Ultima (36 page)

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 . . .”

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 stone 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.”

“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
quipu
s. 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.

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 . . .”