The Fourth Rome (19 page)

The two Russians noticed Grainger at the same time. Matsak held out a forestalling hand and continued talking to Zotov in
rapid-fire Russian that Grainger couldn’t decipher. The tone was argumentative. Zotov was giving Matsak some sort of problem.
The Russians went on arguing for long minutes. Grainger shifted from foot to foot. Good thing he’d sobered up. From the meeting
room beyond, light and music spilled out under closed double doors.

While he waited, Grainger vainly tried to identify the muted music he could barely hear. Maybe Haydn. Maybe some Russian composer.

Finally, the argument ceased. Matsak turned on his heel, straight as the flag officer he’d been or still was. He said to Grainger,
“Zotov says okay. You can see the technology right now. The others will not notice we have gone. They will be celebrating
until they go to sleep. We must go quickly. Hurry.”

Zotov stomped away down a darkened hallway, not waiting to see if they’d follow.

Matsak motioned Grainger ahead of him. They followed Zotov through two corridors and down a flight of stairs. They hurried
through an ill-lit, musty basement. At last they came to more stairs, leading to a subbasement. There Zotov fumbled for keys
in his pocket. The scientist unlocked a door covered with chipped, peeling white paint.

Inside was a working laboratory. In that laboratory were three men in threadbare lab coats. Grainger had not met any of these
men at the party upstairs. They were hunched over a rack of equipment such as Grainger had never seen before.

Huge dials, exposed wiring, makeshift housings. None of it seemed promising. Meters had German manufacturers’ names on them.
Beyond the rude console was a wall with homely curtains drawn across its upper half.

Grainger moved around the console.

Zotov barked something at Matsak.

Matsak said, “So sorry. The Tim must sit here and the technology will be presented.”

Matsak tapped a plastic chair near the console.

Grainger said, “That’s fine with me.”

Matsak stood over him like a bodyguard.

Zotov muttered to his staff.

At last the little scientist seemed satisfied. A small black and white monitor was brought and set down on top of the console.
The three technicians chattered,
“Mouschka! Mouschkal”
Eventually, the problem they were having with their computer mouse was solved and the display flickered alight.

The small monitor displayed a videotape, not a computer program. The tape was of an ongoing event in a town square. Above
the square, something flickered into substantiality.

That something was oval, glowing with lights, and it settled onto the grassy square with an easy grace.

Grainger said, “What’s this?” A chill ran over him that probably wasn’t due to the mixture of alcohol, nicotine, and antitoxins
in his body.

“Watch,” Matsak said.

Grainger wished the monitor was better. But he could see what was happening on the tape well enough. The door of the capsule
opened and six hardsuited men carrying long tubes came out. Russian peasants were crowding around. The men pointed their tubes
at several of the people: a young man, a teenage boy, a pregnant girl. The locals surged forward as the youngsters crumpled.
The hardsuits weren’t from any time or place that Grainger was familiar with. Neither were the tube-shaped implements. Or
the craft, although he was sure from the way it moved that it was a temporal capsule.

The men with the tubes aimed at the crowd. Broad, visible beams from their tubes swept over the frightened, angry people.
More folk dropped to the ground. Three of the intruders from the craft ported their weapons and grabbed the youngsters they’d
originally targeted. Slinging the inert bodies of the three Russians over their shoulders, the men disappeared inside the
craft while their comrades covered them. Once those three were inside, the men providing cover began reen-tering the ship,
one at a time. All very professional.

The last man was moving backward into the craft when a Soviet missile entered the picture, its trajectory enhanced by a computer
graphic of linked oblongs. The missile struck the craft.

A rolling blossom of white engulfed the scene. The screen went blank.

Zotov barked commands in Russian. The technicians ran the tape again, this time using their mouse pointer to freeze frames
and show the approach of the Soviet missile in slow-motion.

“What was that you used?” Grainger asked. His tongue seemed swollen. Those men with the strange weapons weren’t ARC Riders.
Wrong uniforms. Wrong technology. That wasn’t a TC of any manufacture familiar to Grainger. It was bigger, for one thing.
Clearly more advanced, for another. And yet it had been taken out by a Soviet missile …

“Missile? Was … a Tsyklon-class missile.”

“I mean, what was the explosive?”

“Nuclear,” Matsak said flatly.

“Christ…” It had never occurred to him that the Soviets would use a nuke on one of their own towns. “So nothing’s left? Of
the craft, I mean?”

“So sorry, say me again?” Matsak asked.

Zotov was watching him closely, a triumphant smile on his face that Grainger didn’t understand at first.

“I asked if you destroyed the craft totally.”

Now Zotov spoke, first in a barrage of Russian, then in slow English: “This is evidence. I have … pieces. Artifacts. I have
my … group. We have engineered from this … piece … some interesting technology.”

“I bet you have,” Grainger muttered. “Can I see what you’ve got? What you’ve done?” He was on his feet now.

No Russian said anything immediately. Zotov was staring at Matsak and Matsak was appraising Grainger’s reaction.

Grainger said slowly, “Sasha, you were right. This is very exciting. Please begin an arrangement with Academician Zotov on
our behalf. Let’s go to contract. Whatever it takes to get on with our evaluation.”

The two senior Russians went off into a corner.

Grainger called out to them, “Can I see the tape again?”

From their huddle, both Zotov and Matsak gave obviously conflicting orders to the technicians. Eventually, an agreement was
struck and the tape rolled again.

This time, Grainger saw many small details that indicated differences between this craft and the TCs of his era. By the time
the tape had spooled through, he was sure he was looking at a vehicle from Up The Line—from the far future, not from any distant
planet.

Damn.

And the Russians had the wreckage. Obviously, Barthuli had intuited something. But what had the guys from Up The Line been
doing? Their mission had obviously been to take three youngsters, kids too young and powerless to be revisionists. Why abduct
youngsters?

He wasn’t allowed to see the tape a fourth time.

“Later,” Matsak told him when he asked. “A copy will be made for you. Now, you and Academician Zotov will examine the equipment—both
what has been found and what has been created. I will need your small payment. You will come with me outside now …”

Outside the room, Grainger leaned against the rough plastered wall. “You knew exactly what I wanted, didn’t you? Where it
was.”

“Then it is interesting for you?” Matsak wanted to negotiate.

Grainger unshouldered his gearbag. “How much do we need to give Zotov to get to the next level?”

“How much do you have with you?”

No use playing games. “About nine thousand. This isn’t my money. I can’t just give it to you without getting something in
return.”

“So you will give me one thousand. I will give the small “ amount to Zotov now, but not where the
robotniki”
—workers—“can see. We will proceed to the next phase. When we give you the tape copy, you will give one more thousand of dollars.”

“If I need more cash than what I brought, I’ve got to go back to Moscow—involve the others. If we make a deal, the whole thing’s
yours as a good faith payment.”

“For now, this much dollars is adequate.”

If the money had been real, Grainger might have been more cautious. Maybe not. He needed to use the greed factor as motivation.
He had to see what lay behind the curtain that no one had wanted him to get near.

When Zotov joined them in the hallway, Matsak gave him the money. It was as slick a transfer as Grainger had ever seen. “I
want that tape. I need to see it again.”

Too bad the tape quality wasn’t better. But then, considering that the whole area had been nuked, the Soviet-era Russians
who’d put that surveillance equipment in that town square were lucky they had anything at all.

“Soon enough. But first, you will see our science. And our … artifacts.” Zotov’s infusion of dollars seemed to have further
improved his English.

“Great. When did this event happen?”

“On fifth of August, 1989,” Matsak said, guiding Grainger back into the lab. Zotov had disappeared, probably to hide his dollars.

Grainger hadn’t expected to get a date that specific from Matsak. It shocked him into silence. Did Matsak know why he’d asked?
What he was? Why he was here?

They had to wait for Zotov to return before the curtain was pulled back.

Matsak’s disturbing eyes stayed on him the whole time. The technicians smoked. Matsak smoked. Even Grainger smoked. Several
times, Grainger tried to make conversation. Matsak would just shake his head. The tape remained frozen at the point of the
nuclear explosion, no matter how he tried to convince Matsak to let him see it again. He was beginning to wonder if it might
be a fake, since they wouldn’t let him look at it closely.

When Zotov returned, the academician clapped his hands and one of the technicians pulled back the curtains manually.

Nearly half of the craft from Up The Line was shoehorned into the workbay beyond the glass. It was shiny in places, black
and charred in others. Whole sections were slagged, incomprehensible, melted and fused. In front of it, Russian-style workbenches
sat, filled with rudimentary test equipment.

“You would like to see this more closely? Then you will need to wear protective clothing.”

Getting revisionists out of Moscow to 50K was one thing. Getting better than half of a temporal capsule from Up The Line out
of here was going to be much harder. Maybe impossible.

“I believe it’s real,” Grainger said flatly. He wasn’t looking forward to examining the radioactive wreckage in 20th-century
protective clothing, antiradiation shot or no antiradiation shot. It was bad enough that he’d ingested food and drink prepared
in this building and served directly above their heads. “I’ll examine it closely later. I’m more interested in what you learned
from it. What you made from what you learned.” He looked first at Matsak and then at Zotov. “Can I see your own setup? I need
to know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.” And for whom. He already knew why. “That’s why I’m here,” he said softly.
“And that’s why Matsak is here with me—to make sure I see it.”

Tim Grainger was nearly faint. His hands were shaking with adrenaline he had no way to use. Nobody from the ARC Riders had
ever gotten even this close to what lay Up The Line. Radiation sickness makes you feel faint at first. He had to limit his
exposure here to the really critical elements of what he needed to know.

How had those guys Up The Line failed to realize that the Soviet Union, circa 1989, would nuke any encroaching threat?

And who was in control of this technology that the Russians had cobbled together out of the capsule’s wreckage, besides Zotov?
Who knew, besides Matsak? How the hell did three young, powerless Russian peasants fit into the picture?

And why had Matsak decided to show any of this to Grainger?

Zotov said, “Do not be impatient. We have all the proper authority.” His eyes flicked to Matsak.

Matsak said, “The Tim is ready to see your genius, Igor. Let us agree that we have the good basis for cooperation and go to
the next phase now.”

Grainger would have agreed to anything about then, in order to see whatever it was the Russians had created from this wreckage—whatever
allowed them to send people through time in a whole new way. Especially if doing so got him out of such close proximity to
the radioactive proof before him that the Wise Ones from Up The Line were capable of making mistakes just like anyone else.

Bad mistakes.

He had to find out everything he could in Obninsk and get back to Moscow, fast.

G
erd mumbled.

“Pauli, I think he’s coming out of it!” Rebecca Carnes said. She pressed a transparent patch to the side of the analyst’s
neck. Gerd grimaced. He tried to raise his hand, probably to brush away the contact, though his eyes remained closed.

“Want us to stop, girlie?” Flaccus asked from just behind Rebecca. She walked beside the litter, and he was on the back end
of the nearer pole.

“We’ll be at the campsite anytime now,” said Hordius, clerk of the 1st Company, 3d Cohort, 17th Legion. “We may as well keep
going.”

He looked at the sky and added with a scowl, “We’re going to have a bitch of a storm soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow.
And fucking early in the year for it, too.”

Hordius had been noncom of the guard when the ARC Riders entered Aliso. A palmful of gold coins had made Hordius and the squad
he’d commanded that day more than willing to improvise a litter for Gerd. The legionaries believed the ’slave’ had been injured
saving his master’s life; otherwise they’d have been amazed at Pauli’s extravagance.

Gerd lay on half the squad’s leather tent, unloaded from a baggage wagon and wrapped around the tent poles. The combination
made a better stretcher than the poncho liner and pair of rifles Rebecca was used to. With eight legionaries on the poles,
the analyst was as safe and probably as comfortable as Varus in his ornate litter.

Pauli Weigand reined back the horse he’d bought from a tribune. He rode slightly ahead of the litter bearers, regularly stepping
into the forest. There he pulled down his faceshield to scan for dangers the army ignored as Varus drove deeper into territory
the governor—but not the Germans—thought had been conquered.