Italian Caprice

FINALE

"It is the treasure." Antioni spoke the words quietly and almost matter-of-factly, and no other voice broke the silence to disagree.
In Jupiter's great marble face the lapis eyes were an ethereal shade of cerulean blue, and at the front of the dais a bronze Diana stood with quiver and drawn bow as if to forbid any further worldly incursion. Gold drew the eye everywhere, and Jupiter's feet, if not quite buoyed up by clouds, rested on a marble stool supported by four golden lions the size of Clydesdale horses. But for the first few seconds it was wonder at the scene before them, and not the thought of its commercial worth, that left its discoverers open-mouthed, prisoners and gunmen gazing side by side in a moment that seemed somehow to stand outside time, and beyond human enmities.
After their initial paralysis the hands of Max, Jimmy and McCoy found the strength to set the torch beams exploring the rest of the dais, then when the little group began to speak it was in a cathedral hush, low and almost reverential.
"Cor, it's them," Jimmy whispered from the top of the steps. "An' after all these years. It's better than Disneyworld. They're wunnerful."
"Wonderful things," Virgil said softly, nodding. "Carter, the Egyptologist, said that when he first looked into Tutankhamun's tomb. But Carter never saw anything like this." He looked around, dazzled by the ranks of glittering eyes and colored drapery, the angry red ochre on Mars's face, and the gilding and silvering on a thousand mail-coats, swords and shields. "But I've never seen Roman statues so brightly coloured."
"They have been protected," Antioni replied in a low voice. "Why they are here I do not know, but I think when they come here they are almost new, cared for, perhaps straight from their temples. In museums we see such figures as thousands of years of the sun and wind have left them, but this is how they were intended. It is the greatest treasure of art ever found." He shook his head, lost for more words. "Bellissimo. Bellissimo."
"Cut the chat," McCoy snapped, and the spell was broken. "We've waited a long time for this, and we're not waiting any longer. Vincini wouldn't tell us where to find his treasure, but now the last laugh's ours. Let's get the cutting gear."
"You mean this is Carlo Vincini's treasure?" Virgil asked.
Max looked at him curiously. "You really don't know anything, do you? Pietro Vincini's treasure. But since dear Pietro's been resting in peace by beautiful Lake Reno for the last fifteen years I believe it's finders keepers."
"Wait a minute, how do you know that Pietro's dead?" Virgil stared at McCoy's high-powered pistol in growing suspicion. "Seems no-one else round here knows what happened to him, including the police."
"Yore big mouf, Max." Jimmy spat. "See wot you done now?"
"Unless Carlo Vincini didn't kill his brother after all," Virgil went on. "Unless you killed him. Unless you tried to make him tell you where the treasure was, then when he wouldn't answer you shot him dead."
"That's enough!" McCoy stepped forward, raising the pistol. "Not so bright, are you, smart guy? If you were you'd keep thoughts like that to yourself: they can seriously shorten your life. But in this case none of you are going to get the chance to squeal on us, because you aren't going to be around long enough. Line them up, Max."
"We're going to top 'em?" Jimmy asked, his mouth hanging open. "All of 'em, 'ere, just like that?" He looked around at the audience of Olympian eyes. "An' in front of them? It don't seem right."
"Shut up, or you'll keep them company," McCoy snarled. "They've seen us, they know where the stuff is, and now they know about Vincini. I said, line them up, Max!"
But Max wasn't listening. In the midst of the melee of statues a human-scale version of Jupiter sat on a long throne, together with a bronze Minerva, and a third image half-hidden at the bench's end. As Max's torch jerked towards them a powdery cloud of dust rose from the throne, and there was the sound of creaking and grating, like joints of unimaginable age being coaxed into reluctant life. While the frozen watchers struggled with varying degrees of success to come to terms with a childhood nightmare turned to shocking reality in the dark, the unidentified god at the end of the throne flexed first one metal ankle then the other, then rose ponderously to its feet.
"Aaagh, it's come alive!" Jimmy dropped his gun and stumbled backwards with a shriek. "We're dead men, Maxie, it's a judgment on us!"
"Braman!" Virgil shouted in undisguised relief. "How did he get here?"
In acknowledgement the standing copper god gave a graceful sweeping bow, then reached up and doffed its head politely, bathing the scene in a high-tension glow from its innards and leaving a nerve-bundle of wires sagging between neck and trunk. Horrified, Jimmy fell on his face, and unperturbed by the divorce from its visual systems the headless copper torso took up Jupiter's eagle-topped staff and waved it threateningly at Max.
"It's just a damn robot, you idiots," McCoy shouted. "Get it!"
All hell broke loose. Max took off for the end of the dais, letting fly a wildly inaccurate round from the Carlsson over his shoulder as he ran. The robot, its head unit back in place but misaligned, giving it a permanent squint to the left, pursued him, searchlight on and arms outstretched. Jimmy ran in their wake screaming, though whether in terror or in an attempt to distract the enemy it was impossible to tell, and Antioni and Il Dottore dived for the dais as the pistol pumped bullets down the line of McCoy's torch beam with a low, dry cough.
Virgil, grabbing up Jimmy's dropped gun and running for cover, collided in the dark with one of the cistern's supporting pillars, then a ricochet pulverized the stone inches from his eyes and he staggered backwards, blinded. Something like an angry bee zipped past him as he blinked the dust away, then a shaking hand fastened onto his shoulder and Alfredo pulled him to the ground.
"Your robot!" Antioni lifted his head to yell above the scream and whang of wildly flying shots. "Command him to attack. Has he no weapons?"
"He's got a laser gun." Virgil raised his own head as far as Alfredo's restraining arm allowed. "But he's not programmed to use it against people. All he can do is grab them, if he doesn't get shot to pieces first." He checked the appropriated revolver for ammunition, then flattened himself on the stones as a round from the automatic whistled directly overhead. "What we have to do is knock out that pistol. With that thing out of action at least he'll have a chance of keeping them occupied while we get away."
The pursuit had reached the far end of the dais, Braman embracing Jimmy, who was kicking and howling, and Max firing uselessly at the robot's armour-plated head. McCoy stood a short distance off aiming more considered shots at Braman's back, where a thinner shell surrounded the vital central processing unit.
"But to hit the gun from here it is impossible," Antioni objected. "It is the too small target."
"Don't worry," Virgil said grimly, disengaging Alfredo's arm and raising himself on his elbows to sight along the revolver's muzzle, "I'm a pretty good shot."
In the gyrating lights the pistol was a vague shape protruding from the end of McCoy's stiffly outstretched arm, and Virgil waited for the brief illumination of a wheeling torch beam, adjusted his aim, and squeezed the trigger. As its stiff mechanism tightened the Carlsson gave an unexpected buck, and the bullet, departing from the path carefully calculated to send the pistol flying from its owner's grip, instead hit Braman's head and bounced into the darkness above, covering the little tableau of antagonists in a theatrical snow of dust. He pulled the trigger again, but the Carlsson jammed.
McCoy whirled round. The pistol intruded into the dazzling cone of his torchlight like a shark circling the golden ceiling of light over deep water: just as small, remote and deadly. Virgil saw it move, gauging the range to Antioni and Il Dottore behind him, to Alfredo by his side and finally to himself, still propped on his elbows gripping the useless revolver. It made the gunman's intentions as clear as if he had voiced them himself: first you, and then the others.
"Run!" he heard his own voice shout, and he tried to roll aside for the temporary cover of darkness, but found his muscles rigid, clamped steel-tight. Not that it mattered. The bullet, like the bull in the field, would certainly make it to its objective before he could.
Then two things happened almost simultaneously. Alfredo jumped to his feet shouting, the pistol wavered indecisively and its bullet amputated the tip of Mercury's staff in an explosion of vaporized marble. Next as the gun jerked determinedly back to its original target Braman ejected Jimmy, still yelling, and turned to face an awkward problem.
The robot's compact central processor was capable of making its mind up in nanoseconds about most things, but now two imperatives jockeyed for position, and the indicator panel behind Braman's radio-speaker nose flashed on and off with increasing rapidity.
Of the group of human beings in the darkness one set, subgroup friends, was about be annihilated by the other, subgroup enemies. Subgroup friends had to be protected, doubly so as a direct order had very recently been received to that effect, but as most of subgroup enemies were out of immediate reach the only possible action was to shoot. However subgroup enemies also fell into group human beings, which were sacrosanct, therefore the only possible action was to do nothing, sacrificing subgroup friends. With a light smoke rising from the audio sensors on either side of its head the robot strode swiftly into the torchlit no-man's-land between the opposing parties like an actor sweeping onstage for the final apocalyptic scene of a classical tragedy, then it stretched both arms to their fullest extent, grabbed hold of two great stone pillars, and heaved. "Braman! No!" Virgil yelled, but it was too late.
Ever afterwards Virgil fervently wished he couldn't remember exactly what happened next, but the sight of the collapsing columns was etched firmly into his memory, together with the unpleasant sound of screams that were almost, but not quite, drowned out by the thunderous roar of falling masonry. All light was extinguished, perhaps by the destruction of its source or perhaps by the choking cloud of stone and marble dust that rose to thicken the air, but from somewhere in the blackness nearby an incantation in Italian, possibly a prayer, gave the hope that at least he wasn't going to be the sole survivor. Silence followed the last stone down but for a moment he stayed prudently where he was, flat on his face with his arms crossed over his head, until a shallow wave of water washed past his cheek turning the dust to mud, and he sat up, coughing.
Near his hand a lost torch still shone in the water, and he picked it up: by its mud-spotted light he saw Alfredo in his new role as hero helping Il Dottore to his feet, and he breathed a sigh of relief as Antioni's voice came from the darkness behind him.
"Per amore di Dio! What happened?"
"Braman brought the roof down." Virgil looked up, but the unrelieved darkness overhead suggested that a more accurate statement might be that the blocks lining the cistern's ceiling had fallen; presumably a thick roof of rock and earth still remained. He got to his feet and surveyed his companions anxiously. "Is everyone okay?"
Antioni nodded. "We are alright. But I think that is more, as you say, than can be said for the men of the guns."
"Yes. And I'm afraid it's more than can be said for Braman." Virgil swung the torch round, and they saw that the end of the dais had gone, hidden under a mountain range of broken blocks that stretched beyond the light and on into the depths of the cistern. Most of the statues were untouched, but the great figure of Mars had been toppled by the fall, its severed head lying upside down on top of the debris like a monument to the futility of conflict. Of the gunmen, their weapons or the robot there was no sign.
He frowned down at the cold flood creeping up round his ankles. "This water's rising even faster now. The statues are in mint condition, so I'd guess it doesn't usually get this high. There was an outlet tunnel just beyond that rock fall, could be the rubble's blocked it up."
"Then we must hurry!" Antioni grabbed his arm. "With no outlet the whole cistern it may fill. Perhaps we swim for a while like the corks in the wine-vat, then..." He snapped his fingers. "In this roof there is no bunghole. We must find the escape shaft at once."
"But the route to that's behind the rock fall, too." Virgil swung the torch beam around in despair. As it passed over the statues a single star of light lingered oddly on the tip of Diana's bow, and he turned his eyes upwards. Just above the giant Neptune's ear a tiny chink of moonlight perforated the darkness, and an almost invisible shaft of silver slanted down.
"Look! There's a gap in the roof." He pointed. "Maybe that collapse did leave us with a chance, after all." Beneath the chink of light Neptune's arm jostled Jupiter's broad shoulder, from which tiers of marble drapery, possibly climbable, stepped down to the great stone throne. He turned the torch beam onto the lion footstool. "Okay. You three had better start climbing, while I check that rubble. If anyone's still alive under there with the water rising at this rate they won't have a hope, and we can't leave them to die like that."
"Is the fool's errand." Antioni shook his head as a new surge of water brought the level rapidly up to their knees. "No-one else can have survived. There is no time."
"No," Il Dottore agreed, "is too late. Listen, the stones they move! The water lifts them as if they are driftwood; we are finished."
The torch beam reached the rubble just in time to show one massive stone block tilt forwards with a rumble, shouldered up by some emerging powerful force. But instead of the expected torrent from the gap behind it a fountain of blue sparks was followed by a blaze of light. Virgil stared, then sprang forward, splashing across the dais with a shout. "That isn't water, that's Braman! Come on!"
Scratched, dented and with one claw torn away to leave a stump intermittently sputtering low-tension sparks, the robot was already dragging a dazed Max from a lifesaving hollow that had been formed by the falling rocks. With less personal padding Jimmy had suffered more bruising, and kept up a steady low whine of complaint as Alfredo put a supporting shoulder beneath his arm. Using the pink pocket-handkerchief Il Dottore swiftly did what he could for McCoy's shattered right hand, but shook his head eloquently.
"Perhaps the world now is the safer place," Antioni suggested. "But quickly! He will certainly be no further danger if he drown, and neither will we. We must get to the throne of Giove."
They fought their way across the dais through rapidly deepening water, Braman encouraging the gunmen with an occasional prod from the spitting copper stump. As they reached Jupiter's footstool the familiar groan echoed through the cistern again in a dismal accompaniment to Jimmy's keening, but behind it was a new sound, a distant but slowly swelling crash and boom, like a strong wind approaching through a forest.
"A wave!" Virgil struggled to hold up the torch and support Il Dottore in his climb out of the breast-high water. "A wave coming down the tunnels! What we've seen so far was just some gentle leading water; this must be the main flow. Hurry, climb for your lives! If we're not clear of the water when that crest hits we'll never get out at all."
Suiting action to words he followed the others up, scrambling for a foothold on the wet stone, then the oncoming roar drowned out all other sound, and he barely had time to throw his arms around a golden lion's neck before a wall of black water crashed over them.