Sal handed him another sealed plastic bag containing the woollen tunic, leggings and shoes from his trip to 1194. ‘I found some leather flip-flops and took the label off them. I think they’ll do.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve got a location set up about seven miles outside Rome,’ said Maddy. ‘Remote. I’ve pinholed it and run a density probe. It’s quiet, so you shouldn’t be observed arriving or leaving. See if you can thumb a lift in or steal some horses from somewhere… and then I guess the best thing would be to head into Rome and have a quick look around.’ She scanned through some printed-out notes. ‘It seems something or someone’s helped Caligula survive the assassination attempt that cut his reign short. I really don’t know where to suggest you should start looking, somewhere central, the government district, the forum or Senate or whatever the term is. Some place like that.’
‘Their version of Times Square,’ added Sal.
‘Right,’ Maddy nodded. ‘I’ve picked AD 54. On the database of corrupted history we’re getting garbled data for that year. It’s in a state of flux. I think these might be a sequence of oscillating time ripples, like an interference pattern. It’s very unsettled. Obviously something major happens in that year. Let’s start from there and see where it takes us.’
Bob and Liam nodded.
‘So, like the Cabot trip, Liam. OK? Just go look and listen and see if there’s anything at all we can zero in on as a possible cause.’
‘Aye, will do.’
‘Return windows, as usual, are one hour, one day, one week.’
‘Well, don’t get all hissy with me if we miss the first two windows,’ said Liam. He looked at her. ‘Seven miles, you say? That’s a day’s walk there and a day’s walk back. Me an’ Bob won’t get to see much of Rome if we have to get back for — ’
‘A week, then,’ she replied irritably. ‘If that’s what you want?’
‘Aye.’ He smiled. ‘It’ll be good to get a proper look around for once, rather than a flying visit.’
‘Up to you. Just be care-’ Maddy stopped.
She’d not noticed it before, but standing here at the base of the displacement tube, with the strip light fizzing away directly above and casting an intense light down on his face, Liam’s eyes seemed lost in shadow. Ever so slightly sunken. The very first faint hint of Foster’s face in his younger features.
‘Mads?’
She shot a quick glance at Sal. She knew about Liam now. Can she see it too? By this light, is she seeing what I’m seeing?
Liam cocked his head curiously and in the change of expression the vague resemblance to Foster’s face was all of a sudden gone. ‘Maddy? You all right?’
She nodded quickly. ‘Uh… fine. No, what I was going to say was, just… uh, just be careful.’
‘Of course I will. Always am.’ Liam grinned, turned and punched Bob’s bare shoulder. ‘Come on, then, fella. Time for the goldfish bowl.’
She looked at Bob, naked apart from shorts and clutching his own plastic bag of clothes. ‘Is your data-packet upload complete?’
He nodded. ‘I have first-century Latin and the correct timeline history from the database installed.’
‘Bring Liam back safe and sound, won’t you, Bob?’
‘Of course I will. Liam tutus erit in manibus meis. ’
Maddy smiled. ‘Convincing as ever.’
She watched Liam ease himself into the tube, with a whoop at the cold water that echoed round the archway. Bob joined him a moment later, treading water beside Liam. As energy began to surge into the rack of circuitry beside the perspex tube, Sal joined her.
‘Now I know why you always look so sad when you’re sending Liam back,’ she said quietly.
‘Yes.’ Maddy nodded. ‘Now you know.’
The hum of kinetic energy rose in volume and pitch as Maddy counted down the last two minutes.
Because every time I do this to Liam… I’m gradually killing him.
The archway boomed with the release of energy and the flex of perspex suddenly relieved of the weight and pressure of thirty gallons of water.
CHAPTER 24
AD 54, Italy
Liam looked around as he finished dressing. Maddy had managed to find a perfectly discreet location for them. A small grove of olive trees nestled at the bottom of a narrow valley. A brook meandered through boulders and across a shallow bed of pebbles. A quite pleasant patch of wilderness.
They worked in silence burying their bags in the parched, ruddy, clay-like soil beneath one of the olive trees as the rhythmic trill of cicadas whistled at them from the dry grass all around.
Done, they worked their way up out of the valley, clambering up a slope of coarse grass and hawthorn bushes. Liam was mopping sweat from his face with the back of his hand by the time they reached the top and stood beside a dusty, hard-baked track winding down a slope.
Liam took in the broad, sedentary horizon. In the far distance a ribbon of peaks, the Apennine mountains; before him a patchwork of pastures and fields rolling over gently sloping hills and dotted here and there with pastel-coloured villas with clay-tile roofs that shimmered in the heat of the midday sun.
‘The city of Rome is seven miles east of our current position,’ said Bob. ‘I suggest we acquire transport and make our way there to gather intelligence.’
‘Transport?’ Liam looked around. ‘I think we’re the transport.’
Bob scanned the horizon.
‘We’re probably going to have to walk, so.’
‘Negative. This is a trade route into Rome. We will encounter transport.’ Bob narrowed his eyes and studied the dusty track carefully. ‘Look.’
Liam followed his gaze and this time saw a distant curl of dust kicked up from the track.
Bob flexed his fists and played out an unnervingly wide rictus of a smile on his lips. ‘Show time,’ he grunted merrily.
Five minutes later, they were in possession of their own horse-drawn cart laden with amphoras of wine and were leaving behind them, at the side of the track, a portly old Greek tradesman shouting a stream of unintelligible obscenities, shaking his fist furiously at them. The babel-bud in Liam’s ear calmly translated for him in soothing feminine tones.
‹ Your father is a dog with a hygiene problem. Your mother has low moral values…›
‘I’m sorry!’ Liam called out guiltily.
The bud whispered in his ear. ‹ Me paenitet.›
‘ Me… paenitet! ’ he called out.
Bob nodded approvingly as he cajoled the horses in front of them to break into a weary trot. ‘You are using the translator. Very good.’
‘Maybe we should leave him something to drink? You know, it’s hot and…’
‘As you wish.’ Bob reached a thick arm over the driver’s seat into the back of the cart and lifted up a large clay amphora stoppered with a plug of wax. Liquid sloshed around inside as he swung it out over the side and tossed it gently on to the twisted, brittle branches and needles of a squat Aleppo pine tree by the side of the track.
The Greek’s cursing receded, eventually lost beneath the sound of the cart’s creaking wheels and the clop- clop of hooves on sun-baked dirt.
Liam settled back in his seat and sighed contentedly in the warmth of the sun. ‘So this is Ancient Rome, then?’
‘Affirmative.’
