by David Drake
Ainsley had to fight not to laugh, watching the wincing faces of several of the legislators. From the ripple in her veil, he thought the Muslim Federation's representative was undergoing the same struggle.
"What are 'balls'?" asked Fludenoc.
"Later," he whispered. "It is a term which is considered very politically incorrect."
"What is 'politically incorrect'?"
"Something which people who don't have to deal with real oppression worry about," replied the historian. Ainsley spent the next few minutes gleefully watching the world's most powerful woman finish her political castration of the world's most influential regulator of trade.
After the Secretary slunk away from the witness table, the Chairperson rose to introduce the next speaker.
"Before I do so, however, I wish to make an announcement." She held up several sheets of paper. "The Central Committee of the Great Realm of the Chinese People adopted a resolution this morning. The text was just transmitted to me, along with the request that I read the resolution into the records of this Committee's session."
A small groan went up. The Chairperson smiled, ever so slightly, and dropped the sheets onto the podium.
"However, I will not do so, inasmuch as the resolution is very long and repetitive. There is one single human characteristic, if no other, which recognizes neither border, breed, nor birth. That is the long-windedness of legislators."
The chamber was swept by a laugh. But the laughter was brief. The Chairperson's smile vanished soon enough, replaced by a steely glare.
"But I will report the gist of the resolution. The Chinese people of the world have made their decision. The so-called galactic civilization of the Guilds and the Federation is nothing but a consortium of imperialist bandits and thieves. All other species, beyond those favored as so-called 'Doges,' are relegated to the status of coolies."
Her voice was low, hissing: "It is not to be tolerated. It will not be tolerated. The Great Realm strongly urges the World Confederation to adopt whole-heartedly the proposal put forward by our Gha fellow-toilers. Failing that, the Great Realm will do it alone."
Ainsley sucked in his breath. "Well," he muttered, "there's an old-fashioned ultimatum for you."
"What does this mean?" asked Fludenoc.
Ainsley rose from his seat. "What it means, my fine froggy friend, is that you and I don't have to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the proceedings. It's what they call a done deal."
As they walked quietly out of the chamber, Ainsley heard the Chairperson saying:
"—to Commodore Craig Trumbull, for his unflinching courage in the face of barbaric tyranny, the Great Realm awards the Star of China. To all of the men and women of his flotilla who are not Chinese, in addition to he himself, honorary citizenship in the Great Realm. To the crew of the heroic Quinctius Flaminius, which obliterated the running dogs of the brutal Doge—"
When the door closed behind them, Fludenoc asked: "What is a 'done deal'?"
"It's what happens when a bunch of arrogant, stupid galactics not only poke a stick at the martial pride of North Americans, but also manage to stir up the bitterest memories of the human race's biggest nation."
He walked down the steps of the Confederation Parliament with a very light stride, for a man his age. Almost gaily. "I'll explain it more fully later. Right now, I'm hungry."
"Ice cream?" asked Fludenoc eagerly.
"Not a chance," came the historian's reply. "Today, we're having Chinese food."
XI
And now, thought Ainsley, the real work begins. Convincing the Romans.
He leaned back on his couch, patting his belly. As always, Gaius Vibulenus had put on a real feast. Whatever else had changed in the boy who left his father's estate in Capua over two thousand years ago, his sense of equestrian dignitas remained. A feast was a feast, by the gods, and no shirking the duty.
Quartilla appeared by his side, a platter in her hand.
"God, no," moaned Ainsley. "I can't move as it is."
He patted the couch next to him. "Sit, sweet lady. Talk to me. I've seen hardly anything of you these past few weeks."
Quartilla, smiling, put down the platter and took a seat on the couch.
"Did Gaius tell you that we're going to have children?"
Ainsley's eyes widened. "It's definite, then? The Genetic Institute thinks they can do it?"
Quartilla's little laugh had more than a trace of sarcasm in it. "Oh, Robert! They've known for months that they could do it. The silly farts have been fretting over the ethics of the idea."
Ainsley stroked his beard, studying her. Quartilla seemed so completely human—not only in her appearance but in her behavior—that he tended to forget she belonged to a species that was, technically speaking, more remote from humanity than anything alive on Earth. More remote than crabs, or trees—even bacteria, for that matter.
And even more remote, he often thought, in some of her Ossa attitudes.
The Ossa—whether from their innate psychology or simply their internalized acceptance of millennia of physical and genetic manipulation by their Doge masters—had absolutely no attachment to their own natural phenotype. They truly didn't seem to care what they looked like.
To some humans, that attitude was repellent—ultimate servility. Ainsley did not agree. To him, the Ossa he had met—and he had met most of the "women" whom the Guild had provided for the Roman soldiers' pleasure—were simply unprejudiced, in a way that not even the most tolerant and open-minded human ever was. Ossa did not recognize species, or races. Only persons were real to them.
He admired them, deeply, for that trait. Still—Ossa were by no means immune to hurt feelings.
"What phenotype will you select?" he asked.
Quartilla shrugged. "Human, essentially. The genotype will be fundamentally mine, of course. The human genome is so different from that of Ossa that only a few of Gaius's traits can be spliced into the embryo. And they can only do that because, luckily, the chemical base for both of our species' DNA is the same. You know, those four—"
She fluttered her hands, as if shaping the words with her fingers.
"Adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine," intoned Ainsley.
"—yes, them! Anyway, our DNA is the same, chemically, but it's put together in a completely different manner. We Ossa don't have those—"
Again, her hands wiggled around forgotten words.
"Chromosomes?"
"Yes. Chromosomes. Ossa DNA is organized differently. I forget how, exactly. The geneticist explained but I couldn't understand a word he said after five seconds."
Ainsley laughed. "Specialists are all the same, my dear! You should hear Latinists, sometimes, in a bull session. My ex-wife—my second ex-wife—divorced me after one of them. Said she'd rather live with a toadstool. Better conversation."
Quartilla smiled archly. "Why did your first ex-wife divorce you?"
Ainsley scowled. "That was a different story altogether. She was a Latinist herself—the foul creature!—with the most preposterous theories you can imagine. We got divorced after an exchange of articles in the Journal of—"
He broke off, chuckling. "Speaking of specialists and their follies! Never mind, dear."
He gestured at Quartilla's ample figure. "But you're going to stick with your human form?"
"Not quite. The children will have a human shape, in every respect. They'll be living in a human world, after all. Human hair, even. But their skins will be Ossa. Well—almost. They'll have the scales, but we'll make sure they aren't dry and raspy. Gaius says people won't mind how the skin looks, as long as it feels good"—she giggled—"in what he calls 'the clutch.' "
Ainsley raised his eyebrow. "Gaius doesn't object to this? I thought—you once told me—"
Quartilla shrugged. "That was a long time ago, Robert. It's his idea, actually. He says modern humans aren't superstitious the way he was. And he doesn't give a damn about their other prejudices."
The last sentence
was spoken a bit stiffly. Ainsley, watching her closely, decided not to press the matter. By and large, the Ossa "women" had shared in the general hero worship with which humanity had greeted the Roman exiles. Most of them, in fact, had quickly found themselves deluged by romantic advances. But there had been some incidents—
It was odd, really, he mused. Years after their return from exile, the Roman legionnaires still exhibited superstitions and notions which seemed absurd—outrageous, even—to modern people. Yet, at the same time, they shared none of the racial prejudices which so often lurked beneath the surface of the most urbane moderns. The ancient world of the Greeks and Romans had its prejudices and bigotries, of course. Plenty of them. But those prejudices were not tied to skin color and facial features. The Greeks considered the Persians barbarians because they didn't speak Greek and didn't share Greek culture. It never would have occurred to them, on the other hand, that the Medes who dominated their world were racially inferior. The very notion of "races" was a modern invention.
It had often struck Ainsley, listening to the tales of the legionnaires, how easily they had adapted to their sudden plunge into galactic society. No modern human, he thought, would have managed half as well. Their very ignorance had, in a sense, protected them. The world, to ancient Romans, was full of bizarre things anyway. Every Roman knew that there lived—somewhere south of Egypt, maybe—people with tails and heads in their bellies. A modern human, dropped onto a battlefield against aliens, would have probably been paralyzed with shock and horror. To the Romans, those aliens had just seemed like weird men—and nowhere near as dangerous as Parthians.
Ainsley, catching a glimpse of Pompilius Niger across the room, smiled. Only an ancient Roman would have so doggedly tried to make mead by following something that might be a funny-looking bee. A modern human would have understood the biological impossibility of the task.
And, in that wisdom, died in the hands of the Guild.
He looked back at Quartilla.
And so it had been with her and Gaius. The ancient Roman had been frightened and repelled by her scaly reptilian skin, when he first met her. But he had never thought she was anything but a—person.
"I am glad," he said quietly. "I approve of that decision. You understand, of course, that your children will face some difficulties, because of it."
Quartilla shrugged. It was a serene gesture.
"Some, yes. But not many, I think. If other children get too rough on them, Gaius says he will put a stop to it by simply crucifying a couple of the little bastards."
Ainsley started to laugh; then choked on his own humor.
He stared across the room at Vibulenus. The tribune was standing in a corner of his villa's huge salon, wine glass in hand, in a cluster of veterans who were having a vigorous and friendly exchange of war stories. With him were Clodius Afer, Julius Rusticanus—and all four of the Gha.
Good Lord. That's probably not a joke.
He caught Quartilla watching him closely.
"No, Robert," she murmured. "He is a Roman. He is not joking at all."
XII
An hour later, Gaius Vibulenus called the meeting to order.
There were almost sixty former legionnaires sprawled everywhere in the great salon. Fortunately, Gaius owned an enormous villa. The entire estate—not far from Capua, to his delight—had been a historical museum before it was turned over to him by the Italian regional government, following the dictates of popular demand.
Many more legionnaires had offered to come, but Gaius had kept the invitations reasonably small. Too many people would make decisions impossible. Besides, the men in the room were, almost without exception, the surviving leaders of the Roman legion. All of the centurions were there, and almost all of the file-closers. Whatever decision they made would be accepted by the rest of the legionnaires.
"All right," began Vibulenus, "you've all heard the Gha proposal. In its basic outline, anyway."
He waved his hand airily. "I have it on the best authority that the Confederation government will give its backing to the scheme. Unofficially, of course."
Clodius Afer sneered. "Those politicians? Be serious, Gaius! They're even worse than that sorry lot of senators we left behind."
Several other legionnaires grunted their agreement with that sentiment. Ainsley, watching, was amused. With few exceptions—Vibulenus, for one; and, oddly enough, Julius Rusticanus—the Romans had never been able to make sense out of modern politics. They tended to dismiss all of it as so much silly nonsense, which could be settled quick enough with just a few crucifixions.
Much as the historian admired—even loved—the Romans, he was glad not to have lived in their political world. True, much of modern politics was "so much silly nonsense." But, much of it wasn't, appearances to the contrary. And, modern man that he ultimately was, Ainsley thoroughly approved of the world-wide ban on capital punishment—much less torture.
"You're wrong, Clodius," rumbled Julius Rusticanus. The first centurion set down his wine goblet, almost ceremoniously, and stood up. Trained in the rhetorical traditions of the ancient world, he struck a solemn pose. His audience—just as well trained—assumed the solemn stance of listeners.
"Listen to me, Romans. Unlike most of you, I have paid careful attention to modern politics. And I do not share your contempt for it. Nor do I have any desire to listen to puling nonsense about the 'glories of Rome.' I remember the old politics, too. It was stupid Roman politics—the worst kind of personal ambition—that marched us all into that damned Parthian desert. Whatever folly there is in modern men—and there's plenty of it—they are a better lot than we were."
He glared around the room, as if daring anyone to argue with him. No one, of course, was foolish enough to do so. Not with the first centurion.
"No children starve, in this modern world. No old people die from neglect. No rich man takes a poor man's farm by bribing a judge. No master beats his slave for some trifling offense. There are no slaves."
Again, the sweeping glare. The silence, this time, came from more than respect. Whatever their crude attitudes, the legionnaires all knew that in this, at least, Julius Rusticanus spoke nothing but the plain and simple truth.
"So I'll hear no sneering about 'politicians.' We humans have always had politicians. Our old ones were never any better—and usually a lot worse. I know why Gaius is confident that the Confederation will support the proposal. I don't even need to know who his 'best authority' is. All I have to do is observe what's in front of my nose."
He laughed heartily. Theatrically, to Ainsley; but the historian knew that was an accepted part of the rhetoric. The ancients had none of the modern liking for subtle poses.
"The simple political reality is this, legionnaires," continued Rusticanus. "The people, in their great majority, are now filled with anti-Galactic fervor." Again, that theatrical laugh. "I think most of them are a bit bored with their peaceful modern world, to tell you the truth. They haven't had a war—not a real one, anyway—in almost a hundred years. And this is what they call a crusade."
"Won't be able to fight, then," grumbled one of the file-closers. "They're all a pack of civilians."
"Really?" sneered Rusticanus. "I'll tell you what, Appuleius—why don't you explain that to the Guild fleet? You know—the one that's nothing more than gas drifting in space?"
The jibe was met with raucous laughter. Joyful, savage laughter, thought Ainsley. For all their frequent grumbling about "modern sissies," the historian knew the fierce pride which the Romans had taken in Trumbull's destruction of the Guild fleet.
The first centurion pressed home the advantage. He gestured—again, theatrically—to one of the Medics standing toward the side of the salon. This was the "old" Medic, not the "new" one—the stocky, mauve-skinned, three-fingered crewman from the ship the Romans had captured years earlier. A few months after their arrival on Earth, the troop transport's Pilot had committed suicide. But the Medic had adjusted rather well to his new reality. He
had even, over time, grown quite friendly with many of the legionnaires. Vibulenus had invited him to this meeting in order to take advantage of his Galactic knowledge.
