Ultima (41 page)

“We'll have to leave here, then,” Beth said.

“Yes. We need to follow Earthshine, we must make for the antistellar . . . We must cross the darkened face of the world. We'll need to prepare—warm clothes, food. It will take some time—but we must do this as soon as we can. I will tell you more when I know for sure myself,” the ColU said patiently. “But for now, let's begin to plan. We have a long journey ahead . . . Come, Chu Yuen, if you please.”

As Chu turned to begin the walk back to Beth's camp, Stef saw Mardina's hand slip into his, and squeeze tightly.

When Stef and the others returned to the camp, and began the discussion about leaving for the antistellar, Ari drew Inguill aside.

They walked away from the others, on the pretense of inspecting the latrine ditch they had been working on. When they were out of earshot, Ari plucked out his earpiece. “I can speak Latin,” he said in that tongue. “Can you?”

“A little.” Inguill removed her own earpiece. “I studied it in the course of my historical surveys. And my grasp has been refreshed by my contact with your group.”

Ari took the earpieces and set them down some distance away. “Then let us communicate in that way. I would prefer not to have our conversation passed through Collius.”

She smiled. “I think I know why.”

He eyed her. “You and I are not like these others—”

“‘These others,'” she said drily, “include your daughter and her mother.”

He smiled back. “That's a long story. Nevertheless, you and I
see
further than the rest. We would not have come on this astonishing journey across the reality sheaves otherwise. Indeed I was blocked, once, from progressing even faster, from following this Earthshine into mystery, through a Hatch on a different Mars. And now we are here, in this place, wherever it is—”

“Wherever and
when
ever.”

“We are not here to dig ditches.”

“I agree with that,” she said.

“Or to grow potatoes, or build lean-tos. Or to wait around until my daughter and Clodia Valeria rip each other to pieces over the Xin boy.”

She laughed. “You noticed that too. Then why are we here, Ari Guthfrithson?”

“Isn't it obvious? We are fascinated by the jonbar hinges. Whole histories are being wiped away, as if by the wave of a hand. To have such power—”

“You think that is what this Earthshine has gone to seek.”

“Isn't that obvious too?” His eyes glittered. “Now my wife and the rest, goaded by the ColU, are considering an expedition. We will all march off into the dark and the cold. But first we will grow more root vegetables, so that we won't be hungry. Even then we will move at the pace of the slowest of the group. And all the time we will be in the control of the ColU—”

“What are you suggesting, Ari?”

He stepped closer to her, close enough to whisper. His face was hard, determined. She could smell boiled potatoes on his breath.

“I'm suggesting that you and I should leave, now.”

She'd known this proposal was coming, yet her heart beat faster in response. “You're talking about walking around the world. How—”

“There may be ways to move more quickly. We can follow the trail Earthshine left.” He pointed to the southeast. “It's clearly visible. As for food, the store my wife has built up should be enough to sustain two.”

She grinned. “If stolen from her.”

“If stolen, yes. The pressure suit she has preserved since she came through the Hatch from Mars would provide enough warmth for us, I believe—it is a thing of multiple layers, a thing designed for the harshness of Mars, which, even if separated out, could protect the two of us from the chill of this place, Per Ardua. There are tools, even weapons we could take.”

“You would betray your wife?”

He shrugged. “I don't think of it that way. Perhaps I am saving her from her own foolishness.”

“Why should we do this?”

“Because of the power this Earthshine pursues. Huge power, for those brave enough to grasp it. And worthy of it.”

She took a breath. “I feel—intoxicated. As I have ever since I started to uncover the strange mystery of this weaving of history. As if I were a child, plummeting down a hub-mountain glacier, out of control . . . We have both already walked away from our worlds, the very reality we knew, the history, the culture. Now here we are speaking of walking off into the dark. To our deaths—or unknowable glory.” She looked at him. “Do you believe that when your history died, your gods died?”

He shrugged. “In the Christian tradition, Jesu died and lived again. And in the tradition of my ancestors, all the gods die, in a final war at the end of time, but another cycle begins.”

She nodded. “Our priests also talk of cycles of calamities that punctuate time. Perhaps on some deep level we, our ancestors, already knew this is true, this meddling by the Dreamers—whoever and whatever they are.”

“So,” he said, “will you come with me? Will you dare outlive your gods?”

Again, a breath. “When do we leave?”

Titus Valerius, like Ari and Mardina and some of the others, had trouble adapting to the unending day of Proxima, Stef saw. The legionary found it difficult to structure his day, to sleep at night.

But he was in his element when it came to planning the trek to the antistellar. Even the betrayal of Ari and Inguill, who had taken so much of their stock and supplies with them, seemed to make no difference. He had a way of defeating problems just by waving them away.

“So we must walk around this empty world. Pah! In my time I have participated in marches the length and breadth of Europa, Africa, Valhallas Inferior and Superior, and deep into Asia. Marches across hostile territories, into the frozen tundra where wild horsemen still lurk at the fringes of continent-spanning forests—and through Valhallan jungles where every leaf conceals a scorpion, where every shadow is likely to turn out to be a skinny little warrior with a blowpipe. What dangers do we face here? That we will trip over an earthworm? We will do this. I will lead you. We will march—and that is what the Roman army is for, above all else: marching. And if we have the spare energy, I might have you all build a road while we're at it, to ease the journey back. Why, I remember once on campaign—”

“I'm enjoying this performance, Titus Valerius,” Stef said with a grin, “but I don't believe a word of it. For one thing, you're not a surveyor, or a mapmaker. There's going to be nothing to wage war against on this trip. This will be an exercise in planning, Titus Valerius. In logistics. In survival.”

“Survival? In a country where potatoes and beets grow wild? Why, it will be like a stroll through the estates of the Emperor Hadrian.”

She eyed him. “ColU, do you think he really understands what he's taking on?”

The ColU sat on the ground beside the two of them, on a blanket spread out over the rusty dirt outside the shelter. Nearby, a low fire flickered, slowly boiling up another pot of water. “Titus Valerius is a brave man and we are lucky to have him at our side.”

Stef grinned. “Tactfully put.”

Titus Valerius scowled. “You tell me, then, star lady. Describe what it is about this journey that I don't understand.”

“I
have
done this before, Titus. To begin with, we are going to have to travel all the way around half a circumference of the world.” With a broken stem she sketched a circle in the dirt, alongside a bold asterisk to which she pointed. “Here's Proxima, the star. The circle is Per Ardua, the planet. Per Ardua keeps one face to the star at all times. So—” She cut Per Ardua in half with a bold stroke, and scribbled over the hemisphere turned away from the star. “One half is always in daylight, one side is always in shadow—in endless night. The substellar, the point right under the star in the sky, is here.” A thumb mark, on the world's surface right beneath the star. “Which is where we are. And that's why the star is always directly over our heads. The antistellar is on the other side of the world.” Another thumb mark. “It couldn't be farther away from this spot. And to travel there . . .” She sketched a broken line stretching around half a circumference of her planet, from substellar to antistellar. “You see? The shortest possible distance we have to travel is half of a great circle—I mean, if we just head straight for the antistellar. That's without detours, for such details as mountain ranges and oceans and impenetrable forests and ice caps. And the distance—ColU?”

“Per Ardua is a little smaller than Earth. Around twelve thousand Roman miles.”

“And, can you see, Titus? Half of that will be in daylight, and half in the dark. Six thousand miles across icebound lands and frozen oceans.”

“In the dark?” Titus was frowning now. “Where nothing will grow?”

“Nothing but icicles on your beard. Exactly. Now do you see the challenge?
We
had a vehicle, motorized. It was still gruelling. Beth has been building a cart.”

Titus nodded. “Even if we completed it, we would have to
pull
it. We have no engines, no draft animals. On the march, without vehicular transport, we expect to cover around twenty miles a day. So the journey would take us . . .”

Stef smiled. “Leave the mental arithmetic to me. Six hundred days. The best part of two years!”

“And one of those years in the dark and cold, where nothing grows.”

She nodded. “It's easy for us to express an ambition to reach the antistellar, Titus. But it may not be physically possible.”

He grinned. “You should be a centurion, Colonel Kalinski.”

“Really?”

“You never tell a Roman something isn't possible. Romans know no limits.”

“We have one advantage,” the ColU said. “Ari and Inguill went ahead of us, as you say—and Earthshine went ahead of them. There ought to be a trail we can follow, easily visible on the surface of this static world. For, even if Ari and Inguill can have had little idea what they were walking into, Earthshine
will
have known what he was doing. I have no doubt he would have carried a full information store on Per Ardua, as explored by our people, Stef, in our home reality.”

Titus frowned. “You mean, he had maps of this world?”

“More like a memory of maps.”

Titus pointed at the ColU. “And you, demon. Do you have a memory of such maps too?”

“In my humble way, I was one of the pioneers of Per Ardua myself. And after humanity's large-scale emigration to Per Ardua I made sure I kept track of the latest survey data, the exploration results. Yes, I ‘remember' the maps—at least of Per Ardua as it was.”

“Very well.” Titus lifted the ColU bodily, and set it at the edge of the blanket, facing an unmarked stretch of dirt. “Together, you and I will draw a map of this world—the parts I need to know about—so that I understand. Then I will take my daughter, Clodia, with light packs, and we will follow the tracks of Earthshine, and Ari and Inguill, to scout out a route. Meanwhile, you, Stef, will organize the preparations here. Get that cart ready to travel. Gather potatoes and beets. Grow
more
potatoes! It may be some weeks before we are ready to leave. And as for the dark side—let us get there first, and then we will plan anew.”

She saluted him Roman style, fist to chest and then arm raised. “Yes, Centurion! You're right, you know.”

“I am?”

“If anybody can get us to that damn antistellar, you can. I have faith in you, Titus. Maybe not as much as you have in yourself . . . Tell me one thing, though. Why are you taking Clodia on this scouting trip?”

He grunted. “Isn't it obvious? To keep her away from Mardina and the Xin slave boy. We've enough troubles already. Now then, ColU, tell me where to begin with this well-remembered map of yours . . .”

In the end it was more like two months before Titus Valerius, having returned from his scouting expedition with Clodia, declared that they were ready to depart.

They broke camp. Everything useful and lightweight was loaded onto Beth's cart, or was stored on improvised packs on the walkers' backs. They loaded as much as they could of the food store Beth had begun, cooked and dried and packaged up. Titus had decreed that they would forage as they moved, saving as much of their store as possible. The ColU itself was on the cart to relieve Chu of his burden, bundled up in a blanket and lashed in place.

The camp had been Beth's home since she had first come here through the substellar Hatch with Earthshine. Stef watched her regretfully closing down her array of homemade clocks.

At last Stef found herself helped up onto the cart, with Beth at her side. Titus handed Stef the lightweight ropes that constituted the cart's rudimentary steering system.

“Thanks,” Stef said sourly. “So the old lady is baggage on the trip.”

Titus scowled at that. “Yes. You're the oldest. You'll walk the least. Your job is to control the cart. But you
will
get off that cart and walk when I tell you, because I need you to stay fit and healthy.” He had a sheaf of bits of parchment and paper on which he'd worked out his schedule for the trip, tucked under his damaged arm. “It's all in the plan.”

Stef sighed. “I hate to be a burden.”

“Just do as you're told.”

“Yes, Centurion!”

Beth held Stef's hand. “I wouldn't worry about it. He thinks of you as a soldier, if maybe a wounded one, or he wouldn't be so tough on you.”

Stef grunted. “Well, I was military myself. I guess you're right. With men like Titus, it's when they're nice to you that you have to worry.”

“And as for walking . . .” Beth patted the frame of the cart. “Be careful what you wish for. This is my design, remember, and we're not exactly overstocked with tools and raw materials, especially since Ari and Inguill took so much of the good stuff. If this gets us halfway to the terminator, I'll be impressed.”

“Oh, I think we'll do better than that,” Stef said, though she spoke more in hope than expectation as she looked back at the cart.

The basis of it was the frame of “wood”—actually split-open trunks of stem-trees from the substellar forest—lashed together with rope and vines that Beth had begun to build. It rode on wheels of wood rimmed with rope. Rims of steel or iron would have been better, but they didn't want to take the time to build a forge to achieve that, and they'd brought spare wheels.

In addition, the ColU had ordered that sled-like rails should be fixed to the cart's underside, an obvious preparation for the icy dark-side journey to come. And, under the direction of the ColU and Titus, the cart had even been made ready to serve as a shallow-draft boat. The sides had been built up and the whole had been made waterproof, with a coating of the marrow that you could extract from any stem or the trunks of the forest trees. The “marrow” wasn't marrow but a complex organic product in itself, capable of a kind of internal photosynthesis based on the abundant heat energy available from Proxima. The travelers disregarded this biological miracle, and were only interested in using it as a kind of sticky gunk to seal cracks in their cart.

Stef thought it was all a marvel of improvisation and ingenuity, but they could only hope their preparations were adequate to meet the challenges ahead.

At last they were ready to go. Under Titus's rough direction, they formed up into a kind of column. The cart, of course, needed pushing and pulling, and Titus himself, Clodia, Mardina and Chu were assigned to that duty, two ahead, two behind. They'd have some help from Beth, but she was spared the worst of the work. In her late fifties, she was being treated as another honorary old lady, to Beth's irritation and Stef's amusement.

“This is it, then,” Titus cried. “A journey around this strange world—a journey that begins with a single step.” He drew his
pugio
, his dagger, and held it aloft. “Are you ready for war?”

“Yes!”

“I said—are you ready?”

“Yes!”

“Then we advance!” He settled into his own padded harness, positioned his damaged arm, and leaned into the traces.

The cart jolted into motion, nearly throwing Stef off in the very first moment.

So it began.

•   •   •

Titus and Clodia had scouted out their route well. It roughly tracked the trail created by Earthshine and then followed by Ari and Inguill, but from the beginning it was almost all downhill—or at least on a gentle declining slope—and led through reasonably open country, following the water courses that threaded away from the high ground of the substellar plateau. The “draft animals” seemed pleasantly surprised to find that the exercise wasn't as hard as they might have feared, although Stef kept her mouth shut about that, given that she didn't have to share in the labor.

Titus called a halt after about a quarter of an hour, so that people could make minor adjustments to boots and harnesses and other bits of clothing. Then they pressed on for another half hour, until Titus called another stop for water, and then another half hour when he rotated the crew, with Beth slipping into the traces vacated by Mardina.

After just three hours—Stef guessed they'd gone only five or six miles—Titus decreed that they were done for the first day.

The rest were anxious to keep moving now they'd started, with the
thousands
of miles that lay ahead of them weighing heavily on their minds. But Titus was nothing if not an experienced marcher, and he knew what he was doing. He had them all strip off their boots, bathe their feet in a stream, and then slip into the loose, open camp sandals he'd had them make. This first day, unpracticed, it would take them longer than usual to make camp, to get into the routine of digging a latrine ditch and gathering food and collecting water, and Titus wanted to be sure they did all this properly. Also Titus wanted to check over the cart, to see if it was passing this ultimate test of roadworthiness. They had spare parts and pots of marrow to fix up obvious flaws.

“Come on, come on!” Titus chivvied them as they got to work. “When Roman legionaries are on the march they set up camp every night—”

“Sure they do.”

“And you don't hear a word of complaint—”

“Sure you don't!”

“Why, I remember once on campaign—”

“Save it, Titus Valerius!”

Once the labor of the camp building was done, and they were gathered around the fire they'd built for the night, Stef could see the wisdom of Titus's management. They'd all encountered unexpected difficulties, even if Stef's had been only the lack of a cushion under her bony behind. And they were all more tired than they'd expected to be. But they'd got through the day, they'd done everything Titus had demanded of them, and they knew now they only had to repeat this routine in the days to come.

Before they bundled up under their blankets and clothing heaps to sleep, huddling together under Beth's stretched-out tent, Titus came around one more time, accompanied by Clodia with a simple medical pack. The legionary insisted on checking everybody's feet, for bruises, chafing, incipient blisters. “Now that you're all soldiers on the march, you'll learn that your most important items of equipment are your feet. Look after them and the rest follows. And the sooner you're all capable of doing this for yourselves, the better.”

“Good night, Titus Valerius.”

“Good night, auxiliaries . . .”

And, after Titus had done his round, Stef heard rustling, saw shadows slip through the dim light under the canopy. They were unmistakable: Chu Yuen and Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson, clutching blankets, hand in hand, making their way out from under the canopy and into the shade of the forest.

•   •   •

The next day they made better progress. And the day after that, better still.

Stef made a deliberate effort not to count the days, not even to try to estimate the distance traveled. She knew she could leave that kind of management to Titus and the ColU. And besides, she slept better if she tried not to think about the monumental journey ahead. She thought of this as a new way of life, a long tunnel of routine that was going to fill her days for the foreseeable future. Sleep, break camp, march, make camp, sleep . . . Without beginning, and without end.

But, gradually, the country began to change.

They descended from the substellar high ground, and the haulers began to lose the benefit of the downward slopes Titus had cunningly scouted for them. On the other hand, the weather on the lower ground, away from the permanent low-pressure system over the substellar point, became milder, less turbulent. Day by day there was less wind and rain. And the vegetation around them responded. Now the broken forest that characterized the relatively unsettled substellar gave way to more open country, with forest clumps separated by broad swaths of ground-hugging, light-trapping vegetation.

During the long hours between the days' marches, the ColU had Chu carry it out into the country away from the camp to inspect the changing terrain. Out of curiosity, and when she had the strength, Stef followed them—often with Beth, who was curious to see more of what had become of this world that she still thought of as home.

At the end of one unremarkable day, they walked side by side over a plain almost covered in sprawling green leaves, like tremendous lilies, Stef thought. Systems of three leaves united at a central stem, covering the ground, and basking in Proxima light. When she knelt down to look closer she saw that the leaves were firmly anchored to the ground by fine tendrils, covering every square centimeter. No competitor was going to swipe
this
plant's growing space, this share of the starlight. It was a very Arduan scene. But when she dug her hand into the ground beneath the leaf, she came up with what looked like an authentic sample of terrestrial soil, complete with an earthworm, a thing like a woodlouse, and other creeping terrestrial creatures.

As they walked back to camp, Stef gradually got a broader sense of the wider landscape. With the star static overhead, and every square centimeter of ground colonized thickly by the green of life, this part of the world was like a huge, collective, cooperative system, optimized over time to extract every scrap of energy from the light falling from the sky. Stef felt as if she were in some huge greenhouse, old and decayed, the glass choked by lichen, moss and weeds—with here and there a vivid splash of Earth life embedded in the rest.

•   •   •

In the middle of the next day they came to the bank of a river, wide, placid.

Stef clambered off her bench and hobbled over to Titus. He was standing with his one good hand on his hip, staring out at the water, grinning. “This is as far as I came with Clodia, during our scouting trip. Well, I judged we need come no farther. This river clearly flows out of the substellar point,” and he waved his hand back in the direction of Proxima, “and, no doubt fed by many tributaries, continues to flow in a roughly southeasterly direction. Well, you can see that. Now, Stef, tell me I'm no surveyor. Madam, I present a highway as straight and true as any Roman road. And now, for a time at least, we can all ride in comfort, as
you
have been all the way from our first camp.”

“Aye aye, cap'n.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I imagine that didn't translate . . .”

They made camp in the usual manner. Then they got to work reassembling their cart into a small boat—detaching the wheels and axles, going over the seals with their marrow caulking, and digging out paddles they'd crudely made from dead stems lashed up with rope.

In the breaks, they took advantage of the river, washing their feet and clothes, dunking their whole bodies luxuriously in water that ran refreshingly cool. But Titus banned any swimming. Though the river ran with a strong current, it was obvious that the bed was choked with life, and he didn't want anybody getting caught up in that.

It took them forty-eight hours before they were ready to embark. After so long on the road, many days already, they had all learned not to rush.

As with their first day's walk, Titus decreed that their first jaunt in the boat would be a short one, to ensure they ironed out any flaws. He made sure that those to whom he entrusted the paddles had fabric wrapped around their palms for protection, and ponchos improvised from lightweight survival blankets to keep off the spray. They even had to wear their light camp sandals, so that their boots, precious items of equipment, could be bundled in waterproofs. It was all detail with Titus, Stef observed.

It visibly infuriated Titus that, lacking an arm, he couldn't manage a paddle himself. But he insisted on riding at the stern, where a crude rudder had been attached.

Once they were all loaded aboard, their stuff lashed down, Chu shoved them off from the bank with a mighty jab of his paddle against a rock, and they drifted out toward the center of the river. Titus was at the stern with his rudder, Stef at the prow with her back to the river. Of the four rowers, Chu and Clodia sat together to Stef's right, and Beth and Mardina, mother and daughter, to her left. For the first couple of miles they were all silent, save for Titus's curt commands: “That's it, we'll keep to the center where it's deepest . . . Paddle a bit less vigorously, Chu and Clodia—you're too strong and you're shoving us to the bank. We'll balance you up better when we stop . . . That's it . . . If we can let the current take the boat away without us having to do any work at all, I'll be happy . . .”

Stef found herself anxiously watching the deck under her feet, looking for leaks. She had crossed interstellar space in kernel-drive starships, and had even walked between realities through a technology that was entirely alien. And yet a ride in this ramshackle craft, with just a few meters of water beneath her, was somehow more terrifying than all of that.