Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  At the back of the house was a long covered porch. A couple of big swing benches hung from the roof, and big electric lamps were fixed to the wooden wall, banishing the night; beyond was just darkness.

  "Shall we sit here?"

  Michael said, "It's kind of hard on your butt. Mom puts the cushions indoors to keep them dry."

  "Oh, okay."

  "Anyhow it isn't the best view. Come on." Still holding my hand, the boy made his way along a gravel path, barely visible to me, that sloped down toward the coast. He stepped confidently, secure in his little domain. I tried to follow without hesitation.

  Gradually, as the house receded, a little island of light, the night opened up around us. The sky was black and huge, and speckled with stars. Behind me, inland, the lights of the city stained the scattered clouds orange-yellow. But when I looked east, toward the sea, there was only darkness. I could hear the ocean now, a low, restless growling.

  Michael led me off the path a little way. I found myself walking on fine sand that slid into my shoes, so that I walked with a rasp. After a few paces Michael flopped to the ground. I somewhat gingerly lowered myself down, and found myself sitting on soft sand matted with coarse grass. The grass was prickly and a little damp with dew, and I knew my back would soon get stiff. But for now I was comfortable enough.

  "My mom won't let me go farther toward the sea at this time of night," Michael said solemnly. A soft ripping noise told me he was tugging at the grass.

  "Well, that's sensible." I spotted a light, far out on the breast of the sea. I pointed it out to Michael. "I wonder if it's something to do with the launch. Don't they have ships to pick up those solid-rocket boosters that drop off when the shuttle flies?"

  Michael snickered. "I don't think so. The recovery ships are a long way downrange."

  "Oh, right."

  Michael started talking briskly about shuttle launch operations, miming the assembly of the booster stack, and the liftoff from the Canaveral pads with his small hands. He parroted technical terms and acronyms, and when I gently tested him by asking about what lay behind the acronyms, he was always able to answer.

  It was all of a piece with his work on the Frisbees. It hadn't been so long — Christ, just a few years — since we had watched the Apollo 13 movie on TV, and we had chanted the countdown together, because that, said Michael, was the magic you needed to make a spaceship go. Later we had talked each other through the dreadful loss of the Columbia. Now his enthusiasm was still endearing, but his depth of knowledge was startling. To him, the shuttle was no longer a magical chariot, but a piece of engineering that you could pore over and take apart and understand — and maybe even make a better version of one day.

  I suppressed a sigh. After all that he was only ten years old. Childhood is so long when you live it, but so brief when you look at it from outside. And my visits, the brief forays across the Atlantic at Christmas and in the summer, so precious to me, amounted to no more than a few days in total, spread over that evanescent decade.

  Michael suddenly sat bolt upright. "Look! Look, there it is!"

  And so it was, right on time. Looking to the north I saw a spark of light, supernova bright, climbing, it seemed, out of the sea. Its trajectory was already curving, a graceful arc, and I saw how the spark carved out a great pillar of smoke in the dense sea air, a pillar that itself was brightly lit from the inside. All this took place in utter silence, but the sense of power was astonishing — like something natural, a waterfall or a thunderstorm — it was startling to think that this mighty display was human-made.

  We both erupted into cheers and applause, and hugged each other.

  When we ran out of cheers I could hear more distant noise, a kind of crackle like very faraway thunder, or even gunfire. It might have been the sound of people cheering, strung out along this coast, or it might have been the sound of the shuttle's ascent. As the shuttle climbed farther its light spread over the ocean, and a hundred reflected sparks slid over the gently swelling surface, tracking the rising spacecraft.

  In the pale rocket light the face of Michael Poole Bazalget was like an upturned coin, but his mouth was set with a kind of determination, his eyes shadowed. I felt unaccountably disturbed. I wondered what this child, and his own children after him, would do with the world.

  Chapter 13

  The little party of refugees straggled up the hillside from the road.

  The farmstead was just a huddle of buildings, lost on the hill's broad flank. There were no lights. Regina saw the gaping holes of unglazed windows, decayed roofs, fields sketched out by drystone walls but choked with weeds. Beyond the buildings a forest, dense and dark, coated the upper hillside.

  The place was abandoned.

  There were five of them — Regina, Cartumandua and Severus, Marina, Carausias — and they stood in a huddle. Already the night was falling, the cold descending. They had been on the road for nearly a month, since the burning of Verulamium, a month they had spent walking ever west. They must look as lost and helpless, Regina thought, as the buildings themselves.

  "They said they would wait," Carausias said plaintively. "Arcadius was a friend of my brother — a close friend. They said they would wait for us."

  Severus broke away, snarling his contempt. "I've heard nothing but your whining and excuses, old man, all the way from Verulamium."

  Carta said wearily, "Severus, we're all exhausted."

  "And because of this old fool's sentimental stupidity we are stranded on this hillside. I told you we should have gone to Londinium."

  "We've been over this. There was nothing for us in Londinium."

  "Arcadius said he would wait," Carausias repeated. He rummaged beneath his cloak. "I have the letters, the letters—"

  Severus stalked off over the darkling hillside.

  Marina said, frightened, "Severus, please."

  Carta held her back. "Let him go. He'd do no good here."

  "But what are we to do?"

  Carta had no answer. Carausias walked purposelessly back and forth over the hillside, limping as he had done since the first day, despite the bandages that cradled his feet inside his leather shoes. It was as if they were all locked in their own heads.

  Regina crouched down, hugging her knees to her belly. At least she was spared the cramps she had suffered almost continually since they had started their great trek from Verulamium.

  Arcadius was a friend of the family who had a farmstead here, deep in the heart of the countryside to the west. It had always been the plan for Arcadius and Carausias to pool their resources and make for Armorica together. Because of Amator, Carausias had lost his money, and he admitted that it had been a year or more since he had been in contact with Arcadius, because of the unreliability of the post these days. But he was sure that Arcadius would wait for him, and would welcome them into his home.

  That had been the promise that had sustained them through that first, terrifying night of flight from burning Verulamium — the first dismal hours when they had tried to sleep out in the open, keeping away from the stream of refugees, the crying children and limping invalids, the drunks — the promise that had kept them all going through the days and nights of their hike ever west, as Carausias and Severus had used the last of their money to buy a little food, water, and shelter from broken-down inns.

  Then the countryside had been hostile. The collapse of the Roman province had affected most directly the one in ten who had lived in the villas and towns, many of whom were now trying to find a place in the countryside, like Regina and her party. But the farmers had been affected, too, however they had grumbled about tax. Without the need to produce a surplus to pay the Emperor's taxes the farmers had cut their workload back to what was necessary to maintain their families. But with the towns declining there was no market to sell or trade what surplus there was, and there was nowhere to buy manufactured goods like pottery or tools. Iron goods in particular were in very short supply, for people had forgotten the ancient craft of i
ron making. Many farms were being operated at a more basic level than the farmers' ancestors had achieved centuries before.

  Anyhow there had been no place for Regina and her party: no hospitality, no offers of help from hungry, resentful, suspicious people, and they had used up the last of their money on overpriced inns. But it didn't matter. Once they got here, to this hill farm and Carausias's friends, everything would be all right.

  But now here they were, and there was nobody after all. It was just another betrayal. As never before the future seemed a blank, black, terrifying emptiness. Regina wrapped her arms over her belly and the growing, hungry life it contained.

  Carta sat beside her. "Are you all right?"

  "None of us is all right," Regina said. "What a mess."

  "Yes. What a mess," Cartumandua said. "This farm must have been abandoned at least a year. Poor, foolish Carausias."

  "There's nothing for us here."

  "But there is nowhere else to go, and we have no more money," said Carta grimly. "It doesn't seem such a bad location to me. There is water down there." She pointed to a marshy area at the foot of the grassy hill, the thread of a sluggish river beyond. "The fields are overgrown but they have been worked before; they should not be difficult to plow. This hillside is a little away from the road. Perhaps we will not be such a target for the bacaudae."

  "What are you talking about? Who is going to plow the fields? How will we pay them?"

  "Nobody will plow them for us," Carta said doggedly. "We will plow them."

  Regina stared at her. "You are making up stories. We have nothing to eat now. We'll be lucky to live through the night. And, if you haven't noticed, it is the autumn. What crops will we grow in the winter? And besides — Carta, I don't want to be a farmer."

  "And I didn't want to be a slave," Carta said. "I survived that, and I will survive this. As will you." She clambered to her feet and pulled Regina's arm. "Come on. Let's go and take a look at the buildings."

  Reluctantly Regina followed.

  • • •

  The farm buildings were clustered around a square of churned-up mud. There were three barnlike structures, with neat rectangular plans of the Roman kind, and the remains of a roundhouse, a more primitive building with a great conical roof of blackened thatch, and walls of wattle and daub.

  Regina drifted toward the square-built structures, the most familiar. Once they must have been smart, bright buildings; she could see traces of whitewash on the walls and a few bright red tiles still clinging to the wooden slats of the roofs. But one had been burned out altogether, and the roofs of the others, all but stripped of tiles, had rotted through. She stepped through a doorway. The floor was littered with rubble and cracked by a flourishing community of weeds. Something scuttled away in the gloom.

  Carta pointed at the roundhouse. "We'd be better off in this."

  Regina wrinkled her nose. "In that mud pie? I can smell it from here. And look at that rotting thatch — there are animals living in it!"

  "But we have a better chance of repairing it," Carta said. "Face it, Regina — how are we to bake roof tiles?"

  "We could get them replaced."

  Carta laughed tiredly. "Oh, Regina — by whom? Where are the craftsmen? And how are we to pay them?... Regina, I know this is hard. But I don't see anybody standing around waiting to help us, do you? If we don't fix it ourselves — well, it won't get fixed."

  Regina rested a hand on her belly. Carta's realism and doggedness somehow made things worse, not better.

  There was a call from the lower slopes of the hillside. Severus was returning, with something heavy and limp slung over his shoulder. Regina soon made out the iron stink of blood, and a deeper stench of rot. Grunting, Severus let his burden fall to the muddy ground. It was the carcass of a young deer. Its head had almost been severed from its body, presumably by Severus's knife. Severus was sweating, and his tunic was stained deep with blood. "Got lucky," he said. "Leg stuck in a trap. Already dying, I think. See?"

  The deer had been very young, Regina saw. Its horns were mere stubs, and its body small and lithe. But one of its legs dangled awkwardly, and a putrid smell rose from blackened flesh.

  Severus leaned over the limp corpse. With inefficient but brutal thrusts he dug his knife into the hip joint above the deer's good hind leg. With some noisy sawing of cartilage and bone, he ripped the joint apart, and hung the limb over his shoulder. "We've got neighbors," he said, pointing with his bloody knife. "I saw lights. A farmstead over that way, over the ridge. I'm going to see if they'll trade."

  "Yes," said Carausias urgently. "There are many things we need—"

  "What I need is some wheat beer," said Severus. "I've had enough of this for one night."

  Carausias called, "You can't be so selfish, man!"

  But Carta only said, "Come back alive."

  When he had gone, the others stood over the carcass. Blood slowly leaked out of its throat and into the mud.

  Carausias whispered, as if he might wake the deer, "What do we do?"

  At length Regina sighed. "I used to watch the butchers at the villa. We need rope..."

  They dug through the garbage in the buildings until Marina found a mouse-chewed length of rope. To Regina's horror the deer's flesh was warm and soft; she had never touched anything so recently dead. But she got the rope tied around the deer's remaining hind leg. She slung the rope over the branch of a tree. With the three of them hauling, they managed to drag the carcass into the branches.

  The deer dangled like a huge, gruesome fruit. Blood, and darker fluids, flowed sluggishly from its neck and pooled on the ground.

  Carta watched dubiously. "We should collect that blood."

  "Why?"

  "You can cook it — mix it with herbs — stuff the intestines with it. I've seen it done. We shouldn't waste anything."

  Regina felt her gorge rise. But she said, "We don't have a bowl to catch it. Next time."

  "Yes."

  Regina stepped forward with Carausias's knife. Calling on grisly memories from childhood, she reached up, plunged the knife into the deer's skin under its belly, and with all her strength hauled the blade down the length of the carcass. Intestines slipped out, tangles of dark rope. She flinched back, trembling. Her tunic and flesh were splashed with dark blood, and her hands were already crimson to the wrists. She stepped behind the carcass and began to tug at the flaps of skin. "Help me," she said. "After this we should cut off the other legs."

  Carausias built a fire in the ruins of the roundhouse. The wood they gathered was young and damp with dew, and they had trouble getting it burning. But when it was fully alight, and bits of the meat were cooking on an improvised spit, they huddled together around the light and warmth. The meat was tough, lean, almost impossible to bite into, and its bloody, smoky stink was repellent. But Regina was always aware of the speck of life inside her, and so she forced the meat into her mouth, and chewed it until it was soft, and swallowed it down.

  "We are like savages," Carausias said. "Barbarians. This is no way to live."

  "But barbarians have their arts," Carta said. "Your butchery, Regina—"

  "I was clumsy."

  "You will do better. There are older skills we must try to recall. For instance, we should keep the hide, cure it if we can. And preserve the meat. We have been lucky, but we are not hunters; it may be a while before we have another windfall like this one. We could smoke it, dry it in the sun, perhaps pack it in salt..."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. But we will learn. And in future we should save the fat, too. Perhaps we could make tallow — candles—"

  Carausias placed a hand on her shoulder. "Enough for tonight, niece."

  When the eating was done, Regina shrank into the deepest shade of the roundhouse roof she could find. With a corner of her cloak she tried to wipe the animal blood from her hands and face. Soon her skin was sore, and the cloth was starting to shred, but still the blood wouldn't come off her skin.

&nbs
p; Carausias came to her in the dark. He sat beside her and rested his hands on hers, stopping her obsessive scrubbing. "In the morning we will find water," he said. "And then we will all get clean."

  "I don't want this," Regina hissed. "I don't want to live like a, like a dog. Carta is so strong."

  "Yes. And that makes it worse, doesn't it? Because by accepting it, she makes it real. But you are strong, too, Regina. The way you handled the deer—"

  "I don't want to be strong. Not like this." She looked up at his kindly face, blood-streaked and obscure in the dark. "Things will get back to normal, won't they, Carausias?"

  He shrugged. "Even now, Rome spans a continent, a thousand-year-old imperium just a day's sailing away, over the ocean. This has been a dreadful interval for us all. But why should we believe we live in special times, the end times? How arrogant of us, how foolish."

  "Yes. But in the meantime—"

  "It will surely only be a few weeks before we see the post messengers clattering along the roads again. Until then, we must just get by."

  "Just a few weeks. Yes."

  • • •

  The deer fed them for the first few days. They were able to supplement the meat with late-blooming berries. For water they had to trek several times a day to the marsh at the bottom of the hill; they carried the water home in a wooden bucket salvaged from the ruins of the farm.

  But the first rains nearly doused their fire, and turned the floor of the roundhouse into a quagmire. Despite his attempts at bravery Carausias wept that night, bedraggled, cold, humiliated at how far he had let his family fall.

  They had to repair the roof, Regina realized.

  Severus said he could handle this. He clambered onto the roof, hauling branches of oak and hazel over the gaping hole. Regina felt optimistic: surely such a crude structure as this required only the crudest repairs. But when Severus shifted his weight unwisely, his heaping gave way, and he fell to the muddy floor in a shower of snapped branches. He got to his feet and kicked at the mess, swearing oaths to the gods of the Christians, the British, and the Romans, and stalked off in a sulk.