Gaius Vibulenus could not understand the words the file-closer was throwing at him in a desperate attempt to deny what he had just seen. The tribune’s mind danced with a montage of images, from the first moment he realized the guards were throwing his friend toward the wall, to the flash of richly-saturated earth-tones as the legionary disintegrated.
“Sir, please tell me we’re not moving,” begged Clodius Afer.
The younger man blinked down at the file-closer’s hands. They gripped his shoulders but no longer tried to shake him into a response. He was a Roman citizen and an officer. He had his duties.
Taking one of Clodius’ hands in each of his own and lowering them, Vibulenus said, “I think probably we are moving if he says we are, Gnaeus. I don’t understand how that is either, but perhaps we’ll learn. We have a lot of things to learn, I think.”
He looked at the bulkhead and the door closing with another flicker behind the last of the guards. His eyes were again able to see what was there, rather than what had been happening there in the recent past.
He had a duty to Pompilius Rufus, also. Some day he would fulfill it.
“Get up now,” repeated the voice in Vibulenus’ ears. “This room is about to be cleaned.”
The tribune snorted and turned his head on the pillow, thinking in muzzy error that he could muffle the intrusion that way.
A jet of cold — very cold — water from the ceiling played the length of his spine.
Vibulenus leaped up, screaming and certain that he was being burned alive. The water from what looked like an ordinary rivethead splashed momentarily on his chest, but he did not connect the spray with the beam from the Commander’s weapon which had devoured him as he slept.
There were half a dozen other men in the room. Those who had started to get up at the summons were staring in bemusement at Vibulenus and two others, prodded by separate spikes of water. None of the men were known by name to the tribune, though he recognized a couple of the faces. He did not know how he had gotten here, but the pounding of his head told him that he had been drunk at the time.
“Leave at once,” ordered the calm voice. It would have passed for the Commander speaking, but Vibulenus did not imagine the Commander concerned himself with housecleaning. “Other rooms are open for your use.”
The studs which had jetted cold water were now wreathed in steam, and the temperature of the room was already beginning to rise as the Romans stumbled out.
It had been an odd room, now that Vibulenus was alert enough to notice it. The floor was spongy, but its covering and the cushioned banquettes seemed to be of one piece with the walls — which were metal.
The only opening was the door into a broad hallway. That should have made the room stuffy or close under the circumstances, but the wastes voided by sleeping drunks were merely a whiff, not a suffocating reek.
“Pollux, but I need a bath,” Vibulenus muttered. Out in the hall he couldn’t blame the odor he smelled on his fellows.
“Follow the blue dot in the ceiling to the baths which have been provided for your comfort,” said the voice.
The tribune jumped and looked around uselessly. There was a pulsing blue dot on the ceiling, right enough. “You there,” he snapped to a legionary who had exited the room with him. “Did you hear something about the baths?”
“Hah? Nossir,” said the other, giving a glance at the russet border of Vibulenus’ tunic, marking him as a member of the equestrian order — and making the young tribune flush by recalling his mind to the garment’s stains. “Good idea, though; if you know where one is?”
Something spoke to the legionary’s hopeful question, and the man’s eyes flickered up toward the blue dot. “All right,” he said cheerfully. Nodding to Vibulenus, he strode off down the hall.
The blue dot preceded him; and the tribune, grimacing, followed an identical dot that waited until he stepped toward it before it slid on. There were other men in the hallway, some of them wandering with puzzled expressions but most seeming to follow beads of varicolored light, just as Vibulenus was. He vaguely remembered that Clodius Afer had said something about wine as the Main Gallery lowered itself after the assembly, and then the two of them had gone off after a bead of orange light.