The Centurion's Empire (54 page)

Lucel explained Icekeeper McLaren's role in the whole complex affair, how he had founded the Luministes with Lord
Wallace, stolen billions in research funding, effectively murdered Robert Wallace, and been responsible for countless
other acts of terrorism.

"And all of this so that he could transfer my mind from a dying body into that of Robert Wallace?" asked Vitellan.

"That was apparently his sole motive. He was the most brilliant, resourceful, fanatical, dangerous, and loyal Icekeeper
in the history of Durvas."

"He would have got along well with a man named Gentor, but I—I would not have sanctioned any of what he did for me. I
would rather that my Icekeepers were all like Guy Foxtread."

"The 1358 appointment," said Lucel automatically. "For what it's worth, Icekeeper Gulden is the current appointment,
and he seems to be as steady and reasonable as you could wish."

The holographic face frowned.

"A steady and reasonable Icekeeper? A pious and holy devil would be more believable."
Bonhomme had not arisen on the third day after he had shot himself. Blood congealed and darkened where it had
splattered and spilled. Nobody approached the corpse on his own orders, and the Luministe security guards enforced
those orders strictly. Telecameras showed insects moving about on the exposed tissue, and the eyes of the world watched
as they fed and laid their eggs. Luministe clergy misted insecticide over the corpse, but refused to approach it. After six
days there had been no resurrection, and even the media began to lose interest. After ten days the signs of decay were
embarrassingly obvious, and the Luministe Supreme College of Light met to pronounce on what to do. The crowd in the
Atlanta stadium had dwindled, and the substantial police presence was wound down to a token force. The College
proclaimed that Bonhomme may have meant fifty days, that he had mispronounced "fifty" as "three." The faithful
maintained their vigil. The mayor, coroner, chief of police, and owners of the stadium disagreed. Oddly enough it was a
group of armed sports fans that finally liberated the stadium in a vigilante action that was probably sanctioned from
within the government. There was a brief but bloody exchange of gunfire around the corpse. When the authorities were
finally able to reach the remains of Bonhomme, the decay was fairly advanced—aided by the heat from the powerful
lamps trained down on it. The coroner pronounced him dead by his own hand.

As Bonhomme was being scraped off the stadium floor, Vitellan was discharged from the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He
was unsteady on his feet as he and Lucel strolled hand in hand along the Southbank complex beside the Yarra River
some hours later. It was another hot evening of late summer, and thoughts of how he had strolled there with JiUy/Vanda
only days earlier scuttled back into his mind as fast as he could crush them. The place where her thumbnail-missile had
blasted the jogger had been scrubbed clean, but the marks stood out and people stopped to point as they strolled past.
Lucel had booked them into the penthouse suite of the same hotel whose bar window he had escaped through, and kept
suggesting that he must be getting tired all through the evening.

Vitellan had been sharp with medications and enforced rest, however, and even after two hours of intimacy with Lucel on
the huge circular bed he was still wide awake.

"That was important to me," she said as she lay with an arm draped over him in musky dampness beneath the sheets. "I
want to have a time to remember when you are all mine, even if it's only a day or two."
Vitellan pulled her close, and she clung to him gratefully.

"I don't understand. Why only a day or two?"

"You have a secure Village again, and Icekeeper Gulden can be trusted. You've been exchanging a lot of encrypted traffic
with him, I notice. Do—do you want to return to the ice? There are still twenty-six years to go before you turn two
thousand years old."

"Do
you
want me asleep and frozen?"

"No. Who do you think I am, an Icekeeper?"

Vitellan laughed, and Lucel joined him in spite of her mood.

"I wish to stay awake, perhaps for many years. I should have stayed with your grandmother of twenty-eight generations
ago, but leaving her seemed to be the right thing to do, for her own sake. I want to stay with you now."

"Because I give her back to you?" whispered Lucel, pressing her head against his.

"Because you give love back to me, Lucel."

"Love. I'm a lot to put up with for just love."

"Peace, too, belonging, companionship, a friend, a worthy opponent, a teacher—"

"A lover who doesn't bite?"

"That too. To me, I'm back in the summer of 1358 in France, lying in a castle bedchamber, but this time there is no
reason to flee. I really do want to stay with you."

They were up at dawn the next morning, but they stayed in the spa bath for an hour before having an early breakfast
sent up to the suite. The current fashion in leisure wear was cutaway designs over tinted UV bodygauze, but they were
both carrying scars that would attract stares, so they opted for white aircell tracksuits.

"We look odd, young heads on old fashions," Lucel remarked as they waited for a tram beside Princess Bridge.

"If I wore the appropriate fashion, I'd be in a toga and sandals," Vitellan reminded her.
Melbourne's center was an enormous pedestrian mall, patched with lawn, fountains, gardens, and sculptures. In a
bizarre reversal of its former role, the central business district had become an exclusive residential and tourist area,
from which people commuted or telecommuted to work. People ate out, more often than not, and restaurants were
everywhere. Vitellan paused before Deciad Grills, noting that it was open for business, and that the owner's name was
Greek. Inside, it was fitted out in molded fiberglass to resemble the interior of the Temporian time ship. The symbol
from the Quintus scroll was above the door and on every menu.

"Have you ever wondered about this?" Vitellan asked as he and Lucel sat waiting for their coffee to arrive.

"Symbols from the
Deciad
cover of Quintus. You mentioned it back in LA."

"An ancient mason's code, you would call it a triangula-tion. One point is the symbol for mason, another is the symbol
for tunnel. They are each at the points of a set of dividers."

"Quintus and the Temporian time ship. Only two points for a triangulation?"

"It's a riddle, like the symbols over the door to my Frigidarium. A grave without a corpse, and a corpse without a grave.
Rufus, my mason of the first century, explained it to me. The Frigidarium is not a grave nor was my body a corpse. The
riddle is that I was still alive, although buried."

"And there is a 'riddle' here, too?"

"Yes."

"The sides of the triangle are not defined, only the base," she said, stroking her chin. "What do we have for the third
point?"

"The hinge of the dividers. Remember, the Temporian time ship had fifteen more cells for frozen bodies than
occupants."

"There were divisions among them, there is evidence of fighting within the chambers," said Lucel, still unconcerned
rather than puzzled. "Some must have died and been dumped into the sea for the seals and skuas to eat."

"Without the hinge, the dividers are useless. Without Decius, what are the Temporians? The time ship is built like a
fort, it cannot be entered without proper tools. Suppose Decius had returned to find fifteen of his supporters expelled,
huddled outside and slowly freezing to death. They had all drunk the Oil of Frosts, they could all be frozen and revived.
There is a small range of mountains at the hinge-point: some of the ice there may be nonglacial and suitable for
preserving bodies. Decius might have returned to the raft to scratch these symbols on the Quintus scroll's casing, then
led his people inland to scrape out—"

"A time ship!" exclaimed Lucel, immediately wide-eyed. "Another Temporian time ship!"
Vitellan put a finger to his lips as a waiter arrived with their coffees. He was wearing a cotton toga, which was admirably
suited to the Melbourne summer.

"Have you ever been to the time ship?" Vitellan asked him.

"No, but the owner has. He renamed this place Deciad Grills last year after he got back from Antarctica." "Nice decor,"
remarked Lucel.

"Yeah, it gets the crowds in, but I hope he lets us wear suits instead of these bloody togas in winter."
When he was gone Lucel stabbed at the
Deciad
symbol urgently and lowered her voice.

"We'll have to check this at once, Vitellan," said Lucel urgently. "At least some of those Romans may have survived."

"I told Durvas some days ago, over the telepresence net. They are planning a joint expedition with the Mawson
Institute."

"You told everyone but me?" exclaimed Lucel. The waiter looked around, then hastily returned to folding paper
napkins.

"Lucel, Lucel, please," said Vitellan soothingly. "I have been looking forward to a few quiet days with you for so very
long. Last night we talked about each other and our plans and love for hours. If you had known about the second
Temporian time ship, could you have talked about anything else?"

Lucel drew a deep, sharp breath, then gulped a mouthful of coffee.

"Yes, I see. Sensible." Her words were remote, neutral.

Vitellan put a hand on her cheek, then looked into her eyes and kissed her. The change is there, I can see it, he thought
sadly to himself.

A n t a r c t i c a : 9 M a r c h 2 0 2 9 , A n n o D o m i n i

Antarctica was still a rugged place for tourists to visit. Lucel and Vitellan dashed from the SOMS through a snowstorm
to a waiting ice-transit, and from there the journey to the Hotel Temporian took longer than the suborbital flight from
Australia to Antarctica. They spent the period that was designated night in the hotel, although Lucel wanted to go
straight out to the excavation site.

"Neither of us are archeologists," said Vitellan wearily as he lay sprawled across the bed, still wearing insulatives.

"I don't trust the Luministes, you know what they did to the Temporians in the original time ship," Lucel said sharply as
she paced the green carpet. "We'll have to be on guard this time."

"No bodies have been found as yet, so there is nothing to guard," grumbled Vitellan. "When we have something to look
at, then we go there. Agreed?"

They slept badly. Lucel was restless, and she kept Vitellan awake for much of the time. By the breakfast call there was
word from the excavation site that promising ultrasound profiles had been detected, but excavation would take at least
five hours more. Vitellan suggested a tour of the Temporian time ship.

"I don't believe you, Vitellan!" muttered Lucel, grating her teeth and shredding her napkin. "These people have
traveled sixteen centuries. They're Romans like you, yet you don't seem to care!"

"I care," said Vitellan with a disarming shrug. "When they are revived I want to be there, but just now they are frozen
bodies, and that's nothing new for me. I've been one myself for long enough."

Lucel and Vitellan did not take the official tour of the museum, but went straight down to the caverns of the time ship
itself. There were no others down there as they walked the ancient passages. It was better presented than Vitellan
remembered from his virtual tour, but that card had been made many months ago. As the designer of another time ship,
Vitellan took a keen interest in the technology. Lucel remained a curious mixture of boredom and nervous energy.
Vitellan paid particular attention to the frozen, murdered bodies.

"The evidence of the intrusion has been cleaned up," Lucel explained as Vitellan bent over to examine the ice in which
one of the bodies lay. "The holes in the ice Gina Rossi drilled have been filled. The damage that she did is all within
their brains."

"Considerate of her to leave them as good museum exhibits," said Vitellan as he straightened.
They took the elevator back up to the museum and went to the coffee shop. A panoramic window looked out over the
frozen sea, and everything was still and crisp.

"The weather's good, that will help the diggers," said Lucel as they sat drinking their coffee.
Vitellan agreed, then looked across at a group photograph on the wall. He noted the date, and that it was of the museum
staff. A case with one of the frozen Temporians was the centerpiece of the photograph.

"Is Gina there?" asked Vitellan, pointing to the wall. "I think I remember her from the vid, the one near the center."

"Ah, yes, the one standing to the left of the case."

Vitellan stared at the photograph, then nodded slowly.

"Of course, I have—"

"Just a moment!" exclaimed Lucel, suddenly staring at something on her dataspex. "They've found them! All together,
seventeen Temporians. They're separating and extracting them now!"

Lucel already had a tiltfan fitted out and ready for the flight inland. Vitellan went with her to the hangars and sat
patiently in the observer's seat while she hurried through the preflight check, then began bringing the motors up to
operational temperature.