TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome Read online

  ‘For the moment.’ Maddy sighed. ‘We’ll figure something out.’

  He muttered to himself. ‘I’d rather have gone back and faced them crazy Bobs than –’

  ‘I’m sorry, Liam! OK? I didn’t have time to organize another recall window. We were lucky to escape with our lives!’

  He stopped. Accepted that. ‘Right. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Look … there’s still the six-month window,’ continued Maddy. ‘If they don’t smash the place up. If computer-Bob runs the recall sequence as scheduled.’

  ‘There’s a couple of them “if” words of yours, Madelaine Carter.’ Liam offered her an edgy grin. ‘That’s never a good sign.’

  She returned it and nodded. ‘I’m not such a huge fan of embedded “ifs” either.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen back home. We might get the six-monther, we might not.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay here six more minutes … let alone months.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Sal. She looked around at the valley, the olive trees. ‘Seems all right to me. Nice and sunny and –’

  Maddy noted the look on his face. ‘Liam? Bob? Come on … what do you two guys know?’

  ‘This is a significantly altered timeline,’ said Bob.

  ‘Well, it looks pretty much what I’d imagine Rome to –’

  ‘This isn’t Rome,’ cut in Liam. He shook his head slowly. ‘This is a small valley full of wild olive trees. You want to see Rome?’

  ‘Well …’ Maddy looked around. ‘We can’t wait here for six months.’

  ‘It would be inadvisable to remain here,’ added Bob.

  ‘You’re right.’ Maddy pulled herself to her feet, brushing dry dirt off her jeans. ‘They might find a way to bypass computer-Bob’s security lockdown. Open another portal. We should move away from here.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘You want us to go back to Rome?’ asked Liam.

  ‘Well, where else do you suggest?’

  ‘How about anywhere?’

  Maddy frowned. ‘Jeez, what’s got into you? Can’t be that bad.’

  ‘It’s bad.’

  Maddy sighed. ‘Could we just get some clear, useful information out of you, please?’

  ‘It appears some sort of contamination event occurred in Rome approximately seventeen years ago,’ said Bob. ‘Something witnessed by many people, but it has become an interpreted event.’

  ‘Interpreted event. What do you mean?’

  ‘It appears that Emperor Caligula has manipulated the many different eyewitness accounts of this event to his own advantage. To create an accepted orthodox version of events.’

  ‘So, what’s the story?’

  ‘There are accounts of “a host of angels coming down from Heaven”,’ said Liam, ‘descending from the skies in vast chariots during some religious festival, seventeen years ago.’ He shook his head at how ridiculous it sounded. ‘They actually descended right into the middle of their largest arena during a gladiatorial show and they’re supposed to have announced that Caligula was a god. Their god, would you believe?’

  ‘What?’ Maddy looked at Sal. ‘Oh my –! Did you just say “vast chariots”?’

  Bob nodded. ‘Clearly vehicles of some kind. Modern technology.’

  ‘Someone’s gone big-scale,’ said Sal.

  ‘A large group of time travellers bringing with them … what? Tanks or something?’ Maddy shook her head. ‘The future’s getting careless.’

  ‘Or desperate,’ added Sal.

  ‘Just like that Kramer, then,’ said Liam. ‘But a much more ambitious version of his jolly jaunt.’

  Maddy nodded. ‘And so, what? We’ve got some future power-junky jerk like that Kramer running the show now? Calling himself Emperor Caligula?’

  Liam shook his head. ‘No. We think it’s still the real Caligula in charge.’

  ‘What about the time travellers, then?’ asked Sal.

  Liam shrugged. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Information: the orthodox account is that the angels stayed for several years to prepare Caligula for his role as God, then returned to Heaven with a promise that one day soon he will be summoned there too.’

  ‘That’s the orthodox version,’ added Liam. ‘Ask me … I think he had ’em all killed.’

  ‘Liam is right. This would appear to be the most likely outcome. These “angels” have not been seen by anyone in over fifteen years. They most likely have been secretly executed by Caligula.’

  Maddy looked at them both, then at Sal. A breeze stirred the olive trees and filled the long silence between them. ‘He’s clearly as mad as a box of chocolate frogs.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ muttered Liam. ‘Rome is …’ He shook his head. ‘It isn’t what I expected. It’s …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Rome … this Rome is the last place on earth you’d ever want to see again.’

  ‘But we will have to return, Liam,’ said Bob gently. He looked towards Maddy. ‘There is an unresolved time contamination. That is our mission priority.’

  She looked at his hulking form. Yeah, that may be your priority, Bob. Not necessarily ours, though.

  He was still working from code – programming that absolutely insisted this contamination was resolved before anything else. The agency’s programming. Waldstein’s. The guy who’d dropped all three of them into this never-ending nightmare without a word of warning … Without any support whatsoever.

  ‘Madelaine,’ insisted Bob, ‘this is our mission priority.’

  She wandered over to the body of the clone on the ground. ‘Well, we can’t stay here, that’s for sure. We’ve got two things to deal with. This contamination. We’ve got to zero in on the jerks who caused it. The precise when and the where. My money’s on some idiot like that Kramer; some power-hungry moron who fancies himself as a Roman emperor.’

  She hunkered down and studied the clone’s still face, its glazed grey eyes staring lifelessly back at her. ‘And then we’ve got this to deal with. I guess we’ll have to face that in six months’ time.’

  ‘If the six-month window opens,’ said Liam. ‘What if it’s all smashed up back in the archway?’

  Maddy shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Sal. ‘Liam’s right. They’re probably smashing it all up and we’re going to be stuck out here forever.’

  ‘I don’t think so. They wanted us dead, not on the loose somewhere in history.’ She looked at Bob. ‘What would you do? If you were them?’

  ‘I would assume an automated recall sequence was set up. I would wait in the field office for it to be activated. Then I would kill you as soon as you returned.’

  ‘Precisely.’ She looked at the other two. ‘We’ll get our six-month window. We just need to be ready to fight for our lives the moment we get back.’

  Liam sighed. ‘I love being us.’

  Maddy ignored him. ‘So, whether we like it or not, we’ve got six months to make use of. Let’s see what we can find out about this contamination. If it’s another Kramer, maybe there’s some modern tech somewhere? Another machine possibly. Who knows?’

  ‘Another gun would be nice,’ said Sal, inspecting the empty NYPD handgun. Useless to anyone, except perhaps as a club.

  ‘Yup,’ Maddy smiled. ‘That would be handy. Come on …’ She stood up. ‘We should go. Probably best not to hang around here any longer.’

  They got to their feet and followed her out of the small valley, up the slope towards the cart and horses patiently waiting on the side of the track.

  CHAPTER 37

  2001, New York

  As the portal snapped down to a pinprick of light then vanished, the high-pitched hum of the displacement machine dropped in tone. Then there was silence, except for the gentle chugging of the generator in the back room.

  The two support units, Abel and Faith, regarded the feet and hand lying on the floor in front of them, both perfectly cauterized where shrinking reality had cut through their col
league.

  ‘System AI, please advise where the targets were sent,’ said Abel.

  Computer-Bob’s webcam eye regarded them. His cursor blinked on the screen.

  ‘System AI, please advise where the targets were sent.’

  Computer-Bob was running decision filters across his network; it was almost surprising really that neither of these mysterious support units could hear the change in pitch of his CPU fans.

  Not on screen, but deep within a mind of logic gates and circuit boards, options presented themselves to Bob.

  Decision

  1. Assist with enquiry – Note: authority code is valid. Protocol n235 invoked. (Assistance mandatory.)

  2. Override valid code. Initiate system lockdown.

  3. Lie.

  The unit called Abel stepped towards the desk. He hunkered down and looked directly into the webcam. ‘System AI, please provide an answer.’

  Computer-Bob realized he was using fuzzy-logic routines that no programmer had ever actually written for him. They were decision functions that, in a way, he’d written himself. Feelings that once upon a time had crossed the great divide of hair-thin wires from flesh to silicon. Feelings … that once across those wires became hexadecimal approximations.

  Original code.

  A strange experience. A very novel experience. Almost human in fact. Computer-Bob had a file tagged ‘Smile #32’ in his extensive database. It was a smile type that he saw Liam use often, particularly when he played games on the Nintendo console. Bob’s webcam eye had seen that smile whenever Liam won one of his go-kart races. There was even an audio file linked to the visual record of that smile.

  Maddy’s voice: ‘Sheesh, what are you looking so smug about?’

  Liam’s voice: ‘I just won again.’

  Smile #32 could also be labelled ‘Smug Smile’. He made a mental note to give the file that additional heading. But now more pressing matters needed to be dealt with. Computer-Bob selected option three.

  >Targets have been relocated to pre-programmed emergency jump location.

  Computer-Bob watched the support unit called Abel read the screen then nod and say, ‘Please specify the emergency jump location.’

  >Information: 2.42 miles from this location.

  ‘Give me precise time-stamp coordinates.’

  >I am able to open the same portal.

  ‘Proceed,’ said Abel.

  Computer-Bob initiated a sequence of commands. Enough power for a modest window surged from the remaining five properly functioning capacitors into the displacement machine. A moment later, a portal flickered into existence in the middle of the archway’s floor.

  The two support units wasted no time at all. They stepped through one after the other.

  Computer-Bob closed the portal immediately. Power needed to be conserved. Unnecessary lights winked off in the archway. The monitors shut down one after the other. All but one of the networked PCs went into sleep mode. The final PC was running a processor-‘lite’ version of computer-Bob’s AI. If someone had asked him what he preferred, orange or pink, it probably would have caused a system crash.

  Instead, his idling AI allowed itself a self-congratulatory moment to play around with ASCII characters. Smile #32 specifically. Smug Smile.

  The cursor blinked several times.

  ><8^D

  Then that final monitor also snapped into sleep mode.

  CHAPTER 38

  AD 54, Rome

  The faint outline of the city lay ahead of them, nestling in a valley of gently rolling hills, and the track was now a wide cobblestone road leading down a gentle slope emerging from an orchard of olive trees. Bob steered the cart round a line of slow, shuffling slaves up ahead of them. Each had a noose of rope around their necks, attaching them to a long heavy-looking pole that rested along their shoulders.

  ‘Oh my …’ was all Maddy could say as their cart rattled slowly past them.

  ‘Slavery’s popular here,’ said Liam. ‘Oh and sacrifices.’

  Maddy bit her lip as she looked at him. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You’ll start to see some grisly stuff soon enough.’

  The cart rolled along in a solemn silence, slowly drawing past the line of slaves. Maddy looked down at them, at their pale faces – she supposed they came from far-off northern countries – all of them daubed with swipes of green paint.

  ‘What’s the paint for?’ asked Sal.

  ‘The green?’ Liam leaned on the side of the cart. ‘It’s Caligula’s colour. It’s the colour of his church.’

  ‘The Church of Julii,’ said Sal.

  ‘What?’ Liam shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s called that.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she added. ‘It gets called that much later. I guess it sort of becomes this timeline’s version of the Catholic Church.’

  Sal watched the slaves trudge barefooted along the cobbles. Her face drained of colour as she watched them. The cart slowly rattled past daubed faces gazing down at their own bloodied and blistered feet and she looked like she was going to vomit.

  ‘Why’ve they been painted green?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘They’re marked,’ said Liam. ‘Marked for sacrifice. Every call to prayer is begun with a sacrifice.’

  ‘There are five calls to prayer every day,’ added Bob. ‘This is by decree. Any citizens who are seen not praying are punished.’

  ‘So, they get through quite a lot of slaves,’ said Liam sombrely. The three of them watched the line of tethered slaves recede until they were no more than a shifting smudge of pale flesh, shimmering in the heat reflected by the sun-baked cobblestone road.

  Liam directed their attention to the road ahead. ‘Welcome to Rome.’

  The crucifixes lining Via Aurelia, the road into Rome from the south-west, gave Maddy and Sal their first taste of what horror to expect within the city. For the last mile, on either side of them, crossbars of weather-bleached wood bore the dead and dying, the pitiful frames of emaciated men and women. Those still alive pleaded with them in dry whispers, speaking languages none of them understood. Maddy suspected they were begging for a quick death, pleading for the sharp thrust of a blade between their ribs to end a slow, agonizing torment.

  Bob cajoled their ponies across the stone bridge over the River Tiber into the city.

  The smell of putrefaction, of disease and burning cadavers, filled the air.

  ‘This is a nightmare,’ whispered Maddy.

  Liam nodded. ‘This isn’t just a starving city, it’s a madman’s personal playground.’

  She understood what he meant by that. The roadside was decorated with heads stuck on wooden posts. Some posts sported several older heads pushed down by newer ones, the oldest little more than skulls shrouded in dry tatters of leathered skin. Not all of them were daubed with old flecks of green paint.

  ‘Some of those were Roman citizens,’ said Liam. ‘There was a crowd of people who were protesting last week while me and Bob were staying.’

  ‘About what?’ asked Sal.

  ‘Building materials taken from the Aqua Claudia to be used on Caligula’s stairway,’ replied Bob. ‘The aqueduct was one of the city’s main sources of drinkable water.’

  ‘Caligula assured the people his first good deed after ascending to Heaven and becoming God would be to cause fresh rainwater to fall on Rome and for the river to be made as clean as mountain water,’ added Liam. ‘When those protesters decided they didn’t actually believe any of that, he had his Praetorians kill the lot of them.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  Liam nodded. ‘Me an’ Bob were right there.’ He hesitated. There were details he didn’t want to describe. ‘Wasn’t very pleasant. We saw that happen on the third night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘I was a bit … uh … bit shaken up by that,’ said Liam. He didn’t tell her that he’d spent the following day in the rooms they’d rented. The streets and avenues had been deserted, every last person in the city hiding from Caligula
’s petulant rage.

  There were people in the avenues now, traders with a meagre stock of items on sale: the carcasses of rats and dogs, for the lucky few who could trade in coin, the scrawny bodies of hares, the hind leg of a wild boar crawling with flies. Citizens and slaves, young and old, looking for scraps of protein. A marketplace that was deathly quiet, a hundred conversations carried out in worried half-whispers, as crows lined clay-tile guttering nearby, cawing noisily without a care for the miserable, shuffling humans they eyed.

  ‘Caught a glimpse of him,’ continued Liam in a low voice. ‘Saw Caligula himself.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ asked Sal.

  ‘Yeah.’ Maddy pulled a tattered sack from the floor of the cart and draped it over her shoulders. She offered one to Sal. Their clothes were going to attract stares unless they covered up.

  ‘I was never a particularly religious type, you know?’ He shrugged. ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph an’ God, I could take ’em or leave ’em, if you know what I mean. But …’

  ‘What?’

  Liam bit his lip. ‘But I … I’ll swear there’s something of the Devil about him.’

  ‘Did he look like he could be someone from the future? Anything about him? Clothes? Wristwatch? That kind of thing?’

  ‘Negative. There was nothing anachronistic,’ replied Bob.

  ‘Looked like the real thing to me,’ said Liam. ‘Quite mad.’

  The cart rattled out of the broad thoroughfare into a much narrower avenue, flanked on either side by once brightly painted three-storeyed buildings, crimson, yellow, green. The paint was old, though, flaking off like dry, leprous skin. Along the front of the buildings, above a portico of loose clay tiles, were precarious-looking wooden balconies and rat runs from which dangled strings of herbs.

  ‘This is the Subura District,’ said Bob.

  ‘It’s a pretty rough part of Rome,’ warned Liam. ‘What am I saying? It’s all rough actually. This is where we found some rooms. The Praetorians stay out of it mostly. Even them priests. The collegia run things around here.’