The Fourth Rome Read online

  The technology that powered the TC wasn’t something any ARC Rider understood very well. It was from too far Up The line. But after a few missions, you understood what was sur-vivable and what wasn’t. The longer they stayed out of phase, the harder the TC had to work. The harder the TC had to work, the more chance there’d be a malfunction during displacement.

  It didn’t happen often. But it did happen.

  As team leader, Roebeck was responsible for everybody’s safety. She’d given the order to hang out of phase. If she wanted to sit here for any number of elapsed-time hours, that was up to her. The maneuver should be well within TC 779’s tolerances. The runny whine was just that: a funny whine. An artifact. That was all.

  Chun’s control wands tapped again, summoning an exterior view to the bow screen of the temporal capsule. TC 779 was now hovering placidly out of phase over the Moscow River, a little downstream from the Russian White House. The night around them was starless and a deep, pollution-browned black. They’d phase-locked the TC at a 30-millisecond offset for safety’s sake in an urban, post-industrial venue. The capsule was not only invisible from the river or its banks but also from above or below.

  In its current state, TC 779 provided no resistance to local matter, making it sensor-proof in every domain Russians could monitor. All sensors from this period, active or passive, utilized a surface from which to generate a return, a measurable perturbation, or a change in state.

  Grainger pursued his earlier point from where he’d broken off when the TC’s whine stopped unrelated conversation cold. “My grandpa’s friends used to tell stories about this period—March of ’92,” he reminded the others. He was talking to hide his jitters. Or to forget them. “Russia was the Wild West and the Klondike all rolled into one. And the dollar was king. With dollars, you could buy anything: fissionable materials, weapons systems, scientific patents, whole government departments. The rouble’s in a hyper-inflationary spiral. The average Russian barely had enough food to get through the winter. That food went to people with dollars. Factions of the fledgling government here are fighting internally for control. Those factions want dollars like everybody else. And Russians want new-looking dollars. They don’t like shabby-looking money.”

  “Okay, Tim, you’ve made your point,” Roebeck decided. “If plastic is virtually useless except as ID and the local currency isn’t worth anything, then we’ll take dollars onto the local economy—if Chun thinks making some is doable.” Roebeck looked at Chun for a feasibility estimate.

  “Counterfeit money that looks new in ’92? At least old-looking counterfeit is easy. That means fabricating high-quality currency on the fly.” Chun’s almond eyes narrowed. Heavy black hair shimmered as she bent her head to study her desktop display. Her control wands tapped again.

  The capsule’s wraparound bow screen split. One half showed a US ten-dollar bill circa 1992 as Chun analyzed its constituents. The other half began detailing the fall of a great totalitarian empire and the stumble from its wreckage of an uncertain, defiant democracy.

  Chun’s bowed head raised. “Okay. We can do it. If dollars are what you want, Nan, dollars are what you’ll get. Plan to hover out of phase a few hours longer while we make up reasonable facsimiles of this fancy currency.”

  “Oh, great,” Grainger groaned and glowered at Chun. A 21st-century primitive, Tim Grainger was both claustrophobic and leery of temporal travel. The weird whine that TC 779 had made coming out of displacement hadn’t helped.

  “By the way, how many dollars are we talking about, exactly, Nan?” Chun wanted to know.

  “So how much money do we take, Tim?” Right now, Roe-beck was willing to capitalize on the tension between her team members. Some of that tension was an echo of their last mission. Last time out, the ARC Riders’ targets had been Oriental revisionists. Grainger’s own primitive cultural prejudices had transmuted Chun’s lineage into a reason to question her allegiance to the team and the mission at hand. But then, killers were always racists, and Grainger was a shooter, a killer from one of the most murderous times in Earth’s history: the 21st century. One hundred sixty million souls had been killed in conflict during the 20th century. The 21st doubled that number before it was done—all in the name of freedom, democracy, humanitarian relief, and peacekeeping.

  “How much money do we need?” Tim Grainger pursed thin lips and scratched his stubbled, angular jaw. “Maybe thirty thousand dollars. We’ve got places to go and people to bribe.”

  It was Chun’s turn to groan. Grainger swiveled in his seat. He looked long at her, then at Roebeck. “Just make sure the bills are new-looking and none are higher than hundred-dollar denominations. In those days, the US dollar bought something worldwide. In Russia then, it was the only stable currency.”

  “All this money isn’t going to raise suspicions?” Chun, the senior analyst on this mission, tapped her control wands once more. The screen displayed a photo of a stocky, florid man with a shock of white hair. He was standing on a tank, mouth open and fist clenched. “The US didn’t recognize this man Yeltsin’s government until Christmas Day, 1991. And then only after flagrant diplomatic maneuvers by the US meant to unseat him and reinstate Gorbachev despite Yeltsin’s popularity. Americans can’t be too welcome, currency or not.”

  “Au contraire, mon ami,“ Grainger said, “1992 Russia is full of Americanskis. And other foreigners. Entrepreneurs, spies, scientists, officials from the Koreas, Japan, India, the Arab world, and the NATO countries are crawling all over Moscow buying or stealing technology.” Grainger grinned thinly.

  “So you think we can just buy our way to the revisionists?” Chun scoffed. Her control wands were now tapping constantly. A window appeared in the datastream and began running Russia-related 1992 US State Department message traffic.

  “Maybe. Or at least to the technology,” Grainger answered.

  “Okay, you two,” Roebeck said at last. “That’s enough. This team is about to be up to our hips in end-game 20th-century alligators, whether we like it or not. Chun, get started counterfeiting the currency. I want a final logistical plan by thirteen hundred hours—everything, including where we’re going to stash the capsule safely while we all go sightseeing. I need a safe place to park TC 779 that’s round-the-clock accessible, if we’re all going anywhere. Otherwise I’ll have to leave one of you with the capsule. Right now I’m not sure who I can spare.”

  Chun and Grainger just stared at her. Both specialists were in hot competition for the lead on this mission. It had never occurred to them that all three ARC Riders might not go downrange. Each had all the equipment, all the documentation necessary to be tasked with the field action. Each was uniquely qualified. Neither wanted to be left behind.

  Chun, with her 26th-century double doctorate, was indisputably their technical expert. If the ARC Riders found some new, unknown technology, Chun was their best-qualified evaluator. Leaving her with TC 779 was unthinkable when unknown technology was in question and access windows might be fatally short. But Chun was their least experienced field operator.

  Grainger had an inherent feel for the venue. In his native 21st century, he’d been an expert on Techno Fin de Siècle. His grandfather had been an old Soviet hand, a Cold Warrior. His sawy and his closeness to the period’s cultural mechanics made him the perfect field operator in a venue where human intelligence collection and evaluation on the fly could be the make or break.

  Let them sweat it. She wasn’t going to designate a lead. Not yet. Maybe not at all.

  The only problem with taking them both onto the local horizon was that there’d be nobody on board TC 779. For the duration of their recon, the ARC Riders would have no viable link to ARC Central’s terraflops of archival data. Or to an easy emergency extraction, if it came to cut and run. It was a calculated risk that Roebeck was willing to take, if she heard the right answers from her ops team.

  “I’m waiting,” said Nan Roebeck, “for that real good plan for stashing the TC where it’ll be safe an
d snug and ready whenever we want it.” Setting the capsule to autophase in and out of the space-time continuum on a schedule was an easy matter when the local horizon was populated by techno-primitives on earlier horizons. But here and now, among Russians, discovery of a temporal capsule might lead to technological exposure. Even to reverse engineering. The Russian science community was arguably the best educated and most forward-thinking group of its time. She couldn’t risk even one Russian scientist getting a good look at TC 779. Especially since Russians were already fooling around with the space-time continuum. She wished to hell somebody on her team had even a half-baked theory about how the Russians were doing it.

  But nobody did. And neither of her ARC Riders seemed to have a ready answer as to how to secure TC 779 for the duration, either.

  “Make it an idiot-proof scenario,” Roebeck prodded. “And make it quick. I don’t want to wait too long out of phase here in what, despite all we think we know, might be plain sight. Especially if the revisionists we’re chasing are using different space-time mechanics.”

  Nan Roebeck drummed her nails on the padded bumper of the ship’s command console while, behind the ARC Riders’ heads, the text window faded and the fate of the former Soviet Union unrolled in graphic detail.

  Civil Aliso, Free Germany

  August 23, 9 AD

  The alloys used in twentieth-century tools differ from their first-century equivalents,” Gerd explained.

  Rebecca Carnes grabbed his arm and kept him from taking the next step. The whip of the teamster standing on the seat of his bogged cart whistled back to where it would have taken off the analyst’s nose if he’d continued.

  The whip popped. The bullocks grunted against their yoke and started the cart lurching forward again. The street between the line of civilian settlements and the river wasn’t paved, though a few shopkeepers had placed logs to corduroy the stretch immediately in front of their establishment.

  “Ah!” said Gerd. “Thank you, Rebecca. As I was saying, the alloys are different, so when they’re moved through the Earth’s magnetic field they resonate in identifiable fashions that we can locate.”

  He patted the slung pouch where he kept his sensor. He was linked to the unit by a receiver in the mastoid bone at the base of his ear.

  Three barges full of grain in huge jars proceeded up the river toward the landing on the fort’s northern side. Their masts were stepped, but the breeze was fitful and none had set their sails. The leading barge was drawn by a team of mules plodding in line up the outer edge of the road. Slave gangs pulled the other two.

  “The objects don’t have to be, well, pulsed by an electric current for that to work?” Rebecca said. She’d heard of the technique, but it hadn’t seemed that simple.

  “Oh, no,” Gerd replied. “In your day, yes, because your equipment lacked discrimination.”

  “Oh, right,” Rebecca said. She felt a wash of gloom.

  People hadn’t changed in the five centuries between her time horizon and Gerd’s, not really. Language had, but she’d been adjusted to that as easily as she now spoke dialectical Latin. The 26th century’s state-of-the-art technology was at least as accessible as that of her own day. She could handle a transportation capsule in an adequate if not brilliant fashion; better, at least, than she’d been at the controls of a helicopter the times a pilot had brought her onto the seat beside him when things were slack.

  The reality underlying that technology was still magic whenever her nose got pressed up against it. To Rebecca’s teammates, she was a caveman who’d learned to flick a light switch.

  “Have you ever considered what we mean by knowledge, Rebecca?” Gerd said. She reached for his arm again, but this time the analyst had seen the danger himself. They paused.

  A hulking German bouncer hurled a man out the door of a brothel. He splashed in the mud squarely in front of the Riders. A red-haired woman, naked to the waist, came to the doorway and began screaming abuse.

  Rebecca and Gerd stepped around the victim and walked on. “I understand the use of sensor technology,” the analyst continued, “but I could never build a device like this myself.” He patted his pouch. “And while I could provide a detailed plan of the body of the man lying in the street back there, I wouldn’t know what to do to help his condition.”

  Rebecca smiled. “Pressure cut to the scalp from the bouncer’s club,” she said. “Not serious but it ought to be bandaged. Possible concussion. Keep him quiet and at least get him out of the road so the next wagon doesn’t drive over him. Probable gonorrhea, at least that was the girl’s diagnosis. Unlikely to be a resistant strain since back now there’s no antibiotics.”

  She looked at the companion who’d just proved she wasn’t an ignorant barbarian. “Thanks, Gerd,” she added.

  “I’m not a social person, Rebecca,” Gerd said. “I’m very fortunate that this team provides me with a society despite myself.”

  In the same mild voice he continued, “It’s the next building, the upper floor, I believe. Ah—from the quantities and types of alloy, particularly the tool steel and chrome in pure form, I would guess the objects I located were pistols with plated bores.”

  “Somehow I didn’t expect these revisionists were here to take pictures,” Rebecca said.

  Buildings in the strip outside Aliso were of two distinct types, local and imported Mediterranean styles. The inn Gerd had identified was a Germanic longhouse with stables at one end and living quarters including a loft beneath a high-peaked roof at the other.

  A dozen toughs squatted against the outer wall. There wasn’t a paved stoop, but the overhanging thatch kept rain from turning the ground to mud like the street proper was.

  The men were armed with swords or clubs. They held wooden drinking cups but most of them were empty. Rebecca’s hypnotically implanted language training indicated a broad mix of dialects when they spoke German to one another and to the servant girl entering with a wicker basket of produce.

  These weren’t tribesmen. They were bits various tribes had spat out, men who’d lost their homelands. There were people like them in every war zone. If you were lucky, you could avoid them.

  Rebecca kept wide of the building front to stay clear of the loungers, but one of them squatted beside the narrow doorway. She sent Gerd through ahead of her. As she started to follow, the German stuck his leg across the opening.

  “Not so fast, honey,” he said. He wore a greasy cowhide jerkin, hair side out. His boots were hide cut and strapped over his feet without any real attempt at shaping. “You haven’t paid the toll.”

  The German reached for Rebecca’s crotch. It might have stopped there, but it might not. She wasn’t in a mood to learn, so she kicked the knee of his outstretched leg hard enough that her hobnails bit bone.

  The German bellowed and lurched upright. He grabbed the long sword leaning against the wall, then went slack as a silent pulse from Gerd’s pistol hit the back of his skull like a battering ram.

  The German pitched onto his face in the mud. The half-drawn sword fell beside him. It was rusty and of crude local workmanship.

  Rebecca skipped into the inn’s dim interior.

  She was afraid, for the mission and for herself. As soon as they arrived, the three of them had sent their suits three weeks forward in time so that their displacement mechanisms wouldn’t block the revisionists’ arrival. The empty suits would appear in a grove outside Aliso for a few seconds every three weeks. She, Gerd, and Pauli were on their own until then.

  The upper sections of the longhouse walls pivoted down to provide ventilation and some light, but the openings were largely shaded by the overhang. The straw on the floor hadn’t been changed in a week or more; the remains barely gave texture to the mud. The odor of the animals stabled in the other half of the building was heavy but less unpleasant than the sour smell of the humans on this end.

  Gerd’s left hand held the front of his cape closed over the microwave pistol in the other. Rebecca gripped her own p
istol beneath a similar short traveling cape, but using it openly might cause the very sort of anomalies ARC Riders were tasked to prevent.

  “Landlord!” she shouted as she strode toward the counter separating private from public areas of the single room. “There’s a man hit his head on your door beam!”

  Germans crushed into the inn behind the two Riders. Their angry hurry made the doorposts creak and delayed them while Rebecca and Gerd joined the heavyset man coming out from behind the counter.

  “Hold it right there, Osric!” he shouted to the leading thug in German with a Rhenish accent. His hands were beneath his leather apron.

  “Fuck off, Lothar!” Osric replied. He raised a knobbed club, thumping one of the beams that supported the loft. Rebecca prepared to shoot him and worry about the consequences later.

  Lothar stepped forward, bringing his right hand out in a straight punch to the club-wielder’s face. His fist was wrapped in a bronze-studded leather strap, a professional boxer’s cestus that added several pounds to a punch. He broke the thug’s nose and cheekbone, flinging him backward.

  Other members of the inn staff appeared. A woman advanced with a grinding pin and a pair of cook boys carried turnspits from the central hearth.

  “Which of you dog turds is next?” Lothar said, breathing hard. “Which fucking one?”

  Rebecca guessed the innkeeper was in his late forties; obviously a gladiator who’d retired on his earnings. He might not be the man he once was, but that punch proved he was still a man once.

  “Hey,” muttered one of the thugs. “They knifed Hilderic. You can’t let them—”

  “Well it’s about time somebody knifed him!” cried the woman, waving the stone grinder under the thug’s nose. “All of you out! Out now and stay out. We don’t need your sort in this inn!”

  Two men came down the ladder from the better class of sleeping accommodations in the loft. The first was a big, graying fellow who could possibly have been born on this time horizon. His slight blond companion was certainly a revisionist. Rebecca didn’t need Gerd’s confirming nod as he glanced—even now!—at the sensor in his palm.