Myths of the Modern Man (24 page)

The soldiers had me working the forest, cutting the crucifixion poles in the last light of day. Several other captives worked with me, all under the supervision of a Roman construction battalion. We dragged the posts to the cleared hillsides surrounding the valley where the crosses would be raised like a string of Burma Shave signs to announce the Romans’ victory, and to warn the peasants of the countryside to beware what happens when they forget who their masters are.

I looked up, and there he was. Cailte.

His arms lashed to each end of the raised crossbar, his feet bound to the support pole. His legs had been broken, that he might die more painfully. Like their symmetric temples and their precise language, there was something dramatic and eternal about their torture. Long after these distinct aspects of Roman life ceased to be utilized, they remained for us as symbols.

Bone protruded through skin, and streaming dark blood mingled with the blue woad. The sickly colors ran together and dripped down the shredded skin and muscle of his mangled legs, down to the soft green grass below.

He glanced downward at me.

“
Once, there was a warrior-bard,” I whispered hoarsely to him, “who spoke of courage, and desire. His people were better for his stories. His enemies punished him, and his agony at their hands was a tribute to everything he ever wanted for himself, and everything he ever was, and everything he was never going to be. They never truly captured him.”

I reached my hand to him, touched his foot lightly.

“
I will remember you in many days to come, Cailte. I will tell this last story for you.”

He looked at me with his gray eyes that were glassy with his pain and the experience yet to come. He looked away.

He had company on the ridge of hills that encircled and protected the bloody valley. Human bodies dangled like sheets in the sweet hilltop breeze, waiting. Death by crucifixion is not sudden. It is slow, agonizing, and the detail of the ghastliness of a human being’s death is to be witnessed in more horrific detail than even in those bodies that perished under the sword and boots of the soldiers below on the battlefield. Here on the rough crossbar, the body takes its time to shut down and decompose. The mind goes first.

It panics, it pleads loudly in a head that has already surrendered to pain.

The body reacts, its life system working to clot the blood, to stabilize the blood pressure, to slow the heart, almost as if it doesn’t know yet it is dying. It dies piece by piece.

The soul goes through no such process. It merely soars.

I took a moment, and took a deep breath.

Then I hefted the pole I had cut, and swung it at the Roman who guarded me. I caught him in his chest plate, and he stumbled back, and I immediately drove my thumb into his neck. He gasped and choked, and could not call for help while I took off limping. I could not run towards the forest where I had been captured. The way was blocked by too many soldiers and too many captives raising crossbars to the sky.

Instead I stumbled down the hill into the valley and onto the battlefield, hoping to make my way to the far rim of the valley beyond and climb those hills to escape.

There were no rivers to cross, only a sea of bodies.

I reached the valley floor, and I crouched, stepping carefully over the dead.

I hoped I would be indistinguishable among them in the twilight.

I heard the sound of voices, and the intermittent stab of sword into flesh and bone. The cleanup squad, they were still out here on the battlefield, making sure the dead were dead. The Celts had a reputation of guerrilla tricks, such as pretending to be dead and then rising up to attack. Those Roman soldiers needn’t have worried. These bodies weren’t going anywhere.

I lowered myself down among them, flat upon them, and crawled. I touched their cold skin, their sticky blood congealing upon skin, their clothes, and one another. Here and there I touched a detached body part. I shut my mind off. As best I could. I tried to be dispassionate. Dispassionate like the soldiers. Dispassionate like Eleanor. She would see these fly-infested corpses as specimens. She could do it.

A lone soldier drew near, his mind shut off, too, I suppose, from the dull, repetitive work. I squashed myself flat against the back of the next fallen man I had reached. I put my chin on his shoulder and tucked my face against his, as if I were cuddling him. I could hear the Roman soldier stop, and stiffen. I closed my eyes.

I took a deep breath of the smell of decay and held it.

The soldier seemed to have held his breath as well, for he was just as still. I heard the sound of a distant voice. Then I realized the soldier was only trying to listen to this far-off voice, a command for him to come in from the battlefield, to report to another sector. He walked away, lifting his weary legs over the gore and humans, much as one would trudge through a heavy snowfall. I exhaled softly into the ear of the man upon whom I had been lying.

I grasped a handful of hair at the back of his head, and turned his face so I could look at him. A sudden sense of intuition…it was Dubh.

I turned him back, face-first into the ground where he had fallen. I crawled over to the next body, and then the next. When I could feel the body was a woman’s, I tried to see if it was Boudicca. I looked into the faces of many dead Celtic women, until the darkness became such that I could not tell.

After a long time, a very long time, the bodies were not packed as densely, were no longer a patchwork of limbs and tissue, and then I knew I was nearing the edge of the battlefield. The sky grew dark now, and darkness covered me.

I made it. I shuddered, and vomited, retching over and over again.

Sweating and sick, the cool night chilled me as I walked onward up the slope, out of the valley of the shadow of death. One quick look back, and I ran further into the hills. The night covered what had been, but still I walked deeper into the countryside, taking no time to rest. Where I heard shouts or screams, I turned in another direction. The main body of the Roman force made camp for the night, while only small detachments formed hunting parties to scour the hills. There was still a chance I could escape.

Escape to where, I didn’t know. I looked up at the constellations. My buddies. My childhood friends. My bread and butter as an astronaut. Space never looked so good. I picked out what would be the north star at this time, and followed its direction toward Caledonia, future Scotland, hundreds of miles away, until I could double back and head south again. I had to kill time until Eleanor could pull me back. I sure as hell wasn’t staying here now.

Kill time.
Listen to me.

I tripped, and fell over the body of Nemain. So, the Romans had found the druids and routed them. The perimeters of the battle had obviously gone farther than I expected, and I didn’t know where I was, or where I would be safe.

Nemain had been decapitated, his head a grisly totem for a nearby thorn bush.

Somehow I knew Taliesin must be near. He always walked three paces behind his master.

Unless he shared his master’s fate.

CHAPTER 19

General English strode into the lab with self satisfaction and not an ounce of curiosity on his face. He did not shut the door behind him. The other man followed him, not in the manner of an underling, but rather as a superior personage being preceded so as to be presented in a respectful manner to lower beings.

Eleanor glanced up in surprise and annoyance. General English had agreed to exclude the press from this mission this time, and yet here he was breaking his promise and coaxing a foolish reporter into her lab.

Dr. Ford entered last, the third, and most reluctant-looking member of the trio. He seemed to stand straighter, at attention. His easy, casual superior swagger disappeared. His smile had left him. Fear in his eyes replaced it. He nodded at the General and the man, who Eleanor was just beginning to suspect was not a reporter at all. General English did not introduce him. He merely presented Dr. L’Esperance and Eleanor to the man with a slight wave of his hand. The man nodded to them, making firm eye contact. Dr. L’Esperance did not kiss him or hold him in her arms.

“
Dr. L’Esperance, Dr. Roberts.”

Eleanor recognized him as the man General English spoke to at the demonstration of hand-to-hand combat between Colonel Moore and Colonel Yorke. His superior, possibly, the General had said then.

The man strolled over to the empty module and for a moment, all five of them stared at through the clear shield at what was not there.

“
How long before you start the retrieval process?” the man asked, brisk and ominous.

Eleanor looked at him stupidly for a moment, then back at the module, and answered, “Right now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He folded his arms across his chest and watched her, seeming to require no further explanation of the procedure.

Under his observation she inserted the disk, and entered her security code, and ran the program to discontinue the reversal of electromagnetic energy, the shotgun that had propelled Colonel John Moore into a certain latitude and longitude coinciding with the earth’s lazy wobble and the ever-constant revolutions around the sun, over two thousand years previously.

ERROR.

The error screen rattled Eleanor, and Dr. Ford.

The man said nothing, but his stare penetrated the stupefied surprise of the others. General English sighed impatience, which grew to outright concern when he saw that Eleanor was not hitting the terminal or cursing the keypad, or indeed, making any other motions at fixing the problem, such as he did with childish impatience when he could not get anything to work.

She only stared in obvious helpless horror at the error message. General English began to shift from one foot to the other. He glanced sideways, anxiously at the man.

Eleanor could not see Dr. L’Esperance watching all of them with grim sadness, and with particular sympathy for Eleanor. Eleanor had momentarily forgotten she was there. Now she remembered, and felt she would always remember this long, awful moment of Dr. L’Esperance’s triumph.

“
How long has he been gone?” the man asked, which at this nerve-wracking moment seemed idiotically beside the point. Eleanor snapped out of her stupor, and quickly hammered the keypad and tried a couple of other backups.

ERROR.

“
Well?” he asked, more sharply this time. Eleanor flinched, and shot an annoyed glance in the general direction of General English.

“
About a half-hour,” she answered, her throat suddenly dry.

“
Over two thousand years equals one half-hour?”

“
Not exactly. There are elements which figure into the models.”

Dr. Ford remained silent. He would not team up with her to save the mission, or save face.

“
But, in any event, this is because time is cyclical, like an orbit, is that it?”

ERROR.

“
Yes.” She mumbled a desperate obscenity at the last error message. The man glanced sardonically at General English. Then he strolled toward the door, not looking back.

“
You’ve failed,” he said, “Remain on site until you’re debriefed and given permission to leave.”

General English looked in horror at the empty module again, and then with venom at Eleanor. He glared at Dr. Ford for good measure, and then hurriedly followed the man out of the room.

Eleanor heard the door click, distractedly brushed strands of hair from her eyes, and fumbled with the protocol again, step by step. Dr. Ford said nothing, but watched her sadly, with a sick feeling, as one would watch an animal in a trap.

General English popped his head back in the door, clearing his throat.

“
Oh, Dr. L’Esperance, will you join us, please?”

Dr. L’Esperance, who had stood all this time with her hands clasped gently in front of her, like a statue of an angel in a lab coat, gave him a slight, reassuring smile of acknowledgement, and quietly followed him out of the room. She did not look back at Eleanor. Eleanor waited for her to, risked a glance to see if she would, but she did not.

Dr. Ford tucked his hands casually in the pockets of his blazer. She could hear the click of his neatly polished shoes on the tile floor as he approached her. His hands still is his pockets, he leaned gently over and kissed her on the cheek, like the sound of goodbye. Before she had decided what should be said, he turned and left the lab.

What did Dr. L’Esperance say had gone wrong? She predicted the failure, but never said what it was. Had she sabotaged the mission? She could have. Eleanor thought she could have. She had never explained what she was doing in the intel archives.

Eleanor looked around the lab for answers, which was futile and she knew it. She tried to think. She placed her cool fingertips on the keypad of the main terminal again, but repetition of the code was useless. The error screen would not disappear. What was the acceptable time span for error? She had already passed it. Of that much she felt certain, she had already passed it.

Even if she knew how to retrace steps and repair the error, the timeframe was fragile. She had lost her opportunity of ever turning it around.

Damn her, she thought, sure that Dr. L’Esperance had done something to scuttle the mission for her own purposes. Now she was in conference with General English, who had asked her to go with him. Perhaps they were with the Committee, and that man. Who was that man? Part of Dr. Ford’s military conspiracy theory? Cassius. No staunch ally to ever defend her, yet she could not blame him. Survival of the fittest. It came down to that, just as he said it would be.