Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  "No," said Regina flatly.

  The others looked around at her, shocked. Messalina stood at a slight lean, her fingertips resting on the marble tabletop, watching her warily.

  Regina said, "I'm sorry, Messalina. Livia is a fine woman. But I think she would be a poor choice." Regina pointed boldly at Venus — daughter of Messalina, here to assist her mother, and, save for Aemilia and Agrippina, at thirty the youngest person present. "Venus has contributed many times to the business of this group. She will fill her mother's place well."

  Venus, once the object of Sulla's adolescent lust, had matured into a capable woman. She looked pleased, but a little frightened. But Messalina stayed on her feet some time, quietly arguing; she did not want to criticize her daughter before this group, but obviously thought her sister would be a better choice.

  Leda pressed Regina to give a reason for her recommendation. Regina was not sure she could have articulated it. She had always made her decisions by instinct, and then had to rationalize them later. But it was best for the Order; she was sure of that.

  A precedent had to be set. She knew in her heart that the Order could not be entrusted forever to its most senior members. She herself was in her sixties now, and while she had not slowed down as much as poor Messalina, she knew she would not last forever. She did not want the Order to be dependent on her. On the contrary, she wanted assurance that the Order would long survive her. She would like to arrange things so that anybody of healthy mind could serve on the Council and the business of the Order would still be done.

  In fact, if she could have found a way, she would have abolished the Council altogether. The Order's systems, operating independently, should sustain it — just as once the great systems of taxation and spending, of law and class, had sustained the Empire itself far beyond the life of any one person, even the greatest of emperors.

  Even though no individual human was immortal, there was no reason why the Order should not live forever. But to do that it had to shake off its reliance on people.

  Of course, as the talking ran down, Regina's decision was upheld. Venus was welcomed to the select group of twelve Council members with a ripple of applause.

  Messalina resumed her seat with ill grace. There was personal tension here, for Messalina had been a member of the Order long before her cousin Regina had arrived from Britain, with her rough accent and brisk ways: Regina was still a newcomer here, even after seventeen years. But Regina brushed that aside. Such things mattered nothing to her, as long as she achieved what she set out to achieve.

  After a little more business the meeting wound up.

  Brica approached her mother. Deep in her sixth pregnancy, she walked almost as cautiously as old Messalina, and she propped her hands on her back for support. Beside her, her eldest daughter Agrippina walked with eyes shyly downcast.

  Regina smiled, and put her hand on Brica's bulge. "I can feel her, or him," Regina said. "Restless little soul."

  "She longs to be out in the world — as I long for her to be out, too."

  Brica truly did look exhausted. She was in her forties now, and this child, her third by her second husband, had proven especially trying. Besides, that new husband was not so supportive as dull but good-hearted Castor — who had eventually fallen in love with a woman from beyond the Order, and now lived in contentment with a young second family in a jostling suburb, safe from the subterranean strangeness of the Crypt. But still, Agrippina had proven a strong support as she had grown, as had Brica's second daughter, eleven years old, named Julia for her long-dead great-grandmother.

  It was Agrippina, as it happened, that Brica wanted to talk about.

  "Her bleeding has begun," Brica said softly, and Agrippina's face purpled. "It is time for her celebration — the first of my children to become a woman." Brica hugged her daughter. "Already the boys watch her — I've seen their eyes — and soon she will be having babies of her own."

  "Oh, Mother," muttered the wretched Agrippina.

  "I'll be a grandmother," said Brica. "And you, Mother, a great-grandmother. With Agrippina fertile I won't be having any more children of my own... I hope this will be the last before my change... As for the ceremony—"

  "No," said Regina sharply.

  Agrippina looked at her in shock.

  Brica said, "But every girl since Venus — on my own wedding day, as you remember well, Mother — has been celebrated." Anger flared briefly. "What are you saying — that my daughter, your own blood, isn't good enough for such an honor?"

  "No, of course not." Regina thought fast, but inconclusively. It had been another impulsive decision, whose basis she didn't yet understand herself. "I didn't mean that. Of course you must plan the ceremony," she said, seeking time to think.

  But she and Brica were of course long-established combatants, and Brica had caught that note of sharpness. She glared at her mother, but her face was a hollow-eyed mask of fatigue, and she clearly did not want to argue.

  Brica took her daughter's arm. "Fine. Come, Agrippina." And they left the peristylium without looking back.

  • • •

  Since that dreadful day when the Vandals had ravaged Rome, things had changed greatly for the Order.

  As the Order's wealth had increased, a great deal had been invested in the estate on the Appian Way, which today served primarily as a school. But even more money had been sunk underground.

  The use of the Catacombs had proven so obviously valuable that nobody had objected when Regina had suggested extending and modifying them. The old cemetery directly beneath the house remained, almost unmodified; for a Christian order it would have been disrespectful to have disturbed such a shrine. But the tunnels had been greatly extended, and new rooms and passageways had been dug into the soft rock.

  After fifteen years of steady burrowing the Order's underground warren, buried deep in the Roman ground, had spread over two levels. It housed three hundred people, almost all of them women and children. It was comfortable, once you got used to the dim light and cramped corridors. Of course the Crypt would always be dependent on the surface world, for an inflow of food and water, an outflow of sewage, and for money and building materials and labor: the complex could never cut adrift of the world, like a ship sailing away into an underground sea. But the Council had done all they could to maintain a wide range of links and relationships with suppliers and customers and allies in the outside world, making their sources as diverse as possible, so they were dependent on no one group or person.

  As the depth of the Crypt had increased, incidences of flooding or collapse had been dealt with by brute force, with the application of plenty of Roman concrete and brick. Problems with ventilation and heating had been more insidious. Air shafts had been dug out, to be concealed aboveground as artfully as possible. Great fires were lit at the base of some of these shafts, so that the rising air would draw fresh breezes through the tunnels — a practice adopted from deep mines, many of whose engineers Regina had hired to supervise the extension of the Crypt.

  But the air shafts alone weren't enough. There had been a near disaster when a group of five students had been found unconscious, the air in their room foul, a stagnant puddle at the end of a corridor. It had been fortunate for all concerned, Regina thought, that only one student had died — and that her parents, a stoical equestrian family, had been happy to accept the death of their elder daughter as a price to be paid for the safety of their two younger children, both also with the Order. After that incident an elaborate air-monitoring system had been evolved. In every passageway and room there were candles burning, bits of reed dangled from the walls to show the air currents, and caged birds sang in most of the main chambers and corridors.

  And it had been found that the simplest way to adjust the environment was by moving people.

  A person blocked the flow of air, consumed its vital goodness, and pumped a lot of heat into it besides. So you could improve the flow of air into a problematic region by simply evacuating the
passageways around it and moving the people somewhere else. You could likewise cool an area by taking out its people — or warm it up, by crowding more people in. It was impossible to solve every problem by "huddling." The kitchens, and the nursery and crèche where the Order's babies were cared for en masse, were a constant difficulty. But on the whole, with careful monitoring and analysis, the system worked well, and was becoming increasingly effective as they learned.

  Of course there were many grumbles at this regime of constant shifting, but people had adapted. Space had been at a premium from the beginning, so you weren't allowed to bring a great deal of personal baggage into the Crypt in the first place. And furniture in each dormitory room was becoming uniform, so it made no real difference where you were.

  As far as Regina was concerned, this constant uprooting was an unexpected side benefit. Regina wanted every sister to think of the whole Crypt as her home, not just her own little corner of it.

  Meanwhile Order members began to spend an increasing amount of time underground.

  In the Crypt there was no summer or winter, and no threats from barbarians or bandits, and no disease, as all the food and water was clean. And it was safe in here, safe and orderly in a world that was becoming increasingly threatening. To the children who had been born here, in fact, it was the aboveground world that seemed strange — a disorderly place where the wind blew without control and water just fell from the sky...

  One day, Regina mused, somebody would be born in the Crypt, would live out her whole life underground, and then die here, her body being fed to the great ventilation furnaces, a last contribution to the Order. Regina would not live to see it happen, but she was sure that grand dream would soon be fulfilled.

  • • •

  Regina met Ambrosius Aurelianus seven days later. He stood in the Forum, listening to an orator who declaimed the ruin of the world to a cheerful crowd. He wore the leather armor of a Celtae warrior, even here in the heart of Rome. Ambrosius had aged, but he was much as Regina remembered — the stocky frame, the sturdy, determined face. His startling blond hair was receding, and a deep scar disfigured one side of his face. But his blue eyes held the same warm zeal she remembered from Artorius's war councils, all those years ago in Londinium.

  He greeted her with clumsy gallantry, insisting she hadn't changed.

  She snorted at that. "You are a fool, Ambrosius Aurelianus, and from what I remember you always were. But you are a brave fool to try such endearments on a vicious old hag like me."

  He laughed. "I have the diplomatic skills of most soldiers, madam. But I am glad to see you." It was strange to hear the British language spoken so fluently; even Brica rarely spoke more than the odd phrase nowadays.

  They walked to a tavern she knew, a respectable popina, not far from the Forum; it was built in a cellar, and its dark, sweet-smelling interior, reminding her of the Crypt, made her feel at home. Ambrosius bought a pitcher of wine, which she drank with water and flavored with herbs and resin. He seemed hungry, and ordered olives, bread, and roasted meat cut into cubes; he said he relished the richly flavored Roman cuisine.

  He described his visit. He was staying with a rich sponsor who entertained him with lavish Roman hospitality. "They say that everybody should see Rome before they die, and I am glad I have done as much." Regina was sure he was sincere. Despite times of trouble and uncertainty, the crowds in the markets were as busy and affable as ever, there were still wrestling matches and the slaughter of beasts in the amphitheater, and chariots still raced around the Circus Maximus. "But there are so many empty spaces. It seems to me that Rome's statues must outnumber the living."

  "Perhaps. But it is not statues you have come to visit, Ambrosius Aurelianus, for statues have no purses."

  He grinned ruefully. "And you never were a fool... No wonder Artorius always relied on you. And he needs you again, Regina."

  He gave her a brief account of Artorius's career since her departure. His kingdom, based on the dunon, still thrived. But the Saxons continued their relentless advance. One leader called Aelle was proving particularly troublesome; he was said to have ambitions of founding yet another new Saxon kingdom on the south coast. Only Artorius, it seemed, offered any resistance to the Saxons' expanse, and their terrible cleansing; Regina listened somewhat impatiently to tales of his glorious exploits.

  But his grander dreams remained. Each time the Saxons were driven back, Artorius would take his troops away to Gaul, where he continued to campaign season after season against the troops of the new kingdoms that were coalescing there, and even against the remnant Roman forces — all part of his long-standing ambition to march on Rome itself and claim the purple.

  And, of course, Ambrosius was here to request money to support Artorius's campaigning, money from the Order's already fabled coffers.

  "How ironic," Regina said, "that you have come to Rome to seek funds, so you can return with soldiers!"

  Ambrosius spread his hands. "One must do one's duty, no matter how ironic."

  Artorius must have been desperate even to have considered such an approach, she thought; and that made her decision not to waste any of the Order's funds even easier to make. "Here we celebrate life, not death," she said. "Here each life is to be cherished, not spent like a token in some military adventure. That is our fundamental philosophy — it has always been my philosophy. I have said as much to Artorius, not that I imagine he listened."

  Ambrosius was a man of sense, who didn't believe in wasting time. He didn't try to change her mind. "I suspect Artorius already knows your answer," he said wryly.

  "Yes, I suspect he does. Wish him my blessing..."

  She urged Ambrosius to stay for another day, for tomorrow there would be the coming-of-age ceremony, which she invited him to attend. "I would like you to leave with positive memories," she said.

  He agreed to stay.

  He told her something of the fate of Durnovaria, the town closest to Artorius's dunon. Its decline had never been reversed, and now it had been abandoned for perhaps forty years. "In places you can see where the buildings used to be, from courses of stone, rectangles and lines across the ground. But otherwise it is like a patch of young forest, where oak trees are spreading and foxes lurk, with only a few hummocks to show that once a whole town existed..."

  It was only after their conversation was over that Regina remembered the ceremony she had invited him to would be the awkward affair of Agrippina, her granddaughter.

  • • •

  Fifteen years after the first of these ceremonies, for Venus daughter of Messalina, the coming-of-age celebrations had evolved their own rituals, as had so many of the practices of the Order. But this time, Regina felt instinctively, a new precedent must be set.

  At first Regina let events follow the time-honored pattern. Agrippina's sisters, aunts, cousins, and mother formed a circle around her on the stage of the Crypt's tiny theater. They were in a pool of light cast by an array of lanterns and candles, and they were surrounded by as many of the Order as could squeeze in.

  The only male, apart from some small boys with their mothers and sisters, was Ambrosius. Standing tall in his dark brown armor, amid women and girls in their costumes of white and purple, he was like a pillar of male strangeness, utterly out of place.

  As the final preparations were made, Regina approached him, amused. "You don't look terribly comfortable."

  "I can't deny that," he said, and he mopped his neck. "It is the low ceilings. The dense air. The smell." He eyed her uneasily. "I don't wish to give offense — perhaps you have become used to it. It is a smell of people — or of animals, perhaps — almost like the amphitheater, during the hunting shows."

  "And this makes you uncomfortable. You, a veteran of a hundred battlefields!"

  "Then there's the sameness. Everywhere I look I see the same corridors, the chambers, the decorations — even the same faces, it seems. Though beautiful faces — those haunting eyes, like slate — I feel buried in this pit of you
rs — turned around, dizzy. It isn't for me!"

  "It isn't meant for you," she said sharply.

  The little ceremony began at last, Agrippina blushed prettily, and her gravid mother held her hand. Agrippina dedicated her childish clothes to the matres by feeding them into a brazier, and was given her first adult stola, simple white with a fine purple line woven in.

  But when it came to the point where Agrippina was to burn a scrap of linen stained with a little of her first bleeding, Regina stepped forward.

  "No," she said loudly, into a shocked silence. She had had time to think through her first instinctive refusal of this event, and she thought she understood what must be done. She took the scrap of linen from Brica, and held it up. "This is to be destroyed, but not celebrated." She fed it into the brazier, and as the little flames licked she heard the shocked gasps of those who watched. She took Agrippina's hand and placed it over Brica's swollen belly. "This is what is important. This, your unborn sister.

  "Agrippina, your bleeding is no shame. But you are to hide it from others, and you will not remark on it. Your life belongs, not to your daughters, but to your sisters — the one here in Brica's belly, and those born thereafter. When Brica's blood dries — well, perhaps then your turn will come to serve. But until then, if you choose to bear a child, then you will bear it beyond these walls."

  Agrippina looked terrified. "You would exile me for becoming pregnant?"

  "It is your choice," said Regina. Though her tone was gentle, she knew the menace in her words was unmistakable. She turned and faced the watching group. "Do not question this. It must always be so — not because I say it, but because it is best for the Order. Sisters matter more than daughters."

  For a moment Brica faced her, and Regina thought she saw a spark of defiance in her daughter's eyes. But Brica was heavily pregnant, worn out by fifteen years of pregnancies — and besides, she had been defeated by Regina long ago. Her shoulders slumped, she led a weeping Agrippina away.