Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

›Yes, Maddy.

A list of names and dates appeared on the screen in front of them.

‘Roman emperors,’ she said. ‘That’s the whole list. All the way through the Roman Empire.’ She turned to address the screen. ‘Bob, can you put up the list from our external source?’

Another list appeared on the screen next to the first.

‘Spot the difference,’ said Sal, taking a seat beside Maddy.

Liam spotted instantly. ‘It changes after the third fella.’

Caligula.

‘You got it,’ said Maddy. She pointed with a biro, running it down the screen. ‘The correct data says he should have been Caesar from Ad 37 to 41. That’s just four years. Now look at the external data — we’re drawing this from a database location at bibliotheca. universalis/libri. cldvi. See? We’ve got the Emperor Caligula ruling for nearly thirty years.’

‘Weird,’ said Sal, looking at the database address. ‘A Latin Internet.’

Liam squinted as he looked at the names on the screen. ‘And the names are all different after him too.’

‘Right.’ Maddy sat back in her chair. ‘So someone somewhere has just made sure Caligula stays in power for much longer than he’s meant to.’

‘There’d be a much bigger change now, though,’ said Liam. ‘Wouldn’t there?’

‘Well, sheesh, God knows what we’re going to get when the next ripple arrives.’

Sal tutted. ‘Someone’s just been very naughty in Roman times.’

Liam looked at them both. ‘So-o-o…?’

Maddy sighed and tossed the biro on to her cluttered desk. ‘So…’

They shared an uncomfortably long pause, a who’s-going-to-crack-first silence. The question hung in the air between them, not asked and not answered.

‘So,’ said Sal, ‘are we dealing with this, or are we still on strike?’

‘This is a significant contamination,’ rumbled Bob.

‘Yeah, thanks for that, Dr Brainiac,’ said Maddy. She huffed irritably. ‘It would just be so nice if this Waldstein guy actually — you know — bothered to acknowledge what we’re doing here. I want answers before I do another thing for this agency.’

‘Still heard nothing from that advert?’ asked Liam.

‘Not a thing. Nada. Zip.’

‘We cannot ignore this contamination,’ said Bob.

›Bob is correct.

Maddy cursed. ‘Great, now I got both of ’em nagging me.’

Liam shrugged. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t mind having a quick look at them Romans.’ He offered Maddy a conciliatory smile. ‘And maybe the Bobs are right?’

‘If Foster’s telling the truth, Maddy,’ Sal said quietly, ‘if we really are the only team…?’

‘But what if we let it go?’ said Maddy. ‘Let this small timeline change work its way up to whatever year Waldstein is watching us from. Maybe that’ll make him take notice of us. Make him answer our questions.’

‘We cannot ignore this contamination,’ said Bob again.

She balled her fist on the table. A soft gasp of frustration deep in her throat.

Sal looked uncertainly at her. ‘There will be more changes coming soon, Maddy. You know how it goes.’

‘Aye… we ought to do something.’

Maddy turned in her chair to look at them. ‘Right.’ She nodded angrily. ‘Clearly I’m the one being the stupid idiot here. And clearly I’m not actually in charge of this team, then. It seems this is in fact a “decision-making committee” and apparently I’ve been outvoted. That about the size of it?’

Sal was right, though. That was the annoying thing. Liam was right too; even their dumb support unit and the networked computers were right. They couldn’t just do nothing; couldn’t just sit on their hands and ride this one out.

‘Crud. I just wanted to… to wait and see, you know? See if someone else might step in and help out.’ She tried sounding hopeful. ‘Maybe even force Waldstein to come back and pay us a visit. You never know.’

The silence was deafening.

‘All right. OK… I get it. All right.’ She pushed her chair back with a squeak of complaint from castor wheels forced across the pitted concrete. ‘I suppose we better start getting organized, then.’

‘What are they?’

‘They’re called babel-buds,’ said Maddy. ‘According to the packet they came in, everyone in the future uses them all the time.’

Liam looked down at them. They looked like flesh-coloured Smarties with a dimple on one side. Maddy opened a small Ziploc plastic bag and dropped two of them in. ‘I checked them. They support seventy-six languages, Latin among them. Just pop them in your ears when you arrive. There’s a spare in case you lose one.’ She looked at his shaggy hair. ‘And since your ears are lost under that mop, no one’s going to see them anyway.’

Sal handed him another sealed plastic bag containing the woollen tunic, leggings and shoes from his trip to 1194. ‘I found some leather flip-flops and took the label off them. I think they’ll do.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ve got a location set up about seven miles outside Rome,’ said Maddy. ‘Remote. I’ve pinholed it and run a density probe. It’s quiet, so you shouldn’t be observed arriving or leaving. See if you can thumb a lift in or steal some horses from somewhere… and then I guess the best thing would be to head into Rome and have a quick look around.’ She scanned through some printed-out notes. ‘It seems something or someone’s helped Caligula survive the assassination attempt that cut his reign short. I really don’t know where to suggest you should start looking, somewhere central, the government district, the forum or Senate or whatever the term is. Some place like that.’

‘Their version of Times Square,’ added Sal.

‘Right,’ Maddy nodded. ‘I’ve picked AD 54. On the database of corrupted history we’re getting garbled data for that year. It’s in a state of flux. I think these might be a sequence of oscillating time ripples, like an interference pattern. It’s very unsettled. Obviously something major happens in that year. Let’s start from there and see where it takes us.’

Bob and Liam nodded.

‘So, like the Cabot trip, Liam. OK? Just go look and listen and see if there’s anything at all we can zero in on as a possible cause.’

‘Aye, will do.’

‘Return windows, as usual, are one hour, one day, one week.’

‘Well, don’t get all hissy with me if we miss the first two windows,’ said Liam. He looked at her. ‘Seven miles, you say? That’s a day’s walk there and a day’s walk back. Me an’ Bob won’t get to see much of Rome if we have to get back for — ’

‘A week, then,’ she replied irritably. ‘If that’s what you want?’

‘Aye.’ He smiled. ‘It’ll be good to get a proper look around for once, rather than a flying visit.’

‘Up to you. Just be care-’ Maddy stopped.

She’d not noticed it before, but standing here at the base of the displacement tube, with the strip light fizzing away directly above and casting an intense light down on his face, Liam’s eyes seemed lost in shadow. Ever so slightly sunken. The very first faint hint of Foster’s face in his younger features.

‘Mads?’

She shot a quick glance at Sal. She knew about Liam now. Can she see it too? By this light, is she seeing what I’m seeing?

Liam cocked his head curiously and in the change of expression the vague resemblance to Foster’s face was all of a sudden gone. ‘Maddy? You all right?’

She nodded quickly. ‘Uh… fine. No, what I was going to say was, just… uh, just be careful.’

‘Of course I will. Always am.’ Liam grinned, turned and punched Bob’s bare shoulder. ‘Come on, then, fella. Time for the goldfish bowl.’

She looked at Bob, naked apart from shorts and clutching his own plastic bag of clothes. ‘Is your data-packet upload complete?’