Ultima

by Stephen Baxter

  40

  The reception chamber was meant to impress, Mardina thought, if not to awe. Even before you got into the main body of the Titan, the huge space habitat itself.

  The chamber was a wide, deep cylinder set precisely at the spin axis of the rotating habitat, with zero-gravity guide ropes strung from wall to wall. To reach this chamber you had already had to pass through a series of locks, each of which alone had been larger than any single cabin in the Malleus Jesu. The place was ornate, too, with rich woven blankets spread over the steel walls, and sprays of brilliantly colored feathers, even the gleam of gold and silver plate. The huge face of some angry god, his eyes picked out by emeralds, glared down at the Romans from the opposite wall.

  And, from glass-walled emplacements all around them, troops stared down at the newcomers. They wore a uniform of a simple shift tied at the waist, brightly colored, and functional helmets of what looked like hard steel. They had weapons to hand, short swords and stabbing spears—even some kind of artillery, and blunt muzzles peered at the Romans from all sides.

  And now the stranded Malleus personnel—forty legionaries with their Centurion Quintus Fabius, Mardina, Titus Valerius and his daughter, Michael the Greek medicus, and Chu Yuen with the ColU in its pack on his back—were huddled in this vast arena, tangled up in the guide ropes like flies in a spiderweb. It didn’t help that all of them had been cleansed before being allowed this far into the habitat—stripped naked, bathed in hot showers, their clothes shaken out in the vacuum. The ColU said it was entirely sensible that the controllers of this enclosed world would try to keep out fleas and lice and diseases. But it had taken all of Quintus’s personal authority to persuade his men to submit to this.

  The Romans, in their military tunics and boots with their cloaks and packs, looked like savages in this setting, like the barbarians they effected to despise. At least they didn’t look like soldiers anymore. Well, Mardina hoped not. At Quintus’s orders the legionaries had left behind on the Malleus Jesu their gladios and spears and fire-of-life weapons, and their armor, even their military belts and medals.

  The bulk of the ship’s occupants had transferred to the habitat. The ship itself, having come close enough to the Titan for the smaller yachts to deliver the legionaries to the hub port, was now hiding among the asteroids manned by a skeleton crew, a handful of legionaries under the command of optio Gnaeus Junius and trierarchus Eilidh—and with the more fragile passengers, including Jiang, Stef Kalinski and Ari Guthfrithson—able to survive for a long time on supplies meant for five times their number.

  Now, as the Romans waited for the latest step in their induction, Quintus Fabius kept up a steady stream of encouragement. “Take it easy, lads. You look stranger to them than they do to you—even if you are simple farmers of the ice moons. I doubt very much if they’ve seen the likes of you before, Titus Valerius, save in their nightmares . . . Ah. Here comes somebody new to order us about.”

  An official approached them now, a stocky, scowling woman of perhaps fifty, pulling herself along a guide rope. Flanked by an unarmed man and two soldiers, she wore a simple tunic not unlike the soldiers’, but with a pattern of alternately colored squares—like a gaudy chessboard, the shades brilliant—and obviously expensive, Mardina thought. It was a brash garb that did not sit well with what appeared to be an irritable personality. And she carried a peculiar instrument, a frame almost like an abacus but laced with knotted string. She glanced down at this as she approached them, working the knots with agile fingers.

  Titus Valerius murmured, “Speaking of nightmares, Centurion—look at those lads with the clerk.”

  The soldiers who accompanied the official were tall, almost ludicrously so, a head or more taller even than Titus Valerius. Their long limbs looked stick thin but were studded by muscles under wiry flesh, and their faces were bony, skull-like. They moved through the mesh of guide ropes with practiced ease. Close to, they were very strange, even inhuman, and Mardina tried not to recoil.

  “They look ill,” Quintus said. “Too long without weight and no exercise. Put them under my command and I’d soon sort them out . . .”

  “No, Centurion,” Michael murmured. “I think you’re misreading them. These are perfectly healthy—and functional for their environment. They are adapted for the lack of weight. Look how strong they appear, strong in a wiry sense; look how confidently they move. I suspect they would be formidable opponents, just here at the axis of the ship, where there is no weight. Perhaps they have been raised in this environment, from children: specialist axis warriors. Or perhaps they are the result of generations born and bred without weight.”

  “Or,” the ColU murmured from its pack, “perhaps they are the result of genetic tinkering. We have spoken of this, medicus. Your culture knew nothing of this, but we could have done it—”

  “Before the last jonbar hinge but one,” the medicus said drily.

  “Be interesting to fight them, then,” Quintus said thoughtfully. “But not yet. And hush, Collius; that clerk is looking suspicious.”

  The lead official looked up at them now from her knotted strings, her scowl deepening, and she inspected them one by one. Fifty-something she might be, but, Mardina thought, like the soldiers with her, she was handsome. Under black hair streaked with gray she had dark eyes, copper-brown skin, high cheekbones and a nose a Roman might have been proud of.

  The official pulled herself up into the air, so she could look down on the disorderly group of Romans. “Inguill sutiymi—quipucamayoc. Maymanta kanki? Romaoi? Hapinkichu? Runasimi rimankichu?”

  • • •

  Inguill was not having a good day, and when the strangers muttered disrespectfully among themselves before her, her disquiet and irritation quickly deepened.

  Inguill’s formal title was senior quipucamayoc, keeper of the quipus. She was one of a dozen of her rank who, on behalf of the Sapa Inca and through a hierarchy of record-keepers beneath her, effectively governed all of Yupanquisuyu, this great habitat, both cuntisuyu and antisuyu, from Hurin Cuzco at the eastern hub to Hanan Cuzco, palace of the Inca himself, at this western hub. It was a role that, it was said, had had a place in Inca culture since the days before the empire’s conquest of the lands of the first antisuyu, the passage across the eastern ocean, and the move out into the sky.

  And it was a role dedicated to the primary function of control: the essence of the imperial system of the Intip Churi, the Children of the Sun.

  That fact had become apparent to Inguill at a very young age, when the teachers at her ayllu had first picked her out as an exceptional talent and had put her forward for training at the Cuzco colleges. Inguill had risen up the ranks of the imperial administration smoothly—shedding her family and her ties to her ayllu, shunning personal relationships in favor of the endless fascination of the work.

  She had always been able to grasp the key importance of maintaining control, in the empire of the Sapa Inca. Especially in a habitat like this, huge yet finite and fragile, where you had to control the people in order to ensure the maintenance of the complex, interlocked systems that kept them all alive. And in the theology of the Intip Churi, you had to control the gods, too, endlessly placating, and excluding the willful divine anger that could break into the world if chaos and disorder were allowed to reign, even briefly. Of course this great box of a habitat—a box from which there was no possibility of escape, under constant and total surveillance from Hanan Cuzco at the hub, from the Condor craft that continually patrolled the axis, and from operatives dispersed on the ground—lent itself to such control.

  It soon became apparent too that camayocs like herself, endowed with that kind of intuitive perception about the need for unsleeping and unrelenting control, were rare indeed, and prized. So she had found herself plucked out for promotion ahead of many of her age-group cadre—even the privileged sort, the sons and daughters of the rich of the Cuzcos who could afford the fi
nest pharmaceutical enhancements, the most refined extracts from plants and animals bred for the purpose over generations, to sharpen their intellects to a degree of brilliance. Even such an expensively shaped mind was of little use to the state if beneath the glitter and the quick-talk was a lack of basic perception, a lack of an understanding of the challenges of existence. And that was the understanding that Inguill enjoyed, and cultivated in herself.

  Not that it did her career much good. She had proven to be so good at her job that she was given a kind of roaming brief, sent to manage, not the orderly, everyday problems of Yupanquisuyu, but the disorder, the unusual, the out of the ordinary, wherever it might crop up—either within the habitat or coming from without, like this bunch of Romaoi. The paradox was that as a result she spent much of her working life in a state of frustration, even anxiety, and certainly irritation. For the unusual, the disorderly, the chaotic, the very stuff it was her job to deal with, annoyed her profoundly until she could master it and clean it up. And all the while her rivals, over whom she had in theory been promoted, were busily worming their way into comfortable niches in the vast hierarchy of the Cuzcos.

  Nothing in recent times had annoyed her more than these mysterious Romaoi, with their bulging muscles and sullen expressions. Ice-moon farmers? Hah! Not likely . . . But where there was novelty, she reminded herself, where there was strangeness, there was always opportunity—for herself, if not the empire.

  Now she faced the big man with the gaudy cloak who looked to be the leader.

  “My name is Inguill—I am a quipucamayoc. Where are you from? Are you Roman? Do you understand? Do you speak runasimi?”

  • • •

  The ColU’s earpieces had been given to Quintus, Michael, Mardina and a few others. Now Mardina heard the strange device whisper its translation in her ear—a translation from Quechua, which the official called runasimi, into Latin, by an artificial being whose own first language was a kind of bastardized German. Just when it seemed her life couldn’t have got any stranger . . .

  Quintus grunted. “I will never be able to speak this tongue of theirs! It sounds like squabbling birds.”

  “Allichu, huq kuti rimaway!”

  “That was, ‘Say that again,’” the ColU whispered. “Apologize, Centurion. And wait for me to translate.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Pampachaykuway . . .”

  “My name is Quintus Fabius. I am the leader of this group. We are grateful for your shelter.”

  “Well, you haven’t been granted it yet.” The quipucamayoc glared at Quintus and his men, suspicion bristling as visibly as feathers on a predatory bird, Mardina thought. “Tell me again where you claim to come from.”

  “We lived on an ice moon, far from the sun. I apologize; I do not know the names of these bodies as they are known in your mighty empire . . .” (“Collius, I’m not comfortable with all this lying . . .”)

  (“Be humble, Centurion. Guile, remember? You can display your strengths later.”)

  “We were there for many generations. Our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers worked the ice, living off the thin sunlight. We farmed—”

  “You were there so long you forgot most of your Quechua, it seems. Ha! Five centuries after Tiso Inca stomped Rome flat, you refugees still cling to your primitive tongue. Oh, never mind. So you farmed. Why are you here now?”

  Mardina could hear the tension in Quintus Fabius’s voice as he swallowed these insults and responded. She was glad Titus Valerius and the rest could not understand what was said.

  “There was a calamity, quipucamayoc. Another body, a fast-moving rogue, hit our home. We, most of the men, were away, investigating another moon that seemed mineral-rich. We had not detected the rogue, there was no time—our home was destroyed, most of the women and children. All we had built over generations. We who survived came here in the last of our ships, to throw ourselves on your mercy.”

  She peered into his face. “Well, at least you’re sticking to your story. But you don’t betray much grief. That’s either a sign that you’re strong, which is admirable, or you’re lying, which is less so.” She pulled herself along a guide rope and inspected the legionaries. “Also you don’t look like no-weight farmers to me. You’re too solid. Too muscular.”

  Quintus straightened his back. “We—our ancestors were Roman. We retained their sense of discipline, even in our exile out in the dark.”

  “Really. And that ship that brought you in—don’t imagine we didn’t see it before it scurried off into the dark—it didn’t look like any kind of mining craft to me.”

  “Another relic of our pioneering ancestors, quipucamayoc. All we had left. We sent it back to the ice moons to search again for survivors of our family. While we came here looking for work.” (“Collius, these lies become elaborate.”)

  (“Please, Centurion. Humor me. We are playing a long game.”)

  (“Hmm . . .”)

  Inguill glared at Quintus. “You mutter in your antique tongue, as if talking to a voice in your head. Are you simple or insane?” She studied the group, deeply suspicious. “I don’t like you, Quintus Fabius, if that is your name. I don’t like this rabble you have brought into my world. I don’t like your story, which stinks like a week-old fish head. I don’t like the way you hesitate before speaking every line, as if somebody is whispering in your ear. You don’t fit—and I don’t like things that don’t fit. I have the power to throw you all out into the airlessness, you know.”

  Quintus held her gaze. “We are at your mercy.”

  “You are, aren’t you? But you have muscle, and evident discipline of a sort. This is a big craft and we are always short of muscle and discipline—especially if it can be applied to the jobs nobody else wants. Very well. I will let you live. I’ll send you to the antisuyu.” Inguill grinned coldly. “You don’t know what that is, do you? In the antisuyu you will be far from my sight. Indeed you will be far from this place, which is the only way out of this habitat. And a deeper contrast to Rome, and indeed your ice moon, could hardly be imagined. But you won’t be out of my thoughts, believe me. You are a conundrum, Quintus Fabius, and it is evident to me that, to say the least, you are not telling me the whole truth.” She pushed her face close to his. “I don’t like you, and you owe me your life. Never forget that.”

  Quintus did not reply.

  She backed off. “In anticipation of the decision, I brought this man.” She indicated the other clerkish man next to her. “His name is Ruminavi, and he is the tocrico apu of the region to which you will be sent—which contains the ayllu to which you will be attached, among others.” She looked at their empty faces. “Do you understand any of this? You are in Tawantinsuyu, the Empire of the Four Quarters—the earth and the sky, and east and west here in the habitat, the antisuyu and cuntisuyu. Under the Sapa Inca each quarter is controlled by an apu, a prefect, and under him or her are twenty-two tocrico apus . . . Oh! You will learn.

  “Now Ruminavi will escort you to your transports to the antisuyu. Do what the tocrico apu says, and your local curaca, work hard and don’t cause trouble, and you might survive a little while. Oh, and you will give up any weapons you are still concealing. No weapons in Yupanquisuyu, save for the troops and other designated officials.”

  There was grumbling in the ranks at this, but Quintus said quietly in thick rural Latin, “Lads, we’ll find weapons as we need them, or steal them, make them. That’s always been my plan.”

  The ColU said, “Make sure they don’t confiscate me. Tell them I am an idol. Or a piece of medical equipment. Or a scrap from the farmed moon, a sentimental souvenir . . .”

  But the men had fallen silent.

  Mardina turned, and saw that a door at the far end of the chamber had opened, to reveal the interior of the habitat for the first time. A tube of cloud, brightly illuminated, stretching to infinity.

 
; “By Jupiter and Jesu,” muttered Fabius. “Into what have you delivered us, Collius?”

  • • •

  As the Romaoi filed toward the internal transport, one of Inguill’s soldiers approached her, holding a block of metal. “Found this, quipucamayoc. No idea how one of them smuggled this through the cleansing area. And then managed to drop it on the other side . . .”

  Inguill took the piece. It was a kind of belt buckle, she saw, intricately shaped, and stamped with square, ugly Latin lettering that she had to pick out:

  LEGIO XC VICTRIX

  41

  Ruminavi, who was a fussy little man with none of the evident intellect of Inguill, said they would be transported in some kind of carriage to their new home—Mardina imagined something like an elevator car—indeed they would ride in a series of such transports; the carriages would not take all of them at once.

  So the Romans were roughly divided into groups of a dozen or less. Quintus, with Titus’s help, made sure the men were in their contubernium tent groups as far as possible, with somebody relatively sensible in charge of each. The legionaries grumbled and moaned as they formed a queue, hanging weightless in the air—a line that would take them into a chamber of wonders, Mardina realized, but soldiers always grumbled whatever you did for them.

  When it was her turn, Mardina followed Quintus and Chu and a handful of Romans, and passed through a portal into a box of glass, a box riding on upright rails, which in turn were attached to a tremendous vertical wall that stretched above and below her, as far as she could see. Behind her in this glass box, Ruminavi the apu settled on a seat, surrounded by a handful of spidery axis warriors, and the Romans crowded in. And ahead of her . . .

  She recoiled from the view, closing her eyes. She heard a kind of moaning, high-pitched, like a frightened animal. She thought it might be Chu Yuen, the slave, more intelligent than the average legionary and therefore more capable of wonder, and horror. She hoped it wasn’t herself.