The Imperium Game (7 page)

For a moment, lying there flat on his back, staring up at winged shadows flitting from arch to arch, he couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing there. Then it came back to him—the fire, Micio’s death, his own dismissal by HabiTek, and Wilson’s overly dramatic insistence that he come back to put things right.

Sitting up on the unpolished granite bench, he rubbed at his knotted neck, hating himself for being so stupid and gullible. Not one cobblestone of this place was his concern anymore. After giving six years of his life to make the Imperium run smoothly, he didn’t owe its idle, rich inhabitants one damn thing.

And of course, to make it all much worse, there was no prospect of real coffee unless he hiked all the way down into the tourists’ restaurant district, and that would take too long. Shaking the dirt out of his cloak, he shrugged the heavy wool around his shoulders, then looked out into the blue-gray winter sky and estimated the time as after eight; he must have slept soundly after all.

He walked through the arched outer halls of the arena, then trudged down the sandy path to the larger of the two adjacent Gladiatorial School buildings. Perhaps he could at least get some breakfast there.

When he opened the door, a large brute with a broken nose and sinews that could have been made of iron crossed over to him. “And just who are you?”

“Gaius Clodius Lucinius.” Kerickson glanced past the man’s dingy loincloth at the huge practice floor and the pairs of sparring students. The air was thick with sweat and oil and rotting food. Several good-sized rats were fighting over the remains of a half-eaten meat roll from under the nearest bench. “I’m sure that if you’ll check with Marcinius Flatus, you’ll find I’m expected.”

“Well, that might be difficult, unless you’ve a mind to visit the Underworld.” Drawing a huge dagger, the man ran a thumb along the edge, leaving a bright line of blood behind.

Kerickson winced. Bladed weapons were illegal in the Game. First chance he got, he’d have to alert Security to search this place.

“There’s been a slight—accident.” The man’s scarred lips twisted, displaying his stained teeth in a skull-like grimace. “Flatus is dead. I’m the new owner.”

“Oh.” The back of Kerickson’s shoulders began to itch. “And you are?”

“The great Nerus Amazicus.”

“I see.” He recognized the name of a popular but unscrupulous gladiator, known for causing real injuries in a sport where simulation was the rule. Peering around the enormous, grimy, muscular chest, he tried to think how to play this. “Are you still taking new students, then, or should I apply elsewhere?”

“You—a gladiator?” Amazicus threw back his head and laughed all the way from his hairy belly up. “What have you got—two, maybe three hit points at the most? You wouldn’t last five minutes with a real pro.”

Kerickson glanced down at his Game bracelet—half a hit point. This had all been a miscalculation, although he could see why Wilson thought no one would ever look for him here.

“Now, I suppose we could use an undersized runt like you as arena bait for teasing the tigers, or perhaps you could spar with the girls.”

A chuckle ran through the sweaty room. Kerickson backed toward the door. “Never mind—”

“Don’t you lay one finger on that delicious blond head!” a female voice screeched. “I want him!”

Laughter roared. Kerickson felt for the door handle behind his back as a towering, broad-shouldered woman clad in two small scraps of worn cloth elbowed her way through the snickering students. Her cropped brown hair was slicked back from her face with perspiration, and a purpling bruise slashed across her cheek. She weighed at least two hundred pounds without an ounce of fat.

“Oh, yeah?” Amazicus threw his chest out. “And what if I say you can’t have the little twerp?”

“Then I’ll fight you for him.” Brandishing a trident, she flashed him a wicked grin full of broken teeth. “He doesn’t look as though he’d have much go in the arena, but I bet he could warm a girl’s blankets at night—couldn’t you, sweet thing?”

Kerickson’s groping hand found the doorknob and pulled.

“Not so fast, runt.” With a twist of his wrist, Amazicus sent him sprawling on the mats, then turned his attention back to the woman. “And just how much are you willing to bet?”

“Name your price, turdface.” She knotted her dingy brown hair back with a leather thong.

Amazicus’s nostrils flared. “At least I didn’t lose my lease down on the Via Nova from lack of customers!” He thrust his furry chest out. “From what I hear, Ivita, you couldn’t even give it away!”

She dropped into a fighting crouch and sneered back at him. “How would you know? According to what I hear, you’ve never had any!”

Light danced over the pair’s rocklike muscles as the two rushed together like speeding airtrains. Kerickson was just scrambling for the door when the air between them came alive with a thousand sparkling blue lights.

“FINALLY!” Settling himself on a divan that hadn’t been there a moment ago, a small, round-faced man nodded approvingly.

“Mighty Mars, respected God of War.” Ivita hurriedly dropped to one knee and bowed her head. “Tell us how we can serve you.”

“YOU CAN DAMN WELL GET ON WITH IT, THAT’S HOW!” He waved an imperious hand at the pair. “I WANT REAL BLOOD, MAYHEM, BRAINS AND INNARDS PAINTED ACROSS THE FLOOR, BITS OF QUIVERING FLESH SPATTERED FROM ONE END OF THIS PLACE TO THE OTHER.”

“Sire?” Ivita’s square face looked confused, while Amazicus’s jaw sagged.

“HAVE YOU GOT ANY IDEA WHAT IT’S LIKE BEING GOD OF WAR, DISCORD, AND BATTLE, IN A PLACE WHERE THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENS IS A GODDAMNED INFECTED HANGNAIL?”

The hair quivered on the back of Kerickson’s neck.

“I’M SICK OF EVERY CANDY-ASSED SO-CALLED GLADIATOR IN THIS JOINT.” Mars’s eyes flashed dangerously red. “FROM NOW ON, I WANT NONSTOP ACTION AND GLORY, OR I’LL TAKE MATTERS INTO MY OWN HANDS!”

Outside, a clap of thunder rumbled through the dome.

Was this what Wilson had tried to tell him last night? Kerickson edged silently toward the door. Even if it wasn’t, the quicker he got back into the Interface and checked things out, the better. Mars wasn’t supposed to appear without being summoned, much less insist on blood.

“AND WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?” the apparition said as it spotted Kerickson. “NOW THAT I’M FINALLY RID OF THAT WORM WILSON, YOU’RE NEXT!”

“Wilson?” Pressing back against the wall, Kerickson stared at the pudgy God of War. “What about him?”

Mars threw back his balding head and laughed. His voice echoed through the huge training hall. “JUST THAT SOMEONE FINALLY DID WHAT I’VE BEEN LONGING TO DO. THE LITTLE SNEAK WAS FOUND STABBED TO DEATH AT THE ORACLE’S THIS MORNING.” Turning his head, he looked suddenly very much like the vulture with which he was associated. “I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU’RE MISSING A WOOD-HANDLED DAGGER?”

“WILSON?”
Ivita turned and appraised
Kerickson with the look of a cat who’d just got one paw on the canary. “What the hell kind of name is
Wilson
for a player?”

Up in the air, Mars stretched his arms back behind his head and lounged full-length on the conjured divan. “WHO THE HELL
WAS
WILSON IS MORE THE QUESTION.”

Kerickson’s heart pounded like a ten-piece percussion band as he groped for the side of the door. The floor seemed to swoop out from under his feet. Wilson is not dead, he told himself fiercely. This is only a damned game. Mars just means he is dead in the Game.

“AT LEAST NOW WE CAN HAVE A DECENT CREMATION.” The god smiled broadly. “BY MY SWORD AND SHIELD, I’VE MISSED THOSE!”

The Oracle—he had to get to the Oracle and see what this was all about. Kerickson lurched outside into the chill morning air and looked down the hill. On the road below, a cart straggled along behind a moth-eaten donkey, one of the standard disguises for automated tour guides. He could hear the recorded patter about the Imperium from where he stood. Twenty or so people ambled behind it, gazing around with enraptured eyes—obviously day-trippers.

Mars followed him outside and swelled to a more godlike height. “AND NOW THAT THINGS ARE IMPROVING, WE’LL HAVE SACRIFICES AGAIN—LIVE ONES WITH FAT, BELLOWING BULLS AND SQUEALING PIGS AND RIVERS OF RED, RED BLOOD!”

The tourists stopped in the middle of the road and pointed at the manifestation. The automated donkey cart trundled on toward the city without them.

The god’s excited voice climbed higher and higher. “FINALLY, THIS PLACE IS GOING TO RUN AS IT SHOULD HAVE ALL ALONG!”

The cold air had cleared Kerickson’s mind a little, and he realized that he had to stay in character. If Wilson really was dead in the outside sense of the word, then Kerickson would have no way to reenter the Game if he were thrown out, and he was suddenly very sure that he needed to stay. Something was wrong here, and had been wrong ever since the Minerva program had gone down—how many days ago? He couldn’t remember, and that worried him, too. He had to get his wits together. He had a feeling he was going to need them.

* * *

Rome, of course, had possessed a College of Augurs, rather than a true Oracle, but that fact of history had proved so disappointing to the multitudes who had enrolled in the Imperium that HabiTek had been obliged to provide them with a magnificent Oracle personality. After all, as J. P. Jeppers never tired of expounding, HabiTek was in the business of providing entertainment, and if the masses required the flash and mystery of an Oracle instead of a bunch of stodgy old men poking around in gruesome animal entrails down at the College of Augurs, then of course they would have it.

Kerickson’s way led through the heart of the sprawling Market District, already filled with tourists even at this hour. He passed street vendors and hawkers who might or might not be real people. At any given moment in the Game, it was impossible to know exactly with whom—or what—you might be dealing. He lowered his head and avoided the eyes of all he met, hoping not to be recognized

Still, the odors of the steaming meat pastries reminded him of how hungry he was, and he finally stopped before a small brazier and handed the buxom female attendant a bronze coin. She fished a sizzling meat pastry out of the hot oil. He juggled the hot shell from hand to hand and blew on it before he took a tentative nibble. Crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside, it tasted wonderful. Encouraged, he took a bigger bite.

Down the street, someone shouted. He glanced up. A band of teenage boys dressed in the purple-striped juvenile togas of the upper classes were throwing rocks at a gray-headed rug merchant. Kerickson’s hand was automatically groping inside his tunic for his comm unit before he realized that he no longer carried it.

“Vagrants!” The merchant shuffled vainly to avoid the rocks. “Go home before the Guard has you thrown out of the Game!”

A tall, stoop-shouldered boy with lank blond hair laughed. “From now on, you stupid old fart,
this
is the Game. Get used to it!”

The old man squealed as a rock caught him square against the temple. He crumpled to the street. The boys swooped down upon the lush Persian rugs and scattered them into the shocked crowd. “Here, take them! They’re yours, courtesy of Mars!”

“WELL DONE, MY CHILDREN, MY BRAVE YOUNG WARRIORS,” Mars’s voice boomed down from above the red-tiled roofs.

Kerickson dropped the meat pastry as Mars’s huge figure stomped down the street on landcar-sized feet.

“FORGET ALL THIS PAP ABOUT HONOR AND DUTY.” The beefy face shone down with a fierce red light on the gaping humans below. “I PROCLAIM A NEW AGE OF BOLDNESS AND ADVENTURE!” He leaned down and winked his huge eye at a trembling gray-haired woman. “AN AGE OF BLOOD!”

Then he disappeared. The crowd milled in the street and stared at each other.

“I’ve played here for five years, but I’ve never seen anything like that!” Dressed in the off-the-shoulder chiton of a prosperous Greek merchant, a middle-aged man shook his head.

That was because no one in HabiTek had ever written a Game scenario even remotely like what had just happened. Kerickson rubbed his cold hands together. The Mars program had somehow managed to exceed its parameters. Just who was responsible?

No longer hungry, he pushed through the uneasy crowd in the direction of the Oracle. He had to find Wilson. This place was going down the old vac-chute in a hurry, and without access to the Interface, he couldn’t run the proper diagnostics to find out what had gone wrong.

Set on a small rise adjacent to the Temple of Apollo, the Game’s Oracle resided in a gleaming rectangular white marble structure that overlooked the Forum. He labored up the never-ending steps, unable to resist a glance back over his shoulder from time to time, always expecting to see Mars’s face peering down from the sky. And also, he had the prickly feeling that he had forgotten something important.

At the top, he was surprised to find players from every classification wandering through the white columns of the portico. Consultation was available to all players, of course, but only at the cost of both an expensive gift and a roll of the proverbial dice. Once a player applied for advice, the Oracle would predict, then pronounce a random change in one of the vital categories: rank, charisma, or hit points. As a rule, few cared to take the risk of ascending the steps as, say, a respected veteran general of the Numidian Wars, and then descending as an Egyptian onion merchant.

As Kerickson worked his way through the restless, muttering throng, he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

“Not so fast, citizen.” The guard reached for Kerickson’s arm and bent down his beak-nosed face to examine his Game bracelet. “What’s your business here?”

Kerickson recognized the man as a standard-issue robot guard model. Many players changed their roles as often as they changed clothes—some in fact more frequently—and just last year he’d ordered four dozen of this particular robot line to fill in the gaps in the undersubscribed Praetorian Guard. “Just the usual,” he answered uneasily. “Foretelling the future, avoiding disaster, that sort of thing.”

“Freedman, gladiator trainee, Gaius Clodius Lucinius,” the robot read from his Game bracelet, then scrutinized him with narrowed eyes. “If you’ve come to consult the Oracle, then where is your offering?”

Damnation! He’d been so unhinged by that fiasco with Mars, he’d completely forgotten the requisite gift. “I . . . uh, have no riches to offer, so I thought I’d just dedicate my first victory in the arena to the Oracle.”

“Well, go ahead and get into line, but it will be a while.” The guard dropped his arm. “We’re finishing an investigation, and you’ll have to stay out of the way until it’s completed.” Leaving him, it moved to intercept the next supplicant climbing the steps.

Investigation . . . Kerickson blanched as he spotted a solid row of bronze-armored Praetorian backs off to one side. Was that Wilson over there, his friend, with a dagger in his chest? He edged through the restless crowd of slaves and merchants and nobles who had come to take their chances with the Oracle.

“SO, YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST PRANCE UP HERE AND ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN.” The voice of the Oracle boomed out through the crisp morning.

He peeked between the Guards at the small white marble structure that housed the actual Oracle itself, but no supplicant kneeled there, waiting for a pronouncement.

“THIS IS SACRED GROUND, MOONFACE, AND I’LL THANK YOU TO GET YOUR TUSHIE OFF!”

A restless murmur ran through the people. Kerickson eased back, trying to keep the bulk of the crowd between him and the Oracle’s sensors. It had been some time since he’d had any dealings with this particular programmed personality, but he had a sudden vague recollection that they hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

“YES, I MEAN YOU, DIRTFACE. WELL, IF YOU WON’T LEAVE, THEN COME ON UP HERE LIKE A MAN AND GET YOUR FORTUNE TOLD.”

There had been some business about a fixation the Oracle had developed with an acolyte of Apollo, a player who had taken every advantage of the situation . . . He cudgeled his brain for the details. The incident had been almost four years ago, but it seemed to him that the acolyte had been played by . . . Micio Metullus.

“YOU’RE ON MY TURF NOW, SO COME ON OVER HERE AND PLAY, BIG BOY”

All around him the supplicants dropped to their knees and clasped their hands with an air of reverence. A white-robed attendant stood before the ornate marble housing, his head bowed. “Of whom do you speak, oh wise one?”

“THE LITILE TURD OVER THERE WITH THE LIMP BLOND HAIR AND THE RUMPLED TUNIC, THE ONE WHO LOOKS LIKE HE HASN’T SEEN THE INSIDE OF THE BATHS FOR A MONTH.”

Belatedly, Kerickson sank to his knees.

The attendant scanned the crowd anxiously, shading his eyes from the bright sun. “Turd, your All-Knowingness?”

“YOU KNOW. THE ONE WITH THE NERVOUS-LOOKING FACE AND THE SCRAGGLY EYEBROWS, THE ONE TOO BIG FOR HIS TUNIC.”

Eyes moved from side to side as the crowd examined each other out of the corners of their eyes. Doing his best to look perplexed, Kerickson lowered his head, but then a strong hand clasped the back of his tunic and hauled him to his unwilling feet.

“This one, your Grace?”

“THAT’S THE TWIT. BRING IT UP HERE.”

“I’m afraid that there must be some mistake,” Kerickson protested. “I just wanted a few glorious victories in the arena”

“Shut up!” The attendant stopped before the Oracle and dropped him unceremoniously to the marble floor.

“SO WE MEET AGAIN.”

Kerickson straightened his back. “Yeah, yeah, so get on with it. “

“Show some respect there!” A heavy cane whacked across his back.

“I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU, YOU FROG-FACED TWERP.”

“Well, I forgot my gift, so I guess it will have to wait.” Trying not to wince, he got to his feet, keeping an eye out for the attendant all the while. He had really bungled this one. He should have known that the Oracle wouldn’t forget that little disagreement. He’d better get out of here before it blew his cover.

“I WAIVE THE REQUISITE GIFT IN LIEU OF A SERVICE TO BE RENDERED LATER,” the Oracle said smugly. “DO YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS?”

He was about to say no when he saw the attendant brace his feet in preparation for another mighty swing with his brass-tipped cane. “Yeah, I guess—”

“THEN SHUT UP AND BE ENLIGHTENED. MANY SHALL SIT, BUT FEW SHALL EAT. MORE SHALL SEE, BUT FEW SHALL KNOW. ALL WILL COME, BUT ONLY ONE SHALL STAY.”

“Huh?” He glanced into the Oracle’s shadowy interior. “Could you repeat that?”

“AND NOW FOR YOUR FUTURE.”

The oracle hesitated, making Kerickson’s stomach cringe. “I FORESEE A CHANGE IN YOUR CHARISMA.”

The attendant snickered.

“IN FACT, FROM NOW ON, YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO TALK A MOUSE INTO EATING CHEESE.”

Hastily, Kerickson glanced at his bracelet. His charisma rating had dropped from a modest plus-two rating to zero! “Wait a minute, you can’t—”

“Silence, dog!” The ham-handed attendant seized his tunic and dragged him back into the crowd.

“Move aside, please,” boomed a big-voiced guard. “Move aside and we’ll get this mess out of the way so that you can get on with your business.” Several Praetorian Guards pushed through the crowd with a litter, headed for the side area, then reemerged with it a minute later.

Jerking out of the attendant’s hold, Kerickson elbowed his way to the front just in time to see a guard remove a familiar wooden-handled dagger from Wilson’s chest, then drape a coarse wool blanket over the corpse’s pale, lifeless face.

“My word!” A portly man, dressed in the flowing robes of a Syrian wine merchant, wiped at his face. “This place is becoming more realistic every day. I could swear that poor fellow is really dead.”

Lead butterflies thumped in Kerickson’s stomach as he watched the guard place Wilson’s dangling hand back on the litter, then twitch the blanket into place. His friend was dead in every sense of the word. He was caught all alone here in the Game, while somewhere inside the Imperium a murderer romped among unsuspecting Roman sheep.