Empire of Time Read online

  The screen went black and continued to load. Nick found himself staring at his own reflection. The plastic sheen of the monitor picked up so much more detail than the polished metal mirrors he used back home. He tipped his head to get a better look at his face.

  “I’ve often wondered,” Chloe said quietly, noticing his distraction, “do you see Nick, or Pullus?”

  “I see both,” Nick replied. He looked at Chloe, smiled, and watched her head to the door of his room. Only on the final step did she hesitate. “Your Who’s Where status hasn’t changed,” she said. “It’s still saying you’re in the Vomero quarter.”

  Nick looked back at the screen. There were several updates left, which would take a few minutes, even with the speed of the Bureau-provided connection. “Well, today I went to see Fabio and then onto Pompeii. You dropped me off and picked me up, remember?”

  “I just think it’s odd, that’s all.”

  “Update the entry, if it makes you feel better,” he said. “But it’s probably better for the cranks to head out to Vomero than come here. Unless you want to move again—”

  “No. As I said, I just think it’s strange. Anyway, I heard you had an interesting day in Pompeii.”

  Nick immediately thought about the graffiti. Did Chloe know? He turned to her, and was relieved to see she was grinning. “You’ve got a date? Fabio said she was a looker.”

  “Her name’s Amel,” Nick replied. “And it’s just dinner. It’ll probably be all classics chat. And anyway, she asked me, in case you’re wondering.”

  Chloe raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s not like I’m in a relationship with anyone.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” said Nick. Chloe didn’t seem convinced. “The gossip about me and Calpurnia isn’t true, you know. I thought you understood that.”

  “I know.”

  “A classic way of undermining a woman in power is to chatter about who she’s screwing.”

  “Thank you for telling me, sir.”

  Nick let out an exasperated sigh.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Chloe continued, tapping the side of her head as she left the room. “Call me when you get fed up and want to use my connection.”

  Nick rubbed his temples. A muscle was starting to twinge and the blue-green light from the monitor wasn’t helping. He stared at the screen, waiting for the computer to finish updating, as he thought about a long dead name.

  Joe Arlen.

  Nick knew very little about the man. One of the three founders of NovusPart, Arlen had arguably been the most important, the man who’d first understood how to pull particles forward along time’s arrow from the tail to the tip. He’d written the key algorithms. And he’d also prepared its safeguards.

  All of which had been triggered after the fall of New Pompeii.

  Joe Arlen. He’d been just a name, not a face. And most of the world thought he’d become a hermit, an eccentric rich man sitting in a darkened room surrounded by bottles of his own piss. Except Arlen hadn’t become a hermit. He’d been killed. Stolen from time.

  The computer rumbled. If he ever got to meet the diehards providing the fixes and patches for devices like this, he’d kiss them. In many ways, the computer worked a lot better than he remembered, although in others it didn’t. Under the desk, the computer’s fan was growling.

  It immediately warned him what he was doing was archaic. Nick cursed as the computer continued to cycle. Perhaps he should have allowed Chloe to search for him. But she and Jack would be together, sorting through the box of Pompeian wine and garum that smoothed his stay. Jack would no doubt drink the former and sell the latter; the Bureau wouldn’t stop him. If everything went to plan, he’d only be staying for a few days anyway, and then he wouldn’t be back for a long time. Maybe never.

  Just like Joe Arlen.

  Nick pushed the thought aside. It wasn’t fair on Chloe and, in some respects, it didn’t really matter what had happened to Arlen. He was gone. The one man who knew how to get the NovusPart device working simply wasn’t around to ask. And yet no one vanished completely without trace. And neither did a company.

  The browser loaded and Nick brought up information on former NovusPart employees. A few of them had achieved a limited celebrity directly after what some euphemistically called the “Pompeii incident”. A series of archived media articles and defunct blogs gave him a few names for further research, although none looked too promising: low-level staff who likely never had access to the locks and bolts of the NovusPart device.

  Most of the blogs concentrated on gossip. There were hints about Arlen’s mental state, and mentions of Whelan and McMahon, focusing on salacious rumours about their private lives.

  And yet somewhere in amongst all this must be the clue he needed. The fresco in the Gabinetto and the graffiti in the bakery both pointed to the NovusPart device being made to work. And yet neither of the messages had made it to him intact. The first had clearly contained the word “NovusPart”; the second his own name. But the sentences around these words were no longer legible; the steady erosion of history had made both pieces of information useless.

  Frustration bubbled up within him. His eyes ached and the screen in front of him blurred. The fresco and graffiti were useless. Pointers, yes. But they weren’t the answer, and they weren’t the only new pieces of information. The professor he’d met at the restaurant – Waldren – what was his field? Temporal philosophy?

  Nick tapped the words into the search engine. The machine juddered for a few seconds then displayed a list of bland results. He tried the name “Waldren”, but found nothing useful. Certainly nothing that matched the professor’s stated field or interests. Which was odd, Nick thought. Because he couldn’t have sprung from nowhere.

  And neither could Joe Arlen.

  Arlen must have had a family. Where were they? Nick started the new search. He quickly found Arlen’s mother; like most people over a certain age, Mary Arlen clung to the technology she understood. Her old-style blog was active but hadn’t been updated for some time. It would be interesting to talk to her, find out if her son had left anything useful behind. There was an email address. He could send her a message.

  But then he saw his own name. Nick Houghton. And he understood almost immediately that any attempt to contact her would be pointless. The entry was full of hatred: she openly accused him of wasting Joe Arlen’s legacy, keeping the Romans to himself, rather than sharing the wonder with the rest of the world. Any email would likely go unanswered.

  He was about to leave the blog when he spotted something else, a short reference mentioned within a longer diatribe.

  Mary Arlen had set up an organisation to continue her son’s work. Something called the NovusPart Institute.

  37

  Ancient Pompeii, AD 62

  ACHILLIA TRIED TO rest, letting her head fall forwards. She closed her eyes. Barbatus had left and there was no one else in the room with her – this time she was certain – and she likely had at least a little time before they returned. Whether they would have Trigemina with them was another matter. In all likelihood, they’d find her mistress still sitting in that rancid apartment, too scared to leave. Then she’d discover if Barbatus was true to his word; whether she’d be let go or simply executed to tie off a loose end.

  Achillia let out a frustrated scream, and stared again at the fresco of Artemis and Actaeon. Her breathing had just returned to its normal rhythm when she felt a deep, low vibration within her skull.

  “Shit,” Achillia whispered. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  A dark shape forced itself deep into her vision, pushing down hard as a vibration began to build in her ears. Filling her head with noise, before finally a voice emerged.

  Manius Calpurnius Barbatus, it said.

  “I’ve found him!” she shouted.

  You will go to Pompeii, and you will find Manius Calpurnius Barbatus! You will seek his daughter, and you will save her husband Marcus Villius Denter by taki
ng him to meet Balbus in Herculaneum.

  The voice kept repeating the instructions. All of it so close, and yet not quite right. Because as Barbatus had told her, there was no husband to save.

  “I’ve fucking found him!”

  The room was now swaying, just as had happened in the Sibyl’s cave. Achillia leant forward against her bindings and heaved, vomit dripping down her front and pooling in her lap. Just as suddenly as it started though, the voice stopped. But the room continued to move.

  The fresco cracked, scattering plaster and paint across the floor. The vibration in Achillia’s ears had been replaced by a loud roar that filled the room as the floor shook. She heard distant screams from within the house and the sound of breaking furniture.

  Achillia rocked frantically in the chair until it tumbled, assisted by the rolling of the floor. But still she couldn’t get out of the damn thing. “Cocksucking bastard!”

  The screams had gone quiet. No doubt the occupants of the house had all run out into the street.

  But was that a baby crying?

  Finally the back of the chair broke. Her bindings loosened and Achillia scrabbled free. She found a bit of fallen masonry under the wreckage of the chair. Some small offering of luck from the gods, she thought. Maybe even from the Sibyl.

  Achillia didn’t pause to think about it too much. She just ran through the empty house and reached the door to the street. Then she stopped. The Sibyl. That tiny bit of luck. The voice in the cave. Manius Calpurnius Barbatus. The daughter. The husband.

  How could the daughter ever get married if she died here today?

  Achillia hesitated. She could see the street outside. But there was a baby crying. It had been left behind. And somehow, through the terror, Achillia knew it was a girl.

  “Fuck!”

  There was no one left in the house to hear her. Achillia took a further step towards the street, then turned and ran back into the house. She hurried up the stairs, following the baby’s scream to a little wooden cot in one of several small chambers on the first floor.

  The child was wrapped in a thick blanket. As Achillia picked it up, the sound of snapping timber momentarily drowned out the infant’s crying. They maybe had seconds to get out before the entire house collapsed.

  * * *

  As soon as he arrived, Barbatus took the baby from Achillia and passed it to one of his men, who held the small bundle at arm’s length, a confused expression on his face. The party had returned several minutes after the earth shook. In that time, Achillia had waited with the household slaves in the street, surrounded by ruined houses.

  “They tell me you brought her out rather than escaping.”

  Achillia knew she was still Barbatus’s captive; his men had already formed a circle around her. They stepped even closer as soon as the baby was clear and out of danger. “Well, these cocksuckers weren’t going to do anything,” she said.

  “Then you have my thanks,” Barbatus answered. “And you can be sure that those who ran without her will be punished.”

  “I’d have killed them.”

  “I’m going to.”

  Achillia nodded up the street. Or rather, towards the thin strip that now wound its way through the rubble that had so recently been shops, bars and bakeries. It would take a long time to rebuild. Years, maybe. “Trigemina is dead?” she asked. Barbatus hadn’t returned with her, so she already knew the answer. But she still wanted confirmation, just in case the tremor – or the Sibyl – had decided to dole out a little more luck than simply freeing her from a chair.

  “She took the sword,” Barbatus replied.

  Stupid bitch. Why take the sword? Fight. Always fight.

  Barbatus smiled. “She cursed your name before she killed herself, you know,” he said. “Asked the gods to take their revenge for betraying her. It seems, however, they agreed with you, rather than a woman who was in no position to ever grant your freedom.”

  Achillia didn’t say anything.

  “Your plan wouldn’t have worked,” Barbatus continued. “When you got to her family, they would have turned you both in. But now what do we do with you?”

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “You would think so, right?”

  “Then what the fuck else are you going to do?”

  38

  New Pompeii

  ACTIVITY ON THE route to the amphitheatre rose and fell like the tide. On those rare occasions when the gladiators competed, you could be forgiven for thinking the entire town had become concentrated in one place. The workshops and houses lining the via transformed to sell food and drink, and the arches holding up the arena’s outer walls suddenly became home to novelties and side-shows, just like any town fair.

  But not today. As Pullus walked towards the amphitheatre the streets were quiet, and his slightly hurried walk seemed at odds with the pace of life going on about him.

  NovusPart had hoped the arena would generate revenue, but they’d also adapted the structure to accommodate another paradox chamber, linked to the device at the villa, into which they could deliver those people, objects and animals they’d transported forward in time. And if the damn thing looked ugly – jutting from the blind side of the arena like some architectural carbuncle – it was also secure. It was also where Habitus chose to hold outsiders who managed to breach New Pompeii’s security cordon, in his damn holding pens.

  Pullus stopped. The main gate leading into the amphitheatre had been left open. Inside, he could see the perimeter walls that separated the audience from the show. Pictures of horses, gladiators and slaves had been painted on them in bold primary colours, sadly missing from the grass-covered banks of the original structure in Italy.

  This was as far as he usually came. On game days he always headed back home after he’d taken in the atmosphere outside the gates. Maybe that’s why Calpurnia had thought this would be a good place to keep Whelan. He’d been so close.

  A guard, his face almost obscured by a thick beard, appeared from within the arena. “Back again?”

  “I’ve come to see the cells.”

  The guard nodded, unsurprised, and then pointed him round the side of the amphitheatre wall towards the annexe containing the holding pens. “No one told me you were coming,” the guard said. “I would have waited for you. The others are already inside.”

  Others? “It’s fine,” Pullus said, “but if you could take me to them?”

  “Sure. Though I told them there was no point hurrying. Dead men don’t tend to move very fast, do they?”

  Pullus shook his head, and waited for the man to lead the way. Like the upper floors of the House of McMahon, the annexe wasn’t designed to replicate anything in the Roman world. It was wholly modern, and passing through its threshold was like stepping forward in time: from the city of Pompeii, back to the present day. But like so much else, age had wearied it.

  Pullus had to walk slowly whilst his eyes got used to the relative darkness. Along the walls, candle-style light bulbs sat dead in their sockets. In their place, someone – probably the guards – had placed a series of oil lamps, although they gave little light.

  He heard voices from the corridor ahead. He knew some would belong to the unlucky few who’d been caught trying to breach the New Pompeii boundary, men and women who’d been left in the pens to die of either starvation or the shivers. But he also heard voices that didn’t sound like those of prisoners, chatting idly as if passing the time.

  Pullus was nearly at the paradox chamber. He passed several holding pens – ignoring the wails from inside – and came to a stop only when he approached two men standing outside one of the cell doors. He immediately recognised their faces. Both were from Calpurnia’s household, and both were amongst the strongest muscle retained by Habitus. What the hell were they doing here?

  The two men broke off their conversation mid-sentence at the sight of him. The slightly smaller of the pair reached towards the sword at his belt.

  Pullus cleared his throat. �
��You recognise me?”

  “Yes,” said the smaller man.

  “I’ve come to see Whelan.”

  Neither of the men spoke. Then, in the silence, another voice could now be heard. A much younger voice.

  39

  Naples

  “Nick Houghton remains silent on one key issue. The Romans killed everyone to do with NovusPart, except one man. So why did they let him live, when they killed everyone who stood with him?”

  Mary Arlen, archived blog post

  THE BUREAU OF Roman Affairs was a grand name for a dull organisation. It was also significantly smaller than most people assumed. The crest and flag behind the reception desk made a good show of it, but beyond the lobby were no more than fifty people, mainly admin staff dealing with supply issues, liaising with various government offices and – perhaps most importantly – trying to quell rumours circulating on the boards.

  Nick waited as the receptionist buzzed through to Fabio’s desk. He rubbed the back of his hand across the stubble on his face. The call had come early. He’d been awake but not dressed and certainly not washed. Fabio would just have to put up with his dodgy breath as the main penalty for dragging him out here so early.

  “He’ll be with you shortly.”

  The receptionist had only just finished speaking when the door to the main office swung open and Fabio beckoned him inside. “Ciao! You eaten?”

  Nick shook his head. “A coffee would be good.”

  Fabio signalled to the receptionist. “I didn’t think a good Roman boy like you drank coffee.”

  “Somehow, I think I’m going to need it.”

  The Bureau was all open-plan and most of the desks were empty. Nick’s Italian contact had a corner bay all to himself, but instead he directed Nick to a circular desk screened by filing cabinets.

  “Have you found a third anomaly?”

  Nick had meant it as a light-hearted comment, but Fabio didn’t look amused. The Italian hadn’t said much after he’d been shown the graffiti, instead busying himself making calls. The dig site had then been locked down and the patch of wall carefully removed.