Penny said now, “As Ari has told us, the rest of the world is a kind of playpen for the three superpowers of Eurasia. Here’s Australia.”
Beth saw arid crimson plains like a vision of Mars, pocked with the circular scars of explosions, the rectangular wounds of tremendous mines.
“Mined by the Xin,” Ari said.
“My mother was from Australia,” Beth said. “I visited once. What happened to the native people here?”
Ari looked at her curiously. “What native people?”
“Africa,” Penny announced, pulling up image after image. “To the south, extensive mining and farming by the Xin, it seems. To the north, the Sahara—but look at it . . .”
The desert was covered by a grid of huge rectilinear canals.
Ari said, “One of the Romans’ most significant projects. And they are slowly succeeding in making the desert bloom, as you can see. But there is a danger that in years to come, as they advance their colonies ever farther south—”
“And the Xin work their way north from their southern farmlands,” McGregor said, “they’re going to meet in the middle, and clash. It will be Central Asia all over again.”
“Let us hope not,” Ari said fervently. “But, yes, those of us druidh who devote their efforts to projections of the future see this as one possibility.”
“Here’s South America,” Penny said.
“Or Valhalla Inferior,” Ari said mildly. “A battleground between the Xin and the Romans for centuries.”
Beth saw farmland and mining country cut across by vast river systems, and scarred by swaths of desert. “What about Amazonia?”
Penny said drily, “You’d never know the rain forest had ever been there. And again, we’ll probably never know what happened to the indigenous populations.”
In North America, images taken in the dark of night showed a band of fire that Beth thought roughly followed the Canadian border with the United States.
Penny said, “The continent is relatively undeveloped. There’s a big city of some kind on the site of St. Louis, another in Massachusetts. Other than that, small towns and army bases. There is what looks like a Roman legionary fortress on the site of downtown Seattle, for instance, where I grew up—I looked to see. And this is the only place on the surface of the Earth where it looks like there is active warfare in progress.”
Ari said, “This is an arena I know well—I have served here. We Scand reached this country first, more than a millennium ago, and then the Brikanti followed us—and the Romans, some using Scand ships, came soon after. Now, to the north is Brikanti country, once thickly forested, where we extracted wood for our oceangoing ships. Our principal city, near the east coast, is called Leifsholm. To the south, farmland developed by the Romans, a great breadbasket. Their own provincial capital, on the course of a mighty river, is called Messalia. We meet at the latitude of the inland seas. There are no great cities here. In a sense it is a question of tradition, of history. The old countries, Europa and Asia, are where you build cities, whether you are Xin or Roman or indeed Brikanti. The rest of the world is to be exploited.”
Penny said, “That border country looks like a war zone.”
“So it is,” Ari said. “The Romans like to send their legions marching north. We oppose them with fortresses and counterraids.”
“I thought you guys cooperated. You run interstellar missions together, for instance.”
Ari shrugged. “We cooperate when we fly to the stars, while warring on Terra, in the Valhallas. It is a kind of game. Lethal, of course, but a game. The Romans give their legions marching practice and their generals triumphs. We, conversely, enjoy tripping them up. It is not logical, but when has the politics of empire ever been rational? We must retain our separate identities somehow, Penny Kalinski. And after all, the Romans did consider invading Pritanike once. You don’t forgive something like that.”
Penny shook her head. “A continent as one vast military training ground.”
“But what else is such a barren continent good for?”
“You’d be surprised,” Penny said fervently.
McGregor said, “So, an endless three-way war, now extended out into the solar system, it seems.”
“It has gone this way for centuries,” Ari said. “It is our way, evidently—”
“Giving away our strategic secrets, are you, druidh?”
• • •
Beth turned to see Kerys the trierarchus, the ship’s commander, walking into the cabin through the door at the rear. She was followed by a solid-looking Earthshine, an impressive display of virtual projection from the unit in which the old Core AI was stored.
Ari came to a kind of attention. “That wasn’t my intention, trierarchus. I believe that I have learned as much about the home of Beth Eden Jones and her companions as I have revealed about ours.”
Lex McGregor grinned. “And I bet that’s true, you slippery little rascal.”
Kerys walked to the window, hands clasped behind her back, and peered around, beyond the glowing surface of Earth, into space. “Well, our rivals cluster close. They wait on a decision on how we are to dispose of you, the crew of the Tatania. And, needless to say, my superiors at Dumnona have devolved the decision to me.”
Lex McGregor said evenly, “My heart aches for you.”
Kerys arched an eyebrow. “A fine way to talk to an officer who holds you dangling by the testicles.”
McGregor barked a laugh.
“What am I to do with you yourself, for example, General Lex McGregor? Look at you, old and gray, your prime a distant memory. What possible use are you? I might throw you over to the Romans; you might make them laugh, briefly, if they dump you in the arena with a gladiator or two.”
McGregor grinned, fearless. “I’d like to see them try that. Madam, I would have thought my value is obvious. I come from an entirely different military tradition, an entirely different spacefaring background.” He tapped his grizzled pate. “And now all that experience can be put at your command. But,” he said severely, “I come with strings attached. I want my crew with me, Golvin, Kapur, the others—all five of them. Without them I could not function, and would not try. Conversely, throw even one of them to the Romans or the Xin and I will follow.”
“Your loyalty is commendable,” Kerys said, her face kept carefully blank. “You, Penelope Kalinski: frankly your value is obvious even to me. The philosophies and mathematics you display, the technologies you wield—if you spent your remaining years teaching Brikanti students even a fraction of what you know, you could be of immeasurable value.”
Penny nodded her head. She was composed, Beth thought, unmoved, as if she’d thought her way through this already. Penny said, “I can think of worse ways to spend my life. I would need Jiang with me, of course.”
“We can debate that,” Kerys said neutrally. “As for you, Beth Eden Jones—”
She stared closely at Beth, and Beth found herself touching the tattoo that sprawled over her face, a relic of her childhood on Per Ardua: a mark the Brikanti seemed to regard as savage.
“I can vouch for her,” Ari said quickly, forestalling whatever judgment Kerys was about to pronounce. “Trierarchus, she is in many ways the most interesting of all. She was born and grew up on the planet of another star! Embedded in a system of native life of which we have no knowledge—as you know, our ships found no such life on any planet of the star Proxima. She was brought back to Terra as a young adult, and as an outsider she is probably a better witness to that culture than any of these others. Again I cannot say precisely what I would learn from her, given time, but—”
“All right, druidh,” Kerys said, raising a hand. “You’ve made your point.”
“Which leaves me,” Earthshine said silkily.
“Indeed. And you present the greatest challenge of all. The machinery that sustains you is impossi
bly far beyond our understanding—I would have no way of knowing if it represented some kind of danger to my country.”
“Nor what its potential might be,” Earthshine said, “if you were able to learn from it.”
“Very well. But what of you?” She walked around him, inspecting him; she passed a hand through his arm, making pixels scatter in the air, and Beth saw Earthshine flinch as his consistency protocols were violated. “What are you? Not a man. Are you any more than a puppet? Is there a mind in there?”
“I have been accused of being insane,” he said, smiling coldly. “Can one be insane without a mind? And let me remind you what I have stored, in my artificial mind, my roomy memory: the secrets of what made the Tatania fly. The hulk you captured is scrap metal. And I have all the records we brought with us of our reality, and everything we achieved there.”
Kerys frowned, but Beth could see she was intrigued. “Such as?”
“Let me show you. Please, do not draw your weapons . . .” He gestured in the air, cupping his hands.
An image congealed before him, a sphere maybe a half-meter across. The bulk of the surface was gray-white ice glistening in the light of an invisible sun, but the blue and green of life sprawled in great patches under curving lids of glass.
Ari gasped. “It is beautiful.”
“It is a world. An asteroid, what you would call a Tear of Ymir. The largest of all—you must have given it a name; we call it Ceres.”
“To us this is Höd,” Ari said. “After the blind half brother of Baldr, favorite child of the old gods.”
“This is what we built there, these great Halls. And Ceres became the hub from which the exploitation of the asteroids progressed. Here is another world.”
He snapped his fingers, and icy Ceres was replaced by a more familiar world, a burnt-orange ball, its surface scarred by canyons and craters, ice caps like swirls of cream at either pole.
“Mars,” said Kerys.
“Yes—a name we share. Look what we built there.” He pulled his hands apart. The planetary image exploded, becoming misty and faint, but the center, before Earthshine’s chest, zoomed in on a sprawling city, a tower at its heart—a needle-like structure whose height only became apparent when the scale was such that people could be made out individually, in pressure suits at the base of the tower.
“This is the Chinese capital, in a region we called Terra Cimmeria. I know how all this was built, even the great tower. I can help you discover it. And more. Again, do not be alarmed . . .”
On his upturned hands, a series of animals walked, elephants, bison, lions, horses, each three-dimensional image scaled against a human figure.
The Brikanti stared.
Earthshine said, “I and my brothers were created, some centuries ago, for this, above all else. To save the diversity of living things. The destruction of our natural world was not so advanced as it is here, despite centuries of ardent effort,” he said drily. “These animals are known to you only through fossil remains, from bones you find in the ground. To you, the elephants and the apes and the whales are as remote as the dinosaurs. I store genetic data—that is, the information required to recover these animals, to rebuild them. I can give you back your past.”
The animals melted away; he lowered his hands.
“Also I have books,” Earthshine said. “And art. Think about that. Two millennia of a different tradition.” He tapped his skull. “All stored in here—”
Kerys cut him off. “The logic is obvious. Whatever we make of you, we can’t allow you to fall into the hands of our rivals. Welcome aboard,” she said simply.
Earthshine inclined his head, as if he’d expected no other reaction.
Oddly, Beth noticed, Ari Guthfrithson the druidh appeared more skeptical; she would have imagined the scholar in him would have responded to Earthshine’s pitch.
“Well, now that’s decided, we have work to do,” Kerys said briskly. Again she glanced out the window. “I don’t need to inform Dumnona of my decision; I only need to implement it. And no need to give that lot out there any notice. Ari, take charge here; I want all these people strapped in their couches for landing in an hour.”
“Yes, trierarchus.” But as Kerys stalked out of the cabin, Ari continued to stare at Earthshine.
The virtual smiled smoothly. “Is there something more you want, druidh? After all, the decision is made.”
“Yes. But what strikes me is that in all your bamboozling presentation of the miracles you offer, you never once suggested what it is you want in return.”
Earthshine spread his hands. “Your trierarchus has guaranteed me continued existence. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not in your case, no. I don’t think it is.”
And, studying Earthshine, and the cautious reactions of Penny Kalinski and even Lex McGregor, Beth had a profound suspicion that he was right. That there was far more going on here than Earthshine was yet revealing.
But a warning trumpet sounded piercing blasts, and they hurried to their acceleration couches. There was no more time for debate.
12
AD 2222; AUC 2975
Even from the ground, on the nameless planet of Romulus, Stef Kalinski had spotted the Malleus Jesu, star vessel of the Classis Sol of the Roman imperium, orbiting in the washed-out sky, a splinter of light. But it was not until the final evacuation from the planet, as she, Yuri, the ColU, and Titus Valerius with his daughter, all rode one of the last shuttles into space, that Stef first got a good look at the craft.
The Malleus Jesu was a fat cylinder of metal and what looked like ceramic, capped with a dome at one end, a flat surface at the other. It looked as if it was held together with huge rivets. There were windows visible in the flanks of the tremendous hull, protected by venetian-blind shutters. The whole craft spun slowly on its axis, presumably to equalize the heating load it received from the sun. The walls were ornately carved with figures in the Roman style: heroic military men striding over defeated peoples, or marching from world to world. Even the rim of that leading dome was elaborately decorated, though the dome itself looked like a crude layering of rock.
Titus Valerius was a massive presence in the seat beside her; he smelled of sweat, stale wine, and straw. Titus pointed at the base of the craft. “Kernels. A bank of them. To push the craft, yes?”
“I know the theory,” Stef said drily.
“Push halfway, turn around, slow down the other half and stop at Earth.” He pointed again, at the dome. “Shield from space dust. Rock from world below. Shoveled on by slaves in armor.”
By which he meant, Stef knew by now, some kind of crude pressure suit.
Yuri, pale but intent, peered out. “It looks like Trajan’s Column, topped by the Pantheon.”
Stef sniffed. “Looks more phallic to me. The Penis of Jesus.”
“Oh, come on. This is just great. An imperial Roman starship! . . . We know they lack sophisticated electronics, computers. I wonder how the hell they navigate that thing.”
“The drive isn’t always on,” said Titus.
Stef realized that a more precise translation of his words might have been, The vulcans do not always vomit fire.
“Every month they shut it down, and turn the ship.” He mimed this with his one good hand, like aligning a cannon. “The surveyors take sightings from the stars. Then they swivel the ship to make sure we’re on the right track, and fire up the drive again. It’s like laying a road, on the march. You lay a stretch, and at the end of the day the surveyors take their sightings to make sure you’re heading straight and true where you’re supposed to go, and the next day off you go. Works like a dream. Why, I remember once on campaign—”
“Navigation by dead reckoning,” said the ColU. “Taking sightings from the stars—simply pointing the craft at the destination. They have no computers here, Colonel Kalinski, nothing more complex th
an an abacus. And they have astrolabes, planispheres, orreries, sextants, and very fine clocks—all mechanical, and remarkably sophisticated. But, Colonel, this starship is piloted using clockwork! However, if you have the brute energy of the kernels available, you don’t need subtlety, you don’t need fine control. You need only aim and fire.”
Titus pointed again at the craft. “Seven decks. Each sixty yards deep.” He counted up from the base of the ship. “Kernels and stores, farm, slave pen, barracks, camp, town, villas of the officers. Plus a bathhouse in the dome for the officers.”
Stef frowned, figuring that out. The word the ColU translated as “yard” was a Roman unit about a yard in length, or roughly a meter. “That must make the cylinder something like four hundred meters long. And, judging by the proportions, around a hundred meters in diameter. What a monster. Titus, we’ve been told very little about this flight.”
He grunted. “That’s officers for you. Don’t tell you a damn thing about what you’re supposed to do, even as they kick you up the arse for not doing it right—”
She asked patiently, “Such as, how long will the flight be?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “Four years, three hundred and thirty-six days. Same as coming out.”
“Hallelujah,” the ColU said drily. “A precise number at last. And are you under full gravity for the whole trip?” Silence. “That is, when the drive is on, do you feel as heavy as you do on Terra?”
The legionary puzzled that out. “Yes,” he said in the end. “The officers don’t want you bouncing around going soft, like you were on Luna, or Mars. The training’s tougher in flight than it is on the ground.”
“I’ll bet,” Stef said. “I know the military. Locked up in a big tin can like this, they’ll keep the lower ranks as busy as possible to keep them from causing mischief.”
The ColU said, “With the numbers the legionary has provided I can at last estimate how far we are from home . . .”
If the drive burned continually, exerting an acceleration equivalent to one Earth gravity, after about a year the ship’s velocity would be approaching the speed of light.
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