Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  Systems, yes. And it was a system that she had been trying to establish here, following her instincts, bit by bit, as the years wore away. A system that would endure. A system that would work, even when the people it sustained had forgotten it existed.

  The Order would be like a mosaic, she thought — but not of the kind her father used to make. Imagine a mosaic assembled not by a single master designer but by a hundred workers. Let each of them place her tesserae in harmony with those of her sisters. Then from these small acts of sympathy, from sisters simply listening to each other, a greater and enduring harmony would emerge. And it was a harmony that would survive the death of any one artisan — for the group was the artist, and the group survived the individuals...

  You didn't need a mind to create order. In fact, the last thing you wanted was a mind in control, if that mind belonged to an ambitious idiot like Artorius.

  "Listen to your sisters," she said.

  "Regina?"

  "That's all you need to do. And the mosaic will emerge..."

  She slept.

  Chapter 35

  Lucia arranged to meet Daniel at the Diocletian Baths. This was a monument just to the northwest of the Termini, Rome's central station. She arrived early. It was a hot, humid August day, and the sky, laden with clouds, threatened rain.

  She walked around the walls. These baths had been built in the fourth century, and like many of Rome's later monuments they actually presented an ugly face to the world, great cliffs of red brickwork. Over the centuries such monuments had been steadily stripped of their marble, so that all that was left was a kind of skeleton of what had been.

  But the monument was still massive, still enduring. Walls that had once been interior were now exterior, and she could make out the shapes of domes, broken open like eggs. The exedra, once an enclosed space surrounded by porticoes and seats where citizens would gather to talk, had been given over to a traffic-choked square.

  The rain began to fall. She paid a few euros to enter the museum that had been built into the baths.

  There were only a few tourists here. Bored attendants sat on plastic upright chairs, as still as robots switched off at the mains. The exhibits were sparse, cluttered together, and poorly labeled, for, she learned, the museum was in the middle of a long, slow process of being rehoused. Lucia wasn't very interested.

  At the center of the museum she found a kind of cloister, a colonnaded covered walkway surrounding a patch of green. More antique detritus had been gathered here, all unlabeled. There were fragments of statues, bits of fallen pillars, broken inscriptions whose huge lettering told of the size of the monuments they had once graced. Some of the monuments had been set in the garden, where they protruded from the untidy green.

  There were no seats, but she found she could perch on the low wall that fenced off the garden. She put her feet up on the wall's cool surface, rested her neck against a pillar, and cradled her hands on her belly. Her back was hurting, and to sit was a relief. The rain fell steadily, though not hard. It hissed on the grass, and turned the streaked marble of the fragments a golden brown. There was no wind. Some of the drops reached her, here at the edge of the cover of the roof, but the rain was warm, and she didn't mind. It was a peaceful place, away from the city's roar, just her and the dozing attendant, the antiquities, the rain hissing on the grass.

  The time she had been due to meet Daniel came and went. She waited half an hour, and still he didn't come.

  The rain stopped. A murky sunlight broke through smog the rain had failed to clear. By this time the attendant was watching her suspiciously — or perhaps it was just that he wanted to close up early.

  She swiveled her legs off the wall and got to her feet. Her back still hurt, and the cool marble had made her piles itch, maddeningly, comically. Feeling very old, she made her way out of the museum.

  She went back to the Crypt, for she had nowhere else to go.

  • • •

  That night, and the next day, whenever she found a little privacy, she made more covert calls to Daniel's cell. But the phone was switched off, and he didn't reply to the messages she left on his answering service.

  The second day she tried to resist making any more calls. She was wary of scaring him off. She seemed to be aware constantly of the phone's mass in her pocket or her bag, though, as she waited for it to ring.

  By lunchtime she lost her nerve. She went to a corner of the scrinium offices, shielded by filing cabinets, and made another call.

  This time he picked up. "...Hello?"

  "I—" She stopped, took deep breaths, tried to be calm. "It's Lucia." She sensed hesitation. "You remember—"

  "The girl in the Pantheon. Oh, shoot." He used the English word. "We were going to meet, weren't we?"

  "Yes. At the baths."

  "Was it yesterday? I'm sorry—"

  "No," she said, forcing herself to keep an even tone. "Not yesterday. Two days ago."

  "You turned up and I didn't. Look, I'm really sorry. That's me all over." His voice sounded calm, faraway, untroubled save for a little embarrassment. A voice from another world, she thought. "Let me make it up to you. I'll buy you lunch. Tomorrow?"

  "No," she snapped.

  "No?"

  "It doesn't matter about lunch... Let's just meet," she said.

  "Okay. Whatever you want. I owe you. I don't want you to think badly of me. Where, at the baths?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll find you."

  "Today," she gasped. "It has to be today."

  Again she heard him hesitate, and she cursed herself for her lack of control.

  "Okay," he said slowly. "I have a study break this afternoon. I can get away. I'll see you there. What, about three?"

  "That will be fine."

  "Okay. Ciao..."

  She put away the phone. Her heart was hammering, her breath short.

  • • •

  She made an excuse and got out of the office. She changed into a shapeless patterned smock, loosely tied by a belt at the waist.

  She caught a taxi back to the baths.

  This time she walked around the complex until she came to the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. In the sixteenth century this had been built into the ruins of the baths, to designs by Michelangelo. The church's name proudly adorned one of those broken-open domes.

  Inside, the church was bright, spacious, and open, nearly a hundred yards across, richly decorated. There was an elaborate sundial inscribed on the floor, a great bronze gash that cut across one nave. She followed it to a complex design at its termination, where a spot of sunlight would map the solstices of years far into her own future. Here and there she made out relics of the building's origin, like seashell motifs on the walls. Michelangelo and the architects had used this great vaulting space well, but once this had been nothing more than the tepidarium of the tremendous complex of the baths.

  She had chosen this place for Daniel's sake. She had been nervous about how he would react to her, especially in her changed condition. She thought the baths would pique his interest in the deep history of Rome, and how its buildings had been used and reused. Maybe he would come for the buildings, if not for her.

  "...Lucia."

  She turned, and there he was. He wore what looked like the same faded jeans, a T-shirt labeled ROSWELL U RUNNING TEAM, and he clutched a baseball cap in his hand. The light behind him caught the unruly hair around his face, making it glow red.

  He grinned. "You've changed. You're still beautiful, of course. What's different?..."

  At the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the tears seemed to explode from her, fueled by longing, unhappiness, grief. She dropped her head and covered her face with her hands. How she would have reacted if he had come to her and taken her in his arms, she didn't know.

  But he didn't. When she was able to look up, she saw that he had actually backed away a couple of steps. He was holding his baseball cap up before him, like a shield to fend her off, and his mouth was round
with shock. "Hey," he said uncertainly. He laughed, but it was a brittle sound. "Take it easy. People are staring."

  She struggled to get herself under control. Her face felt like a soggy mass. "Well, fuck them. Even if it is a church."

  He was staring at her, eyes wide, mouth still agape.

  She said, "Let's sit down."

  "Okay. Okay. Sitting down is good—"

  She grabbed his hand to stop him talking. She marched him to a pew in the nave where the sundial glistened on the marble floor.

  They sat side by side, far from anybody else. He wasn't looking at her, she realized; his gaze wandered around the paintings on the wall, the marble floor. At last he said, "Look, if you're in some kind of trouble—"

  She hissed, "Why didn't you turn up?"

  "What?"

  "Here, at the baths. On Tuesday. You didn't come."

  "Hey," he said defensively. "So what? It wasn't important. It was just—" He leaned forward, so he was facing away from her. "Look. You have to be realistic. I'm seventeen years old. You're a pretty kid. And, well, that's pretty much it." He ticked off the points on his fingers. "I saw you in the Pantheon, and I spotted you in the park that day, and I thought, what the hell, and I said I'd meet you in the Piazza Navona, and there you were, and then—"

  "And then?"

  "And then you told me you were fifteen." He shrugged. "It was just a few moments, months and months ago. It wasn't even a date."

  "It was important to me."

  "Well, I'm sorry. How could I know?"

  "Because you met me. We talked."

  "Only for a few minutes."

  But in that time, she thought, we made a connection. Or did we? She looked at him again, in his nerdish T-shirt, with his baseball cap on the wooden seat beside him. He was so young himself, she realized. He was just playing at relationships, playing at flirting. That was all he had been doing, all the time; even his supposed seriousness was just part of the game. Hope started to die.

  He said, "I didn't mean to hurt you. Really. And anyhow, I did like you, you know."

  She sighed. "Look, I don't blame you. The irony of it is, with almost anybody you met it would have made no difference."

  "But it does with you." He turned around and looked back at her. In the church's soft light his skin seemed very smooth, very young. "Look, I was, am, and always will be an asshole. And I'm sorry." His face clouded. "I remember now. You said something about problems at home. Your family? If there's something serious, maybe my dad can help—"

  "I've had a baby," she said simply.

  That took him aback. His mouth opened and closed. Then he nodded. "Okay. A baby. When? How old were you? Fourteen, thirteen—"

  "It was two months ago."

  He laughed, but his face quickly drained of humor. "That's ridiculous. Impossible, in fact." He frowned, trying to remember. "You sure didn't look pregnant when I last saw you."

  "That's because I wasn't. I was a virgin," she said. "I became pregnant in March."

  That, absurdly, made him blush; he briefly looked away. "So," he whispered, "you had sex with some guy. You got pregnant. Then, what, you had a miscarriage—"

  "I had a baby," she said rapidly. "A live, full-term baby, after thirteen weeks. I don't care whether you think that's impossible or not. It happened."

  He sat silently for a moment, mouth gaping. Then he shook his head. "Okay. Suppose I concede you had a baby, six months premature, as if... Who's the father?"

  "His name is Giuliano... I have forgotten the rest."

  "You've forgotten his name? Did you know him?"

  "No. Not really."

  He hesitated. "Was it rape?"

  "No. It's complicated."

  "You're telling me."

  "It's a family matter. There's a lot you don't know."

  "Sounds like there's a lot I don't want to know... This guy who knocked you up. Was he older than you?"

  "Oh, yes. About thirty, I think."

  "Is that legal here?... Oh. He wasn't a family member, was he?"

  "No. Well, a distant cousin."

  "Murkier and murkier. Did your parents set you up somehow? Did they sell you?"

  She shook her head. "It wasn't like that. I can't explain it. And you probably wouldn't believe me anyhow."

  He gazed back at her, exasperated.

  She studied him, trying to understand his mood. He wasn't scared anymore — or at least that wasn't his only emotion. He was genuinely listening, genuinely trying to understand, and his face showed a kind of determination.

  He was constructing a new model of their relationship in his head, she thought. First he had believed he was a kind of romantic hero, the traveler in Rome. Then when he found out she was too young for a relationship, he decided he was playing a flirting, slightly edgy game with a precocious kid. Her news that she had given birth, and in a manner he couldn't understand, had broken all that apart. But now he was trying to construct a new vision. Now he was the knight who could ride in to save her, solve all her problems at a single blow — or anyhow a single phone call to his father.

  He really was just a kid, Lucia thought almost fondly, and he saw the world in simplified, childlike ways. What he imagined was going on here had very little to do with the truth. But, kid or not, he was all she had. And, she thought coldly, if she had to use him to ensure her own survival, she would.

  Lucia forced a smile. "You are an American," she said. "You made deserts bloom. You put people on the moon. Surely you can help me—"

  But he was staring past her.

  Pina was standing silently at the end of the pew.

  • • •

  Daniel stood up and confronted Pina. "Oh, it's you. The ugly sister."

  "This is a church," Pina said levelly. "Let's not make a scene." She turned to Lucia. "Rosa is waiting outside, with a car."

  Daniel said, a little wildly, "Are you going to drag her out of here, the way you dragged her out of that coffee shop?" He was guessing, Lucia saw, but he was hitting the mark.

  Pina glared at him, calculating. Then she said, "I'll sit down if you will."

  Daniel hesitated, then nodded curtly. They both sat.

  Pina touched Lucia's arm, but Lucia flinched away. "Oh, Lucia. What are we going to do with you?"

  "How did you find me this time?"

  "This boy can't do anything for—"

  "How did you find me?"

  "There's a tracer chip in your cell phone. It wasn't hard."

  Lucia glared at her. "You bugged me?"

  "For your own good." Lucia still wouldn't let Pina touch her, but she leaned forward, and Lucia could smell a milky Crypt scent on her clothes. "Come home, sister."

  "I don't know what's going on here," Daniel said. "But she isn't going anywhere, except with me."

  Pina laughed, softly, but in his face. "I believe sex with minors is known as statutory rape in your country. Do you want to find out about the Italian equivalent?"

  It was an obvious ploy, but it made him hesitate. "I haven't touched her."

  "Do you think that will matter?"

  Lucia said, "Daniel, she won't go to the police."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because it's not the way the Order does things." She took a deep breath. "And besides, she would have to explain to them how come I'm pregnant."

  Daniel was puzzled. "You mean you were pregnant."

  "...No. I am pregnant. Again."

  There, she thought. I've said it.

  Pina's mouth tightened. "What have you told him, Lucia?"

  Daniel was staring at her, a mix of horror and incredulity on his face. "Was it him again? This guy Giuliano?"

  "No. Or rather..."

  Lucia remembered her bafflement when her menstruation had stopped, her growing puzzlement at the strange sensations in her belly — strange, yet familiar. She had gone to Patrizia innocently, wondering if she was suffering some kind of postnatal symptom.

  She hadn't been able to believe wha
t Patrizia had told her. But Patrizia seemed to have expected it. Patrizia called in others — Rosa, one of the younger matres, assistants from the delivery rooms and the crèches. They had clustered around Lucia, their smiles glistening wetly, touching her shoulders and back, kissing her brow and cheeks and lips, overwhelming her with their scent and taste of sweetness and milk. "It's a miracle," one of them had whispered in Lucia's ear. "A miracle..."

  "A miracle," Lucia said hotly to a baffled Daniel. "That's what they called it. A miracle. But it isn't really, is it, Pina? Because in the Crypt it happens every week, two or three or four times."

  Daniel asked, "What miracle?"

  "I hadn't had sex," Lucia said. "Not since the birth. Not since Giuliano — and then, only that once, before my first pregnancy. I hadn't had sex, but I'm pregnant anyway. And it's Giuliano's baby again, isn't it, Pina? Conception without sex," she said bitterly. "Have you ever heard of such a thing, Daniel? Do they have such things in America? No, of course not. There are wonders happening in that Crypt to be found nowhere else in the world, I'm sure. Wonders in my own body." She turned on Pina. "But it isn't my body anymore. Is it, Pina? My body, my womb and loins, belong to the Order. My future is babies — more and more of them. My body is just a tool to be used as efficiently as possible for the Order's purposes. And I, I don't count for anything — my wants, my needs, my desires—"