Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 83

AD 54, outside Rome

‘I… I am not going in there. I am not going with you!’

Maddy looked at the old man. She’d expected they’d have to get Bob to wrestle the young Rashim through the portal, but not the old one. ‘What? Why?’

He shook his head. ‘Want… want to die right here.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Here… this place. This hilltop. Open space…’ He closed his eyes, sniffed the air as the gentle breeze made the long grass before them and the leaves above them whisper together.

‘Shadd-yah! You don’t have to die,’ said Sal. ‘We can get you some help back home! Decent food. Get you looked at by some doctors or something! You’re going to be just fine!’

‘Already dead,’ he rasped. He looked at his younger self. ‘Don’t become this…’ he said, touching his own cheek with a claw of a finger. He smiled and closed his eyes. ‘I found you. These people must stop you… stop us.’

‘None of you understand, do you?’ said young Rashim. ‘The world’s pretty much finished in my time. We’ve poisoned everything. The world’s a garbage pit. What’s left that isn’t flooded is… is landfill. There’s no hope for us any more!’

‘Whatever mess we made of earth… we can’t toy around with time like this,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re all going back and leaving this history as it’s meant to be.’

‘No!’ The old Rashim’s eyes opened. ‘God… He’s in there.’ He nodded towards the strobing beacon that Bob was holding in his fist. ‘In that place… is chaos!’

Young Rashim shook his head with mild disgust at the rambling old man. ‘There’s no way that crazy old fool’s me.’

‘… if I he finds me… me and Mr Muzzy,’ he gabbled, ‘… if he finds us in there, we’ll be sent straight to Hell for what we did. Straight to Hell! Straight to Hell… ’

‘Why don’t we let him stay?’ said Liam.

Maddy turned round. ‘What?’

‘Let him stay.’ Liam looked at the old man with pity. ‘Look at him

… the poor man’s completely terrified.’

‘We can’t just leave him here! He’ll starve or — ’

‘He won’t survive, Maddy. He won’t make it through. Look at him.’

Maddy did. And she could see Liam was probably right. It looked like a strong gust of wind would kill him, let alone being bombarded with cell-rupturing tachyons. ‘All right, then.’ She squatted down beside the old man and put a hand on his arm. His wild rambling stopped.

‘Is this what you want, Rashim?’

He turned to look at her with milky madness in his wet eyes. She wondered if he was even seeing her.

‘Rashim? Can you hear me? Do you want to stay here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be on your own? We all have to go.’

He nodded, smiled. ‘Have Mr Muzzy with me.’

Maddy shook her head. It felt wrong leaving him out here. His mind was mush. She wasn’t even sure he knew where he was, even who he was any more.

Then there seemed to be some purpose in his eyes. He smiled. ‘You go. I want this…’

‘What? What is it you want?’

He spread his arms. ‘ This. Let me have this.’

She looked around at the flat hilltop. The soft hiss through the dry grass, the unbroken blue sky above. A horizon of distant lavender-tipped mountain peaks. And peace.

Peace and almost infinite space.

Maddy got it. She totally got it.

‘All right,’ she whispered softly to him. ‘All right…’ She smiled, squeezed his arm gently. ‘Savour it, Rashim. Savour every moment of it.’

He looked at her with a glimmer of sanity. ‘Thank you.’

She stood up and beckoned the others away, leaving the old man sitting hunched in the middle of the tall grass, his head cocked, listening to the gentle whisper of the wind.

‘Fill up that jug for him. Let’s at least leave him some water.’

‘He’s not coming?’ asked Sal.

‘Nope.’