The Imperium Game

by K. D. Wentworth

  The six blood-red eyes sagged. He continued, working his way down through the choruses to eighty-five. Then, still singing, he crouched down and took Amaelia’s hand.

  Her fingers moved in his, and she crawled toward him. The central head opened its eyes again and snarled at him. He leaned back with all his weight and belted out, “Take one down and pass it around, eighty-four bottles of wine on the wall!” He dug in his heels and pulled. “Eighty-four bottles of—come on!—wine on the—” With a rip, she slid out from under the beast, leaving her skirt behind, and fell on top of him in the metallic black sand.

  For a moment they both lay there, speechless and exhausted. Then Cerberus shook itself and howled a great reverberating cry of rage, and Kerickson pushed Amaelia up. “Come on! I don’t think his parameters allow him to leave the gate!”

  Slogging wearily across the sweltering black beach, they dodged boulders until they reached the shore of the thundering, sulfurous Styx. Amaelia sank to her knees, gazing mournfully across to the other side. For a moment he didn’t understand; then it hit him, too.

  Charon and his ferry were on the opposite shore.

  * * *

  It took a full half day before Demea deemed her god-husband sufficiently distracted by his daily inspection of his realm to risk contacting Publius Barbus and instruct him to meet her in the overgrown palace gardens.

  Manifesting in her only slightly larger than life-size form, she arrayed herself in a gown of glittering black stars and wandered through a grove of vine-choked willow trees and rambling, untended azalea bushes. A dark, bitter flood of anger rose in her throat. What good was it to play Proserpina, Queen of Hades, if she couldn’t do exactly as she pleased? Supreme power was the whole point of becoming a goddess. What right did Pluto have to deny her anything?

  “You sent for me, your ladyness?” a rough-edged voice asked from behind her.

  Turning around, she met the mean little pinpoint eyes of Publius Barbus. “YOU WILL NOT ADDRESS ME IN THAT CRUDE AND FAMILIAR MANNER!”

  “Taking on airs, eh?” Barbus rasped his fingers over his scruffy beard, then chuckled “Well, I suppose you’re entitled. It’s not every broad what can work her way up to goddess!”

  Her height increased without her even thinking about it, so that she found herself staring down through the leafy treetops at his insectlike body. “I HAVE A TASK FOR YOU.”

  Barbus plopped down on the ground and pulled a sandwich out of his pocket. “Well, I suppose we might be able to work something out, just for old times’ sake. What’s your best offer?”

  “NOT TO TAKE YOUR WORTHLESS, WORMY LIFE!” She summoned a ball of crackling power and cradled it in one hand. “I WANT TO DISPOSE OF SEVERAL PEOPLE ABOVE, BUT AS PROSERPINA, I CAN NO LONGER GO THERE MYSELF.”

  He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Disposals don’t come cheap, you know. How are you going to pay me?”

  She had to think for a moment—she no longer possessed anything of a material nature. Then she had it. “MICIO’S BUSINESS, WHATEVER IT WAS—YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL. I HAVE NO NEED OF IT NOW.”

  “That?” He waved the sandwich at her. “The moment I turned you over to old Dark and Gloomy, it was mine. He promised me that much up front”

  “PLUTO PROMISED YOU MICIO’S BUSINESS IF YOU BROUGHT ME TO HIM?”

  “That’s right, Queenie—lock, stock, and laser, plus free run of the Dark Kingdom anytime I want.” He stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth.

  She had been sold, like a leg of lamb or an airhopper. The idea staggered her so much that she lost her concentration and the ball of power in her hands fizzled away to nothing. She shrank to normal size before she noticed.

  “Now don’t go getting yourself all in a tizzy.” Barbus brushed the crumbs off his hands. “It’s not like you was cut out for a life of crime, anyway. Admit it, you didn’t really have the faintest idea what his formerness, the Emperor, was up to. There’s no reason for a classy dame like you to get your hands dirty with smuggling and point-stealing and the like. You just stay down here and leave the nuts and bolts to old Publius Barbus.”

  “I NEED YOUR HELP ON THIS ONE SMALL MATTER.” She crossed her arms. “THEN WE CAN CONSIDER OURSELVES EVEN. I WANT ARVID KERICKSON AND AMAELIA METULLUS DEAD, IN ANY SENSE YOU CAN CONTRIVE.”

  “Who?”

  “ARVID KERICKSON, MY EX-HUSBAND.” She conjured a holo image from the computer’s files and displayed it for Barbus: an old file recording from one of Arvid’s many trips out on the playing field. Dressed in the uniform of the Praetorian Guard, he looked rather more dashing than she remembered.

  “You know, I seen him before.” Barbus walked around the image, scratching his head. “Yesterday, in the work crew. He was causing some kind of commotion and had the wrong kind of bracelet.”

  “WELL, YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT BETTER TRACK OF HIM.” Watching Arvid’s holo marching down the Via Ostiensis, she felt cold fury running through her veins. “HE WAS ONE OF HABITEK’S PROGRAMMERS, SO HE KNOWS THINGS ABOUT THE IMPERIUM NO ONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS.”

  “A programmer? Then what’s he doing in the Game?” He shook his head. “You know, this is weird. If he was in my work gang, then he shouldn’t be able to stay away from the Spear and Chicken. In a few more hours he should be there on his knees, begging for another fix.”

  When the file image ran out, she summoned another, this time Arvid standing in the throne room with that disgusting bimbo, Amaelia, at his side.

  Barbus whistled “Is that the babe you was talking about? I’d keep her company any time.”

  “DO ANYTHING YOU LIKE WITH THE NASTY LITTLE BRAT, AS LONG AS YOU GET RID OF HER.”

  “You want her dead, huh?” He squinted at the image of the slender, red-haired girl. “Hey, ain’t that the same she-male Quintus Gracchus is tearing apart the whole dome to find?”

  “QUINTUS GRACCHUS?” She tapped a long, poppy-red fingernail against her chin, thinking. Yes, that made sense. Since that Praetorian idiot had married Amaelia to legitimate his claim as Emperor, he must be looking for her. “PUBLIUS BARBUS, DO YOU KNOW HOW AMAELIA WAS KILLED?”

  “Oh, yeah, that story was all over the Imperium this morning.” Barbus grinned “You see, Amaelia evidently slipped out of the Palace without no escort, then wound up at the Temple of Jupiter during all that ruckus with Mars. Jupiter—well, everyone knows what he’s like—he took such a fancy to her that Juno showed up and sent her straight to—”

  “TO ME.” The pieces came together. After Amaelia had been declared dead, Arvid had intervened with Pluto, insisting that it was all a mistake, but obviously it had been nothing of the kind. Amaelia was dead, fair and square, as the old saying went. No matter what Pluto said, she had no right whatever to be up on the playing field now.

  “I’VE CHANGED MY MIND.” She turned back to Barbus. “KILL ARVID, BUT RETURN THE GIRL TO ME. WE WOULDN’T WANT TO BREAK ANY RULES.”

  * * *

  The sulfurous stench from the river made Kerickson’s eyes water, and the heat rivaled the interior of a rocket engine. They had to get across, and soon, but the ancient ferryman remained obstinately on the other shore.

  Amaelia cupped her hands next to his ear. “We’ll never get out this way!”

  He nodded back at her, then wiped the dripping sweat out of his eyes. It was pointless to waste any more time here. They were only going to get hungrier and thirstier and hotter while waiting for a new shade to show up so that Charon would have to pole the ferry back to their side. And even if they did hold out that long, Charon’s programming forbade dead players like Amaelia to recross the Styx, and since Charon was a robot, there was no question of two humans being able to overpower it. Also, if Charon had been reprogrammed with the same upgraded version of Interact as Cerberus, then Kerickson knew he wouldn’t be able to override its programming.

  “Come on!” He seized Amaelia’s hand. �
��We’re getting out of here.”

  She stood up, gazing back at Cerberus. The three-headed dog whined, then licked all its chops. She shuddered. “How?”

  “We’re going to swim.” He pulled off his sandals and threw them down on the black sand.

  “Across that?”

  He followed her gaze to the roiling, white-foamed water surging over the rocks. “It isn’t as bad as it looks,” he shouted over the roaring river. “Charon crosses it all the time with nothing more than a pole.” He decided not to mention that Charon’s ferry ran on an invisible track under the oily black water.

  “Oh.” She wrapped her arms around her chest.

  “I’ll go first, then you jump in on the upstream side of me. That way, we should stay together.”

  “If—If you say so.”

  He could see in her wide, staring eyes that she wasn’t crazy about this solution. He didn’t blame her. Taking several deep breaths, he jumped into the hot, smelly water and swam hard to keep from being dashed back against the rocks that lined the shore. “Come on!” he shouted over his shoulder, getting a mouthful of the nasty, brackish water.

  She clambered to the top of a boulder and dove in. Then she came up sputtering on his left, arms flailing.

  “Swim!” he shouted at her. She worked her arms harder, then was thrown against him by the water’s force. Before they had made more than a couple of yards’ progress, he realized that the current was too strong. They were going to be swept into the tunnel through the rock wall up ahead long before they could reach the opposite shore.

  Charon waved a skeletal arm at them just as the water sucked them into the dark hole in the cavern wall.

  Struggling to keep his head above water, Kerickson snagged Amaelia’s neck with one arm. “Lie—still!” he shouted to her, but he couldn’t tell if she understood or not

  Where did this tunnel come out? As the rushing water threw them from side to side, he tried to remember—did this branch of the river circulate through the pumps and filters before coming out above? Amaelia floundered against him, panicking. He flipped her over so that she lay against his chest in the swirling water. “Relax, you’re all right!” he shouted in her ear, then hoped he wasn’t lying.

  With an increasing roar, the river surged around them, speeding them to—where? The sweltering water closed over his head. He held his breath and wrapped both arms around the girl’s struggling body. Somewhere up ahead he heard a deep, rhythmic beat that overrode every other sound.

  Evidently the pumps came first.

  * * *

  “WHAT DID THAT INSECT, PUBLIUS BARBUS, WANT?” Pluto’s black eyes crackled with suspicion.

  With the tiniest diversion of energy, Demea erased the computer’s memory of that particular meeting. Then she twined a lock of Pluto’s curly black hair around her finger, pulling him closer and closer until she could see only the bottomless pools of his eyes. “HE WANTED ONLY TO PRAISE ME, AS IS MY DUE.”

  “AND WHAT OF MY DUE?”

  Heat blazed from him, hotter than the sun, which she would never see again. She pressed herself against him, drinking it in. “WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE?”

  “I WILL SHARE NO PART OF YOU WITH ANYONE!” His hands gripped her shoulders, holding her hard, cruelly. “EVEN YOUR ANGER IS MINE ALONE. REMEMBER THAT!”

  “OF COURSE,” she murmured, then felt herself swept away in his dark fire. “OF COURSE.”

  SHRILL, frenzied screaming penetrated the black fog in Amaelia’s head. She turned her head, trying to get away from it, and got a faceful of wet sand.

  “HAVING A BIT OF A SWIM. MY DEAR?” a reverberating male voice asked.

  Screaming flashed by again, more excited than afraid. Icy water splashed the length of her body and she shivered. Her throat spasmed and she coughed up a mouthful of stale, brackish water.

  “REALLY, DON’T YOU THINK IT’S TIME YOU GOT OUT OF THOSE NASTY, WET THINGS.”

  Another screaming party passed close by. Pushing weakly at the sand, she managed finally to roll over on her back. Her eyes cracked open. Clouds drifted overhead, gray and brooding. Had they made it outside?

  “I KNOW, LET’S GO SKINNY-DIPPING!”

  She turned to see the head of a massive brown eagle cocked attentively. staring down at her. Her heart sank and a throbbing conga-drum ache settled in her temples. “Jupiter?”

  “FAR-SEEING, LOUD-THUNDERING, THE ONE, THE ONLY.” It winked a gleaming yellow eye. “NOW, WHERE WERE WE BEFORE WE WERE SO RUDELY INTERRUPTED?”

  “Go—away,” she said weakly.

  “WELL!” The eagle fanned its wings. “SEE IF I GRANT ANY MORE OF YOUR PRAYERS, YOU LITTLE INGRATE!” It leaped skyward and disappeared.

  She covered her aching eyes with a sandy arm and tried to think back; they had been in the river, alternately tossed above, then sucked under the oily, sulfurous water. She remembered being battered against the sides of the smooth conduit, and a pounding that grew louder and louder—and then she remembered nothing at all.

  “Hey, you can’t swim in there!” The voice—male, but decidedly human—was somewhere above her.

  “Ga—Gaius?” she called hoarsely.

  “See, officer?” the voice complained. “Right in the middle of the Tiber River Adventure. I don’t care if it is Saturnalia, I could lose my license for this.”

  “Don’t worry, citizen.” Footsteps crunched across the sand “We’ll have them out of there in a second.”

  Amaelia tried to sit up, but the sky spun around her in crazy circles. Her stomach heaved and she pressed her hands over her eyes. The screamers sailed by again, showering her with another sheet of frigid water. Her hands and feet seemed to be made of ice.

  “All right, you two,” a male voice said. “Fun is fun, and I’m sure you aren’t the only ones who had too much celebrating last night, but you can’t lie around down here on the shore.” Hands tugged at her shoulders.

  “C—Cold!” she forced out through chattering teeth.

  “Maybe they fell out of one of the boats,” a different voice suggested.

  “No, that would have been reported right away, and the emergency drones would have taken care of it.”

  Someone wrapped a warm, dry cloak around her shoulders, then rubbed her arms. “Now, then, little lady, we’ll have you all fixed up in just a minute.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up into a swarthy, hook-nosed face half hidden under the crested bronze helmet of a Praetorian Guard. He reached for her wrist. “Let’s see who you are.”

  Remembering her red status light, she tried to pull away, but his grip was too strong.

  “Well, I’ll be—” The Praetorian’s breath puffed white in the cold air as he turned her wrist over. “Crassus, come look at this. She doesn’t have a bracelet.”

  “Neither does this one.” A second guard looked up from a few feet down on the white sand beach. “And his sandals are gone, too. They must have lost them in the river.”

  “Gaius?” Shivering, Amaelia wavered to her feet. “Is he alive?”

  The guard took her arm, steadying her. “What possessed you to go swimming in the Tiber this time of year? You could have drowned or died of exposure.”

  “It—seemed like a good idea at the time.” Gaius said weakly from the sand.

  “Gaius!” Aided by the Praetorian, she stumbled barefoot to where he lay on his back. His blond hair was plastered wetly to his forehead, and his skin was so pale that it looked translucent. “Are you all right?”

  A Roman galley filled with excited passengers swept by, pursued by a Carthaginian warship. Just as they hit the curve of the waterway directly opposite Amaelia, the boats kicked up a huge sheet of icy water and the passengers screamed. She watched them disappear around the corner, trying to make sense of it all. Apparently, she and Gaius had washed up next to an amusement ride along the river.


  Gaius was sitting up now, shivering and blue around the lips, his forehead propped against his knees. The second soldier took off his cloak and covered him with it, then looked at Amaelia more closely. “Say, I know who she is. Quintus Gracchus has the whole city out looking for her. She’s Amaelia Metullus!”

  “Are you sure?” The two men peered closely into her face.

  She shuddered and did her best to look common and lowborn. “Are you kidding?” She huddled deeper inside the scratchy wool cloak. “My name is, uh, Flina. The closest I ever got to the Palace was to deliver some figs to the kitchen last quarter.”

  “Well, dear . . .” Gaius tottered to his feet. “I can’t say it hasn’t been fun, but Saturnalia or not, we’d better get back to the villa or the master is going to have our hides.”

  “Not so fast.” The second guard planted himself firmly between Gaius and Amaelia. “You two have no bracelets and were caught in a restricted area. You’d better come to headquarters and explain yourselves.”

  * * *

  He didn’t like it, no, not one bit. Publius Barbus leaned his elbows on the sticky counter and checked the current roster of workers one more time. The man Proserpina was looking for, the same man he’d found among the work crew without a properly modified bracelet just the day before, was definitely not listed.

  And everyone else in the crew had already had his or her latest fix. It was well past the time for this Arvid Kerickson’s, if he needed one. Either he had gone into withdrawal somewhere out on the playing field and was now frothing at the mouth, or he had never been “processed” at all. If the first were true, the problem would, of course, take care of itself in a matter of hours—but if it were the second, big trouble was brewing. No one who knew the secrets of the Spear and Chicken could be allowed to contact the authorities.