The Centurion's Empire (35 page)

Many days later I was able to sit up, and to speak. I confessed to Helica that I had heard her words to Decius, and I told
her that I was very confused.

"My lady, I heard that a great ship is to be built," I said. "I am a mason. I know only walls, arches, and the cutting and
fitting of stone."

"So? Did not Rome stand behind walls of stone for many hundreds of years?" Her eyes were wide, sparkling, pulsating,
growing.

"All the other artisans, the scholars, even the sailors, talk about founding a new city, just as the Trojans built Rome
after their city was betrayed."

"Not a city, Quintus, yet not really a ship as you think of it. You shall design its rooms and corridors, and we Gods of
Romulus shall certainly travel in it."

As her eyes grew I no longer felt the motion of the ship. I seemed to fall for a very long time.

"I'm going to skip a rather large part of the text now," said the guide. Vitellan noted that several of the students were
looking particularly impatient. "If you want to read the
Deciad
for yourself there are some good translations available in
the museum bookshop."

There were sneers, but no interjections. The students probably disagreed with the guide's translation, yet they were
quiet.

"The
Tenebrae
reached their garrison in the Cape Verde Islands in spite of the trouble with the crew, and they stayed
there for several months. There Quintus completed the

drawings and estimates for the chambers that the expedition built, the chambers that we are standing above now. He also
wrote about two thirds of the
Deciad
there. Yes? You have a question?"

"I've always wondered why the 'Gods of Romulus' had to run for it in the first place," said a middle-aged woman with a
New York accent. "If they'd been controlling the Roman Empire for so long and they had such advanced technology,
surely it would be easier to stay and rally their folk against the Visigoths."

There were titters from the students at her question.

"That's almost as big an issue as the fall of Rome itself," the guide replied, and now there were frowns of impatience
from those who were hearing the story for the first time and wanted to know how it ended. "Quintus imagines that some
malevolent goddess was responsible and he states several times that Juno was attacking the expedition, just as she
harassed the Trojans in Virgil's
Aeneid.

"Recent research suggests that the 'Gods of Romulus' were being defeated by a combination of infertility and attacks
from an early Christian sect. Arabic documents were discovered in a Spanish library late last century that describe a cult
called the Manneleans, a group of 'heroes' who struck down the last of some unspecified pagan gods just as Rome fell.
There is also strong evidence that the Manneleans were led by a renegade from the 'Gods of Romulus' themselves. The
eminent authority Professor Storey suggests that Constantine, Theodosius, and even Saint Paul might have been this
same man. At any rate, the 'Gods of Romulus' were seen as agents of the devil, and a systematic Mannelean campaign of
assassination probably began.

"By itself that may not have been enough, but Quintus mentions a disease similar to gonorrhea that was making many
women infertile around that time. Perhaps the Manneleans singled out those who could still conceive, and both the

'Gods' and Rome went into decline. Eventually someone came up with the idea for this voyage to escape the
Manneleans."

"But what was the point, if they were infertile?"

"A few of the remaining thirty women probably could

conceive, but to do so would invite instant attack from their enemies. By targeting only pregnant women and babies they
would hit the group at its most vulnerable point. Decius decided to use technology to escape to where the Manneleans
could never follow. As it turned out, the stay at the island garrison was quite eventful, as some Mannelean agents seem
to have infiltrated the
Tenebrae'%
crew. There were several murders, and a small battle that took the lives of fifteen men
and two 'Gods.' Knowing that his enemies could do great damage if they got as far as the ultimate sanctuary, Decius
mustered all those he could trust for yet another secret escape."

One day, a full month before we were due to sail on, the commander ordered all Gods of Romulus and many of the
artisans to board the cornships and inspect our quarters, so that we could make suggestions for the final fittings. At this
time the ships had only skeleton crews aboard, and very little in the way of stores.

Valerius and myself were the last to be rowed out, but no sooner were we taken aboard than the anchors were raised and
the ships began making way under a fair breeze. All at once there was a great shouting on the shore as Juno entered the
hearts of many left behind. Some groups began to battle each other, and some even tried to launch the beached trireme,
but it was still under repair and many planks were missing from the hull.

Thus did we sail beyond the reach of Juno, long the enemy of Rome and persecutor of both Aeneas and Decius. For all of
that day we sailed, and for the following night. At dawn the commander called us together on the flagship, the
Nemesis.

Gods and mortals together, he addressed us.

"People of Rome: Even at our remote island garrison the enemies of the Gods of Romulus reached out their bloodied
hands to slay us, but now they are trapped there. Each mortal among you was ordered aboard yesterday because your
loyalty was beyond question. Now we shall sail on to complete our work in safety."

At this there was a great murmur among us, and

Rentian, one of the senior Gods of Romulus, raised his hand and spoke out.

"Commander, we have three ships to sail, yet hardly the crew and stores for a single one."

"You are right, but all is well," said the commander. "This very morning all stores and crew will he brought aboard the
Nemesis,
and the empty vessels put to the torch. If the estimates done by Quintus the mason are good, this will give us
just enough to complete our task."

All at once I felt very fearful. The fate of this voyage, the lives of many Romans, everything depended on my hasty
calculations. Yet in spite of all my drawings and designs, I knew nothing of our ultimate purpose. There would be a small
labyrinth cut into solid rock, and that was all. No city and no ship.

The next display was a diorama of the island garrison, complete with a battle scene in which tiny figures were frozen in
desperate, struggling groups—a disorderly, spontaneous conflict, lacking any of the discipline for which Roman soldiers
were famous.

"Decius is now acknowledged to be one of the greatest navigators in history," the guide said as the group crowded
around the diorama. The well-trained sense-host of the Paradise Vistas tour vid scanned the displays systematically.
Vitellan paused the vid at several items that caught his interest, then let it continue. The guide began speaking again.

"It is hard to believe that without the
Deciad
of Quintus we would know nothing about Decius. The voyages and feats of
navigation by Columbus or Erik the Red are nothing compared to what Decius did, yet we had to wait sixteen hundred
years to learn about him. He must have been a fantastically charismatic leader to have kept his crew behind him on such
long and dangerous voyages.

"From this point on Quintus was only able to keep a rough diary. When you consider what they must have gone through,
it's amazing that he was able to write at all."

DAY 91: The skies are almost always gray now, and the smallest of the seas could wash over the very walls of
Rome. Each day the wind is colder and stronger, and we all now wear the fur jackets and trousers of the northern
barbarians. There is no more muttering that the edge of the world is near, as all of the remaining sailors were with the
commander when he came here years ago. On the few clear nights I see strange new constellations that circle a celestial
pole with no pole star. Among them is a mighty cross that never sets—surely a sign of the Christian God. Is his domain
here? Do the Gods of Romulus come to do battle with him?

DAY 157: Icicles hang from the ropes and fittings, and the clothes of the sailors are stiff with frost. Great islands of
floating ice loom all around us so thickly that we must use sweeps to navigate around them. Two steersmen have died of
exposure, and there have been some beatings to keep the discipline.

DAY 170:1 write on land, but this coast is the most barren, cold, forsaken place ever beheld by mortal eyes. Day and
night have merged into one, the birds walk about as men, yet the cattle crawl like worms. Everywhere is ice and rock,
with not so much as a single tree, or even a blade of grass. Rentian begged the commander to let us return in summer,
but he replied that this
was
summer, and that we had better dig out the first of the chambers quickly, to have shelter in
the really bad seasons. Just as Aeneas descended to the Underworld, so have we come here. Stoutest of mortals, Valerius
builds a forge and whistles cheerfully.

"Quintus' dating is not always reliable, but we estimate that this Roman landing in Antarctica took place in February
412 a.d. Two of the men buried at the Cape Verde Islands garrison have fingers and toes missing, probably through
frostbite, and these graves have been dated to around 390 a.
d
. They were almost certainly from Decius' first voyage to
Antarctica."

By now they had moved on to stand before a map of Antarctica, with the site marked by a red arrow. While the tour group
stood staring with indifferent interest, the guide pressed a stud beneath a handrail, and the curtains that cov-
ered one entire wall were drawn aside. There was a collective gasp, even from the students. Beyond the triple glazing was
a gray, choppy sea, with light snow blowing past on a strong wind. The shingle beach was bare and lifeless, just as it had
been when the Romans had landed there. Some of the tourists shivered and rubbed their hands, perhaps in sympathy
with Quintus, who had had no more than heavy clothing and a tent for shelter when he wrote those words so long ago.

"I shall read one last passage," the guide announced as she closed the curtains again. "In the year that followed, the
expedition dug the chambers that Quintus had designed. It was revealed that they were building a time ship to enable
the 'Gods of Romulus' to escape to the future.

"These strange people may or may not have had the longevity that Quintus attributes to them, but they certainly had
some advanced scientific techniques. They had discovered a method for suspended animation that involved antifreeze
chemicals such as polyhydric alcohols and glycerols. These were probably extracted from snow-dwelling insects such as
springtails, midges, and snowflies, and they allowed the human body to be chilled without tissue damage."
If only you knew who would be agreeing with you, thought Vitellan. He paused the vid, then reran her explanation twice.
Here was the secret of his own time machine, and here were the people responsible for it. He pondered many seemingly
unconnected facts, then keyed the vid to continue.

"The time ship had to be in a place that was always freezing, but was also so very remote that neither the Manneleans
nor curious natives could disturb it while the centuries passed. Decius would have found Eskimos in the Arctic lands that
he explored, but Antarctica was so very remote that only the finest Roman ships and navigation techniques would have
allowed the people of his time to reach it. With Rome fallen to the Visigoths, Antarctica would be as inaccessible as the
moon would be to us after some nuclear war"

. . . and on that final day that saw neither dawn nor dusk, the Gods of Romulus gathered to drink the
golden elixir before sailing away into the ages in their time ship. Like Aeneas, Commander Decius lived this year past
in the underworld of this land, paying homage to the gods, his very brothers and sisters.
Even as he wiped the last drops of the elixir from his lips, though, his gaze did turn to us, the mortal Romans. Crew of
the
Nemesis
and builders of the time ship, we could never sail back through the islands of ice without him to navigate.
Sad, wretched, doomed, our plight reached out to his heart.

"These brave, loyal Romans will surely perish without me to guide them back," he cried to the assembled Gods of
Romulus, dashing his silver goblet to the shingles. "Friends, you have your time ship and may go in safety to some new
age. I wish to stay behind. Too many loyal Romans have died already for us, and it is my will that these at least should
grow old under a warm sun."

Then Helica spoke, saying "Decius, my lord. Many years have I been apart from you. Nine decades have I waited since
we were married, so how could I now give you up forever? If you would stay in this age so that these brave craftsmen and
sailors of Rome might live, then I shall stay too, tending the sick and ever by your side."
Even as we cheered their noble sacrifice, the godling Rentian raised his voice in an angry cry. "This is madness! Decius,
Helica, you must come with us. Forsake these wretches. They will lead assassins back here to destroy us as we sleep in
the time ship."