Ultima

by Stephen Baxter

  “Don’t be.” A woman drifted before them, smiling. “It takes time to adjust if you’re used to the gravity of the suyus . . .”

  Perhaps forty, with black hair tied back, she had an open, smiling face, though the colors of her cheeks and lips were exaggerated with power and cream. She wore a dress of some brilliantly patterned fabric, and a headband set with emeralds that offset her dark eyes. A beautiful face, beautiful clothing. But she was taller than any legionary, and spindly, as if stretched, her neck long, her bare arms like twigs, and her joints, wrists and elbows and shoulders, were knots of bone. An inhabitant of the axis, then.

  Clodia’s hand gripped Mardina’s tighter.

  Ruminavi laughed. “Oh, don’t be afraid. Lowlanders are often startled by the first nobles they encounter. But you should recall this from your first arrival at Yupanquisuyu. Do you remember the axis warriors, bred for the lack of weight? This is my wife. Her name is Cura—that’s easy to remember, isn’t it? She’s one of the highborn—she comes from one of the first ayllus, the dozen clans here in Cuzco that can prove lineal descent from the earliest of the Incas. So she is a useful ally for you, you see. And her half brother Villac is a colcacamayoc, a keeper of the storehouses—just as senior in the government as Inguill, but with rather different responsibilities. Villac’s responsibility is to collect the mit’a tributes and distribute the stores as necessary; Inguill’s is to count it all, across the empire. And it is Villac who will assist your comrades to get to their ship. Isn’t that marvelous?”

  “But first we have to get you to the palace compound,” Cura said. She cupped Clodia’s cheek in a hand that looked to Mardina as if it was crippled with arthritis, so swollen were the joints. Clodia was clearly forcing herself not to shrink back again. Cura said, “The ceremony of the Great Ripening is not far away; many of the other blessed ones have been preparing already for many days. You are late.” She gazed into Clodia’s blue eyes, caressed her fair skin. “But there have been rumors of your beauty, child, ever since you arrived at the habitat, and then from every mit’a assessor who visited your home ayllu. They were not wrong. You are perfect. Now come, follow me. I know you are used to traveling in space, so you will find the lack of weight no problem.”

  She turned and swam away, slipping gracefully through the mesh of cables, heading deeper into the city.

  • • •

  Mardina and Clodia followed Cura easily, as they passed along a broad avenue lined with huge buildings. Glancing back, Mardina saw that Ruminavi was following them too, with four bony axis warriors bringing up the rear of the party. Though this was the periphery of the city, people hurried everywhere, scrambling through the cobweb, mostly dressed in bright, colorful fabrics, some clutching bundles of quipus. This was a capital city, Mardina reminded herself, the administrative center of an empire the size of a continent, as well as a solar system full of mines and colonies too; many of these tremendous buildings must be hives of offices every bit as busy as the Navy headquarters at Dumnona.

  Clodia was staring, wide-eyed. Mardina remembered she’d had little experience of city life.

  Mardina squeezed Clodia’s hand. “You’re doing well.”

  “I know. Considering I know what it is Cura thinks I’m ‘perfect’ for.”

  “It won’t come to that. The plan, remember . . . But you’re brave, even so.”

  Clodia snorted. “I’m the daughter of Titus Valerius. Of course I’m brave.”

  They passed one particularly ornate building, a kind of flat-topped pyramid on top of which a figure sat on a throne—a statue, Mardina supposed, decked with fine clothes and jewelry. Two axis warriors hovered over the statue, like protective angels.

  The girls slowed, distracted by the sight.

  Cura said, “Look at that stonework! Hand cut, and each stone fits its neighbor as well as two palms pressed together.”

  “Is this the palace?” blurted Clodia.

  Cura smiled. “Well, it’s a palace. It is the home of Huayna Capac, one of the greatest of the Incas.”

  Mardina frowned. “The Sapa Inca—I thought his name was Quisquis.”

  “So it is, the latest Inca—distant descendant of Huayna Capac, of course, separated by seven or eight centuries . . . My chronology is poor.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mardina admitted.

  “I think I do,” Clodia said. “I heard of this. When the Sapa Inca dies—”

  “The Sapa Inca does not die,” Cura said firmly. “He lives on in his palace, he has a household of servants, and he is reunited with his ancestors and descendants on feast days.”

  Clodia stared at the figure in the throne. “How many palaces like this are there?”

  Ruminavi knew the answer to that. “Thirty-eight.”

  “Thirty-nine Incas, then. Thirty-nine emperors since Yupanqui.”

  Mardina stared into the mummy’s painted face. Here was a tough warrior who had built an empire with tools of stone and bronze, and long after his death had been lifted into a realm he could never have imagined.

  “This is my future,” Clodia said. “To become like this.”

  Ruminavi smiled. “A malqui, stuffed and preserved? Not if the plan works out.”

  Once again Clodia slid her hand into Mardina’s.

  53

  The Roman century came to the ocean coast at a beach, not far from the delta of a great river.

  Quintus Fabius ordered his men to stay in the cover of the forest rather than move out into the open. Grumbling, they complied, and began the daily process of establishing camp—for the twenty-first time on this march, they had fallen just a day behind the schedule the centurion had set for them.

  Quintus himself, ordering Chu Yuen with Collius to accompany him, walked out into the light, onto the sandy beach. They were close to the marshy plain of the delta, where tremendous salt-loving trees plunged deep roots into the mud. The river was a mighty one, draining a swath of this half-cylinder continent, the antisuyu, and when Quintus looked ahead he could see the discoloration of the freshwater pushing far out into the ocean brine.

  And when he looked up to left and right, in wonder, he saw how the ocean rose up beyond what ought to have been the horizon, splashed with swirls of cloud, tinged here and there by the outflow of more huge rivers—and merging at last in the mists of the air with the other half of this world sea, which hung like a steel rainbow above his head.

  Inguill, with a couple of Inca soldiers, was waiting for him here, as Quintus knew she would be. “You’re late.”

  He shrugged. “Within our contingency. There’s plenty of time left before—”

  “Before time runs out for Clodia Valeria?”

  Tall, thin, pale, intent, she looked out of place on the beach, in this raw natural environment. She belonged in an office, Quintus thought, her fingers wrapped in those bundles of string she read. But she was in command.

  She turned now and pointed. “Down there are your transports over the ocean.”

  Quintus saw a series of craft drawn up on the sand, flat wooden frames with sails furled up on masts. “Rafts?”

  “They are adequate. They are built by the Chincha, who are a people who once lived on the western coast of the continent you call Valhalla Inferior. Now they live here. Their rafts are of balsa and cotton. They were the best sailors in our world, until the Xin came calling on our shores in their mighty treasure ships. The Chincha craft will suffice to carry you over to the cuntisuyu if the weather over the ocean stays fine—as it is programed to do.” She glanced up at a sky empty of Condors. “And of course you will be less conspicuous than in any other form of transport. On the far side you will be escorted to a capac nan station. There are freight wagons sufficiently roomy to hide your men, all the way to the hub. It won’t be comfortable, but you will be safe enough and will not be betrayed.”

  “Well, we’ve trusted
you this far.”

  “And I, you,” she said drily. “Some would say I have already betrayed the Sapa Inca, my only lord, simply by keeping secrets from him.”

  “Speaking of secrets,” the ColU said now, “I have studied your records, quipucamayoc. I believe I know the nature of the jonbar hinge that separates your reality from ours.”

  They both turned to the slave who bore the ColU. He dropped his gaze as always.

  “Tell me,” Inguill snapped.

  “Yes,” Fabius said with a grin. “Tell me where we Romans went wrong! Perhaps I can put it right beyond the next hinge.”

  “There was nothing you could have done. Nothing anybody could have done. There was a volcano, Quintus. A devastating explosion on the other side of the world. This was some hundred and eighty years before the career of Cusi Yupanqui, Inguill, your empire builder.

  “The Romans and the Brikanti were already in the Valhallas, the Romans for more than a century. Inguill, your own culture had yet to rise up, but already there were civilizations here—cities, farms. The Romans planted colonies in the antisuyu forest, but had only minimal contact with the continent’s more advanced cultures.

  “Then the volcano erupted, on this world. A great belch. The site of immediate devastation was far away, but the ash and dust and gas must have wrapped around the planet.”

  Inguill’s eyes widened. “I know something of this. The Tiwanaku, later a people of our empire, who lived by a great high lake, wrote in their chronicles of a ‘dry fog’ obscuring the sky, of crops failing, of swaths of deaths. All this they wrote down in their histories, which our scholars retrieved in turn when the conquest came.”

  The ColU said, “These western continents suffered, then. But because of vagaries of wind directions and seasonal changes, the eastern continents suffered far more—Africa, Asia, Europa. I have found little evidence for what happened to the Xin. But, Quintus, Rome was grievously damaged. There was mass famine within the Empire, and invasions by peoples from the dying heart of Asia, who brought plague. The Empire never recovered its former strength, and certainly abandoned its holds in the Valhallas, giving up its wars there with the Brikanti.

  “And meanwhile, in Valhalla Inferior, under Cusi Yupanqui and others, the Intip Churi rose up—”

  “And when we began to push into the jungles of the antisuyu, we found Roman colonies.”

  “Yes. Though much degenerated, they preserved some of the skills and traditions of the old world. The Incas took what they wanted from these Roman relics—notably the secrets of the fire-of-life and of iron-making. The Incas’ strongest metal before this contact was bronze. I doubt that a trace of the blood of those Romans survives today, Quintus. But their legacy transformed the Incas.”

  “All because of a volcano,” Quintus said heavily. “And I wonder if those devils who require us to build their Hatches had something to do with that. For all these changes in the fabric of the world seem to be accompanied by huge violence, vast destruction.”

  Inguill smiled coldly. “The intervention of destructive gods. We know all about that, Quintus. Well—history is fascinating to me, as you both know. But it is the future that concerns me now. Will you be ready to disembark in the morning?”

  They wandered along the beach, discussing details.

  • • •

  Later, Chu Yuen murmured to the ColU, “You did not tell them all that you had learned, Collius.”

  “I told them what was necessary. I considered that a fee to be paid to the quipucamayoc for her assistance with this flight.”

  “But the evidence Inca philosophers have found of kernel energies at the volcano site—your suggestion that the eruption was made even worse by yet another war inflicted on mankind by the technologies of the Hatch builders—Quintus almost guessed it.”

  “They don’t need to know that. Not now, not today. Inguill and Quintus must work together; they have much to achieve. I don’t want them to feel helpless.”

  “Do you feel helpless, Collius?”

  “Not I, Chu Yuen. Not I. Come now, we’ll go back to camp. You must be hungry after the day’s march . . .”

  54

  The palace of the Sapa Inca was, Mardina learned, not so much a palace at all as a city in itself, a fortified town within a town. Protected on all sides by thick stone walls faced with green tiles and sheets of gold, it was shielded from above by a stout steel grill, and by squads of axis warriors wearing some kind of rocket pack who flew continually in pairs over the compound—Cura said there was even an air shelter to be pulled over the whole compound should Cuzco’s main dome fail.

  But Mardina and Clodia were led past barriers and guards, straight into this most secure of sanctuaries. They were guided along a kind of ornate tunnel to a central block, and then through corridors and halls whose walls were covered with bewildering displays of colored tiles, some depicting people or animals, others showing only abstract designs.

  It was here they said goodbye to Ruminavi for now, but his wife Cura rushed them along. “We must hurry,” said Cura. “It’s a shame not to give you time to take in everything better. But there will be time later . . . And a shame of course that you’re not more appropriately dressed, but that will be forgiven.”

  Clodia said, “These are the best clothes we have, from the ayllu.”

  “Believe me, nothing you brought will be suitable for Hanan Cuzco. And conversely, you will be given everything you need here.”

  “But our luggage—”

  “That will be kept in storage until it’s time for Mardina to leave. That’s the official plan at least . . .”

  The girls exchanged glances at that. Mardina would be leaving, then, not Clodia, if the Incas got their way.

  They came to a heavy door, armored, guarded and evidently airtight, and passed into another chamber of dazzling beauty through which they hurried, dragging themselves along rails and ropes. The deeper in they moved, Mardina noted, the more people they encountered. They all seemed slim and tall—even those not obviously axis-adapted—elegant, dressed in colorful finery, with elaborately prepared hair. Most had huge golden plugs in their earlobes. Many were very beautiful, even the servants, and Mardina remembered how the prettiest children of the provinces were taken away from their families to serve here. In the lack of gravity, they swarmed and swam in the air. To Mardina, rushing after Cura, it was like passing through a flock of exotic birds.

  And where the girls from the ayllu passed, there were stares and sneers and pretty laughter behind raised hands. Mardina glowered back.

  Clodia said, “There seem to be many soldiers here. I thought everybody loved the Sapa Inca—”

  “Who protects and feeds them—of course they do,” Cura said. “It’s his family that’s the trouble. On the death of an Inca, his successor should be chosen by a council of the panaqas, factions within the family. But Incas generally have many sons by many wives—although the children by his full sister should have precedence. So while an Inca is healthy there is squabbling and maneuvering to gain his favor and that of the panaqas; when he starts to fail there is frantic negotiation among the factions; when he dies the succession can often degenerate into a bloody contest; and even when a winner is announced—”

  “People hold grudges,” Mardina said. “I’m told it’s often like that for the Roman emperors, or was, before.”

  Cura smiled. “Educated people try not to worry about it. The bloodshed generally doesn’t extend beyond the court itself. And it is a way of keeping the line strong; only the toughest survive.”

  Now they had to work harder, pushing through crowds that were mostly streaming ahead the way they were going.

  “I’m getting winded,” Mardina said. “What is it we’re going to see?”

  “Why, it’s the procession of the Inca himself. You’re lucky to have arrived on such a day, to see it in your very first
hour here. Once a month he travels around Cuzco—I’m surprised you haven’t heard of this even out in the antisuyu.”

  Mardina glanced at Clodia. “I think most people out in the country gossip about who stole whose potato, rather than goings-on at court.”

  “Well, that’s their loss. And this particular month, every year, the Sapa Inca comes to the Hall of the Gaping Mouth.”

  “What’s that?”

  Cura smiled. “You’ll see.”

  She led them through one last entrance—huge doors flung open—into a hall containing another three-dimensional crowd, more colorful, gorgeous people flying weightlessly everywhere, and axis warriors aloft, eyeing the populace suspiciously. The hall in some ways was like any other they’d passed through, brilliantly lit by vast fluorescent lanterns, the walls glittering with colored tiles.

  But the floor here was different, for it was panelled with vast windows that showed the blackness of space below—a scattering of stars, a brighter point that might be a planet, the whole panorama slowly rotating as seen from this axis of the habitat.

  Mardina was entranced. The vacuum itself was only a pace or two away. “We must be at the lowest level of the palace—the outer hull. What a sight . . .”

  “Look, Mardina,” Clodia said.

  “Makes me almost nostalgic—”

  “Look. Above the windows, farther down the hall . . .”

  Mardina looked up, drifting into the air to see over the crowd. Now she saw that to the floor’s central window panes were attached upright glass tubes, a dozen of them. And in each of the tubes was a person—young, fourteen or fifteen or sixteen years old maybe, six boys and six girls. Their clothes looked expensive, their faces gleamed with oils, and each wore a dazzling headband studded with precious stones. All drifted weightless in their bottles. And each passively looked out with an empty expression, confused, even baffled, Mardina thought, as if they had no idea what was happening to them.

  Clodia’s observation was terse. “They look fat.”