The Centurion's Empire (36 page)

Loud and long were his pleadings on that bleak beach, but to no avail. As Decius turned to lead us away, the false
Rentian took a lance and flung it full at his back. Had not Valerius pushed him aside and taken the point between his
own ribs, we would all have been fated to a cold, lingering death, lost amid storms and islands of towering ice. Only then
did Rentian feel remorse, and he ordered choice stores from the time ship itself to be put aboard the
Nemesis
so that the
noble blacksmith's death would be atoned for. Then we were sped on our way.

That was our parting—the Gods of Romulus into

rime, and Decius, Helica, and we mortal Romans into the gray and terrible sea.

The guide closed the book with a snap and declared: "There is no more."

Some of the tourists shifted uneasily, puzzled by the abrupt ending. This was obviously her standard, dramatic way to
end the readings from the
Deciad.
It brought the focus back to her with a jolt.

"Late in the Resources War of 2026," she continued, "an Australian hovertank crew found the half-buried remains of a
raft made from charred timbers on a pebble beach while conducting a sensor patrol. The nails and metal bands in the
timber registered on the tank's instruments, and the crew shoveled away the overlying pebbles to reveal the raft."
The group moved over to an air-conditioned glass case the size of a small room, in which were housed the carefully
restored remains of the raft. Some of the charred beams showed the chisel strokes of the Roman shipwright who had
originally fashioned them.

"Rentian probably planted some sort of timed incendiary device among the stores that were put aboard the
Nemesis.
This
detonated when the ship was well out to sea. Incredibly, Decius somehow survived, built a raft, and reached the Antarctic
coast again. We presume that Helica died when the
Nemesis
sank, but no further mention is made of her. The fate of
Quintus was another matter. The manuscript of the
Deciad
was found in a lead tube strapped to his body."
In a separate case was a lead cylinder about the size of a wine bottle. The metal was bright where it had recently been cut
open at one end, and there were letters and symbols scratched in the lead. The guide translated the message:

"Beware the time ship and Godlings of Romulus. Mark well the tale of Quintus."
Now there was absolute silence. Here were the last written words of the author of the
Deciad.

Vitellan reran the seconds where his host's eyes stared at a silk rubbing of the words and symbols from the cylinder.
Could it be possible that nobody else but he had grasped

what Quintus was trying to tell the future? The letters were slightly smaller and neater than those of Quintus in the
mockup scroll lying open beside it. Vitellan decided that this should remain his own private secret until he knew more
about this century and his own place in it. After another half-dozen reruns and pauses Vitellan finally continued on to
where the guide was speaking again.

"We shall never know exactly what happened as the
Nemesis
sank off the coast of Antarctica," she explained. "Perhaps
Decius managed to drag Quintus aboard his raft, but the mason died, probably of exposure. When he reached the shore
Decius placed his body in a depression on the beach and covered it with the raft.

"Nothing of Decius was ever found. He evidently set out overland to avenge Helica's death but died before reaching the
time ship. The hovertank BM 895 took both the manuscript and Quintus' mummified body to Jones Base, but within
hours they were caught in an Espanic attack. The hovertank was destroyed with all hands in the fighting. Quintus' body
was lost when the administration bunker o'f the base received a series of direct hits from Espanic percussion-wave
missiles. The
Deciad
manuscript survived, and was smuggled out to Australian lines a few days later. It contained enough
clues to allow the time ship to be located. After the final treaty to end the war was signed, the Australians sent an
expedition to find the site. As ^ou know, the time ship has proved fascinating to tourists, being the greatest archeological
find since the tomb of Tutankhamen. It had to be developed quickly as an international museum."
Leaving the group at the exhibits for a moment, the guide returned her copy of the
Deciad
to the lectern. The tourists
spent a lot more time with the exhibits, now that the end of the
Deciad
was fresh in their minds. People were nodding
and pointing, and Vitellan could even hear snatches of very strangely pronounced Latin in the conversations. After an
appropriate interval the guide called for their attention.

"If you will follow me into the elevator now, we shall have a tour of the parts of the time ship open to the public."
The elevator was large and broad, the size of a small room. It descended, then opened into a low-roofed chamber
cut out of the rock. Half of it was partitioned off by a double wall of thick glass. Beyond this a tall, well-proportioned man
lay on a couch, naked under the fluorescent lights. Beside the couch was a complicated mechanism connected to several
vats of liquid and the shutters of two ventilation shafts.

"There are three other rooms like this," said the guide. "The people in them were to awake first, then revive the others
manually."

"Why have four rooms?" asked the veteran.

"Multiple redundant systems, like the early spacecraft had. The mechanism in one room has in fact failed because of
slow corrosion, but the other three would have functioned properly."

"When?"

"About twenty years from now."

There was a murmur of astonishment. Vitellan wondered what the reaction of the world would have been if the time
travelers had revived themselves.

"The timer works by the liquid properties of cold pitch. Pitch is actually a liquid, but flows very slowly if the temperature
is lowered to the point that is needed for suspended animation. The designer calculated that after a few centuries enough
pitch would drip through a broad funnel to trip a balance arm. That would in turn trigger mechanisms to seal off the cold
air vents and start a chemical reaction to ignite a separate vat of pitch and heat the place. The ice encasing the man on
the couch would melt, and the spring-and-wax clamps that had kept water out of his lungs while he was being frozen
would pop off his nose and mouth. After a measured period, when the body was warm enough, a series of three hundred
lead balls would roll down a race. They would strike his chest at about one-second intervals and were meant to start his
heart. A second race with heavier balls was meant to work his lungs."

"And they expected this wacky contraption to work?" asked the tourist from New York.

"Actually, it probably would. A chemical analogue of the Romans' elixir had already been synthesized from the body
of the Durvas time traveler, so a team in Berkeley conducted experiments using monkeys in a scaled-down version of
this type of mechanism. One out of four were revived by the mechanism alone. The Romans had a fighting chance." "So
what does the elixir do?"

"Their bodies are preserved from decay by the cold, but they are not frozen solid—ice formation within individual cells
would damage their bodies' tissues. They used a type of antifreeze derived from snow-dwelling insects to get around this
problem, so that in theory they could stay frozen forever. In practice, natural radioactivity from their own bodies and the
surrounding rocks would slowly damage the DNA of their cells, and after several thousand years of accumulated damage
the person would die of cancer soon after being revived. At worst, the symptoms would resemble a massive radiation
overdose. They could not have known about radioactivity, however, and were just lucky to have chosen a safe period."

"Hey, wait a minute! That one there—"

"Rentian."

"Whoever he is, he's not frozen in ice."

"It's good that you spotted it, a surprising number of people don't. Look closely, everyone. There's a thin film of thermal
pump gel, layered and molded to his skin. First, it makes his body more accessible to scientists doing scans and taking
samples; second, it keeps him as stable as ice would in the chamber's freezing air; third, it makes it easier for you to see
him than if he were in a block of ice. Now step this way and you can see the real thing."
The group proceeded to the dormitory chambers where most of the sleepers were on display but still in blocks of ice.
Over a dozen spaces were ominously empty, and the guide said that there was evidence of fighting among the time
travelers after Decius had left. Very significant, Vitellan thought to himself. Other chambers held clothing, food,
weapons, and instruments. Everything was well preserved and ready for use; there was even a small prefabricated ship. A
model of the assembled ship stood before it. Now the group began to break up, and people wandered off to examine what
interested them most.

One of the classics students tried to start up an argument

with the guide about her use of "elixir" instead of "philter" in her translation of the
Deciad.

" 'Elixir' is a word associated with alchemy, it has a European medieval origin," he insisted earnestly.

"English has a European medieval origin as well," replied the guide.

The veteran spoke next. "I still don't see why we have to keep them frozen," he said. "I mean I've heard all that guff
about them starting cults and causing trouble like Bonhomme did when he was unfrozen, but I can't believe that a bunch
of folk over eighteen hundred years old could take over the world."

"You may be right," said the guide, "but we want to be sure. The revival timer will click over in about twenty years, and
the Deciad Management Trust Committee has decided to postpone revival until then. After all, it conforms with their
original plans. In the meantime we have yet another frozen time traveler to observe when he is revived. The city of
Durvas in England has that time traveler claimed to be a Roman who was awake for two years in the fourteenth century.
I actually saw his body when it was on display in the British Museum in 2016. He was due to be unfrozen in 2054

according to Durvas tradition, but the revival has now been brought forward to later this year. Radiocarbon microcore
samples of his tissues verify the body's age, so he must be as genuine as Bonhomme or any of these bodies here. If
he

turns out to be less trouble than Bonhomme, then we shall definitely revive these Romans early as well."
The veteran pointed to the niodel of the ship. "Just imagine if we hadn't found this place. Twenty years from now the
Gods of Romulus might have revived and sailed that proto-schooner into Sydney harbor by themselves."

"It's one of my favorite fantasies," the guide replied, cocking her head to one side and folding her arms, "except that
they go to Valparaiso for me."

The vid tour ended, and a list of credits scrolled up the wallscreen. To his surprise Vitellan found that the tourists were
all actors, and only Gina Rossi was what she was portrayed as: a tour guide. The entire thing, all the spontaneity,
everything had been a show.

As bedtime entertainment Lucel could not have made a worse recommendation than the vid. Images of the Deciad
Museum and readings from the
Deciad
cascaded through Vitellan's mind all night, and he had questions that nobody in
this century was even capable of asking. Answers were, of course, well beyond hope. Vitellan could not fall asleep, and
eventually he gave up. Looking for uncomplicated distraction, he accessed the full text of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury

Tales
from a datafarm and lay reading from the wallscreen until dawn.

Lucel's hologram-face was neutral as Vitellan spoke to her the next day. She listened to his impressions of the vid with
interest, and was able to field his questions with unexpected authority.

"I've done some research on that first expedition, and I found out that a conscript classics tutor named Max Kerrin was
shown the
Deciad
manuscript after it was smuggled out of the Jones Base. He even did a rough translation to assess its
worth."

"And the crew of the hovertank?" asked Vitellan. "Did they speak to anyone on the base about their find? Did they even
know what they had found?"

"Of course not, none of them knew Latin and they were not archeologists. They probably thought that they had found
some modern Espanic wreckage, and that the manuscript might have been coded intelligence. That's why it was
smuggled out after the base fell."

"And is anything known of Quintus' body?"

"Nobody survived to tell. The fighting for Jones Base was very heavy, and only a few people in the hospital bunker lived
through the first attack. Why are you so interested?"

Vitellan leaned forward, a hand resting on one knee and the other gesturing in the air as if he were conducting the
Orchestral hologram tutor.

"Why? They were the first Romans I've seen for six of my years—or 1,867 of yours, and they made the elixir that allowed
me to travel through time. It's like an orphan suddenly discovering a book about his parents, except that a lot of the
pages have been torn out."