The Centurion's Empire (39 page)

"Evil had nothing to do with it. It was strategic bombing, . to weaken the enemy overall. They were making munitions
and general supplies for the war effort, so bombing their cities made it easier to defeat their armies."
In spite of his twenty-first-century memory imprints,

Vitellan still had the values of a centurion from the Roman legions. The mass destruction of cities from something as
remote as a flying machine offended him, and there was no escaping the fact.

"The pattern of the bricks and brickwork is familiar," Vitellan said as they walked.

"Oh, it's very much in the Roman style. We couldn't have it any other way, that would never do."
As they were walking along the tunnel something faint but insistent called to Vitellan from within himself. At first he
thought it an imprint malfunction. They were known to happen, and their effect was described as similar to this. He had
something like an itch to think about a memory.

He realized that he was aware of having spoken to Baker, and within the past few seconds. It was a memory without
experience, just like an imprint. He had told him that the results of certain tests on his tissues were ready. Dr. Baker
had also advised him to return to Houston at once.

"The house itself is the old headquarters of the Village as a corporation," Lord Wallace was saying, "but the functional
headquarters of today is wherever the Corporate meets. That's usually at one of the datanode buildings, but this place is
still used for ceremonial occasions. The Corporate has been called to meet here in an hour, and I want to show you over
the place first."

Vitellan stopped and deliberately made to steady himself against the wall. His hand sank in before the orientation
software stopped him and tilted his hologram upright.

"Please, I think I've had enough for now," he said as Lord Wallace turned back. "My real body is tired. Could I come
back here later, just before the meeting with the Corporate?"

"Yes, of course. You are the Durvas Centurion. You can do whatever you want."

Houston, Texas: 11 December 2028, Anno Domini

As easily as waking from a dream, Vitellan was back in Houston. The webbing of the couch parted like tearing cobwebs
as he sat up.

"Baker?" he asked the form before his unfocused eyes.

"Yeah, that's me. I sent a flagged imprint directly to your brain, rather than the sensory access point at your holograph.
That way the message could not be monitored unless someone did a blanket scan."

Vitellan examined the memory of the message that he had neither read nor heard.

"You ... informed me that I am between twenty-four and twenty-six years old," said Vitellan in a flat voice, fighting down
his incredulity.

"That's right."

Again there was a moment of silence, except for the soft rushing of the air conditioning. "How?"

"It's a summary of a lot of little things, such as wear on your teeth. Just for the record, the scans of your teeth confirm
some very classy laser dental work was done on your molars in 2014, 2017, and 2019. There are ceramic fillings with
datable trace radioisotopes mixed in for reference purposes."

Vitellan's jaw dropped to say "Impossible!" but he caught himself in time.

"What were the other tests?"

"Bone joint condition, skin conductivity, a whole bag of cellular tests for mutation, telomere erosion, and the buildup of
trace environmental pollutants such as dioxin."

"I seem to have scars missing from my body. Have I had plastic surgery?"

"Sure, there's evidence of it. Could you tell us where the scars were?"

"Later." Vitellan put his hands together and pressed his fingertips against his lips. He turned to Hall. "Soon I have to
return to the telepresence tour of my Village in Britain. When I get back here from that telepresence session I want a... a
diagnostic scan of my imprints done. Is that the right term?"

"Sure is."

"After that, I want certain locked memories probed directly. I believe that can be done."

"Big bucks," interjected Baker. "You would have to guarantee the Village to underwrite that sort of work."

"I can do that. How long would it take you to set up the equipment?"

"Get the credit for a deep scan and we can be doing it within, say, four days," said Hall.
Durvas, Britain: i I December 2028, Anno Domini

Vitellan's historic meeting with the Village Corporate had not been originally planned as a telepresence event, but while
the Durvas Centurion had demanded that it be held at once, he also refused to leave the safety of Houston until he was
more confident about his own staff. His attitude was quite understandable, given all that had happened to him since his
body had been unfrozen.

So this is what it is to be a ghost, he thought as he materialized in the unfamiliar room. It was a high-ceilinged
anteroom decorated in a vaguely eighteenth-century style, although the furniture ranged from early Georgian tables to a
chunky art deco lounge suite. Vitellan tried to walk, but it was no more effective than treading water.

"Will yourself in the direction you wish to move in, sir," said a software tutor's gentle voice. The sound seemed to
enclose him.

He floated over to a wall, where a gold-leaf strip divided coffee cream painted plaster from red wallpaper. He tried to
reach out—that same mistake again. Before the tutor came* to his aid he extended his sense of touch and felt the
texture of the red velvet wallpaper. Looking carefully, he noted that the velvet did not show the impression of a finger as
he trailed his senses along it.

"What will the Village Corporate see?" he asked on the auditory band.

"A hologram of yourself dressed as you are in Houston, sir."

Vitellan drifted across to a full-length Victorian mirror in i rosewood frame. A fuzzy green sphere about the size of a
melon hung in midair.

"Then why do I look like a green snowball?"

"That is only a position-point hologram, sir. It is for courtesy referencing. Full projection facilities have been installed
in the Corporate room only."

So, I obtain a body only as I enter the room, he realized. I enter clumsily, feel a fool, begin the meeting on the back foot.
He moved forward and extended arm-equivalent force to the door handle. A rubbery resistance barred his way.

'The Village Corporate is not yet ready to see you, sir," the disembodied voice explained with a blend of patience and
regret.

"Inform the Village Corporate that I am to be admitted at once or they can come in here and talk to me as a green
position-point snowball. I am going to count to ten," he added without elaborating.
He reached seven. The door opened of its own accord. Vitellan drifted forward, then found himself abruptly anchored in a
simulation of his body. It had weight characteristics and could not be willed to float like a wisp of smoke. He held up a
hand briefly, as if to satisfy himself with the hologram's quality, then walked forward.
The Village Corporate's boardroom was brightly lit, with spot-lights playing down at the space enclosed by a U-shaped
table of varnished oak. Each member's place was encrusted with interface studs and navigation pads. There were
seventeen members, and all wore white silk knee-length kimonos over business suits. Although the effect was meant to
be Roman, it came across as a tasteless combination of smoking jacket and laboratory coat. There were six women, and
nobody was under forty, Vitellan noted. Lord Wallace was present as a hologram.

The walls were frescoed with art nouveau images of Durvas history. They featured an early Roman occupation idyll,
Alfred of Wessex fighting the Danes, Durvas bowmen in the Hundred Years War, the great revival in the fifteenth
century, and the Village's rise as an industrial center during the nineteenth century. Vitellan noticed that the trip
through time ended with a Durvas elder shaking hands with a scruffy-looking little man who wore an ill-fitting suit and
top hat, and smoked a cigar. An early wide-gauge steam train was belching smoke in the background. A display case
full of weapons and ice-compacting equipment covered the remaining space.

"The wall is about due for another extension of the mural," Lord Wallace explained, following Vitellan's gaze.
The Corporate remained standing, stiff and uncertain. Vitellan looked to where the usher was beckoning him, a point at
the focus of the U-shaped table. He ignored him and walked toward one of the glass-fronted cabinets.
Upon extending a hand he felt the image stopped at the glass. He made a fist and punched through the glass. Nothing
shattered, but there was about the same resistance as a sheet of paper would have offered. He ran his finger along a
familiar-looking blade. It was hard and cold to the touch. The sensors in the room's projector could apparently scan
through glass.

"I recognize this Saxon half-sword, the one with the two nicks in the blade," he said, almost as if he were talking to
himself.

"A fine and prized relic," Lord Wallace explained, breaking ranks with the others and walking over. "It is said to have
belonged to the Centurion himself—well, I mean . . ."

Vitellan turned, frowning as if trying to recall something in the very distant past. "Yes, I remember using it in the
fighting against the Danes."

That broke the decorum. The rest of the Village Corporate abandoned the table and crowded around to share in this
magical moment of reunion, this confirmation that they had indeed served the Centurion well.

"We had it restored very carefully, Centurion," the Durvas conservator assured him, "but someone had butchered the
blade by grinding it to a more tapering point."

"Ah yes, it was I who modified it," replied Vitellan. "I preferred the balance of a blade with the long, tapering point of
the Roman gladius."

The conservator seemed to shrink before his eyes. Vitellan withdrew his hand and walked his hologram briskly to the
table. The Corporate members hurried back as well, but the hologram Vitellan took a short-cut through the table and sat
down in Lord Wallace's chair. The usher came running

up with a spare chair as the others stood beside their seats. When Lord Wallace's hologram finally sat down the rest took
their seats. There was a welcome speech for the Centurion, delivered by the Corporate herald from a carved oak lectern.
The text read very strangely, having been carefully sculptured and remolded over many centuries by Durvas elders who
had all wished Vitellan to hear
their
words—even though they would not be alive to speak them. After that, Lord Wallace
went to the lectern and read from the
Chronicles of Lew and Guy,
written in the Swiss village of Marlenk in 1359 and
brought back to Durvas a few years later. The reading was from the later pages, and concentrated on the Centurion's
crossing of war-ravaged France and the confrontation with Jacque Bonhomme at Marlenk.

Vitellan frowned during the reading, unsettling those members of the Corporate who noticed. Something was amiss; the
Centurion was displeased.

"That was probably written by the Marlenk priest under direction from Lew and Guy," Vitellan commented as Lord
Wallace finished. "They would not have written about theology and such matters so very fluently."
As the members of the Corporate realized that the frown was for the long-dead, the mood relaxed as palpably as if a
terrorist had placed his machine pistol on the table and raised his hands.

"But Centurion, is it accurate?" asked the Corporate herald, who was sitting up straight with his hands so tightly
clasped that his nails were digging into the skin.

"Accurate but limited. Father Guillaume, Jacque Bonhomme, whatever you call him, he was not the sniveling, cowering
wretch that this chronicle describes. He was proud, charismatic, cunning, and fairly brave."

"But in the final analysis, a medieval priest," said the chronicler. "How could he possibly run a major religious
movement in the twenty-first century, one based on mass media? The chronicle is so specific, Bonhomme was a coward,
an inept leader—"

"Not so. I met him only weeks ago, but in the fourteenth century. / ought to know."
The chronicler still seemed unhappy, but he said no more.

The reality of who Vitellan really was tended to smother his own status as the ultimate authority on the history of
Durvas.

"What else can you tell us, Centurion?" asked the marshal, Anderson.

Jacque Bonhomme and his followers were seldom far from Vitellan's thoughts.

"The Jacques did indeed commit atrocities against the nobles, but not on the scale described by Lew, Guy, or other
contemporary chroniclers such as Froissart. Most Jacques just wanted to eat the nobility's food and loot their houses. If
there were folk weaker than they to victimize, they would do it. I'll not deny that there was a lot of torture, rape, and
murder as well, and none of that was excusable, but most of the Jacques were just yokels grasping for riches and
pleasures. The nobility were not entirely innocent either, but then is anyone?"

"So who
is
Bonhomme?" asked the chronicler.