“I guess the Commander must be a god,” said Clodius Afer, tilting his head to peer at the curving surface of the ceiling eighty feet above. “D’ye suppose we’re all dead after all?”
“Castor!” Rufus blurted. “He is.”
The three of them had reached the area closest to the front of the Main Gallery where ten of the Commander’s bodyguards stood with their maces held crossways at waist level. There was no door in the bulkhead behind them, but a hexagonal outline the size of a man’s chest stood out against the shifting pastels that colored the partition.
The very presence of the toadfaced guards was enough to clear an area of almost twenty feet between them and the nearest legionaries. Facing the wall, and as separate from his fellows as from the armored non-men, was the waxen-faced figure of Arrius Crescens — the legionary whom Vibulenus had seen stabbed through the belly so fiercely that the bloody spearpoint burst through the links of mail in back as well.
Crescens was so still and blank-faced that the tribune thought he might in fact be a simulacrum, a death mask worn by a dummy in some unfathomable alien rite. While Rufus and Clodius started away, the young officer began to walk cautiously toward the figure of the dead man.
It was a dummy. There was nothing to fear.
“Crescens?” Vibulenus said, extending his hand slowly toward the figure’s shoulder.
“I suppose,” said Crescens, turning to Vibulenus with the deliberation of an ox dragging a cart. “Except I’m dead. They all say that.”
“Yeah, you are,” whispered Vibulenus, uncertain whether he had mouthed the words or only formed them in his mind. He continued to extend his arm until the fingers touched the slick fabric of the legionary’s tunic and felt the bone and muscle shifting beneath.
“You think I don’t know it!” Crescens shouted, slapping the tribune’s hand away and glaring at him as if he was on the verge of further violence. “I felt it go in, didn’t I? Hercules, mister, it was like fuckin’ ice all the way up me! And ye know what. . . ?”
The legionary leaned closer and reached out to grip Vibulenus’ wrist, the hand he had just struck away. The pores of the dead man’s face were large, and the unnatural pallor of his skin magnified their relative darkness into freckles.
“I couldn’t see any more when that big fucker pulled the fucker out agin,” Crescens said. He held Vibulenus’ palm against his belly, against a large knot in the muscles that felt like cartilage beneath the fat. “I could hear the edge of it grind agin my rib bones, though.”
“You needn’t let that bother you, my man,” the tribune said in his clear, detached voice. He stepped back, inexpressibly thankful that Crescens released him. The red dye on the legionary’s belly made a splotch noticeable beneath the fabric of his tunic. “We’ve all noted how amazing the Commander’s surgeons must be. My own —”
Vibulenus fingered his dyed left biceps, but before he was finished, he was stuck by the absurdity of comparing his recent wound to the way Crescens had been transfixed. His lips twitched silently for a moment. Then, almost without input from his mind, his mouth said, “You weren’t actually killed, you see. Just wounded and repaired.”
The tribune turned sharply and strode back to his companions, willing his ears not to hear anything the dead man might call after him. When he risked a glance from the corner of his eye, he saw that Crescens had resumed his blank-eyed stance. His right hand continued to rumple the tunic over his wound in a slow massage.
“They, ah. . . ,” Vibulenus said, as Rufus and the file-closer carefully looked at the floor or the ceiling to avoid staring at him. “Well, I guess the Medic. . . ,” he tried but paused again.
“You will live forever,” the Commander had said. Gaius Vibulenus Caper, eighteen years old, wondered how long forever really was.
“Hey, there’s Niger,” said Rufus, striding across the open space. He was willing to ignore the presence of the guards in order to reach the farther side of the hall, where he had glimpsed his cousin, in the shortest possible time. “Niger!”