Ultima

by Stephen Baxter

  “I admire your grasp of history, ColU,” Stef murmured. “Among your other accomplishments.”

  “I was programmed to serve as tutor to the children of Yuri’s colony on Per Ardua. My knowledge base is broad.”

  Yuri said, “I think she’s ribbing you.”

  “Well, I am happy to serve, even though that destiny has changed—”

  “And so,” Stef said, “it appears, has the destiny of Rome. The Caesars didn’t travel to the stars. They didn’t even have airships, as far as I know. Maybe the history you remember is out of date, ColU. I wonder if these Romans ever heard of Stilicho.”

  “You are right, of course. These are not our Romans. We can be guided by our knowledge of our own history, but we must always be aware that things are different here.”

  “Here, on the other side of the Hatch,” Yuri said.

  “The word the Romans are using for the emplacement is actually more like Gateway,” the ColU said. “I have chosen to translate it to the more familiar term . . .”

  Stef shook her head. “Here we are discussing a whole new history, as if it was normal. Are we all going crazy? As if it happened every day.”

  The ColU said softly, “At least we are coping, Colonel Kalinski.”

  And Yuri grinned. “Besides, didn’t it already happen to you once before, Stef, back on Mercury? It is—difficult, though. Do you think if we stepped back through the Hatch—if these goons in fancy dress ever let us—we would find ourselves back where we came from? I mean, on Per Ardua, and with the only Romans in the history books where they belong?”

  “Somehow I doubt it, Yuri Eden,” the ColU said. “Having stepped through this door—”

  “We can never go back. If there are Romans here, they’re going to be everywhere, right?”

  “We must make the best of it, Yuri Eden. And after all, nobody forced us to come here, through the Hatch.”

  Yuri looked drawn, tired, Stef thought—ill, perhaps. They had all been through a lot, this long day—even though, as a glance at her watch showed her, with shock, that not an hour had passed since they’d said their goodbyes to Liu Tao, in the middle of the chill farside of Per Ardua, planet of Proxima Centauri. It was obvious they’d traveled a hell of a long way from Proxima, itself four light-years from Earth. And traveled more than mere distance—more than just light-years. What was this place?

  • • •

  They reached the airship.

  Stef was shoved none too gently by a legionary’s palm toward a rope ladder. She climbed stiffly, followed by Yuri.

  The two of them—three with the ColU—were pushed into a hold at the base of the gondola, roomy but without windows, and lit by a crude-looking fluorescent lamp. They had no view out. They had no seats either; they were made to sit on the floor, with their backs to the wooden wall. The soldiers sat around on their cloaks, talking softly, and looking speculatively at Stef, who glowered back.

  The ship, which the Romans called a cetus, lifted with a smooth acceleration, a hiss of bellows somewhere.

  “The walls are wooden,” Yuri observed. “And the floor. I see straw, and blood stains, and the whole thing smells of sheep.”

  “And goats,” Stef said. “Although that could be the legionaries. This has to be some kind of surface patrol vessel. Starship in orbit somewhere? You wonder what kind of technology they must have up there if this is the best they can do down here.”

  “If they have kernels,” the ColU said, “quite crude enabling technologies may be sufficient for other purposes, such as life support. Kernels—which, incidentally, they refer to as vulcans, after the god of the forge. I have translated appropriately.”

  The legionaries watched them suspiciously as they spoke, and Stef was uncomfortably aware of how eerie it might seem to these characters—bored, heavily armed soldiers—if she and Yuri appeared to be listening to a voice, even responding to it, that they couldn’t hear. It was almost a relief when one of them grunted, “No talking.”

  Stef shrugged. But she saw that Yuri’s eyes were closed anyhow, his arms folded over the backpack on his lap, his head lolling.

  It wasn’t long before the airship descended. As anchor chains rattled, the legionaries debated briefly among themselves. Then they stood, opened the door to the short corridor down which they’d come to this hold, and shoved the travelers back to the hatch through which they’d clambered aboard the vessel. There they were made to wait until Quintus Fabius and a few of his officers had gone down the ladder to the ground.

  Stef ducked so she could look out of the hatch. She saw an enclosed compound, roughly rectangular, laid out over the purple-streaked ground, with walls of sod and what looked like orange-tinged wood, and central buildings of wood and thatch. Carefully she pulled a slate from her jacket pocket. “Hey, ColU, you might want to see this.” She held up the slate to serve as the ColU’s vision.

  “Remarkable. Remarkable! A classic Roman legion’s marching camp. Displaced thousands of years in time, and brought across the stars . . .”

  They were prodded down the ladder.

  On the ground, the leader of the little group of soldiers delivered them back to the retinue of Quintus Fabius. Quintus ignored them, but Gnaeus Junius, the second-in-command—the optio, Stef learned—waved vaguely. “Oh, just stand over there and stay out of trouble.”

  And trouble there was, as Stef could see. Shoved to the periphery, ignored as the Romans bickered among themselves, she tried to make sense of all this.

  Centurion Quintus was in the middle of some kind of argument with a group of legionaries, most dressed in what Stef was coming to think of as the characteristic style of these post-Romans—much as Roman soldiers had dressed in all the history books and reconstructions she’d seen, even if they were generally drabber, dirtier and more battle-scarred. They all wore heavy belts, with loops for weapons and immense, ornate buckles. The belts were the single most striking feature of their costumes, she thought, gaudy, almost barbaric. Quintus dominated proceedings in his scarlet cloak and spectacularly plumed helmet.

  But some others wore various other costumes. One tough-looking woman, short, stocky, red-haired, stood fearlessly close to the centurion. She wore a kind of woollen poncho, with tunic, trousers and boots; there seemed to be military insignia on her shoulder flashes, but nothing like Roman designs. Still, she stood beside Quintus Fabius as if she deserved her place. Alongside her were more men and women dressed much as she was, as well as an older man, dark, with a Mediterranean look to Stef’s eyes, wearing a kind of cut-down toga.

  Stef heard chickens cluck and sheep bleat, and the voices of women and children as well as the gruffer tones of the men, and she smelled cooking fires. Now that she was on the ground, the fort felt less like a military installation than a small town, if fortified. But there was a stronger burning smell, of straw and some kind of wood. A building on fire?

  As the arguments went on, a line of women, bent low under yokes bearing pails of water, made their way past the knots of soldiers, entirely ignored, eyes downcast. Stef stared. Could these be slaves?

  Yuri shook his head. “What a day. We came all this way, we stepped between the stars, and now nobody’s paying us any attention.”

  Stef shrugged. “People are people. Everybody has their own problems, I guess.”

  “Yes,” said the ColU. “What we must do is leverage those problems to our advantage.”

  Stef said, “ColU, that messenger told Quintus there was trouble at the colonia. You think that’s what this place is?”

  The ColU murmured in her ear, “It was the Roman practice to plant colonies of veteran soldiers in a newly occupied province. An easy way of enforcing imperial discipline, an example of Roman culture for newly conquered barbarians, a military reserve, an occupied fortification. Maybe that’s what’s being set up here. Many of these legionaries, with their families, may
not be going home again when the Malleus Jesu leaves this world. Evidently that’s what they’re grumbling about.”

  “A fortification against what?” Stef thought back. “We’ve seen some mighty ruins here but no sign of an extant civilization. No animal life even, those clucking chickens aside. What are these legionaries going to wage war against, a slime mold?”

  Yuri grinned tiredly. “This is an alien world, Stef. I guess it depends on the slime mold.”

  “And also,” the ColU said, “if these Romans can reach this world, so may their rivals.”

  “They speak of the Xin,” Stef murmured. “Chinese, do you think?”

  “The name ‘China’ has a root in the name of the first dynasty to unify the country. ‘Xin’ could be a corruption of that.”

  “And the Brikanti, whoever they are.”

  “I am Brikanti.” The woman in the poncho who had been standing with Quintus came striding over. “Whoever you are.” Her language, audible under the translation, was Latin but heavily accented. “I had heard a rumor that Quintus had discovered strangers by his brand new Hatch.”

  “Rumors travel fast here,” Stef said.

  The woman laughed. “In a Roman camp, of course they do.” She leaned closer to inspect Stef. Her hair was a deep, proud red, and cropped short; she looked perhaps forty years old—maybe a quarter-century younger than Stef herself—but her face, weather-beaten, made it difficult to tell her age precisely. Her eyes were an icy blue. She said, “You dress strangely. You smell strangely. I will enjoy hearing your lies about your origin.”

  Stef grinned. “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”

  “Ha! That bull-headed centurion might not; we Brikanti have subtler minds. One thing is certain—you did not stow away to this world aboard the Malleus Jesu.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The ship is mine. This mission is a joint venture of Rome and Eboraki—and if you don’t know the Brikanti, you won’t know that Eboraki is our capital. In the orbit of the sun we have our own fleets, Rome and Brikanti, but we cooperate on missions to the stars. Quintus Fabius commands the mission and his Roman louts, but I, Movena, command the vessel and its crew. The Roman term for my role is trierarchus. The ship itself is Brikanti, of course.”

  “I . . . think I understand.”

  The older man in the toga leaned closer to her as she spoke. “It’s remarkable, Movena. She speaks softly, in a tongue that, to a stranger like me, sounds like your own, mixed in with German perhaps. Yet that—thing in her ear—repeats her words in Latin. But what if we remove it? If I may?” He reached up to Stef’s head.

  She was uncomfortable with this, but she hardly had a choice. She glanced over at Yuri, who shrugged. She let the man remove her earphone.

  Movena grinned easily. “Don’t mind Michael. He’s the medicus, the ship’s doctor. A Greek, like all the best doctors. And like all Greeks, endlessly curious about trivia. I’m speaking in my native tongue now. Can you understand me?”

  Stef heard this only indistinctly, from Yuri’s earphone; Movena’s natural tongue, sounding like Danish with a lilt, dominated her hearing.

  Michael said, “Say something in your own speech.”

  Stef grinned. “If you damage that earphone, I’ll break your arm.”

  “Ha! Remarkable.” He passed back the earphone, which Stef quickly replaced in her ear.

  And Yuri coughed, suddenly. Stef saw that he was leaning on a low rampart wall, and she felt a stab of concern for him.

  Michael pushed forward. “Please, let me see if I can help you . . .”

  Movena turned to Stef. “Is your companion ill?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “The Greek is an excellent physician—far better than these Romans deserve. He will help, if help is possible.” As the doctor approached Yuri, Movena drew Stef aside. “Now listen to me.”

  “Yes?”

  “I command not only the ship on this mission. I am senior woman. Quintus Fabius has agreed to this.”

  “Senior woman?”

  Movena sighed. “Do you know soldiers?”

  “I was one myself.”

  Movena raised her eyebrows. “Very well. Then you will know how soldiers behave—how they have always behaved. The men, anyhow. In the Roman system, you see, the army is all; their navy is essentially a branch of the army. Whereas in our system it is the other way around. Which is why our systems mesh together so well, when we aren’t arguing, Romans and Brikanti.

  “But you need to understand that these Romans are primarily soldiers, and that is how they think of themselves. Most of these legionaries, especially the older ones, have served in war, on conventional military missions—most will probably have seen service in the last Valhallan campaigns against my own people in the northern continent, a war ‘concluded’ with the latest flawed attempt at a treaty, but probably flaring again by now. And in the south the Romans’ uglier wars with the Xin grind on . . . In such wars, women are booty. Or targets, their bodies a battleground after the men have fallen. Do you understand? Now, this is not a war of conquest; there are no enemies to defeat here, human or otherwise. Nothing to rape and kill. And of course the men have been able to bring their wives and sweethearts, even their children. Such is the way of it—for if you sent a shipful of Roman soldiers off on a year-long mission, alone without women, they’d have buggered each other senseless before killing each other over the favors of the prettiest standard-bearers before they got past Augustus.”

  “Augustus?”

  She frowned. “The seventh planet of the sun . . . Where do you come from? But, look, even with female companions available, men are men, soldiers are soldiers—and women are targets, the slaves, the celibate servant girls of the vicarius of Christ, even their comrades’ wives and daughters. You, my dear, are not so old nor so ugly that you are safe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And so we protect each other. As I said, I am senior woman. If you have trouble of that sort, come to me.”

  “I can look after myself.”

  “Good. Do so, and come to me when you fail. Is that clear?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Very well. Now we should pay attention to these little boys with their quarrel . . .”

  • • •

  Quintus Fabius’s voice boomed out, cutting through the arguments. “Titus Valerius, you old rogue! At last you show your face. I might have known you were behind all this trouble.”

  Through the crowd, Stef could see one of the legionaries being pushed, apparently reluctantly, to the front of a mob of unhappy men. He was burly, with his bare head shaved close, a grizzled gray—and, Stef saw, one arm terminated in a stump, encased in a wooden cylinder. “Centurion, don’t take it out on me. And it wasn’t me who set the principia alight. On the contrary, it was me who organized the bucket chains that—”

  “Pah! Don’t give me that, you devil. You were trouble when you were under my father’s command and now you’re just as much trouble under mine.”

  Titus sighed heavily. “Ah, well, if I could afford to retire I would have long ago, sir—you know that—and I’d take my daughter, Clodia, home for a decent education and a quiet life, away from the ruffians of your command.”

  “Ha!” Quintus waved a hand at the fort. “This is your retirement, you dolt. A city to command. A world to conquer! Why, I’ll appoint you head of the senate if you like.”

  “Fancy titles aren’t for me, sir. And neither is this world.”

  “The Malleus leaves in under a month, and you won’t be on it. And if you haven’t sorted yourselves out by then—”

  “But that’s impossible, sir! That’s what we tried to tell you. That’s why we had to set the principia alight, to make you listen!”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t you—”


  Titus grabbed his commander’s arm with his one hand. “Listen to me, sir. Our crops won’t grow here. The wheat, the barley, even Valhalla potatoes fail and they grow anywhere. The soil’s too dry! Or there’s something wrong with it, something missing . . . You know me, sir. I’m no farmer.”

  “Yes, and you’re not much of a soldier either.”

  “No matter what we do, and we’ve been stirring our shit into this dirt for months now, nothing’s working. Why, this reminds me of a time on campaign when—”

  “Spare me your anecdotes. Shit harder, man!”

  “It’s not just the dirt, sir.” Titus glanced up at the sky, at the rising second sun of this world. “Some say that bastard Remus is getting bigger.”

  “Bigger?”

  “This world, this sun, is spinning in toward it. What then, sir? It’s hot enough here as it is. If we are to be scorched by two suns—”

  “Rubbish!” Quintus proclaimed boldly.

  The response was angry heckling. He faced the mob bravely, but men on both sides of the argument had their hands on the hilts of their swords.

  Stef murmured to Movena, “Do the men have a point?”

  “Well, they’re right about the second sun. This world circles the big ugly star you see up there—that’s called Romulus; Romans always call double stars Romulus and Remus. But Romulus and Remus circle a common center of their own—they loop toward and away from each other like mating birds, or like the two bright stars of the Centaur’s Hoof, the nearest system to Terra. In a few years, as that second sun swims close, this world will get decidedly hotter than it is now—and then, a few more decades after that when it recedes, it will get colder.”

  Stef wondered if this wretched planet was doomed to orbit out of its star’s habitable zone, when the twin got too close—or even receded too far away. “Has anybody modeled this? I mean, worked out how the climate will change?”

  “I doubt it. And even if they had, no matter how dire the warning, the orders for these men and their families would not vary. From the point of view of the imperial strategists snug in their villas on the outskirts of Greater Rome, you see, worlds are simple. They are habitable, or they are not. If they are not, they may be ignored. If they are, they must be inhabited, by colonia such as this one. Inhabited and farmed. It is just as the Romans took every country in their reach and appended it as a province—all but Pritanike, of course, thanks to the wisdom of Queen Kartimandia, and we Brikanti escaped their net. If this world is not habitable after all for some subtle, long-term reason, bad luck for the colonists. But at least the Xin won’t have it. Do you see? Though I must say it will be unfortunate if the very crops won’t grow here—”