Strength and Honor (32 page)

But Claudia’s attention was now on her own hands. She tried to rub something off them. She beheld her hands in advancing horror, as if they were covered in something hideous.

Munda covered the data receptacle on the platter and whisked it away, his
curiosi
in his wake, back to the catacombs of Imperial Intelligence.

25

^D
ON’T MOVE!” ROMAN
legionaries bellowed. A lot of them Large boots tromping Cole Darby’s face.

Okay,
thought Darb cooperatively. On the ground, not sure if he was lying on his back or his front. Getting the idea his neck was broken. Not moving was not a problem. If the lupes ordered him to move he was screwed. Didn’t feel his own breath from his nostrils against his upper lip and wondered if he was breathing. If not, he ought to be blacking out soon.

Heard grunts of the others. Ranza. Cain. Dak. Carly. Twitch. There was some kicking going on.

Kerry Blue’s cry sounded frightened.
“Darb!”

A
voice in Latin: “This one’s dead.”

A lupe may have kicked him because Darby’s head rocked slightly against the grass and he felt his cheek move against the dirt.

The pitiful cry,
“No!”

I love you, Kerry Blue.

Strange face loomed close to his. No pity there. Very young. Perfect Roman. Cole Darby moved his eyes to tell the face he was not dead.

“He’s alive!” Kerry cried.

The face rose away.

The Latin pronouncement, “No, he’s not.”

Barrel in his ear. Kerry Blue’s screech. The leading edge of a blast.

Claudia cried for days, racked by headaches. Blisters, real ones, appeared on her hands. She scratched at them until her hands were bloody. Specialists tried to block the reception of the nerve endings to her brain, but it didn’t help. As if the itching was not in her hands but all in her head.

She screamed from a stabbing pain in her eye.

Medici
sedated her.

More than once she bolted up from what should have been deep sedation to scream:
“Pater!”

Attending
medici
looked up as Caesar Romulus entered Claudia’s room in the private clinic. He had brought fresh flowers.

One of the attendants took the flowers and put them into a vase at Claudia’s bedside.

Claudia was unconscious, twitching, moving, her face pale against the pillow, her thick eyelashes quivering, noises coming from her throat.

“You cut off her hair,” said Romulus, shocked. It brought to mind Calli Carmel, and he had to wonder if Calli were not behind this monstrous attack.

“She was tearing at it,” said a
medicus.
“We have it here.” She indicated a side table where Claudia’s long dark locks lay cleaned, combed, and bagged next to her emeralds. Hair was easily reattached, and Claudia looked in no state to be missing it.

Her hands were covered in gauze, her wrists bound in soft restraints at her side. “She has been calling for your father, Caesar,” a medical attendant advised, insinuation in his voice.

“She is calling God, you idiot,” said Romulus.

Chastised, the attendant said, “She is in terrible pain.”

“Then stop the pain! What is wrong with you?”

The senior
medicus,
Pontius Placidus, moved in, took over. “We have shut off the neural pathways from the nerve endings to her brain, Caesar. We cannot stop the pain. The nanites are
inside
her brain.”

“Nanites!” Caesar recoiled. “From the patterner’s black box?”

“Yes, Caesar.”

“Other people have touched the black box with their bare hands,” said Romulus. “Why isn’t Trogus scratching
his
hands off?”

“The nanites are programmed to activate upon a trigger event.”

“What trigger?”

Pontius Placidus said quietly, “Caesar, may we talk in private?” and showed Caesar to a door. Opened it for him and let Romulus precede him through it to the kind of room where they tell you, “I’m so sorry.”

The room was chock-full of potted plants, crowded with life, green and flowering. Tiny jewel birds uttered soft fluttering notes, not their characteristic hard banging chirps. The light through the false windows was soft as Earthlight. The chairs were overstuffed to hug you when you sat in one. The hearth held an eternal flame.

Romulus refused the chair. He was dressed all in black, even to his gloves, which had become part of his usual garb. He held his arms crossed so hard that he was hugging himself. Struggled not to bite the hand that tried to heal. He just wanted to execute the lot of these quacks and bring in someone competent.

Pontius Placidus was the best neurologist in the Empire.

“There are several specialized types of nanomachines at work here,” Pontius Placidus explained. “The syndrome is activated by a combination trigger. The recognition molecules react with a specific target biologic. In this case the recognition molecules are reacting to a near DN A match to Magnus. A filial match.”

“Augustus targeted me,” Romulus translated.

The medicus seemed to hedge. Continued, “DNA is not enough. It is a combination trigger. Contact with DN A having filial commonality with Magnus is the first thing the nanite looks for. That contact triggers the nanite to construct a second set of recognition molecules, which are dispatched to the hippocampus and the frontal lobe to troll for electrical pulse patterns within the central nervous system that equate to patricidal memory and guilt.”

“Stop!” Caesar cried. “You cannot possibly read a mind from electrical pulses.”

“In a limited sense, yes, we can,” said Placidus. “A patricidal experience alters the map of the human brain. Crime leaves physical tracks. The recognition molecules look for the shape of a memory. Killing one’s father is a major event. The experience leaves an impression—a characteristic brain pattern.”

“The nanite cannot have found that in my sister,” Romulus declared.

“It thinks it did,” the medicus said diplomatically. “That event triggers the creation of yet another recognition molecule which looks for a guilt reaction associated with the memory. Guilt dwells in the frontal lobe—guilt as in the fear of being caught. The nanites do not look for remorse, which is a separate pattern. Finding a filial match for Magnus’ DNA, patricidal memory, and guilt, the nanites then construct other nanites to inject information into the brain. They bring the patricidal memory to the fore cortex and create visual, auditory, and olfactory electrical pulses. Electromagnetic pulses trigger the release of the brain’s own neurotransmitters to create a synthetic reality—pain, visions, stench, itching. Other nanites create the physical blisters.”

“You are implying that my sister is guilty of something and I know that is not true. She is high-spirited and self-indulgent. That is all. Very well, she is a brat. I know that. Augustus was a murderous renegade. He killed our father and tried to divert his own guilt to a high, high target. Augustus and Gaius Americanus and the American Callista Carmel are all in this.”

Pontius Placidus could see that familial loyalty was blinding young Romulus to the obvious guilt of his sister. A difficult thing to explain to a Caesar. “The recognition molecules—”

Romulus cut him off. “//Claudia has a memory of killing our father, then Augustus’ nanites
created that too.
He just had his nanites destroy the evidence of that part of the scheme before he let you find the ‘recognition molecules.’ He was a patterner! He could create and hide evidence at will! Claudia did not kill our father. I know she did not.”

The medicus had not considered the possibility of the patterner planting a false memory first, then sending his recognition molecules out to find it. “I apologize, Caesar. I fell for it. You are correct. It would not be beyond the ability of a patterner.”

“Where would Augustus get the raw data to find the pattern to do that? He had American help, didn’t he?” Romulus guessed the answer he wanted to hear.

The medicus was reluctant to follow that leap. “Nanotechology has been around for hundreds of years. We have it. The Americans have it. Brain alterations? I’m afraid those are Roman advances, Caesar. Augustus had Secundus’ Striker. Strikers carry extensive data banks already installed. You are correct, patterners don’t normally construct things. But this particular patterner, Secundus, worked under Constantine Siculus. That means both Secundus and Augustus had Constantine’s database.”

“PanGalactic Industries,” Romulus gave a horrified murmur.

Constantine Siculus was the founder of PanGalactic Industries. The father of modern manufacturing. Tell the PanGalactic program what you want with great specificity, and PanGalactic will figure out how to get it made. Augustus must have asked for very specific nanites.

“Augustus knew I wanted his head!” said Romulus, agitated. “Those nanites were meant for me!”

“I believe you may have it, Caesar.”

“How do those nanites travel? Are they loose in my palace?”

“They are only mobile within a human body. But they may pass by contact like dust. If you are the nanites’ true target, then you are in danger, Caesar. The nanites could be on your gloves if you touched the black box even with your gloves on.”

“I didn’t touch the black box at all.”

“Claudia. If you touched your sister after she touched the black box, you are certainly already exposed.”

“I haven’t.” A chill passed through Caesar’s body. He had started to touch her many times, but always stopped himself. “Myself,” said the medicus. “I have touched the black box extensively.”

Pontius Placidus could tell by the look on Romulus’ face that Caesar would love to throw the medicus into the nearest annihilator. Caesar instead commanded soberly, “Kindly confine yourself to a quarantined area.”

“Yes, Caesar. Anything Claudia touched may carry these nanites. With your permission I shall organize a cleansing of this site, and the reception area where she first contacted the black box. We can sanitize your shoe soles on the way out.”

“Good man,” said Romulus. “I have noted your initiative, your thoroughness, and your discretion in this affair.”

Pontius Placidus nodded, accepting the recognition. He could expect tangible gratitude for his service. Caesar Romulus could be wildly generous.

“Make her comfortable,” Caesar commanded. “And
get those things out of her brain!”

“I will do my best, Caesar.”

Romulus breathed a big angry inhalation, about to shout at Placidus that best wasn’t good enough. Forced himself down from boiling wrath. Tried to find words to impress the urgency on this intelligent ape. “Pontius Placidus, she is your sister. She is your daughter. She is your wife. She is your mother. You understand how important she is?”

“Everything possible will be done,” said Pontius Placidus. Romulus left the clinic, quaking to the foundation of his being.

Romulus contacted his chief of palace security with orders that Senators Umbrius, Trogus, Quirinius and Opsius be expelled from the palace and denied future access, by force if necessary. Then he added Numa Pompeii to that list. He thought about ordering Gaius Americanus killed or quarantined, but Gaius was confined under the Coliseum, so there was no point dredging him up.

Romulus considered having an arsonist torch the palace annex. Damned Augustus again.

He had wondered about the shot through his throne in his bunker. He wondered what made Augustus so sure Romulus would be on the throne when he took the shot.

Obviously Romulus had not been on the throne, and obviously Augustus hadn’t been sure.

But Augustus knew—for sure—that Romulus wanted his head.

Augustus had left this trap for him.

Claudia sprang it instead.

was meant for me. It was meant for me. I survived you again, you mechanical zombie abortion.am Caesar and you are dead!

Romulus was filled with a sudden sense of elation, an amazing freedom. The air felt clean and pure in his lungs. He was alive, and he felt like celebrating.

Merrimack
ghosted a French merchant ship that was not where it was supposed to be, on a stealthy approach to Palatine.

Captain Farragut did not like to shoot at civilians, even French ones. But he did not intend to let the ship pass. The decision was between gentle ramming and terminal blasting.

“Let’s show ourselves,” said Farragut.

“He could run, sir,” Tactical advised.

“Then we’ll catch him again when he drops to sublight at the planet. We know where he’s going.”
Merrimack
moved in close enough to read the name on the hull,
Pharaon.

Merrimack
swept in front of the freighter. Hailed on the international channel and commanded the ship to turn back. The freighter
Pharaon
did not respond. Maintained course.

Merrimack’s
Intelligence officer, Colonel Z, suspected the freighter was not the French craft it appeared to be.

Thaleia was the more likely point of origin.

Farragut looked to his exec. “Anything, Gypsy?”

Gypsy Dent had sent a res inquiry to Earth upon first sighting the freighter, to verify the ship’s authenticity. “Waiting for something back from France,” said Gypsy. “Bumper cars,” said Farragut.

Helm made two gleeful fists. “Aye, aye, Captain!”

“Go easy,” said Farragut. “Don’t hurt him yet. See if he has anything to say now.”

Merrimack
moved in like a killer whale trying to balance a baby seal on its nose, while the com tech held his headset away from his ear.

“What do you have?” Farragut asked.

“He’s squawking,” said the com tech.

“What’s he saying.”

“It’s in French.”

“Aren’t you wearing a module?”

“It’s real bad French. I got the words ‘outrage’ and ‘my government.’ “

“We can wait and see what his government has to say.”

“Can I keep bumping him, sir?”

“Oh, sure. Carry on.”