"What happens when the dictator goes wild? He always has."
The smile was there again. "You're not quite ready for that," Ilaria told him. "But, it has been taken into consideration."
Out of the corner of his eye, Jay saw the slight puff2 of Ilaria's chest, the self-satisfied square of his shoulders, the quick set of his jaw3. He wondered what part Tribune Kevin Ilaria played in the 'dictator control' this world had provided.
"The system has worked and is working. See this?"
They turned a corner in the corridor and faced a great domed4 room. On the far wall hung a white tapestry5 of something like 40 x 40 foot dimensions. On it, emblazoned in letters of red and yellow made to look like flame, were the characters PPB. In the lower right-hand corner, in white outlined with blue, was the same PR that Ilaria wore. Jay waited for the Tribune's explanation.
"PpB stands for Pax per Bello," Ilaria explained. "Peace through War. That slogan was written in 1967 by Julius and adapted in 1971 as official."
"Julius?"
"Yes. The first Dictator."
Things were beginning to click in Jay's mind.
"I think I know what PR stands for," he said. "Pax Romana."
As always, Ilaria smiled. "That's right," he said.
The command-car marked with the PR symbol pulled over and stopped.
"What is it? Who are you?" the driver demanded.
The Captain on the seat beside him peered into the blackness and cursed.
The man who had waved the vehicle to a halt walked away.
"Here!" the Captain cried. "What in blazes is going on here? Why'd you stop us? Centurion6! Stop that man!"
The two Centurions7 in the back seat looked at the Captain for a moment, then they both jumped out and ran after the man.
An ellipsoidal grey thing streaked8 out of the darkness, landed in the driver's lap and thudded to the floor of the car. The Captain threw open his door and started to climb out. The driver bent9 over to see what it was.
At that moment the driver, the command-car and the Captain blew up.
The silence that followed was broken by the blast of a submachine gun as it struck down the two centurions.
"Sir, what is it?" asked a guard anxiously.
"Terribly quiet out here; something's up," the Lieutenant12 muttered calmly.
There were seven of them. The Lieutenant, the Centurion, and five legionaries. They had grown accustomed to the quiet life of garrison men in a calm, conquered city. When there is nothing tangible13 to be guarded, a guard's life is a dull one. The guns they carried were the symbol of their authority, and had never been used for any other purpose.
They looked around. The dirty, once-white buildings rose close on either side. There was no moon. There was no sound. The darkness and the silence could have been cut with a knife.
The Lieutenant grinned. He didn't feel much like grinning. He spoke14. He didn't feel much like talking, either.
"This darkness is thick," he said. "You could cut it with a knife. Wish I had a knife."
He got a knife. The men had just started to laugh when the Lieutenant got it.
Between his shoulder blades.
As the Lieutenant toppled forward, the Centurion dodged15 close against the dirty stone wall and yelled "Spread out!"
They killed a lot of the shadowy, green-clad attackers, but there were only six of them and they were cornered. When the enemy drove a tank into the alley16 and sprayed them with its mounted gun they died.
"Take their weapons," said a quiet voice.
The half-track rolled to a stop.
"Where, Sir?" the driver wanted to know.
"No, Sir." The driver craned his neck. There was nothing but barren rubble18 and bomb craters19 and torn, twisted metal and ruined buildings.
"There are all sorts of old automobiles20 lying around out there, Sir," the driver volunteered.
"Yes, and they've been here long enough to get good and rusty," the Captain snapped. "This is something else."
The driver craned his neck. There was nothing but rubble.
Eight men in the back of the half-track leaped to their feet when they heard the faint clicking of KCN-H2SO4 guns and the buzz of an old gamma gun and the sharp bark of a very old sub machine-gun. But a grenade landed on the truck and another rolled under it.
"Take their weapons, if there are any left," said a quiet voice.
And in the more peaceful city of Louisville, Jay Welch was introduced to Kevin Ilaria's best friend, his adjutant at Standiford Field.
"Jason is adjutant," Ilaria explained. "And one of the few 'field soldiers' who manages to get along with Caesar's Pretorian Prefect, Lamberti. How he does it, I don't know. Lamberti's absolutely unbearable23."
"Prejudice. Middle-class prejudices," Rinaldi grinned. He was short and very dark with a lot of black hair.
Ilaria's left cheek cracked into a long dimple as he smiled. "He picks on me because I'm a serious psychologist."
Rinaldi laughed. "As a psychologist, Kevin, you're an excellent bridge player. As a soldier—"
"Just remember who's got three bars and who has two."
Rinaldi waved his hand and shrugged24. "They pass 'em out to psych boys wholesale," he said, and ducked Ilaria's swing. "Slow reflexes, too," he added as he turned to go.
Ilaria stopped him at the door and murmured a few sentences.
Jay caught something about sabotage25 at Standiford. Rinaldi seemed to be attributing it to the Commanding Officer there.
"Nice guy," Jay said as the door closed behind Rinaldi.
"You said it. Good officer, too. He'll root out the bird who's playing around out there. Can't figure out why it's being done."
"Little ones always exist, I guess. Have you finished with the history films?"
"I've seen them, yes. I'm still trying to digest them."
"The language give you much trouble?"
"Quite a bit, but I think I got most of it.
"One man," Jay went on wonderingly. "One man. A Captain in the Italian Army.
"The Communist forces in Indo-China had been driven back and Captain—then Major—Lollabrigida went in after them.
"The defeat was becoming so terrible that the Kremlin dealt itself a playing hand rather than the dummy27 it had been playing. Red forces came piling in. Lollabrigida and his Italian troops stopped them cold. Then he seemed to sway. And, when the Commies pounced28 for the kill, they were trapped, pocketed, and annihilated29.
"American newspapers and commentators30 began to call Major Julius Lollabrigida 'Julius Caesar.' Italy became big overnight. The Big Three became Russia, the United States, and Italy. Lollabrigida appealed to America—sometime in there they made him a Colonel, but he was actually telling the Generals and the Italian government what to do—for aid in going ahead aggressively.
"And America turned him down. They were still playing 'wait and see.' They waited. They waited too long. The Commies got tired of waiting around and sent a couple of jet bombers31 with A-bombs."
"Now you're telling me things," Ilaria interrupted. "I'm pretty shady on that period myself."
Jay shrugged. "It was after my time. All I know is what the films show. Two planes, each with a seven-man crew, and each carrying one atomic bomb, were dispatched from an airbase somewhere near Juneau." Jay stopped.
"And?"
The man from 1954 choked. It was hard to be objective about this. It wasn't so easy for him to pass off as the film had done.
"And—" he hesitated.
"It's over, Jay. It's done with. It doesn't even concern you anymore. It belongs to a past era."
"One was headed for New York. The other struck farther inland ... for Washington. The first one was shot down by an F-117 border patrol plane. The other one got through. It—it levelled the capitol. Almost completely. The White House and the Pentagon were destroyed."
Ilaria sat quietly and waited. Jay didn't go on.
"Thus removing the United States of America, as such, from a prominent position in the world picture," Ilaria said.
"Yes. I can't understand it. Everything just folded up. SAC didn't even get off the ground. And Colonel Lollabrigida, by then Commander-in-Chief of the UN forces, sent fifty planes, each with one A-bomb, over the Kremlin. One was shot down over Vladivostok, but the bombardier pulled the firing pin as the ship crashed and most of Vladivostok was destroyed. Six other planes made it to their destinations and dropped their loads. I can't remember the cities ... one was a new super airbase near Moscow. Five of the planes returned. None had managed to reach Moscow. Half the world was in ruins. The Pope begged that the War be stopped."
Ilaria snorted. "He knew they'd hit Rome!"
Jay looked at him. "Is that what you think?"
Jay stared. What changes had taken place in religious philosophy in this hard-bitten world of 2054?
Kevin Ilaria shrugged, smiling. "That's unimportant. Let's go on with the history lesson. Then what?"
"Uh—oh, yes. As I remember Julius Lollabrigida, to be trite33, launched an 'all-out offensive' against Communist forces everywhere. People were afraid of Russia, but they were afraid of Lollabrigida and Rome, too. So they joined him. Aid poured into the UN. Czechoslovakia was taken and Poland and Hungary and finally only the old Russia of pre World War II days was left. And in they went.
"Then Lollabrigida's saboteurs exploded an atomic bomb in the heart of Moscow. After that it was pretty easy sledding."
"Astounding34 how a nation seems to fall apart when its capitol and its leaders are gone," Ilaria remarked.
"After the demolition36 of Moscow and other parts of the USSR, Italy stood at the top. General of the Armies Julius Lollabrigida marched back into Italy and into Rome and into the capitol and up on a pedestal. He stood as Italy's utter ruler. His last name was lost and replaced by 'Caesar II.' He was named Dictator.
"From mighty37 Rome, Caesar sent out linguists38 and anthropologists and ethnologists and psychologists and military men and others. In twenty years, twenty peaceful years, Italian had become the language of the world. A few minor39 uprisings in America and in Japan were smashed. Julius Caesar II was World Dictator of the Republic of Earth. Someone in America denied him and was torn to pieces by the people. Someone in Italy spread literature of dissension and was hunted down and liquidated40 by Caesar's personal police, the Pretoriani. And so it went.
"Caesar adopted a prominent Air Force Colonel who became Caesar III on Lollabrigida's death. Each year on his birthday men were silent. No business was transacted41. No one left his home. Except blue-and-silver clad soldiers, wearing PR armbands. Caesar's Pretorians. No one dared venture out.
"During the reign42 of Caesar III, every person in the world changed his last name to an Italian one. The Ali bens and the Chicos and the Andres and the Fritzes and the Johns became Marianos and Roccos and Caldinis and Campisanos and diManos."
There was silence for a moment.
"The thing I can't understand," Jay mused43, "is why in all these years there hasn't been a 'bad' Caesar, or an uprising."
"What do you mean by 'bad' Caesar?"
Jay shrugged. "In the first Pax Romana there was Caligula, who was insane. Nero, who preferred artistic44 diversions to politics. There was Galba, who didn't know what was going on. And so on. And on and on. Your three dictators so far seem to have done excellent jobs. They seem to be damned conscientious45 leaders."
"When you re-create something," Ilaria told him, "you try to eliminate its faults."
"Of course. But what if Caesar's son or a Caesar's adopted son goes bad?" Jay elucidated46.
"So far we haven't had that problem to deal with. But we're ready. Each time a new Dictator comes to power, one thousand top military men draw folded pieces of plastipaper from a 'bowl.' On twenty of these are X's. The others contain O's. The twenty X's are a secret organization, sworn to kill the Dictator if it should become necessary. When Caesar, as you say, 'goes bad'."
"Brilliant!" Jay breathed. "And he—Caesar—never knows who they are?"
"No one ever knows," Ilaria said. "Not even the members. They remain in contact, but none ever knows who the others are."
Jay remembered Ilaria's previous mention of the system, and the unconscious swelling47 of the Tribune's chest at the time. "You're one," he said.
Ilaria was caught off guard. "I—yes," he said. "I won't ask how you knew."
"A guess. Then you've been a—whatever it's called—for nine years, during Caesar V's reign."
"That's right."
"And you don't know any of the others?"
"Only one. I found out accidentally. He—" Ilaria stopped.
Jay shrugged. "I won't ask any more questions along that line," he promised. "But I still can't believe there haven't been any uprisings!"
"None. Caesar II died of a heart attack. Caesar III had a brain tumor48 which we learned about too late. His son never had a chance to prove himself, other than that he was brave and foolish. He swam the Rubicon at its widest point, then walked to Rome in his shorts in the dead of winter. He died of pneumonia49. Caesar V, our Dictator today, is strong and quiet. He holds the Empire firmly unified50. But he does nothing extraordinary. And he is too lenient51."
"I just can't conceive of such perfection!"
Kevin Ilaria smiled. He walked over to the window and peered out. "You couldn't. But this is the perfect government. Everyone is satisfied. One ruler. One capitol. One army. One language. One nationality. One world. One religion."
"I realize—" Jay halted. "One religion?" he demanded.
"Yes."
"What is it?" He found himself afraid of the answer. The indications were there, in plain sight. He guessed it before Kevin Ilaria turned from the window and said:
"Caesarism."
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收听单词发音
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1
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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4
domed
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| adj. 圆屋顶的, 半球形的, 拱曲的 动词dome的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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centurion
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| n.古罗马的百人队长 | |
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centurions
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| n.百人队长，百夫长（古罗马的军官，指挥百人）( centurion的名词复数 ) | |
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8
streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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9
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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11
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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12
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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13
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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14
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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15
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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16
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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crater
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| n.火山口，弹坑 | |
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18
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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19
craters
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| n.火山口( crater的名词复数 )；弹坑等 | |
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20
automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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21
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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22
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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24
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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25
sabotage
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| n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏 | |
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26
factions
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| 组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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27
dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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28
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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29
annihilated
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| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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30
commentators
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| n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员 | |
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31
bombers
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| n.轰炸机( bomber的名词复数 )；投弹手；安非他明胶囊；大麻叶香烟 | |
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32
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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33
trite
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| adj.陈腐的 | |
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34
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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35
morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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36
demolition
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| n.破坏,毁坏,毁坏之遗迹 | |
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37
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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38
linguists
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| n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家 | |
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39
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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40
liquidated
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| v.清算( liquidate的过去式和过去分词 )；清除（某人）；清偿；变卖 | |
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41
transacted
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| v.办理（业务等）( transact的过去式和过去分词 )；交易，谈判 | |
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42
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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43
mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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44
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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45
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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46
elucidated
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| v.阐明，解释( elucidate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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48
tumor
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| n.（肿）瘤，肿块(英)tumour | |
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49
pneumonia
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| n.肺炎 | |
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50
unified
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| (unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的 | |
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51
lenient
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| adj.宽大的，仁慈的 | |
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