A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  “Hey, hold my hand,” said Cady, taking the watch from her pocket. “I want to try something.”

  Georgia looked slightly baffled but did as she asked, closing her hand around the watch. Now they both held it, their fingers entwined.

  “Ask him something,” said Cady. “See if he understands you.”

  “How far away is Rome?” Georgia asked, surprising Cady just a little with this level headed request. One thing about Georgia, she got her shit sorted quickly when she had to.

  It seemed she had surprised the gladiator as well.

  “Your man, Smith John Smith, said you were merchants. How do you not know how to find Rome? All roads lead there.”

  “We got lost,” Cady shrugged.

  “Couldn't get a GPS fix,” Georgia said.

  The gladiator regarded them as though they might be unhinged, but only because he understood the words they had said, and it still made no sense.

  “Your man fights well, for a merchant,” he went on.

  “He's not our man,” said Georgia.

  “I already told him that,” said Cady, before addressing the gladiator again. “So, my name is Cady and this is my friend Georgia. And we were wondering if you'd like to help a couple of gals break out of this festering hellhole.”

  “I am Gannicus of Salluvi, and yes, every man and woman who struggles under the heel of Lentulus Batiatus yearns for their freedom.”

  “Awesome,” said Cady. “So, this breaking out thing. Ideas? Suggestions? Cunning plans?”

  Gannicus of Salluvi looked troubled. “If your band has more of these weapons hidden somewhere, a cache that you have kept from Batiatus, we could use them to strike off our chains.”

  “We're not in a band and no, we don't have any more weapons. Got any other ideas?”

  “So the thunderbolt of Smith John Smith is unique?”

  “There can be only one,” said Georgia.

  “Where have they taken him?” Cady asked.

  “Batiatus will put him in the fighting pits,” said Gannicus. “When your man has been broken there, he will give the pig everything he asks for.”

  The gladiator looked them up and down.

  “Including you,” he said.

  “Oh, man, you so don't know Smith John Smith,” said Cady.

  Gannicus suddenly turned away from them, and she wondered if she'd said something to offend him, but she soon heard footsteps crunching over gravel. Two guards arrived at their cell door, and behind them, two women; some raven-haired fox from the Golden Years of Hollywood and an old witch who looked like she'd fallen off el Diablo's charm bracelet. Bent-backed and sour-faced, she struck one of the guards with a long wooden cane, motioning for him to unlock their cage. The man, who was at least three times bigger than her, leapt to the task. Even so, she continued to whip him with the cane, absentmindedly, almost as though she had nothing better to do.

  He flinched under each bow, muttering apologies for his tardiness, his stupidity, his unworthiness.

  The younger woman watched Cady and Georgia, her eyes giving nothing away.

  “Shut up and open the gate,” the older one growled. “Lentulus Batiatus would have me judge them.”

  Crack!

  “Yes, madam. At once, madam.”

  Crack!

  “A thousand pardons, madam.”

  Crack!

  Cady and Georgia flinched almost as much as the victim of this flogging. She was raising welts with every stroke of the cane.

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered Cady. “She's like Judge Judy on steroids and bath salts.”

  “Looks more like Joan Rivers,” said Georgia, “but, you know, as a snarly fucking zombie or something.”

  The cage door creaked open and the guards muscled in ahead of the old biddy and her PA to secure their entrance. They needn't have bothered.

  No way was Cady crossing this crazy bitch.

  “Strip,” the hag ordered, and when they didn't she whipped Cady on the arm with the cane.

  “Ow! Bitch, that really hurt!”

  “Ah. So it speaks,” crowed the woman. “I had it from Lentulus Batiatus himself that you were mute. Now strip!”

  She raised the cane again and Georgia put her hands up in the pretense-weak position Cady recognized from their self-defense classes. She looked like she was flinching from the anticipated blow, when in fact she was getting ready to close with the old crone and stick that cane right up her ass.

  “Georgia, no!” Cady said. “It's alright. Just … just do it.”

  She let go of her friend's hand and started to undo her jeans, using the move to slip the watch back into her pocket.

  “It'll be okay. They're just checking out the merch. Roll with it, for now.”

  They undressed in front of the audience.

  The old woman considered them like grocery items from an untrustworthy bodega. Her assistant stared into the middle distance, the way a shop girl would when you put in your PIN at the checkout.

  Nothing to see here.

  At one point, unable to bear looking at their captors anymore, Cady glanced across at Gannicus and was strangely comforted to see he had turned his back and folded his arms. He was steadfast in his refusal to look on, unlike the guards who were so pleased with the show they forgot themselves, earning a couple more lashes of the cane.

  “They belong to Batiatus now,” Judge Judy snapped at them. “Let neither your hands nor your eyes defile his property, lest I take your eyes in settlement.”

  They dropped their gaze and did not look upon the two young women again.

  “Pussy-whipped much, boys?” Cady taunted them, earning her another stroke of the cane, but also a secret smile and the faintest nod from the silent woman behind the crone.

  Cady sensed the connection immediately. This one, like Gannicus, was a slave of Batiatus, not a servant or ally. Whatever thoughts she might have had about that, however, fell away as ol’ Judy leaned in to take a good long sniff of her crotch.

  “Hey! That's not cool, you old vaginasaur!”

  Cady scored an arthritic but stinging bitch slap for that, which delayed Georgia's genital inspection and sniff test for all of one second.

  “They are clean,” the old woman declared. “Not virgins, but not riddled with the pox. They can serve in the bedchamber.”

  “No way!” Cady spluttered.

  “What?” Georgia asked. She had lost translation service when they stopped holding hands.

  “This old hag thinks we're gonna do the nasty with Jabba the Hutt.”

  “Wait, what? No way!”

  Judge Judy measured them with her dark little eyes. She smiled and Cady saw that her teeth were rotten, adding to the whole Walking Dead effect.

  “You will serve your master in the bedchamber, and you will please him, or I will leave you to these men.”

  She inclined her head toward the nearest guard.

  The man did not dare look at her now, but Cady thought she could sense his anticipation.

  “We can cook,” Georgia said, without warning.

  The crone did not understand, but Cady followed up immediately.

  “Oh, hell, yeah. And I make a kick ass margarita,” she improvised. “You don't want to go wasting our five star skills in the flophouse, Granny. We're like Masterchefs. Your boy, Bashy? He's got a bad dose of the permanent munchies, right? Well, we could invent waffles for him. He's gonna love waffles, believe me. And he's gonna love you for plating them up.”

  To Georgia, she said out the side of her mouth, “You know how to make waffles, right?”

  “I've eaten waffles.”

  The crone narrowed her eyes.

  “These waffles of which you speak. Tell me more.”

  31

  Smith had never truly been lost before. He understood that now. When he palmed the watch to Cady he'd known what he was giving up. That was why he gave it up. Cady McCall was smarter than him. Her friend, Miss Georgia, might be smarter again. But none of those sma
rts were going to do them any good if they were lost in the Tower of Babel. Smith knew he was not likely to fight his way out of this. If they were to survive and escape, it would be because those girls were able to outthink Batiatus and his goons. He had faith in them. He had to.

  But right now he had to live with the consequences of that faith. Right now he was the one lost in Babel.

  From the moment Cady had closed her fist around Wu's timepiece, Smith had been plunged into an ocean of strange sounds and meaningless gabble. It started with Batiatus, of course. The slaver was talking as his goons marched Smith away from the cells. Away from his friends. There was really no point attending to the man's words. Without the chronometer they were utterly senseless. It was all Greek to Smith. Or Roman, he supposed.

  But of course, Batiatus was not a man used to having his words ignored and it soon blew up between them. They were striding around the edge of the circular courtyard, keeping to the shadowed cloisters, staying out of the sun. Batiatus was waving Smith's gun around. Only the devil knew what he was saying, but Smith did understand that it was all for his benefit. When the slave master grew irritated at not receiving the replies he obviously sought, Smith finally sighed and brought on his fate.

  “You can keep jabbering away all you want in your heathen tongue, my fat friend. None of it will ever make a lick of sense to me. Just as not a word I say will ever penetrate your thick skull.”

  Batiatus and his entourage stopped.

  They had reached a tunnel leading away from the circular prison. The cells here were empty. Perhaps their occupants were out in the sun, having at each other with wooden staves and swords. The man in the bed sheet said something to him again, possibly repeating his last statement or question, and Smith smiled like a man who has just played his last chip at poker, and lost.

  “If I thought I had a chance to grab that gun off you and blow your head off, rest assured the wind would be whistling between your ears already. But I know your janissaries here will turn me into a human pincushion if I try. Heck, they might do it anyway. And I need to keep breathing, because there's a chance my two young lady friends will reverse our fortunes and remove the yoke you have placed upon our necks.”

  All of his captors exchanged baffled looks. Smith could understand that, even sympathize some. They had even less idea than he did of what was afoot.

  Batiatus said something, and Smith replied in a level tone, “Sorry, didn't catch that.”

  Color was rising in the man's face. His cheeks turned a florid pink and then purple. It was just possible, thought Smith, that his heart might give out. That would be a jolly caper. He might just have a go at grabbing that gun then, and seeing how many of these spear carriers he could put down before they got to him with their steel. Three, at most; the number of bullets left.

  Batiatus shouted at him.

  Smith's mother had taught him that if he ever got to thinking he was a person of some influence, that he should try ordering somebody else's dog around.

  He fixed his eyes on Batiatus, who fumed at him.

  “I ain't your dog,” Smith said quietly.

  The slave master had a man-sized conniption, screaming and waving his arms around, spittle flying from his lips. He jammed the gun up under Smith's jawline and Smith got ready to take his leave of the world.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

  The Lord's Prayer did nothing to soothe the troubled soul of Lentulus Batiatus, but he was not so far gone in his outrage that he pulled the trigger. Instead, he smashed the gun into Smith's face, breaking his nose and drawing blood. The big man staggered back under the blow, into the arms of a guard behind him. He took a shot in the kidney, someone kicked out his legs, and then he went down under a threshing machine of kicks and punches.

  He might have fought back. There are ways to defend yourself even in dire and forlorn straits such as that. But much as he longed to account for himself, rational forbearance won out.

  He was very close to dying here. All these men needed was a reason to stop punching and to start hacking and stabbing and cutting. So Smith did something he had never done, not once in his life. He curled himself into a ball and endured the loathsome experience of taking a beating without retribution. It was his only path back to his daughter, and he held tight to the memory of little Elspeth as he tried to roll with the punches and the kicks. The blows came so quickly and from so many directions, that the only form of resistance left open to him was to deny them the pleasure of his pain. Marshal John Titanic Smith gritted his teeth and received the attack in silence, while yearning for his little girl.

  Eventually, the furious tide ebbed and the last blow fell.

  He groaned then, allowing himself that one indulgence. He could not see his attackers. His eyes were filled with blood. He expected to hear Batiatus cursing him, perhaps ordering someone to count coup on his sorry carcass. But the killing blow did not come. Instead, he was hauled to his feet, kicked in the rear end, and sent down the long tunnel surrounded by guards who were all panting with the effort of beating him down. Of Lentulus Batiatus, he could hear and see nothing.

  Smith stumbled and fell twice in the tunnel, before emerging into another bright, open space. He was so discombobulated by the beating that he didn't realize, until he was blinking and squinting in the sun, that he'd picked up a couple of pals in the tunnel. Two men in chains.

  Both tried to talk to him, but he could no more understand them than he could Batiatus. When he lost his footing a third time, however, they took him by the elbows and supported him until he could find his feet again. Their grip was firm but gentle. They could not be guards. They had to be slaves, like him.

  They helped him out of the tunnel to stand at the edge of a great court, maybe three or four times larger than the practice ground enclosed by the prison cells. This looked like a stadium where big city teams might play the final game in a baseball season. Stands climbed away from the field, providing seating for many hundreds, if there had been that many to watch. Today the stands were mostly empty. Through his blood-dimmed vision, Smith could make out a few scattered figures, all of them dressed like Batiatus, in long flowing robes.

  Masters, then.

  He allowed the men at his elbows to half-carry him under a shaded awning. They gave him a bladder of something to drink. He assumed it to be water, but after a couple of gulps and gagging on the unexpectedly strong, sweet taste, Smith realized it was a medicinal blend of water and wine. Mostly wine. A woman in a simple, home-spun tunic fussed and mopped at his sweat and blood with a damp cloth. It felt like a kiss on his ruined face.

  Smith imagined at first that the guards had abandoned him to his new companions, but he soon realized that they had simply dispersed, joining the ranks who stood at ease around the circumference of this coliseum. There were dozens of fighters under training here, many times the number he'd seen back in the prison. The training looked to be more intense, too. Here they fought with metal weapons. He could see them glinting under the sun and hear the clash of steel.

  Unable to converse with him, the two men from the tunnels—gladiators like Gannicus he supposed—left him to the care of the nurse, or whatever she was. She spoke to him while she tended to his bruises and bumps, twittering along in a singsong voice as she cleaned out a cut on his cheek.

  “I am mighty grateful for the consideration, ma'am,” he said, “but I'm afraid I have no way of telling you that.”

  She paused in her ministrations, as if she expected him to say something she might understand. Smith attempted a smile and inclined his head in thanks. She returned the gesture and took up her one-sided discourse again.

  He had not felt so lonesome since those first days with Chester, when he'd understood even less of what had befallen him. But at least then, he'd not had to deal with the perfidy of other men. At least then, he'd thought himself honestly lost, not cast adrift on the eons by sorcery.

  As his wits returned to him, Smith asked himself what Cady
would make of all this. Why did these men, trained fighters all of them, not rise up against their oppressor? He estimated there to be more than a hundred gladiators under tutelage in this larger arena. They outnumbered the guards four or five to one. Why did they not just stand up?

  “Why don't you?” he muttered to himself, unable to keep recrimination from his voice.

  His nursemaid twittered something at him, which of course he did not understand.

  “My apologies, young lady,” he said. “Please, I think you've done enough. From the looks of it, there's fellers out there will need your care more than I. I just took a beat down, is all. Weren't my first. Won't be the last, God willing.”

  He gently pushed her hands away and smiled. Then he inclined his head towards the training grounds, and made a shooing gesture with his hands.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She smiled, uncertainly, but in the end she seemed to take heed of his meaning. When she left, two guards took up station outside the shade cloth.

  So why don't you just stand up, Marshal? Smith asked himself. If'n you're so fired up for these other fellers to throw themselves onto the spear points, perhaps you should lead by example.

  He sat nursing his wounds and his dark mood until more guards arrived and began yammering at him in their heathen tongue. He deduced that he was to go with them. He felt every blow of that late beating all over again as he climbed to his feet. His clothes were torn and covered in blood. He thought of the big pink valise back in Cady's home year, sitting uselessly in the rear seat of the wagon where he'd left it.

  If only he'd had a mind to pick it up.

  The guards started shouting at him, and like a broken man, he did as he was told. Or as he assumed they were telling him. Smith shuffled out of the tent and fell in between his captors.

  They walked him around the edge of the stadium, giving him a chance to marvel at the array of bizarre weapons and fighting styles. Men fought with nets, tridents, and all manner of arms that made no sense at all to him. Although they were training, they did so in earnest, and he was constantly assailed by the sort of screaming and shouting he'd not heard up close since his own time in the war. Once or twice he saw men destroyed.