David Epperson - The Third Day

I sighed, but made no further move stop him. Lavon was the expert, after all.

“Just don’t get yourself killed, OK. We still need someone who can actually talk to these people.”

“Don’t worry, Bill,” he replied. “Besides, it will be helpful to scout the ground outside this fort, wouldn’t you say?”

***

I couldn’t not worry, but there was no use arguing. For a brief instant, I followed Lavon up the steps into the courtyard, where I saw Markowitz and Bryson pacing back and forth on the other side of the open gate.

On the ramparts above, a Roman sentry watched them curiously but made no move to impede their progress. Apparently, we could come and go as we pleased.

As Lavon joined the others, I just waved and then walked back down to the baths.

“This is a bad idea,” I said to Sharon.

“Did they take the camera?”

I nodded.

“Well,” she smiled. “That’s one less thing we have to worry about here. No one can steal it while we’re bathing.”

“I suppose not.”

“What are we going to do while they’re gone, after our baths?” she asked.

I stared down at the floor and shook my head. “Perhaps we can go upstairs and watch the riot that starts when those three try to get into the Temple. That should be entertaining.”

“I’m serious.”

So was I.

I decided not to complain, though. There was nothing I could do.

“I’d be interested in learning how the soldiers train,” I finally replied. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk to them, and even if I could, they’d have questions for me, too. What could I tell them that they could possibly believe?”

“What did you do in the Army before you retired?”

“My last assignment was to improve the coordination between our covert field operatives and their linkages to satellite reconnaissance and drone aircraft.”

Sharon laughed. “Yeah, I see how that might be hard to explain. What did you do when you first enlisted?”

“Chased Viet Cong through the jungle and tried not to be the last man killed.”

The truth was the other way around — except for the trying not to get killed part — but I saw no reason to complicate matters.

She eyed me strangely. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen. I had stolen a car. The draft had ended but the Army still needed recruits. The judge told me I could either enlist or go to jail. It wasn’t really a hard choice.”

“I suppose not.”

“As it turned out, I was pretty good at it — soldiering, that is. After I came back stateside, they gave me an intelligence test, and the next year, I was off to OCS. After that, one thing led to another.”

“And here you are.”

I glanced around the room. Though the evidence was overwhelming, my mind still struggled to accept the fact that I was indeed sitting in the bath facility of a first century Roman fort.

“Yeah, here I am.”

The fawning servant interrupted and beckoned once more for us to follow. Sharon decided it would be best if she went ahead, though before she did, I waved the man away, reached into my bag and pulled out an object resembling a common ear bud, which hung from a Kevlar thread, like a pendant.

I draped it around her neck. “Before you go, take this.”

She looked confused — as if unsure whether I was giving her something she would need in the next few minutes or trying to convince her to let me join her for some rub-a-dub-tub.

“It’s a transmitter,” I explained. “Actually, it’s more than that. If you put the bud in your ear, it will also make translations.”

“You’re kidding!”

I was not. The latest wars found American soldiers toiling in ever more remote parts of the world, and needing to communicate with people who spoke languages few Americans knew. DARPA scientists had labored over the technology for years, though they had only recently managed to construct viable prototypes.

“What it won’t do,” I said, “is translate your speech back to them. I’ve disabled that feature, since I’m not sure how a first century Roman would react to a little talking disk.”

I didn’t think they’d burn us as witches, but saw no need to take the chance.

“As a safety precaution, it senses body heat; so if it’s not seated in your ear, it won’t make a sound.”

“How well does it work? The last computer translation program I had was a joke.”

“It’s not perfect,” I admitted. “I got the gist of what Publius and the other man were saying last night, though.”

“Wow.”

“The Greek should be functional. I programmed it with modern Greek during those few days we were getting ready to go.”

“But the Greek spoken here is different.”

“Yeah, Robert told me that it’s the equivalent of a modern American reading Chaucer in the original. Still, the eggheads at DARPA say that the software is adaptive. Although Chaucer isn’t easy to read, it’s still a lot easier for us than it would be for someone who didn’t know English at all.”

“You couldn’t program the Aramaic?”

“I had no access to modern speakers on such short notice. Besides, we’d have the same language drift problem — worse, probably.”

Do the others have one?

“I could only get my hands on three. I was going to give one to Lavon, but I didn’t expect the other two to take off like they did, which is a shame, since it can also serve as a two way radio.”

Moments later, the servant returned. He was more insistent this time; we must have been holding up the line.

“Go ahead,” I said. “It’s waterproof. If you keep it around your neck, you won’t be able to hear me, but I should be able to hear you.”

She stepped behind the drapery and hung her clothes on a rack. Then she walked down a narrow corridor until she reached the entrance to the caldarium , where she slipped on the wooden clogs that the attendant had laid at the threshold.

As I was to see a few minutes later, the pool itself was surprisingly large — about seventy-five feet long and roughly half as wide. We could hear the fires from the furnace underneath — a hypocaust , Lavon had called it. Hot air mixed with steam rose from hollowed out bricks along the edges of the room, producing a sauna-like effect.

I could hear her kick off the clogs and ease herself into the water. It sounded like she swam a couple of easy laps before gliding over to the steps and leaning back.

“It’s about the temperature of a Jacuzzi,” she said. “The only things lacking are the bubbles.”

I smiled. We had, perhaps, enough mechanical knowledge between the five of us to invent some sort of pump out of available materials, though I for one didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out.

Sharon stayed in the water and helped herself to the refreshments beside the pool. A little while later, we both heard a bell ring, which was the signal to move on.

I gave her a few minutes before I, too, deposited my clothes on the shelf. I walked into the caldarium and set my bag next to the edge of the pool. I also swam a couple of slow laps and then just rested on the warm steps, sampling the food. Lavon was right: it was delicious.

Between the warmth and the chow, I lost track of time. A little while later, though, the bell rang again, so I got out of the water, picked up my bag, and headed to the next station.

This room, the frigidarium , Lavon had called it, was only a quarter of the size of the one I had just left. People were less likely to linger here, and this made sense.

I suppose some creatures — polar bears, perhaps — might have described the water as ‘invigorating.’ To me, it was just plain cold, although it did shake the cobwebs loose.