The Far Time Incident (28 page)

“To change their fate, then.”

“Fate isn’t the right word either.” This from Helen.

“Fine, what is the right word?”

“Their future, the world’s past,” Helen said.

“It’s all twisted together, isn’t it?” Kamal said as we passed under a wide arch and into the Forum. “Like some temporal Möbius strip. From our twenty-first-century perspective
all of this already happened a long time ago, that man who was using the urine vat, that group of children playing by the temple, that woman hurrying somewhere.” He pointed. “History, as chiseled into stone and in the documented record that society keeps. And yet we’re here watching it happen. I told my parents I couldn’t study medicine because I don’t like the sight of blood—who does, really?—but my mother, like I said, was sure time travel would be worse. Disturbing, confusing, strange.”

“Yeah,” said Abigail.

The hot afternoon stretched on, made somewhat bearable by an offshore breeze; the six of us were temporarily time-stuck at one end of the Forum, near the stately marble temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the triad at the top of the god food chain. Xavier had been playing the part of tour guide, pointing out the Basilica, or town hall, and a temple that housed bronze statues of the twins Apollo and Diana; to the other side was a large marketplace and a long hall built by Eumachia, town priestess. All around us were brightly painted equestrian statues, toga-clad citizens, beggars crouched in dark corners, children playing hide-and-seek, and shoppers haggling with merchants who were hawking shoes, cloth, jewelry, gladiator figurines, and, most disconcertingly, in one large area, slaves.

“I know what you’re going to say, Julia, and there’s nothing we can do about the slaves for sale or trade here,” Xavier informed me, forestalling the comment I was about to make. Helen was taking the opportunity to grab a quick sketch of the gabled roof and garland-decorated columns of the temple of Jupiter. “This area will be damaged by the Allied bombing of
1943,” she explained. “We can include the sketch with the note. Abigail, see if you can get a photo.”

“I know that there’s nothing to be done,” I said to Xavier. “I was merely going to lament about it.” What I really wanted to do was to holler at the top of my lungs, “Can’t you see what’s coming? Flee, all of you,
now
, before it’s too late. Heed the signs of the earthquakes, of the failing fountains,
go
. There is still time.” Not only had there been another small earthquake, but
something
was making its way into the water pipes, lowering the pressure to a trickle in many neighborhoods. The well-off woman with the multiple chins had told Helen about it at the baths. It was another sign. The clock hands were moving closer to midnight. A bull sacrifice had been made as an attempt to regain the good will of the gods, the woman had said.

I commented on the futility of this.

Xavier shrugged. “All the blood sacrifices of animals, the ritual reciting of prayers, the vows and offerings at the temples… They’ve worked so far, haven’t they? Rome is great.”

He left it at that. I felt Nate’s eyes linger on me as Helen finished her sketch. Another few minutes passed by, and we were finally able to leave the Forum. We took a drink of water at a fountain decorated with a somewhat spooky face of a Gorgon, where children splashed in the water, leaving the pavement wet, and continued out of the Forum to the double-arched Marine Gate, which faced the sea. The larger of its two archways served cart traffic coming up the steep road from the harbor and its warehouses, and the smaller was reserved for pedestrian traffic. Helen stopped to sketch the houses that sprouted above the town walls on either side of the gate. “The people living up there must have nice views of the harbor,” I commented in an effort to prove to everyone that I could be as calm and dispassionate about the fate of the town as they seemed to be. I had, after all, asked to go on a time trip.

Xavier pointed to a terraced, three-story villa to the left of the gate. “That one, over there, belongs to Secundus’s main competition. One Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, the number one garum producer and exporter in town. Scaurus owns extensive facilities and warehouses down in the harbor. His ex-slaves sell the stuff in shops all around town and he exports it, too.”

I imagined the garum maker on the terrace of his villa, keeping an eye on his warehouses and watching merchant ships carrying his fish sauce sail to faraway lands.

The security chief’s ears had perked up, but, “That’s quite a place,” was all he said.

“What, you suspect him of trashing Secundus’s shop because Secundus is elbowing in on his turf? But Secundus’s shop is such a small place,” I protested.

“Small businesses are the ones most easily intimidated and driven out of town. We should go in and talk to the man.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked.

“I’m a police officer. If I suspect someone of wrongdoing, the first thing I do is talk to them. I don’t speak Latin, but one of you can translate for me.”

I would have probably tried to spy over Scaurus’s garden walls but Nate’s method made sense, too.

“It will only take a few minutes,” Nate said.

Xavier hesitated, then said, “Just the chief and I.”

Helen, our two grad students, and I were left to cool our heels (literally) by the Gorgon fountain with its wet pavement. We didn’t have to wait long for Nate and Xavier.

“What happened? What did Scaurus say?” I asked.

“We didn’t get to talk to him. One of his slaves, a burly overseer—the kind you don’t argue with—informed us that his master wasn’t accepting visitors, at least not rabble such as ourselves. He said we should come back tomorrow at dawn,” Xavier said.

“At dawn? Why at dawn?” asked Abigail. The invitation did have the suggestion of a duel about it.

“Of course. For the patron visits,” Helen said.

“Patron visits? Who is the patron?” I asked.

“Scaurus himself. Those of lower socioeconomic status come by to ask him for favors. It’s a measure of his power and influence,” she explained.

“It put us in our place,” Xavier said.

“We could spy over his walls,” I suggested.

Nate sent a look in my direction. “If Scaurus did have something to do with the damage to Secundus’s shop, he wouldn’t have gotten his own hands dirty. I don’t like the look of that overseer—Thraex, you said his name was, Xavier? Latin sounds like gibberish to me, but even I picked up on his tone. I’d like nothing better than to get my hands on his fingerprints and dust off Secundus’s shop.”

“What about Secundus’s landlord?” I asked.

“Nigidius? What about him?” Xavier said.

“Maybe he was irked that Secundus was late with the rent, or he doesn’t like the fact that Secundus is subletting one of the rooms above the shop to you to make extra income. He could have sent his slave to trash the shop as a warning.”

“I doubt it,” said Xavier. “I’ve seen Primus around the neighborhood. Mousy-looking fellow. Warts on his nose. Goes around painting
Rental Quarters Available
signs. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was most apologetic when he told Secundus he would have to leave if he didn’t come up with the rent.”

“We’ve met his wife,” Helen remarked. “Nigidius’s, I mean.”

“We have?” I asked.

“At the baths. Claudia.”

“You mean the portly woman with the hovering attendant, the large earrings, and the sagging—Did she say anything of note?”

“She wanted to know all about us when she heard we were staying in her block. She thinks her cook uses some of Secundus’s fish sauce. I told you about the rest—we mostly talked about the strange goings-on with the water pipes, and how she was forced to come to the public baths after the pipes to her house ran dry. A kink appeared where the pipes meet up with the street…
meet up
—” She stopped and sucked in her breath. “Yes, of course. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

“Helen?” Xavier asked.

“You may be content to live in the past, Xavier, but I am not.”

“Oh?” Xavier said.

“I’ve thought of a way to get us home.”

“Am I correct, Julia?” Helen said. “I thought I remembered that Dr. May wanted to propose a run to Rome in the spring.”

I was burrowing in the wooden chest of the Nigidii tomb, where we had stashed most of our twenty-first-century things, stuffing the cloaks and lamps back on top to hide them. I wondered if the fact that we had been able to leave them there meant that the members of the Nigidii family weren’t likely to visit their ancestors anytime soon—or if they did, perhaps wouldn’t open the chest? My cell phone had STEWie’s roster in its memory. I hoped there was enough battery life left to turn it back on. I had almost drained it the night before, when we’d used the phone as a flashlight to guide us to the tomb.

The phone was dead, very much so. I shook it, which didn’t help in the least, and said, “As I mentioned the other day, Dr. May was up next after Dr. B and Dr. Little. She was planning to go to 41 BC Egypt to try to snap photos of Cleopatra. But I’m pretty sure she was on the roster for another run during the spring semester… The dedication of the Roman Colosseum, yes, I think you’re right, Helen.”

“Do you remember what month and year she’s jumping to, Julia? Have we missed it?”

“Don’t you know what year the Roman Colosseum was built, Helen?” Xavier asked.

“No, I don’t. Not offhand.” Her cheeks were crimson. “Do you?”

I was beginning to see why Xavier and Helen had gotten a divorce—it wasn’t just the fourteen-year age difference. Their strong personalities grated against each other. On the other hand, a sharp cheddar was best paired with a strong wine (or so I had once read on a cheddar cheese wrapper).

Still kneeling by the chest, I closed my eyes and tried to visualize STEWie’s roster. I remembered the note I’d included in the information field for the Colosseum run:
Lavish and over-the-top affair, lasted a hard-to-believe hundred days. An easy target for a run.
A hundred days of celebration and carnage, with gladiator battle after gladiator battle. And the year…was AD 80, I was pretty sure. I opened my eyes. We hadn’t missed it.

“It’s going to be tricky to meet up with Dr. May’s team given that we don’t know the exact day they’ll arrive, but we can worry about that later,” Helen said, restacking our items back into the chest.

“We can let her know to be on the lookout for us in the cheese-and-craker-package note,” I said “I’m glad we don’t have to decide whose name to put on it. Still—”

“Yes, I’d like to have a good idea of who to confront when we return home,” Nate finished my thought. Was there a slight emphasis on the “I” in that sentence, as if to remind me this was
his
investigation?

“For now, the main thing is to get ourselves to Rome,” Helen said. “We have a comfortable buffer of a few months to find our way there. Then we can try to cross paths with Dr. May to hitch a ride back home in her basket. Assuming they haven’t shut the program down, that is,” she added.

“Why would they shut the program down?” Abigail asked with all the optimism of youth. “STEWie is so important.”

“They think they’ve lost six people. It’s going to be hard to justify continuing the program in its current format to the board of trustees,” I explained.

Helen agreed. “It could very well set the program back a decade or more.”

Xavier took the opposite view. “It will make the news and Lewis can use that to bring in new funding. And no, I’m not suggesting that as a motive for whoever sent you here. Lewis will have his work cut out for him. Meeting up with Dr. May isn’t a bad plan, Helen,” he added.

“You can stay here if you prefer.”

“I can’t. You’ll need funds to go to Rome. I’ll have to sell off my wares. Rome, huh? I’ve heard a few things about Rome while I’ve been here. Some of them good. By the way, if we really wanted to move along freely in the Eternal City, we could use the Cloaca Maxima.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Rome’s great sewer. I don’t think so, Xavier,” Helen said, speaking for all of us.

Xavier lifted a coarsely sewn woolen sack filed with peppercorns—it left behind a small pile of black granules—into my arms. We had all squeezed into his rental room to help him carry what was left of his wares downstairs so that he could make a circuit around town in the morning to sell everything off. “There’s a notebook under my bed with the notes and sketches I took when I first arrived in town,” he mentioned. “Since then I’ve mostly tried to keep my activities limited to the quarter of town
between the Vesuvius Gate—the one you’ve been coming in and out of—and the Nola Gate to the north, where the road leads inland to the town of Nola.”