Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

There was silence for a moment. The atrium of Crassus’s home echoed with the sound of his household slaves preparing food out in his courtyard.

‘But the Stone Men are very real,’ said Cato. ‘And dangerous. Caligula has made sure to demonstrate that very publicly. The question we have to ask is do you think your Stone Man could best Caligula’s guards?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘Possibly.’

‘Even to distract them for a moment,’ said Cato. ‘That’s all. A moment when I am close enough to him. Enough time to strike him down. That’s all I need.’

‘That’s possible,’ she replied. ‘But in exchange we need some help.’

Crassus leaned forward. ‘Go on.’

‘Those chariots… we need to find them. Are they somewhere in Rome still?’

Crassus shook his head. ‘Nothing from that day apart from the Stone Men has ever been seen again.’

‘But,’ cut in Cato, ‘there are places in the palace that Caligula will allow absolutely no one to go.’ The others looked at him. Maddy suspected that was information new to them. ‘He’s given very specific instructions to me on the deployment of the Palace Guard. There are places only he can go.’

‘Big enough to hide these chariots?’

‘The imperial compound is vast. But in the palace itself… yes. I’ve seen a reinforced doorway guarded by Stone Men. Perhaps in there you might find something.’

Maddy stroked her chin thoughtfully for a moment. ‘All right, then. Perhaps we can help each other out.’

Cato turned to look at Crassus and the others. Silent nods from them all.

Sal tapped her arm gently. ‘Any chance you’re going to tell me what we’ve just agreed to?’

AD 54, Rome

The two senators left for their townhouses in the Greek district. Atellus returned to his legion stationed outside the city.

Maddy and Liam sat with Cato in the shade of a portico watching Macro and Fronto sparring with Bob in the courtyard with wooden training swords. Crassus chortled and Sal hooted with delight at the centurion and ex-centurion’s failed attempts to score a touch on Bob’s torso.

‘Your Stone Man is so fast,’ said Cato.

‘Very,’ said Maddy.

‘He’s saved my life many times over,’ added Liam. ‘One-man army, he is.’

‘Tell me.’ Cato sat forward. ‘What language is that you use, when you speak quietly?’

‘You mean when we whisper to ourselves?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. ‘You must think we’re totally mad, talking to ourselves.’

Cato splayed his hands apologetically. ‘It’s a very odd thing you do.’

Liam reached up to his ear. ‘Shall we show him?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Might as well.’

He pulled out his babel-bud and handed it to Cato. ‘You’d better explain how it works,’ he said to her.

‘This little device translates our language, which is called English, into Latin.’

Cato turned the small flesh-coloured bud over in his fingers. ‘It actually speaks words to you?’

‘Yes. In our ear. It hears what we say quietly in English and gives us the correct Latin phrase to say.’

He frowned as he looked at it. ‘Do you mean to say it is… this device can understand the meaning of what is said to it?’

‘Yes. There’s a thing called a computer in there. A bit like a mind, I suppose. An artificial one. It’s an engineered thing.’

Cato’s eyes widened. ‘This province of yours with such advanced devices… how is it possible that no one has ever come across it before? How is it possible no Roman has ever heard of America before?’

Cato passed the bud back to Liam and he carefully placed it back in his ear.

‘Because it’s too far away for anyone — even any Roman — to find.’

Liam’s bud was whispering again in his ear. ‘You telling him about time travel, Mads?’

‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ she replied.

Cato frowned. ‘What did you just say to each other?’

‘It was nothing.’

‘I suspect you’re patronizing me,’ he said with a smile. ‘The simple-minded Roman soldier, eh?’

She made an apologetic face. ‘Where we come from is very difficult to explain, Cato.’

‘Why not try?’

She realized how easy and how stupidly incorrect it was to assume that a person from an earlier time was somehow less intelligent. Just because they might not understand the concept of something as commonplace as a cellular phone, or a computer, or a light switch, it didn’t make their minds any less agile.

‘We are from the future.’

His eyes narrowed and he rubbed the dark hairs on his forearm as he digested that. ‘When you say “future”… are you talking about the passage of days?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Days yet to happen?’

‘Correct.’

‘You mean to say, then, you are from time… that is ahead of us?’

‘Exactly that,’ said Liam. ‘A long way ahead.’

‘See… in the future, Cato, mankind will discover how to travel backwards and forwards along time, just like travelling along a road.’

‘A road? A road through time?’

‘The place where we and them Visitors came from — America — doesn’t exist yet,’ said Liam. ‘Well, it does, but it just doesn’t have that name yet.’

Cato stared at the sparring men as he attempted to absorb what they’d just told him. ‘This is an incredible idea,’ he whispered after a while. ‘You know, as a small boy I used to wonder what it would be like to witness the future. To see how things go. To imagine what I would be like as a man. Whether I would ever become a freedman.’ He looked up at them. ‘And you say it is possible to do this?’

Both of them nodded.

‘So, how far along this “road of time” do you come from?’

‘How many years?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, this is quite a hard thing for me to try and explain…’

‘I suspect you’re patronizing me again.’

Both Maddy and Liam laughed at that. ‘All right,’ said Liam. ‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you. This’ll really mess with your head, so it will.’ He grinned at Maddy impishly. ‘You gonna tell the poor fella, or shall I?’

‘About two thousand years,’ she said.

Cato’s jaw hung slack. ‘Did you just say two thousand?’

‘Just under.’ She shrugged. ‘Give or take a few years. Depends on whether you count in Jesus-years or normal ones. AD, anno domini, or CE, common era.’

‘Jesus-years?’ He cocked his head.

Maddy shook her head. ‘That’s a whole other story. The thing is, Cato, history has a way it’s meant to go. A way it’s supposed to go. And these Visitors from the future, they’ve sent events going off in a different direction. A wrong direction.’

Maddy and Liam proceeded to explain to him the nature of time travel and alternate timelines; histories that should never be and how they caused things called ‘time waves’, reality shifts that erased everything in their path and left monstrous new realities in their wake. She was surprised at how well he grasped the notions, how intelligent his questions were. An agile mind just as keen to peer into the unknown as any of the great thinkers and philosophers hundreds of years down the line.

By the time they’d finally finished explaining, both Macro and Fronto had had enough swordplay and were hunkered over, sweating in the midday sun, gasping for breath. Bob continued play-sparring with Sal.

‘So then,’ said Cato, ‘you are here to correct events?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you say this time we are in right now… this would be the rule of Claudius, not Caligula?’

‘Yes.’

‘Claudius? That old fool?’ He looked surprised, but then shrugged as he gave it some thought. ‘Better a fool than a madman, I suppose.’