The energy dam still functions, but with the orbit of Io perturbed I don’t know how long this will last. We assumed there was to be another attack when the Umbrathane fleet displaced into orbit around Callisto, and in response missiles were launched from Station Seventeen. They didn’t impact, for the fleet shifted inside the temporal barrier englobing the moon. What readings we were able to take showed us that the entire moon was a few degrees out of phase. Attempts at tachyon communications failed. Luckily Seventeen did not orbit Callisto, since, like the rest of the stations that were there then, it would now be drifting erratically in the Jovian system — the phase change having negated the moon’s gravity-well before the final apocalyptic event. It seems stupid to ask how we could not have predicted this when we have access to time-travel technology. But who would have thought only a month ago we would have needed to look to the immediate future? It is certain that the entire population are all dead. It was only the Umbrathane fleet and the research facility that shifted.
As they thawed, the apples became pulpy, but Polly still managed to eat four of them. Then she gnawed her way through to the frozen core of her pie as she walked some miles along the watercourse. Finally stopping to rest with her back against an oak tree, she slept until what was, in her estimation, midday. When she woke her mind seemed a lot clearer.
‘I don’t want to just survive. I want a life as well,’ she abruptly stated.
Nandru’s reply was some time in coming, as if he too had been dozing.
You are alive.
‘I want to understand, to experience. So I should view this… journey as an opportunity. There is so much I can learn.’
All you ever wanted to experience before was as many highs as possible with the fewest hangovers.
Polly unbuttoned her coat to check the contents of her hip bag. It still contained some heroin patches and pearlies.
‘No, I’ve changed,’ she insisted.
She ignored the patches, taking out only her tobacco to roll herself another cigarette. It occurred to her that she only had enough for a few more days. Not having experienced withdrawal from the other drugs she had used before placing the scale on her arm, she might avoid tobacco withdrawal as well. She had no intention of getting hooked again on patches though, so considered throwing them away. However, they would serve as analgesics should she be injured—which was now looking increasingly likely.
So your plan is?
‘To learn, to experience. I need to see things in this time before I get dragged back again.’ She assessed the food bag. ‘I have enough supplies here for a few more days, but what after that? I’m hardly equipped for this kind of life.’
You’ve done pretty well so far. You’ve acquired rather more suitable clothing than that you started out with—as well as a gun and a knife—and, of course, you’ve still got your taser.
Reminded of this last item, she removed it from her hip bag and studied it. It was not yet recharged, so she moved back to the open area by the river and rested the taser on a log, where its solar cells would benefit from direct sunlight.
Yours seems an admirable aim, but surely, in a such a barbaric age as this, you’d do better to keep your head down and wait for the next time-jump.
‘But then I’d continue doing nothing—just existing.’
Then, when your taser is fully recharged, we must go and look for whatever passes for civilization here.
When later she came upon it, the military encampment was undoubtedly the work of man, but whether civilized or barbaric was still to be seen. Polly had entered an area at the forest’s edge where some trees had been felled, coming in sight of a tented city surrounded by an abatis and earthen banks. Outside these, soldiers stood in neat ranks facing funeral pyres—Roman legionaries burning their dead. Seeing heads already turning in her direction, and word being passed along, she sat herself on a stump and started chewing on another pie. Shortly after, a small group of heavily armed legionaries was approaching her, their cloaked commander riding along behind. She noticed how cleanshaven and neat these people were, how polished was their steeped-leather armour, how their short swords gleamed. She also noticed how frequently their attention shifted to the forest behind her.
They suspect an ambush.
‘Well, I’m not going to ambush them, unless they get nasty,’ Polly replied out loud.
The men gazed at her in puzzlement as she finished the last piece of pie crust.
‘Quis’s, pro Ditem?’ asked the legionary now closest to her—a brutal-looking man whose clean-shaven skin only revealed more clearly an ugly scar across his face.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you said just then,’ said Polly, standing up and sliding her hand into her pocket to grip the comforting weight of the automatic.
He said, ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘You can understand what they’re saying?’
Just about. In here Muse has dictionaries for about a hundred languages. By simultaneously accessing all European languages, I can get a rough translation, as many of them have Latin as their root.
‘Fugite,’ said the mounted officer, urging his horse forward. The men parted to let him through. He dismounted and tossed the reins to scarface. ‘Qua loqueris? Certe nil horum barbarorum.’
‘Sorry, I’m just an ignorant savage and don’t understand what you’re saying.’
I think he just said you don’t sound like an ignorant savage.
‘What’s he saying now?’ Polly asked. The officer had turned to scarface.
He’s pointing out that you are talking in your strange tongue to someone apparently unseen, so you are either fifty men short of a cohort or touched by the gods. I suggest you continue talking to me out loud, so that they may retain that opinion of you and not think to satisfy their curiosity by means of the numerous sharp objects they seem to favour.
‘A cohort is one tenth of a legion, and usually consists of between three and six hundred men,’ said Polly, shivering.
Yes. So what?
‘That’s something I never knew before. So how do I know it now?’
You haven’t figured that out?
‘Apparently not.’
When I put Muse 184 onto you, it immediately established a nanonic linkage through to your spine and up into your head, where it has since been making numerous connections—an example of this being that you no longer really need the inducer in your earlobe to hear me. Its library — and something of me too — have been bleeding over into your mind ever since. You didn’t notice it at first because the heroin abuse kept you on the edge of moronic most of the time. Then the scale cleaned out your system and ever since you’ve been growing continually more knowledgeable. Besides that, Muse has also been upgrading your linguistic ability in English, so that you would become more able to communicate with it coherently.
The Roman commander turned and gestured towards the encampment. Scarface reached out to take hold of Polly’s arm, but desisted when the commander spat another order at him. Looking round, Polly saw awe in the faces of the soldiers, and something like fear.
‘But I’m talking like I’ve always talked,’ argued Polly.
Another soldier now moved in beside her, while the commander remounted. Scarface gestured towards her food bag. She handed it over and he peered inside, wrinkled his nose at its contents, then tossed it to the other man to carry. Whatever happened now, Polly was determined not to hand over any of her weapons. But Scarface baulked at the prospect of searching her further, after nervously eyeing her clothing. Perhaps he thought she might put a curse on him, or perhaps he thought she had fleas. After a moment he ushered her on ahead of him.