It had taken ten years of hard work, and a fair amount of jaw-jaw, but the pagan Haveners and the radioactive mutants of the Kingdom of Mutants and the Christian farmers of Pleasantdale had joined together to form a new society.  The mutants had contributed their psionic mastery (not caused by the radioactivity as they had thought), and the Haveners had added in their vast trade network they had constructed to get them slaves (but it was even more useful for decent merchants), and the farmers had provided food for body and for thought as the Free Confederation of Cities had risen based on their food and their tolerance of others.  All this had been necessary to build a hydropower dam to provide electricity to free the cryofrozen experts of a previous era.

And with their coming into the new post-apocalyptic future, the mutants had started to receive the gene therapy they so desperately needed, and the farmers got effective growing methods, and the amazonian Haveners got looms.

I prepared to enjoy the fruits of my labors with much thanksgiving, but I was needed elsewhere, and so the upper path above the dam failed under my running feet as I went on a practise run.  And I fell nearly a thousand feet to the surface of the lake.  At that speed, hitting water is roughly like hitting concrete.

I was grateful that I’d been able to recharge my Lekostian cybergear, and recover my Duffel Bag of Doom with its assortment of lethal surprises.  However, I was still short on Unfolding Honeycomb Fletchette Darts for my modified Uzi.  They would not have the ability to make them in this world for at least a century, so I’d done without.

And then I hit the water–head first since there was really no reason to prolong things.

And I woke in a new universe, as always.

Dry, stifling heat reached me first, followed by a faint chemical oder almost overwhelmed by the rank miasma of body wastes that filled the air.  I stood up from the cheap, green carpet surrounded by four walls of glass, and open air that spread out toward mountains in the far distance on my left.  In front of me, a metal panel and faux wood desk provided a minimal bar to the sight of the dead man’s body.

He lolled back bonelessly in a wood and fabric chair.  His head hung back, and his mouth hung open.  While he was not a handsome man, there was an essential quality of courage in his face.  Wrinkles besieged his open mouth, and a fringe of white hair crowned his head except near his dreadful wound.

He wore a toga over his tunic.  The Roman toga is frequently square, and it looked woolen.  His tunic underneath it went down to his knees, and had broad stripes on it.

Tunica laticlavia, I remembered.  My Latin is gutter Latin since the last time I visited the Eternal City, it had been in the second century after Christ, and I’d spent my time in the rougher parts of town before joining with another verser, Captain Charles, in an attempt to assasinate the current emperor.  But I remembered that senators wore the tunica laticlavia.

To double check, I went to my knees, and looked at his feet.  They were brown sandals with an ornament, in this case, an oak leaf, on the heel.  That settled it.  The dead man was a senator, which meant very important.

In my history, one old man had went out to meet a Syrian army outside of Alexandria, and instructed the invader to choose whether to leave or invade.  The general at the head of his army had asked for a day to make up his mind.  The old man had drawn a circle in the dust around the general, and told him he had until he stepped out of that circle.

The general with his invading army in front of an undefended city left rather than face down an old man…from Rome.  Which was the ticket, really.  For a very long time, being Roman meant something extraordinary.

Now, by this time, you may be wondering why I had not spent more time examining the guy’s body, or bemoaning his fate.  The answer is I did not know what sort of world I was in.  Some worlds, if you’re found with a dead body, they expect you to bury the guy with your own coin, but unless their are witnesses determined to come forward, no one is sent to trial.  In other worlds, you’re considered ritually contaminated, and the community needs to be purified by tossing you alive on top a pyre with the dead body.  So finding out the nature of the world was of vital importance to me.

But I was seriously starting to think I was in major trouble.  There was no certainty that these Romans were like my Romans.  After all, the Multiverse is a very big place.  But I knew where I’d be placing my bets.

The intense heat was slightly mollified by a bit of wind which tinkled the windchime dangling from the plate glass window to the left of the senator’s desk.  The wind chimes were perfect circles with some odd organically shaped bit on the upper edges of each.  It probably was some reflection about the nature of the almost pure mathematics of the heavens, and so I moved on to examine the wound.

His head lay back, and looking down on him, I could see a hole through his head.  The scent of cooked meat wafted off him.  The drillhole went down the center of where his left eye used to be, and continued into his skull.  The back end of his skull had exploded off, and was now decorating the floor. So I was pretty certain he had died in this chair, and not been toted here, and dumped.

Which was a problem because killing someone in a glass room is difficult to do without someone seeing you.

To his right, on the faux wooden desk, lay a small energy weapon.  Apparently, he had raised it too his left eye, and blown out the back of his skull.  And then his arm flopped back down, and the gun skittered on to the desk.

It was physically possible I decided.  Although it was a bit unlikely.  I looked around for a bit more evidence of suicide.

To his right, some sort of communication device lay on the floor.  It too was cheap, not like our senator’s clothing.  Carefully, I picked it up, and heard nothing but a hum.  It was loud enough to be a deliberately produced hum.

It had a small LCD screen which said, in Latin, of course, "One Call Recieved. Hangup?"

Interesting.  He had been talking on what looked to be a cellular phone when he died.  Which could be read as against the idea of suicide, but some suicides liked to torment the survivor by making them watch or listen.  However, while it is hard to deduce character from the lines in a person’s face, and even harder once they are dead and shot in the face–still the victim didn’t strike me as blatantly malevolent.  I’d chalk that one down against suicide, but faintly.

I heard some noise from outside and below, and looked out the windows.  Four windows of plate glass surrounded me.  This was truly a house without walls or privacy.  Looking out was looking down.  Below me some sort of factory with outer walls guarding a courtyard was bustling with people like a beehive smacked with a stick.

The factory had a grandness to it with noble columns and pediments at the main entrance, but the outer curtain wall told another story.  As did the hovercar, I saw below me.

I wondered if the hovercar could have flown up here, but a closer look at it made me shake my head.  It was strictly a ground-effect vehicle, and not an aircar.  Although that made me wonder about helicopters….

Below me, in a wing of the factory off to the right of the dead man, I saw a telescope.  And then another one a bit further on.  On the opposite side, likewise.

The back wall, the one facing away from the factory looked out over undisturbed grasslands.  And I got the idea of the local culture.  This factory was a fort/economic producer/seduction device.  The local tribes resisted the Romans enough to make it unsafe for people to live in suburbs and the like.

The factory was the equivalent of a medieval city-state.  And since they had curtain walls for defense, that pretty much ruled out gunpowder cannons for the attackers since curtain walls are meat to cannons.  By the way, curtain walls are what people think of typically for castle walls.

It was very interesting that Romans who were extremely effective at subduing the local populace, and evidently had a serious technological advantage were still not secure enough to move out from behind walls.

Evidently I was in some sort of tower since I saw nothing supporting me, and the ground was a good two hundred feet below.  This would be a difficult place to escape even for someone many people called the Ghost.  And that made it even harder for someone to sneak in here, unless that someone was say a guard with a right to be here….

Now, why did I think of a guard?

Perhaps the locals were masters at subterfuge, and at slipping into places they were not supposed to?  Perhaps the Romans faced the equivalent of the Ninja or the Sioux here?  Still, the only pre-cannon weapon that could do that kind of damage would have to be something like a heated iron poker.  If you heated it up red-hot, and stabbed the enemy in the eye it would cook the brain like this.

There was something wrong there, I felt it, but I couldn’t see it.

Okay, then, what about if the Ninja-Sioux had stolen a Roman weapon, and used it?  But a plasma torch is a very noisy weapon.  It quite literally roars.  In some cultures, they call it ‘the breath of the dragon’.

Wouldn’t someone have come running?  Or maybe the Romans in this timeline had discovered some sort of harmonic cancelization trick to damp out the noise?

My problem was no one except a ninja or an approved person could have gotten in here.  And unless no one truly cared, the roar of a dragon would have drawn them.

Hopelessly, I went over to the windchime, and felt faintly cooler until I stuck my hand to the convex shape of a chime.  It burned me.  And when I jerked free, some of the organic material came free as well.

And it burned as well.

Parafin, I think.  I rubbed it off on my pants, and tried to use my psi to heal myself to no avail. 

I went over the carpeted floor with a keen, sweeping eye, and immediately spotted the door in the floor, and opened it.  It led out onto a small slick metal platform guarded by a single rail from plummet into the open-air elevator shaft, or into the metal skeletonwork of an Eiffel Tower like structure.  But it was more like an outsized fire tower with the building on top of it.

You see, I was getting curious.  For what reason would they have this high status man in this glass box atop a tower, way out of the way?  I scratched my head on this one.  There was no sign of proper control functions.  A hovercar pretty much necessitated computerized screens, and I had not seen any monitors in the room. 

Of course, they might be hidden.  Frequently high-status people like to pretend to their underlings that they do nothing while they are secretly working very hard. And so they deliberately conceal the amount of work, and the tools of work they use.  Of course, then there is the bunch of high-status folk who don’t need to pretend.

I considered trying to flee by scampering down the skeletonwork, but I counted not ten or twenty, but fourty-five men with guns pointing them my way.  I had been seen.  Of course, I had not really been trying to hide which I was beginning to think had been a serious error of judgement.

Retreating to the glass-walled office, I considered taking up the energy pistol on the desk for my defense.  It was cool to the touch which I found odd.  I recognized the basic design.  Plasma torches are notoriously short ranged, and they melt if fired too often. But even one shot was enough to make them significantly hot.

Sighing, I made ready with prayers, and felt happier for a moment to feel the air conditioning finally click on.  Evidently from my look at it under the desk, it was on some sort of timer. Evidently, the Senator was one of those lucky to enjoy heat, because he had no sign of sweat, and I was making my shirt damp.

Further checks of the desk revealed a foam padded gun box with the cardboard lid left hastily off the top of the box.  It seemed to be unusual for the man as he seemed a precise fellow even if he had horrible green carpet.

In the center drawer, I saw a letter in Latin.  I struggled through it.

Dear Friends,

I know that I have brought shame on myself, and so I do this to recover my honor.  Fear not for me, for I am with Apollo now.

May my house prosper, and my eldest son Lucas, and all my children, and my wives and concubines know a measure of peace and honor now that I have left this too cruel earth behind, driven from it by enemies who showed me a cruel mercy so that I would see what I must do.  I go to my ancestors.

Patroculus Graachii, Senator of Rome representing the Sippi Plains. 

I looked at the letter, and at the man.  He didn’t write it.  Maybe he might have committed suicide, but if he had he would have scorched his enemies one last time.  I could not see him basically saying "my enemies were right" with that bit about ‘cruel mercy’.  But I wasn’t sure I was right.

Then I went back down to await the elevator.  It opened, and as expected, burly men in red tunics with gold-plated Kevlar came pourng out of the small room to take me prisoner with plasma torch, and gladius.

I tried to talk to them friendly-like. 

They hit me over the head, repeated with the prominent bulbs on the base of their hilts.  My gladius was not here, but it had no such hilt.  But then it was not designed as a crowd control weapon.

I woke up chained to a wall, and in darkness.  So, I slept off my beating, and was quite cheerful when the jailer came by to feed me brown bread, and water.

"Its not every day we have an assasin in our little factory-town."  He spoke, and I had him repeat himself thrice while I tried to get the hang of the language drift.  It seemed that the Latins had added tonality to their language, at least in part.  It was obviously a bit of a hack job like Modern English is.  But as in the case of Modern English and all its hybridizations, this kludge gave a greater subtlety and power that the original Latin had been lacking.

"Would it help if I said I didn’t do it?"

"Hah, now there’s a laugh.  No one can figure out how you convinced the Grand Senator to sign the suicide note since he was such a stuck-up, snobby, ‘I’ll die before I bend my principles’ sort of jerk.  You tell me how, and I’ll get you wine and cheese to add to your daily menu.  Actually no one knows how you got up there to plasma torch his face with his own gun."

He looked curiously at me, and I shrugged.

"Well, you’ll be talking soon enough.  They say crucifixtion makes even the strong man groan."

He left, and I shivered in fear.

Crucifixtion.  The most dire and painful method of inflicting death the extremely inventive Ancient World had come up with is what I’ve heard.  Now, I’ve never been crucified, but I was more than willing to take others words on this subject.  No personal experience was required.

And in the tradition of Ellery Queen: 1) You have the facts needed to tell how the man was killed (although to make it easier, I’ll allow questions of Tadeusz in his dungeon).  2)For a bonus, why was the man up in the tower in the first place?