The Fourth Rome (12 page)

Etkin turned to the waiter, who had poured some wine into one glass and was holding it out. His ring finger had a wide white
swath on it, as if he’d removed a ring recently. Probably his KGB class ring, pocketed for the duration of this meeting. Etkin’s
suit had all the earmarks of a privileged class: real buttonholes on his cuffs, hand-stitched lapels, soft chalk stripes.
Only a few prize-winning Russian scientists had the kind of cash it took to buy a suit like that. The ones that did were “show
scientists,” trusted party functionaries. KGB Department 6 senior personnel, especially, spent lots of time abroad under the
cover of scientific exchanges.

Etkin tasted the wine, approved it, and pushed his glass aside to make room for two fingers of Jack Daniel’s. “You may leave
the bottle.” This guy was not going to miss a free bottle of Western booze. Etkin addressed the ARC Riders as a group, formally:

“A toast. Today you are here seeing for yourselves how we have screwed up communism. Tomorrow, may you return to see how we
will screw up capitalism!” His smile was daz-zlingly white.

Nan Roebeck and Chun laughed out loud. Grainger forced a grin, but Etkin’s toast chilled him. Too temporally focused. Was
Etkin warning them? Acknowledging them for what they really were? Telling them he knew exactly why the ARC Riders were here
and now? Volunteering his services? Or merely making amusing conversation?

“To capitalism,” Nan said, taking a deep swallow of wine that made her eyes grow round in her head.

“To Russia,” Chun added.

“And to absent friends,” Grainger amended, picking up the blood-dark wine and looking at his wrist chronometer at the same
time. His left arm already hurt when he raised it. The combined injections had made a sore lump that felt as big as a rat
under his skin. Stalin’s favorite wine was so dry it tasted like red dust. “Got to run. Please, Colonel, forgive us.” Grainger
didn’t like being talked about in the third person, as a “thing” the way Etkin had talked about him to Roebeck. Nothing on
Etkin’s card had indicated a military rank or KGB affiliation, but it was time to call a spade a spade.

Etkin’s pale shooter’s eyes caught his and held him still for a moment. Not unfriendly, just acknowledging a kindred spirit.
An amusement drifted in their depths that was colder than a winter wind. Etkin inclined his fine-featured
nomenclatura
head infinitesimally.

Okay, maybe Etkin wasn’t a mere colonel, but someone of higher rank. Either way suited Grainger’s mood. Tun Grainger wasn’t
Nan’s guard dog, some expendable piece of well-conditioned flesh here to provide muscle in dicey moments.

On second thought, maybe he was. “Come on, Nan. I’ll walk you. Tomorrow night at your club, then, Professor Etkin—it will
be my pleasure to accept your hospitality.” He stood and Nan followed suit.

“Whatever specifics Chun Quo arranges are fine with us,” Nan Roebeck said.
“Das vedanya.”

There was no other way. They had to go meet their own contacts, leaving Chun in the silky smooth clutches of Academy of Sciences
Professor Viktor Etkin, KGB.

T
he breeze had picked up slightly as the afternoon wore on. Occasionally a wave slapped the bank, though the river was low
at this time of year. If Gerd fell from the stump on which he leaned outward, he’d land in mud without injury.

“We need to be inside the gates before sunset, Gerd,” Rebecca Carnes called.

“Yes, I’m coming,” the analyst said; and for a wonder, he did hop back to her across the trench trampled by the feet of the
barge tows. He’d slipped his sensor into his purse for safety.

“I wanted to get a view of the barges,” he explained. “There’s too much activity at the dock inside the fort for me to record
details from close by.”

Rebecca grimaced. “I thought you were scanning for the other revisionists,” she said.

“Of course, Rebecca,” Gerd said with a faint smile. “I’m constantly scanning within my sensors’ fifty-meter effective radius.
From this angle of the river, I was able to view the barges as well. Did you realize that virtually all the army’s supplies
have to be brought in by water? There’s no settled agriculture in this region, only a little gardening.”

“But there’s people, aren’t there?” Rebecca said. “What do they live on?”

Evening had brought more traffic, mostly toward the fort. With the army moving out in the morning there wouldn’t be the usual
number of overnight leaves.

“The Ubians and some other of the Rhenish tribes grow crops,” Gerd said. “The Germans of this area and eastward herd cattle.
Even if Varus conquered them, they couldn’t support a Roman garrison. The troops’ staple is bread, not meat. Changing the
region’s agriculture would take generations.”

A soldier rode by on a mule, splashing mud. He was very drunk and singing at the top of his lungs about a girl named Lalage.
He wasn’t wearing armor, but he carried a javelin from whose tip streamed a woman’s silk bandeau like a crimson flag.

“So there’s really no risk?” Rebecca said as she tried to process what Gerd was telling her. “Even if we didn’t prevent the
revisionists from saving Varus and his army, the Roman Empire
couldn’t
really expand to the Vistula?”

“It would make no administrative or economic sense to expand the empire to the east, Rebecca,” the analyst said. “Overland
communications with the central government would be a nightmare, and the combination of soil and climate make most of Germany
of only marginal argicultural value compared to Gaul and the Rhine basin, which supported Rome’s frontier garrisons in our
timeline.”

He looked at Rebecca with his frequent wistful smile. “But they could have done it, Rebecca,” he said. “Without Varus losing
ten percent of the empire’s total army at the critical moment, Central projects that Roman generals
would
have marched and conquered as far perhaps as the Ukraine. Russian generals conquered Siberia in the 19th century, even though
they brought down the czarist state behind them because of the resources they wasted in the effort.”

“Thereby bringing into being the Soviet state the pair back at the inn wants to expand,” Rebecca said. She laughed.

A woman coming from the fort looked at them. She led an eight-year-old by the hand and a four-year-old clutching his elder
sibling’s other hand. The woman had blond hair and Germanic features, but the children’s complexion was Mediterranean olive.

“I’m afraid that people don’t often learn from history,” Gerd said in an apologetic tone, as though it were somehow his fault.

“You’re wrong, Gerd,” Rebecca said. “We’ve learned a lot.”

She grinned at him, feeling brighter than she had for most of the day. Maybe she’d gotten over the shock of brawling with
the revisionists’ bodyguards.

Gerd raised an eyebrow in question. They were approaching the gate. Both halves were open with outbound traffic on the left
side. There was a short line of returnees being checked into the fort; a few civilians argued at their exclusion.

“We’ve learned that humanity can’t afford to let idiots do idiotic things,” Rebecca Carnes said. “They’ve got to be stopped.
And you, me, and Pauli are going to do just that.”

The garlic sauce had an interesting flavor, but the meat was tough even though it’d been boiled and Varus referred to it as
“calf.” Pauli Weigand had trained his palate in meals eaten across ten millennia. He guessed the donor hadn’t been a calf
for at least a year, and that it had been a pretty rough year besides.

As worried as he was about Beckie and Gerd, anything Pauli ate was going to taste like sawdust. His jaws moved stolidly on
the bite he’d torn from the slice he held in his right hand.

“Wine!” Sigimer demanded. His mustache and much of his blond beard were purple with spillage from previous cups. A girl with
a ladle of wine reached cautiously toward Sigimer’s cup. Earlier the German had jerked the dress down from her bosom, though
that had been several cupfuls before.

“Why don’t you barbarians make wine yourselves, Arminius?” asked Silius Gallus. The lawyer’d been drinking also or he might
have found a more tactful way to phrase the question. “I tried some of your
ale
when I arrived here and it was terrible. Why, I’d have believed a slave had pissed in my mouth!”

“Is that the sort of problem you often have, Gallus?” Cisius asked in false concern.

“Oh, good one, good one!” Varus bellowed. He mopped his lips, like the governor’s tunic, the napkin had a broad violet border
to show that he was a member of the Senate. “ ‘Is that the sort of problem you often have?’ ”

“Ah, most of my poor people haven’t had the experience I have of seeing Rome firsthand,” Arminius said. He’d drunk his share
during the meal, but he had a stronger head than Sigimer and, for that matter, many of the Romans. “Soon I’m sure all Germany
will have a chance to see exactly what Roman power amounts to.”

Pauli put the remainder of the meat into his mouth and resumed chewing. He licked his fingers, then wiped them on the napkin
he’d brought with him. The linen was dyed to match his dining cape; sauce stains only darkened the fabric.

He hadn’t been expected to take part in the conversation. The last place at table would probably have been filled by one of
the governor’s freedmen had not “the messenger of Augustus” arrived. Nobody thought Pauli’s position gave him status to equal
that of the nobles with whom he dined.

There was commotion in the hallway. The majordomo himself ran in. “Master!” he cried. Varus was looking over his shoulder
to talk with the chief steward and didn’t notice the intrusion for a moment. “I would have brought this to your attention
properly, but—”

A big, middle-aged German strode into the garden. He was flanked but not prevented by two soldiers, one of them the centurion
commanding the guards outside the residence. Besides his swagger stick, the centurion carried a long sword with an ornate
hilt.

“Quinctilius Varus!” the German said in a voice raised nearly to a shout. “Listen to me, my prince!”

Sigimer looked up and said, almost sober, “Hey! What’s Segestes doing here? Hermann, look who’s here!”

Arminius got to his feet, hindered by the pillows and the couch coverlet that tangled with his short cape. Pauli rolled his
knees under him though he didn’t rise, not yet.

He didn’t think things could get too badly out of hand. The carver slicing bits off the veal loin at a side table hopped back,
taking the big knife with him. That was the only weapon in the garden besides those the legionaries carried—and the microwave
pistol in the lining of Pauli’s cape.

“Ah, Segestes,” Varus said, pursing his lips in concern. “I had no idea that you’d be in Aliso today or I’d have invited you
to dinner. As it is…”

“Sir, I thought I’d better let him through, being he’s a king and an ally and all that,” said the centurion. He looked relieved
that the governor wasn’t tearing a strip off him, at least not as a first thought. “We kept the folks riding with him outside,
though.”

Segestes had a dark red beard and mustache, while the shoulder-length hair of his scalp was blond and speckled with gray.
The borders of his long blue cloak were worked with gold lace; the tip of the scabbard poking beneath the hem of the cloak
was gold cut-work as well.

“I didn’t come to eat!” Segestes said. He threw the right side of his cloak back over his shoulder as if to clear his sword
arm, though the ornate scabbard was empty. Segestes wore a torque like a giant horseshoe around his neck. It must be made
of tubing rather than solid metal or the weight would have bent him double. “I came to warn you that this Cheruscan viper
is planning to murder you and all your army if you march against the Chauci tomorrow!”

Gallus burst out laughing. Cisius stifled a smile in his napkin and said, “The whole army? My goodness, that’s a little extreme
even for barbarian hyperbole, isn’t it?”

Sigimer stood up, swaying noticeably. He looked in puzzlement at the cup in his hand, then cocked his arm back. The chief
steward snatched the cup from his hand before he could hurl it at Segestes.

“That’s a damned lie,” Arminius said. “Segestes, you’re a damned liar!”

The Cheruscan prince turned to Varus. “The Ubians are cowards who grub in the dirt and forget how a man lives,” he said. Under
stress his Latin had become more guttural, though it was still more intelligible than Segestes’. “This king of cowards can’t
raise his men to march with you, so he tries to frighten you into not marching at all. He doesn’t want anybody to get loot
and glory because he has no chance of that for himself!”

Segestes started for his younger rival. His knees bumped the serving table before the young legionary put an arm around his
throat from behind and started to choke him. The centurion dropped the sword to help. Segestes might be a king, but to Roman
soldiers he was still a member of an inferior race.

“Now, now, friends,” Varus said. He found it awkward to look up at Arminius standing behind him, particularly when he wanted
to keep an eye simultaneously on the Ubian whom his guards were wrestling back on the other side of the benches. “Why don’t
we all sit down and have a friendly drink together?”

He twisted his head in the opposite direction and said to the steward, “Grommus? There’s a jar of Falernian still sealed in
the storehouse. Have it brought in immediately.”

Segestes relaxed. The soldiers let him go, though they braced themselves to crush the German between their armored shoulders
if he tried violence again.

“My prince,” Segestes said a little hoarsely. “This whole business is a conspiracy, and there—”

He pointed at Arminius with his full arm.

“—is the one who planned it. This so-called Chauci rebellion is just a ruse to draw you into the middle of nowhere so you
can all be massacred!”

“Liar!” Arminius repeated. He sounded angry, but Pauli could hear an undertone of concern. The Cheruscan was trying to goad
his rival into a physical attack that would get him ejected before he could argue his case.