Ranks of Bronze

"Your commander is about to address you," said the clear voice in everyone's ears. "Before he does so, the floor will shift so that everyone has a clear view. Do not be concerned."

Relatively few of the thousands of men in the Main Gallery listened to what their ears could not fail to have heard. Even those few, like Vibulenus, who didn't tune out the words as just another repetition of the summons, were still trying to process the information when the back of the gallery began to rise.

There would have been panic even if every one of the soldiers understood the statement, of course.

Clodius and Vibulenus, at the front of the long room, felt only a trembling through the soles of their bare feet. The tribune looked back over his shoulder, frowning in concentration, because he thought the voice had said that The floor of the Main Gallery was slanting upward, carrying legionaries with it. As their footing shifted, men bolted backward toward the- door by which they had entered. The screams were so loud and universal as to overpower the deadening effect of the gallery's acoustics.

The ceiling was lifting in synchrony with the floor, so there was no reason to fear that the surfaces would grind the men between them like millstones. Fear is emotional, not a matter of reason, however, and fear is the most human reaction to having solid become fluid underfoot. The door at the back did not open.

The only thing that kept the panic from being as lethally crushing as an actual mating of floor and ceiling was that the movement of the gallery lessened to zero in the front. Pressure from the crowd behind would have crushed men to death against the wall, as Vibulenus had once seen happen when a chariot crash started a rush for the stadium exits. Here, the men in the middle of the gallery poised, uncertain whether to rush the door or toward the front; and those nearest the front were more bemused than frightened by what they saw happening to others.

Over all the commotion, the disembodied voice kept calling angrily, "Everyone stop crowding! There is no need for concern! Stop this at once or there will be severe disciplinary measures!"

There had been a certain amount of crowding forward by men who closed their eyes so that they would not have to see that they were pushing their fellows closer to the guards. Clodius Afer, with a grimace that reflected his own distaste for the situation, thrust himself back into the press. Snapping, "Loosen up your ranks!" the file-closer slapped men alongside the head to get their attention.

The tribune took a deep breath. He had been trying to brace himself against the men pushing him from behind. Now he turned sideways, slipping back a rank or two, and shouted, "Stop this at once, you men!"

He tried to slap a grizzled legionary whose name he did not know. The man responded with a short punch that numbed Vibulenus' whole left side and blinded him with the pain. He couldn't fall down because the crowd was too tight, and when it loosened a moment later he had enough control of his body to stay upright.

The panic had ended itself in exhaustion and pointlessness. Men who had fought a grueling battle and undergone enervating rehabilitation in the Sick Bay simply did not have enough energy to long sustain a rush to nowhere. Sheepishly, shaking loose their tunics, legionaries drifted back to the center of the long room, leaving the front and rear to those who had preferred those extremes to the neutral median in the first place.

After all, there was nothing frightening about standing in a hall whose solid floor sloped toward the front at about the angle of the aisles of a theatre.

"What in Hades happened to you, sir?" Clodius Afer demanded, dusting his palms as he strode back to the tribune. The legion's front had advanced several feet as a result of the commotion, but the toadfaced guards had relaxed again and were no longer bracing their maces out in front of them as a physical bar to the humans.

"Somebody…" Vibulenus wheezed. He forced himself to stand fully upright, though his right shoulder was still an inch high to put less tension on the ribs and muscles of his other side. "I was going to help you," the young tribune went on with careful steadiness, "but somebody hit me. I don't see him."

He glared at the nearest soldiers. Some blinked in surprise and a few turned their eyes away, but the man who threw the punch had disappeared into the crowd.

"Umm," said the file-closer, sucking in his lips. He laid his hand on Vibulenus' shoulder; in comradeship, but also to face the younger man to the front again. "Gotta be careful about, you know, things like that, sir," the veteran said. "Saw a first centurion tossed right through an oak door, the once, when he broke his swagger stick on somebody and turned his back to fetch another one. You got enough people together, you can lead 'em when there's someplace to go… but you need be real careful if you're go

There was a series of crisp flashes from within the hexagon on the wall, light like the edge-glints of swords, drawn in the sun. The figure itself spun, momentarily circular with its velocity. Around it opened a rectangular doorway tall enough to have passed one of the giant spearmen.

The Commander looked even tinier in the doorway than he had when mounted on the carnivore.

"Brave warriors," said the voice in Vibulenus' ears, and the tribune was close enough to see that the sound now synchronized with the Commander's lip movements.

The door closed behind the figure in blue, and another glitter of light from the hexagon haloed his head. The door pivoted from one side, but it did not seem to be attached in any way to the lintel or jambs. Like the vehicles which roved the valley after the battle, the panel of shimmering metal appeared to float in the air until its edges merged again seamlessly with those of the bulkhead.

"Here, on a world far from your own," the Commander continued, "you have undertaken your first duties as assets of the finest trading guild in the Federation. Your success was beyond our expectation-and your reward will be beyond your dreams."

The Commander's chest rose and fell without affecting the words Vibulenus heard, so the pause was a rhetorical one before the voice continued, "You will never grow older. Throughout eternity, you will remain as strong and agile as your are now."

There was so general a buzz of sound from the assembled Romans that the Main Gallery hissed and popped like a fire in wet leaves. The young tribune glanced sharply at Clodius, knowing-presuming, at least-that the file-closer had heard this before, when they had confronted the Commander at the gate of the sacked camp.

Clodius' muscles were still, his eyes wide open and expressionless. His face was not so much blank as masked, and the knuckles of his right hand were grinding against the calloused palm of his left in proof of physical existence.

"This gift of immortality-so to speak," said the Commander, hushing the room with anticipation of what might come next, "is a very expensive boon, one which I myself received only upon being promoted to my present post. You have earned it by the technical skill which you displayed today."

"Have you seen anybody besides him and the Medic?" Clodius Afer whispered into the tribune's ear.

"Well, the guards," Vibulenus whispered back with a quick flutter of his hand that was all the gesture he was willing to make toward the creatures in plate armor.

"You will have no duties, no responsibilities," said the Commander, "save the duty for which you have proven yourselves so splendidly fitted: war against the enemies of my guild, the enemies of galactic progress."

"Them," sneered the file-closer, and it was a moment before Vibulenus remembered that the guards were the pronoun's referrent. "They don't run this place. They're dim as six feet up a hog's ass."