The Twice and Future Caesar (34 page)

Romulus scoffed at the idea of reverse engineering. “I created this protection unasked, and I give it freely, because it is right and proper. No one should be seeking profit from this emergency.”

Romulus let it be known that he might be persuaded to lead the pestilence away from certain fields or flocks. He bestowed protection on Vatican City because it was “right and just.” Other nations needed to earn that boon.

And because he was benevolent, Romulus would extend protection to a beloved pet brought to him in the arms of a child.

The U.S. State Department warned its citizens that if they traveled to Beta Centauri and swore to Romulus, then they should not come home. Anyone carrying one of Romulus' protective medals would be turned away at the ionosphere.

Even so, pilgrims flocked to Beta Centauri from all the countries of Earth, because the protection actually worked and because no lawful authority had protection to give.

It was extortion. It was hideous. People saw the true face of the monster, and still they journeyed to Beta Centauri, selling their souls to keep their children safe.

The Fleet Marines on
Merrimack
sneered at the turncoats. They called the pilgrims headed to the Centauri system, “horse pants.”

“What's with centaurs anyway?” Kerry Blue asked. “Whose bright idea was that? Boxers, briefs, or horse? I mean, can we be serious?”

Cole Darby's brows lifted as far as they would go. “Apparently we cannot.”

15 November 2443
Xerxes
Beta Centauri
Near Space

Romulus fashioned a resonator into an earring for Claudia to wear. “It's an amulet,” he told her. “Never take it off.”

Actually, he made sure she
couldn't
take it off. He didn't trust her not to get bored with it. “If you want a different style, come to me. But know that this one carries inside it all my love.”

He injected her with a resonant intradermal. Now, wherever she went, the Hive would mistake her for one of its members and ignore her. She could pass through them in safety. Not that he would ever allow the monsters to come so close to his beloved.

Romulus disappeared from the public eye for a few days. No one knew where he was. You could hope he was dead, but you didn't count on it.

He resurfaced at Terra Rica, where he planted his imperial eagles on the Cordillera estate.

The nation-planet of Terra Rica had few defenses other than goodwill.

Jose Maria de Cordillera, on board
Merrimack
, looked to Captain John Farragut for help. “What can be done?”

Farragut gave a heavy sigh. “Here's where neutrality bites you in the hindquarters, Jose Maria. We can expect righteous indignation and strong words from my government. I don't know what kind of military support I can wrangle for you while Earth is under Hive siege. And you might not want U.S. help anyway. Romulus could decide to displace gorgons to Terra Rica to spite us.”

Then Jose Maria received a video. It had been sent to him in care of his niece AnaLuisa on Terra Rica. When the family saw what it was, they forwarded it to Jose Maria on board
Merrimack
. The recording was a cruel fiction starring AnaLuisa. AnaLuisa asked her uncle what it meant.

It had to be fiction.

Jose Maria was afraid it was not.

The video began with his niece AnaLuisa piloting a sky yacht, an advanced kind he'd never heard of. He saw AnaLuisa as if he were taking a resonant call from her. He heard his own voice talking to her over a com.

His niece looked older than she should be. Here she looked old enough to be piloting a sky yacht.

She had motes on her face.

She was speaking to him. She invoked the Jericho Protocol.

Jose Maria watched the chilling story play out. Within hours it was all over. The final scene was a long view from space. Jose Maria's beautiful niece, his beautiful world, was dead.

It was dreadfully realistic.

Jose Maria gave the video to Augustus. He whispered, because he had no voice, “Is this real?”

Augustus answered. “No and yes. Terra Rica is still out there. It's still alive. Today. But the configuration of the background planets and stars in this recording is consistent with a date in
Anno Domini
2448, which is also consistent with the apparent age of your niece in this recording.”

Jose Maria's voice shuddered. “This
will
happen?”

“No. This
already happened
in a future reality.”

Jose Maria inhaled, like breathing in knives. “Is there nothing to be done?”

“Stay in the present tense if you're to be of any use to anyone,” Augustus said coldly. “In some reality, the destruction of Terra Rica actually happens. But not in
this
reality. And this is the one we have.”

Jose Maria stared at the data capsule with dread sorrow.

Captain John Farragut put out his hand. “Let me see that.”

Jose Maria gave Farragut the capsule. Farragut threw it into the annihilator.

Jose Maria looked quietly stunned. He spoke resentfully, “That was not yours to destroy.”

“I am the master of this vessel,” Captain John Farragut said. “Torture devices are subject to summary annihilation, no process, no recourse. Stay with me, Jose Maria. I need you.”

Romulus still needed to kill Jose Maria. Horribly. But he couldn't find him. Jose Maria wasn't on Terra Rica.

Romulus had sent the recording of Terra Rica's destruction to the Cordillera family on Terra Rica, but he received no confirmation that it ever got to Jose Maria or that Jose Maria actually viewed it.

Romulus gave the planet Terra Rica to Claudia at her demand.

Terra Rica had light industry and no military. It had a huge export business in pharmaceuticals, and it was a planetary breadbasket. It produced a wealth of natural building materials.

As Romulus desperately hoped, Claudia was disenchanted with it inside a terrestrial day.

With Claudia safely restored to her gilded cage inside the Xerxes, Romulus pointed his ship back toward his power base on Beta Centauri.

While in transit, Romulus escorted Claudia to a recreation of the Anastasis Ball, a well-recorded party that celebrated the emergence of the new Roman Empire in year 2290, when secret Romans broke the Long Silence and revealed their Empire ascendant.

The Xerxes brought the occasion to life. The greatest bands of the day played. It took some intricate programming to keep Claudia from running into the compartment's physical walls as she danced. She changed her dress twelve times. She loved the antique fashions. Shimmering bubbles floated up to the towering ceiling. She caught and released sparkling flits that left her hands dusted with gold. He'd never seen her so happy.

The programmed courtiers were charming to her. Romulus called out
a cheeky, insolent rake to the terrace with drawn rapiers. Romulus fought the rake to the ground, had him on his back at swordpoint, waiting for Claudia's mercy. She had none.

18 November 2443
Kentucky, USA
Earth

Gorgons were difficult to kill. Vacuum didn't kill them, Neither did they crush. They were pressure impervious. They burned slowly.

Gorgons descended on Kentucky. Decimated as they were, clouds of them still got past Earth's Horizon Guard, and they were falling on the Farragut estate.

His Honor John Knox Farragut Senior ran outside with a Colt .45, blaspheming, a dinner napkin still tucked into his collar. He quickly found out that bullets were no good against gorgons. He turned around and came back out with a scythe.

The horses were running.

Mama Farragut bade her eighth-born son, “John John, see to your father.”

“He's fine,” John Junior said. “He's wearing an adamantine net.”

“Gorgons can chew through adamantine,” sister Leah said.

“Only if they live long enough,” John John said. “His Honor is scary.”

The family dogs howled, milling, and whining. They banged at the windows. Leah had orders to lock the dogs indoors. The hounds desperately wanted to get out there and help their master, but they were too slow to survive a gorgon.

“Watch his back for him, John John,” Leah said. “Gorgons learn.”

“The gorgons are learning to run away,” John Junior observed, making no move to go out and help.

The Farraguts' golden Xanthin serpent, which had never been anything other than a sweet furry family pet, coiled itself around His Honor's waist and bit the fanged end off any tentacle that tried to strike its master from behind.

The eldest Farragut daughter paced, pushing herself off the walls, out of her mind with worry. Her mares were screaming. Amanda was going to lose all her foals. She kept from saying that aloud. It would sound small
compared to what other people were losing. She kept her foals out of it and wailed, “Where's the Horizon Guard! Where are the U.S. Fleet Marines?”

A roar from the sky brought all the Farraguts out to the porch in time to catch the retreating sterns of a flight of Fleet Marine Swifts, flying so low they flattened the tall grasses in the pastures. The fighter craft fired fragmentation rounds at the gorgons in the fields. They swept wide of Justice Farragut, who took off his hat and waved.

Leah, on the porch, yelled back into the house, “Mama! John sent the Marines!”

John Knox Farragut Junior stood back. He leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed, mouth shut.

A second flight of Swifts made a low pass, picking off gorgons.

John sent the Marines. Well, yes, it must be Captain John Alexander Farragut's idea to send in the Marines after seven years away from Earth. Because God knows our State Senator, Catherine Farragut Mays, could have nothing to do with the appearance of Fleet Marines over Kentucky in a crisis. No. It's all John Alexander. Everything is John Alexander.

His Honor, Justice John Knox Farragut Senior, marched in from the field. He was drenched in sweat. He left his scythe at the bottom of the steps, and he climbed up to the wide front porch. He uncoiled the Xanthin serpent from his wide waist and bundled it into Leah's arms. “Brush him out. Give him some water. Some quail eggs after he's cooled down. Good snake.” He ruffled the serpent's golden fur.

He moved back out to the edge of the porch to watch the Marine Swifts come down for another pass.

21 November 2443
Kentucky, USA
Earth

Captain John Alexander Farragut never came home from the Battle of Eta Cassiopeia seven years ago. His wife Laura sued for abandonment and he let her carve him up. He never told anyone that the children weren't his, though anyone who could read a calendar knew whose children they weren't.

Captain Farragut took a Fleet Marine Swift into Earth's atmosphere.

Swifts were small fighter craft. Farragut barely fit into the cockpit. He
set the little ship down on the old homestead in Kentucky. He would not displace while there were gorgons on world.

The Swift sat in the grass between the ancient oaks. The oaks clung to most of their brown leaves. The old house sprawled with several added wings. It had housed twenty-one children, some of whom came back, and now there were grandchildren.