Ultima

by Stephen Baxter

  And pride surged in Mardina’s own breast, as she waited in the ranks for the centurion to come to her.

  She had spoken to the centurion long ago about her own thwarted military ambitions, on the other side of the jonbar hinge, her dream of joining the Brikanti Navy. But the recruiting of “barbarians,” as Quintus put it, into the Roman army had a long tradition. So, in the weeks since Inguill had come to call and the century had prepared for battle, the centurion had given her a lowly field commission. The tribunes had allowed her to join in the legionaries’ training routines—the physical exercises, the construction work, the fighting with wooden spears and knives. She enjoyed joining with crowds of men in the battle formations, the square, the wedge, the circle, the tortoise. In practice, in the end, Quintus had found her more useful as a quality check on the work he was having done quietly around the village. To the local people, she wasn’t as threatening a presence as the average burly legionary.

  She was even put on the payroll of the imperial army, and the salary due her, nine hundred sesterces a year, was duly recorded—to be paid, she was solemnly assured, when the legion finally returned to Terra and its collegia, less tax, punishment deductions and replacement equipment costs.

  Now Quintus stepped back from the ranks, and looked over his men, and up at the standard over all their heads. This bright morning, with the century drawn up in a glittering array under the light of the Inti windows, Mardina thought that at last there could be no more self-deception about the meaning of all this. The century was a military unit, and it was ready for the march.

  In proud Latin Quintus declared, “Well, if I was a sentimental man, and if I didn’t know you were a bunch of lazy, bed-hopping, wine-swilling slackers, I’d say you made a pretty sight for the eye, men, even under the mother’s milk that passes for daylight in this tub of a world—you are Romans! And proud of it! And I’m proud of you!”

  That was the cue for the first cheer, which Titus Valerius led, raising his stump of an arm, and Mardina joined in with the rest. But Mardina noticed that Titus kept one eye on the sky; she knew they had timed this parade for the intervals between the overflights of the vacuum-eating Condors, the Incas’ spies in the sky, and if one showed up unexpectedly, they would break up the display quickly.

  “We’ve a challenge ahead of us now,” Quintus said, “the like of which no Roman has faced before.” He pointed west. “Probably a month’s march through this jungle, longer if the Sapa Inca spots us on the move and tries to do something about it.” Laughter. “Then we face an unknown ocean, an ocean that spans the waist of the world . . . Pah. We’ll swim it. And then on to the hub, to Hanan Cuzco, where we’ll face down the Sapa Inca himself and his decadent hordes, and we’ll carve out a destiny that nobody who lives in this rolling barrel will ever forget!”

  If that was vague, it was purposefully so, Mardina knew, because the whole strategy was vague, the more so the further out you looked. To get to Mars/Illapa: that was the only clearly defined goal. The rest was going to have to be improvised, hopefully with the help of the quipucamayoc. But the centurion was rewarded with another cheer even so.

  “Now, before we start,” Quintus said, “and I know very well it’s not New Year’s Day, I want us to remember who we are and what we are. No matter how far from home, we are bound to the Emperor and the Empire. And we will say the sacramentum together. Titus Valerius, lead us.”

  The big warrior, who had been rehearsing this, stepped forward and boomed out the words of the soldiers’ oath: “We swear by God and Jesu, and by the majesty of the Emperor who second to God is to be loved and worshipped by humanity . . .”

  The legionaries repeated the ancient words, as they were used to doing every New Year.

  “. . . that we will do strenuously all that the Emperor commands, will never desert the service, nor refuse to die for the Roman state . . .”

  The voices of the legionaries made a cavernous rumble. And when they were done they yelled and waved their gladios in the air.

  Clodia Valeria ran out of the crowd of watching civilians, and hugged her father. There were catcalls at this, but Titus hugged his daughter back with his one good arm. And he exchanged a dark glance with Quintus, a glance Mardina understood, for Clodia had her own difficult duty to perform before this mission was through, as indeed did Mardina.

  • • •

  With the ceremony done, the parade broke up, and the men formed up into a column for marching.

  The legionaries themselves, laden with their cloaks and packs, would go ahead two by two, the standard-bearer leading the column, with scouts probing the countryside. A rough baggage train formed behind. This included some of the wives the legionaries had taken from the ayllu—and one mother with a very young Roman-Inca baby. Michael the medicus walked here, with Chu Yuen and his burden at one side, and Clodia Valeria at the other. Then came some of the mitimacs who had volunteered to assist the march, carpenters, cobblers, cooks—and then a train of yanakunas, slaves used as bearers of baggage.

  Mardina was surprised so many of the mitimacs, the ordinary taxpayers of the ayllu, had been prepared to come along. Well, most of their time and labor was their own to use as they pleased, and many, it turned out, had never traveled far from their home, either toward the eastern hub in one direction or the ocean in the other. Some, especially the young, were excited by the idea of joining this adventure, even if it was ill understood. In fact, Mardina suspected, some of them probably believed that this highly organized expedition led by the commanding Quintus Fabius was a fulfillment of a portion of their mit’a obligations.

  When they were ready the scouts led the column out of the ayllu, to cheers, ribald whistles, even a scattering of applause. At first little children from the ayllu ran alongside, shouting and waving, and in the excitement even some of the tamer guinea pigs ran around, wondering what all the fuss was about. But the parents called their offspring back before the head of the column reached the fringe of the hacha hacha. Here the trumpets sounded, and soon anti guides materialized out of the forest, their blue-painted faces seeming to hover in the green gloom.

  And that was when the grumbling started, as Titus had predicted to Mardina. She knew that many of the legionaries had never gone farther into the jungle than you needed to take a discreet piss. Now they weren’t happy at walking into the great green chamber of the forest, past the slim columns of the tree trunks, under the dense canopy that excluded so much of the light, with the antis like elusive shadows all around—and the legionaries jumped at every crack of a twig, every hiss of a snake or clatter of scorpions.

  But the complaints lessened after an hour or so, when they reached a clear path—not a metalled road, it was mere dirt beaten flat by bare feet, but it was a straight path heading directly west, and all but concealed from the sky by the trees. After the confusion of the denser jungle, the column quickly formed up in good order once more, and the march to the west continued.

  Another hour and they passed through an anti village, round huts built on frames of branches and walled with reeds, the people all but naked, some at work skinning animals or pounding grain or tanning leather or tending fires. The antis stared curiously at the legionaries—and they stared back with interest at the bare breasts of the women, and with horror at the elaborately pierced penises displayed by some of the men. Everybody seemed to be tattooed, Mardina thought; faces like the jaguars of local mythology peered at her from every shadow. She was poignantly reminded of the tattoo on her own mother’s face.

  Soon the village was behind them, and the march continued along another straight track. Some of the walkers peeled off to fill flasks from the stream that watered the village.

  This was to be the strategy, to keep to the deep forest tracks as much as possible—to exploit what the antis had built here. For this was the real anti culture. Mardina herself had seen a little of it, and from their arrival here Quintus Fabi
us had sent out his scouts to study every aspect of their environment. The antis were not town dwellers like Romans or Incas, but they were not savages living at random in the jungle either. The Roman scouts had found a network of settlements and trails cut or burned into the forest, neat round clearings connected by dead straight lines, all invisible from outside the forest, and mostly screened from the air by the forest canopy. And it was these tracks the Romans would follow, as far as possible, relying on the support of friendly antis as they traveled.

  It might work, Mardina thought. The Inca state seemed to have an ambiguous relationship with the antis. In theory they were mitimacs, taxpayers like every other citizen of the empire. And they did make tributes when the assessors came calling, from the produce of the forest. Their wiry archers would also serve in the Inca’s army, and reasonably disciplined they could be too. On the other hand, the Sapa Inca would occasionally order his troops to make forays into the forest, seizing goods with the excuse of unpaid mit’a, or even taking antis as slaves, yanakunas—but there could be anti raids on unwary ayllus too. It was a wary relationship then, between two quite alien cultures. But on the whole the Incas seemed content to allow the antis to live their lives under the cover of their forest canopy, invisible even to the vacuum-eating Condors. And the antis were useful to the Romans now.

  So here they were: Roman legionaries marching through a three-thousand-mile-long habitat in space, and Mardina was one of them. When she thought about it, she was thrilled.

  • • •

  They had walked about seven hours when the surveyors said they had covered twenty miles, the standard target for a marching day.

  They came to a clearing, perhaps once occupied by the antis but now abandoned, with the scuffed and blackened remains of old hearths pierced by the brilliant green of saplings. The men broke formation, dumped their packs, and changed their boots for camp sandals to ease their feet. They looked exhausted to Mardina; they weren’t in as good shape as Quintus might have hoped. But they would toughen up—and their work for this day wasn’t yet done.

  With the spades they carried on their packs—tools they had been allowed to keep on arrival in the habitat—the legionaries got to work creating a camp for the night. Some worked around a perimeter sketched by the surveyors, digging a ditch and building walls. Others hastily assembled spiky caltrops from fallen tree branches and scattered them around the perimeter. Soon the tents went up, sheets of heavy leather carried by the yanakunas, in neat rows along what was effectively a narrow street, with latrine ditches threading out of the camp. Meanwhile the fires were lit, the pots were set up, and the smell of cooking filled the air, mostly a broth of guinea-pig meat and vegetables and fish sauce.

  Outside all this, the wives and other camp followers made their own arrangements for the night, as best they could. The glow from the Inti windows faded, and the eerie night of the habitat drew in.

  Quintus Fabius sought out Mardina, where she was helping Titus Valerius and his daughter with their meal. The centurion beckoned to draw her away.

  Together they walked around the perimeter of the camp. The centurion growled, “Oh! What a relief to talk decent camp Latin again, without trying to curl one’s lips around runasimi, or to have Collius whispering in one’s ear . . . So what do you think of your first day on the march, my newest legionary?”

  That title, casually used, thrilled her. “Impressive,” she said truthfully. “The discipline, despite all the grumbling.”

  “Soldiers always grumble.”

  “And the way they put together this camp—”

  “Centuries of tradition and years of training. But the men like their camps. It’s the same every night, as if you aren’t traveling at all—as if you’re returning home each evening to the same miniature town. Soldiers like familiarity, above all. A place they know they’ll be able to sleep in safety.” He glanced at the engineered sky. “We made good progress today.”

  “Yes. I spoke to the surveyors. It’s one advantage of having a sky that’s almost a mirror image of the ground. They say it’s fifteen or twenty days’ march to the ocean, if we do as well as we did today.”

  “Well, that was pretty much the plan.”

  They came to a stretch of the wall that was less satisfactory than the rest; he scuffed some loose earth with his sandaled foot, and glanced around; Mardina could see he was making a mental note regarding some later discipline. They walked on.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m glad to have them on the march at last. Legionaries need to be legionaries; they’re not cut out to be farmers and taxpayers—not until they retire, anyhow. We have had some discipline problems—more than you were probably aware of. Bored men squabbling over gambling games, or women, or boys. As for the positive side, I ran out of excuses to issue phalera and other wooden medals for basic camp duties. Well, Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson, I’m glad you saw little of that, and I’m glad you see us at our best—doing what we do best, short of giving battle, that is.”

  She plucked up her courage to speak frankly. “And you’re speaking to me like this, sir, because—”

  He stopped and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Well, you know why. You have a duty of your own to fulfill, you and Clodia. Tomorrow you’ll be led out of the forest by a couple of antis, and you’ll meet the tocrico apu Ruminavi and other agents of the quipucamayoc, who will take you to a capac nan station and deliver you into the hands of the Sapa Inca’s tax collectors . . .”

  “Tomorrow? I didn’t know it was as soon as that.”

  “I thought it best not to tell you. To let you enjoy as much of this as possible.” He squeezed her shoulder harder. “You know the plan. Of all of us, yours is perhaps the most difficult duty to fulfill. Even more than poor Clodia Valeria, who I suspect understands little of this.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “You’ll do more than that, legionary,” he said gruffly, releasing her. “You’ll fulfill your orders and do what’s required of you, adhering to the oath you swore this morning.”

  She stood up straight. “Of course, sir.”

  “All right. Now go back and help Titus with his stew. Later I’ll stop by and make sure he remembers he has to say goodbye to his daughter in the morning . . .”

  52

  Hanan Cuzco was a great city.

  Of course, Mardina had been here before, when she had first arrived at Yupanquisuyu. But so baffled had she been by the giant habitat that she had taken in little of the capital city itself.

  And this was a city like no other. Mardina, who had seen Dumnona and Eboraki in Brikanti, and many of the cities of the Roman Empire, could attest to that, as she and Clodia Valeria, grimly holding hands, bewildered after a long rail journey, were led by Ruminavi through the last security cordon.

  Hanan Cuzco nestled in the tremendous bowl of the western hub, a structure itself over four hundred miles across—seen from the edge, it was more like a crater on Luna, Mardina thought, than any structure on Earth. And, she saw, as they rode across the face of the hub in a comfortable seated carriage, nestling at the base of this bowl was the city, huge buildings of stone and glass, blocks and pyramids and domes set out like gigantic toys. Many of the roofs were plated with gold that shone in the light of the Inti windows. All of this was crowded around a huge central structure, that tremendous tower she remembered well, a supremely narrow pyramid that must reach a mile high.

  Ruminavi, their guide, pointed out sights. “There is Qoricancha, the temple of the sun. There is Huacaypata, the main square, where the great roads cross. The big structure on the far side is Saqsaywaman, the fortress that guards the capital. All this is modeled on Old Cuzco, the Navel of the World, and yet wrought much larger . . .”

  The great buildings, imported from Terra stone by stone, were of finely cut sandstone, huge blocks that fit together seamlessly, and without mortar. Lesser buildings had ston
e walls and thatched roofs, and wooden door frames in which colorfully dyed blankets hung. Here at the axis of the habitat there was no spin gravity, and she could see metal straps wrapped around the walls and roofs, to hold the buildings in place in the absence of the weight of the stones themselves. And in this city without weight, the wide streets were laced with guide ropes, many of which glittered silver, stretching across the avenues and between the upper stories of many of the buildings, as if the whole city had been draped in a shimmering spiderweb. People moved through that web, strange angular people, like spiders themselves.

  Of course they were hundreds of miles above the layer of atmosphere that was plastered against the habitat’s outer wall. So the city was enclosed by a dome, barely visible, a shimmering bubble that swept up above the buildings. There were more buildings outside the air dome, squat, blockier, air-retaining structures: factories that maintained the air and water and other systems, and a number of military emplacements—no chances were taken with the security of the Sapa Inca. Mardina had taken in little of this during her first bewildered hours in the habitat. She hadn’t even noticed the dome.

  And, when she stepped out of the glass-walled transport and looked around, over Mardina’s head the interior of the habitat itself stretched like a tremendous well shaft, walled with land and sea and air, a shaft thousands of miles tall.

  Clodia tugged her hand. “Don’t look up. It makes you giddy.”

  Mardina had looked up, and, yes, she felt briefly dizzy. “I’m sorry.”