Rogue Emperor

by Crawford Kilian

  “Please be seated. May I serve you some coffee, or a drink?”

  “It is you who should be seated,” said Pierce. He drew a Mallory .15 from his shoulder holster and aimed it at Bruckner’s belly. “It is set for maximum impact, and I will use it without hesitation.”

  The man paled and sat down on the couch beside the coffee table, taking care to keep his hands visible. “If, ah, you want money, there is plenty. In the safe. 1 will give you the combination. Or some special artworks?”

  Pierce sat down opposite him, ignoring Aquilius.

  “I want only information. Who is your knotholer?”

  “I don’t understand the term.”

  “Don’t insult me. You get your stock from Ahania, so you use an illegal I-Screen. Who runs it?”

  “A man named Niccolo. I don’t know his last name, or where he is.”

  “How do you get in touch with him?”

  “I don’t; he calls me when he has a shipment. It comes at night, in a truck, never the same one twice. Surely the procedure is familiar to you gentlemen.”

  “We are not competitors, not in that sense. But I would very much like to meet Niccolo.”

  “Ah — you are Federazidne police? I am eager to cooperate — eager. But you understand, he has covered his tracks very well.”

  “Have you ever known anyone who has undergone deep interrogation, sir?” Pierce asked.

  “No.”

  “The process is painless, but the odds are that you will emerge psychotic. I am quite prepared to have it administered to you this evening.”

  Bruckner’s face crumpled, and he began to cry. “I don’t know, I don’t know who he is or where he is. Please — take what you like, money, the dolphin — please, I don’t know where he is.”

  “Come with us, Signor Bruckner.”

  Pierce and Aquilius escorted Bruckner back downstairs and out to the sidewalk where the Fiat waited. Aquilius got in next to Vido; Pierce and Bruckner sat in back.

  “Aeroporto dell’urbe,” Pierce said.

  Vido, seeing Bruckner’s red eyes and terrified expression, looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

  “A great deal, but nothing to concern you,” said Pierce. “Just get us to the airport.”

  En route, he used the ringmike again to alert airport security. Overhearing him, Vido smacked the steering wheel with his palm.

  “Please keep both hands on the wheel,” the car said, in a calm female voice with a good Tuscan accent. Vido swore.

  “Signor Pierce, can’t we come to some understanding?” Bruckner pleaded. “1 honestly do not know this Niccolo. Can I perhaps trade some other information?”

  “I need to know who is going through to Ahania. And who might be shipping arms to Ahania.”

  “Arms, arms — I am a simple art dealer. I know nothing of weapons. I detest weapons. Vido, help me. Who has an I-Screen? Who ships arms?”

  The driver glanced into the rearview mirror. “Tomasetti, maybe. He has a Screen, but he doesn’t seem to sell anything anymore.”

  “Give me the address.”

  “Via Togliatti 45, in Ostia. Down by the docks.”

  “Very helpful. Anyone else?” Pierce asked.

  Vido shook his head.

  The Fiat drove through the night to the airport; Pierce asked Vido to turn on the radio, and they listened to news broadcasts about the bombing.

  “Eighty-three dead,” Pierce murmured. “We’ll get them for that.”

  “Pardon me?” asked Aquilius.

  Pierce switched to Latin. “In the Agency, our whole purpose is to protect civilized humanity against its enemies. We do not forgive.”

  At the airport, a squad of police met them. Pierce spoke briefly with their sergeant, who nodded, saluted, and then gestured to Vido and Bruckner to follow him. They entered the main terminal building and walked directly to an unmarked door.

  “What will happen to them?” Aquilius asked.

  “Deep interrogation.”

  The young Roman frowned. “But you traded other information. They gave you a name.”

  “Do you think I was underhanded?”

  “Yes. Yes. This was not fair.”

  “It was not fair to kill eighty-three people either. I do whatever must be done.”

  Aquilius looked unhappy.

  “Come, come,” Pierce said cheerfully as he led the way across the terminal building. “On Ahania they would be tortured as a matter of law.”

  “Most of my texts,” said Aquilius calmly, “like to argue that humanity has progressed since the days of the Romans.”

  “Do you think it has?”

  “In some ways. Not many.”

  “I agree.”

  *

  The Ostia carabinieri soon found that Vido had not lied about Tomasetti; at Via Togliatti 45, an old warehouse, an I-Screen had clearly been set up not long before. But it was dismantled now. The police reported only abandoned junk, an ancient IBM AT, and bloodstains on the floor. Evidently someone else had wanted to become a knotholer and had stolen Tomasetti’s equipment. The identity of that person would take time to determine.

  “It was a thought,” Pierce said. He and Aquilius had not left the airport, staying instead in a VIP lounge with the local police lieutenant. “If Tomasetti had been in operation, we might have been able to identify the emperor’s assassins. We might even have gone through the knothole directly to Ahanian Rome.”

  “Perhaps the assassins were the ones who took the Screen,” said Aquilius.

  Pierce nodded. “Perhaps. Most knotholers leave one another alone. The assassins might not want a Screen under the control of an outsider, even a sympathizer.”

  The police lieutenant, hearing a summons in his earphone, spoke briefly into his ringmike. He turned to Pierce and shrugged.

  “Deep interrogation confirms Bruckner’s story. He is a dealer in illegal art, nothing more. The cabdriver is his agent. We have descriptions of the trucks used by this Niccolo, including license numbers, so we will pick him up soon. But I doubt that he will be able to lead us far.”

  “Thank you. Then perhaps you could arrange an aircraft to take us to Sardinia.”

  *

  Aquilius sat by a window in the Agency Learjet, watching the lights of Rome retreat into the darkness.

  “Do you enjoy flying?” Pierce asked.

  “Yes. I wish we could have made this flight in daylight. They flew us back from Sardinia to Rome on a beautiful day.”

  “Weren’t you afraid? You were only, oh, three days from Rome, and flying thousands of meters above the Mediterranean.”

  Aquilius smiled. “They gave us plenty of tranquilizers.”

  The jet took them to the Venafiorita airport, just outside Olbia near the north end of Sardinia. When Pierce and Aquilius stepped down to the tarmac at nine-thirty that night, a Volvo station wagon was waiting for them. The driver was a tall woman in tight jeans and a black turtleneck sweater.

  “Teresa Giuliani.” Her handshake was hard and dry. “I’m from the reception center. They tell us you need some help.”

  “Yes.” Pierce waved Aquilius into the front seat of the Volvo, while he climbed in back behind Teresa and stretched his long legs out sideways. “We are for some reason involved in a terrible mess downtime, and now here as well.”

  “We’ll do what we can.” The Volvo rolled through the gates, past saluting guards and out onto the superstrada. “You will have to discuss your plans with the director, Dr. Kallistis. We’re not accustomed to sending people back to Ahania — only receiving them. I’m not sure we’ll have everything you need.”

  “Will your people be able to supply us with Roman clothes and money?” Pierce asked.

  “Clothes, yes, from the recruits.” She glanced at Aquilius, as if she had suddenly recognized him. “Money will be harder. Most recruits bring very little.”

  Pierce nodded and closed his eyes. The pheromones of Teresa Giuliani were intensely arousing, but his enhanced senses and h
air-trigger reflexes also made him almost useless as a lover: another reason to return to normal.

  The Volvo drove swiftly through darkened countryside near the coast. The air was warm: Pierce smelled dust, unknown scrubby plants, and salt water. The road crossed Cabo Coda Cavallo, a rocky cape falling steeply into the sea, and turned south around the dry foothills of Monte Nieddu. At an unmarked side road Teresa turned off and drove down a series of switchbacks. At the bottom, Pierce knew, was a good harbor with only a narrow access to the Tyrrhenian Sea. On the dry and rocky slopes above the harbor, prefab buildings rose in orderly rows. Down on the shore was a large floodlit building resembling an aircraft hangar and extending fifty meters into the water: the reception center and Transferpoint.

  Security was tight all over the center. Squads of AID infantry tramped about with infrared visors pulled down over their faces, and guards stopped the Volvo three times before it reached the reception center.

  Inside the huge, echoing building, Pierce saw that it extended well over fifty meters out onto the water. Its far end was open, and lights reflected off the polished steel of a large I-Screen mounted with its lower third submerged.

  “It looked very strange,” Aquilius murmured as they walked across a broad expanse of empty concrete to a two-story portable building set against the far wall. “We were sailing into an empty harbor, and suddenly — a strange circle with lights burning inside it. One boy thought we were going to Hell.”

  “Were you that boy?” asked Pierce.

  “No. But the lights were a little frightening.” He looked around almost fondly.

  Inside the portable building was a warren of offices and store rooms. Teresa knocked briskly at a plain door and then opened it into an equally plain office whose every horizontal surface seemed piled with printouts.

  “Dr. Kallistis.”

  He was a Trainable, of course, rather good looking with curly black hair framing a serene oval face. He shook hands and waved them into armchairs, cordial but businesslike and completely unlike the young aesthete who ran the Accademia in Rome.

  “The Agency has asked us to supply you with all possible help. We will do so. Do you have any more news of the bombing?”

  “Nothing. Perhaps the police will know more in the morning.”

  “Incredible that they could get so close, through all our security.”

  Pierce’s eyebrows rose. “The attack probably came from Ahania. The embassy there was under attack just before the bombing. It seems likely that the attackers launched a bomb through the embassy I-Screen.”

  Kallistis’s mouth turned down. “Then it’s worse than I imagined. If some group downtime is that well organized, surely more than two of you should go through.”

  “In good time. We’re simply conducting a reconnaissance.”

  “You will need to reach Rome quickly. At the moment we have no sailing ship available — one just left for Ostia this morning. We could recall it, but I think a helicopter would be more useful.”

  “Excellent. In fact, you should recall the ship anyway. It may be attacked by whoever’s behind this.”

  Kallistis sighed and nodded. “It’s almost a relief, dropping the cover. The Romans deserve to know the truth.”

  “Some already do,” said Aquilius.

  “Indeed.” Kallistis smiled at him. “I take it that once you reach Rome you will be going undercover.”

  “Yes,” said Pierce. “The helicopter will have to drop us off somewhere outside the city, so we can get in unnoticed.”

  “No difficulty. Dr. Giuliani will see to your equipment; I’m arranging for a helicopter from Olbia. Good luck.” He shook their hands and remained standing while Teresa and the two men left his office.

  Teresa led them into a large office. On a countertop, four technicians were unpacking a cardboard box.

  “Your clothes.” Teresa handed Pierce and Aquilius each a tunic of coarse wool — Pierce’s brown, Aquilius’s a muddy yellow. “A little small for Mr. Pierce, but the best we could do. And loincloths. Shoes. Cloaks. Belts and pouches. Knives. And the money.”

  Pierce stared unhappily at the pile of silver and copper coins. “Only a hundred sestertii? That’s barely enough to keep us fed and housed for a couple of nights.”

  “It was all we could get on short notice. If you could wait until tomorrow or the day after, we could find much more than that.”

  “I’m supposed to have a supply of Pentasyn as well,” Pierce said.

  She handed him a small plastic vial full of orange-and-yellow capsules. “A week’s supply.”

  Pierce took it and studied the label. “More like two days’ worth. The recommended dosage isn’t strong enough. Not when you’ve developed a tolerance.”

  She looked at him with a mixture of surprise and distaste: what had he been doing, to develop a tolerance for Pentasyn?

  “Would you like me to order more? That’s the total supply in Olbia, but we could get more from Marseilles.”

  “We can’t wait. How soon can we go through?”

  “About twenty minutes. It will be just about two-thirty A.M. on Ahania.”

  “Good.” Pierce stripped off his clothes and pulled on the scratchy Roman garments. At least they had found shoes big enough for him: sturdy, thick-soled, with uppers of leather strips. Aquilius, after a nervous glance at Teresa, also changed his clothes. Pierce was amused: most Trainables were fond of nudity, and had little reluctance in stripping in front of a woman. A Trainable endochronic, only three weeks away from his original culture, could be forgiven for a twinge of modesty.

  “Before we go through,” said Pierce, “I must make a few phone calls.”

  “Of course.” Teresa Giuliani gestured to a nearby office. “Please.”

  The phone was an old Olivetti with a black-and-white screen. Since Pierce was not going to use video, that didn’t bother him. He sent a quick message to his mother in New Mexico: Delayed in Italy. Back soon, I hope. Love, Jerry. Then he called Wigner again.

  “Policy: how well armed can I be?”

  “Where’s the Mallory you took before?”

  “Burned.”

  “Call the local carabinieri. Take whatever you want. We’re past playing games.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “I’d like you back in a week. We’ll arrange for a pickup from Sardinia; all you have to do is beep us.”

  “For how long?”

  “You’re not back in a week, old son, we come looking for you. By November tenth we’ll have a Screen working in Rome again.”

  “That’s best case. They’ve given me only a couple days’ worth of Pentasyn. Worst case: how long before my B&C burns me out?”

  “Morrie Weissbrod lasted six months. Almost six months.”

  “Morrie’s dead.”

  “True. But he was functional right up to the end.”

  “You’re encouraging.”

  “Jerry — people need you.”

  “I know.” It was one of the conditioning phrases Wigner sometimes invoked rather than waste time in tedious discussion. Pierce shrugged with good humor.

  “Godspeed.”

  The call to the Olbia headquarters of the carabinieri was brief and businesslike. Their armorer authorized allocation of two Mallory .15 handguns, four recharges for them, and a thousand flechettes in twenty clips. As well, Pierce ordered four concussion grenades and a spetsnaz knife with four extra blades.

  While they waited for the weapons to arrive aboard the helicopter, Teresa Giuliani showed Pierce and Aquilius the survival kit the reception center had cobbled together on a few hours’ notice: in addition to the money and silver, it included a thumb-size radio homing beacon, four pen-lights, six gold rings, fifty razor blades and five handles, vials of medicines, a magnetic compass, and eight squares of silk.

  “I could have used all this when I went through before,” Pierce murmured to Aquilius. “It was a hard trip from Rome to the Alps, and a harder one back.”

  �
��What were you doing in the Alps?” asked Aquilius.

  “Looking after the Agency’s interests.” Pierce smiled blandly at the woman. “This will be extremely helpful, Dr. Giuliani.”

  “If you’re ready, the Screen will be operating in a few minutes.”

  “Very good.”

  She led them out into the hangar-like expanse under the high, arched roof. Floodlights marked the entry, and wavelets sparkled in the intense glare. Without warning, an old Sikorsky SH-60D Seahawk helicopter swooped out of the darkness and roared toward them. The pilot, a sallow young man in pale-blue Agency fatigues, put the helicopter down on its pontoons just a few meters from the little group. Squinting against the blowing dust, Pierce nodded his thanks to Teresa and gripped Aquilius by the arm. They trotted through the downdraft and clambered aboard into seats just behind the pilot. The roar of the engines was deafening, and seemed to bother Aquilius: the boy sat with his hands pressed to his ears and his eyes squeezed shut. Pierce saw the pilot’s lips move as he talked via radio to the I-Screen team.

  The helicopter lifted off again and rotated to face the I-Screen. At first, nothing changed. Then, within the polished steel circle, the air seemed to shimmer. The circle swirled with soap-bubble iridescence, and a moment later, as the colors vanished, the external lights disappeared. Beyond the I-Screen was a different darkness: the morning of May 23, A.D. 100.

  Five

  The big Sikorsky crossed the Tyrrhenian Sea to the coast in less than an hour. The Italian pilot had been adequately briefed, but seemed a bit nervous to be flying through a night sky empty of radio traffic and homing beacons. After checking and packing the armaments that the Olbia carabinieri had sent, Pierce and Aquilius went up and joined him for a while, discussing possible landing sites.

  “We want to be within walking distance, but not in a built-up area,” Pierce said. A map of Ahanian Rome glowed on the navigation VDT; potential landing sites expanded on the screen to show fine detail, then shrank again.

  Aquilius touched the screen at a point north of the city, near the Via Flaminia. The map flashed into fine detail of a region about five by eight kilometers.