The Fourth Rome Read online

  The last man was moving backward into the craft when a Soviet missile entered the picture, its trajectory enhanced by a computer graphic of linked oblongs. The missile struck the craft.

  A rolling blossom of white engulfed the scene. The screen went blank.

  Zotov barked commands in Russian. The technicians ran the tape again, this time using their mouse pointer to freeze frames and show the approach of the Soviet missile in slow-motion.

  “What was that you used?” Grainger asked. His tongue seemed swollen. Those men with the strange weapons weren’t ARC Riders. Wrong uniforms. Wrong technology. That wasn’t a TC of any manufacture familiar to Grainger. It was bigger, for one thing. Clearly more advanced, for another. And yet it had been taken out by a Soviet missile …

  “Missile? Was … a Tsyklon-class missile.”

  “I mean, what was the explosive?”

  “Nuclear,” Matsak said flatly.

  “Christ…” It had never occurred to him that the Soviets would use a nuke on one of their own towns. “So nothing’s left? Of the craft, I mean?”

  “So sorry, say me again?” Matsak asked.

  Zotov was watching him closely, a triumphant smile on his face that Grainger didn’t understand at first.

  “I asked if you destroyed the craft totally.”

  Now Zotov spoke, first in a barrage of Russian, then in slow English: “This is evidence. I have … pieces. Artifacts. I have my … group. We have engineered from this … piece … some interesting technology.”

  “I bet you have,” Grainger muttered. “Can I see what you’ve got? What you’ve done?” He was on his feet now.

  No Russian said anything immediately. Zotov was staring at Matsak and Matsak was appraising Grainger’s reaction.

  Grainger said slowly, “Sasha, you were right. This is very exciting. Please begin an arrangement with Academician Zotov on our behalf. Let’s go to contract. Whatever it takes to get on with our evaluation.”

  The two senior Russians went off into a corner.

  Grainger called out to them, “Can I see the tape again?”

  From their huddle, both Zotov and Matsak gave obviously conflicting orders to the technicians. Eventually, an agreement was struck and the tape rolled again.

  This time, Grainger saw many small details that indicated differences between this craft and the TCs of his era. By the time the tape had spooled through, he was sure he was looking at a vehicle from Up The Line—from the far future, not from any distant planet.

  Damn.

  And the Russians had the wreckage. Obviously, Barthuli had intuited something. But what had the guys from Up The Line been doing? Their mission had obviously been to take three youngsters, kids too young and powerless to be revisionists. Why abduct youngsters?

  He wasn’t allowed to see the tape a fourth time.

  “Later,” Matsak told him when he asked. “A copy will be made for you. Now, you and Academician Zotov will examine the equipment—both what has been found and what has been created. I will need your small payment. You will come with me outside now …”

  Outside the room, Grainger leaned against the rough plastered wall. “You knew exactly what I wanted, didn’t you? Where it was.”

  “Then it is interesting for you?” Matsak wanted to negotiate.

  Grainger unshouldered his gearbag. “How much do we need to give Zotov to get to the next level?”

  “How much do you have with you?”

  No use playing games. “About nine thousand. This isn’t my money. I can’t just give it to you without getting something in return.”

  “So you will give me one thousand. I will give the small “ amount to Zotov now, but not where the robotniki”—workers—“can see. We will proceed to the next phase. When we give you the tape copy, you will give one more thousand of dollars.”

  “If I need more cash than what I brought, I’ve got to go back to Moscow—involve the others. If we make a deal, the whole thing’s yours as a good faith payment.”

  “For now, this much dollars is adequate.”

  If the money had been real, Grainger might have been more cautious. Maybe not. He needed to use the greed factor as motivation. He had to see what lay behind the curtain that no one had wanted him to get near.

  When Zotov joined them in the hallway, Matsak gave him the money. It was as slick a transfer as Grainger had ever seen. “I want that tape. I need to see it again.”

  Too bad the tape quality wasn’t better. But then, considering that the whole area had been nuked, the Soviet-era Russians who’d put that surveillance equipment in that town square were lucky they had anything at all.

  “Soon enough. But first, you will see our science. And our … artifacts.” Zotov’s infusion of dollars seemed to have further improved his English.

  “Great. When did this event happen?”

  “On fifth of August, 1989,” Matsak said, guiding Grainger back into the lab. Zotov had disappeared, probably to hide his dollars.

  Grainger hadn’t expected to get a date that specific from Matsak. It shocked him into silence. Did Matsak know why he’d asked? What he was? Why he was here?

  They had to wait for Zotov to return before the curtain was pulled back.

  Matsak’s disturbing eyes stayed on him the whole time. The technicians smoked. Matsak smoked. Even Grainger smoked. Several times, Grainger tried to make conversation. Matsak would just shake his head. The tape remained frozen at the point of the nuclear explosion, no matter how he tried to convince Matsak to let him see it again. He was beginning to wonder if it might be a fake, since they wouldn’t let him look at it closely.

  When Zotov returned, the academician clapped his hands and one of the technicians pulled back the curtains manually.

  Nearly half of the craft from Up The Line was shoehorned into the workbay beyond the glass. It was shiny in places, black and charred in others. Whole sections were slagged, incomprehensible, melted and fused. In front of it, Russian-style workbenches sat, filled with rudimentary test equipment.

  “You would like to see this more closely? Then you will need to wear protective clothing.”

  Getting revisionists out of Moscow to 50K was one thing. Getting better than half of a temporal capsule from Up The Line out of here was going to be much harder. Maybe impossible.

  “I believe it’s real,” Grainger said flatly. He wasn’t looking forward to examining the radioactive wreckage in 20th-century protective clothing, antiradiation shot or no antiradiation shot. It was bad enough that he’d ingested food and drink prepared in this building and served directly above their heads. “I’ll examine it closely later. I’m more interested in what you learned from it. What you made from what you learned.” He looked first at Matsak and then at Zotov. “Can I see your own setup? I need to know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.” And for whom. He already knew why. “That’s why I’m here,” he said softly. “And that’s why Matsak is here with me—to make sure I see it.”

  Tim Grainger was nearly faint. His hands were shaking with adrenaline he had no way to use. Nobody from the ARC Riders had ever gotten even this close to what lay Up The Line. Radiation sickness makes you feel faint at first. He had to limit his exposure here to the really critical elements of what he needed to know.

  How had those guys Up The Line failed to realize that the Soviet Union, circa 1989, would nuke any encroaching threat?

  And who was in control of this technology that the Russians had cobbled together out of the capsule’s wreckage, besides Zotov? Who knew, besides Matsak? How the hell did three young, powerless Russian peasants fit into the picture?

  And why had Matsak decided to show any of this to Grainger?

  Zotov said, “Do not be impatient. We have all the proper authority.” His eyes flicked to Matsak.

  Matsak said, “The Tim is ready to see your genius, Igor. Let us agree that we have the good basis for cooperation and go to the next phase now.”

  Grainger would have agre
ed to anything about then, in order to see whatever it was the Russians had created from this wreckage—whatever allowed them to send people through time in a whole new way. Especially if doing so got him out of such close proximity to the radioactive proof before him that the Wise Ones from Up The Line were capable of making mistakes just like anyone else.

  Bad mistakes.

  He had to find out everything he could in Obninsk and get back to Moscow, fast.

  Seven Kilometers East of the Hase River, Free Germany

  August 26, 9 AD

  Gerd mumbled.

  “Pauli, I think he’s coming out of it!” Rebecca Carnes said. She pressed a transparent patch to the side of the analyst’s neck. Gerd grimaced. He tried to raise his hand, probably to brush away the contact, though his eyes remained closed.

  “Want us to stop, girlie?” Flaccus asked from just behind Rebecca. She walked beside the litter, and he was on the back end of the nearer pole.

  “We’ll be at the campsite anytime now,” said Hordius, clerk of the 1st Company, 3d Cohort, 17th Legion. “We may as well keep going.”

  He looked at the sky and added with a scowl, “We’re going to have a bitch of a storm soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow. And fucking early in the year for it, too.”

  Hordius had been noncom of the guard when the ARC Riders entered Aliso. A palmful of gold coins had made Hordius and the squad he’d commanded that day more than willing to improvise a litter for Gerd. The legionaries believed the ’slave’ had been injured saving his master’s life; otherwise they’d have been amazed at Pauli’s extravagance.

  Gerd lay on half the squad’s leather tent, unloaded from a baggage wagon and wrapped around the tent poles. The combination made a better stretcher than the poncho liner and pair of rifles Rebecca was used to. With eight legionaries on the poles, the analyst was as safe and probably as comfortable as Varus in his ornate litter.

  Pauli Weigand reined back the horse he’d bought from a tribune. He rode slightly ahead of the litter bearers, regularly stepping into the forest. There he pulled down his faceshield to scan for dangers the army ignored as Varus drove deeper into territory the governor—but not the Germans—thought had been conquered.

  “I was starting to worry,” Pauli said. He sat his mount with a certain stiffness himself. Despite Rebecca’s protests, he’d done his usual set of flexibility exercises when he got up this morning. His face had been white and clammy when he finished them, but he had finished. Pauli believed against reason that pain was a challenge, not a warning, and he was afraid to back down from it.

  “He’s been doing fine,” Rebecca said. She’d been worried, too, but on general principles. “Since I was able to sedate him, Gerd wasn’t able to strain himself with manly nonsense.”

  “Home sweet home,” Hordius said as the litter entered a natural clearing being expanded by the efforts of legionaries from the front of the column. Axes rang. Gangs of soldiers shouted in cadence as they dragged fallen trees deeper into the forest to get them out of the way.

  As usual, there was no attempt to palisade the camp. Varus didn’t give the orders, and soldiers tired from a hard march and roadcutting wouldn’t volunteer for extra labor even if they thought their lives depended on it. Rebecca’d seen the result often, men who’d been wounded because they were too tired to dig in though they knew they’d be attacked during the night. Soldiering was a fatalistic profession.

  And these legionaries didn’t believe their enemy was any threat. They were more worried about the rain.

  Rebecca leaned close to read the monitor she’d attached to the analyst’s neck. Gerd’s vital signs were all within normal range, and brain activity was rising quickly as the sedative wore off. She’d injected a twenty-four-hour dose metered to Gerd’s body weight and metabolism, but it was always a marvel to her that 26th-century medicine worked with the regularity of a light switch.

  The day before she’d applied first aid while the bellowing Germans checked their wounds and legionaries came up the road at the double, summoned by the clang of weapons. Nobody paid her any attention.

  She’d covered the pressure cut in Gerd’s scalp with first a topical knitting agent, then a liquid bandage that set like clear latex and would dissolve as the flesh beneath it healed. The sedative came next, followed by a transcutaneous patch at the back of Gerd’s neck to dissolve the blood clots that’d be forming on the brain. He’d been slugged with either a club or the flat of a sword whose edge he’d managed to dodge. His skull wasn’t fractured, but the blow had given him both a primary and a contra-cu concussion.

  All in ninety seconds, working in near darkness. A 20th-century emergency room couldn’t have done as much.

  But neither could Pauli nor Gerd have done as much if they’d been working on Rebecca Carnes. Technology was wonderful, but it wasn’t magic and it still left room for experience.

  Dealing with Pauli had been more difficult simply because he wasn’t unconscious. He kept insisting that he was fine and that he needed to go after the surviving revisionist immediately. He maybe could have walked—he was as tough as he was stubborn—but he couldn’t ride and he certainly couldn’t fight. Istvan still had his Skorpion. Another burst was likely to send splinters of weakened ribs through Pauli’s lungs even if the bullets themselves didn’t penetrate, and Istvan might go for a head shot anyway.

  She’d gotten Pauli’s mail shirt off him by saying she knew it would hurt him too much to raise his arms. Raising his arms had hurt, but he’d done it and Rebecca pulled the fabric of fine steel links off him like a sweater.

  The mail had been driven almost through the leather under-vest in three places. At those points the flesh was swollen and hot to the touch. She’d spread anticlotting agents, topical anesthetic, and—despite Pauli’s objection—a general analgesic that left him too wobbly to walk without help.

  She helped Pauli, and a gold piece brought Gerd back to the camp seated in the arms of a pair of legionaries bemused to be earning two weeks wages for walking a hundred yards.

  They wouldn’t have long to spend the money, but it’d keep them happy for a day or two.

  Rebecca had examined her teammates in better light under the tent the army provided for the emperor’s representative. She’d found and dealt with a cut Pauli’d gotten by falling onto his head. Only then did she go back to the scene of the ambush which the legionaries had put down to an argument between clans of Fritzes.

  The German chiefs and their retainers had ridden away carrying their dead even before the legionaries left. The corpses of the revisionists’ thugs lay where they’d fallen.

  Germans had found Osric alive though unconscious. Sigimer rammed the small end of the club down the man’s throat and into the chest cavity. Rebecca didn’t watch, but she had to pass the body when she searched for signs of Istvan.

  There were none. Pauli hadn’t gotten a clean hit on the man. The revisionist had taken himself and his equipment into the forest when he came to.

  Hannes, the elderly Russian, was dead as Rebecca had expected. No one had noticed his body in the elderberry thicket. There was a froth of blood on his lips. Both his hands were locked on the shaft of the javelin that had plunged in through the top of his breastbone.

  She’d stripped the body of its 20th-centqiry equipment. The radio might be helpful since Istvan and perhaps the unidentified revisionists had similar units. The night-vision goggles weren’t any use to the team, but she didn’t want to leave something anachronistic for future archaeologists to find. The belt of gold coins would be simply weight. No finder on this or a later time horizon was going to learn anything critically important from even a detailed assay.

  Rebecca Carnes belted the Skorpion and its pouch of spare magazines on under her cape. She might not be as lucky the next time her microwave pistol failed her and a life was in the balance. Pauli knew she’d kept the weapon but he hadn’t said anything about it.

  Rebecca had never knowingly killed a human being before.
She’d never even killed a warm-blooded animal. Her heart was cold and she’d see the Russian’s face in nightmares for as long as she lived; but faced with the same choice, she’d make the same decision. She’d rather loathe herself for what she’d become than remember that she’d let a friend die because she was too squeamish to save him.

  Gerd tried to sit up. Rebecca put a hand on his chest to keep him down. “A few minutes more, Gerd,” she said. All they needed was for the analyst to fall off the litter now and break his neck. “You’re still groggy.”

  They entered the clearing. Minutius, the centurion who commanded the 3rd Cohort, was assigning tasks. He saw the litter and nodded. Hordius had made sure the centurion got his share of the gold. 1st Squad was effecitively excused from ordinary tasks to serve the ARC Riders. Pauli’s supposed rank might have gotten similar results, but hard cash cut through a lot of bureaucracy.

  “Rebecca?” Gerd said in a rusty, frightened whisper. “My sensor pack? Do you have it?”

  “I’ve got it safe,” Rebecca said. Gerd had clamped so tight around the little device while he was unconscious that she’d injected a muscle relaxant to pry it from his fingers. “I’ll give it back to you as soon as we’re settled.”

  The team spoke Standard among themselves, completely unintelligible to everyone around them. That didn’t concern the soldiers. A person who spoke Latin, Greek, and perhaps in the eastern provinces Aramaic could travel from one end of the empire to the other; but hundreds of separate languages survived beneath that common umbrella. Two members of the squad spoke Oscan between themselves, and they’d been born within sixty miles of Rome.

  Hordius pushed through the mob to get direction from one of the surveyor’s assistants laying out the campsite. “Right, set it here!” he called, gesturing the litter bearers to a location pegged in the natural clearing. The 17th led the column today; its officers wouldn’t have to contend with tree stumps in the billeting area. “When Gaius Clovis releases you, report to Minutius in fatigue kit.”