Debt of Ages

by Steve White

  Ecdicius exploded into action, shoving Sidonius back into the bushes with one hand as he drew his spatha with the other. He was of only average size, but his body had lost little of its whipcord toughness to middle age. Positioning himself to shield Sidonius, he held the three-and-a-half-foot cavalry sword at the ready as the six bravos closed in with their shorter weapons. Two of them moved to flank him while two others leapt in.

  Ecdicius’ response was too quick for Sidonius to follow, as he suspected it would have been even in bright daylight. Almost simultaneously with a quick clang of blades, one bravo was on the ground gurgling his life out through a slashed throat and Ecdicius was grappling with another who had gotten in under his long sword. With a vicious move, he dislocated the bravos shoulder and sent him staggering sideways into his companion who was moving in from the right. That was all the time it took the bravo from the left to grab him from behind, as the remaining two moved in.

  Sidonius had never encountered physical violence in his entire adult life, and it was as though he moved through a world of unreality with the rock he couldn’t remember picking up. He brought it down on the head of the bravo holding Ecdicius. At the same time, the latter kicked out with both feet, sending the two new arrivals staggering backwards, then fell in a heap with the unconscious man who had grasped him. He rolled free in time to grab Sidonius, who was staring openmouthed at the blood-smeared rock he still held, and haul him back against a thick shrub, then turn to face their attackers once more.

  Things began to register on Sidonius. Ecdicius still had his spatha. Three bravos were out of action, but the other three had picked themselves up. Now, in company with their employer—who was holding his sword as though he knew how to use it—they were closing in warily. They’d make no more mistakes. And—final detail—Ecdicius was bleeding from a superficial but doubtless painful wound in his left side.

  Sidonius managed to form words. “Guards ho!” he croaked. “To me!”

  “Save your breath, Sidonius,” Ecdicius said quietly. ‘They must have made certain no one would be in earshot. Otherwise somebody would have heard this fight.”

  The leader of their assailants gave an unpleasant smile that provided confirmation. His face still wore the smile as he started forward… but then went blank as he crumpled, without fuss, to the ground.

  Sidonius became aware of a strange buzzing sound, not really like the swarming of bees. He wondered what it could be, with a small part of his reeling mind, as he watched the three bravos collapse.

  He and Ecdicius looked at each other.

  Two men stepped from the shadows.

  Sidonius and Ecdicius started, and the latter raised his spatha again. The new arrivals halted, and the shorter of them—they were both big men—spoke in the Latin of the army with an accent not unlike that of the Augustus.

  “Relax, Noblissimus! We’re here to save you.” He indicated the motionless forms of their erstwhile attackers. “Sorry we didn’t arrive sooner—although you weren’t doing so badly yourself! And you, Your Holiness—you’re pretty handy with that thing. Have you considered you may be in the wrong line of work?”

  Sidonius dropped the rock like a red-hot cinder and tried to draw a cloak of dignity around his brutalized sense of reality. “Who are you, my son? Step closer so I may see you.”

  The pair did so. They wore nondescript civilian garb. Oddly enough, for men supposedly embarked on a rescue, they were unarmed. Instead, each held a short metal rod of no apparent function—and yet, in an undefinable way, they carried the useless-seeming objects like weapons.

  The man who had spoken was very dark considering the British origin his accent suggested, but his features and his blue eyes were not inconsistent with it. The other, aside from his robust size, could have passed unnoticed in the streets of Constantinople. Sidonius spared him barely a glance. He could only stare at the Briton—for such he seemed to be—and try to decide where he had seen him before, where he had heard that voice. For he was morally certain that he had met the man.

  Ecdicius spoke without preamble. “How did you do that to them… with those?” he indicated the little metal rods. Sidonius felt his eyebrows rise; what could make Ecdicius think the strangers had incapacitated the would-be kidnappers with those things? It was manifestly impossible. And yet… what else could they have done it with? And Ecdicius and the Briton were gazing intently at each other, with a look that went beyond mutual respect, though that was very much present.

  “Noblissimus,” the other stranger spoke, “I know you have many questions, but we haven’t time to answer them. This city isn’t safe for you—nor for you, Holy Father. Your only hope of safety is to follow us down to the Boucoleon Harbor.” He gestured toward the darkling waters of the Sea of Marmara, barely visible through the trees. “We have a ship ready to take you to Italy.”

  “Italy?” Ecdicius blurted. “I can’t just run away from Constantinople in the night like some footpad! The Augustus needs me. And Faustina, and—”

  “Noblissimus,” the big stranger cut in “the Augustus is going to be beyond your help, or anyone’s, very soon. And your wife and children are already on our ship.”

  “And,” the Briton added, “you can accomplish nothing by staying here. Ah… here comes someone you know, Holiness. I think he may be able to persuade you.”

  A man emerged from the darkness. He was middle-aged, very tall, with features and coloring that must draw glances in even so cosmopolitan a place as Constantinople…

  “Tertullian,” Sidonius breathed.

  Ecdicius shot him a glance. “You know this man, Sidonius?”

  Sidonius nodded. He heard his voice answer for him. “He was my secretary, long ago, before the Battle of Bourges. He was never heard of after the battle. We all assumed he had been killed.”

  “Well, Your Holiness, as you can see I’m very much alive. I regret that I had to leave your employ so abruptly. But there’s no time for apologies now. This man—” he indicated the Briton “—is absolutely correct. The Noblissimus Ecdicius will not be allowed to live to assume the purple. You must both take refuge in the West, where support for his claim—and for the true Catholic faith—is concentrated.”

  Sidonius barely heard the last two sentences, for recognition had smote him again. “You!” He stared at the Briton. “I remember you now. You’re that mercenary Tertullian hired as a bodyguard while he was traveling with Artorius. What was your name… ?”

  “Bedwyr, Your Holiness. And my comrade here is Andronicus. And now can we please go?” His eyes met Ecdicius’ again, and he raised, ever so slightly, the metallic rod he held.

  For a heartbeat their eyes locked. Then Ecdicius’ face broke into the familiar devil-may-care grin. “Lead on, then! I never was much good with my books—isn’t that so, Sidonius?—but I like to think I can tell a good man when I see one.”

  “But Ecdicius,” Sidonius stammered, feeling the solidly built structure of his life begin to pitch and heave like the deck of the ship these impossible people were leading them toward. “We can’t… How do we know… ?”

  “Ah, come on, Sidonius!” Ecdicius slapped the pontifical shoulder. “Is life really worth so much worrying?” And he was off behind the strangers, again the wiry, restless boy in the Arvernian villa.

  Afterwards Sidonius could never remember much of the scramble through the darkened gardens, illuminated by the lighthouse to their right, down to the Boucoleon Harbor with its semicircular artificial mole. How these people had gotten access to the private imperial harbor was the least of the impossibilities that swirled through his mind. But underneath it all there seemed to lurk something very prosaic and obvious, something he should have noticed. Even as he stumbled over tree roots and half-slid down the final slope to the quay, he couldn’t stop worrying about it.

  Then they were approaching a ship, and Ecdicius was rushing ahead to embrace his wife and children, and Tertullian was conferring with a strongly built man on the quayside… an
d it finally came to Sidonius. Tertullian didn’t look a day older than he had when Sidonius had last seen him. Bedwyr was somewhat older-looking, but not as much so as he should have been after twenty-two years. He stepped forward to ask Tertullian about it.

  Then the strongly built man turned to face him, and the question fled his mind, along with everything else.

  Tertullian must have seen his expression. “Ah… Your Holiness, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely candid with you.”

  Sidonius didn’t hear him. He grew aware that he was on his knees, making the sign of the cross with frantic repetition—and, with his other hand, older signs such as the peasants of the Auvergne still made when no priest wag looking. “In nomine Patris,” he began.

  Strong hands grasped his arms and raised him up. “Don’t be afraid, Sidonius.” Yes, it was the same deep baritone.

  “But… but… but Augustus?!”

  As always, the boyish smile looked somehow right on that face—the face of a man in his early forties, the same face that the thirty-seven-year-old Sidonius had seen by the mouth of the Loire.

  “Sidonius, you never change! If we’re going to be fugitives together, I think you can address me by my name!”

  Chapter One

  The battlecruiser had come out of continuous-displacement drive in the cold dark domain of the outer system. But now its sunward hyperbolic orbit had carried it into the regions where liquid water could, under certain circumstances, exist. Rear Admiral Robert Sarnac, Pan-Human League Space Fleet (Survey Branch), standing under the curving armorplast transparency that was a prerogative of his rank, was bathed in the light of the sun Loriima that flooded his quarters.

  To an observer, he might have seemed to be talking very clearly and distinctly to himself. In fact, he was dictating a report for Fleet Ops. The computer wasn’t really sentient, of course—that still lay in the realm of science fiction, where Sarnac privately hoped it would remain. But it was programmed with his personality and handled most of his routine business on its own, conversing with people mostly too young to care about their inability to tell whether they were talking to him or to his silicon-based familiar. It could be trusted to edit reports like this one, bleeping out all facetiousness, sarcasm and other assorted wise-ass-isms that he himself wouldn’t have allowed onto the final hardcopy. He sometimes wished it wouldn’t.

  “… And so,” he concluded, “as per orders, I proceeded with all possible speed to Starholm where I picked up my augmented staff. There, I learned that it has been confirmed that the hostile forces encountered in the Toriaerann Chain beyond Loriima are, indeed, of Korvaash race. I thereupon continued to Loriima, where, pursuant to orders, I have contacted Battle Group Thirty-Seven and assumed command, effective this date, Terran Standard 24 June, 2275.” The computer would, of course, insert the Raehaniv half of the paired standard dating. “Upon arrival at Loriima III, I will receive a full report of the Battle Group’s status, including progress made in repairing the recent battle damage. My first-sense impression is that the initial reports of the extent of that damage were not exaggerated.

  “I therefore urgently request that the reinforcements I have been promised be dispatched as expeditiously as possible, since any delay in mounting a counterattack will only allow the Korvaasha to consolidate their position in—”

  The door chimed for admittance. “Cease recording,” Sarnac ordered—regretfully, for he hated to break such an uncharacteristic flow of pompous formality. The computer must be proud of me, he thought. I haven’t given it anything to clean up. Or maybe it thinks I’m up to something. “Enter,” he added. The door slid open, revealing his chief of staff.

  Senior Captain Rimaerly zho’Dornaeriel looked as Raehaniv as her name: tall, slender, sharp-featured, with skin of a coppery shade not quite like that of any of Earths ethnic types. Her features were a caricature of those which, in Tiraena, were smoothed and muted by an infusion of Terran blood. It was a thought Sarnac couldn’t let himself dwell on, for it reminded him of how long it had been since he had seen Tiraena. Too long. And now we’ve got another goddamned war.

  “Well, Rimaerly,” he greeted her, “is everything set for our arrival? And don’t tell me about any last-minute hitches—I don’t need it!”

  “Not to worry, sir,” was what Sarnac heard inside his skull, overriding Rimaerly’s liquid Raehaniv. The ubiquitous implanted translators had swept away language barriers and allowed the wartime alliance between the two branches of humanity to ripen into the League.

  “Our people have been in contact with what’s left of the Battle Group Thirty-Seven staff,” Rimaerly continued, “and it looks like we’ll be able to put together a combined staff without hurting too many feelings—the seniorities of the people involved worked out right. And we haven’t gotten any trouble after the initial raised eyebrows over a Survey officer assuming command.”

  “Come on, Rimaerly! It was more than ‘raised eyebrows,’ and I know damned well what these Line types really call ‘Survey officers’! But they couldn’t argue with the general order amalgamating Survey and Line and everything else for the duration and making seniority apply across the board regardless of branch.”

  “No, sir, they couldn’t. And…” She hesitated. “They naturally stopped grumbling when they heard who the Survey admiral was.”

  Sarnac grimaced. He and Rimaerly had been together too long for any possibility of brown-nosing, and they both knew it. The chief of staff was just stating facts. But he’d never overcome an inability to wear special status well. Maybe it was a matter of national character, for he was a child, however irreverent, of one of the North American successor-states, and the traditions of aggressive egalitarianism and “aw-shucks” self-deprecation had never quite died. Still, he reflected, fifteen years should have been time enough to adjust to it. He’d had to live with it since the day he and Tiraena had arrived in a stunned Solar System with the news that the beleaguered Solar Union had allies among the stars—human allies who had no business being there, including descendants of the Russian-American Mars Project people whose disappearance had mystified Terran humanity for two centuries. It had been the beginning of the end for the late unlamented Realm of Tarzhgul, and he had seen Fleet action in the final campaigns of the war—experience which should stand him in good stead now.

  But, as always, notoriety had been a decidedly mixed blessing for a junior officer. There had been times when he had come close to quitting the service. The lure of new frontiers had kept him in, just as it had kept Tiraena in the affiliated civilian agencies, specializing in alien contact as she had done before they—and, through them, their peoples—had met. It was what she was doing right now, on the far side of the League from the Torlaerann Chain.

  “And,” Rimaerly went on, sensing the Admiral’s discomfort and changing the subject, “the fact that we’ve got an ops officer who’s Line should make them feel better.”

  Sarnac nodded. Captain Draco had joined the staff at Starholm, and the death in action of Battle Group Thirty-Sevens operations officer had left a vacancy he would fill in the combined staff. Sarnac didn’t know him, but on the basis of his service record he’d been glad to get him. An altogether impressive man… and one whom Sarnac couldn’t stop thinking he had met somewhere, long ago and far away. For the sight of him had aroused unwelcome, tantalizing echoes of the dreams. They’ve been getting worse lately. Why?

  “All right, Rimaerly,” he said, dragging his mind back to the here-and-now. “Let me finish this report for Fleet Ops. Then I’ll want to go over the new staff postings with you.”

  A couple of Terran weeks passed, and the combined staff was, if not quite a band of brothers (and sisters), at least a smoothly functioning unit. Rimaerly had worked wonders, Sarnac thought as he entered the briefing room— Rimaerly, and Captain Draco.

  He studied the officers who rose to their feet in the afternoon Loriima-light that streamed through the tall windows. The majority were Raehaniv-looking. However in
tegrated the Leagues military had become, units still tended to retain their original ethnic character. Battle Group Thirty-Seven, based here at an old Raehaniv colony, had always been a predominantly Raehaniv outfit. Of course, a certain number of them showed the blood of those Terran exiles for whose descendants fighting for Raehan had become a tradition… Sarnac sternly dismissed the image of Tiraena.

  In an instants flash of clarity, he wondered at the way these humans, originating on two planets a light-millennium apart, could function so matter-of-factly in the face of the inexplicable. But that was the point, of course: the existence of homo sapiens sapiens on two different planets was inexplicable, and the peoples of the League couldn’t let themselves dwell on the mind-numbing impossibility of it. They could only agree that the human species—and certain others—had evolved on Earth and somehow appeared on Raehan thirty thousand years ago, apparently through the agency of a palpably impossible prehistoric human starfaring culture, and let it go at that, assuring each other that future discoveries would undoubtedly clear up all the mystery. Only thus could they concentrate on immediate practicalities.

  Like the fact that we’ve just turned up another Korvaash successor-state, Sarnac thought. Yeah, the other end of creation is probably the best place for Tiraena to be right now, just like school on Earth is the best place for Claude and Liranni.

  Two centuries earlier the Korvaash empire, the Unity, had sprawled over an unknowable expanse of this spiral arm, and had extended one tentacle to crush the life out of Raehan. Varien hle’Morna, the eccentric genius who had invented the continuous-displacement drive that allowed interstellar travel without recourse to fixed displacement points, had taken his discovery to Earth and offered it as payment for help for his world. In one of history’s little ironies, he had arrived to find a world turning its back on space as it sought a return to a totalitarian womb. But the exiled American and Russian terraformers had taken up his offer, departing with him and destroying all evidence of their origin so as to place their homeworld beyond Korvaash reprisal in the event of failure.