‘There’s no knowing how long we have,’ said Cato. ‘Fronto’s lads are loyal to the emperor and their prefect, Quintus. They’re following my orders for now because they think I’m loyal too. But they catch a glimpse of what’s gone on here … Do you understand? They’re our men until they realize they’re being fooled.’ Cato shook his head. ‘We have to find whatever contraption it is you need to put things right and we have to leave this place quickly.’
Bob’s voice rumbled out of the gloom. ‘He is correct, Maddy. We are trapped in here. This is not tactically advisable.’
‘All right …’ Maddy panted in the dark. ‘All right … OK … we’ll – ahh Jeeesus, this is freakin’ crazy! So, I guess, what? We’re gonna fight them?!’
‘Your Stone Man, Macro and I … I say we have a chance.’
‘Wait!’
The voice came from out of the dark. She heard the slap of bare feet approaching. ‘Wait! I … know … this …’ His voice was weak and brittle, the words slurred and almost incomprehensible.
‘The word!’ he croaked. ‘The word! There’s a word … I know it! There’s a word!’
They didn’t have time for this. ‘Does everyone have a w-weapon?’ Maddy whimpered nervously. ‘Oh God, I can’t believe we’re doing this. We’re going to die!’
‘The word!!’ cried the old man. ‘I … I have the wo-o-o-o-ord!’
‘Stand back, old man,’ barked Macro, readying the sword in his hands.
‘On three,’ said Cato to Bob. ‘You open those doors on three. Is that clear?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Get back, Sal,’ whispered Maddy, holding the hilt of a knife in trembling hands.
‘Shadd-yah! Maddy? What? We’re letting them in?’
‘One … two … and … three!’
Bob pulled both doors inwards, stepping backwards into the room as the dancing light of oil lamps outside spilled in to meet them. He pulled the sword from his belt. The two Stone Men charged into the room, side by side – not a single microsecond wasted in offering a challenge.
‘S-s-s-s-SPONGEBUBBA!’ screamed the old man, an insane, wild, banshee scream that peeled round the darkness like the cry of some nocturnal forest creature.
The units instantly froze.
They dropped their swords and shields at their feet; a deafening clatter and rasp of metal on ceramic. Their heads dipped in unison, their eyes slowly closed as they straightened their posture, arms dropped to their sides, and they planted their feet heel by heel: soldiers standing to attention.
Ten, twenty seconds passed, the silence filled with a chorus of panting breath.
‘What are they doing?’ gasped Maddy.
Presently both units raised their heads and opened their eyes, gazed quite neutrally, almost benignly, at them.
‘Diagnostic mode reinitialized,’ they both calmly announced. ‘Please state your username and password.’
CHAPTER 68
AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome
Centurion Fronto heard the impatient clatter of hooves; nonetheless his optio called out the obvious. ‘Horses, sir!’
‘I can hear them.’ He stepped towards the iron gate and looked out on to the Vicus Patricius. An hour earlier there had been several hundred citizens gathered out there, pleading to be let in, begging for food and water. No rough-talking plebeians these, but the better-off citizens, well-to-do merchants, friends and hangers-on of the court.
They’d been there grasping the iron bars and rocking the gate menacingly. He’d had to muster several sections of his century to form up inside the palace compound, open the gates and present an advancing shield wall to flush them away. They’d dispersed eventually, but not before a few of them had felt the probing tip of a gladius between their ribs.
Since then, it had been relatively quiet outside. Little but the occasional shout and scream echoed from back streets and across rooftops, the faint rasp and clang of blades here and there as collegia and neighbourhood militias fought each other.
He looked through the iron bars and saw a column of cavalry making their way hastily up the Vicus Patricius towards them. For a moment he wasn’t sure if it was an advance party of scouts from Lepidus’s legions or their own Praetorian cavalry squadron.
‘Septimus? Can you make them out?’
The optio squinted. The sun was approaching the skyline of roofs and terraces; the men on horseback were a jiggling, silhouetted mass of helmet plumes, oval shields and the bucking heads of horses.
‘Not sure, sir.’
But as they drew closer, Fronto caught a flash of purple tunic. His heart sank. Imperial purple. They’re ours. That didn’t bode well. If those had been red tunics, they’d be horsemen from the Tenth and Eleventh. It would mean Lepidus had won and Caligula was finished.
The column of horsemen drew up outside the gates and a decurion dismounted quickly, striding towards the gates. Fronto ordered the gates open and went outside to meet him. The young officer stopped and saluted him.
Fronto acknowledged the junior officer. ‘Make your report. What’s happened?’
‘Sir!’ The young man gasped for breath. Clearly he and his men had ridden hard. ‘General Lepidus … has been beaten, sir!’
Fronto nodded, forced a grin on to his face. ‘That is good news. And the general?’
‘He’s dead, sir.’
Fronto struggled to contain a sigh of relief. Dead, at least Lepidus wasn’t going to be able to tell Caligula anything. Name any names. Hopefully he’d done the honourable thing and taken his own life before he could be captured alive.
‘Sir! I have orders from the prefect.’
‘Yes?’
The decurion seemed hesitant.
‘Come on, what is it?’
‘Your tribune … Tribune Cato.’
‘What about him?’
‘I have orders for his immediate arrest, sir.’
‘What?’
‘You are to arrest him immediately. The prefect … the emperor himself … wants him taken alive, sir!’
Fronto stroked his chin. His mind racing. ‘My tribune? My commanding officer? He’s … you’re telling me he’s a traitor?’
‘Just have those orders, sir.’
‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘Right, I … I’ll have to …’
‘He’s to be taken alive.’
‘Yes … yes, I understand. I’ll have to …’ He turned hesitantly to look at his men, watching from inside the open gate. All of this was out of their earshot. He could see an expectant look on their faces, eager to hear whatever news the messenger had just brought.
‘Wait here, Decurion. I’ll see to his arrest personally.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Fronto turned on his heel and strode smartly back to his men. He picked out his optio and spoke in a lowered voice. ‘Close the gates!’
‘Sir?’
‘Those men outside?’ Fronto thumbed over his shoulder. ‘They’re traitors. They’ve turned against the emperor.’
The optio’s eyes widened. So did those of the other men close enough to hear.
‘They’re a part of General Lepidus’s plot. They are not to be admitted into the imperial compound under any circumstances! Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir!’
Further down the avenue he could see another couple of turmae of cavalry arriving. A single squad – a turma – accompanying a messenger was quite normal. But others arriving? He wondered if Praefectus Quintus had despatched the entire cavalry wing.
‘Close the gates!’ the optio barked to his men. Several men dropped their shields and worked the iron gates closed.
The decurion called out something. Confused.
‘TAKE ANOTHER STEP FORWARD AND YOU’LL GET A JAVELIN!’ roared Fronto through the bars.
The decurion stopped in his tracks. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Septimus!’
‘Sir?’
‘Send someone into the palace to find the tribune. Tell him
we’ve got company out here.’
‘Yes, sir!’ The optio turned sharply and picked one of his men to take the message.
Fronto watched the decurion standing outside in the avenue, shrugging with bewilderment at the gate being closed on him. Fronto wondered how long he was going to maintain this confusion among his own men. Sooner or later they were going to question his orders.
‘Lads!’ he barked so that they could all hear. ‘Those men outside have turned against our emperor! They are traitors! The emperor was victorious this morning … and our boys are already on the road back to Rome! We must protect the palace until then!’
His men eyed him uncertainly.
‘No one is to enter!’ roared Fronto. ‘Not a single man … until our emperor returns! Until our emperor approaches up that avenue! Is this clear!’
His men chorused a ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good!’
He looked through the bars at the decurion. The young man had caught most of what he’d just bellowed. His eyes met Fronto’s and he shook his head gravely; he was perfectly clear on what the situation was now. That it wasn’t just Tribune Cato who was to be taken alive. The decurion shook his head again. It said more than a mouthful of words could convey, a warning from one officer to another.
You are a stupid fool … sir.
CHAPTER 69
AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome
Maddy and the others listened to the poor old wretch gabble. His cracked lips opened sores as they moved frantically; a trickle of blood and spittle rolled from his lips and into his thick, mucus-encrusted beard.
‘… I hacked them … I … you see I … they were … reset to take his orders …’
‘Slow down,’ said Maddy. ‘Please. Slow down. You’re not making sense.’
‘… chief technical officer … me …. m-me! See? … I was in charge! Exodus! Exodus!’
‘Exodus?’
‘P-project … the project. Exodus … I was chief t-technical officer.’ The old man squatted down on the cool floor, his painfully malnourished body already exhausted from the rush of excitement.
Cato crouched down beside them. ‘Ask him if he was one of the Visitors.’
‘Oh, I think he must be,’ replied Maddy.
‘R-Rashim … m-my name … it … it’s Rashim!’ he replied in broken Latin. ‘Yes! I … I was one of them! I w-was there! I was THERE!’
Sal came over to join them. ‘I’ve bound Liam up and … Jahulla!’ Her eyes took in the ruined facsimile of a human being, tucked into a foetal huddle on the floor. She stifled a gasp. ‘Who is that?’
‘We think he’s one of the Visitors,’ Maddy whispered in reply. She turned back to the man. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked. ‘What happened to the others?’
Rashim’s wild eyes danced from Cato to her. ‘B-betrayed! My fault … oh my G-God it … it w-was all my fault I … I j-just wanted to … I never thought that … I … Oh God! OhGodOhGodOhGod –’
Maddy touched his hand, held it to calm him down. ‘Shhh. It’s OK, it’s OK. You’re safe now. We’re going to get you out of here.’
‘No … m-must listen. Y-you must listen to m-me now!’ He snatched his hand from her. ‘Time! Not m-much time! It … it … it h-happens soon!’
‘What does?’
‘Tell me … tell m-me the day! What is … the day? WHATISTHEDAY?’
‘Date? Is that what you want? You want the precise date?’
Rashim’s head nodded vigorously. ‘TELL M-ME!’ His thin voice was almost a childlike scream.
Maddy looked at Bob.
‘Information: today’s date in the Roman calendar is twenty-nine Sextilis, in the Twentieth Year of Gaius. In the contemporary calendar that would be twenty-ninth August AD 54.’
Rashim’s eyes rolled, showing the whites, and his eyelids drooped down, almost closing. His cracked and bloody lips fluttered silently, counting, calculating.
‘What is it?’ asked Maddy. ‘Rashim? Rashim – is that your name? What are you doing?’
He raised a bony finger tipped with a long claw-like nail to shush her, his lips still silently twitching and leaking bloody spittle into his beard.
‘Rashim? What’s up? What’re you doing? Are you counting? Is that it?’
‘NO-O-O-O!’ Rashim bellowed suddenly. ‘No-no-no-no … too soon, too soon, toosoon. TOO SOON!’
Cato grasped Maddy’s arm roughly. ‘Tell me! What is he saying?’
Too many things, too much hitting her at once. Maddy was ready to scream along with this crazy scarecrow of a man on the floor beside her.
‘Rashim! What? Tell me, what is too soon?’
His eyes locked on her. ‘I am c-coming!! I will be here!!!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘B-beacons … BEACONS! L-light, to show the way! … I … I came … I came years b-before! I w-was here! To show the way!!’
She shook her head. That meant nothing to her. It was complete gibberish.
‘R … r-receivers …’ Rashim continued. ‘I p-placed th-them. T-t-tachyon b-beacons –’
Maddy looked up quickly at Bob; his inert face flickered with a reaction.
‘Rashim, did you just say tachyon?’ asked Maddy. He was burbling nonsense again, the half-whisper of a deranged mind. She grabbed his shoulders firmly. ‘Rashim! You said the word tachyon! You’re talking about time travel! Yes?’
He nodded frantically. ‘Yes … yes! M-markers! S-signals.’
‘Madelaine.’ Bob hunkered down beside her. ‘This could be an alternate time-displacement method. Marking out a locked location, a time-stamp.’
Rashim’s face lit up hearing that, his deranged whispering brushed aside in an instant. ‘Yes … y-yes! Understand?’ He grinned manically, looking at Bob then Maddy. ‘T-time travel! Exactly! We came through … all those, all those years … but I came through before the others. See? Yes. It was me. I had to set it up, you understand?’
‘You placed out … what, some kind of time-stamp markers?’ asked Maddy. ‘Beacons? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes! Y-yes! Then we a-all came through. We all came through! Exodus!’
‘Exodus? What is that? Is that the name of your … your group or something?’ She recalled a name stamped on the side of the first-aid pack. Project Exodus.
‘Project Exodus?’
‘P-project! Yes!’ He huffed air into his lungs. ‘We came … the future is dead! We came back. We c-came back here! That … that is – was – m-my project. My project. My project!’
They heard the gravel-rasp of Macro’s voice, an exchange of voices outside the temple in the short passageway. A moment later, he was standing in the pooling light of the doorway.
‘Cato … we’ve got some company.’
‘Lepidus?’
Macro shook his head slowly. ‘No such luck.’
Cato cursed. He looked at Maddy. ‘Caligula’s on his way back. We may not have much time left.’
‘Can you buy us some more time?’
He gestured at the piles of dust-covered technology. ‘So, can we use these things?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe there’s a way out of here. I just … I …’
Cato nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can.’ He got up and headed to the doorway.
They watched him go until Bob broke the silence. ‘It is possible Rashim may have been part of an advance party that arrived in this time to deploy markers in order to plot out a safe arrival area for a much larger group.’
Rashim nodded. ‘But … calculations, I … made mistakes. So many m-mistakes.’ He shook his head, eyes leaking tears on to his scab-encrusted cheeks. ‘Too many new p-people. They made me guess. I had toguess!’ His eyes darted wildly in their sunken sockets. ‘You … can’t just … guess. This … has to be precise. Time t-translation, you MUST be precise! You understand? PRECISE!’
Maddy nodded. ‘Oh yes … I know that.’
‘I-I … I got it wrong. W-we lost half of them.’
‘Lost? Do you mean in chaos space?’
Rashim stilled. ‘… chaos? Chaos?’ He worked the word round his mouth. ‘Chaos … yes. Or Hell? Hmmm? Hell?’ He licked his dry, cracked lips, shook his head and began to giggle manically. ‘This is my Hell … my Hell, my Hell, my hidey-hole Hell. My hidey-hole Hell. Me and Mr Muzzy. Mr Muzzy and me –’
‘Rashim!’ She shook him by the shoulders. ‘Rashim, come on, stay with us!’
His face steadied; the insane smile slid off his lips and vanished into his beard. ‘I lost them in chaos. Lost s-souls now.’
‘You said half of them. What about everyone else? What about the rest of you? You came here, right?’
Rashim laughed again. Bitterly. ‘Arrived … seven … seventeen years too early.’ Strings of blood-tinted spittle hung from his lower lip. ‘Wrong time … wrong time … wrong Caesar.’
‘Bob …’ said Maddy. ‘I’m just trying to figure this out. He’s saying he made a hash-up of things and his group what? Overshot these time-stamp markers?’
‘Correct. That is what I believe he is saying. They went back seventeen years earlier than intended.’
She looked at him. ‘And that happened about seventeen years ago? That’s when “the Visitors” supposedly arrived?’
‘Affirmative.’
She shook Rashim from his manic reverie. ‘Rashim! Is that what you’re saying? Your deployment team are going to appear sometime soon? Appear to place out those beacons?’
He nodded. ‘He knows too.’
‘He? Who?’
‘God.’ Rashim chuckled.
‘God?’ Bob looked confused.
‘Right,’ said Sal dismissively. ‘He’s a nut.’ She looked at the others. ‘And we’re listening to him?’
‘No, wait!’ said Maddy. ‘He’s talking about Caligula, aren’t you, Rashim?’
‘I told him … it was this year … this summer … I told him.’
‘Oh my God! You actually told him about your advance party appearing? About there being a portal?’
Rashim nodded. ‘He … his … his doorway to Heaven.’