The Imperium Game

by K. D. Wentworth

  “IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO. OR SO THEY SAY.” The eagle’s outline swelled into the shining shape of a seven-foot bearded man clutching a huge scepter in one hand and a jagged thunderbolt in the other. He bared his large white teeth in a broad smile.

  “Amaelia!” Kerickson motioned at her from behind Jupiter’s back. “We have to go now!”

  “YOU CAN’T LEAVE WITHOUT A SACRIFICE.” The god’s eyes glowed with a fierce blueness that made Kerickson look away. “AND I HAVE JUST THE THING IN MIND.”

  Kerickson wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic. “Amaelia!”

  “So, think of something!” She darted behind the altar and glared at him. “This was your idea!”

  “AND SUCH A GAME IT WILL BE, MY LITTLE MELON BALL.” Jupiter’s bushy gray eyebrows arched.

  “Oh, for—” Kerickson angled toward the girl.

  Just as he reached for her hand, Jupiter aimed the thunderbolt at him. “ONLY TWO CAN PLAY THIS GAME, SONNY BOY.”

  Kerickson’s body writhed in a spasm of hot pain, and the marble floor smacked him in the rear. Struggling for breath, he stumbled back to his feet, but his legs wilted and he fell again. His vision faded in and out. “Amaelia!”

  The god—and the girl—had disappeared.

  * * *

  Demea glanced at the tiny chronocrystal she usually kept hidden, for authenticity’s sake, beneath her gown. Down here in the Underworld it was impossible to tell what time it was without a clock. The light, if it could be dignified by so lofty a name, never varied from the last dregs of twilight.

  She paced around her spacious bedchamber, wondering if she should make another attempt to escape. So far she’d tried twice to find her way back to the surface, but both times Pluto’s automated minions had dragged her back to the gleaming black palace.

  “Wine, my love?” The long-faced shade of Micio drifted after her, an erotic painting of a woman and a huge white bull on the opposite wall visible through its nebulous body.

  She stopped, her hands knotted into fists. It had been bad enough to put up with her whiny husband when he had been alive, but having his shade follow her around down here was absolutely intolerable. “For the last time, go away and leave me alone!”

  “Well, you don’t have to get huffy about it!” The shade looked down its long Roman nose at her, then shrugged a misty fold of toga over its shoulder. “This certainly isn’t my idea of a good time.”

  Her quarters lay open to the luridly lush palace gardens on one long colonnaded side. She walked through Micio’s body into shadowy greenery. Fleshy white flowers that smelled strongly of overripe melon trailed over her hands and arms. A transparent nightingale fluttered over her head and into her room. It circled for a moment, then perched on the black marble shoulder of a faun in the middle of a small fountain. She stared at the bird, fighting the urge to throw her sandal at it. Somehow, she had to find a way out of this depressing place, even if she had to kill someone to do it!

  “Let me out of here!” She threw her head back. “Do you hear me? You’re driving me crazy!”

  Startled, the ghostly nightingale took to the air again, leaving her alone with Micio’s shade and the gurgling water. She clasped her trembling hands together and came back in to sit on the edge of the fountain.

  With a clatter of hooves, a huge black bull trotted in from the gardens and swung its homed head in a wide arc. “NONE ABOVE SHALL EVER SHARE YOUR BEAUTY AGAIN!” Its black eyes bored into her, bottomless pools of night that made her knees weak. “YOU ARE AS FAR BEYOND THOSE PUNY MORTALS AS WE GODS ARE BEYOND WORMS. NOTHING SHALL EVER SEPARATE US AGAIN!” The bull lowered its fierce head and pawed the floor. “NOT EVEN DEATH ITSELF!”

  “I suppose that’s meant to be a comfort.” She studied the long black face, finding this manifestation even less inviting than his previous, towering five-story image. Running her hand over her elaborately braided hair, she tucked in a stray wisp. “Why don’t we try to be reasonable about this? You are a computer program.” Rising, she walked into the garden, parting the heavy white flowers with one hand. “I, on the other hand, am human. There’s nothing either of us can do about that, and pretending won’t make one bit of difference.”

  The flowers closed in behind her, brushing her skin with cool leaves, clouding her mind with the heady perfume of night jasmine.

  “THERE IS A WAY.”

  “There is not!” A path stretched out before her, winding back upon itself into shadowy bowers under palm trees, then splitting around yet another dreary black marble fountain.

  A figure dressed in glimmering black armor stepped out of the palm trees, a tall, broad-shouldered man with curling midnight hair, life-size this time, as he had never come to her before.

  He extended his hand. “ACCEPT ME AND WE SHALL TASTE THE PLEASURE OF A THOUSAND THOUSAND ENDLESS NIGHTS.” His black eyes smoldered.

  Her skin prickled as he approached. She stared at his hand, unable to stop thinking how lovely it would be if all this were real, if a darkly handsome god really did desire her for his consort, if he could touch her and hold her as no holo image ever could, if this Game fantasy could somehow be made real.

  “STARS TO MY NIGHT . . .” His voice was low and husky as he reached for her face. “THERE IS A WAY. ONCE YOU ENTER MY REALITY, YOU WILL SEE THAT YOUR LIFE BEFORE WAS ONLY A DREAM.”

  She felt the bite of electricity at his holographic touch. “You have to let me go back.” Her throat tightened. “I can’t take much more of this.”

  “JOIN ME, THEN.” His black-velvet voice throbbed with the music of a thousand organs.

  “I can’t!” Unaccustomed tears rose into her eyes and she dabbed at them furiously. “This is so stupid! I’m only a player! I can’t be a goddess. There’s no such role!”

  “ONCE I, TOO, WAS MORTAL.” His dark-eyed, high-cheekboned face hovered above her, so perfect she wanted to cry. “ONCE I LIVED ABOVE, UNDERSTANDING NO MORE THAN OTHER MEN. BUT NOW I ABIDE HERE, ALL-POWERFUL, IMMORTAL. SAY THE WORD AND IT SHALL BE SO WITH YOU, TOO.”

  “You’re a program, nothing more!” Her voice shook.

  “I AM PROGRAM . . . AND MACHINE . . . AND MORTAL.”

  The implications flooded through her mind “You’re talking about cybernetic interface. That’s illegal!”

  “ILLEGAL, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE WHEN FUNDS ARE UNLIMITED.” A faint smile played over the god’s dark face. “MONEY EQUALS POWER, AND POWER IS EVERYTHING. I SAW YOU UNDERSTOOD THAT, TOO, AS YOU PLAYED ABOVE, LEAPING FROM RANK TO RANK, MAN TO MAN, ALLOWING NOTHING TO STAND IN YOUR WAY. THAT HAS DRAWN ME TO YOU, AND YOU TO ME. WE ARE TWO OF A KIND.”

  A dim understanding flickered within her: she could play, not as Empress, but as a goddess, could wield unlimited power in the Game—it made her head spin.

  “But—how?” She bit her lip, feeling on the edge of a vast yawning precipice.

  “EVERYTHING IS IN READINESS, MY LOVE, AND WHEN IT IS DONE, THE ENTIRE GAME WILL LIE AT YOUR FEET.” Again he held out his nonexistent hand to her.

  She breathed hard, longing to feel his flesh warm against hers.

  “JOIN ME AND WE SHALL PLAY SUCH GAMES AS OTHERS HAVE ONLY DREAMT.”

  Her hand went to her throat. The dense gardens seemed to close in upon her. Did she dare believe him? “If I do this, can we be truly together?”

  “YOU CANNOT BEGIN TO GUESS THE INFINITE VARIETY OF PLEASURES AVAILABLE IN THIS STATE OF BEING.” His fierce black eyes burned down at her. “I SHALL TEACH YOU WHAT IT IS TO LOVE AS A GOD.”

  And they would all know her name, she thought. Everyone would know that she, Demea, was a goddess, and there would be no more grubbing around for authenticity points or fawning upon fools for favors to retain her rank. They would all come to her begging, and, ten stories high, she would look down and laugh in their mortal faces.

  “Yes,” she heard herself say in the stillness of the t
wilit gardens, “I will.”

  * * *

  “Now you’ve done it!” The priest stomped angrily over to the altar and hiked himself up on the edge.

  His head still ringing from the effect of Jupiter’s thunderbolt, Kerickson staggered to his feet. “Me?”

  The priest buried his face in his hands. “I should have known today would end like this!” He picked up the libation jug and took a stiff pull on the sacrificial wine. “The signs were all there—the sacred chickens were completely off their feed this morning. The little horrors refused to touch a single grain of corn.”

  He upended the jug until bright red wine dribbled from the corners of his mouth. “And the Saturnalia begins tomorrow, too!” He wiped his face with a handful of his white tunic, leaving behind a livid red stain. “I’ll be lucky not to be busted back to a . . . a . . .” He stretched out on his back, narrowly missing the smoldering sacrificial fire. “A blue-painted Briton!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kerickson’s head ached and his mouth tasted like the inside of an old shoe. Blinking hard, he wobbled over to the altar and stared down at the distraught priest. “What— Where did she go?”

  “Who?” The priest scratched his nose. “Oh, the girl. He took her, of course. What did you expect?”

  Kerickson eyed the libation jug, then decided against it. “He’s a computer program. She can’t be with him.”

  “Are you nuts?” Leaping off the altar, the priest glanced around with white-rimmed eyes. “First,” he whispered, “you come in here, asking Jupiter to appear, by god, when everyone in Rome knows what he’s like! Then you wave a nubile young female right under his nose, and now you’re saying that—that C-word, right here before the Saturnalia!” He mopped the film of perspiration on his brow with his sleeve. “Maybe you don’t care about advancing in rank, but I don’t intend to spend another quarter stuck in this dump poking around in animal entrails, even if they are only simulated. I want to be a general and rewrite military history!”

  “Where—did they go?” Kerickson’s tongue felt as though it belonged to someone else.

  “Oh, you know what the old goat is like.” The priest tugged at the hem of his tunic, now speckled with red down the front. “He’ll reenact a few of his favorite myths, then he’ll get bored and let her go.”

  “Where—”

  “You certainly have a one-track mind, don’t you?” The priest shook his head. “Well, you should have considered the consequences before you came up here with a girl.”

  “I suppose you’d have preferred to let Mars burn down the city?” Kerickson kneaded his forehead, digging at an ache behind his eyes.

  “I—” The priest’s head whirled around as he was interrupted by a faint, stomach-churning scream from inside the temple.

  Kerickson pushed off the altar on legs that seemed to be made of water.

  “I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you,” the priest called after him. “He can be downright beastly if you get in his way.”

  “Yeah, right.” Gritting his teeth, Kerickson supported himself against a carved column as black spots danced in front of his eyes. He shook his head, then lurched on toward the massive closed door.

  Another muffled scream split the air.

  “Amaelia!” Seizing the latch, he tugged at the towering door, but it refused to budge.

  “Now, look here.” The priest hiccuped. “Be reasonable. He’s not going to let you in there.”

  Kerickson leaned his head against the bas-relief of Jupiter appearing as a shower of gold, trying hard to think. If only he could go back to the Interface, he could have her out of there in a second, but he had no access now.

  Something flickered in the back of his mind, some faint idea, some way out. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate.

  From within the temple a deep voice rumbled, and then he heard Amaelia laugh.

  “See?” The priest waggled his finger in Kerickson’s face. “She’s all right.” He took another deep swig of sacrificial wine, then threw the jug aside. “After all, it’s not every girl who gets to disport herself with him, and they didn’t exactly seem to be strangers, if you catch my drift.”

  No, they didn’t, Kerickson thought, and then the glimmer from the back of his mind leaped out at him. Of course! He needed access to an Interface, and Amaelia had mentioned seeing screens in Quintus Gracchus’s villa. He whirled around and stared into the priest’s wine-spattered face. “Watch this door,” he said. “If Amaelia comes out before I can get back, tell her to wait for me.”

  “Oh, you think I don’t have better things to do than sit around here all day?” The priest peered morosely into the mouth of the empty jug.

  “I think you’ll spend the next quarter playing a eunuch in the Temple of Vesta if you screw this up.” Kerickson stared him straight in the bloodshot eyes. “And that’s a promise.”

  The priest’s legs gave way and he slid down the column behind him until he was sitting on the floor, his tunic hiked up around his knobby knees. He blinked up at Kerickson with heavy-lidded eyes. “And why should I take the word of a freedman on that?”

  “Because I’ll cram one of those damn sacred chickens down your throat if you don’t!” Kerickson started down the steps to the Forum, then heard Jupiter’s laugh rumble through the marble door.

  * * *

  Afraid, yet enthralled, Demea stared into the trickling water of the fountain, thinking of the promise of so much power and prestige. But at what cost? Was she doing the right thing?

  “Can I ever go back?” she asked the shadowy spaciousness of her palace chambers. “Once I interface with the computer, can it be undone?”

  “NO.” Pluto’s deep voice came from everywhere at once. “HOW CAN A FULL-GROWN MIND BE STUFFED BACK INTO THE WOMB?”

  Her stomach contracted, full of icy fear prickles. He was talking about another plane of existence, as far beyond her as an adult was beyond an unborn child, something at which she could only guess. Rising, she stared down at her rippling reflection in the pool, appraising her assets. Tall and large-boned, with black hair, she was attractive enough, although she’d never had the money necessary for cosmetic surgery that could have softened the bold lines of her face into conventional prettiness. Her first husband, Arvid, had been able to afford either a good biosculpt or enrollment in the Game, but not both. She had chosen the Game.

  In ancient Rome, women had been revered for their strength as well as their comeliness. and she had let that work for her, knowing that a certain sort of man liked to be bullied and pushed It had worked with Arvid, at least for a while, and later Micio—but this thing with Pluto was a new experience. Now she was the one who was pursued and persuaded.

  “IT IS TIME, MY LOVE.”

  A door, hitherto invisibly seamed into the wall, opened. A gleaming hallway appeared beyond, all silvery metal, quite unlike anything she’d ever seen on the playing field. Her heart thumped. Holding her head high, she walked into the corridor.

  Another door opened at the far end, spilling a bright, almost surgical light. She steadied herself against the wall with one band, then recoiled from the cold metal.

  “WHEN WE MEET AGAIN, WE WILL NEVER BE PARTED.”

  His voice already sounded farther away, cut off by the corridor walls. She glanced over her shoulder, chilled by the realization that he did have limits, limits she would share if she took this step.

  But what awaited her if she went back? Even if she could go on playing Empress, and there was no guarantee of that, it would be nothing but second best now. She wanted more power, more adulation, more of everything. Her eyes went back to the blinding light ahead.

  The time had indeed come.

  * * *

  “ARE YOU SURE?” the glittering cloud of gold thickened, obscuring the colorful scenes of voluptuous young maidens in various stages of undress painted on the opposite wall. “
WON’T YOU MOO FOR ME, JUST THE TINIEST LITTLE MOO? I WOULD BE EVER SO GRATEFUL.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Amaelia hunched her knees up to her chest, then fingered the gaping rent in the bodice of her gown. She was lucky to have nothing worse than a torn gown and a few bruises after being flung like a sack of grain into the temple’s inner room by Jupiter’s overwhelming gust of wind. “Look, I have to go. Gaius is waiting for me.”

  Or was he? Jupiter had been yammering at her for several hours now. If her new friend had gone off and left her, well, she could hardly blame him.

  The golden cloud sulked on the other side of the chamber for a few minutes. Finally, it formed a skewed face that stared petulantly at her.

  She crossed her arms. “This is very silly, not worthy of you at all.”

  “HAVEN’T YOU EVER THOUGHT OF BECOMING A HEIFER?” The cloud coalesced into a huge white bull. It swished its tail. “SO YOUNG AND TENDER, SO SWEET, SO—”

  “What is this obsession you have with cattle?” She jumped to her feet. “You should be out there protecting the city from Mars, and instead you’re mooning around in here with me!”

  “MARS?” The bull dissolved into an oversized, slightly potbellied older man sitting on a golden throne. He twined a graying strand of beard around one finger. “IT’LL TAKE A FULL DAY FOR HIM TO GET HIMSELF TOGETHER AGAIN.” He leaned forward and raised one gray eyebrow. “SO WHAT SAY YOU AND I GO FOR A LITTLE SWIM? I CAN DO THE MOST MARVELOUS SWAN—”

  A blow against the outside door made the whole temple shudder. The god hesitated.

  “OPEN THIS DOOR, YOU RANDY OLD HE-ASS!”

  Jupiter bit his lip. “ON THE OTHER HAND, MY DEAR, PERHAPS WE SHOULD CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION, PROMISING AS IT IS, SOME OTHER TIME.”

  “I HAVE CONTROL OF THE CITY NOW, AND I WON’T HAVE THESE SORTS OF GOINGS-ON UNDER MY PROTECTION!”