Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 15

AD 37, 16 miles north-east of Rome

‘We’re in a rural region called Sabines, about sixteen miles to the north-east of Rome.’ Rashim looked at the Exodus group gathered in front of him. Just under a hundred and fifty of them. They’d lost roughly half the people in the jump. The children, the baby, were among those that had failed to emerge from extra-dimensional space.

God help them.

‘This location was picked out by the Exodus survey team. Headed up by, uh… well, me actually.’ He shrugged self-consciously. The sun was setting behind a row of cypress trees on the horizon, and long shadows stretched across the gently swaying grass around them. ‘I was in charge of establishing the receiver station.’

‘What’s that?’ someone in the gathering dusk asked.

‘Four beacons broadcasting tachyon beams. The EDT: the Extra-dimensional Translation array…’

Keep it simple for the morons out there.

‘The time machine — ’ he hated that term — ‘was designed to zero in and snap to on these beacons’ beams and use that to guide us in to the correct emergence point. But it, uh… it appears we’ve gone a little further back in time than we actually planned.’

‘And lost over a hundred of our people!’ Rashim turned towards the voice. ‘Someone messed this up badly!’ Vice-president Stilson glared like an Old Testament preacher.

‘Well now, look, Mr Stilson… this really isn’t a precise science. And quite honestly, with all the last-minute data changes coming in, and no time to recalibrate the EDT’s transmission program… Actually, I’m rather amazed that any of us survived!’

Stilson shook his head angrily. ‘OK, I’ve heard enough. Look, I’m assuming authority from here on in. This is a damned mess already and we need to turn this around right now!’

‘What?!’ Rashim’s voice skipped up a notch. It was almost a yelp. ‘No! Look see, uh… Dr Yatsushita actually put me in charge of Exodus. He said that — ’

‘I’m afraid we don’t have time for this, Dr Anwar… isn’t it?’

Rashim nodded.

‘Right, well, I’m the senior government representative of the North American Federation here. Which gives me executive authority. Like it or not, that puts me in charge.’

‘Dr Anwar…’ A woman. Civilian. He recognized her as one of the Project Exodus support staff. Not one of the candidates.

‘Yes?’ Rashim answered her quickly before Stilson could go on any more. ‘What is it?’

‘Do you know how far we’ve overshot the receiver markers?’

Rashim nodded forcefully and tried his most authoritative face. Here was a question he most certainly had an answer for. ‘Yes. I was able to successfully record the decay rate of the tachyon field. It’s quite simple really. Tachyon particles decay at a constant rate, a very similar principle actually to something like carbon dating where

…’

Keep it simple.

‘Well, basically, to cut a very long and boring technical explanation short, ladies and gents, we went back about seventeen years earlier than planned.’ He scratched his chin and offered them a wan smile. ‘Which, actually, I think is quite impressive really.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Given the last-minute metrics I had to guess at.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘It could have been a lot worse than that really.’

‘Seventeen years out… over half our people lost and most of our equipment gone!’ Stilson stepped forward. ‘Good God, man! This is already a damned mess! I know what the precise plans were for colonizing the past… that’s ancient history now. We’re going to have to take stock and — ’

‘Uh, well now, Mr Vice-president, yes… of course we may have to play out the “deployment phase” slightly differently.’

‘You can say that again, Anwar. Looks like we’ll be improvising the plan from now on.’

The group were silent. Few of them had been briefed on the details of Project Exodus.

‘All right, listen up, everyone!’ barked Stilson. ‘Gather round closer! I’m going to bring you folks up to speed on what you need to know. What I’m about to tell you has been classified for top-level eyes only. Outside of the Exodus technical team, the only other eyes on this have been those of the President, myself and the joint Chiefs of Staff.’

Rashim noticed how easily Stilson could rally everyone round.

‘This project has been in development for over five years, funded by what remained of our defence procurement budget, for what it was. Exodus was… and still is… our plan to transplant our values, our knowledge, our wisdom on to the infrastructure of an existing, well-established and robust civilization. The Roman Empire.’

Rashim heard the vice-president’s audience stir.

‘A panel of historical experts identified a specific moment in time in which to deploy Exodus. We were meant to arrive towards the tail end of the reign of a weak emperor. A guy called Claudius. A weak emperor struggling to maintain his position in power. Now… the plan was quite simple. To offer our services, our technology, to this guy Claudius in exchange for executive power. In effect to become his governing body. And eventually, on his death, to replace Roman dictatorship with American-style Republican democracy.’

Stilson turned and looked at Rashim pointedly. ‘But it appears things have gone very wrong.’

Rashim felt all of their eyes fall on him. ‘Uh… now, yes. But you see most of you here are the wrong people. That is to say, you’re all the wrong weights and sizes; it’s thrown all my calculations completely out! Which is why we lost — ’

‘Dr Anwar,’ said Stilson, ‘what we don’t need to hear are excuses or technobabble after the fact. What we do need to do is start rethinking our plan of action. We’re here in this time now and that’s what we have to deal with. So, what we need to start finding out is exactly where we stand. What the situation is seventeen years earlier. Can you at least tell us something about that?’

Rashim looked at the man and the others gathered behind him.

You’ve lost them already. You’re not in charge any more. He realized it wasn’t knowledge or wisdom that made a leader. It wasn’t being smarter than everyone else. And, by God, he could perform intellectual somersaults round most of these morons. No, it was something as simple as the deep cadence of a voice, a certain way of addressing assembled people. A way of carrying yourself. Authority. Entitlement. Stilson had that all right. And Rashim none of it.

‘Dr Anwar?’

He sighed, slid open the panel of the h-pad on his wrist and a faint holographic display hovered in the air in front of him. ‘Yes… there we go. So.’ He swiped through a timeline with his finger. ‘Ah, here we are. We’ll be dealing with a different Roman emperor. Not Claudius, but…’ His fingers traced along a glowing chart line to a name. ‘Caligula.’

‘What data do we have on this guy, Dr Anwar?’

‘Uh… let me just look that up on my…’ He hadn’t had the time to read up on the historical briefing Dr Yatsushita had the project historians put together. Not really. If things had been a bit less of a frantic rush these last few months and weeks, he might have been able to give it a cursory read-through. His job was the metrics, punching the numbers — getting them all here in one piece.

‘Emperor Caligula? I can tell you about him.’ All heads turned towards someone in the crowd. By the fading light Rashim vaguely recognized the face: one of the candidates. One of the few people who was actually meant to be there instead of another last-minute gatecrasher.

‘I know all about Caligula… God help us.’

Stilson gestured for the crowd to allow the man through. ‘And you are?’

‘Dr Alan Dreyfuss. Roman historian. Linguist.’

‘OK, then, why don’t you go ahead and tell us what you know, Dr Dreyfuss?’

The man was in his thirties, narrow-shouldered with a pot belly, a shock of sandy hair above glasses and a salt and pepper beard grown, Rashim suspected, to hide a double chin.

‘Oh, Caligula…’ Dreyfuss began shaking his head. ‘Oh boy, this guy’s bad news.’

‘Bad news? What do you mean?’

‘He’s mad.’

‘Mad?’

‘Uh-huh. Totally. Completely insane.’

The people stirred, unhappy at the sound of that.

‘But look, I think there’s a way we can play this guy,’ said Dreyfuss, smiling.

Stilson pursed his lips and nodded appreciatively. He seemed to like this guy. ‘All right, Dr Dreyfuss, let’s hear what you’ve got.’

‘Shock and awe. We’ll make an entrance.’ Dreyfuss played the crowd almost as well as Stilson. ‘This guy made his own horse a senator, would you believe? This guy, Caligula, believed in omens, portents; he was superstitious, paranoid.’

Dr Dreyfuss grinned. ‘We’ll make him believe we’re gods.’