New Pompeii

by Daniel Godfrey

  “Then it boils down to the old cliché of bread and circuses.”

  “The people are well fed.”

  “So you need to entertain them. They’re bored – and frightened.”

  Whelan considered this. He turned to McMahon. “We could bring forward our launch events?”

  “Fine. It’s your call. Yours and your young advisor’s.”

  46

  KIRSTEN SWITCHED OFF the computer and headed for the stairs. Her brain was only just overpowering her instinct to run. After all, she didn’t want them to know what she’d been researching. But the voices had been clear and loud. The girl had left the library soon after Kirsten had seen her staring at her. And now she was back with a couple of porters in tow.

  “She was in here,” said a female voice. “I’ve not seen her before – and with the news saying that stuff about a madwoman on the loose…”

  “You did the right thing.”

  Kirsten sprinted up the single winding staircase, which led to all four levels. She headed to the third floor and ducked inside, trying to hide among the bookshelves while peering through the windows that overlooked the lawn.

  More porters were coming. At least another two. Four to search the building. She had to keep hidden. Or else be taken back to NovusPart. To be dealt with once and for all in that pit.

  In her time, the porters had all been ex-policemen and she had no reason to think that wasn’t the case now. Old and grey, but not stupid. And trained to search a building. Kirsten looked round the floor, and saw nothing but shelves. There was only one door, back to the staircase. She had nowhere to go. She was going to be caught.

  Footsteps echoed in the stairwell but continued up to the top floor. Ex-police, she thought again. They’d keep two downstairs, while the others swept the building from top to bottom. One guarding the stairwell while the other searched the floor. But maybe they only had four porters on duty. Which meant only one person to sweep the rooms while the other stayed on the staircase.

  It was her only chance. Kirsten edged away from the door to the back of the room in perfect line with the exit. She crouched, trying to peer through the bookshelves. If the porter came in and moved right, she’d go left. If he came in and went left, she’d go right. Try to keep behind him as he made his sweep.

  A couple of minutes passed before her plan was put to the test. The door swung open and a large, fat porter took a couple of steps into the room. After a few seconds, he went right. Kirsten moved in the opposite direction, hugging the back wall and then slipping down the side of a bookcase. The porter continued his sweep. He didn’t find her.

  As the door snapped shut, Kirsten felt herself exhale. She crawled over to the windows and saw four figures crossing the lawn, back towards the lodge. But she couldn’t go yet. They’d still be looking for her.

  After ten minutes her terror had turned to boredom. She looked along the shelves. The nearest held scientific journals; she moved on quickly, idly pulling out bound up copies of a history periodical. Then she saw them: College Life, the annual college magazine, row upon row of issues. From battered copies decades old, to the crisp clean volumes of the previous year.

  Her fingers trembled as she searched for the correct year. Each magazine had identical content: a brief overview of the previous year; news from fellows and old members; clubs and society events; obituaries; and a matriculation list. She paused at a page of photographs. One shot showed three young men: McMahon, Whelan and Arlen stared back at her.

  She put the issue to one side and started to look at the years following their arrival at the college. She paid particular attention to the matriculation photographs, the group shot of all the new students taken in each year. She scanned each photograph in turn, taking her time, but also in a hurry. Alert for any sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  But they were already too late. Because she’d found him. The student by the bath. The one who had spoken to her.

  Kirsten gripped the magazine tighter. The door to the staircase had opened. Light footsteps. She heard the door shut, but whoever had entered was now walking in near silence. She was being hunted, and she had no idea which way she should feint.

  She braced herself to run. Perhaps if she caught them by surprise she might get past. But it was too late. A man stepped in front of her. He was holding something to his ear, a flicker of a smile on his face.

  “Yes, Marcus,” he said. “She’s just where you said she would be.”

  47

  “MAKING ANY PROGRESS, Dr Houghton?”

  Nick stopped by the pool. He’d been heading towards the street when the chef had appeared in the atrium. Mary was grinning at him, her cheeks slightly flushed, holding a small bowl of fruit and nuts. He presumed she was on her way upstairs to McMahon.

  “Sort of… I’m actually heading out for breakfast.”

  “Something wrong with my cooking?”

  “No,” said Nick, just a little too quickly. “But it’s my job to…” He let his voice trail off. From the look on her face, she was clearly teasing him. He would only end up digging himself in deeper if he tried a witty response. “I’ve never seen you out in town,” he said.

  “No.” Her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to work something out. “So, are you getting any closer, Dr Houghton?”

  “Closer to what?”

  “Working out what makes the people tick.”

  Nick shrugged. In truth, he wasn’t. But he’d only just started, and a project of this size would take a lot of time. If he’d be given enough was another matter entirely.

  Mary laughed, and made for the stairs. “Well,” she said, “don’t spend too long trying to solve the past, when the real riddle is working out the future.”

  Nick watched her go. Working out the future. Pop psychology that sounded good but didn’t make sense. As Cicero wrote, if you don’t know your history, you remain for ever a child.

  Which would have been a good response, if he’d thought of it sooner. Nick headed for the atrium corridor. The next time he bumped into Mary, he’d have to raise it with her again.

  He headed to a nearby taberna. No matter the impact on the chef’s professional pride, eating out provided him with the best opportunity to get close to the people he was meant to be monitoring. He could hear what people were saying without them scurrying away like he had the plague. And very occasionally he got to speak with them directly.

  “Excuse me?”

  Nick looked up from his bread. A man and woman were standing in front of him. From their dress it was clear they weren’t wealthy, but they weren’t slaves either. Ordinary Romans. Well, as ordinary as they could look, living fifteen hundred years after the end of their Empire.

  “Yes?” Nick said. He had sat at the end of the bar, with his back to the street – just in case he needed to make a quick exit. But these Romans didn’t look aggressive.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” asked the man. He pointed at Nick’s white-banded wrist.

  “I don’t know what you mean…”

  “We can tell. By the way you talk.”

  And the way he looked.

  “We wanted to thank you for saving us,” said the woman, cutting in. “We all thought…” There were tears in her eyes. “We all thought we were going to die.”

  Nick put down the last of his bread, not really knowing what to say. “Augustus saved you,” he said. “I’m just here to do his bidding.”

  The woman smiled with sympathy. As if she was complicit in his lie. She reached forward and took hold of his hands, bowing her head. A couple of tears trickled down her face. “You are good people,” she whispered.

  Nick looked about him, slightly embarrassed. He slid his hands from the woman’s grip. A couple of the other customers were nodding in agreement; however, the majority seemed unmoved. One man bristled with hostility. Which meant, although Nick wanted to speak with the pair further, it was probably time to leave.

  “Thank you,” he said, getting
up from the counter. He looked round the bar again. He desperately wanted to be able to talk freely with every person he saw staring back at him, but every one of them would only respond to him as a stranger.

  A sudden thought struck him, a memory from his undergraduate days. At the time, he’d not really understood it. “It is impossible to measure something without affecting it.” The guy who’d told him the line had been studying physics, and his statement related only to the smallest particles of matter. But that same phenomenon was going to end his research. Because he’d come to find the people of Pompeii, and he’d found they weren’t really here. They’d already been lost in the ash of the volcano.

  “Pullus!”

  Nick stumbled back on to the street. He could tell the people in the taberna were already talking about him. The hum of conversation was almost drowned out by the noise from the street. But not quite.

  “Pullus!” It was Patrick, with Maggie and Noah. A couple of NovusPart security guards were walking a few paces behind. “We were told you’d be out here.”

  Noah was pulling at Maggie’s stola. The kid looked like he’d been cooped up for too long. He could probably use a trip over to the amphitheatre to burn off some energy. The Astridge woman didn’t seem to notice.

  “I seem to recall you comparing this town with Barcelona, Dr Houghton. Did you get beaten senseless there, too?”

  With all that had happened, Nick had almost forgotten his encounter with the Good Samaritan. But the bruises were probably still visible on his face. And from the look on Maggie’s, she seemed determined to remind him.

  “I guess I was tempting fate.”

  “You certainly were.” Maggie tipped her head towards her guards. “Fortunately, Mr Whelan provides us with protection when we want to go into town. Mind you, we’re not here to hang around the forum, or take part in an orgy.” She turned her full glare on him. “That’s where you were, wasn’t it? Some sort of Roman party? Patrick told me they found your clothes on the floor of a whorehouse.”

  Nick felt his cheeks flush. Before he could reply she had turned, dragging Noah with her, away along the via. The guards followed in her wake, but Patrick stayed close. “I said ‘seedy bar’,” the translator said, somewhat defensively.

  Nick nodded. “Well, you can at least understand her being protective of her son.”

  For a second, Patrick looked confused. “Oh, Noah? Sure… right.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  Patrick shrugged. “It’s nothing to do with me.” He pointed down the street. “Whelan asked me to say ‘thank you’ for your good work yesterday.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I think you’ve managed to impress him, which is no mean feat.”

  “So what’s my reward?”

  “He said you could do with a bath.”

  It was only mid-morning, and Nick followed Patrick expecting that they would be turned away. In Pompeii the bathhouses would have been closed until about midday. But the Stabian Baths were open; another indication that New Pompeii was different to its namesake.

  “We asked the aediles to keep these places open longer,” Patrick explained. “To distract people from some of the remaining problems, including the Isis situation. Of course, as representatives of Augustus, we don’t have to pay.”

  Nick nodded, and followed the interpreter into a changing room where about a dozen men were in the process of getting undressed. The sound of voices and splashing water echoed from the rest of the building.

  Nick removed his sandals and stepped barefoot on to the changing room’s intricate mosaic floor. A beautiful image of an octopus stared up at him from the tiles, mythical sea creatures floating around its tentacles. All he had to do was take off his clothes, but that was easier said than done. He struggled to remove his belt and swore under his breath. Although he’d wanted to see how the Roman baths worked since he’d arrived, the process of going inside didn’t exactly fit with any modern ideals of modesty. He pulled off his tunic and stuffed it into one of the many niches that lined the walls, making a mental note of the number scrawled above his niche. He looked over at Patrick, careful to keep his gaze at eye level.

  “What happened to Felix? Was he sent back to the control villa?”

  Patrick looked at him with heavy eyes. “No, Nick. That’s not how McMahon likes things done. And Whelan generally makes sure things don’t go wrong twice, if you catch my drift.”

  Nick nodded, understanding. “They’re all just puppets, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you?”

  “Of course it does. But I’m not going to feel too upset about what happens to someone who should have died two thousand years ago.”

  Nick didn’t reply. The translator’s logic didn’t assuage his feeling of guilt. He followed Patrick through the low door at the far end of the changing room, trying to push thoughts of Felix to the fringes of his mind, remembering that at least he’d managed to save Calpurnia from getting caught.

  Calpurnia. He immediately regretted thinking about her.

  “So what do you think?” asked Patrick.

  The exercise yard was noisy and stank of sweat mixed with olive oil. There were men lifting weights; others sparring. Shouting as they won some small victory, and letting everyone know defeats weren’t their fault. Around the edges of the main pool stood a huddle of stalls, mainly selling food. Their owners hollering about what they had for sale, above the splashing of the water.

  It was all there. A Roman bathhouse in full flow.

  And no one seemed to have noticed them.

  “Let’s speak in Latin,” Nick said.

  The translator looked amused. “Going native?”

  Nick shook his head. Patrick didn’t understand. On the street they were obviously outsiders. But although he’d come in here feeling completely exposed, their “emperor’s new clothes” were an effective disguise: they were lost among all the other naked apes.

  Still, there were still some things he wasn’t prepared for. They made their way to the main pool, and Nick scowled as he saw the water. He reminded himself that Astridge had recreated Roman plumbing. The lack of circulation meant an accumulation of soap fat, oil, scum and phlegm dotted the water’s surface. He didn’t even want to think about what else could be in there.

  “I’m not going in that water,” Nick said.

  “Fine – let’s go and get scraped.”

  Patrick indicated a side chamber. Inside were a collection of knee-high rectangular tables, each manned by a slave. The translator slid on to the nearest one, stomach down. Nick clambered on to the table next to him. Two slaves came over and started the process of oiling and then scraping their skin using hook-shaped metal strigils.

  “Roman exfoliation,” Patrick said. “Maggie would be very impressed.”

  “There’s an old anecdote about the baths,” said Nick, feeling the pressure of the metal pushing against his shoulder blades. The smell of the oil was starting to irritate his nose. “It goes something along the lines that an emperor visits the baths and sees a man scraping his back against a wall. The emperor finds out he’s too poor to own a slave to do it for him, so gives him one. The next time he goes, ten men are stood scraping themselves against the wall. So the emperor tells them to scrape each other.”

  “Very good. From that joke book?”

  “Yes.” Nick paused, feeling the strigil scrape away at the tension in his muscles. “Back at the house, I heard McMahon talking about a man called Harris.”

  Patrick didn’t respond.

  “He seemed quite obsessed with him.”

  Patrick turned his head as his slave pushed heavily against him. The skin on the translator’s back was pushed up like a wave and deep into his shoulders. “Best not to talk about that,” he said, in English.

  “It would be useful to know,” Nick persisted. “So I don’t put my foot in it with McMahon.”

  Patrick let out a heavy
sigh. “Okay – but you didn’t hear it from me, right?”

  Nick nodded.

  “So a few years ago, we kept on hearing about a guy called James Harris. Who was he? Who knew him? Who had he spoken to? McMahon was quite worried for a time but then announced he’d dealt with the problem.”

  “When was this?”

  “A while ago… I’d only just joined. I had to answer a ton of questions about him. Which would have been easier to answer, if I’d actually known anything about the guy.”

  “Well,” said Nick, “it looks like he’s back.”

  48

  “YOU LOOK SURPRISED.”

  Kirsten stared into the eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. It was the student. Except he was no longer a teenager. Or a student. His hair was thinner and there were clusters of lines at the corners of his eyes.

  “I don’t think I ever introduced myself.” He put the small phone he’d been carrying into his pocket, and extended his hand. “James Harris.”

  Kirsten didn’t accept the gesture. She lifted the magazine. “That’s not what it says in here.”

  “No,” he replied, his tone even. He reached forward and took the magazine from her, replacing it on the shelf. “But sometimes it’s better that people don’t know who we are, or where we’ve been.”

  “You’re working for McMahon?” she said.

  The student – James Harris – smiled patiently. “Why would you think that?”

  “You said he’d snatched me into the future. I didn’t expect you to be part of it.”

  “Well, I don’t work for Novus Particles.”

  Kirsten didn’t say anything.

  “Now,” said Harris, looking towards the door, “if we wait another ten minutes, I’m assured we can get you out of here.”

  49

  THE NICHES WERE empty, their tunics and sandals gone. Nick looked about, seeing Patrick looking as confused as he felt. Other patrons were dressing and undressing around them – all seemingly unaware of their predicament.