Fortuna Read online

  For his part the professor looked surprised — no — shocked. Glancing at his stomach, he almost laughed at the sight of a small black hole and a telltale ochre stain on his shirt. The red was spreading swiftly, no, voraciously. Barely able to remain on his feet, MacPherson declared in a shaky voice, “Fortuna iudicavit,” meaning: “Fortune has passed judgment.”

  Before Felix or anyone else could stop him, and before the station’s Health Drones could spring into action, MacPherson gathered the last of his strength and collapsed inside the transparent sphere. Like vultures feeding on a weakened victim, the gases churned about him until … he was gone.

  “Where…?” Carolyn started to ask.

  “In a place where he’ll die of that wound,” her father answered. “Nothing can save him.”

  Felix might have added something but his eyes were on the doctor. The pistol still in hand, Dr. Lee was frowning, as if studying a phantom only he could see. While his expression marked his total defeat, his posture was straight and implied strength of purpose.

  “Chen,” the general called out. “The drama’s finished. Please lower the gun.”

  The doctor turned and looked them in the eye. His face was hollow, as if he’d been a dead man all this while. He smiled and the effect was even more ghastly. And instead of lowering the gun, he had it aimed at his heart.

  “What a strange thing passion is,” he reflected. “In your case, Felix, it led you to save a world; in mine, it led me to seek its destruction. And all because I loved my boy. I missed him so much that I never considered how he’d react to my actions. He was kind and honest, Charlie was. He’d have been shocked to discover that I had killed to bring him back.”

  “Chen. Lower the gun,” the general pleaded. “We can help you. Mem-rase can ease the pain.”

  “But I don’t want it eased, Isaiah. True, I’d rather not remember my loss, but I can’t possibly forget it, either, not without killing Charlie again. And so … I will take my leave in Roman fashion. Believe me when I tell you that I am so, so sorry for pain I’ve caused. Farewell …”

  “No!” the general screamed.

  “Wait!” Carolyn and Felix pleaded.

  “Charlie, I’m coming,” Dr. Lee announced.

  A shot rang out. Again it travelled round the chamber. By the time its echo had died away, Dr. Chen Lee, loving father of Charlie, had entered a stream of time that coursed on forever.

  Chapter Twenty

  “I’ve entered another algorithm contest. The judges will decide the winner next week, but I know I’m a shoo-in. Carolyn didn’t compete this time. I guess she learned her lesson and knows she’ll never defeat me.”

  Felix sighed. Life was back to normal and he was travelling from Toronto to Rome in search of more books. As luck would have it, Stephen Gowan had spied him and installed himself in a nearby seat. The trip was scheduled to last twenty-one minutes. Felix wondered how he’d survive this ordeal.

  It had been two weeks since the showdown in the TPM. Besides taking time to heal, Felix had composed a long report and provided evidence against Professor MacPherson. Together with the general and other staff members, he’d attended a funeral for Dr. Lee. Yes, the man had plotted against the world; but he’d also wound up stopping the professor.

  Having spent a week tidying the drama’s loose ends, he’d boarded a shuttle with General Manes and watched the station recede into the distance. In the wake of the near temporal disasters, it had been decided to shut the facility down. While the TPM had stopped the plague last year, events had shown it was incredibly dangerous. The risks outweighed the benefits and Time was something that shouldn’t be toyed with. Apart from a couple of service drones, the Station would be off-limits to all personnel. “That’s fine by me,” General Manes had joked. “I can at last study history without having to worry you’ll change its course.” Before parting with Felix, he’d promised to speak before a global council and ensure the Repository would never be closed. “This is a debt of honour,” he’d promised. “To you and all the people of the past.”

  “And speaking of Carolyn, what’s with her?” Stephen said, oblivious to Felix’s lack of interest. “I saw her at the awards ceremony and she hasn’t been in touch since then. She’s ignored all my messages and pretty much vanished. What is it with girls? She meets my parents, shares the stage with me, I discuss my techniques and future plans, and she hasn’t the decency to stay in touch? Talk about ingratitude!”

  Felix sighed again. Carolyn wasn’t well. When Dr. Lee had put a bullet through his heart, his suicide had pushed her over the edge. Fragile from her battle with the clone, she’d closed her eyes and collapsed to the floor. As things stood, she was undergoing psychiatric testing. Over the last two weeks, he’d sent her messages daily, but hadn’t received any answer back. Who could blame her? As she saw it, Felix was connected with death. The plague, gladiators, Clavius, the wars, Dr. Lee, the professor, the library, the clone: the list rolled on and on. If she was going to put her trauma aside, perhaps she should never see him again, or be reminded in any way of their times together.

  But the news wasn’t all bad. Once the professor had been proven guilty, General Manes had been in touch with Mr. Taylor. After apologizing for his error of judgment, he’d restored Mr. Taylor to his former self. While he was still raw from his ordeal, Felix’s dad was on the mend and expected to recover. Already he was shelving books and busy reading, to the accompaniment of his beloved Bach. Felix and he were still shy around each other, but their relationship would soon be on good footing again. By the time Mrs. Taylor returned, their household would most likely be back to normal.

  “Come to think of it,” Stephen said, “I haven’t seen much of you, either. You look thin and hollowed out. I guess you’ve been reading all this while, hey? You’ve been losing sleep over those tales of Caesar who’s famous because he invented a salad?

  Felix smiled thinly. The sooner he got used to this ribbing, the better. The crisis was over and the world was back to normal. People didn’t know how close they’d come to tasting death again. And if they did know, they would quickly forget, by shrugging the business off or undergoing Mem-rase.

  But he no longer cared. People were set in their ways and he couldn’t change them, not against their will. On the other hand, they couldn’t change him, either. Just because they were indifferent to the past didn’t mean his interests were without value. He’d known this all along, but now, after Rome, Alexandria, Clavius, and Caesar, he was strong enough to ignore oafs like Stephen Gowan. His course was clear. He would follow it boldly. And if myopic idiots kept interfering …

  “No seriously, why would anyone waste his life reading garbage when he could devise new computer programs? Doesn’t it bother you?” Stephen groused. “I mean, really. Here I am, working on important stuff, while you spend your days reading stories to yourself. It’s affecting your health. You know what I think?”

  “I know exactly what you think,” Felix said. “And for someone who’s supposedly so smart, you have no idea what you’re talking about. So if you don’t mind …”

  He disengaged the speaker connecting their pods. Insulted, Stephen kept jabbering away, like a machine playing out its pre-programmed role. Smiling to himself, Felix looked out the window and was dazzled by the sight of clouds passing in a stream.

  It was a simple truth, he mused, even if it lacked all logic. The sun would rise tomorrow because it had risen yesterday.

  Felix eyed the sky with worry. Clouds were gathering and it was two minutes past three. According to the local reports, rain was scheduled for 3:09 p.m. and would last twelve minutes before it headed south. He had to find some shelter over the next seven minutes.

  He was walking through the heart of Rome. He was coming from a nano-bot plant that had been built on a library fifty years back. While the library’s contents had long eroded, a large trunk full of books had survived. Opening its lid, Felix had found treasures inside: detective novels, children’s b
ooks (among them was something called Harry Potter), a manual on car repairs, two travelogues, three cookbooks and the Elvis Repertoire (whatever that meant). After arranging to have the trunk sent to Toronto, he’d left the place with the cookbooks in hand, much to the amusement of the factory boss.

  There was a distant roll of thunder. Understanding he had six minutes to find shelter, Felix glanced ahead. Fenced off from the modern part of town, with its vast commercial centre and so-called floating towers (eight mega-structures built on transparent piles), the ancient Forum seemed to call him over. With a shrug, Felix sprinted forward.

  He ran along a road that followed the old Claudian aqueduct. To his right was the Coliseum, and, perched before it, the Arch of Constantine. For a moment he thought of veering off and waiting beneath its pitted stone hollows, but a thought had occurred to him and he knew his destination. It was a structure that, despite its age, would keep him dry.

  A small fence confronted him. He leaped and cleared it. The rumbles grew louder and a breeze was blowing in from the west. It smelled of rain.

  Ahead of him were trees — poplars planted in a row. He had to twist to manoeuvre past them, but, once they were behind, the ruins lay before him. He smiled as they greeted him like a long-lost friend, the Domus Flaviana, the Stadium Palatinum, the Templum Jovis Victoris, and the Curia Julia.

  A raindrop struck. Then another and another. He wanted to run, but the ground was uneven and set with broken lengths of marble, remnants of an ancient past which modern Rome would come to resemble, considering Time never stopped exacting its dues. The rain was really falling. The sound of it hitting the poplars was thrilling and the earth seemed to come alive at its touch. The stones were indifferent. Over the last eighteen centuries they’d been toppled, kicked, hammered, battered, ignored, peed-on, and generally abused, so a summer rain was nothing.

  At last he reached the curia. Approaching its doors, he stroked their weathered surface. Much to his surprise, they opened at his touch, creaking eerily on their hinges. While dim, the interior was lit: the building had windows set into its walls and these allowed the afternoon light to enter. Felix advanced to the centre of the room. He glanced up at the vaulted ceiling, at the bits of broken statuary and patterned floor. Finally his gaze alighted on a bust in an alcove. Being careful not to slip on the marble, he made his way over.

  It was a bust of Julius Caesar — he had commissioned this building. The general’s eyes considered him closely, with suspicion at first then a certain warmth. So you made it, they seemed to say.

  “I made it,” Felix said aloud.

  The weight of his struggles suddenly struck home: Aceticus’s wound, his brush with ERR, Clavius dying in front of his eyes, the angry Egyptians, the battle at the harbour, the library’s destruction, the clone’s final gasps, the professor’s fall, the doctor’s death. A wave of exhaustion almost bowled him over and he felt empty, saddened and … alone. That was the worst part, his isolation. If there were someone to talk to, someone to hold….

  Not just someone.

  You should call her, Caesar seemed to address him.

  “I can’t,” Felix spoke aloud. “She’s fragile and I’m no good for her.”

  Call her, Caesar insisted. I saw you together.

  “I shouldn’t. I can’t.”

  See what Fortuna says.

  Felix stared hard at the bust. After a minute, he put his hand in a pocket and pulled out four astragali — the knucklebones that he’d received from Caesar. Rolling them in his hands, he tossed them on the floor. They were light and porous, but there was a faint echo as they clattered off the marble. Felix bent and looked them over. The sides confronting him were different, all of them. Was that a good sign or …?

  That’s a Venus, Caesar seemed to address him again. The best possible throw! The love goddess approves and that can only mean one thing!

  Felix stood. He felt dizzy and cold and hot and … hopeful. Standing close to the bust, he stroked its marble cheek, then turned away and approached the exit. The rain was spitting but, over in the west, the clouds were getting thinner. Being sure to close the doors behind him, he rushed across the ruins and replenished green.

  He had another Rubicon to cross. But with Fortuna’s blessings, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Glossary

  Ab urbe condita

  From the founding of the city (i.e., Rome in 753 BCE)

  Alea iacta est

  The die is cast

  Apodyteria

  A changing room

  Arar

  The river Saone

  Balineum Fausti

  The Faustine Baths

  Caldarium

  A room containing a hot pool (in a public bath)

  Cella

  The innermost shrine of an ancient classical temple

  Cubit

  A unit of length (roughly 45 centimetres)

  Cucina

  Kitchen

  Domine

  Lord, master (a term of respect)

  Dux

  Leader, general

  Fili mi

  My son

  Hortus

  Garden

  Hostis

  Enemy

  Laconicum

  The hottest place in a Roman bath

  Lectus

  Couch

  Magister

  Teacher, master (a term of respect)

  Mehercule

  By Hercules (interjection)

  Munus

  Game, gladiatorial exhibition

  Palaestra

  Exercise grounds in a Roman bath

  Patricii

  The patricians or Roman noble families

  Pax tibi

  Peace to you (singular)

  Pax vobiscum

  Peace to you (plural)

  Peristalsis

  A colonnade around a temple

  Peristylium

  A courtyard within a Roman house

  Porticus

  A colonnade serving as an entrance to a building or temple

  Puer

  Boy (term of affection)

  Rhenus

  The river Rhine

  Rhodanus

  The river Rhone

  Sequana

  The river Seine

  Tamesis

  The river Thames

  Thermae

  Baths

  Vicus

  A street

  Vigiles

  The public guard

  Vale pater

  Hello father

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Michael Carroll for his willingness to run with another Felix Taylor adventure. I would also like to thank Shannon Whibbs for her immensely helpful corrections and editorial suggestions. The story is much stronger as a result.

  Other Dundurn Titles for Young People by Nicholas Maes

  Laughing Wolf

  A Felix Taylor Adventure (Book 1)

  978-1554883851

  $12.99

  It is the year 2213. Fifteen-year-old Felix Taylor is the last person on Earth who can speak and read Latin. In a world where technology has defeated war, crime, poverty, and famine, and time travel exists as a distinct possibility, Felix’s language skills and knowledge seem out of place and irrelevant. But are they? A mysterious plague has broken out. Scientists can’t stop its advance, and humanity is suddenly poised on the brink of eradication. The only possible cure is lupus ridens, or Laughing Wolf, a flower once common in ancient Rome but extinct for more than two thousand years. Felix must project back to Roman times circa 71 B.C. and retrieve the flower. But can he navigate through the dangers and challenges of the world of Spartacus, Pompey, and Cicero? And will he find the Laughing Wolf in time to save his family and everyone else from the Plague of Plagues?

  Transmigration

  978-1459702318

  $12.99

  Simon Carpenter is a normal sixteen-year-old living in Vancouver. Or is he normal? Any type of music drives him
crazy. When walking by a homeless person, he can see the world through the drunken man’s eyes. And when visiting a pet shop he hears a rabbit speaking to him. To solve these mysteries, he takes the rabbit home, only to discover that a foreign “presence” lives inside it. To make matters worse, this “presence” belongs to an army of souls that has plans to supplant the human race. Who are these creatures? How do they plan to accomplish their goal? How is Simon connected to them? And how can he stop them? These are questions he must answer … quickly. Nothing is what it seems to be and failure will lead to worldwide disaster.

  Crescent Star

  978-1554887972

  $12.99

  Avi Greenbaum is Jewish and lives in West Jerusalem. Moussa Shakir is Palestinian and lives in East Jerusalem. Both are fifteen years old, live without their fathers, adore their older brothers, and belong to the same soccer club. Avi commemorates the Holocaust and celebrates Israeli independence, while Moussa mourns on Nakba Day, marking the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. Their lives are parallel lines: they have everything in common and nothing at all. Each is oblivious to the other’s existence. As Avi and Moussa go about their daily routines in the spring of 2006, they face reminders of the conflict that has dogged the region for the past three generations — the security wall, suicide bombings, police operations, and the looming shadow of war. While navigating this legacy of suspicion and violence, they must decide what their own roles in the stalemate will be.