The Centurion's Empire (43 page)

As he had done many times in the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Vitellan told the story of who and what he was. For
twenty minutes their side of the conversation was little more than whistles, "In-credible!" and "Hey man!" yet Vitellan
thought that they assimilated the wonder of what he was remarkably well. It was a century of wonders, however, so
perhaps their attitude to yet another wonder should not have been so very surprising. Hall had also lost a lot of his
spontaneity: Vitellan could tell when people were being guarded; he had spent too much time with kings and nobles not
to have learned that.

When he had finished recounting what Lord Wallace had just revealed they became more animated.

"What he told you is downspeak, but it's accurate as far as it goes" was Hall's verdict.

"Are you sure? You said it would take me six years to be made into a stable imprint on another brain."

"Oh yeah, that tech's all well known and understood, but from what my scans show, the imprinting has not been going
on for six years. You began the overlay treatment in around 2025, so that's only three years. Imprint experiments with
capuchin monkeys back in 2020 showed rapid fading to be a problem with big overlays that have not been boosted enough
times to bed down."

"So the me in here is fading," Vitellan said, tapping the side of his head.

"Well, yeah, but very slowly right now. The end will be one big rush, then nothing."
Vitellan shook his head and stared at the. rose-patterned carpet. "It's like the barbarians moving into the old Roman
Empire. They just kept enslaving Roman officials to herd sheep, and pulling down Roman buildings to make their
fortresses until Rome's identity died."

Baker blinked, then nodded vigorously. "Sure, that's just like it. Mr. V., the Wallace guy, is right, you have no real
choice. You either trust him or you fade anyway."

Vitellan did not answer.

"What plans have they got for you?" asked Hall once the silence had stretched uncomfortably long.

"Oh, I'm to be their figurehead leader and provide a focus to take the spotlight away from Bonhomme for a few years.
People are vulnerable to novelty, they always have been. That's what makes Bonhomme dangerously special, and that's
why I have value as a counter against him."

"And if you want to time-travel again, what then?" asked Baker.

"I'll be injected with glycenal-AT4, that's the new name for Oil of Frosts."

"Yeah, I know. My father was on the team that did the analysis," said Baker. "They won the Hotchkins Award for that."

"Your—yet
you
work in a black market gang clinic?"

"Pop still drives a 2007*Toyota and lives in a rented apartment in Durvas. He even became a British citizen to stay on
that research team. He's crazy. I live a whole lot better. Now then, after they freeze you it's off to bed in a vat of
radioac-tively stable liquid nitrogen, right?"

"Yes."

"And that's in the Deep Frigidarium?"

"Temporarily. The Village is planning a new Frigidarium about a mile beneath—well, somewhere hard to reach. It's all
very secret for now, but they plan to market it as a high-security body store in decades to come. One-way time travel has
potential as big business, or so Wallace told me during one of our talks. Thousands of people have been injected with
glycenal-AT4 and had themselves frozen, either to wait for a cure for illness or just see what the next century is like. I'll
just be another one of them."

Vitellan stood up and walked to the wall-window. He stood with his hands behind his back, staring out over the flat,
green cityscape of Houston for a while.

"Could you stabilize my imprint overlay in here?" Vitellan asked without turning.

"We need big iron, and big iron like that is only available to the likes of you in Durvas. SQUID arrays with thousands of
elements, that sort of thing."

"Couldn't you even try?" Vitellan asked.

"Hey there, I can help with what's known and not strictly legal, but real bleeding edge games are not my bag. Durvas is
the only place where they can do what you want."

"Could you at least tell me how much time I have until the fading starts?"

"Yeah, no problem. You should notice dropouts in a week. Little things, like, well, the overlay will not be able to
reference the cyclopedia imprint properly, even though we give your cyclopedia a boost every day. It can't stick with
nothing to stick to. Where was the cyclopedia work done?"

"Moscow."

"Oh yeah? In that case, you could have big dropouts in a day or two. You will be you until the middle of February, but
after that—hey there, I can't really say what it will feel like, a human's never had a total overlay until now."
Vitellan turned to see Baker glance to Hall, who was nodding.

"I need to think things through while I'm still me," said Vitellan, stroking his chin and still savoring the novelty of
being so incredibly close-shaven.

"You don't have much time, man," said Hall.

"That's my business. In the meantime, Lucel is due out of the medical unit today, and she's going to be angry. I was
supposed to give her a line outside, but I didn't."

"Ahhh—but that's cool," said Baker. "Don't you trust her?"

"No. I want her out of here as soon as she can walk. How many weeks until she can do that?"

"Weeks? More like hours. She can get out and get dressed as soon as the cover is raised on her unit."

"Hours!" exclaimed Vitellan. "Impossible. Scars like she has take weeks to heal or they'll tear open."

"Not so. Collagen bonds and braces are holding her muscles and internal organs together, and her skin is bonded with
Dermal Clear over the scars. She'll have to get the internal scaffolding stripped out in a couple of weeks, and she isn't
going to be winning any races for a while, but she will be walking today."

Vitellan sighed with relief that he hoped came across as amazement.

"Before she revives could you put a tracker implant in her and have her movements monitored?" he asked Baker.

"You're payin' the bills, Mr V. Do'you want Durvas told she's still alive?"

"Ah ... no. They don't know who she is anyway, and neither do I."

"Mr V., you sure learned about not trusting people in a hurry."

Faster than you realize, Vitellan thought to himself. Everyone had been lying to him. Hall had been smoothly
contradicting what he had let slip several days ago, Vitellan was sure of it. It had been just after Hall had been probing
the memories beneath Vitellan's imprint overlay, and he had been exclaiming in amazement at what he had seen.
Classy

work and fully stabilized.
Hall had said.

Houston, Texas: 17 December 2028, Anno Domini

"After all the fuck I've done for you and you had to do that to me!" snapped Lucel furiously as she flung her green hos-
pital gown to the floor and snatched a black sportsbra from the couch where Vitellan was sitting.

"You did not trust
me!"
Vitellan retorted. "I asked you for the truth and all you did was hide it from me!"

"I didn't
know
the truth!" she screamed back. "I had a few clues and theories, I would have told you what I knew once I
knew more myself."

"Would have, would have. Words are cheap."

She dressed stiffly, unsteady on her feet as she pulled on her jeans. Vitellan's eyes kept drifting back to the tracery of
scars at her midriff beneath the strips of Dermal Clear.

"Would you mind fucking off, I'm trying to get dressed," she suddenly snarled. Vitellan stood up.

"All right, but you will not see me again. I leave for Durvas tomorrow. I have a lot of imprint therapy to be done there."

"Really? So, after all we've been through, it's bye " She held out her hand. "Just one last warning," she said as they
A

shook hands.

"Yes?"

Her fingers snaked forward and stabbed into a pressure point in his wrist. Pain came as a blue bombflash behind
Vitellan's eyes and he dropped to his knees in shock.

"Trust nobody," said Lucel as she pulled a T-shirt emblazoned with LIBENS VOLENS POTENS over her head.
Lucel discharged herself from the clinic within the half hour. She left through the front entrance, and security cameras
followed her as she walked from the foyer carrying a shoulder bag with the few personal things that came with her. A
gunmetal-blue, roach-profile suncab glided into the field of view, summoned by her call to Transit Southeast. It raised a
wing of solar panels and she stepped into the reclining seat. A moment later she was sealed out of sight.

"The job is to Eastwood, not the airport," the security regulator reported to Baker from his screen.

"Not surprised," replied Baker's hologram head from beside him. "How are her implants?"

"Loud and clear."

"Good. Now I want you to post their code profile to this netboard address."

The. regulator sat back in surprise at the letters suspended before his face. "Foxhound? That's not a clean shop, that's
the undercoat gangs."

"Just do it."

"Okay, okay. Can I patch through to you when the police holos walk in here asking questions?" "That won't happen."
Lucel left the suncab at the Eastwood Mall, a Latino marketplace. The gangs had taken over the district early in the
century, but by 2025 their structures had evolved into warlord-style district councils that provided services and protection,
and even attracted business with their economic stability. The crowds were more exotically dressed than in the condo and
civil areas of town, and there were more weapons being carried openly, yet the incidence of violence was lower than
outsiders realized. A system of truces and alliances kept feuds under control, and what had once been protection money
now amounted to something like municipal rates.

The buildings were poorly maintained although the roads were well swept by the pickers, who also collected the garbage.
The area was like the gangs themselves, surviving on the by-products of society, a remora that neither harmed nor
hindered its host city. Graffiti was left in place, a symbolist newspaper and roadmap on the very buildings themselves. It
was not a culture of polish and shine, although exquisite little gardens and courtyards could be glimpsed occasionally
through half-open gates.

Most of the people that Lucel passed smelled stale, and the cars were filthy: some external authority was restricting the
water supply until a new contract could be agreed to. States within states. There was no mediating body for state/gang
disputes and transactions, so they were settled by barter and embargo like medieval fiefdoms. The world had unified
internationally only to fragment locally.

Lucel passed the headquarters of the area, which was a squat bunker of concrete blocks streaked with oxides. The blocks
were angled upward to deflect the blast of any car

bomb, and there were drop-moats and gardens filled with blocks to prevent any vehicle from reaching the walls. The
windows were narrow and featured heavy blast shutters. At one end was a stained, pitted area the size of a tennis court,
evidence that the bomb-proofing had done its job. Gang-gang confrontations seldom resulted in outright war, but
terrorism was a common method of diplomatic pressure.

The crowds swirled around Lucel, people who were fawning yet assertive, respectful yet intrusive. Some begged for spare
change while others tried to sell credit and goods. Some of the kids waved and pointed their guns at passersby, but both
Lucel and the locals knew better than to flinch or reach for their own weapons: it was only bravado. Lucel was doubly
safe, because nobody tried anything with someone wearing dataspex. You never knew where the images were being
transmitted, or who was storing them.

A beacon at the focus of her dataspex map guided Lucel until she came to a shop front overhung by rust-caked steel
shutters and pulsing electronic warnings to any dataspex sensor within range. Her key interlocked with one of the
transceivers and executed an encryption match, then her visor glowed green with an acceptance. She walked through the
hologram of a door without breaking stride. Nobody greeted her inside; there were only two rows of booths on either side
of a strip of aqua carpet. The color clashed disconcertingly with the flaming red of the booths and the yellow walls and
roof. Shanty decor was always ruled by the use of what was at hand.

Shimmering electric inversion fields warned of which booths were occupied as Lucel made a selection and spoke a code
from memory. The booth sealed itself into a bank-level security mode, then the connection was made. She noted the
lightspeed delay of a satellite link.

"Bonhomme nodal," declared a blank-faced holographic bust that materialized before her.

"FreeView Latin," Lucel replied. "Patch me to Crusader TY03 on my entry code key."
Moments later the holographic face assumed detail. Eager, anxious detail.

"FreeView! It's been a very long time between reports."

"So? Are you giving me a redundancy deal?"