiny. My grandmother decided that freedom to choose my destiny included the story of a frozen man in the Swiss mountains, and a couple of days after 1 got my first Internet account—for. my seventh birthday as I recall—Grandmama sent me nearly half a megabyte of unsolicited family history that she had typed with her... what did they call them, word processor I think. Of course I was an unreconstructed romantic even at that tender age, so the tradition survived yet another generation. I was just a teenager when you were dug out of the Swiss ice and moved back to England, and ah, but I was thrilled and devastated, all at once. I filed past when your body was on display for a week in the British museum before being returned to Durvas. You were just a blur in the ice, but it was you. I kept buying tickets and going past with the crowds, I took vids of you time and again. I knew that I might even meet you if I lived to 2054, but I would be in my sixties by then and probably not very alluring. Perhaps my own daughter might come to love you, but then my own daughter might turn out like my mother and not give a hoot. I considered not having children, trying to charm you myself in 2054, yet there would be thirty years between us. Would you want me? Ah, it tore me apart, I was a very, very romantic young girl.
"When the Luministe cult started I was one of the first to join. You were the only sleeper that they could possibly be talking about in all that preaching about a prophet from the past, and if I was an important Luministe I would be important to you when you woke in 2054. Then Bonhomme was discovered, and the Luministes embraced him as their prophet. I knew the truth about him from the Hussontal traditions, but I was only one voice and nobody would have listened. Suddenly it dawned on me that you might be revived early to fight yet again with the evil leader of the Jacques. If that happened you would need a dedicated spy who was trusted completely by the enemy.
"I volunteered to train as a Luministe assassination agent and spy. I trained hard, and had combat enhancement surgery and implants, in fact I became so good that the Luministes paid for me to be given two years of stabilized imprints from the great and notorious terrorist Vanda Louise Mattel."
A light began to flash on her dataspex on the bedside table. Lucel checked it, then spoke a few words of code.
"All's well," she reported.
"What was that?"
"I have two contract cells watching this place. They don't know about each other, and both groups are reporting that we are being watched but not threatened."
"So we are in danger."
"You specifically."
"From other imprint pupils of Mattel?"
"There was only one other, a girl named Gina Rossi. She led the hit on the Antarctic time ship, and was killed when she blew up the Mawson Institute. No, the vector incoming is Mattel herself: as cunning, ruthless, and deadly as the devil on steroids."
"I've studied modern terrorist techniques, Lucel: Many groups, including the Luministes, use imprint gating to give assassins obsessive, blind dedication to their missions. Their assassins simply can't turn traitor. Did they do that to you?"
"Yes, but there was a catch: I had already turned traitor. They fixated me on killing all false prophets from the past, but I did not regard you as a false prophet." She rolled off him and lay on her back with her hands clasped behind her head.
"I knew about imprints, and imprints can be adjusted with certain meditation techniques before they are bedded down. When the treatment had finished, my first priority was to keep you safe, but I was also vectored on killing 'false prophets from the past'—Jacque Bonhomme, as far as I was concerned. One day I would have done just that, but he beat me to it and did the job himself."
Vitellan sat up in bed and looked at the radio-clock display. It was 4:47 A.M.
"You have a plan, and it involves me as bait," he said, his throat dry and his voice flat.
"Yes, it involves you flying out to Australia in about three hours," replied Lucel, reaching up and rubbing a hand along his back. "It's called a filter tactic: draw the enemy to a specific location, then run fast. Their warhead unit reacts fast, too fast, blows cover and gets targeted by us. You will leave here with a girl from one of my decoy couples, her name's Jilly Stevenson. You and Jilly will take a SOMS to Melbourne and play tourist, okay?"
"But—"
"Just do it. No buts. Play the part with her: hold hands, kiss, buy each other little presents, sleep together, and make sure that you screw her! Okay? I don't want any hotel staff changing the sheets next morning and reporting to some contract gang cell that the honeymooners who were oh-so-cute in public were not doing it in private. This is war, Vitellan, and this is how you have to fight."
"If we live through this, my countess, knight, and lover, remind me to explain the symbol on the Deciad scroll to you. It is so simple, yet behind it is something wonderful."
"Why not now? We have a little more time."
"Because one should avoid fighting a war on more than one front," he whispered, his voice trailing away as if the very words fatigued him.
Jilly and Vitellan set off in an autocab before sunrise, negotiated their way through the airport's baggage check-in and boarding security scans, then boarded a SOMS. She was a Utile shorter than Lucel, and quite a lot thinner. She said that she had won several gymnastics competitions while at school, and now taught aerobics when not doing contract work. As they settled into their seats she activated a portable cloaker.
"Good work, but you're looking too cool," Jilly said,
looking Vitellan in the eyes. "Drop a Latin word, look a bit confused now and then. You're meant to be bait, okay?"
"Yeah, okay," replied Vitellan, unsure of how to react or feel. "I'm new at this."
"It shows," replied Jilly. "Maybe it's why she chose you."
M e l b o u r n e , A u s t r a l i a : 2 0 F e b r u a r y 2 0 2 9 , A n n o D o m i n i They landed in Melbourne's evening, but with their body clocks ready for a morning's sightseeing. After booking into a Southbank hotel they had dinner and strolled beside the river in the balmy air of late summer. The waters of the river were black and placid, hardly reflecting any highlights from the glittering lights of the city. Jilly was dressed in cheek-shorts, a scoopneck T-shirt, and jogger sandals. Her nipples stood out beneath the white cloth, both casting conical shadows. Vitellan's tracksuit was made of the same light airtrack hemp and cotton, and he felt cool and exposed, as if he were naked. His thoughts tumbled along in a giddy dance: I'm holding hands with a complete stranger in a city that should not have existed in my lifetime, and very soon we'll be fornicating in a hotel room as high as the clouds. Sheer desire drenched him like warm drizzle, and he noticed that Jilly's fingers were kneading against his.
"What was our hotel?" he asked, even though he had been absorbing every detail of the riverside plaza and could have returned to the hotel blindfolded.
"The Centenary South," she replied at once. Eagerness, Vitellan wondered? "Do you want to go back?"
"Well... we've been out being seen for two hours."
"And you can't wait to prove that we're into good, healthy consummation?"
"Now.that you mention it, no, I can't."
"Hey, then let's do it, that's what we're paid for."
She slid an arm around his waist and stepped in front of him, then pressed her lips against his and thrust her tongue between his teeth. A party boat passed on the river, and the revelers cheered and shone torches on them as they stood rubbing their thighs together.
"I suppose it was built in 2000," Vitellan said to cover his embarrassment as they entered the hotel foyer. "Yeah, guess so." "Big party year."
"I thought it sucked," Jilly said, her voice suddenly sharp. "My dad's business crashed when the change-of-year prefix screwed his computer database. By the time he was back in action the competition had moved in on his customers." The doorlock clacked free to a wave of the desk card. Jilly reached in and switched on the light as Vitellan pushed the door open. The door clunked shut behind them, a firm, secure commitment of what was to come. They stared at each other across a few feet of Center-red carpet while the cream quilt of the double bed gleamed in the recessed halogen lighting.
"Hey, is this hard work or what?" Jilly giggled, then raised each foot in turn and unbuckled her sandals. Vitellan responded by removing his tracksuit top. Jilly whistled at his roughly stapled scars.
"Been a bad little boy," Vitellan explained.
"Hell, I can show you mine," she said as she pulled her top up over her head to reveal taut, conical breasts with large dark nipples. She put her hands on her waist and thrust a hip at Vitellan. "But mine ain't scars." Vitellan was still trying to shake his tracksuit pants free of his feet as they coupled across the bed. Jilly was all long nails, grappling legs, teeth and giggles. She shrieked and laughed at their reflections in the ceiling mirror while Vitellan wondered how Lucel would react to the lurid evidence that he had followed her orders to the very letter. Jilly had excellent stamina, and did not tire for a long time. She insisted on staying underneath so that she could watch their images in the mirror.
It was the evening of the next day when Vitellan awoke from a fitful doze, his body insisting that it was time for bed but with moonlight streaming in through the windows. Jilly was in the shower already, preparing for a night on the town with him. There were spots of blood on the sheets, all from the cuts that her false nails had made on Vitellan's back. A detached nail lay among the sheets. Vitellan grinned ruefully, picked it up and tossed it across to where Jilly's gossamer-fine UV bodysuit lay across a chair. The fabric stiffened for a moment as the nail landed, then sagged. Vitellan blinked. Lucel had clothes that did that! The fabric was normally flexible, but stiffened like a thin shell of steel when struck sharply. It was enough to stop a knife or a fist, and would take the kick out of most conventional low-velocity bullets as well. His heart thumping, he stood up and took a pen from the commdesk. Holding it like a dagger he stabbed down, overhand. The gossamer fabric snapped rigid, then relaxed. The point of the pen had made only a tiny impression. He picked up the false nail and turned it over. It was heavy, and there were little grooves and flanges underneath. A Luministe weapon, a very, very exclusive Luministe weapon. Jilly was a girl who looked barely out of her teens, yet let slip that she remembered the millennium year. Lucel had said that she .was imprinted with Vanda Mattel's tacticals, so Vanda Mattel would think like Lucel... or try to outthink her. Successfully. Too successfully. Jilly/Vanda was in the shower with nine explosive nails on her hands, so attack was out. Vitellan pulled on his track-suit pants and top, checked for his wallet, then slipped on his joggers and pressed the Velcro straps down. Battle tactics, his subconscious whispered at him. He picked up the gossamer armor-suit and jogger sandals. Should run with them, but they might have a beacon built in, he thought, but no dataspex, she probably has them in the shower, making contact about what Lucel was doing. Too bad, no certainties. He opened the door. It would click distinctly when the hydraulics closed it. He opened it all the way, then let go and ran.
Vitellan took the fire escape. He pounded down, four steps at a time, jumping six to the landings, counting floors. A door clacked open high above him, then boomed closed again. Was she coming or—express mode in the elevator, she probably had a key for it. Know the battlefield. First floor has a lounge and balcony overlooking the Southbank plaza. Vitellan slammed the release bar down on the first-floor fire door and ran for the balcony bar. An alarm began blaring as he entered, and the doors to the open-air balcony automatically shut and locked. Vitellan flung Mattel's bodysuit and sandals aside, swept the glasses from a granite top table and tried to lift it. The table was bolted down. Hands seized him.
"What the fuck do you think—"
Vitellan drove his elbow back into the man's nose and wrenched at the tabletop again. The filigree alloy base snapped. He flung the marble top at a glass panel and it burst in a hailstorm of glass pellets. Vitellan crunched through the debris out onto the balcony and vaulted the stone railing. He had expected the twelve-foot drop but not the pedestrian who broke his fall. Vitellan limped away past concrete and tile tubs of palms and cycads. Up on the bridge, blue and red lights were flashing and people were hurrying about. He began limping for the edge of the river when a passing jogger in a dark blue tracksuit exploded with a sound like a heavy rock dropped into an iced-over pond. Vitellan ran, dove into the darkened water, then doubled back and swam along beside the embankment. Somewhere behind him an explosion reverberated through the water. He surfaced to breathe then dove again, crossing the river in the shelter of the arches of Princess Bridge.
When he emerged from the water on the northeast side of the bridge Vitellan was dripping water but still fully clothed and wearing his joggers. Sweat from a hard run, nobody should notice, he thought hopefully. He climbed the steps to Swanston Street. Police lights were flashing, people were milling to watch whatever was going on and speculating about the explosions. He walked quickly down to a T-intersection facing a mall. Cars were waiting for the lights to change—and at the front was an Australian version of a roadspike on a Harley-Davidson. "No problemo," Vitellan said under his breath as he walked out across the road and between the cars.
The roadspike's jacket had incoming losers stenciled on the back. Vitellan caught him from behind in a headlock and used his weight to twist his victim and the bike over to crash to the roadway. With a kick to the roadspike's face that he hoped would be adequate, Vitellan turned and wrenched the
still-idling Harley upright, gunned the engine and engaged the gears. He roared off against the red light and a traffic camera flashed to record the violation.
"Fucking bastard!" bellowed out behind him, and something heavy and painful struck his right shoulder. With little traffic sense and some confusion about what side of the road Australians drove on, Vitellan made a difficult and unpredictable quarry for the police as he entered the Swanston Street Mall and weaved his way among the screaming pedestrians and clanging green tramcars. Police ran to bar his way, then scattered as he charged them. Laser-lit fountains, trees hung with fairy lights, buskers, and even a Morris dancing troupe passed in a surreal stream of light and music.
"Morris dancing, last saw that in May 1358," he said to himself as he passed the floodlit museum. "Museum; statues of Saint Joan on a gelding and Saint George on a stallion out front, museum means end of the mall, one mile more and there's a big university and I hope that tourist imprint knew what it was telling me." Sirens seemed to be everywhere as Vitellan pulled into the grounds of the University of Melbourne and ran the Harley into a stand of bushes. As he limped away into the maze of buildings and gardens he realized that a short knife was lodged in his shoulder. With some effort he managed to reach around and pull it out. His shoulder was throbbing more noticeably now, and it hurt like fire to move his arm but he hefted the knife gratefully.
"At least I'm armed, and at least I'm left-handed," he tried to reassure himself as he limped across a lawn. "And she can't track me—oh shit!"
He realized that Vanda was sure to have put a beacon on him, if only through blind paranoia. Where to hide a beacon?
Tracksuit? Shoes? He entered an underground carpark, ignoring a challenge from the autom
ated security system. After three cars he saw an unzipped tote bag with jogging gear visible. The butt of the roadspike's knife shattered the window, and he limped out into the darkness again with at least five different alarms blaring and shrieking behind him. He stripped and changed into the stolen gear amid dense
bushes near the library while university security guards ran about with torches. The tracksuit and joggers were slightly big, but still a passable fit. He noticed the lights of the guards were moving away to the east. That was where he had abandoned his stolen bike; they had probably found it and were waiting for him to try to use it to escape. Vitellan dropped the bag in the loading bay of a building in the Faculty of Medicine, then broke a laminate plastic slat from a packing case and crawled back to wait behind a garbage skip.
Leave bait, stalk the stalker: he repeated the words to himself as he tied a strip of cloth to the end of the slat. It had roughly the weight and dimensions of a pilum, he noticed as he tied the knife to the other end. Vanda Mattel has seven of those explosive nails left. Two had been expended and one was in his pocket, in the tracksuit. He hurried back to the bag and retrieved the false fingernail. Back behind the skip he untied the knife from his improvised pilum as he struggled to recall a demonstration that Lucel had given him as they rode the maglev to Moscow. Squeeze the sides together until it clicks, then push down in the middle until it clicks again. That arms it. Push down in the middle a second time to disarm. To launch ... to launch? No matter, no launch was required. He cut a groove in the end of the slat, armed the nail and jammed it in. Now he was ready to fight.
Vitellan waited. The knife wound in his back ached insistently, but had stopped bleeding. The city beyond the university seemed to be alive with sirens, and police drones whispered overhead several times. The last surviving centurion of Imperial Rome cowered beneath flattened cardboard and foamed plastic packing, his infrared image smothered from both the drones and Mattel's dataspex. Vanda Mattel. Not an hour ago they had been in bed together, he could scarcely believe it. He fingered the lovebites on his neck. His fingers touched something soft beneath the skin. A little cyst? A little cyst, just below one of the lovebites.
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