The Centurion's Empire (52 page)

"The family returned to France in 1858," Lucel whispered as they lay together in the darkness and the unsleeping
rumble of Los Angeles continued outside. "The women of the time organized themselves to return separately, as a secret
pilgrimage. A grandmother, mother, and two daughters started off from Durvas in spring, and rode in a carriage to Dover,
then took a steamboat to Calais. They had an early camera, and I have the pictures in a card in my slacks."

"I'd like to see them . . . tomorrow," mumbled Vitellan dreamily.

"They traveled past Paris, followed the River Marne for a while, and even spent a night in Meaux." "It was burned."

"It's been rebuilt. They stopped at the site of the Hussontal family castle where two of their menfolk had already
returned to buy back parts of the old estate and the ruins of the castle. In early winter the whole family traveled on to
Marlenk in Switzerland for what was supposedly a holiday."

"Have I really been a party to six centuries of simulated adultery?" asked Vitellan.
Lucel rolled on top of him, pinning his arms as if to pre-

vent him from escaping. He could not help but notice how similar her mannerisms were to those of his original Countess
of Hussontal, and he wondered if it was something genetic. With his cyclopedia faded, his knowledge of genetics was
patchy.

"Think of us as the backup infrastructure of your time boat," she said gravely. "As it turned out, you needed a backup."

"Your personal dedication to me begins to make sense now."

"It nearly didn't happen. My mother was a dedicated feminist and never breathed a word of your story to me. She told my
grandmother that she did not want me to be a slave to some sexist tradition of emotional enslavement and that I should
be free to choose my own destiny. My grandmother decided that freedom to choose my destiny included the story of a
frozen man in the Swiss mountains, and a couple of days after 1 got my first Internet account—for. my seventh birthday
as I recall—Grandmama sent me nearly half a megabyte of unsolicited family history that she had typed with her... what
did they call them, word processor I think. Of course I was an unreconstructed romantic even at that tender age, so the
tradition survived yet another generation. I was just a teenager when you were dug out of the Swiss ice and moved back
to England, and ah, but I was thrilled and devastated, all at once. I filed past when your body was on display for a week in
the British museum before being returned to Durvas. You were just a blur in the ice, but it was
you.
I kept buying tickets
and going past with the crowds, I took vids of you time and again. I knew that I might even meet you if I lived to 2054, but
I would be in my sixties by then and probably not very alluring. Perhaps my own daughter might come to love you, but
then my own daughter might turn out like my mother and not give a hoot. I considered not having children, trying to
charm you myself in 2054, yet there would be thirty years between us. Would you want me? Ah, it tore me apart, I was a
very, very romantic young girl.

"When the Luministe cult started I was one of the first to join. You were the only sleeper that they could possibly be
talking about in all that preaching about a prophet from the past, and if I was an important Luministe I would be
important to you when you woke in 2054. Then Bonhomme was discovered, and the Luministes embraced him as their
prophet. I knew the truth about him from the Hussontal traditions, but I was only one voice and nobody would have
listened. Suddenly it dawned on me that you might be revived early to fight yet again with the evil leader of the Jacques.
If that happened you would need a dedicated spy who was trusted completely by the enemy.

"I volunteered to train as a Luministe assassination agent and spy. I trained hard, and had combat enhancement surgery
and implants, in fact I became so good that the Luministes paid for me to be given two years of stabilized imprints from
the great and notorious terrorist Vanda Louise Mattel."

A light began to flash on her dataspex on the bedside table. Lucel checked it, then spoke a few words of code.

"All's well," she reported.

"What was that?"

"I have two contract cells watching this place. They don't know about each other, and both groups are reporting that we
are being watched but not threatened."

"So we are in danger."

"You specifically."

"From other imprint pupils of Mattel?"

"There was only one other, a girl named Gina Rossi. She led the hit on the Antarctic time ship, and was killed when she
blew up the Mawson Institute. No, the vector incoming is Mattel herself: as cunning, ruthless, and deadly as the devil on
steroids."

"I've studied modern terrorist techniques, Lucel: Many groups, including the Luministes, use imprint gating to give
assassins obsessive, blind dedication to their missions. Their assassins simply
can't
turn traitor. Did they do that to
you?"

"Yes, but there was a catch: I had already turned traitor. They fixated me on killing all false prophets from the past, but
I did not regard you as a false prophet." She rolled off him and lay on her back with her hands clasped behind her head.

"I knew about imprints, and imprints can be adjusted with certain meditation techniques before they are bedded
down. When the treatment had finished, my first priority was to keep you safe, but I was also vectored on killing 'false
prophets from the past'—Jacque Bonhomme, as far as I was concerned. One day I would have done just that, but he beat
me to it and did the job himself."

Vitellan sat up in bed and looked at the radio-clock display. It was 4:47 A.M.

"You have a plan, and it involves me as bait," he said, his throat dry and his voice flat.

"Yes, it involves you flying out to Australia in about three hours," replied Lucel, reaching up and rubbing a hand along
his back. "It's called a filter tactic: draw the enemy to a specific location, then run fast. Their warhead unit reacts fast,
too fast, blows cover and gets targeted by us. You will leave here with a girl from one of my decoy couples, her name's
Jilly Stevenson. You and Jilly will take a SOMS to Melbourne and play tourist, okay?"

"But—"

"Just do it. No buts. Play the part with her: hold hands, kiss, buy each other little presents, sleep together, and make
sure that you screw her! Okay? I don't want any hotel staff changing the sheets next morning and reporting to some
contract gang cell that the honeymooners who were oh-so-cute in public were not doing it in private. This is war,
Vitellan, and this is how you have to fight."

"If we live through this, my countess, knight, and lover, remind me to explain the symbol on the
Deciad
scroll to you. It
is so simple, yet behind it is something wonderful."

"Why not now? We have a little more time."

"Because one should avoid fighting a war on more than one front," he whispered, his voice trailing away as if the very
words fatigued him.

Jilly and Vitellan set off in an autocab before sunrise, negotiated their way through the airport's baggage check-in and
boarding security scans, then boarded a SOMS. She was a Utile shorter than Lucel, and quite a lot thinner. She said that
she had won several gymnastics competitions while at school, and now taught aerobics when not doing contract work. As
they settled into their seats she activated a portable cloaker.

"Good work, but you're looking too cool," Jilly said,

looking Vitellan in the eyes. "Drop a Latin word, look a bit confused now and then. You're meant to be bait, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," replied Vitellan, unsure of how to react or feel. "I'm new at this."

"It shows," replied Jilly. "Maybe it's why she chose you."

M e l b o u r n e , A u s t r a l i a : 2 0 F e b r u a r y 2 0 2 9 , A n n o D o m i n i
They landed in Melbourne's evening, but with their body clocks ready for a morning's sightseeing. After booking into a
Southbank hotel they had dinner and strolled beside the river in the balmy air of late summer. The waters of the river
were black and placid, hardly reflecting any highlights from the glittering lights of the city.
Jilly was dressed in cheek-shorts, a scoopneck T-shirt, and jogger sandals. Her nipples stood out beneath the white cloth,
both casting conical shadows. Vitellan's tracksuit was made of the same light airtrack hemp and cotton, and he felt cool
and exposed, as if he were naked. His thoughts tumbled along in a giddy dance: I'm holding hands with a complete
stranger in a city that should not have existed in my lifetime, and very soon we'll be fornicating in a hotel room as high
as the clouds. Sheer desire drenched him like warm drizzle, and he noticed that Jilly's fingers were kneading against
his.

"What was our hotel?" he asked, even though he had been absorbing every detail of the riverside plaza and could have
returned to the hotel blindfolded.

"The Centenary South," she replied at once. Eagerness, Vitellan wondered? "Do you want to go back?"

"Well... we've been out being seen for two hours."

"And you can't wait to prove that we're into good, healthy consummation?"

"Now.that you mention it, no, I can't."

"Hey, then let's do it, that's what we're paid for."

She slid an arm around his waist and stepped in front of him, then pressed her lips against his and thrust her tongue
between his teeth. A party boat passed on the river, and the revelers cheered and shone torches on them as they stood
rubbing their thighs together.

"I suppose it was built in 2000," Vitellan said to cover his embarrassment as they entered the hotel foyer. "Yeah, guess
so." "Big party year."

"I thought it sucked," Jilly said, her voice suddenly sharp. "My dad's business crashed when the change-of-year prefix
screwed his computer database. By the time he was back in action the competition had moved in on his customers."
The doorlock clacked free to a wave of the desk card. Jilly reached in and switched on the light as Vitellan pushed the
door open. The door clunked shut behind them, a firm, secure commitment of what was to come.
They stared at each other across a few feet of Center-red carpet while the cream quilt of the double bed gleamed in the
recessed halogen lighting.

"Hey, is this hard work or what?" Jilly giggled, then raised each foot in turn and unbuckled her sandals.
Vitellan responded by removing his tracksuit top. Jilly whistled at his roughly stapled scars.

"Been a bad little boy," Vitellan explained.

"Hell, I can show you mine," she said as she pulled her top up over her head to reveal taut, conical breasts with large
dark nipples. She put her hands on her waist and thrust a hip at Vitellan. "But mine ain't scars."
Vitellan was still trying to shake his tracksuit pants free of his feet as they coupled across the bed. Jilly was all long
nails, grappling legs, teeth and giggles. She shrieked and laughed at their reflections in the ceiling mirror while
Vitellan wondered how Lucel would react to the lurid evidence that he had followed her orders to the very letter. Jilly
had excellent stamina, and did not tire for a long time. She insisted on staying underneath so that she could watch their
images in the mirror.

It was the evening of the next day when Vitellan awoke from a fitful doze, his body insisting that it was time for bed but
with moonlight streaming in through the windows. Jilly was in the shower already, preparing for a night on the town
with him. There were spots of blood on the sheets, all from the cuts that her false nails had made on Vitellan's back. A
detached nail lay among the sheets. Vitellan grinned ruefully, picked it up and tossed it across to where Jilly's
gossamer-fine UV bodysuit lay across a chair. The fabric stiffened for a moment as the nail landed, then sagged.
Vitellan blinked. Lucel had clothes that did that! The fabric was normally flexible, but stiffened like a thin shell of steel
when struck sharply. It was enough to stop a knife or a fist, and would take the kick out of most conventional low-velocity
bullets as well. His heart thumping, he stood up and took a pen from the commdesk. Holding it like a dagger he stabbed
down, overhand. The gossamer fabric snapped rigid, then relaxed. The point of the pen had made only a tiny impression.
He picked up the false nail and turned it over. It was heavy, and there were little grooves and flanges underneath. A
Luministe weapon, a very, very exclusive Luministe weapon. Jilly was a girl who looked barely out of her teens, yet let
slip that she remembered the millennium year. Lucel had said that she .was imprinted with Vanda Mattel's tacticals, so
Vanda Mattel would think like Lucel... or try to outthink her. Successfully. Too successfully.
Jilly/Vanda was in the shower with nine explosive nails on her hands, so attack was out. Vitellan pulled on his track-suit
pants and top, checked for his wallet, then slipped on his joggers and pressed the Velcro straps down. Battle tactics, his
subconscious whispered at him. He picked up the gossamer armor-suit and jogger sandals. Should run with them, but
they might have a beacon built in, he thought, but no dataspex, she probably has them in the shower, making contact
about what Lucel was doing. Too bad, no certainties. He opened the door. It would click distinctly when the hydraulics
closed it. He opened it all the way, then let go and ran.