Free Vestiges of Time by Richard C. Meredith Page B

circular blade about an inch into my flesh, taking out a core a few millimeters in diameter of skin and flesh and muscle tissue. During the taking of the biopsy, KaphNo, who stood at my left hand, told me the approximate number of cells that would be removed, but I’ve forgotten how many he said. Sufficiently large for their purposes, with a good loss factor figured in.
    The biopsy was over in a matter of minutes and the small wound in my thigh was closed and sealed with something I would have called “plastiskin.” They wouldn’t let me try to walk until the anesthetic had wom off, but when it had I didn’t much want to walk anyway. That’s what they hadn’t told me about: once the anesthetic wore off, it did hurt terribly for a while. You know how puncture wounds are. But I didn’t complain to anyone. Generals don’t cry, do they?
    I spent the rest of that day, my second full day in the Underground of the BrathelLanza, resting in the
    “study” of my suite, using the equipment that EnDera had finally shown me how to work, sipping cold beer —they brewed some fine beer Here and Now—smoking cigarettes, which I’d finally been able to obtain— the use of tobacco being almost unknown in NakrehVatee—and skimming through the spools of an encyclopedia, familiarizing myself with the more salient facts about the city of VarKhohs, the nation of NakrehVatee, and the world of which they were a part.
    This world, I determined, was one of a series of related Timelines that the Kriths collectively called Neo-Carthaginian. Carthage. In the Phoenician, Kart Hadasht. In the Greek of my ancestors, Karchedon. The Jewel of North Africa. The Mother of Kings—in this world at least.
    In the history of these so-called Neo-Carthaginian worlds, the tactics of the great general Hannibal had been more successful than on many another Line. Iberia had remained in the hands of Carthage during the Second Punic War. Hannibal crossed the Alps and fell on Rome with all his fury. And it had been the Romans, in the year B.C. 200, who had gone down in flames, not the descendants of the Phoenicians.
    Rome was leveled and her colonies taken over by the Carthaginians. Though later rebuilt as a satellite of Carthage and renamed, the city of Rome never gained great importance outside the Italian peninsula. The centers of power remained in the Near East and the Far East, moving to Europe only centuries later when it too was colonized and dominated by Asiatic and African peoples who had risen to power following the fall of the Cartho-Byzantine Empire.
    All this, in much more detail, I learned as I read books and scanned tapes that day, relaxing and attempting to enjoy myself.
    Late that evening, after sharing a large meal with EnDera, which she’d prepared with aid from the auto
    kitchen, I was paid a visit by Professor KaphNo, who now seemed to be a rather happy, animated old man.
    “Well, Master Harkos, we have begun,” he said, sitting on a cushion across from me, gazing into the foam in his mug of beer, which EnDera had also provided. “The replication?” I asked.
    “Not the replication exactly, but the first stages of cloning that will lead to replication. Your cells have been placed in the growth media and are already beginning to respond. We should have an ample quantity of cells to begin the actual replication processes by the end of the week, I would say.”
    “And' then?”
    The bright eyes in the deep sockets sparkled. “Then . . . well, in about ten months, General, you should have your army.”
    “The replicates will be mature then?”
    He nodded. “There are some other things you should keep in mind, however.”
    “Okay.”
    “When the replicates reach a maturation level equivalent to eighteen years of age—ML-18Y, that’s the way we say it in the labs—they will be ready to be decanted. However, you cannot expect them to be able to immediately function as would a normal human being. Their muscles will have a lot of