“It was less like a dolphin than you are,” said the traveller calmly, always calmly. “It appears to have been a – ” he looked at the agent, his lips pursing around the choice of a word – “marine reptile, a tylosaurus. It eats fish, though it would probably make short enough work of a man in the water. The ship itself is far too large to be potential prey, so I was not concerned.”
The fact of identification has its own power over the thing identified. Perennius looked from Calvus to the pike in his hand. “Oh,” he said in chagrin, conscious of the woman’s eyes as well. He had made a fool of himself in his panic. “I hadn’t seen one before.”
“No, you certainly hadn’t,” the traveller agreed. “The last of them disappeared from Earth sixty-five million years ago. I don’t think it will be able to stay alive very long in this age. The seas must be far too salty, so that it will dehydrate and die.”
In a society that valued rhetoric over communication, mathematics were a slave’s work – or a spy’s. Numbers – of men, of wealth, of distances – were a part of Perennius’ job, so he had learned to use them as effectively as he did the lies and weapons which he also needed. But even in a day when inflation was rampant and the word for a small coin had originally meant ‘a bag of money,’ the figure Calvus had thrown out gave the agent pause. While Perennius struggled with the concept, the Gallic woman sidestepped the figures and went to the heart of the problem. “You say they’re all dead,” she said in her own smooth dialect of Latin, “and you say we just saw one. Where did it come from?”
The traveller was looking astern, toward the empty waves past the rope-brailed canvas of the mainsail. Perhaps he was looking much farther away than that. “Either there is something completely separate working,” he said “or that was a side-effect of the way I came here. I can’t be sure. I was raised to know and to find – certain things. And to act in certain ways. This isn’t something that I would need to understand, perhaps .. . but I rather think it was not expected.”
The tall man shrugged. He looked at Sabellia, at the agent, with his stark black eyes again. “This was not tested, you see. It was not in question that the technique
would work, but the ramifications could be as various as the universe itself. That’s why they sent all six of us together . . . and I am here.”
“Calvus, I don’t understand,” Perennius said. He watched his hands squeeze pointlessly against the weathered gray surface of the pike staff. “But if you say that it’s all right, I’ll accept that.”
“Aulus Perennius, I don’t know whether or not it is all right,” the tall man said. “We didn’t have time to test the procedure that sent us here.” The smooth-skinned, angular face formed itself – relaxed would have been the wrong word – into a smile. “We did not have time,” Calvus repeated wonderingly. “Yes, I’ve made a joke. I wonder how my siblings would react to me now?” He smiled again, but less broadly. “Contact with you has changed me more than could have been expected before we were sent off.”
Sabellia began to laugh. Perennius looked at the woman. “You too?” he said sourly.
Sabellia’s hair was beginning to bleach to red-blond after days of sea-reflected sunlight. “It’s the idea of anyone getting a sense of humor by associating with you. Lord Perennius,” she said. Her giggle made the sarcasm of “Lord” less cutting, though abundantly clear.
“That wasn’t quite what I meant,” said Calvus. He looked from one of his companions to the other.
But as the agent strode toward the mast to rack the pike again, he too began to laugh.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The sails were to windward of them. That was bad enough. What was worse was the fact that their attitude shifted even as Perennius watched them. If he was correct, the vessels were turning toward the Eagle, not away. In this age, in these waters west of Cyprus, no honest seaman wanted to meet another ship.