by B. L. Morgan
We passed into the city down an avenue where all kinds of vendors sold things of all sorts. Everything was on sale, from bladed weapons to furniture, to fruits and vegetables, and even prostitutes were out there selling themselves.
One thing about the shopkeepers at these open air stores were that they weren't the same kind of sales people we see back home in K-Mart or Safeway. All these shopkeepers were heavily armed, tough looking, sons of bitches.
I found out why when we passed one of the food stands and a guy tried a grab and dash on a hanging chicken. The shopkeeper cut him down in mid-stride before he got three steps away with a chop to the leg with a short sword.
The shopkeeper dusted off the chicken and hung it back up. The would-be thief crawled off down the road, his thigh spurting blood.
I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but I was beginning to appreciate the police force back in my neck of the woods. There, at least most people didn't have to fight for survival on a daily basis. Here, the strong take what they want and anything you have, you have to fight to keep.
We passed a few of the tourist spots and Marius gushed over them before we got to the Temple of Isis. The only tourist spot that impressed me was the Coliseum.
Now that was a big stadium.
I'd gone to Busch Stadium back in St. Louis a few times and drove past it more times than I even know. Busch Stadium was big but the Coliseum made it look like a midget. And it was made completely of stone, too, by slave labor. I don't want to even think about how many people they beat to death to get that thing built.
As we rode past the Coliseum a huge roar erupted from inside that made goose bumps jump up on my arms. Probably some poor bastard just got his head cut off or something.
Yeah, the noble Romans do love their sports.
We rode on.
About a half hour later, we arrived at the Temple of Isis.
CHAPTER 40
Beneath the Temple
The Temple of Isis was a modest place. It looked like a medium sized stone elementary school house to me. Inside the wood double doors was first a large room that had wooden pews all in rows. Strangely this first room reminded me of an old fashioned Southern Baptist Church.
There was a guy standing behind a pulpit who was speaking to ten of the robed Brothers spread throughout the room. The Brothers of Isis were listening intently but it didn't sound like he was preaching to them. It sounded more like a business meeting than anything else.
"That is Brother Clovis," Marius told us, motioning toward the speaker. "I'll introduce you in a moment."
Clovis wrapped up his little speech by giving out work assignments, things like, who was going to sweep the floors, fix the meals and empty the piss and shit buckets. Glad he didn't know we were back there. If he'd have told me to empty anyone's crap, I'd have had to tell him where to shove that bucket.
The Brothers dispersed and Marius waved to Clovis and he came down to greet us wearing a warm smile.
"Brother Marius," Clovis said. "I am relieved to see you back. With so many bandits out in the countryside, I had some concerns about letting you go outside the city to get cheaper prices for our supplies. You don't look like your journey was uneventful." He indicated the bruises on Marius's face.
"That is why these two gentlemen are with me," Marius said introducing the two of us. "If it wasn't for them, I would be laying dead on the side of the road." He told Clovis what happened outside the city.
"We are in your debt," Clovis told us. "Anything the Brothers of Isis have, we will share with you."
"Well, we could use some grub," I told Clovis.
"I'm getting hungry as hell," Johnny agreed.
Clovis led us to a place that was like a cafeteria and got us a bowl of something that was like beef stew. It didn't taste bad either. While we were eating he asked us about who we were.
We gave him a condensed version of the story that we told Marius, about being guards for the King of Siam.
He smiled at that.
"It is interesting that you should be coming from that part of the world," Clovis said. "There won't be any trade between the European nations and the South Eastern Asian countries for, oh, I'd figure at least seven hundred years yet."
Johnny and me looked at each other.
Clovis' smile broke into an even wider grin. "Michael Clovis from Dallas, Texas," He said and extended his hand. "From the way you talk I'm guessing you two are from the twentieth century as well. What really brings you to our enlightened city?"
We shook his hand and since it didn't seem to make any difference, this time told him the truth that we were hunting for two kidnapped women from our own time.
* * *
After we described the women we were looking for, Clovis sent one of the Brothers, a guy named Anthony, out to ask around at the different slave markets to see if any Oriental type females had been bought in the last few months. Orientals were rare in the heart of the Roman Empire, so if they had been sold here we should find out.
Then he told us a little about himself.
Michael Clovis was studying to become a Catholic priest back in Dallas. He aimed at becoming a priest because he wanted to help people. He wanted to do the things that conscientious Christians want to do like feed and house the poor and help the abused learn how to live better lives.
What he was learning how to do at the seminary was to become a politician who wore a white collar; he found out quickly that being a good Catholic priest and being a good man were too very different things.
Part of Michael Clovis' training involved an internship at a ghetto church under another priest. While there, he was invited to observe a secret ceremony of the Cult of Isis in a factories' basement. It was then that he met the Goddess Isis in the flesh and found his calling in life to be a social worker in the Roman Empire of Caligula's era.
At this place in history, a lot of people were in need of a helping hand. Clovis was going to do what he could.
* * *
After we finished eating, Clovis and Marius showed us the room where their portals were. I think they had the feeling that soon we were going to be in need of a speedy exit. I had that feeling myself.
Beneath the Temple of Isis there was a stairway that led down into the Earth. After about fifty stone steps we came to a steel door. By the light of the torch that Marius held all of this looked extremely similar to the entrance to the portal room back in Cahokia.
All the places where these portals were, this room, the one on Cahokia and the one in Viet Nam gave you a feeling of being disconnected from everything else. When you head down the steps and step through the steel door it's as though the rest of the world doesn't exist. You are suddenly separated from everything else. It's as though you are in another dimension where time and space does not exist. I know you're hearing the theme song from The Twilight Zone in your head now, I don't give a fuck. That's just how it is.
Inside the portal chamber beneath the Temple of Isis were four stone ovals. There were eight of the Brothers sitting on the floor, two in front of each portal, meditating and chanting.
All four of the doorways were active. The high pitched screeching I'd heard from the other portals was absent this time. We could see the yawning distant winking of the stars inside the center of the stone ovals.
Johnny asked Clovis, "Where do they go to?"
"We don't know," Clovis answered. "We don't use them. The Goddess just tells us to keep them open. It is not for us to understand why."
"So when we go through one," I asked, "We're just taking our chances, right?"
"All of life is a chance," Clovis answered. "Would you have it any other way?"
"This time I would," I told him.
CHAPTER 41
Lost Forever
At the top of the stairs we were met by Anthony, that guy Clovis sent to gather information about Sherry St. Clair and Sushi. He seemed to be nervous. He consciously avoided eye contact with Johnny and me.
"
I need to speak to you in private," Anthony told Clovis.
"If it's something about what happened to those women, one of them is mine! You tell us now!" Johnny said. He didn't look like he was in the mood to be playing checkers.
After a moment of awkward silence, when I was certain that Johnny was going to begin Jap-slapping Anthony upside the head, Clovis told Anthony. "Tell us all what you have found out."
"Those two women are lost to you forever," Anthony told us. "I'm sorry to tell you that they were bought about six weeks ago." He took a deep breath and placed a hand on Johnny's shoulder. "They were bought by the Emperor Caligula himself."
* * *
It surprised the hell out of me how well Johnny kept control of himself. He acted as though everything was OK. He thanked Anthony, Clovis and Marius for everything and asked where the Emperor was.
We were given directions to the palace where the Emperor stays when in Rome. Then Johnny said we would just go over there and attempt to buy the women back tomorrow. I was tempted to say, "Buy them back with what?" We didn't have that kind of money, but I kept my mouth shut.
After that, we asked for a place to sleep.
The Brothers directed us to a small spare room and while resting on two cots by the dying evening sun we talked.
"So, where's all this money you got hid?" I asked Johnny.
"Ain't got no fuckin' money. You know that." He answered.
"Didn't think so," I told him. "So, we're just going to take a short little nap and pay the Big Boss a visit tonight."
"You learn quick," he said.
"Only because I taught you," I told Johnny.
CHAPTER 42
To the Palace
It must have been around midnight when Johnny was shaking me by the shoulder to wake me up. I was in a deep dream where Julia was wrapping her thick African lips around my Irish sausage and reached out my hands to guide to her head farther into my crotch.
"Mother fucker!" Johnny said and that woke me up completely. "I will bust you upside your goddamn gourd head."
I sat up, and then stood up. "Didn't know who the hell you were there." I told him.
"No shit." He answered.
We got dressed, buckled on our swords and crept out of the Temple of Isis and into the street.
After retrieving our horses from the Brothers’ stables we rode down the street toward where Caligula's palace in Rome was. The streets were torch lit just like in Micea. There wasn't much difference in the nightlife on the streets of Micea and the streets of Rome.
The prostitutes were out and so were the drunks and the gangs of tough guys who would slit your throat for what was in your money pouch. We rode our horses down the street with our swords out and resting across the horses’ backs ready to be used at any moment.
We passed into a better neighborhood a half mile before we got to Caligula's palace. On the border of this neighborhood was a horse boarding stable. We woke the guy who ran the stables up by banging on his door. He was pissed off until we agreed to pay him twice the rate for boarding our horses for one night.
From there, we went on foot.
Passing into this Patrician or "upper class" area the first thing I noticed was the difference in streetlights and that there actually did appear to be some sort of a police force.
In the other parts of the city, the torches burning to light the streets were pretty much randomly distributed. There would be a torch placed in front of a tavern or a whore house by the people who owned the businesses so customers could find the way to what was being sold inside. But there was no plan to the city's night lighting at all. Some streets were pitch black except for what moonlight was shining down.
In the Patrician area, where the Senators and the Emperor of Rome were staying, burning torches were evenly spaced and all of them were lit. The torches were roughly about one hundred feet apart and the illumination they provided wasn't half bad.
It wasn't as good as the streetlights back in the good old U.S, of A, but it was enough so that the guards marching around on these streets had a good view of what was going on.
The police force I mentioned were groups of threes of Roman soldiers who were patrolling the streets in the Patrician neighborhood. I was guessing that it was the same here as everywhere else, even back in our time in the USA. The rich get the best protection, the best that money can buy. Everybody else gets what's left over. In Rome, that didn't amount to shit.
As soon as we entered this neighborhood we ducked behind some bushes to keep from being seen by these guards. The way we were dressed, they would know immediately that we didn't belong here. Any questioning by them and we couldn't give good answers.
So, we played it like what we were, thieves in the night. Only these two thieves were out to steal two women and take them back to where they belong.
Johnny hadn't been saying very much since he woke me up. He was all business tonight. No playing around. I figured one good session of tongue-fu and fuck-fu with Sushi would put Johnny back to being himself.
But, who the fuck was going to cure my bad mood?
Well, maybe I'll talk to Sherry St. Clair about that. I get Sherry out of this mess and she'd owe me big time, and I'm the kind of guy who likes to collect, especially when it means laying the meat to a sweet thing like Sherry.
We were sneaking through yards, jumping small stone walls and avoiding the foot soldiers patrolling the streets for maybe about an hour before we got to Caligula's estate.
You might wonder how we knew it was Caligula's palace so easily. Well, what was engraved on a huge stone tablet that was over the front steps to the massive house gave us a good clue.
Caligula: Emperor of Rome.
We snuck around back of the place. The building was about the size of a medium sized city courthouse. Come to think of it, it looked like one too, with its stone columns and wide steps in front of the building and arched roof.
I don't think I'd ever want to live in anything with a roof as high as that one. It would feel like I was sleeping in church.
Since there really was no easier way to do it, we decided to just find an open window or door, try to stay out of eyesight of any of the guards and just start looking in bedrooms.
Maybe it wasn't the most efficient way to go, but there really didn't seem to be any other way to search for the girls. This wasn't no damn hotel, where they had a sign-in desk and we could just ask what room they were in.
Finding an open door was no problem at all. The first door we came to in the back of the building was unlocked. It was kind of unnerving.
Johnny whispered to me in the darkness behind the building exactly what I was thinking. "This is too fucking easy," he said.
"Yeah, I know," I told him. "I'd expect the Emperor to have guards up the ass."
"Maybe he does that too," Johnny said. "I just expected him to be protected a lot more than this."
We bypassed the first door without even looking in.
We checked the next door.
It was unlocked also.
"I don't know what the fuck is going on here," Johnny said. "But I'm not staying out here all night. I'm going in to look for Sushi."
"And Sherry too," I reminded him.
"Yeah, right," he answered. I knew he didn't give a fuck about her. He was only here to take his woman home.
We entered in through that second unlocked back door and with swords out crept down a dimly lit shiny marble corridor.
We searched the first floor moving like shadows in the night. No one was on the first floor. Not even a guard, asleep or awake. The first floor looked like it was reserved for meetings and banquets. There were only a lot of couches and chairs, some tables and decorations like statues and paintings.
The idea of there being no guards inside was strange as hell to us.
We came to a central staircase and after passing a look between us, started up.
The stairway was wide and open. If there were any guards at the top they couldn't
help but see us. That was the weird thing though. We weren't running into any guards at all.
The place had a strange unearthly silence about it, a kind of hush almost as though the walls themselves felt a need to be quiet.
Large windows opened on the front of the building. When we reached the top of the stairs the moon came from behind the clouds and illuminated the entire inside of the building.
The entire place looked deserted. In the bright moonlight if any guards had been posted we would have seen them from the top of the stairs and they would have seen us.
But, there was no one there.
We moved along the marble walkway to the right of the stairs and came to the first door. Turning the latch I carefully pushed the door open.
It was a bedroom.
There was a candle burning beside a large well cushioned bed. A naked female ass peeked out from under the covers. It was a nice looking ass too. The long blond hair on the pillow told us she wasn't one of the women we were looking for.
Too bad I was busy tonight, I thought. If I wasn't, I'd slip right in that bed and play hide the salami.
CHAPTER 43
Hello Darlin'
Everyone was sleeping soundly.
It was after the fourth door we opened that we found what we came for. Stretched out on silk sheets, naked as the day she was born, her breath coming in the rhythm of a deep snooze, was Sushi.
That may have been my best friend's woman on that bed laying with her mouth partially opened and the rest of her exposed but at that moment she looked like a machine that was built for fucking.
Johnny went to the bed. I turned my back to them and made like I was guarding the door.
From the bed came a startled little cry, then Johnny was saying, "Shhhhhh…, shhhhhh. It's me. I came to get you out of here," And he was hugging her and kissed Sushi.
