Lost Republic (12 page)

Seen from the road, the Republic was an ordered, prosperous place, primitive by twenty-first-century standards, but not without civilization. As they neared the capital, the buildings got finer and bigger. Near dusk, Silex's command passed a magnificent white temple on a hill overlooking the road. The style was purely Roman, with ornate columns, broad white steps, and robed priests passing in and out carrying offerings from local citizens. Jenny wondered aloud whose temple it was.

“It's a temple of Diana,” Emile said.

From behind him, France said, “How do you know that?”

“By the friezes on the pediment.”

“The who on the what?” asked Julie.

“The carvings under the roof,” Eleanor replied. She hadn't said two words since being chained.

The temple was half a mile away. Everyone could see there were figures carved into the area below the roof peak, but no one could see what they represented—no one but Emile.

“Glad to hear they have freezers,” said Julie. “I sure could go for a cold Coke.”

“‘Friezes,' not ‘freezers,'” Hans said, hobbling along. “It's the wide central section of an entablature, usually decorated with bas-reliefs.”

“Whatever . . .”

They saw things not so beautiful, too. At a crossroads, they passed a dead man hanging from a gibbet. He'd been there awhile. His clothes were in tatters. So was the rest of him. A wooden sign tied to his feet read
Thief-Murderer-Atheist
in crudely daubed letters.

Everyone stared. Silex let the
Carleton
people slow almost to a stop. The lesson of the hanged man was clear.

“They hang people? That's not like the Romans,” Hans observed.

France swallowed. It was hard to do.

“Maybe they are out of crosses,” he muttered.

“I understand the thief and killer part, but why do they call him an atheist?” asked Julie. Looking at the decaying dead man, her face was pale but her voice did not waver.

“‘Unbeliever' is a better way to read the word,” Emile said. He scuffed his feet a little faster, trying to get the others to move along. “He must have denied the gods. That's a crime. Remember what happened to Socrates?”

Jenny didn't know anything about Socrates, whoever he was, but seeing the executed man convinced her she had to escape. Linh wondered how long it would be before someone she knew ended up like that poor man.

Silex barked at the column of
Carleton
people to get moving. The sun was going down. At his urging, the legionnaires began prodding their prisoners along, hurrying them. The pace got to many, particularly the men carrying Mrs. Ellis's litter. Near dusk, one of them tripped on a high cobblestone and sprawled on the road. The front end of the litter hit the pavement, spilling Mrs. Ellis out.

Leigh, last in line of the chained teens, was horrified. He planted his feet to stop his comrades. Shouting for help, he tried to double back to help the old lady. By the time he got enough slack in the chain to reach her, she was up and standing by her fallen helper. The man's ankle was badly twisted. She was fine.

“My God, you're standing!” Leigh gasped.

“What?” Mrs. Ellis looked down at her thin legs. “So I am!”

The others crowded around. Someone asked how long it had been since Mrs. Ellis had stood on her own.

She took a few experimental steps. “Seven years.” She took a couple more. “And I haven't walked unaided in ten!”

“Get moving!” the centurion boomed. The injured man—one of the Irishmen—got a lift from his teammates. Supported on either side, he was able to stand and move.

“Forward!” Silex said. “We sleep in Eternus tonight! The rest of you may sleep with Pluto if you don't get moving!” Julie wondered why he threatened them with a cartoon dog.

The stars were out when they first sighted the walls of the city. They stretched away as far as anyone could see in the growing darkness, gray and indistinct but definitely there. Directly ahead, the road led to a massive fortified gate, which was standing wide open. Torches atop the wall and a bonfire off the road highlighted the scene. Soldiers stood on guard at the gate, stopping everyone entering or leaving.

“My feet hurt,” Julie declared.

“Everything hurts,” said Hans. His knee had swollen after his spill and ached. It painfully disproved a theory he'd been toying with since Mrs. Ellis's amazing recovery. The injuries France and Julie got fighting off their attackers healed almost instantly. Since coming ashore, Mrs. Ellis legs had recovered. So why did his knee hurt so much? Whatever healing agent worked on France, Julie, and the old lady wasn't working on him, or on Mr. Shanahan, the man who wrenched his ankle when he fell.

Silex ordered the column to halt. His men separated themselves and stood to one side while a troop of soldiers from the gatehouse trotted out to take their place. In the interval between, it would have been easy for anyone from the
Carleton
to bolt for freedom. The soldiers were away, and the fires fractured the night, making it easier to hide in. No one moved—the eight teens chained could not, and the rest did not. The
Carleton
people stood quietly gazing at the monumental gate with curiosity, not fear.

With the new guard in place, a Latin officer, younger than Silex, rode out of the gate on a beautiful gray stallion. He gave his name as Antoninus Valerius. To Linh he looked like a statue of some Greek god, with curly golden hair and a smooth, unemotional face.

“Newcomers?” he said to the centurion.

“Yes, optimus.”

“A promising lot?”

“Promising, noble sir.”

Valerius stretched in his stirrups to survey the crowd.

“Why are some chained? Did they give you trouble?”

Silex shrugged. “They gave sign of wanting to run. The irons were a precaution.”

“Take them off.” Silex started to protest, but the noble Valerius silenced him with an upraised finger.

“We must trust the gods to open their eyes,” he said loftily. At that, the centurion clenched his jaw and said nothing.

With hammers and chisels the chains were struck off. Julie swore at the blisters around her ankle. Leigh glanced to both sides of the road, judging how fast he could sprint into the safety of darkness.

Jenny caught his arm. At her glance, he saw archers atop the wall, watching them. He wouldn't get five steps without being riddled with arrows.

“Where do you come from?” Antoninus Valerius asked the
Carleton
people.

Chief Steward Bernardi, looking a bit puzzled, said, “We come from—from—many places. We arrived—by sea.”

“It matters little now. You will soon become citizens of the Republic. Obey and prosper.”

Valerius turned his horse around to lead them into the city. France thought of the hanged man at the crossroads.

Obey and prosper. The unspoken counterpart of that advice: Disobey and die.

Slowly, with exhausted limbs and sore feet, the survivors of the S.S.
Sir Guy Carleton
entered the Eternal City.

France's first impression of the capital of the Republic of Latium was how dark it was. Only a few torches lit the streets. After passing through the fortified gatehouse, they crossed a wide avenue running inside the city wall. Dogs darted out of the shadows and barked at them, only to be driven off by shouting soldiers. Beyond the street were many more or less identical buildings, rising up three or four stories. As they tramped past, France had fleeting glimpses of timber and brick facades, shuttered windows and shop doors. This made sense. In many parts of Europe, the ancient pattern still existed: ground floors were for shops, upper floors were homes.

Jenny saw windows on the upper floors open. Dull orange light shone out, the glow of oil lamps or candles. People were silhouetted by the light while looking down at the strange parade in the street. Some of them called down comments:

“Soldier! Soldier, save one for me!”

“Ha, is the army taking old folks and babies now?”

“More barbarians! Aren't there enough barbarians in Eternus already?”

“I like them when they're new! Limbs of iron and heads of mush!”

And more like that. The leering made her skin crawl. What did they mean, heads of mush?

But oh! It felt good to have those chains off! Jenny longed to run. She hadn't run since the day before the ship ran aground, which was, what, six days ago? Seven? It was hard to remember. It felt like they'd been marooned in this weird place forever.

A young male voice yelled something crude at Julie. She replied in the same vein. At that, a clay pot full of waste hurtled down, smashing a few feet away from her. Some of it got on the legionnaires, who complained loudly to Valerius.

He pointed to a door on his right. “Third floor, that house.”

Yelling battle cries, five soldiers broke down the door and swarmed inside. There was a lot of shouting and a few screams. The column of soldiers and
Carleton
survivors were past the building when they heard a scream louder than the others. A young man with a mop of dark hair, wearing some sort of robe, catapulted out the same window as the chamber pot. He was soon in the same condition as the pot when it hit the pavement. Cheering their victory, the soldiers emerged from the house and ran to rejoin their company. All had bruised and battered faces. One of them spat a few bloody teeth onto the street. But they had won. The fool who threw a chamber pot at them got what was coming to him.

“Why can't you stay out of trouble?” Leigh hissed at his sister's elbow.

“What did I do?” Julie protested.

Was there any point telling her? Leigh sighed and moved on.

They went this way and that through the dark streets, following Antoninus Valerius on his horse. So far the city looked much the same—meandering streets, house blocks, a few market squares. They also saw an occasional temple. Most of these were modest buildings, columned and roofed like little Parthenons, set in their own small squares.

The first few temples they saw were marked by stands of burning torches blazing by the front steps. One sanctuary stood out. It was much larger, more like the temple of Diana they saw in the country, and it stood in a wide plaza, surrounded by a hectare of open ground. The strangest thing about it was it glowed. A soft bluish light surrounded the building. It cast no shadows, but it was bright enough to read a PDD by. There were statues at the corners of the roof and at the peak. After being in the dark so long, seeing a well-lit building was unsettling. It made Linh yearn for the lights of Paris. She slowed then stopped, staring at the distant marble building. Other followed suit.

Valerius bowed his head in passing. So did the soldiers. A few even removed their helmets in respect.

“What's that, the emperor's palace?” Leigh wondered.

Without conferring, everyone looked not to Hans, but to Emile. He smiled and said, “That is the temple of Mercury Illustro, Mercury the Illuminator.”

“Never heard of him,” said Hans. “How do you know what it is?”

“I don't. Just joking.”

Eleanor linked her arm in Linh's and got her moving before the soldiers decided to prod her.

Not long after passing the lit temple, they arrived at the firelit legion camp. They crossed over a bridge (water flowing underneath) and stopped at the neatly finished wooden stockade surrounding the camp. High watchtowers bristling with torches overtopped the wall. Some official-looking men met Valerius at the gate. They consulted privately for a moment, and then the noble Valerius issued crisp orders.

The
Carleton
people were divided again, not by sex this time, but by age. The oldest people, led by Mrs. Ellis and Chief Steward Bernardi, followed a Latin man bearing a blazing brand. Another clerkish-looking fellow led away the middle-aged adults, and a third took charge of those in their twenties and thirties. Kiran Trevedi, the American navy men, and the Irish footballers departed without a word of protest. Mothers and fathers left their children, who waited by themselves and did not cry.

Leigh stayed tense all through the process. He'd seen old movies about the Holocaust, where children and parents were separated like this. It always meant bad things were going to happen. He was ready to join any brawl that started when parents protested, but none did. The entire procedure was less exciting than taking the London Underground. Nobody pushed or shoved, yelled or wept. Leigh found himself standing there, keyed up with no one to fight.

The teens and younger children were a small group, only sixteen of the one hundred fifty survivors. A Latin woman, about thirty, appeared to guide them. She had a plain, pale face. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied in a simple ponytail.

“Children,” she said. “I am Sylvia Alumna. Please follow me.”

“Where are we going?” said Jenny.

“To bed,” the Latin woman said. “It is late.”

To bed in a military camp? What did that mean? Julie looked around for the kind of men who had bothered her before. There were soldiers about, but officers, too, so maybe it was okay.

The Sylvia woman led them to a barnlike barracks, a long single-roomed building with a dirt floor and rows of cots. Some of the cots were already occupied by kid-sized humps covered in scraps of dark blanket. Sylvia Alumna put the girls on one side of the hall and the boys on the other. She pointed out chamber pots and pitchers of fresh water if anyone was thirsty.

“Good night,” she said. “May Somnus guide you to your rest.”

“Somnus?” muttered Leigh.

“The god of sleep,” said Hans.

She left. The young children crawled onto their cots, covered up with blankets, and went to sleep.

Leigh couldn't believe it. He checked the door. No guards. He could see all the way to the torchlit stockade gate. It was wide open.

“We can leave anytime we want!” he declared in a loud whisper to his friends.

“And go where?” France said. “We're in the middle of an armed camp, in the capital city of these people. Where can we go?”

Leigh's shoulders sagged. “Are you all giving up?”

“I'm not,” said Jenny. “But I am going to sleep.”

Hans groaned a bit when he lay down. His knee was throbbing, but lying down helped.

“Sleep sounds good to me.”

“We'll fight 'em tomorrow,” said Julie, yawning.

No one wanted to escape with him? Leigh sat down heavily on his cot. It was just a rectangle of canvas stretched over a wooden frame, but he was so tired, it felt like a zero-G bed in an orbital spa.

“Where the hell are we?” he said, holding his head in his hands. His face was sore from his misadventures.

France lay down and sighed heavily. “Right now, I don't care.” Hans was already gripped by Somnus.

Leigh raised his head. The girls' side of the hall showed nothing but lumpy shapes under blankets, snoozing. The only other person awake was Emile. He sat on his cot on the other side of Hans, gazing curiously at the rafters overhead.

“Hey, chocolate boy, aren't you tired?”

“Yes.”

“Go to sleep, then.”

“This style of architecture is not authentic,” Emile said, sliding his feet onto the cot. “More medieval than Roman.”

“Who cares?” Leigh certainly didn't. He lay down on his side, and though he was stiff with exhaustion, he kept watching Emile until his eyes collapsed shut. The Belgian boy sat on his cot staring at the ceiling for a long time, long after everyone else had succumbed to sleep.

France had odd dreams. He saw a tall figure glowing faintly blue like the temple they saw, walking slowly along the row of cots, eyeing each of them in turn. Someone else followed behind the tall figure, hidden by shadow.

It paused at the foot of France's cot.

“The patterns here are indistinct,” murmured the tall being. The phantom trailing behind said something France didn't make out. “No, let them alone. They have been chosen for other purposes.”

The shadowed figure asked a question. The glowing figure leaned over France, who saw the stranger was very tall, abnor-mally so. He felt the blue aura on his face, like static electricity. It made his skin prickle like the touch of a hundred tiny needles.

“He's awake!” declared the voice quite close to France.

The teen opened his eyes and bolted upright, heart hammering. The barracks was completely dark and empty. Even Emile was sleeping, facedown on his flimsy cot. Breathing fast, France got up and looked around. There was no one like his dream around, but he did detect an odd smell—sharp and bleachy. He had been to his father's manufacturing plant enough times to recognize ozone, which was made when ordinary air was exposed to high-voltage electricity.

Shaking, he went to the nearest chamber pot. It was on the floor below a glassless window. He stood there looking out. Someone was there, looking back at him. The light was poor, but he could see enough to know it was Sylvia Alumna. In the air above her was a slowly turning ball of pale blue fire the size of a basketball . . .

“He's awake.”

France stumbled backward from the window. Was it a dream? Or had he interrupted some kind of nocturnal inspection?

There was so much not right here, but the great flash in the night, the blue glowing ball, and the lighted temple smacked of technology. There were strange forces at work here, things not part of ancient Rome or the modern world France felt so far from.

Cold fingers touched his neck. France yelped and drew away, only to find Linh standing behind him, pallid as a ghost.

“Damn, don't do that!” he gasped.

“Did you see it? The light?” she whispered. France nodded. “What was it?”

“I don't know. Some kind of surveillance device.” Police all over Europe used silent, electrically powered drones to keep watch for terrorists and other criminals. France decided the blue ball of light was a drone of some kind that had flown in the window to examine them while they slept. The figure he thought he saw was just a dream, imposed on the real object hovering over his bed.

He explained his theory to Linh. Instead of being frightened by the idea they were being watched, she actually smiled.

“Thank goodness!” she said. “Surveillance drones I can understand. I was starting to believe we were in the hands of sorcerers!”

She trembled, chilled in short sleeves and bare feet. France took the blanket from his cot and draped it over her shoulders.

“What will you use?” she whispered. “You'll be cold!”

He shrugged and lay down with his back to her.

“Good night.”

She didn't answer, and for a moment nothing happened. Then France felt Linh settle on the edge of his cot. She raised her feet and lay down beside him, drawing the blanket over both of them.

He wanted to say thank you, but the words stuck in his throat. Linh's breathing slowed, became regular, and she went to sleep. Looking up at the rafters, France stayed awake until the last traces of the blue glow outside faded away.