Ultima (30 page)

This small hub of industry and provision was set in the astounding panorama of Yupanquisuyu.

As the Romans bickered around the shops, Mardina once more walked alone, away from the station
.
Though by now it was evidently full night in the habitat, it was not entirely dark; the residual glow seeping from the light pools was clear and white, but so faint that colors were washed out. It was like the moonlight of Terra, Mardina thought, and no doubt that was by deliberate design. She could make out the sleeping landscape all around her, the terraces and fields. A little way ahead, though, the country began to break up into hills and valleys that were lakes of shadows. They would be descending soon, then, to lower country, and thicker air.

And to the left and right, the uplift of the landscape was easily visible, even in the night. The ColU had told her that a round world with the curvature of this cylinder would have a horizon only a mile away, compared to three miles on Terra. So, well within a mile, she could see the land
tipping up
, the trees and houses visibly tilted toward her. And the rise went on and on—there was no horizon, only the mist of distance—until the land became a tremendous slope, bearing rivers and lakes at impossible angles. Soon the detail was lost in darkness, and in the thickness of the faintly misty air. But then, as she raised her eyes further, she saw the roof of the world, an inverted landscape glowing with pinpricks of light. It looked like the dark side of a world as seen from space, with threads of roads and the spark of towns clearly visible beyond its own layer of air and clouds. At this altitude the air was so clear it was as if she were looking through a vacuum.

The
apu
joined her. He was chewing some kind of processed green leaf; he offered her some, but, moving subtly away from him, she declined. He said, “Quite a sight if you're not used to it. And even if you are, it astounds you sometimes.”

“It doesn't look like the other side of a cylinder. It's like another world suspended over this one.”

The ColU murmured in her ear, “That's natural. The human eye was evolved for spying threats and opportunities in the horizontal plain, and so vertical perceptions are distorted—”

“Hush,” she murmured.

Ruminavi looked at her quizzically.

She said, “I can see we'll be coming down from the
puna
soon.”

“Yes. Which is why they put this
chuclla
here. The last stop before the descent. A place to acclimatize to the thinner air, if you're coming the other way.”

“And the land below . . .”

“It's a kind of coastal strip. The rivers pour down off the
puna
and spread out, and you have sprawling valleys, immense deltas. Very fertile country, nothing but farmers and fishers. They grow peppers, maize. Should take us half the time we traveled already to cross.”

“Five more hours? And then what? You said a coastal strip. The coast of what?”

“Why, of the ocean. Goes all the way around the waist of the world.” He pointed to the sky, in the direction they'd been traveling, the direction he and his soldiers called east. “You can see it at night sometimes. Spectacular by day, of course. We'll be crossing by the time the sun comes up.”

“Crossing it?”

“It's spanned by bridges, for the railway, other traffic. We'll go rattling across it without even slowing down.”

“How long to cross the ocean?”

“Oh, it'll be getting dark again by the time we reach the eastern shore.”

The times, the distances, were crushing her imagination. Fifteen, twenty hours more, and she would still be traveling within the belly of the artifact. “And beyond the ocean?”

“Ah, then we come to the
antisuyu
. The eastern country, all of
this
side of the ocean being the western, the
cuntisuyu
. And if you went on all the way to the eastern hub, it would be another fifteen hours.”

“But we won't be going that far.”

“Oh, no. Only five, six hours to home. My home and yours.”

“Which is? What's it like?”

“Jungle.
Hacha hacha.
You'll see.” He grinned, his teeth white in the pale light. He held out his leaves again. “You sure you won't have some of this coca? Makes life a lot easier to bear . . .”

She shook her head, and once more backed away from him. He followed, ineffectual, evidently drawn to her but, thankfully, lacking the courage or guile to do anything about it.

On Per Ardua, that first “night” after Beth and Earthshine came through the Hatch, it rained for twelve hours solid.

The sound of the rain on the tough fabric of her shelter was almost reassuring, for Beth. Almost like a memory of her own childhood, when, as her family had tracked the migration of the builders and their mobile lake her mother had called the
jilla
, they had stayed in structures that were seldom much more permanent than this.

But no matter how familiar this environment felt to her, Beth was painfully aware that she was
alone
here, save for an artificial being that seemed to be becoming increasingly remote—even if he was, in some sense, her grandfather. “And that's even before he drives off over the horizon,” she muttered.

“I'm sorry?” Earthshine sat on an inflated mattress beside her, with a convincing-looking representation of a silver survival blanket over his shoulders.

Over a small fire—the first she'd built here since she'd left for Mercury, all those years ago—she was making soup, of stock she'd brought with her in her pack, and local potatoes briskly peeled and diced and added for bulk. Plus, she had boiled a pot of Roman tea. She had flashlights and a storm lantern, but in the unending daylight of Per Ardua, enough light leaked through the half-open door flap of the tent for her to see to work.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just rambling. I keep thinking I haven't slept yet, not since the Hatch.”

“But it's only been a few hours,” Earthshine said gently. “We've seen a lot, learned a lot. It just seems longer.”

“Maybe. Only half a day, but you're already planning to light out of here, aren't you?”

He shrugged, and sipped a virtual bowl of tea. “I see no reason to hang around here any longer than it takes the support unit to make itself ready to travel.”

“Where?”

“The only logical destination on a planet like this.”

“The antistellar?”

“Of course.”

“Which means a trek across the dark side,” she said.

“You are free to come with me,” he said evenly. “There is no rush; we can make preparations. You could even ride on the support unit if you wish. We could rig up some kind of seat.”

“Thanks.”

“Alternatively, you are free to stay here, or go where you wish. I will donate some components from the support unit, if you choose that course. A kit: basic environment sensors, food analyzers, a medical package to supplement the first aid available from your suit.” He passed his fingers through the fabric of her sleeve, wincing as he did so. “Remember, I won't need it.”

“I lived off the land here once, with my family, and I can do it again.” She did a double take. “
Our
family.”

He didn't respond to that.

“Why are you going to the antistellar?”

“In search of answers.”

“Answers to what? What's wrong with being right here?”

He clenched a fist. “This is
all
wrong. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I smashed Mars to make them listen to me—to us, to humanity.”

“You mean the deep bugs in the rocks.”

“The Dreamers, yes. As I call them. Our puppet masters, or so I'm coming to believe. They have been disturbing our worlds, trashing our histories, wrecking our painstakingly assembled civilizations with impunity. Well, no more! I made them listen. I made them respond.”

“Their answer was the Hatch on Mars.”

“Yes. A Hatch which brought us
here
. But this isn't good enough. Not a good enough
answer
.”

“I don't understand—”

“This is Proxima! Oh, I can't deny it, Beth—it must be, a Proxima somehow old and withered, but . . . Proxima, the nearest star. But I wanted to be taken to Ultima, the furthest star of all our legends—or the equivalent for the Dreamers. The place where the answers are—the place where I'll learn at last why it is they do what they do. And,” he said darkly, “maybe I will stop them. Maybe I can still be Heimdall to their subterranean Loki . . . Yes, I forced an answer out of them. A response, at least. But it's not enough. So I will put them to the question again.”

“How?”

“I don't know yet. When I get to the antistellar I'll figure it out.”

She thought that over. “Somehow I feel you're wrong. I don't know how or why . . . They brought you here. Maybe the answer you seek is right here, and you just aren't seeing it.”

“That's possible. But even if so, it can't do any harm to go search some more, can it?”

“A lot of people thought you should be stopped from pursuing your ambitions. That was always true, all the way back to your early days on Earth, wasn't it? Even before you became—”

“What I am now? When I was merely Robert Braemann, bona fide human being, and busy breaking the law to save the world? Or at least that's the ‘I,' of the nine of me, who interests you. And then I became Earthshine, a Core AI, one of three rogue minds, once again breaking humanity's laws to save it. And again, they never forgave us. Now here I am alone, trying to save—”

“The world? Which world?”

“All the worlds, maybe. I don't know.” He was silent a while; the rain continued to hiss on broad Arduan leaves. “Do you think you will come with me? I ask for purely practical reasons. The timescale, the preparations—”

“I haven't decided yet,” she said curtly. “We only just got here . . . I
like
it here, even if it isn't what I quite remember. I like the day side anyhow. I don't know if I want to go into endless night, so cold I'll need to wear a spacesuit.”

“But,” he said gently, “you also aren't sure if you want to be alone.”

“Do you
want
me to come? After all, it was you who brought me through the Hatch with you.”

“I didn't force you.”

“Do you really think of us as family, Earthshine? I know my father's father is only one of you, one of the nine minds . . . Do you think of him as your son?”

“Of course I do. I always did the best I could for him—myself and his mother.”

“Which included shoving him into a cryo freezer for a century, and ultimately killing him?”

He sighed. “We were working at the margins of the law. We were trying to save him. We thought that perhaps in a century he at least would be able to live his life out of our shadow. We underestimated the vindictiveness of mankind. Their retrospective tribunals. Their visiting of punishments on the children of the perpetrators. They never forgave us.”

“Did you love him? Do you love us now?”

He smiled. “A part of me does. That's the best answer I can give you. I'm sorry. Humans aren't meant to be like this, you see. Like
me
. Identity, consciousness, isn't meant to be something you can pour from one container to another, and meld with others as if mixing a cocktail. So you'll find my reactions are always going to be—off. But at least I'm here, with you, today. Which is all, in the end, you can ask of anyone.”

She smiled back. “That's true. I feel an atavistic urge to hug you, Granddad.”

“I urge you not to try. I think the rain is stopping. I will go check on the progress of my support unit.”

“And I,” she said, stretching and yawning, “think I'll take a nap. Don't wake me when you come in.”

“I'll try not to.”

•   •   •

In the warm, moist air of the Arduan substellar, she slept as well as she had for years. And for an unknown time too, under the unmoving face of Proxima. Whatever the unanswered questions, whatever the reservations she might have, she was home; she could feel it. Alone or not.

Even if she missed her daughter, Mardina, with a savage ache, as if a steel cable were attached to her belly, dragging her back to Mars.

When she glanced out of the shelter, she saw Earthshine standing over his support unit as it slowly reassembled itself for the journey.

The Romans were brought to a wide, flat clearing cut into the rain forest.

Here they were to farm, they were told.

They would grow maize, corn, wheat, rice, coca, and the ubiquitous potato, which the Incas called
papas
. There were no animals to raise, no sheep, goats, cattle—no llamas—though, they were told, some animals ran wild in the
hacha hacha
, the jungle. But they were expected to raise some more exotic and unfamiliar crops, gaudy flowers, strange fungi and lichen, that the ColU speculated were the source of mind-altering potions—
psychoactive drugs
, he told Mardina, evidently a feature of Inca culture in any timeline.

So the work began.

•   •   •

The land had to be kept open by regular burnings at the perimeter of the clearing. And the labor of keeping the land drained would always be considerable. It was poor, the soil thin, but not so bad that it was unworkable. The Romans fertilized their patch, mostly with ash from the burned rain forest perimeter, or the dung and bones of the animals that ran wild in the rain forest, notably rodents that could be the size of sheep. The work was hard but bearable.

There were people here already, of course.

They had joined an
ayllu
, a kind of clan, a loosely bound group of families, some of whom had some kind of relationship with each other, some of whom didn't. The people were friendly enough, however, Mardina found. It seemed to be the Inca way to move people around their box of an empire, from place to place, from near to far—sometimes across the toroid of an ocean from one “continent” to the other, from the
puna
and river deltas of the west, the
cuntisuyu
, to the rain forest–choked eastern half of the habitat, the
antisuyu
. All this was no doubt intended to ensure continued control, of the kind that
quipucamayoc
Inguill had talked about on the Romans' first arrival here. If you didn't stay long in a place, you couldn't set down roots, couldn't establish loyalties—your only long-term relationship was with the Sapa Inca, the Only Emperor, and his officials, not with the strangers around you.

But a consequence of the system was that people were used to strangers moving in—strangers they called
mitmaqcuna
, colonists. So while everybody had their property, and a plot of land to work, and, more important, they all had some kind of status in their society, they weren't so territorial that they excluded the Romans and their companions.

The Romans, however, did not own this land; that was made clear from the start—and nor did anybody of the
ayllu
, and none of them ever would. The Sapa Inca owned everything. The people were not slaves—as was proven by the fact that there were actual slaves, called
yanakuna
, to be seen throughout this place. The Romans were to be
mitimacs
, which meant something like “taxpayers.” They were entitled to keep the produce they raised, save for a proportion that they had to hand over to be stored in the big
tambos
, the state-owned storehouses that studded the countryside. This was part of the
mit'a
, the tax obligations of every citizen.

Also as part of their
mit'a
they were expected to contribute a proportion of their labor directly to the services of the state. This might mean creating or maintaining military equipment such as quilted armor, boots, blankets—never any weapons—or field rations of dried potatoes or maize, all to be stored in specialized warehouses called
colcas
, for the use of the army. It might mean laboring to support the big
pukaras
, fortresses of stone with spiral terraces winding around their inner cores of buildings: a design that reminded Mardina of huge snails squatting in the countryside. It might mean working on projects for the common good such as the regular forest clearance, or scraping clear the dust and algae that gathered with time on the habitat's huge Inti windows, or maintaining the
capac nans
, the long, straight roads and rail tracks that threaded through the forest, and the
chucllas
, the waystations that studded their length.

And the
mit'a
obligation might even mean serving in the military, although it was clear that the beefy, tough-looking, well-disciplined Romans weren't trusted enough for that, not yet.

All of this was organized on a global scale by a hierarchy of officials, beginning with the
ayllu
's local leader, the
curaca
—an imposing, reasonable-looking man called Pascac, who was the leader of ten families, and reminded Mardina a little of Quintus Fabius—and up through the Deputy Prefect Ruminavi, the
tocrico apu
, who in turn reported to one of two
apus
, the prefects each of whom ran one of the two great “continents” of the habitat, west or east. And then the command chain reached up to the court of the Sapa Inca in the two hub Cuzcos, including the
quipucamayocs
like Inguill, and the
colcacamayocs
, keepers of records and stores respectively.

The legionaries grumbled at the lack of freedom. And about the lack of money, the lack of shops and stores where you could
buy
things, from beer and wine to fine clothes and other luxuries, and not least, prostitutes. But then, this wasn't an economy that ran on money. And there was some tension in the very beginning, when the local
curaca
decreed that the Romans could not use permanently any of the small wooden houses that made up the core of the small township inhabited by the people of the
ayllu
, but must construct their own. But legionaries always grumbled, whatever you tried to get them to do.

And Quintus Fabius once more proved he was a more than competent leader. In fact he seemed to relish the challenge of the situation.

On the very first night in the
antisuyu,
Quintus had the legionaries construct the rudiments of a marching camp, with a rectangular perimeter wall of dirt and timber with rounded corners, and ditches for drainage and latrines, and the start, at least, of permanent structures inside: a training ground, a
principia
for the centurion, barracks blocks and storehouses. It was a lot smaller than would have been built by a full legion on the march, of course. There were fewer than fifty men here, a little more than half a full century in the Roman system. Nevertheless, Mardina thought, as a demonstration of Roman competence and adaptability, it clearly impressed the locals. And right from the beginning of their time here the exercise reassured the legionaries that—whatever else might become of them, whatever this strange place
was
, and Mardina suspected some of them were pretty puzzled about that—they were still Romans, still legionaries, and all they had learned over years of training and experience still counted for something.

And Quintus was very careful that the legionaries preserve and respect a
huaca
, a local shrine—little more than a heap of stones—that happened to fall within the domain they were given to set up their camp.

•   •   •

Soon they had their fields laid out and plowed. It was hard work. The lack of draft animals, and a paucity of machines away from the richest
ayllus
, meant there was a reliance on human muscle. But for all they grumbled, Romans were used to hard work.

There seemed to be no seasons here, as far as Mardina could tell from interrogating baffled locals, though she supposed a cycle of shorter and longer days, a “winter” created by selectively closing some of the light pools, could have easily been designed in. But then, much of the Incas' original empire on Terra had been tropical, where seasonal differences were small. This did mean that growing cycles, and the labor of farming, continued around the year; you didn't have to wait for spring.

Yet life wasn't all work. They might have to pay the
mit'a
, but the legionaries soon learned they didn't have to go hungry. If you fancied a supplement to your vegetable-based diet, you could always go hunting in the rain forest, where there seemed to be no restrictions on what you took as long as you were reasonably frugal about it. There were big rodents, which the ColU called
guinea pigs
, that provided some satisfying meat, even if they were an easy kill. Smaller versions ran around some of the villages.

The lack of alcohol was one enduring problem. It seemed to Mardina that the local people didn't drink, in favor of taking drugs and potions of various kinds.
Chicha
, the local maize beer, was officially used only in religious ceremonies. After a time Quintus turned a blind eye to the illicit brewing of beer.

As for the drugs, the most common was coca, the production of which was part of the
mit'a
obligation. But you could grow it anywhere—it grew wild in the forest—and
everybody
seemed to chew it, from quite young children up to toothless grandmothers. Some of the legionaries tried it, taking it in bundles of pressed leaves with lime, and a few took to it; they said it made them feel stronger, sharper, more alert, and even immune to pain.
Medicus
Michael officially disapproved, saying that the coca was making your brain lie to you about the state of your body.

With time, the villagers started to invite the Romans to join in feasts to celebrate their various baffling divinities. The adults passed around the coca, smoked or drank various other exotic substances, played their noisy pan pipes, and danced what Mardina, who did not partake, was assured were expressions of expanded inner sensation, but looked like a drunken shambles to her. The children would hang lanterns in the trees, and everybody would sing through the night, and other communities would join in until it seemed as if the whole habitat was echoing to the sound of human voices.

The local people would always look strange to a Roman or Brikanti eye, Mardina supposed. The men wore brilliantly colored blanket-like tunics, and the women skirts and striped shawls and much treasured silver medallions. But they grew tall and healthy. Sickness was rare here. The
medicus
opined that most diseases had been deliberately excluded when the habitat was built, and it was kept that way by quarantine procedures of the kind the legionaries had had to submit to on arrival. And, if you ignored the forest-bird feathers that habitually adorned the black hair of the men, and the peculiar black felt hats with wide brims that the women sported, the people could be very attractive, with almost a Roman look to their strong features.

On the other hand, Mardina supposed, to these legionaries exiled by a jonbar hinge from their wives and families and all they knew, almost any woman would be attractive.

One by one, the legionaries began to form relationships with the women of the village. The Sapa Inca's own clan was polygamous—although it was said that the true heirs to the empire were always born of the closest family of all, of the Inca marrying a favored sister—but the villagers, at least here in the wilds of the
antisuyu
, were ferociously monogamous. Quintus said only that he was pleased how few of these new loves, relatively speaking, were already married, and how few passion-fueled disputes he was having to resolve.

But he did have to mediate conversations with the legionaries and the local leaders about birth control. Contraceptives were free at the
tambos
, and so were abortions, though Mardina got the sense that the operations could be risky; such was the state of medicine here. Your choice about having children was up to you, but the population size was carefully monitored by the imperial authorities, and if the average birth rate of an
ayllu
went above two children per couple without the appropriate licenses, there would be, it seemed, penalties to pay.

Even though many of the younger local men watched Mardina, or spoke to her, or tried to bring her into the narcotics-fueled dances, she kept to herself. Some attention she got wasn't so welcome, such as from the
tocrico apu
Ruminavi. She soon learned from local gossip that he was a married man with kids as old as she was, but he didn't seem able to keep his eyes off her, and Clodia, when she visited.

For now she kept everybody at bay.

“I'm just not ready for it,” she confided once to Clodia, daughter of Titus Valerius, as they patiently weeded their way through a field of maize. Clodia was still just fifteen, but she and Mardina were closest in age in the Roman party, and the only two young women.

Clodia was more wide-eyed about the local boys. “What about that Quizo?”

“The one who always wears the hummingbird feathers?”

“That's the one. I'd be ready for
him
any day of the week . . .”

Mardina playfully ruffled her hair. “Sure you would, and in a few years you'll eat him alive. But for now—it's different for you, Clodia. At least you've still got your father here.”

“Ha! The big boss of me. Well, you can keep
him
 . . .”

Mardina said patiently, “It's just that we've all been through so much. We passed through the jonbar hinge. We lost everything we knew. And even before that, I knew that my own mother was from another world again, from before another jonbar hinge, and how strange is that? Now, here we are in this strange place where nobody speaks Brikanti or Latin, and nobody's heard of Jesu or Julius Caesar . . .”

“Well, I like it here,” Clodia said defiantly. “I always liked living in camp when we were at Romulus, and I wanted to train as a legionary. Now there's nobody to tell me I can't.”

Mardina grinned. “Well, good for you. For me, it's just that I need to find myself here first, that's all. Before getting lost in Quizo.”

“Very wise,” Clodia said gravely. “You take your time. But can we talk a bit more about his eyes first?”