“Your commander is about to address you,” said the clear voice in everyone’s ears. “Before he does so, the floor will shift so that everyone has a clear view. Do not be concerned.”
Relatively few of the thousands of men in the Main Gallery listened to what their ears could not fail to have heard. Even those few, like Vibulenus, who didn’t tune out the words as just another repetition of the summons, were still trying to process the information when the back of the gallery began to rise.
There would have been panic even if every one of the soldiers understood the statement, of course.
Clodius and Vibulenus, at the front of the long room, felt only a trembling through the soles of their bare feet. The tribune looked back over his shoulder, frowning in concentration, because he thought the voice had said that —
The floor of the Main Gallery was slanting upward, carrying legionaries with it. As their footing shifted, men bolted backward toward the door by which they had entered. The screams were so loud and universal as to overpower the deadening effect of the gallery’s acoustics.
The ceiling was lifting in synchrony with the floor, so there was no reason to fear that the surfaces would grind the men between them like millstones. Fear is emotional, not a matter of reason, however, and fear is the most human reaction to having solid become fluid underfoot. The door at the back did not open.
The only thing that kept the panic from being as lethally crushing as an actual mating of floor and ceiling was that the movement of the gallery lessened to zero in the front. Pressure from the crowd behind would have crushed men to death against the wall, as Vibulenus had once seen happen when a chariot crash started a rush for the stadium exits. Here, the men in the middle of the gallery poised, uncertain whether to rush the door or toward the front; and those nearest the front were more bemused than frightened by what they saw happening to others.
Over all the commotion, the disembodied voice kept calling angrily, “Everyone stop crowding! There is no need for concern! Stop this at once or there will be severe disciplinary measures!”
There had been a certain amount of crowding forward by men who closed their eyes so that they would not have to see that they were pushing their fellows closer to the guards. Clodius Afer, with a grimace that reflected his own distaste for the situation, thrust himself back into the press. Snapping, “Loosen up your ranks!” the file-closer slapped men alongside the head to get their attention.
The tribune took a deep breath. He had been trying to brace himself against the men pushing him from behind. Now he turned sideways, slipping back a rank or two, and shouted, “Stop this at once, you men!”
He tried to slap a grizzled legionary whose name he did not know. The man responded with a short punch that numbed Vibulenus’ whole left side and blinded him with the pain. He couldn’t fall down because the crowd was too tight, and when it loosened a moment later he had enough control of his body to stay upright.
The panic had ended itself in exhaustion and pointlessness. Men who had fought a grueling battle and undergone enervating rehabilitation in the Sick Bay simply did not have enough energy to long sustain a rush to nowhere. Sheepishly, shaking loose their tunics, legionaries drifted back to the center of the long room, leaving the front and rear to those who had preferred those extremes to the neutral median in the first place.
After all, there was nothing frightening about standing in a hall whose solid floor sloped toward the front at about the angle of the aisles of a theatre.
“What in Hades happened to you, sir?” Clodius Afer demanded, dusting his palms as he strode back to the tribune. The legion’s front had advanced several feet as a result of the commotion, but the toadfaced guards had relaxed again and were no longer bracing their maces out in front of them as a physical bar to the humans.