“It. Isn’t. Easy,” Vespasian responded, with a slow shake of his head as he straightened his posture. “A very interesting response. Humble, yet most would say it was impossible.”
“Galba’s told you more, hasn’t he?” I asked.
“Oh yes… far more.”
“Did he speak of Agrippina?”
“Ah, the lovely Agrippina,” he said, rolling his head as he spoke, “yes, well, we shall get to her soon enough. But first, I have a question for you. As I said, Galba has informed me of where you come from. I understand how you came to be here, at least, as far as anyone could honestly understand it, and wish to sympathize with you. However, your arrival is an accident, and if I truly understand everything, possibly a detrimental one. Now, choose your words very carefully, for your response is most important…”
Before asking, he leaned back in his chair and held the back of his head with his hands. I wasn’t sure if the posture was meant to throw us off, intimidate us or give us false hope. Considering the ambiguity the man had displayed thus far, I couldn’t even begin to guess. Even so, he stared me dead in the eyes, shifting his attention to Helena, and back to me.
“This is my home. Rome,” he said. “Flawed as it is, it’s one I care very deeply for. So I must know, what gives you the right to interfere with it as you have for the past five years?”
His question was steady, but strain was obviously evident. He didn’t sound angry, but there was sternness in the question. I felt Helena’s hand reach out and grip my own, giving it a tender squeeze. Vespasian noticed but didn’t comment. I looked at her and she gave me a supportive smile.
This was it. The question. The one I had struggled with and attempted to justify since we’d arrived here. I took a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts before answering.
Vespasian waited patiently for almost two minutes.
“The right,” I started, glancing up from my thoughts. “A very interesting concept, don’t you think?” Vespasian didn’t respond, but I didn’t expect him to. “Well, I’ve always thought so. I mean, who really has the right to anything? Has God,” I paused, “or gods, ever come down and personally proclaimed anything for anyone? Maybe. I’ve spent my entire life in the belief of a supreme being, and I still do, but when I think of what ‘rights’ he has given me, my conclusions always draw me to a single thing.”
“And what is that?” Vespasian asked.
I paused and looked at Helena.
“To life,” I said turning back to him. “My government added extra little things like ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ but those are social constructs, created in the hope that people would strive for more with those principals beneath them. But life, well, there is no one out there who can deny me my right to live, and if they threaten it, I will defend it. I have the responsibility for self-preservation and a responsibility to protect those I love.”
Helena squeezed my hand again.
“Our arrival here was, as you said, an accident, and yes, a potentially detrimental one.” I took a deep breath. “And it was my fault. I have carried this blame on my shoulders for five years, and it gets heavier by the minute. At times I feel like Hercules taking the world off of Atlas’ shoulders for a while the responsibility seems so great. But because it was my fault, it is also my job to put things right.” I paused again, taking yet another breath. “Our interference, as you put it, has possibly changed your history, and very possibly the lives of trillions, but, honestly, I couldn’t care less.”
Vespasian opened his mouth to speak, but I defiantly cut him off with an upraised hand.
“In fact, I only care about one thing, and that’s getting me, my friends, and the woman sitting next to me home. They are all I care about. But we have to fix what we’ve broken first. Only we know what needs to be done, and only we have the means to accomplish it.”
My right hand started shaking in frustration upon my knee as I spoke. I looked down at it and clenched it into a fist to quell it, placing it in my lap before continuing.
“Where I come from, we have a saying. ‘If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it,’ but sir,” I said with half a chuckle, “we broke something. Something that could have ramifications thousands of years from now.” I paused, shaking my head at the floor before continuing. “It’s something we… I… have to fix it, and that gives us… gives me… the right to do everything I need to do. If I can’t do that we’re as good as dead anyway. The only real question is whether you’ll help me or not.”
Vespasian remained in his chair, his fingers now linked together in support of his chin. He seemed deep in thought. Perhaps he had already made a decision before we arrived and something I had said made him rethink his position. Or perhaps he’d had no prior thoughts on the issue at all, and was weighing his options carefully.
Whichever the case was, Vespasian had always been a thinker, and he had also been a level headed and compassionate man. In fact, one of his greatest characteristics, in my opinion, had always been his adherence to the codes and mannerisms of Augustus Caesar, who had preached careful management, thought before action, hard work, moral determination, and simply making rational decisions. He’d been an inspiration for Vespasian, and I only hoped it wasn’t a sentiment the man before me was still destined to develop later in life.
“You speak well, Hunter,” he finally said. “I feel the conviction in your words, as well as this burden you speak of. I have to agree that if I were in your situation, I would want nothing more than to find my way home as well. That is why I have decided to help you.”
“You have?” Helena asked skeptically.
“Yes,” he replied easily. “Even before Galba spoke of you, I had heard your stories. Everyone has. Vani, correct? I did not know you were these vigilantes at the time, but there isn’t a man, woman or child in the Empire who has not heard of you. What you have done for all those people is beyond reproach. You are noble and valorous, having had no reason to help them at all. With your abilities, you could have taken control of Rome itself had you desired, but you did not. You did the right thing. Meeting you both has reinforced what I already suspected: that you are worth helping.”
I cleared my throat. “Do you even know what it is we’re trying to accomplish?”
“Of course,” he said, that jovial attitude faintly returning. “You wish me to remove Agrippina from power.”
“Galba told you, I take it?” I asked, almost annoyed at the ugly Roman legate.
“Yes. As I said, we have become good friends. At first his stories were but idle entertainment, but as they went on, I realized just how real they were. As for Agrippina, I took issue with her four years ago when she took over Caligula’s throne. Few know this, but I spent time with the Imperial family when I was younger, and had grown quite fond of the man, but his sisters were note quite so endearing. Agrippina had been the worst. Always plotting and scheming, it would not surprise me if she, in fact, was responsible for his death.”
I repressed the urge to whistle, knowing full well her actual implication in the assassination. It was also interesting to learn that Vespasian had been hanging out with the Julio-Claudian clan in his youth. He was right, I hadn’t been aware of his early friendship with Caligula, and as far as I knew, neither did the rest of the academic 21st century world. Considering his upbringing, I wondered how that had worked.
“Therefore,” Vespasian continued, “I have decided to take it upon myself to remove Agrippina from office and find someone more suitable to govern our great empire.”
“I believe Jacob told Galba who he thought…” Helena started before Vespasian cut her off.
“Yes, he informed me of your thoughts on the matter.”
“We don’t think, we know,” I enforced.
“Yes, yes,” he said, sighing with a shake of his head, “but I am not yet forty years of age myself, and far less experienced than most, Galba included. How can I govern all of Rome if I doubt even myself? No, we will find the m
ost appropriate man for the job.”
That wasn’t part of the plan, but I shouldn’t be surprised he would think that way. It was a typical Vespasian answer, but even so, he was the only surefire candidate. Others may do a good enough job, but there was no way to ensure that. The safest and most logical thing to do was to follow history.
“Now,” Vespasian said, shifting into a more comfortable position in his chair, “tell me more about this blue orb and how it works. Galba was very inconsistent with his details, and I can only assume that was because he had little information.”
On his orders, I set out to tell him my ever-expanding and unreliable theory on time travel. I explained the rubber band theory and wormholes, using the worm burrowing through an apple analogy. I then went on to describe the numerous paradoxes we were possibly dealing with, or even possibly proving wrong. I explained what Varus had told me of Remus and the orb’s connection with German druids, as well as the Etruscan mantra apparently needed to use it. I finished by indicating that, in reality, I had no concrete idea how the thing worked, just ideas.
“I think I understand,” Vespasian said when I was finished. “Your story of fixing what you’ve changed certainly makes sense now. Any alterations to history today, could change your home completely.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“But how will you know when this… timeline… is fixed?”
“Well, I have a theory,” I offered unsteadily
“You do?” Helena asked curiously.
“In theory, I have a theory,” I clarified
“Well, that’s helpful,” she commented, folding her arms across her chest, a typical Helena reaction whenever I brought up yet another of my theories.
“It requires the orb,” I said. “When Claudius was in the midst of torturing me all those years ago, there was a moment when he pressed it against my face. It made contact with my skin but nothing happened. Why not?” I asked both Helena and Vespasian.
Helena worked her lips in thought while Vespasian leaned back in his chair expectantly.
“Okay,” I said, “I believe the answer lies in the claim that, according to a fella named Einstein, time is relative.”
“What do you mean?” Vespasian asked, ignoring the name drop.
I cringed. Even Helena, the pop culture ignoramus that she was, knew of the science fiction concept of time travel. She, at least, had some very vague and theoretical background knowledge on the concept, but Vespasian had nothing. Nothing in his life could ever have prepared him for the idea of traveling through time. Even Greco-Roman mythology lacked any concise story of time traveling beings, at least as far as I knew of.
“Look,” I sighed, “this stuff is very confusing, and I will be the first to admit that I am by no means an expert. Even the most fundamental and scientific knowledge from my timeline is little more than guesswork and theory.”
“Just keep it simple, Jacob,” Helena advised.
I nodded. “When we first went back in time four years ago, we immediately altered the timeline. Now, think of time as a river and us as a rock being tossed into it. At first, the rock was very small, just a couple of people standing around in a cave, not impacting much of anything. The river still flowed around it easily. Had we never left the cave and gone back home right away we would probably find that very little, if anything, had changed.
“However, the longer we spent in this point in history, the bigger that rock became, so much so that we run the risk of it becoming so big that the water may flow over the embankment, a natural dam builds and the flow of the river slows or diverts, or in a worst case scenario, stops the flow of the river completely. Do you understand what that last part means?”
“I think I do, yes,” Vespasian said slowly.
Helena was also nodding, completely enraptured.
“Now, we don’t know how big the rock is at this point, it could be huge, it could be small, but my theory as to why nothing happened when I last touched the orb is simply that the rock got big enough to divert the flow of water down another channel, so much so that it deposits the water in a completely different location, meaning that because of what we’ve done, the timeline is now fixed so that any future encounter with the orb, by anybody, no longer occurs.”
“How?” Vespasian asked.
“Well, remember what I said about time being relative? That means that from the perspective of someone from the future, no matter what we do, it has already happened for them. It’s done. The reason why I couldn’t see anyone on the other side of the orb here in our past is simply because there is no one there in our future. We haven’t yet activated the sequence of historical events that will lead to the point where our future selves,” I said, pointing to Helena and I, “encounter the orb again. Or anyone else, it seems. Once I look through the orb and see ourselves, I’ll know the timeline has reoriented itself to the point where nothing has changed in our present… or at least very little,” I finished with a hopeful chuckle before growing serious. “Then again, there is the chance that the rock we’ve created has already become so big already, that no matter what we do, I’ll never see myself on the other end of the orb. Which could mean a thousand different things.”
I let out a slow breath and looked over at Helena. Her chin rested on her hand and she wore a wide eyed and vacant expression on her face, something between complete boredom and being totally lost. After a few seconds, she finally noticed my attention and gave me a supportive smile and nod, like she’d been following along the entire time. Vespasian looked equally as confused, but he let it pass with a shake of his head.
“Are you sure you do not wish to stay in Rome?” He asked. “Once Agrippina is taken care of, I am sure we can find you a position in one our academies.”
I looked at Helena with a mock smile on my face.
“A teaching job? In Ancient Rome? Tempting…”
She rotated her face at me with another wide eyed, but completely different expression on her face.
“Never mind,” I said quickly, turning back to Vespasian. “Sorry, but I’m a historian, not a pseudo-scientist.”
“I see,” Vespasian said, “well, I must admit that your explanation is mostly meaningless to me, but it sounds like you understand the problem. Theory or no.”
Vespasian stood from his chair, moved over to his bedside stand and poured himself some wine. Goblet in hand, he took a seat on his bed and took a deep breath, a moment of weakness I had not yet seen in the man.
“It is time for us to take our leave from one another,” he said, “but not without leaving you with some information first.” He sighed again. “Even after all we’ve spoken of, I still can’t believe I am about to do this…”
He trailed off, before finally looking at me.
“Agrippina is near. She is staying a few miles outside of Tripolis, just north of Caesarea in Syria. She has brought her Praetorians to aid in the Jewish subjugation and to quell rumbles of insurrection in Parthia, providing us a unique opportunity. The best way for us to remove her is for you to do it. I cannot allow my legions to become involved. Find her and bring her to me, and we will take her back to Rome together in chains. The Senate is fickle, weak. She may have many senators under her influence now, but once I’m through with them, she will be hard pressed to retain their loyalty.”
“You want us to capture Agrippina for you?” Helena asked defiantly. “She could have thousands of Praetorians with her. There are eight of us.”
“Take your friends Gaius and Marcus,” Vespasian offered, waving towards the entrance and our two friends waiting just outside. “That should make it an even fight. She may even have your orb with her.”
That got my attention. If we could bring her to justice, remove her from power and get the orb all at the same time, we might actually be able to get home sooner than expected. Of course, I still had no idea how to work the damn thing, but with Agrippina out of the picture, Varus and I would at least have time to figure it out.
“We’ll do it,” I said, receiving a shocked look from Helena in return.
“Good,” Vespasian huffed. “You may go back to your friends now. I will order Gaius and Marcus to join you soon to inform you when it’s best for your group to leave. Speaking of, I must say that I look forward to meeting all of you at a later date, especially the one Galba referred to as, ‘the funny one.’ He seems quite entertaining.”
I smiled. I’m sure Santino will let that go straight to his head.
He always did.
“I’m sure they would like to meet you as well,” I replied. “When should we expect to leave?”
“Perhaps two days from now. I’ll make sure siege operations are light so you can prepare.”
I nodded my head and rose to my feet, following Helena as she rushed unceremoniously towards the entrance. I let her through, but paused briefly, a moment of weakness, or perhaps compassion, hitting me.
“Just one more thing, Vespasian. A favor, really.”
“What is it?”
“Once you put down this rebellion, please, go easy on the Jews. It wasn’t… completely their fault. Let them have some peace.”
Vespasian looked up from a document he was reading to look at me coldly. He held the look for a few seconds before he laughed to himself and punched his desk.
“I knew these Jews were acting bolder than I gave them credit for. They never would have had the balls to rebel on their own. Perhaps in a few years, but not now. I knew it had to have been instigated by someone else. Fine. In honor of your deeds as Vani, I will make sure the rest of this war is as devoid of bloodshed as I can help. What’s done is done, however, that I cannot change.”
I nodded. “Just remember when you’re settling terms to be gentle. I hate to break it to you, but from where I come from, Jews are still around to pester people, but Roman History is just a course taught in school.”
Vespasian lost his smile at that comment, so offering him an innocent smile of my own, I turned and left the praetorium. I waved farewell to Gaius and Marcus after retrieving my weapons as Helena finished by giving them quick kisses on the cheeks in parting. Together, my female companion and I marched definitely through the camp and out into the quiet, cold night.
To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) Page 34
