Union Forever

by William R. Forstchen

  Marcus and the Roum had yet to grasp the full import of what this strange machine would do for them. The sooner the Roum started building their own lines, Vincent now realized, and the sooner they gained control of internal trade as a result, the better off they'd be, and the better allies they'd be as well in the long run. It was something he had yet to discuss with Keane, but he had a gut feeling the colonel would agree.

  "So I have not heard you suggest that I should start building my own railroads and become what you call a capitalist," Marcus replied with a shrewd smile.

  Vincent did not reply and turned away to look at the work going on in the foundry. The laborers continued their toil as if their consul and the Yankee did not even exist, for to stop work in their presence would have the worst possible consequences. Vincent was repulsed by what he saw. There was no mechanization to speak of; all labor, right down to the manning of the bellows, was done by slaves. A contract had been let out to Marcus, who of course owned the foundry in his capital city, to supply spikes and tools for the line. Using slave labor to supply the railroad Vincent found to be morally objectionable, but he had to agree with Andrew that the first step was to make them part of the system, and then to work on changing what their system was.

  Marcus looked over at Vincent and could see the look of disdain on his young open features as he watched the sweat-soaked laborers manning the bellows.

  Everything was going far too fast for his liking. When the first Wanderers had come nearly two years earlier than usual, he had feared the worst, that the Tugars would soon be at his gates yet again. He had remembered their last visit and had ever since lived in dread of the return.

  But the news the Wanderers carried had been beyond belief. He had spurned at first the offering of the protection from the disfiguring pox, but when it was obvious that an epidemic was starting he had allowed the healers who had arrived from the land of the Rus to attempt a cure. Within weeks they had brought the epidemic under control. He tried to block out the memory—if only they had arrived earlier, his only son and the wife whom he had loved for thirty years would still be alive.

  That was the beginning. A contingent of two hundred Rus warriors had arrived, bringing with them several of the blue-clad men called Yankees, and with their aid the tattered remnants of the Tugars had been driven off when as one patricians, plebs, and slaves rose up and fought with fanatical fury for a dream of forever overthrowing their hated lords.

  From that Marcus found as he rose out of the shadow of personal pain that he could dare to dream, that now he could live beyond the shadow of fear, and that as in the legends of old, he would as a true patrician rule, with no Tugars to dread.

  "I've had reports about the conversations your soldiers who came with you have been engaging in about the city," Marcus said quietly, leading Vincent back out into the street and away from the din of the workshop.

  Vincent grimaced inwardly. He had known this was coming. Since their arrival in Roum yesterday the city had been wild with celebration at the appearance of the 5th Suzdal and the 2nd and 3rd Novrod light batteries. He knew how his men, who but a few years before had been slaves under the boyars, would react to what they saw. The difficult times that Andrew had counseled him about were now here. He wished that somehow it was Andrew who would handle these problems and that when the train had left Hispania to return back to Suzdal he had been aboard. It had been nearly two months since he had last seen Tanya and the children, and the enforced absence, which would last at least another several months before the twins were old enough to travel safely, weighed heavily upon him.

  "I would guess that it has something to do with our politics," Vincent said evenly, looking straight back at Marcus.

  The consul smiled at the guileless approach of the young ambassador, a quality he found to be wonderfully refreshing.

  "Our treaty agreement said that there would be open trade between us, consul. We both know that we need each other now."

  "Oh, I fully agree with that," Marcus replied. "There is no telling who will come against us, Tugars or their rival hordes to the south. I want your weapons, and you need our metals."

  "But you don't want what our men say about equality and freedom."

  Marcus smiled and shook his head.

  "Even though they don't speak our tongue, or my people your language, still their feelings are already understood concerning our way of living."

  "You know how I understand your language?" Vincent replied.

  "It does seem a bit strange."

  "We, the Yankees, came through the gate of light, the same as your ancestors did over two thousand years ago. Marcus, back in our old world, your Roum became legendary for its form of government. That is what we Yankees modeled our own system on."

  Vincent had let drop the later history of the Roman Empire completely. Though lying was still a sin to him, he saw no moral problem with simple avoidance, since the ancestors of these people had apparently crossed through sometime during the old Carthaginian wars. As near as he could figure out from their legends, they had been part of a Roman fleet in the First Punic War that had disappeared, and after arriving here they had been given this land and women from other tribes by the Tugars, who, as they had all others that had passed through the gate, allowed them to grow and then started to harvest their descendants for food. It explained as well the undying rivalry with the Carthas to the south, who had crossed from the old world to this in the same tunnel.

  Before Muzta had released him he had explained these things, telling him how without any pattern it appeared as if humans from half a dozen points around the world would occasionally be swept up, disappearing forever from Earth and arriving here. So it had been for the Roum and Carthas.

  Unlike the Rus, neither had ever traded. The prevailing south and westerly winds had discouraged any maritime efforts on the part of the Roum, for they had to cross up the long narrow bay leading to the Inland Sea. The undying enmity between the two peoples had held as well, and thus the Roum had built only enough ships to protect the entryway into the bay and large vessels to move grain from outlying districts back to the city. As it was, a ship running down from Rus could make but one voyage in a season, so difficult was the return voyage against the wind. And galleys were just not practical as cargo ships. The Roum interaction with the Carthas was limited to occasional pirating and no more, when the Tugars or Merki were not around.

  "When you speak to me of this old world of ours," Marcus finally ventured, interrupting Vincent's thought, "you are saying we've forgotten our old ways, is that it?"

  Motioning for Vincent to join him, Marcus stepped into his chariot, and together they clattered down the dockside lane of the city. The waterfront area was bursting with activity. Until last fall the city of Roum had been cut from the bay, since the Tiber River, which flowed along the east side of town, dropped through a final series of rapids. All shipping had to be unloaded at Ostia five miles to the south and brought up by wagons. It was a system, he realized, that perfectly mimicked ancient Rome, built at a similar point to protect it from coastal pirates. Andrew had decided to allocate several tons of precious powder along with a couple of Ferguson's engineering assistants to cut a canal with a single lock to bypass the drop-off. It was a goodwill gesture that had delighted Marcus and was rapidly changing the commercial life of the town. It had made an enemy in the Senate as well, since the city of Ostia was owned by a Petronius Regulus, who had now made it a habit to denounce any help, even the weapons the Rus might offer.

  Marcus nodded with approval as they cantered along the new wharfs going up, the docks already lined with ships. Reaching the base of the hill, he turned the chariot west and started the long climb up toward the forum.

  For the moment Vincent forgot their debate as the two massive horses trotted along the cobblestone road past a columned temple and the communal baths.

  His one and only experience there last night had shocked his Quaker sensibilities to the core. When fir
st offered a bath he had rejoiced that at least the Roum, unlike his Rus friends, felt that regular bathing was a fundamental right that should be observed regularly.

  But disrobing and lolling about with hundreds of naked men had left him uneasy. The worst shock, though, was when he saw several men in a darkened alcove engaging in activities that he did not even know existed until that moment.

  For once he let his ambassadorial front drop. The matter was made worse when Marcus indicated that if he was interested Vincent would certainly be welcome to join the group. Such things simply didn't happen in God-fearing Maine!

  From now on, local custom be damned, he'd bathe in private.

  "You are still upset about the bath," Marcus ventured, looking over at Vincent, who was staring at the building as if he expected a homed satan to come leaping out of the door.

  "It's your custom, but not mine," Vincent said coldly, leaving out the part about damnation he had sputtered out when he had stormed out of the room.

  "The same stands in both directions," Marcus rejoined, as if he had won a telling point.

  "Sir, your practices when you are alone should be no concern of mine."

  "Even though you find them disgusting."

  "I did not say that."

  "But you're thinking it," Marcus replied with a laugh.

  Vincent, feeling he was definitely losing this one, did not reply.

  "Perhaps I am being a bit unfair," Marcus said after several moments of silence. "But what your men are spreading about in our taverns and in our public amusement houses is certainly my concern, and to my fellow patricians and our free class of merchants and skilled craftsmen it is equally disgusting to contemplate."

  That was another thing that worried him, Vincent thought sharply. In his walks about the city since their arrival, he had seen a number of establishments that were obviously havens for soiled doves, and more than one of his men had quickly ducked the other way at his approach.

  "These difficulties go both ways," Marcus continued. "When that train track of yours comes into the heart of my capital in another two months, thousands of your people and mine will make a journey that not a handful made in a year.

  "Though I need what you have, I do not want what your people seem so eager to give."

  "A free government and the end to slavery," Vincent replied. "Marcus, the world is different now. The Tugars wanted you to rule through slavery—they did the same with the Rus, and with all the peoples of this world. But they are gone, and freedom is pushing in."

  "And if I walked into my Senate right now and told the patricians, the estate owners, that their slaves could now vote, could now work as they pleased, I would not walk out of there alive."

  Would it be this way with every city they came to? Vincent thought. Before, in Rus, it had seemed so easy. The boyars wanted the Yankees dead. The rebellion had been forced on them when the peasants spontaneously rose up against their hated masters. Vincent could sense that hatred was here as well; already the slaves he passed, and the whole damn city seemed to be full of slaves, were looking upon him with outright awe. Could he be part of instigating a rebellion that would kill yet more? Would they have to fight a revolution in every city, to advance sword in hand in an unending series of wars? Thousands would die, and the thought made him sick; he had had enough of killing to last a lifetime. Perhaps this was why Andrew had appointed him ambassador and Kal had confirmed him when he had become president. As a Quaker he had to find a better way than the sword he had carried before.

  "Then we are presenting you with an unsolvable problem," Vincent replied evenly, hanging on as Marcus maneuvered the chariot through a tangle of traffic which scattered in every direction at the approach of the first consul.

  "It's your job to figure out that answer," Marcus said coldly as they burst out of the thoroughfare and into the open plaza of the forum. Vincent smiled in wonder at the sight. The buildings flanking the acre-size square were all of limestone. The forum was faced with fluted columns and surmounted by a dome atop which was the marble figure of Jove.

  Marcus's palace across the square stood out brilliant white in the afternoon sun. The other sides of the square were faced by the smaller palaces of the twenty families that ruled the vast domain and nearly two million inhabitants of Roum. Unlike the Rus, the Roum had never fallen into an unending rivalry between boyars but had always stayed united under one consul, a position passed down unbroken from father to son for hundreds of years.

  That alone had given Vincent pause in all his musings about the political job before him. At least among the boyars the rivalries had enabled the Yankees to survive at first and helped to set the seeds for the revolution. There were no such rivalries here to play on, nor was there a church; though at first the Rus church had been an enemy, it had now become a staunch ally of the republic. Beyond that the Roum simply outnumbered the Rus by more than three to one, since they had not suffered the ravages of the war.

  If they should teach Roum how to arm and in the end it became a hostile power, the difficulties might be insurmountable. Vincent could sense they were in a delicate time, when the novelty of this new contact and the sense of freedom from the Tugars created an openness between the two countries. One wrong move could change all of that, setting a precedent that could doom forever the dream of unification and manifest destiny. There were seeds here for a serious problem in the future, offset for now by superior technology, but even that might be balanced out in time.

  "I'm going in now to face my senators and listen to their ravings about your men inciting servile rebellion," Marcus said, in what to Vincent's surprise was an almost warm manner.

  "Marcus, you've only seen the beginning of what free men can create," Vincent replied, taking hold of the consul's arm.

  "Is that a threat?"

  "No, sir, a promise of what Roum could be. Would you agree that slaves in general are a lazy, shiftless lot, ready to cheat, to steal, to do the least amount of work whenever possible?"

  "Of course," Marcus laughed. "They are lower than scum and dumber than my horse."

  Vincent winced inwardly, for the slaves who with wooden faces came forward to hold the chariot acted as if they had heard nothing.

  "All of the Rus soldiers, you see, were slaves. The men building the railroad were slaves, our army that destroyed the Tugars were former slaves. Now you see the most industrious people on the face of this world. Every day in Rus, a free man, a former slave, mind you, looks at how something is done. He thinks of a better way of doing it, a new machine perhaps, and eagerly he sets out to improve something."

  "Whatever for?" Marcus asked, unable to understand such thinking.

  "Because he is a free man. If he makes something better he'll make money. Every time someone does that, it makes our people stronger, wealthier, all of us living better than before. Our government taxes little, it tries not to interfere in people's actions, for it knows that if it did that it would weaken itself as well. That is the secret of our strength, Marcus, and it could be the source of your strength as well. Think about that, Marcus. Your people could be that industrious."

  Marcus paused for a moment and looked at Vincent as if he had spoken an impossibility.

  "Your landholders could tax your people instead of taking from them. If people believed that they could work for what they owned, they'd produce three, four times as much, and you and your senators would not lose anything in the process.

  "And if we allowed the mob to represent themselves their first act would be to drive us out," Marcus retorted.

  "With our help you could draft laws that would allow your families certain rights to guarantee their wealth, in return for the freedom of everyone.

  "As in your legendary Rome of the old world, or a country like our own called England, we could have two representative groups, one for the patricians and one for the common people. Both groups would have to agree upon a law before it could be passed. That would be fair to everybody. There could be tw
o consuls as well, one from each group, who would act in agreement."

  Vincent groaned inwardly at what he had just offered, a guarantee to a landed aristocracy to continue to exist. If Tom Jefferson were here, he thought sadly, the man would most likely tear him apart. Being an abolitionist was becoming far harder than he had ever imagined.

  "We've got plenty of time to discuss this later," Marcus announced as the lictors, bearing their ceremonial bundles, came out of the Senate and lined the stairs for the consul. "For right now I've got more immediate concerns. We'll talk again tonight."

  Turning away, Marcus started up the steps, then paused and looked back at Vincent.

  "It's terribly hot out. Why don't you go to the baths?"

  "I'd rather go to your palace," Vincent snapped back, unable to hide a tone of peevishness.

  Laughing, Marcus continued on his way.

  Shaking his head, Vincent jumped down from the chariot, and waving off the escort of a slave carrying an umbrella against the sun, he stalked across the square back toward his quarters in Marcus's palace.

  Play the game out a card at a time, he thought. Let the aristocracy have their land. But it'll be industry that drives this economy in a couple of years. As the railroad pushes on eastward to the land of the Khitai, and Nippon beyond, Roum will be a major center for the new industries. The small group of plebs and eventually the freed slaves will flock to that, and they can build their power from there. Introducing farming machines will create a vast surplus of labor, the same as it has in Rus, freeing men to work in the new industries. The key trick is to let the nobles continue to view involvement with these new trades as beneath their dignity and they'll die on the vine like English nobility.