“Now,” said Vibulenus clearly, “we go see the women.”
He wondered how badly the lower part of his abdomen had been injured, but nothing in the world would have caused him to lift the hem of his tunic now and see what was dyed red.
“Bad as when they first announced it,” grumbled Clodius. “Line’d slimmed down by yesterday, and we’d be fine now ‘cept for them making such a point in the assembly.”
“Well, it moves real quick, the line does,” said Niger.
That was true, for they had continued to advance at a walking pace even after they reached the end of the line of soldiers intent on using the women.
“How —” Vibulenus began. He meant to add, ‘— much farther are the rooms?’ because the corridor curved and it was impossible to see the front of the line. But there were no landmarks on the vessel and possibly no fixed locations, so his companions could have no better idea than he as to how far they had yet to go.
Instead, the tribune said, “How many of the girls are there, then?”
The non-coms looked at one another with an unexpected furtiveness. “Sir,” said the centurion with his eyes fixed on a point on the wall, “I couldn’t rightly say, but it’s a good number. Thing is, I like t’ keep the lights down, you know, and — and anyway, it’s the part of a woman that’s the same that’s important, not whatever little ways they may be different.”
“That’s so,” said Helvius with a ponderous lift of his eyebrows. “By Apis and Osiris, that’s just so.”
“Look, just what —” Vibulenus said, falling into his tone of command without precisely intending to do so.
Clodius interrupted him, or at least thundered on when they began to speak together, with: “There, all right, there’s the door.”
The speed troubled Vibulenus. The line was moving as fast as men could pass two at a time through the open portal at the end of this corridor. Sure, horny soldiers . . . but not that horny by now, the men who had been alert for the three days he had spent in the egg-shaped room unconscious.
Unalive.
Thinking about that took the tribune’s mind off immediate questions. His companions seemed happy enough to leave him in bleak silence, though Niger muttered something uncomfortably to the centurion.
The legionary directly ahead of Vibulenus stepped into a cubicle the size of those in the Sick Bay. Instead of a door closing, the opening dimmed as if curtained with silken gauze. The soldier did not move, but either the floor or the whole cubicle shifted to the left with him. Simultaneously, the identical unit in front of Clodius Afer slid to the right and the diffraction smoothed from the air. The cubicles were empty.
“Go ahead, sir,” said Clodius Afer. He paused, then stepped off a half beat behind the tribune.
Vibulenus was familiar enough with the ways of the vessel that he did not expect to feel concern now, even though it was not the crib that he had expected. The cubicles’ similarity to the Medic’s array, and the baggage that memory brought with it, froze him into quiescence. Without the centurion’s request, he might not have moved at all, though it was without fear that he obeyed what his mind took to be an order.
The screen that appeared behind the tribune did not affect the muted lighting he perceived within the cubicle. Instead of a feeling of motion sideways, the wall in front of him seemed to slide upward. He stepped into the room beyond, small but not the closet he had more or less expected. Military brothels were no more spacious than barracks accommodations.
The room was lighted by what was little more than a red dot in one of the upper corners, but it was enough to show that the woman reclining on her left arm was full formed and had hair long enough to spill over the edge of the couch. “Hello,” she said in a throaty, feminine voice. “You must be one of the tribunes, huh? I’m Quartilla.”
“I —” said Vibulenus. He glanced down at the striped hem of his garment, almost black in this light. It was a sign of social rather than military rank, but no member of the equestrian order would be serving as a common soldier. She was sharp, which made the business all the more confusing, and her Latin was far too good for anyone but a true Roman.