The Centurion's Empire

by Sean McMullen

  "Right," Vitellan agreed.

  Gulden watched as the two bodies were lowered into the cryogenic chambers together. Fumes billowed from the liquid nitrogen, and one by one the sensor ikons on a wallscreen beside him turned from red to green. Covers glided into place, sealed, then locked.

  The 121st Icekeeper of Durvas sighed with relief. The Master was safely frozen again, after a most harrowing few months in the world outside.

  "A close call, Master," Gulden whispered. "Ah, Icekeeper McLaren was so loyal. It grieves me that the truth about what he did for you cannot be shouted to the world's media and turned into another Durvas legend. He shook the world to keep you alive, Master. The older you grow, the fiercer does our loyalty become."

  He touched a key, and the guard circuits switched to automatic-live. The lights dimmed in the Deep Frigidarium.

  "I am honored to have known you, but I am glad that you will sleep for most of my tenure. We love you, Master, but we fear the madness that fires us to protect you."

  * * *

  Some minutes later Gulden was back on the surface, chatting with Dellar and Burgess in an overgrown garden that was full of spring blooms and birdsong. They had stopped before the twelfth-century building that guarded the entrance to the original Frigidarium.

  "So they're both down now," said Dellar. "The Master and his true love."

  "Repulsive woman, I don't know what he sees in her," muttered Burgess.

  "We had better start planning for the revival of 2054," warned Dellar.

  "He will not want to stay awake long if Lucel remains frozen, Sir Peter," Gulden replied confidently.

  "And Lucel? You had all the Luministe obsession gates scrubbed out of her mind?"

  "Yes, it was easy. Just after she was sedated for freezing I gave her an imprint explaining everything. The most she can do to me at the time she is revived is jump up and down on my grave."

  "Five of those Temporian Roman sleepers have just been revived, including Decius himself, " Dellar remarked, as if he expected Gulden to be following his thoughts.

  "I know, I've been following the interviews with them. They said they were part of a secret bureaucracy of time travelers that ran the Roman Empire, and nearly every government on Earth has been sending urgent requests for more information. These men and women from our past might end up changing our world more than the crew of a UFO could hope to. It's like First Contact, in fact in a sense it really is First Contact."

  "All of a sudden the Durvas time traveler is old news," said Burgess wistfully.

  "Yes, isn't it wonderful!" exclaimed Gulden his elation undisguised. "All those psychologists had been queuing up to study the Master as soon as we hinted at an early revival, but now they're off to study the Temporians."

  "They had a point," Dellar reminded him. "Now that time-jumping is to be part of our lifestyle we heed to see how peo- pie like Vitellan managed to adjust to awakenings in new centuries. Until recendy he was priceless for that reason."

  "Ah, but now nobody cares about us freezing him again," said Gulden. "The Romans from Antarctica are even older than our Master, and they can teach us an actual science of administration by time travel."

  "Are you absolutely positive Lucel is safe?" asked Burgess. "If any of the Temporian Romans decide to be refrozen, then she could cause a lot of trouble in the future if her treatment is incomplete."

  'Trust me, Lucel is now harmless," replied Gulden. "I worked from the original imprint maps when I reversed what had been done to her. The Luministe imprint analysts left an encrypted README imprint in her mind explaining what they had done, and I had the encryption key from McLaren's records in the Deep Frigidarium. When Lucel and Vitellan are eventually revived together, they can look forward to many happy years with each other." Sir Peter Dellar sighed with relief and satisfaction. He was concerned for the Master's welfare, but he also wanted him to be happy. Gulden had engineered a win-win outcome.

  "So when will that joint revival be, Dr. Gulden?" Dellar asked.

  "Not during my lifetime, Sir Peter. I want it written in the Village Corporate Chronicles that the Master remained safe and secure during my tenure as the Icekeeper of Durvas, and that is most likely to be the case if he is frozen."

  - Look for-souls

  in the

  great machine

  Available in hardcover June 1999

  I

  Champions

  Fergen had not noticed a suspicious pattern in the pieces on the board by the seventh move. Champions was his best game and he had even its most exotic strategies and scenarios memorized. The Highliber advanced a pawn to threaten his archer. The move was pure impudence, a lame ploy to tempt him to waste the archer's shot. He moved the archer to one side, so that his knight's flank was covered.

  The Highliber sat back and tapped at the silent keys of an old harpsichord that had been cut in half and bolted to the wall of her office. Fergen rubbed plaster dust from his fingers. All the pieces were covered in dust, as was the board, the furniture, and floor. The place was a shambles. Wires hung from holes in the ceiling; partly completed systems of rods, pulleys, levers, pawls, gears, and shafts were visible through gaps in the paneling, and other brass and steel mechanisms protruded from holes in the floor. Occasionally a mechanism would move.

  Fergen gave the game his full attention, but Highliber Zarvora tapped idly at the harpsichord keys and seldom glanced at the board. A rack of several dozen marked gear wheels rearranged their alignment with a soft rattle. The mechanisms were part of a signal system, the Highliber had explained. Libris, the Mayoral library, had grown so big that it was no longer possible to administer it using clerks and messengers alone.

  The Highliber leaned over and picked up a knight. With its base she tipped over one of her own pawns, then another. Fergen had never realized that she had such small, pale hands. Her knight toppled yet another of her pawns, then turned as it finally claimed an enemy piece. Such a tall, commanding woman, yet such small hands, thought Fergen, mesmerized. The knight knocked another of its own pawns aside, then his king fell.

  For some moments he stared at the carnage on the board, the shock of his defeat taking time to register. Anger, astonishment, suspicion, incomprehension, and fear tore at him in turn. At last he looked up at the Highliber.

  "I must apologize for the surroundings again," she said in the remote yet casual manner that she used even with the Mayor. "Did the mayhem in here disturb your concentration?"

  "Not at all," replied Fergen, rubbing his eye. Behind it, the early symptoms of a migraine headache were building. "I could play in a cowshed and still beat anyone in the known world in less than fifty moves. Do you know when I was last beaten at champions?"

  The question had been rhetorical, but the Highliber knew the answer.

  "Sixteen seventy-one GW."

  She tapped again at the silent keyboard. The little gears, marked with white dots, clicked and rattled in their polished wooden frame.

  "And now it's sixteen ninety-six," he said ruefully. "I've played you before, but you never, never made moves like these."

  "I have been practising," she volunteered.

  "You take a long time between moves, but oh, what moves. I have learned more from this game than from my previous hundred. You could take my title from me, Highliber Zarvora. I know mastery when I see it." The Highliber continued to tap the silent keys and glance at the row of gears. The same slim, confident fingers that had harvested his king so easily now flickered over the softly clacking keys in patterns that were meaningless to Fergen.

  "I am already the Highliber, the Mayor's Librarian," she said without turning to him. "My library is Libris, the biggest in the world and the hub of a network of libraries stretching over many mayorates. My staff is more than half that of the Mayoral palace. Why should your position interest me?"

  "But... but a Master of the Mayor ranks above a mere librarian," spluttered Fergen.

  "Only in heraldic convention, Fras Gamesmaster
. I enjoy a game of champions, but. my library means more to me. I shall tell nobody about your defeat."

  Fergen's face was burning hot. She could take his position, but she did not want it! Was an insult intended? Were there grounds for a duel? The Highliber was known to be a deadly shot with a flintlock, and had killed several of her own staff in duels over her modernizations in the huge library.

  "Would you like another game?" asked the Highliber, facing him but still striking at the keys.

  "My head . . . feels like it's been used as an anvil, Frelle Highliber."

  "Well then, return later," she said, typing her own symbols for / CHAMPIONS ELAPSED TIME? /, then pressing a lever with her foot. Fergen heard the hum of tensed wires, and the clatter of levers and gears from within the wall.

  "I could teach you nothing," he said in despair.

  "You are the finest opponent that I have," replied the Highliber. "I think it—" She stopped in mid-sentence, staring at the row of gears.

  "You will excuse me, please. There is something I must attend to," she said, her voice suddenly tense.

  "The gears and their dots have a message?"

  "Yes, yes, a simple code," she said, standing quickly and taking him by the arm. "Afternoon's compliments, Fras Gamesmaster. May your headache pass quickly."

  Fergen rubbed his arm as the Highliber's lackey showed him out. The woman had all but lifted him from the ground!

  Amazing strength, but to Fergen no more amazing than her victory at the champions board. Zarvora slammed aside a small wooden panel in the wall and pulled at one of the wires dangling from the roof. After a moment a metallic twittering and clatter arose from the brass plate set in the recess.

  "System Control here, Highliber," declared a faint, hollow voice.

  "What is the Calculor's status?" she snapped. "Status HALTMODE," replied the distant speaker. "What is in the request register at present?"

  "MODE: CHAMPIONS; COMMAND ELAPSED TIME?" "And the response register?" "46:30.4, Highliber."

  "Forty six hours for a twenty-minute game of champions, Fras Controller?" shouted Zarvora, her self-control slipping for a rare moment. "Explain."

  There was a pause, punctuated by the rattle of gears. Zarvora drummed her fingers against the wall and stared at a slate where she had written 46:30.4.

  "System Controller, Highliber. Both Dexter and Sinister Registers confirm the figure."

  "How could both processors come up with the same ludicrous time?"

  "Why . . . yes, it is odd, but it's the sort of error that even skilled clerks make sometimes."

  "The Calculor is not a skilled clerk, Fras Lewrick. It is a hundred times more powerful at arithmetic, and with its built-in verifications, it should be absolutely free of errors. I want it frozen exactly as it was during that last calculation."

  'That's not possible, Highliber. Many of the components from the correlator were exhausted by the end of the game. They were relieved by components from the spares pool."

  Too late, thought Zarvora. "We shall run a set of diagnostic calculations for the next hour," she said. "Do not change any tired components. If some fall over at their desks, mark them before they are replaced."

  "Highliber, the Calculor is tired. It's not wise."

  "The Calculor is made of people, Fras Lewrick. People get tired, but the Calculor merely slows down."

  "I'm down inside it all the time. It has moods, it feels—"

  "I designed the Calculor, Lewrick! I know its workings better than anyone."

  "As you will, Highliber."

  Zarvora rubbed at her temples. She too had a headache now, but thanks to the long vibrating wire beneath the brass plate, her discomfort remained unseen.

  "You are trying to tell me something, Fras Lewrick. What is it.. . and please be honest."

  "The Calculor is like a river galley, or an army, Frelle Highliber. There is a certain . . . spirit or soul about it. I mean, ah, that just as a river galley is more than a pile of planks, oars, and sailors, so too is the Calculor more than just a mighty engine for arithmetic. When it is tired, perhaps it sometimes lets a bad calculation through rather than bothering to repeat it."

  "It is not alive," she replied emphatically. "It is just a simple, powerful machine. The problem is human in origin."

  "Very good, Highliber," Lewrick said stiffly. "Shall I have the correlator components flogged?"

  "No! Do nothing out of the ordinary. Just check each of the function registers on both sides of the machine as you run the diagnostic calculations. We must make it repeat its error, then isolate the section at fault. Oh, and send a jar of tourney beer to each cell when the components are dismissed. The Calculor played well before that error."

  "That would encourage the culprit, Highliber."

  "Perhaps, but it is also important to reward hard work. The problem is a hole in my design, Fras Lewrick, not the component who causes problems through it. We could take all the components out into the courtyard and shoot them, but the hole would remain for some newly trained component to crawl through."

  Libris was Rochester's Mayoral library. Its stone beamflash communications tower was over six hundred feet high and dominated the skyline of the city. The Highliber of Libris was second only to the Mayor in power, and she controlled a network of libraries and librarians scattered over dozens of mayorates and thousands of miles. In many ways the Highliber was even more powerful than the Mayor. There was no dominant religion across the mayorates of the Southeast, so the library system performed many functions of a powerful clergy. The education, communication, and transport of every mayorate in the Southeast Alliance was under the discreet but firm coordination of the Highliber of Rochester.

  Rochester itself was not a powerful state. In fact, the other mayorates of the Southeast Alliance deliberately kept it as no more than a rallying point, a political convenience. Neighboring mayorates such as Tandara, Deniliquin, and Wangaratta held the real power, and wielded it shamelessly in the Councilium Chambers at Rochester. Mayor Jetton of Rochester was the constitutional Overmayor of the Councilium, but in practice he was of little more consequence to his peers than the servants who scrubbed the floor, dusted the tapestries, and polished the broad, red rivergum table at which the meetings were held.

  Libris was the very reason that Rochester was kept weak. A powerful mayorate controlling the vast and influential library network would quickly become strong enough to rule the entire Alliance. The Councilium was wary of that. Zarvora had been appointed recently, replacing a man eighty years her senior. She had become a Dragon Silver at twenty-four, and after two years had jumped the Dragon Gold level to be appointed Dragon Black—the Highliber's rank. There had been some luck involved: Mayor Jetton also happened to be young and ambitious, and was weary of elderly men and women telling him what he could or could not do. Zarvora offered him the chance to make Rochester powerful, and outlined some radical but plausible ways of doing it. He proposed her name to the Councilium, giving her the chance to address the Mayors in person. She promised to make both Libris and the beamflash network pay for themselves within three years or resign. The Mayors were impressed and appointed her.

  Zarvora became Highliber in 1696 GW, and massive changes followed. The Tiger Dragons, Libris's internal guard, were tripled and a branch of them was turned into the Black Runners, a secret constabulary. Parts of Libris were rebuilt and extended, and staff and books were moved into other areas. In the workshops of the expanded library, artisans toiled through twelve-hour shifts, day after day, month after month, making strange machinery and furniture. Carpenters, blacksmiths, and clockmakers were recruited from far afield, and the edutors at the University were contracted to solve odd problems in symbolic logic. Large areas of Libris were sealed from outside scrutiny. Zarvora explained that Libris had become too big to govern manually, and that a vast signaling and coordinating division of clerks, lackeys, and librarians had been set up to

  manage its books and coordinate its activities. Indee
d, the efficiency of Libris's activities improved dramatically in only a few months, and by the end of 1696 GW, the Mayor could see real savings set against the Highliber's expenses. There were also drastic changes in the staffing of Libris. Examinations for Dragon Red and Green were changed to favor candidates with mathematical and mechanical backgrounds, rather than those with just knowledge of library theory and the classics. No recruit was older than thirty-five, and several accepted options to study further at Rochester's University. The changes did not go uncriticized, but the Highliber was dedicated and ruthless. She lobbied, fought duels, had officials assassinated . . . and even had the more numerate of her opponents abducted for a new and novel form of forced labor. When those obstructing her had been outside Libris, it had been necessary to arrange other means to push them aside. In the case of Fertokli Fergen, Master of Mayoral Boardgames, she had used humiliation.