Somebody stepped in front of him to the space he had chosen, but the air around the soldier next to that place lost its sheen. That legionary sauntered away from the wall with a refreshed expression; his skin was flushed and gleaming as if from an expert massage. Vibulenus took his place without hesitation.
There was a ping that could have been in his ears instead of being heard by them. Everything in the room as a whole was now glimpsed through a surface that was perfectly clear but did not pass light in quite the same line as air did. Vibulenus remembered the way the Commander’s face gleamed and wondered if that were from the same unknown cause.
“Standard?” asked the voice.
Vibulenus looked around, surprised out of his fuzzy internal dialogue.
“Or do you want to give instructions for changes in the standard cleansing program?” prompted the voice. It had a peevish tinge at such moments, unless the young tribune was imagining the tone from memories of house slaves skirting insubordination under similar circumstances.
“Fine, that’s fine,” Vibulenus snapped, flushing again. “I’ll have the same that the men have.”
Before the tribune could wonder whether he had correctly inferred from the question that he was being offered something special because of his rank and class, needles of warm water with a slight astringence began to scrape grime from his body. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, but it was effective; and the steam that clouded the invisible cylinder around him sheltered Vibulenus from eyes more effectively than his mind could do.
As a way of cleaning the body, this “bath” was at least as effective as the system with which Vibulenus was familiar. The sprays varied in temperature and were firm enough to knead his muscles like the fingers of a masseur. There seemed to be an ingredient added to the water which took the place of the olive oil with which the tribune would ordinarily have rubbed himself, then scraped off in combination with the dirt and body grease from his skin.
So it wasn’t the result of the bath that bothered the young Roman, only the process. He had expected a social event — sitting with half a dozen others around the water vat in the steam room; racing a friend across the pool in the cold room; and at the very least, being oiled down by a slave in the warm room — a task no individual could effectively perform for himself.
Instead, Gaius Vibulenus Caper was more alone than he had ever been in the eighteen years since he left his mother’s womb . . . excepting only what had happened to him in the Medic’s cubicle; and this bath was too similar to that event to be comfortable.
The sprays became bitingly cold, then shut off. Blasts of hot, dry air wrapped Vibulenus for a moment, and the voice said, “New clothing will be issued to you at the exit from the bath.”
Probably the ping Vibulenus thought he had heard before did have something to do with the invisible shield, because when he heard the sound again he was back in the room with no distortion. The air was cooler than the flows which had dried him, and the atmosphere had a freedom of movement that would have gone unnoticed except that during the bath the tribune had felt that he was circumscribed.
The shimmer of a cubicle next to him ceased without a sound the tribune could hear. It reminded him to step back into the room, to give space to anyone else who wanted it. What were the bath hours here? Were there bath hours? Was it daylight now?
The man stepping away from the wall next to him was Lucius Rectinus Falco. He was two inches shorter than Vibulenus and within days of being the same age, but he always gave the air of being infinitely more knowledgeable.
Vibulenus would have let his eyes slide away from the other tribune, except that Falco was already starting to grin with recognition. To refuse to face him would be cowardly as well as futile, so Vibulenus started to nod a vague greeting in hope that it would suffice.