Departures

DEATH IN VESUNNA

This story was my first professional sale. It was not, however, my first professional appearance. The magazine that bought it, Cosmos, folded after four issues-and before the story saw print It later ran in Isaac Asimov’s. The idea from which it sprang came from my ex-wife, who was not then ex-, whose name appears in the table of contents as coauthor. The research and almost all the writing are mine. The marriage ended up failing, as sometimes happens. The story, I think, still works.

“More wine, gentlemen?” Clodius Eprius asked, eyeing his two guests with faint distaste. He had wanted to leave for his country estate to supervise the harvest, but this dinner meeting was keeping him stranded in Vesunna like some vulgar lampseller. When both men nodded, he sighed and rose from his couch. Picking up the red earthenware jug, he filled their cups and poured himself a hefty dollop, as well.

All drank; the two strangers murmured appreciatively. That warmed Eprius a little. He said, “It’s not Falernian, but this is a fine vintage. It was laid down the year Hadrian died, eight-no, nine years ago now. A fine vintage,” he repeated. “Do you know, they’re even shipping our Aquitanian wine to Britain these days.”

“Really?” One of his visitors, a short blondish fellow who called himself Lucius, looked interested. His comrade kept his nose in his cup. A tall, solidly built man with hard, dark eyes, he had not said three words all through dinner. Lucius had introduced him as Marcus.

For no reason he could name, Eprius’ guests disturbed him. It was not their accent, though Lucius, who did most of the talking, flavored his Latin in a curious fashion. No, the way they looked at their surroundings nettled their host more. Itinerant booksellers like these men would have seen many splendid villas in their travels, to be sure. Eprius knew his house would not have seemed imposing to anyone newly come from Rome or Antioch. But a fountain laughed in the courtyard, and the statues around it were good work. So was the hunting scene picked out in mosaic on the dining room floor; craftsmen from Rome had created it. His home was no hovel. It did not deserve Lucius’ patronizing stare or the contempt Marcus scarcely bothered to conceal.

He drained his wine. “Well, good sirs,” he said, “you told me you had a proposition I might find interesting, could it be kept in sufficient privacy. I have met your request. My servants are already at my other home, and I’ve given my valet the evening off. I am at your disposal, gentlemen. How do you wish to entice me?”

“We thank you, my friend,” Lucius replied, “for a fine meal and for the kindness you have shown two men you do not know. We will think your courtesy limitless indeed if you answer one question for us.”

“Ask, sir, ask.”

“I am sure you know Vesunna is not a town to which we usually travel, fine though it may be. But while we were in Massilia we heard a rumor so astounding, if true, that we hurried north to investigate.”

“You have not asked your question,” Eprius pointed out. There was a tinge of smugness in his voice, and Lucius did not miss it.

“It’s true, then. You do have a copy of Sophokles’ Aleadai?”

“And if I should?”

“May we see it?” For the first time Lucius displayed real eagerness. Even Marcus’ dour features almost smiled.

“I keep it in my private suite. Wait here a moment, if you will.” Taking a lamp to light his way, Eprius bustled out of the dining room, down the hall, and into his sanctum. The first thing he spied there was a stout walking stick. He seized it gratefully, for he had been a trifle lame since falling from a horse a couple of years before.

He shuffled rolls of papyrus, finding Book Three of the Aeneid, Book One of the Iliad, a bill from the sheep doctor Valerius Bassus, Book Seven of the Aeneid, and, at last, the work he sought. A copy of the Aleadai had been in his family for almost three hundred years. One of his ancestors had been a centurion in Lucius Mummius’ army when that general had sacked Corinth, and had taken the original document as part of his loot. Finding that the ravages of time had made it almost illegible, Eprius’ grandfather had had it recopied. It had been rare then. Eprius still recalled the old man chuckling as he described the surprise of the copyist who redid it. He could well understand booksellers coming a long way in search of such a work.

Lucius took the roll like a lover caressing his beloved. Yet he handled its spindles clumsily, almost, thought Eprius, as if he were not used to unrolling a book to read it. Don’t be a fool, he told himself: A book dealer sees more books in a month than you will in ten years. The wine has simply made his fingers awkward. He certainly reads well enough-he isn’t even moving his lips, which is more than you can claim for your reading.

A passage seemed to please the stranger, who began to read aloud. His accent was, if anything, stronger in Greek than in Latin, but he paid scrupulous heed to the complex meter of the tragedian’s verse. Despite himself, Eprius was impressed.

Lucius read silently once more, faster and still faster, whipping through the scroll now with a speed that left Eprius blinking. A lamp went out, but Lucius never noticed. He read aloud again:

“ ‘Stop! It is enough to have been called father,

If indeed I begot you. But if not, the harm is less,

For what one believes carries more weight than the truth.’ “

He turned in triumph to Marcus.”That clinches it!” he said. “This is one of the sections Stobaeus quotes, and this is the genuine Aleadai!”

“Of course it’s genuine,” Eprius said in aggrieved tones. These fellows had approached him. Did they now think he was trying to cheat them? And who was Stobaeus? The name was not familiar.

Neither of his guests was listening to him. They sprang from their couches, Lucius carefully put the Aleadai down first, and capered about in ridiculous fashion. They slapped each other’s backs, swatted each other’s palms, and clasped each other’s wrists, all the while making interlocking rings of thumbs and forefingers. Barbarians after all, Eprius thought.

Little by little they calmed down. Marcus’ glee subsided into wariness, but Lucius’ face was lit by that special joy felt when something long sought was at last found. “This is indeed a treasure.” he said. “What price would you put on it?”

Eprius smiled. “A curious sort of merchant you are, to let a prospective seller know how much you esteem his goods.”

Marcus looked alarmed, but Lucius said smoothly, “Under any other circumstances you would be right, but not today. You see, I have a standing offer for this work from a gentleman at Rome whose name I am sure you would recognize were I at liberty to disclose it. Quite a sizable offer, in fact.”

That made sense. Many senators and other officials were zealots in the pursuit of culture. Eprius nodded, and as he did, Marcus’ watchful mask settled back over his face. “How sizable an offer?” Eprius asked.

“Large enough so that I can afford to offer you-hmm- seventy-five aurei and still turn a handsome profit.”

“Seventy-five aurei?” Eprius tried hard not to show how startled he was. That was many, many times the going rate, even for a rare book. “A princely sum! Why is your unnamed patron so anxious to acquire the Aleadai?”

“It is the only play of Sophokles he lacks.”

“Come now, do you take me for an utter idiot? I doubt if even the library of Alexandria could make that claim. My friend, I do not know what your game is, but find someone else to play the dupe.”

“Do you think we are trying to defraud you? This will persuade you otherwise.” Lucius drew out a leather purse and tossed it to Eprius. He opened it. Ruddy in the lamplight, gold-pieces spilled into his palms. They clinked sweetly.

“Well, well,” he said at last. “I owe you an apology, good sirs, both for what I said and for what I thought. Let me take the roll to our local copyist, and you may have either the original or the copy within a week, just as you please. Aemilius Ruso is a friend of mine; I assure you he has a fine hand, and he is careful, too.”

“I am afraid that won’t quite do, friend Eprius. A condition of the sale is absolute privacy, and it is a condition on which I have no discretion whatever. We must have this work now. Is the price inadequate? I can sweeten it a bit, I think.”

“ ‘Money buys men friends and honors, too.’ So says the poet in this very play. But money will not buy the only copy of the Aleadai, for it has been an heirloom in my family for eleven generations. I see no reason not to share it, but I will not give it up.”

“A hundred aurei?”

Eprius’ face froze. He refilled the purse and threw it at Lucius’ feet. “You insult me, sir. I must bid you a good evening.” He held out his hand for the play.

Reluctantly, Lucius began to give it back to him, but Marcus reached out and held him back. His smile and his heavily accented voice were deliberately offensive. “I think we keep this,” he said.

“What? Get out, you rogues, you lashworthy rascals!” Despite graying hair and growing paunch, Eprius was still fairly quick on his feet. His walking stick thudded down on Marcus’ shoulder. The Aleadai fell to the floor. “Get out, robbers, get out!” Eprius shouted.

“Bastard!” Marcus snarled. He ducked the next swing of the stick. Stars exploded inside Eprius’ head as a solid right sent him spinning back over his couch to the floor. Somehow he held on to his stick. Too angry to fear facing two younger men, he surged forward, crying “Thieves! Thieves!” at the top of his lungs.

Marcus’ hand snaked under his tunic. Eprius saw it emerge with a curiously shaped metal object. One of Marcus’ fingers twitched on it, and Eprius heard the beginning of a barking roar. Something sledged him in the forehead, and he never saw or heard anything again.

Lou Muller, who in Vesunna called himself Lucius the book dealer, stared in horror at the crumpled corpse that had been Clodius Eprius. The gun shot still seemed to echo in the room. “Jesus H. Christ, Mark!” he said, and he was not speaking Latin at all. “The patrol-”

“Lou, you can take the patrol and stuff it right on up-” Mark Alvarez tucked away the pistol and rubbed his shoulder. “The old son of a bitch damn near broke my collarbone. What was I supposed to do, let him yell until all the neighbors came? Speaking of which-” He scooped up the Aleadai and trotted into the street. His partner followed, still expostulating.

“Oh, shut up and listen to me, will you, please?” Alvarez growled. “Why do we make a good team, anyway? It’s not just because you’re the fellow who knows his way around the second-century empire and I’m the one with the pull to get a timer. I’ve got the brains to get you out of trouble when you screw up, which you did. For one thing, even I know-you’ve told me often enough-Stobaeus isn’t going to be born for a couple of hundred years yet. For another, and worse, that geezer was never going to sell us the play after you got his back up.”

“But I offered him seventy-five aurei!”

“That didn’t impress him, now did it? And it doesn’t impress me, either. What’re seventy-five aurei to us? Thirty credits for the gold (always thanking God for fusion-powered transmutation), the same for some authentic molds, and voila! Aurei! Whereas we can-and we will-get easily fifty thousand credits for a lost play of Euripides.”

“Sophokles,” Muller corrected absently.

“Whatever. And as for the Time Patrol, why are we here in the boondocks instead of at the library of Alexandria? Why do we insist on so much privacy when we make our deals? Just so they won’t run across us. And they won’t. Erasing this fellow won’t leave any clues downtime. We don’t change anyone’s ancestry, because his wife’s been dead for years. We did check him out, you know.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Did anyone see us leave?”

“I don’t think so. But my God, Mark, a bullet-”

“What about it? Nobody here will ever figure out how he died. The local yokels’ll call it the wrath of the gods or something, and then they’ll forget it. All we have to do is sit tight for three weeks until the timer recharges, and then it’s back to 2059 and lots of lovely money.”

“I suppose so,” Muller agreed slowly. “I kind of liked old Eprius, though.”

“Liked him? Lou, he was just a stupid savage, like all the other stupid savages here and now. Look around. Is there anything here but filth and disease and superstition? You couldn’t pay me to time if it weren’t for xanthomycin. Come on, let’s get back to the inn. Like the fellow said, my man, the play’s the thing, and we’ve got it.”

“What about the gold?”

“You want to go back and get it? Relax; it’ll confuse the issue, anyway.” They walked on in silence until they came to the inn. “What a dump,” Alvarez sighed. “Oh, well, at least it has a bed, and I need sleep right now. We’ve had a busy night.”

The sound of a fist crashing against his door hauled Gaius Tero from the depths of slumber. Stifling a curse, he climbed out of bed and threw on a mantle. His wife stirred and muttered drowsily.”It sounds like business, Calvina,” he said. “Go back to sleep.” A forlorn hope indeed, with his door being battered down. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” he shouted, and the pounding stopped. As tesserarius of Vesunna’s seven-man detachment of vigiles, he wondered what had gone wrong now. Had someone knocked over Porcius’ wine shop again, or had Herennius

Fundanus’ firetrap of a stable finally decided to go up in smoke? Either way, the responsibility fell on him, for the vigiles were constabulary and fire brigade both.

He threw open the door. Just as he had expected, there stood the panting figure of Larcius Afer, who had the watch that night. “Well, what is it?” Tero demanded, adding hopefully, “I don’t smell smoke.” The siphon, which was the city’s chief fire-fighting implement, was a pain in the fundament to deploy and use.

“No, sir,” Afer agreed. He paused to wipe sweat from his face. The night was warm, and he had plainly run some distance. Tero, who was not the most patient of men, glared at him until he continued. “Clodius Eprius has been killed.”

“What do you mean, killed? Has he been murdered?”

“Killed, sir,” Afer repeated stolidly. “Kleandros is with the body now. He’ll be able to tell you more than I can, I’m sure.”

“Obviously,” Tero snapped. Still, he was glad the Greek doctor would be there. They were old friends, though they argued constantly.

The tesserarius ducked back into his house for sandals, then accompanied his fellow vigil to the dead man’s home. It was a couple of hours before dawn, and a waning crescent moon shed a wan light over the town. Nevertheless, it was dark enough to make Tero glad his companion carried a torch.

Eprius lived (or rather, had lived) at the opposite end of town from Tero’s home. He and Afer tramped through Vesunna’s central forum, silent save for the sound of their footsteps. At its very heart was the temple dedicated to the city’s tutelary gods. Its huge circular cella made it currently the biggest structure in Vesunna, but the amphitheater being built not far away promised to dwarf it and everything else in the town.

Tero wondered idly what the old Petrocorii, the Celtic tribe that had founded Vesunna, would have thought of such an incredibly huge edifice. Magic, without a doubt: Anything was magical to someone who did not know how to do it.

His thoughts turned back to Eprius. Why would anyone want to kill the old fool? Tero knew him fairly well, and also knew he had not a single enemy in town. Had some footpad done away with him? Tero tried to pump Larcius Afer, but Afer shook his head, saying, “You’ll have to see for yourself. “With a small shock, the tesserarius realized his subordinate was frightened. That was very strange. Before settling in Vesunna, the two of them had served together on the Rhine, and Tero knew full well that the skirmishes there had thoroughly inured Afer to the sight of gore.

It seemed as if most of Eprius’ neighbors were gathered outside his front door. Well, Tero thought, that’s scarcely surprising. They all started talking at once when they saw him, raining questions down on his unprepared head. “I don’t know a damned thing yet,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd. “If you’ll let me by, maybe I’ll find out something.”

Kleandros met him at the entrance. Tero liked the sharp-tongued physician. They had worked together before, and once or twice a month they would meet for wine, a friendly game of draughts, and much good talk. Still, the doctor’s elegant slimness always made the squarely built Tero feel like a poorly trained dancing bear. Just by standing before him, Kleandros made him suddenly and acutely aware of his own uncombed hair, the patches and stains on his cloak, and the ragged bit of leather hanging from one sandal. As usual, he disguised his feelings with raillery. “Hello, quack,” he said. “What do you have for me today?”

An opening like that would normally make Kleandros sputter and fume, but today he did not rise to the bait. Under the curling black ringlets he combed low on his forehead, his face was grim as he answered, “Hello, Tero. I’m glad to see you. You’d best come look for yourself.” He was speaking Greek instead of Latin, something he did only when very upset. Tero began to worry in earnest.

The physician led him down the dark entry hall to the dining room. Someone had refilled and lit all the lamps there; the flames cast multiple dancing shadows. Three couches had been grouped together in one comer of the room. One was overturned, and the wall behind it bore a sinister stain. The vigil looked a question at Kleandros, who nodded. “Poor Eprius is behind the couch,” Kleandros said. “Tell me what you make of him.”

“Why me? You’re the doctor,” Tero said, but he walked around the couch.

Both on the Rhine and as a vigil in Vesunna, Gaius Tero had seen the results of more violent deaths than he liked to remember. Yet the corpse in this quiet room shook him in a way none of the others, however grisly, ever had. He was in the presence of the unknown, and little fingers of ice crawled up his back as he viewed its handiwork.

Eprius’ body lay on its right side; its right hand still clutched a stick. Tero barely noticed, for his gaze was fixed in horrified fascination at the ruin that had been its head. There was a neat hole about the width of Tero’s little finger over the left eye. A small stream of blood ran down over Epirius’ face to join the pool beneath his head. Already flies were beginning to buzz about it.

Bad as that was, it was far from the worst. Whatever had drilled through Eprius’ forehead had smashed out through the back of his head, tearing his skull open: Much of the left rear quadrant of his head was a sickening soup of brain, pulverized bone, scalp, and hair. It was that which had stained the wall; blood cemented the gory fragments to the plaster.

The hobnails of Larcius Afer’s sandals clicked on mosaic tiles as he came up. Dread was on his face; his fingers writhed in a sign to avert evil. “It was Jupiter’s thunderbolt that slew him.” Afer said. “Two or three of the neighbors heard him cry out, and then the terrible roar of the thunderbolt itself-and not a cloud in the sky. His man Titus had the evening free and when he got home, he found this.”

Tero had never been one to fear the gods unduly, but he felt the little hairs on the back of his neck trying to rise as he listened to Afer. Surely nothing in his experience could have produced the ghastly wound he saw. To have Kleandros throw back his head and laugh was unbelievable. Tero wondered if the doctor had taken leave of his senses, and Afer stared at him indignantly.

“How many men has either of you known to be killed by the gods?” Kleandros demanded. “I’ve been a doctor for twenty years now, and I’ve never seen one yet.”

“There’s always a first time,” Afer said.

“I suppose so,” Kleandros conceded. “But Clodius Eprius? Good heavens, man, use your head for something more than a place to hang your hair. The worst thing Clodius Eprius did in his whole life was to drink so much wine friends had to carry him home. If the gods started killing everybody who did that, why, there wouldn’t be five men left alive in the empire by this time tomorrow. No, I’m afraid that if the gods left it to Nero to kill himself and soldiers to do away with Caligula, they wouldn’t have much interest in Clodius Eprius.

Afer was still far from convinced. “What did kill him then?” he demanded.

“I haven’t the slightest idea right now, but I intend to find out instead of moaning about Jupiter.”

The physician’s healthy skepticism gave Tero the heartening he needed to shake off his superstitious fear and begin thinking like a vigil once more. He quizzed Eprius’ neighbors, but learned nothing Afer had not already told him. There had been shouts and then a crash, but nobody had seen anyone fleeing Eprius’ home. Titus proved even less informative than the neighbors. He was grief-stricken and more than a little hung over. When Eprius had given him the night off, he had not questioned his master, but headed straight for the wine and girls of Aspasia’s lupanar, where he had roistered the night away. When he came back and found Eprius’ body, he rushed out to get Kleandros, and that was all he knew. Tero left him sitting with his head in his hands and went back to the dining room.

“Learn anything?” Kleandros asked.

“Nothing. Maybe Jupiter did kill him.”

Kleandros’ one-word reply was rude in the extreme. Tero managed an answering grin, but it was strained. His eyes kept going back to the blood-spattered wall. In the middle of the spatters was a ragged hole. “What’s this?” he said.

“How should I know?” Kleandros said. “Maybe Eprius used to keep a tapestry nailed there and was clumsy taking it down.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been here more than once, and I don’t remember any wall hangings.” Tero took a knife from his belt and chipped away at the plaster, enlarging the hole. At its bottom was a little button of metal. No, not a button, a flower, for as Tero dug it out he saw that little petals of lead had peeled back from a brass base. Never in all his years had he seen anything like it. He tossed it up and down, up and down, whistling tunelessly.

“Give me that!” Kleandros said, grabbing it out of the air. He examined it curiously. “What is it, anyway?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I couldn’t begin to, any more than I could begin to tell you what killed Eprius.”

Something almost clicked in Tero’s mind, but the thought would not come clear. “Say that again!” he demanded.

Kleandros repeated.

He had it. “Look,” he said, “where did we find this strange thing?”

“Is this your day to do Sokrates? Very well, best one, I’ll play along. We found this strange thing in a hole in the wall.”

“And what was all around the hole in the wall?”

“Clodius Eprius’ brains.”

“Very good. Bear with me one more time. How did Clodius Eprius’ brains get there?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here pretending to be Euthyphron,” Kleandros snapped. “I’ve seen a fair number of dead men, but never one like this.” He looked at the piece of metal in his hand, and his voice grew musing. “And I’ve never seen anything like this, either. You think the one had something to do with the other, don’t you?”

Tero nodded. “If you could somehow make that thing go fast enough, it would make a respectable hole-it didn’t make a bad hole in the wall, you know.”

“So it didn’t. It probably used to have a tip shaped more like an arrowhead, too; that lead is soft, and it would get smashed down when it hit. See what a brilliant pair we are. We only have one problem left: how in Zeus’ holy name does the little hunk of metal get moving so fast?”

“Two problems,” Tero corrected. “Once you get the little piece of metal moving, why do you use it to blow out Clodius Eprius’ brains?”

“Robbery, perhaps.”

“Maybe. Titus should know if anything is missing. Until he can figure that out, I think I’m going home and back to bed. Wait a moment; what’s this?” Almost out of sight under one of the couches was a small leather bag. Tero stooped to pick it up and exclaimed in surprise. It was far heavier than he’d expected. He knew of only two things combining so much weight with so little bulk, lead and- He opened the bag, and aurei flooded into his hand.

“So much for robbery,” Kleandros said, looking over his shoulder. The images of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius looked mutely back, answering none of the questions the two men would have put to them. The only time Tero had ever held so much gold at once was when he’d gotten his mustering-out bonus on leaving his legion.

He looked up to find Kleandros still studying the coins, a puzzled expression on his face. “What now?” Tero asked.

It was the doctor’s turn to have trouble putting what he saw into words. “Does anything strike you as odd about this money?” he said at last.

“Only that no robber in his right mind would leave it lying under a couch.”

“Apart from that, I mean. Is there anything wrong about the money itself?”

“An aureus is an aureus,” Tero shrugged. “The only thing wrong with them is that I see them too seldom.”

Kleandros grunted in exasperation. He plucked an aureus of Trajan from the pile in Tero’s hand and held it under the vigil’s nose, so close that Tero’s eyes started to cross as he looked at it. Tero shrugged again; to him it seemed like any fresh-minted goldpiece. He said so.

“To me, too,” Kleandros said. “And that is more than a little out of the ordinary, since Trajan has been dead-what is it? Thirty years now, I think. I was somewhere in my teens when he died, and I’m far from a youth now, worse luck. Yet here is one of his coins, bright and unworn. More than one, in fact,” he said, picking out three or four more. They lay in his hand, alike as peas in a pod.

And that was wrong, too. No coin had the right to be identical to its fellows; they were stamped out by hand, one at a time. There were always differences, sometimes not small ones, in shape and thickness. Not here, though. Both men noticed it at the same time, but neither was as disturbed as he would have been a few hours before. “Everything we’ve found here is impossible,” Tero said, “and this is just one little impossibility among the big ones.”

It was growing light outside. Tero swore disgustedly. “I might as well stay up now. Care to join me for an early cup of wine?”

“Thank you, no. But if you don’t mind, I’ll cadge a meal from you and Calvina this evening. We can talk more then, and maybe squeeze some sense from all this.”

“I doubt it, truth to tell. But I’ll expect you a little past sunset.”

“Fine.”

Tero swallowed his last morsel of ham, wiped his fingers, and sighed loudly. “Why did I ever quit the legions?” he said. “I’d twenty times rather fight the German lurking in his gloomy forest than face another day like this one.”

“That bad?” Kleandros asked between bites of apple.

“You should know-you started me on it.” The vigil did not feel right about dropping all his troubles on his friend, but he had had a bellyful. The story of Clodius Eprius’ death had raced through Vesunna, gaining fresh embellishments with each teller. It did not take long for people to be saying that all the Twelve Immortals had visited the town, destroying not only Eprius but his house and those of his neighbors, too. More than one panicky citizen hastily packed up his belongings and headed for the country.

None of that sat well with Vesunna’s two duumvirs, and both of those worthies came down heavily on Tero, demanding that he find the murderer at once. “What will this do to the name of our city?” one said, though Tero knew that what he meant was: “I do not want my year in office recalled only for a gruesome killing.” He promised to do his best, though he had few illusions about how good that was going to be.

Late in the afternoon Eprius’ servant Titus came in with two more bits of depressing news: first, the gold the vigil had found was definitely not Eprius’; and, second, as far as he could tell after a quick search, nothing was missing from his late master’s home. Larcius Afer was there to hear that, and his superior smile made Tero want to kick him in the teeth.

That he did tell Kleandros; it galled him too much for silence. The doctor pursed his lips and said judiciously, “If a fool laughed at me, I’d take it for a compliment.”

“So would I, were I sure he was wrong. But what do we have here? A murder committed for no reason with an impossible weapon that produces an incredible wound. I think I’d rather believe in an angry god.”

“Who leaves behind a purse full of counterfeit aurei? No god would do that.”

“No person would, either,” Tero pointed out. “And they aren’t counterfeits, either; they’re pure gold. Rusticius the jeweler checked them for me this afternoon.”

“Did he? How interesting. Yes.” Kleandros said nothing more, but a look of satisfaction spread across his face.

“You know something!” Tero accused.

“I have some ideas, at any rate. Did I ever tell you that I studied medicine under Diodoros of Alexandria?”

There were times when Tero found his friend’s evasiveness maddening. This, it seemed, was going to be one of them. “No,” he said, “you never did. Why do you see fit to impart this bit of information to me now?”

“I am coming to that, never fear. You see, Diodoros himself was learning his skill in Alexandria when Heron son of Ktesibios was at the height of his fame.”

Tero had to admit he did not know the name.

“Do you not? A pity; he was a remarkable man, probably one of the finest machine makers the world has ever seen. Diodoros was fascinated by his contraptions, and he never tired of talking about them. Really amazing things: a device for dispensing sacramental water that worked only when a copper was inserted, a trumpet made to sound by opening a nearby door, bronze animals that moved like live ones, and many other things.”

“He sounds like a sorcerer.”

“No, he was an artificer and nothing more. One of the things he made, not really more than a toy, was what he called an aeolipile.”

“All of this must lead somewhere, I suppose. What might an aeolipile be?”

Kleandros explained: a water-filled cauldron was fitted atop with a hollow ball mounted on a hollow tube. Directly opposite the tube’s entrance into the ball was a pivot, which was attached to the cauldron’s lid. The ball itself was fitted with bent nozzles; when a fire was lit beneath the cauldron, steam traveled up the hollow tube and out through the nozzles, making the ball spin merrily. “Do you see what I’m getting at?” the doctor asked. “In this device the force of the steam escaped continuously, but if some way were found to block it up for a time and then release it all at once, it could give a little metal pellet a very strong push indeed.”

Tero took another pull at his wine while he thought. The idea had more than a little appeal, for it gave a rational picture of how the killing might have taken place. Still… “A cauldron, you say. How big a cauldron?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen the machine in action myself, only heard Diodoros talk about it.”

“Somehow I find it hard to imagine Clodius Eprius letting anyone set up a cauldron in the middle of the room and then aim a little ball at him. And whoever would be using it would have to wait for his water to boil before it would go off, wouldn’t he?”

“I suppose so,” Kleandros said sulkily.

“Not only that, anyone hauling a cauldron through the middle of Vesunna would get himself noticed. Even if I don’t know what killed Eprius, I can tell you a couple of things about it: you can use it right away, and you can carry it around without having it seen. I’m afraid your whatever-you-call-it misses the mark both ways.” Seeing his friend’s hurt expression, Tero went on. “If you could make one big enough, it might make a good ballista, though.” I wonder why our generals never thought of anything like that, he thought, a little surprised at himself.

“Your logic is convincing,” Kleandros said, adding, “Damn it!” a moment later.

“Let’s give up on the weapon for now,” Tero suggested. “It matters less than the person who used it. If we had some way of knowing who he was, we might catch him, thunderbolt thrower or no.”

“A good point,” Kleandros said. “Whoever he was, we can be fairly sure he was from outside the empire.”

“Why do you say that?”

“We know of no weapons to fit the bill within our land, do we? Also, why would a citizen need to carry coins that weren’t genuine but would pass one by one? If they are true gold, that only makes the argument stronger.”

“A spy!”

“You may have something there. But who would want to spy on Vesunna, and why?”

Thro opened his mouth for a reply, then realized he did not have a good one. No one had ever seen a German in the town, and Parana was at the other end of the world. Besides, he was sure neither the Germans nor the Parthians had weapons that could blow large holes in men’s heads. If they did, they would have used them on Roman soldiers long before. In fact, anyone who had such a weapon could master the world, and surely would have done so by now. It made no sense at all.

What other foreigners were there? There were nomads south of Roman Africa, and others east of the Germans. There was an island off the coast of Britain, but it was full of savages, too. There was-“Men from Atlantis, perhaps?”

“My dear Tero, I would be the last to deny Platon was a man of godlike intellect, and the Timaios has always been one of my favorite dialogues. Still, as far as I can see, in it he invents Atlantis in order to portray an idealized way of life. And, as Aristoteles said, ‘He who invented it destroyed it,’ for, if you’ll remember, Platon says it sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago.”

“That’s a pity, because I don’t see how a spy could come from any country we know well.” He explained his reasoning to the doctor, who nodded.

“Where does that leave us?” Kleandros asked.

“Right where we started-ramming our heads into a stone wall. A plague on it for now. Did you bring your Iliad with you? I’d sooner bend my brain around that for a while.” Slowly but surely, over the course of years, Kleandros vas teaching the vigil to read Greek; most cultured citizens of the empire were bilingual. Tero spoke Greek fairly well: though more elastic, its basic structure was much like that of Latin, and there were more than a few similarities of vocabulary as well. But Homer was something else. His hexameters were splendid and his picture of the heroes of the Trojan War supremely human, but his antique vocabulary and archaic grammatical forms often made Tero want to tear his hair.

Line by line they fought their way through the opening of Book Sixteen, where Patroklos begs Akhilleus to let him borrow his armor and drive the Trojans from the ships of the Akhaians, which they had begun to burn. Akhilleus, hesitant at first, assented when he saw the fire going up, and

“Patroklos armed himself with shining bronze.”

“I hate these funny-looking datives,” Tero said, but went on:

“First he put well-made greaves on his calves;

They had guards of silver on them.

Then on his breast he put the cleverly made shining

Corselet of Aiakos’ swift-footed scion.

He slung his silver-nailed bronze sword from his shoulder,

And after it a great stout shield as well.”

“Bronze, bronze, bronze!” Tero said. “Bronze this, bronze that. One cohort of my legion could have gone through all the heroes of the Trojan War, Akhaians and Trojans both, in about an hour and a half. Ten years? No wonder it took them ten years with tactics like theirs. They run at each other, throw their spears, and then start looking for rocks to fling. And nobody cares about the fellow next to him until the poor sod gets a spear in the groin. Then they fight over his armor, not him.”

“You have the soul of a turnip,” Kleandros said; he had heard Tero’s complaints many times. “That we are better at killing people than they were in Akhilleus’ day is no cause for celebrating.”

“Nevertheless, I wonder what shining-helmed Hektor would have thought if one morning he woke up and found my old legion around his walls instead of those Akhaian cattle thieves. Can you imagine it? Earthworks, siege towers, catapults, rams. He couldn’t have held that town three days against us. I think I’d have paid money to see his face.”

“He probably would have been like Afer, convinced all the gods were angry at him.”

“And yet we would just have been men with skills he didn’t have, not demigods or heroes. It’s very strange.” Tero returned to his home and plowed on doggedly even after his attention began to wander. The truth was that he did not want to think about Eprius’ corpse, though he suspected he would see it in his dreams for years to come. Crimes were hard enough to solve at any time; but this one had an impossible wound, an unknown but highly potent weapon, a good many cleverly counterfeited aurei, and, to make matters worse, no visible motive. “What verb does lelalestho come from?” he asked Kleandros.

The knock on Tero’s door a few days later was so tentative, he was only half-sure he’d heard it. Nonetheless, he went to the door and opened it to find Eprius’ valet Titus waiting for him.

“Come in, come in,” the vigil said. “What can I do for you?”

“Thank you very much,” the servant replied. His Latin, though grammatically perfect, still carried a faint guttural touch of his native Syriac. When comfortably seated, he went on, “I’ve had the time now to go through my late master’s effects more thoroughly, and I’ve found something I think you ought to know.”

“Ah?” Tero leaned forward. “Tell me more…”

The two time travelers walked through the center of Vesunna. The tune Alvarez was whistling would not be written for another nineteen centuries, but he couldn’t have cared less. In less than a day the timer would recharge itself and he’d return to the era where he belonged, a richer man. He looked about. He’d had enough of painted marble statues Uttering the city square, enough of the stink of ordure and the slimy feel of it under his feet, enough of drafty clothes, bad syrupy wine, and a language he barely understood! And he’d had enough of bedbugs, too; he scratched under his mantle. His fingers brushed the leather of his shoulder holster, and he smiled a little. The weight of the revolver was a comfort, like a paid-up insurance policy.

Lou was silent beside him, watching the tide of humanity ebb and flow. Today was market day, and the square was packed. To Alvarez the merchants and their customers were so many gabbling barbarians, but for some incomprehensible reason Lou chose to regard them as people. Most of the time this inspired nothing but disdain in Alvarez, but now his all-encompassing good humor even included his partner. Lou might be a weakling, but he knew his stuff. He had tracked that play of Sophokles from nothing but the vaguest rumor, and now it looked as if there would be an unexpected bonus in this squalid town. Who would have thought a copy of Hieronymos of Kardia’s lost history would have ended up here? It would be worth plenty: not as much as the Sophokles, perhaps, but still a nice piece of change.

Whoever this fellow was, this Kleandros Harmodios’ son who owned the Hieronymos, he wanted enough for it. Aemilius Ruso, the local scribe, had offered what was a good price by here-and-now standards, and Kleandros had turned him down flat. Alvarez chuckled. He and Lou would have no trouble on that score.

Despite directions, they got lost more than once searching out Kleandros’ house. The streets of Vesunna were winding alleyways, and one blank house front looked very much like another; to the locals, display belonged to the interior of a house, not the outside. Alvarez was beginning to mutter to himself when Lou stopped at a door no different from half a dozen others nearby and said, “This is it, I think.”

“How can you tell?” Alvarez asked, but Lou was already knocking. The door swung open, revealing a spare but handsome man wearing a white chlamys and sandals with leather lacings reaching almost to his knees. It was Greek dress, Alvarez realized: this must be Kleandros himself. Good. If Kleandros was answering the door himself, that must mean he was taking seriously the privacy instructions he’d gotten. Alvarez looked him over. In his own time he would have guessed Kleandros to be in his mid-fifties, but the wear and tear was harder here, so he was probably younger. Still, if he was a doctor, he might take better care of himself than most of the locals. Maybe not, though-some of the things the second century judged medicinal were amazing.

“Come in, come in,” Kleandros was saying. “You must be the gentlemen who inquired about my history.” Lou admitted it. “Very good. Will you join me in the courtyard? The day is far too fine to be cooped up inside without need.”

Kleandros was not as rich a man as Clodius Eprius, who had used the income of his country estate to beautify his home in Vesunna. Fewer rooms opened onto this courtyard, and it was bare of the elegant statuary that had been Eprius’ delight. There was a fountain at the center of the courtyard, though, and flowers of many kinds and colors grew in neatly trimmed rows, bright against drab plaster and pale stone.

The doctor seated his guests on a limestone bench and offered them wine. When they accepted, he served it to them in cups of the same red-glazed ware Eprius had used. It was decorated with embossed reliefs and called terra sigillata, or sealing-wax ware, after the color of the glaze. The stuff was everywhere in Gaul; it was made locally and had nearly driven the more expensive Italian pottery from the market.

Putting down his cup, Kleandros said, “Now to business. I am not eager to sell the history of Hieronymos, but I have a need for ready cash. What will you give me for it?”

A long haggle ensued. Lou had learned from his mistake with Eprius not to show too much eagerness, and as for Kleandros, he might have been arguing with some farmer over the price of a sack of beans. Alvarez was stifling yawns when they finally agreed that twenty-eight aurei did not seem too unreasonable. Lou was not yawning; he was sweating.

“Whew!” Kleandros said. “You drive a hard bargain, my friend. I suppose you would like to inspect the work now?”

“I would,” Lou agreed.

“Wait a moment, then, and I will fetch it.” Kleandros disappeared into the house. While he was gone, Lou counted out the requisite number of gold coins and made a little pile of them.

Kleandros’ face lit up when he returned with the scrolls and saw the money. “Splendid!” he said, scooping up the aurei. “I’m glad you brought what money you needed with you; waiting is hard on the nerves.” He studied the coins intently, so much so that Alvarez began to worry. Perhaps noticing the time traveler watching him, the doctor grinned and said, “It’s amazing how much more handsome an emperor’s face is when you see it on gold.”

“True,” Mark said, and he grinned back. For the first time he got a hint of his partner’s point of view; Kleandros didn’t seem like a bad fellow, for a savage. The doctor idly flipped a goldpiece in the air once, twice, three times.

Lou had been reading the work Kleandros had given him. At first his grin had been as wide as the Greek’s, but little by little it fell from his face, replaced first by puzzlement and then by anger. “What are you trying to palm off on us?” he demanded of Kleandros. “This is not Hieronymos of Kardia’s history; it’s the work of Diodoros of Sicily, who borrowed from him.”

Alvarez’s newfound liking for Kleandros flickered and blew out. Muscles bunched in his arms as he rose. If this downtime dimbulb was trying to cheat them, he was going to remember it for the rest of his life.

A crash behind him made him whirl, hand darting for his gun. Half a dozen fully armored Romans had burst from their concealment within Kleandros’ house and were rushing him, swords drawn, faces grim over their shields. Lou screamed in terror and started to run. Barking an oath, Alvarez snapped off a quick shot. It went wild. Before he could fire again, Kleandros seized his arm and dragged it down. Desperate now, Alvarez smashed at the doctor with his left fist. Kleandros fell with a groan, but by then the soldiers were on the time traveler. A sword knocked the gun from his hand. It flew spinning into the flowers. Punching and kicking to the last, he was borne to the ground and trussed like a hog on the way to the slaughterhouse. Lou Muller got the same treatment; a magnificent flying tackle had brought him down just inside Kleandros’ front door.

One of Alvarez’s captors, a broad-shouldered, grizzled fellow of about fifty, knelt over him, saying, “I arrest you for the murder of Clodius Eprius.” Alvarez spat at him; in return he got a buffet that loosened his teeth. “Eprius was a friend of mine,” the Roman said.

“You were right, Tero,” another trooper said. “They are human, after all.”

“I told you so, Afer. You owe me two aurei.” Tero turned to Kleandros and helped him to his feet. A dark bruise was forming under the doctor’s left eye, but he did not seem badly hurt.

The byplay went on without much attention from Alvarez. He was in pain and sunk deep in despair; the timer would automatically return to 2059 twenty-four hours after it recharged unless someone reset it, and it did not look as if he or Lou would have the chance. He was stuck here and now forever. No, revise that-his future here looked limited, too.

He realized Tero was saying something to him, but did not take the trouble to understand. Tero kicked him in the ribs, not unkindly, and repeated: “Tell me, barbarian, how many years lie between our time and yours?”

Alvarez felt his world coming apart. Somehow these savages had managed to seize him, and now they knew his secret as well. He strained wildly at his bonds, trying to break free, but one thing the Romans plainly knew was how to tie firm knots. “You are the barbarians!” he shouted.

Tero and Kleandros bent over him, faces intent. “It’s true, then?” the Greek whispered. “You do come from the future?”

Utterly beaten, Alvarez said, “Yes.”

“I thought so,” Tero breathed. “Quite by accident, it occurred to me how much more we know now than the heroes of the Trojan Wars. That set me thinking-how much more still would the men who come after us learn? Surely they would have powers we do not: terrible weapons, who knows what? Simpler things, too: the ability to make one coin just like another, for instance. How do you do that, anyway?”

“Molds,” Alvarez said dully.

“Ah? Interesting. It’s neither here nor there, though. Even after I got my notion, I still had to figure out why the men of the future would want anything from us in the first place. That stymied me for a long, long time. By my own logic, you had to have everything we do, and more besides. And then Eprius’ body servant found that one of his master’s books was missing, a rare one.”

“Rare?” Kleandros interjected. “If I had known Eprius had a copy of the Aleadai, I might have killed him myself.”

“You see?” Tero said. “It’s so easy for a book to be lost forever if few copies are made of it. Works like the Aleadai are valuable now-how much more would they be worth in some future time if between now and then they’d been lost altogether? A great deal, I have no doubt. Enough to steal for, enough to kill for? Once we knew the sort of thing you were after, it was easy enough to set a trap, and you walked right into it.”

Kleandros added, “My apologies for not using an authentic copy of Hieronymos of Kardia, but, you see, no one in town owns one.”

This was all a bad dream, Alvarez though. It could not be happening. To be caught was bad enough, but then to be lectured by these stupid barbarians…

He must have said that aloud, for Tero’s lips tightened. He realized the English phrase was close enough to the Latin from which it had come to let the Romans understand him.

“Us, barbarians?” Tero said. “On the contrary. What are the marks of the barbarian? Surely one is acting without thinking ahead to see what results might come of what you do. Did you do that when you used your thunder weapon? Hardly. And because we were ignorant of your device, did you think us dolts?

You were stupid to reveal it to us at all. No, man from another time, if either of us deserves to be called a barbarian, it is you.” He stood and turned to his men. “Take them away,” he said.