Ultima

by Stephen Baxter

  So, with a nod to the bored-looking legionaries who manned the system, Titus Valerius escorted Stef up from deck six, the township, to deck seven, the deck of the villas. Sitting in a steel elevator-like cage, it was like ascending into a park. Stef’s first impression was of green, the green of grass, trees, bushes, and moist, pleasantly warm air. She glimpsed only a handful of people—a group of men in togas and carrying scrolls, holding some earnest discussion beside the waters of a lake, a rectangular basin surrounded by slim nude statues. She might have been looking at a scene from two thousand years ago, the senators plotting the assassination of Caesar, perhaps. But over the heads of the debaters soared a metal vault, riveted and painted sky blue. The light, which felt warm and authentically like sunlight, came from fluorescent lanterns that dangled from the ceiling. And the surface of the pond, strewn with lilies, bore a subtle pattern of ripples, a product of the slightest irregularities in the kernel drive that thrust this scrap of pretty parkland through interstellar space. She wondered briefly how they covered over this water feature when the drive was turned off and the gravity disappeared.

  Titus Valerius led her along a path by the lake, stone blocks set in the short-cut grass. He was a slab of muscle, out of place in this rather effete setting. “We’ll meet the doctor at the quarters of the optio, Gnaeus Junius. Which is not the grandest up here, believe me. They modeled this whole deck, so they say, on a villa of the Emperor Hadrianus, in Italia itself. Although that was probably a lot more than a hundred paces across.”

  “I can believe it.”

  “Waste of space if you ask me.”

  “That’s officers for you.” But she remembered the ColU’s speculation about the life-support systems in this big hulk of a ship. “You know, Titus, this park might be part of the ship’s design, as well as a luxury for the officers. It’s probably good for the ship as a whole, to have all this greenery up here—”

  “Hush.” He’d frozen.

  From a clump of trees, a slim face peered out at them. Some kind of deer, evidently. It held Titus’s gaze for a second, two. Then it turned and bounded into the shadow of the trees, and Stef glimpsed a slim body, a white tail.

  Titus growled as they moved on. “They won’t let us hunt, you know.”

  Stef laughed. “There can’t be more than a handful of animals up here. And it wouldn’t really be fair, Titus; they couldn’t run far in this metal box.”

  “True. A well-shot arrow could reach from wall to wall. But still, the hunter in me aches to follow, one-armed or not.”

  She patted his shoulder. “You’ll be home in a few years, Titus Valerius, and then you can hunt all you like.”

  “I’ll take you with me,” he promised. “Meanwhile here we are—home away from home for the equestrian and his subordinate officers.”

  Gnaeus’s “quarters,” set close to the curving hull wall, turned out to be a compact cluster of buildings centered on a cobbled rectangular courtyard, and surrounded by a fringe of carefully manicured garden. There was a gate, wide open, and Titus walked in boldly, followed by Stef. A fountain bubbled from a stone bowl at the center of the yard. The buildings were neat, single story, walled with plaster painted white and roofed with red tiles. Steam drifted from the windows of a blocky building in the corner. The only concession to the environment of space travel that Stef spotted were a few steel bands to hold the stonework in place in the absence of thrust gravity.

  Titus saw Stef looking curiously at the rising steam. “A bathhouse. Do you have steam baths where you come from?” He pointed up over his head. “The whole dome up there, in the nose of the ship, is one big bathhouse. I’ve never been up there, I can tell you that. They say there are cohorts of whores up there, male and female, exclusively for the use of the officers, whores who never even see the rest of the ship, let alone the target planet. The lads spend a lot of time on the march speculating about that.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “But the most senior officers, like the optio, have their own private baths too. There’s plenty of heat from the kernels to fire the hypocausts, and plenty of slaves to serve you, so why not?. . .” He frowned. “Speaking of slaves, we should have been met by now, by one of the optio’s household slaves, or failing that, a guard.”

  “I meant to ask you about the slaves. We still haven’t seen Chu Yuen since we left Romulus.”

  “Well, there’s a problem down in the pen.” He rubbed his nose with the wooden stump of his arm. “I might suggest the optio has a couple of men posted up here. We’re not expecting trouble, but you never know—you can’t have fellows just wandering in as we have.”

  “I heard that.” Gnaeus Junius, in a loose-fitting toga, came walking from one of the buildings, trailed by Michael, who was more plainly dressed in tunic and light cloak, with a satchel at his waist. Through the open door behind the two men Stef glimpsed lantern light, a low table covered by scattered scrolls, some kind of fresco on the patterned walls—a mosaic on the floor?

  Titus stood to attention. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to be insolent.”

  “Not at all. That’s good advice, about posting guards. Sort it out when you return to barracks, would you? And consult the other officers about a similar arrangement, at least until the slaves are back.” He smiled at Stef. “It’s good to see you again, Colonel Kalinski. How are you enjoying the journey?”

  “I’m intrigued by it all. But I have a tooth that wants to get off.”

  Titus grinned. “Broke it on a bit of bread. Whatever army you once served with, you wouldn’t last a month on the march with a Roman legion, madam. With all respect.”

  “That’s probably true of most of us.” Michael deftly produced a small mirror on a probe from the satchel on his waist, asked Stef to open up, and made a quick inspection. “No sign of infection or other injury. I’m afraid the tooth will have to come out, however.”

  Stef winced. “I was afraid you’d say that. I’m not terribly good with pain.”

  “Don’t worry. I have treatments, in particular a paste concocted from certain flowers unique to Valhalla Inferior. You won’t feel a thing.”

  “I’ll say you won’t,” Titus said with a grin. “They give me that stuff when I have problems with the stump. Why, I remember once on campaign—”

  “Oh, hush, legionary,” the optio said, “you’re not in barracks now.”

  “Sorry, sir. Stef asked about the boy, Chu Yuen, who was assigned as a carrier for, umm, Collius.”

  Gnaeus nodded seriously. “There is an issue in the slave pen, I’m afraid. None of the slaves have been released yet, since the launch.” He smiled. “Which has caused rather a lot of grumbling from those who miss their little conveniences.”

  Conversations about the slaves always made Stef wince. Yet she felt compelled to press the point; as the ColU had said Chu at least was one slave they maybe could protect. “You couldn’t make an exception for the boy? He was remarkably useful.”

  Gnaeus glanced at the doctor. “Well, Michael, you’re due to go down to the pen for another inspection anyhow. Why not seek out the boy, and see if he’s fit to be released? Take Colonel Kalinski with you.”

  Michael didn’t look thrilled at the idea of such a journey, Stef thought, but he nodded amiably enough. “Fine. And perhaps you could spare Titus here for our protection.”

  Titus looked even more gloomy, but he nodded grimly. “I’ll do it, optio. After thirty years in Legio XC, sir, I’ve probably caught everything I’m going to catch and survived the lot.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Michael said. “And it is possible the boy, being of Xin stock, will have been spared the plagues running around the rest of the herd down there.”

  Plagues?

  “But first things first,” the doctor said, smiling, and he took Stef’s arm. “If you would lend us a room, optio, let’s sort out this tooth.”

 
Gnaeus led the way, and Stef, reluctantly, followed, with Titus grinning after her.

  14

  The doctor advised her to wait three hours, in a dark and quiet room, after his brisk and painless treatment, to allow the aftereffects of the drug he rubbed into her gums to wear off.

  Titus was waiting for her, with Michael, when she emerged. Titus grinned. “How are you feeling?”

  “You were right. The medicus here had to peel me off the ceiling.” In fact she still felt giddy, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Titus.

  “Well, when we take the ascension again, prepare to have your head float away once more.” The legionary led them across the parkland to the fireman’s pole. They paused under a complex set of anchors that held cables supporting the various cradles that rode up and down the pole. A couple of legionaries stood by the installation, at ease. “Since Michael is with us we have permission to ride the ascension all the way down to the pen. It’s quite a trip, I can tell you. You’ll feel like Jesu Himself in the End Times, when He will descend on Rome with Augustus and Vespasian on His left and right hands, to establish the final dominion of the Caesars across the stars.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “So all soldiers believe,” Michael said drily. “Jesu the warrior god embraced Rome by leading Constantius I to a famous victory. I, like most Greeks, take a more philosophical view—I’m more interested in what Jesu said rather than what He did. As for the Brikanti, they are Christians too, but they cling to the image of Jesu the ally of the fishermen, rather than the holy warrior who cleansed Jerusalem of corruption at the point of a sword.”

  “But it’s all in the Bible,” Titus said briskly. “You can’t deny that, medicus.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “I must read the Bible,” Stef said. “Your Bible, I mean.”

  Michael looked at her thoughtfully. “Implying yours may be different? Hm. There is another interesting conversation we must have someday.”

  This time the ascension cradle they took was an open cage, built stoutly of steel. Titus showed them seats—padded couches—and handrails, and even a small bar stocked with slim flasks of water, cordials and wine. “Not that the journey is very long, but officers always like to travel in style.” He glanced up and waved. “All right, lads? Let her go.”

  With a clatter and groan the pulleys started to turn, and the platform lurched downward, dropping immediately beneath the level of the floor. Stef still felt giddy from Michael’s Valhallan potion; she grabbed a rail.

  “There’s an engine up there, powered by steam, kernel heat,” Titus said. “Actually it’s usually human muscle that’s used to operate the pulleys. A slave party, and punishment details from the army units. Honest work and good discipline for a miscreant. But today we’re riding, not Roman muscle, but hot air . . .”

  The floor, itself a thick slab of engineering riddled with pipes, cables and ducts, rose up past Stef’s head. A plaque marked clearly with “VII” above and “VI” below showed her which decks she was passing between. Below her now opened up the sprawling urban landscape of the township where she had her own small house with Yuri. Hearth smoke rose up from some of the buildings, wisps that drifted off toward great wall-mounted extractor fans. It was still morning, she knew, by ship’s time; the big fluorescent lamps were not yet raised to their full noon brilliance, after an eight-hour “night” illuminated only by emergency lanterns. It struck her now that there were few people to be seen, that the neat little community seemed oddly underpopulated. But this township was lacking its slaves, who might number as many head as the citizens and their children themselves.

  As their cage descended, dogs barked, and barefoot children ran to see the party pass. Stef smiled at the children, and resisted the temptation to wave.

  Down from VI to V, and having passed down through a Roman city, now Stef and her companions descended toward the Roman military camp. It seemed a hive of activity; Stef saw units marching around a track at the perimeter of the deck, heavily laden with packs, while others were building some kind of fortification of sod and dirt—the sod and dirt having been shipped up from the ground for the purpose, Stef supposed.

  “We train hard,” Titus said, looking around approvingly. “Suspended as we are in emptiness, we do not forget how to march, with our gear. We do not forget how to build a camp in a few hours at the end of a marching day. We do not forget how to command, how to lead.”

  “Or how to complain,” said Michael drily.

  “Thank you, medicus.”

  V to IV, and here was another deck Stef was familiar with, the “barracks,” the level where she had first boarded the ship. There were orderly rows of huts here, accommodation for the century of legionaries and the various auxiliary units that made up the ship’s military force. Titus pointed out a group of huts, almost an afterthought in the layout below, where the remiges were quartered when off duty, the ship’s crew, all of them Brikanti—they were mostly Scand, in fact, Stef learned, the descendants of Vikings. Away from the obviously military facilities were blocks of sprawling housing, clustered around squares and courtyards. Here Stef could see women working and walking, a huddle of children engaged in what looked like some open-air lesson. She was reminded that these soldiers had brought their families with them on this interstellar march, their wives and lovers, and children born in and out of wedlock.

  There were legionaries stationed at the hole in the floor through which they would descend farther. And this time the breach was actually blocked by a covering of wood and glass.

  Michael dug into his satchel and handed Titus and Stef masks of linen soaked in some kind of alcohol. “You may prefer to wear this when we descend.”

  Stef apprehensively donned the mask.

  The platform slowed as it approached the level of the deck. Titus spoke softly to the guards stationed there, and they laughed at a joke Stef did not hear. Then the guards hauled back the big hatches that covered the portal in the ground, and the platform descended.

  IV to III. The slave pen.

  It was the stench that hit Stef first, a stench of shit and piss and vomit, of blood and of rotting flesh—a stench of an intensity she hadn’t known since her first experience of zero-gravity emergency drills, in her early days as a raw ISF recruit.

  Then she made out the detail of the deck, sixty meters below. Illuminated by bright white light, the entire floor was covered by an array of cubicles, neat rectangular cells, block after block of them lapping to the hull on either side. Above the floor, supported by angular gantry towers and fixed to the hull, was a spiderweb of walkways and rails, a superstructure of steel. Soldiers patrolled the walkways, or were stationed on towers mounted with heavy lights and weapons. All the troops wore masks. The troops carried none of the gunpowder handguns they called ballistae, she saw; instead they were armed with swords, knives, lightweight crossbows. Even the big weapons mounted on the towers were some kind of crossbow. No gunpowder weapons in a pressure hull; it was a good discipline that the ISF had always tried to follow.

  It almost looked neat, industrial, a cross between some vast dormitory and a beehive, she thought. Until she looked more closely at the contents of the cells.

  What had looked like worms, or maggots perhaps, were people, all dressed in plain grayish tunics of some kind, crammed in many to a cell. She thought she saw bunks—or maybe shelves would be a better word. People stacked, like produce in a store. A party was working its way along a corridor that snaked between the cells, hauling at a kind of cart—a cart laden with bodies, she saw, peering down, bodies loosely covered by a tarpaulin, with skinny limbs dangling from the edges.

  Titus seemed moved to explain. “Obviously none of the slaves is allowed above this level because of the ongoing plague. So the security issues are more troublesome than usual.”

  “‘Troublesome’?”

 
; “We’ll find your slave boy. There’ll be a record of his cell.” The platform was slowing, and Titus pointed down. “You can see this shaft goes on down to the lower decks, but we’ll stop at the walkways and move out laterally from that point.”

  For one second Stef bit her tongue. This isn’t your world, Stef. Keep out of trouble . . . The hell with it. She turned on Michael, her self-restraint dissolving. “You’re supposed to be a doctor. Do you have the Hippocratic oath in your world? How can you condone this? How can you cooperate?”

  Michael looked at her strangely. “You ask me? We Greeks think the Romans are soft on their slaves.”

  “Soft?”

  “There are ways for slaves to win their freedom, in much of the Empire. But to us, the slaves are barbarians, irredeemable. Once a slave, always a slave.”

  “But you’re a doctor . . . Never mind. I guess my own people don’t have an unblemished record. You say there’s a plague down here?”

  “Yes. It is . . .” The words Michael used were not translated by the ColU’s earpiece.

  She dug her slate out of her tunic pocket. “ColU, are you there?”

  “Always, Stef.”

  Of course he was listening in; she wouldn’t have been translated otherwise. “There’s plague down here, in their slave pen. You have chemical sensors in this thing? Can you tell what it is from up here?”

  Michael and Titus both stared as she held the slate high in the air, pointing the screen down into the honeycomb of a deck.

  After a pause, the ColU said, “A kind of cholera, I think. Clearly endemic on the ship. I imagine that the appropriate vaccines are unknown to this culture. The disease must flare up when water filtering systems fail—it is possible the Romans don’t even understand the mechanism, why filtering is effective—and the death rate in the conditions you show me below—”