Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  We swapped the limoncello again, and I changed the subject.

  "So," I said, "what became of that invisible spaceship that took a right in the center of the Earth?"

  He glanced at me, a bit wearily. "You still don't take it seriously. George, something happened. It came from the sun. It made straight for the Earth, and it changed course. If it had been visible it would have been the story of the century."

  "I don't see why you're so fascinated by dark matter in the first place."

  He slapped the brick wall behind him. "Because for every ton of good solid brick, there are ten of dark matter, out there, doing something. Most of the universe is invisible to us, and we don't even know what it's made of. There are mysteries out there we can't even guess at..." He lifted his hand and flexed his fingers. "Baryonic matter, normal matter, is infested with life. Why not dark matter, too? Why shouldn't there be intelligence? And if so, what is it doing in our sun?"

  I shook my head. I was drunk, and starting to feel sour. "I don't understand."

  "Well, neither do I. But I'm trying to join the dots." He leaned forward and lowered his voice again. "I'll tell you what I think. I think there's a war going on out there. Some kind of struggle. It's going on above our heads, and we can't even see it."

  I grunted. "War in Heaven? The dark against the light? I'll tell you what this sounds like to me. Peter, your background's showing. You've just somehow sublimated your Catholic upbringing into this great space-opera story of war in the sky."

  His mouth opened and closed. "I have to admit I never thought of that. Well, you might be right. But my psychological state doesn't change the reality of the data — or the consequences. Just suppose you are a field mouse stuck in a World War I trench. What do you do?"

  "You keep your head down."

  "Right. Because one misdirected shell could wipe out your whole damn species. That's why some of us," he whispered, "believe that it would be a mistake to announce our presence to the stars."

  I frowned. "I thought we'd already done that. We've been blasting TV signals to the skies since the days of Hitler."

  "Yes, but we're getting more efficient about our use of electromagnetic radiation — tight beams, cables, optic fibers. We're already a lot quieter, cosmically speaking, than we were a few decades ago. We can't bring back our radio noise, but it is a thin shell of clamor, heading out from the Earth, getting weaker and weaker... Blink and you miss it. And besides, radio is primitive. The more advanced folk are surely listening out for more interesting signals. And there are some people out there who think we should start sending out just those kinds of signals."

  "I take it you aren't one of these people."

  "Not anymore." He was gazing into his hands as he said this, and his voice was unusually somber.

  I remembered how he had fled to Rome, with no money, not much more than the clothes he stood up in. Suddenly I was suspicious. "Peter — what have you done?"

  But he just smiled and reached for the bottle.

  Chapter 42

  It was in the year 1527 that Clement came to Rome. He was in the service of Charles V, Emperor of Germany, who also happened to be king of Spain and Naples and ruler of the Netherlands.

  A huge army of German Landsknecht, mainly Lutherans, had been raised by the king's brother, a mighty force to wreak vengeance on the Antichrist in Rome. They battled through torrential rain and snowstorms to cross the Alps. They advanced on Lombardy and joined the Emperor's main force of Spaniards, Italians, and others.

  And then they converged on Rome.

  Clement, after his travels, had seen much of the world. But Rome was extraordinary.

  A great circuit of wall, it was said raised by the Caesars, was still in use today, much repaired. But within its wide boundaries there were farms, vineyards and gardens, even areas of scrub and thicket where deer and wild boar roamed. Here and there you could see broken columns and shapeless ruins poking out of the greenery, draped with ivy and eglantine and populated by pigeons and other birds. The inhabited area was small and cramped, a place of narrow streets and houses hanging over the muddy waters of the patient, enduring Tiber, with the spires of the rich looming over all.

  There were many fine churches and palaces. But Rome was a city trapped in the past, Clement thought, a city that would have been humbled if set aside Milan or Venice or Trieste.

  And now it was to be humbled further.

  The pope offered an indemnity, which tempted the army's leaders. But the Landsknecht wanted pillage. And so it was that an undisciplined, heterogeneous, half-starved, and ragged army finally marched on Rome, dreaming of plunder. There were more than thirty thousand of them.

  • • •

  The attack began before dawn.

  The first assault on the wall was repulsed, but the defenders, hugely outnumbered and lacking ammunition, were soon reduced to throwing rocks at those they called "half-castes" and "Lutherans." Up went the scaling ladders, and soon Germans and Spaniards were swarming over the wall. Some of the defenders fought bravely, including the pope's Swiss Guards, but they were quickly overwhelmed.

  By the time Clement had crossed the wall the fighting was all but done. It was still dawn; still mist from the Tiber choked the city streets. Afterward, Rome was at the mercy of the Emperor's troops. Later, Clement would remember little of the days that followed, little save bloodstained glimpses of unbelievable savagery.

  The Romans were cut to pieces, even if unarmed, even if unable to defend themselves. Even invalids in hospitals were slaughtered.

  The doors of churches, convents, palaces, and monasteries were broken down and their contents hurled into the streets. When people tried to shelter in the churches they were massacred; five hundred died even in Saint Peter's. Priests were forced to take part in obscene travesties of the Mass, and if they did not they were eviscerated, or crucified, or dragged through the streets, naked and in chains. Nuns were violated, and used as tokens in games of chance, and convents were turned into brothels where the women of the upper classes were forced into prostitution. Holy relics were abused; the skull of the Apostle Andrew was kicked around the streets, the handkerchief of Saint Veronica was sold in an inn, the spear said to have pierced Christ's side was displayed like a battle trophy by a German.

  Clement took part in the torment of one wealthy man who was made to rape his own daughter, and another, a very fat man, who was forced to eat his own roasted testicles. Afterward he would not be able to credit what he had done.

  The Sack of Rome was the end product of decades of suspicion, jealousy, and hostility. The Renaissance popes had been great patrons of the arts, but they had acted like ambitious princelings and made many enemies. Meanwhile the great wealth of Rome had made the city a prize that the European powers, especially France and Spain, had eyed with jealousy. French, Spaniards, and landless German Lutherans had at last made common cause under Charles's imperial banner. But none of this could have justified the Sack.

  It went on for months. It was said that twelve thousand were killed. Two-thirds of the housing stock was burned to the ground. On the resulting wasteland lay putrefying corpses, gnawed by dogs. Even on Sundays not a church bell sounded, across the whole of Rome.

  • • •

  One hot night Clement found himself with a party of a dozen or so that ventured outside the city walls. They were drunk. There might be nothing to find out here, but at least it would be a break from the stink of the city itself, where, it was said, by now you couldn't find a purse worth emptying or a virgin over twelve.

  The Emperor's soldiers followed an old road the locals called the Appian Way. It was overgrown and rutted, but you could still trace its line, arrow straight. They drank, sang bawdily, and as they walked they probed with sticks and spears at the ground. There were tales of Catacombs out here, and where there were Catacombs you might find treasure.

  It was Clement, as it happened, who found the door. His broken stick, in fact a smashed-off crucifix,
hit wood — he thought — something solid, anyhow.

  He called the others over, and soon they were scrabbling at the turf and dirt, pulling it away in great handfuls. Gradually they exposed a great square door in the ground. They tried to haul it open, but it would not budge.

  So Philip, a great slab of a man from southern Spain, got to his hands and knees and began to hammer on the door. If it was not opened it would be smashed in or burned, he shouted, and it would be the worse for whoever was inside. None of this provoked a response, so the men began to gather wood for a fire, to burn their way through.

  Then, without warning, the door pushed open. Philip scrambled off, and soon all the men were gathered around, hauling at the door.

  A chamber in the ground was exposed. It was walled with white-painted plaster, Clement saw, and lamps flickered in the breeze. And there were women here — six of them — none younger than sixteen or older than twenty-five, he judged, and they were wearing white dresses. They stood in a row, peering up, like nuns praying. They were very pale, like ghosts, yet beautiful, and all of them full-figured.

  When the men roared and reached for them, the women's nerve broke. They clung to each other and huddled back in their pit. But they could not escape the men's eager hands. They were hauled out of the pit, stripped, and taken, there and then, on the surface of the ancient imperial road. When the men realized the women were all virgins they fought among themselves to be first to have them. But in the end all the women were used, over and again.

  As their pale bodies writhed Clement was reminded oddly of maggots, or larvae, wriggling when exposed to the light.

  Once Philip and two others set on one woman at the same time. When they were done, they found they had crushed the breath out of their victim. She was left where they had finished her, for the dogs and birds to take. The other women were taken back into the city, where four of them were sold to a group of Germans, and the other gambled away.

  Sated, occupied with the women, the men didn't try to penetrate the Catacomb further, and left the pit in the ground gaping open.

  • • •

  A few nights after that Clement and some others went back along the Appian Way, searching for the door once more. Clement's memory was good, and he had not been terribly drunk that night. But search as he might he could find no trace of a doorway in the ground, or of the debauchery that had been committed here, or of the woman killed. When he thought back, to that vision of the pale women writhing on the ground like uncovered worms, it seemed like a dream.

  Chapter 43

  We agreed to meet Daniel and Lucia inside the Colosseum. Peter and I grinned at each other when Daniel, through his emails, suggested this cloak-and-dagger rendezvous. But anyhow we went along, one bright early-November morning.

  • • •

  The Colosseum was only a short walk down Mussolini's majestic boulevard from our hotel, and its ruined grandeur loomed ahead of us as we approached. In fact the Colosseum had been a key motivation for Mussolini to build his imperial way where he did, for he wanted a clear view of it from his palace off the Piazza Venezia. Its size was deceptive; it seemed to take us a long time to reach the foot of that mighty wall, even longer to walk around the tarmac apron at its base.

  By the time we got to the public entrance, Peter was puffing and sweating profusely. He seemed agitated today, his untroubled demeanor gone, but he wouldn't say what was on his mind.

  We joined a glacier-pace queue of more or less patient visitors before the glass-fronted ticket office. Hucksters worked the crowd: water sellers, tropical-shirted vendors of bangles and felt hats and fake-leather handbags, and a few plausible-sounding American-accented girls who offered "official" guided tours. Groups of blokes in fake legionary uniforms, all scarlet and gold and plastic swords, volunteered to have their photos taken with tourists. With my British sensibility I vaguely imagined these were "official," somehow sanctioned by the city or whichever authority controlled the Colosseum, until I saw them cluster around one hapless American tourist demanding twenty euros for each photograph they'd just taken.

  But above all this indignity loomed the antique walls, to which marble still clung, despite fifteen hundred years of neglect and despoliation.

  Peter wasn't comfortable in the gathering heat. "Fucking Italians," he said. "Once, you know, they could get fifty thousand people inside this stadium in ten minutes. Now this."

  At length we inched our way to the head of the queue, bought our tickets, and passed through a turnstile and into the body of the stadium.

  The huge structure was a hollow shell. Inside, cavernous corridors curved out of sight to either side. Peter looked a little lost, but all this was startlingly familiar to me, a veteran of the architecture of English soccer stadiums. Still, the corridors and alcoves were littered with rubble, stupendous fragments of fallen brickwork and columns and marble carvings. The place had long been neglected; even in the seventies the Romans had used these immense corridors as a car park.

  We emerged at last into bright sunlight.

  The interior of the stadium was oval. Walkways curved around its perimeter at a couple of levels. Because we were early, like dutiful tourists we completed circuits of the walls, and crossed a wooden walkway that passed along the axis of the stadium floor. The original floor, made of wood, had long since rotted away, exposing brick cells where humans and animals had once been kept, waiting to fight for their lives on the stage above.

  After perhaps half an hour, it was time. We made our way to the small book stall, which had been built into an alcove close to the main spectator entrance. There was quite a crowd here, for this was where you congregated for your "official" guided tours.

  I had no problem recognizing Lucia.

  • • •

  She had exactly the look that had characterized the women and girls of the Order: not tall, stockily built, with the oval face and pale gray eyes of that huge subterranean family. I had had a lot of trouble figuring out ages in the Crypt, but Lucia looked genuinely young — perhaps sixteen, or even younger. She had blue-tinged sunglasses pushed up on her head. But her simple blue dress was grimy, the hem ripped; it looked as if she had been wearing it for days.

  She was heavily pregnant, I saw, startled.

  When she saw me standing before her — and she recognized my similar features — her eyes widened, and she clutched the hand of the boy with her.

  He was quite different: perhaps a couple of years older, taller, slim, with reddish hair that was already receding from a pale, rounded brow. His eyes were clear blue, and he peered at us suspiciously.

  "So here we are," Peter said. "I take it you're Lucia — you speak English?"

  "Not well," she said. Her voice was husky, her English heavily accented.

  "But I do," said the boy, Daniel. "I'm an American."

  "Good for you," said Peter dryly.

  I tried to reduce the tension. "My name is George Poole. Lucia, it seems we are distant cousins." I smiled, and she nervously smiled back. "And this is Peter McLachlan. My friend."

  Daniel wasn't reassured. He looked defiant, but scared. He was already out of his depth. His Internet contact with us, conducted from the safety of his home or some cybercafé, was one thing, but maybe he was having second thoughts when confronted by the reality of two hefty, sweating middle-age men. "How do we know we can trust you?"

  Peter snorted, sweating. "You contacted us, remember?"

  I held up a hand and gave Peter a look: Go easy on them. I said, "I'm family, and Peter is an old friend. He's here to help. I've known him all my life, and I trust him. Let's just talk. We can stay in public places all the time. Anytime you like you can just walk away. How's that?"

  Daniel, still uncertain, glanced at Lucia. She just nodded weakly.

  So we walked around the curving walkway. Lucia, gravid, walked heavily and painfully, her hand on her back. Daniel supported her, holding her arm.

  I whispered to Peter, "What do you think?"
/>
  He shrugged. "That poor kid looks as if she's going to pup any minute... You think Daniel's the father?"

  "I have no idea," I said truthfully. But somehow I thought it wouldn't be as simple as that.

  Peter chewed a nail, a habit I hadn't noticed before. "I wasn't expecting this. This is supposed to be about your sister, and her cult. What are we getting into here?" He had seemed oddly jumpy all day, and his nervousness was getting worse. I had no idea why — but then I knew there was a lot about Peter, not least why he was in Rome in the first place, he wasn't telling me.

  The Colosseum is a big place, and we soon found an out-of-the-way alcove where it looked as if we would be undisturbed. Lucia found a place to sit, on a worn row of steps in the shade. Daniel stood over her protectively. Peter had a couple of bottles of water in his day bag. He gave one to Lucia, and she sipped it gratefully. She was breathing hard, I saw, and sweating heavily.

  "So," said Peter. "Tell me how you got in touch with us."

  Daniel shrugged. "It wasn't hard... I thought I needed to find somebody outside the Order, and yet with a connection. You see what I mean?"

  "Yes," I said. "Somebody else asking awkward questions."

  And so, he said, he had hacked into the Order's email streams looking for likely candidates. "It was difficult — the Order's traffic is heavily encrypted — but—"

  "But you're a smart little hacker," said Peter unsympathetically.

  Daniel's eyes flashed. "I did what I had to do."

  Peter said, "Let's cut to the chase. She's your girlfriend, and you got her pregnant. Is that the story?"