Ultima

by Stephen Baxter

  Mardina leaned over to see. The fabric itself looked strange, with thick threads that were shiny where they were ripped. And stitched to the scrap was a kind of insignia, she thought, a triangle of thick cloth, edged in gold around a background field of blue-black. In the foreground was an arc of a red-brown planet, girdled by a swooping line, the schematic path of some kind of aerial craft. The craft itself was shown as a clumsy affair of tubes and boxes and shining panels, roughly stacked. Hovering over all this was an eagle, wings outstretched, holding some kind of branch in its talons—an olive? And there was Latin lettering around the edges of the triangle.

  “The eagle is the best-worked element of the thing,” Titus Valerius murmured.

  “That’s true,” said Mardina, entranced, puzzled.

  The ColU inspected the insignia through the slate carried by Chu. “Quipucamayoc, where did you get this?”

  “You don’t recognize it?”

  Quintus shrugged. “Obviously not.”

  “And yet here is this lettering, in the Romaoi style. Can you read this?”

  Quintus picked out the words, letter by letter. “GERSHON—YORK—STONE. These mean nothing to me. Names, perhaps? But this—this is the name of one of our gods. Or at least, his Greek cousin. ARES.”

  “Yes. I’ve been looking this up. Ares—the god you call Mars. And Mars is the name you gave to the fourth planet, is it not? Which we call Illapa, after an aspect of the sky god, the thunder deity. And is the eagle not an emblem of the Romaoi?”

  The ColU repeated, “Inguill, where was this found?”

  “Where do you think? On Illapa, of course. On Mars! Near the wreckage of a crashed craft—oh, centuries old, we think. But not far from the warak’a field, the gateway—”

  The ColU said, “Gateway? Do you mean a Hatch?”

  “Stop,” Quintus ordered. “We must take this one step at a time.”

  Chu dropped his eyes, as if he might be blamed for the ColU’s impertinence.

  “You see,” Inguill said now, “what puzzles me is this. In our history there is no record of the Romaoi reaching Illapa. Or reaching space, beyond the home world—or even, actually, mastering flight in the air. We put a stop to such ambitions when we burned their capital and subjugated their people and their territories. But you,” she said now, staring at Quintus, “you—and now we must tell each other the truth—you came from a history that was not like the one recorded in our quipus,” and she tapped the frame of the machine she had produced for emphasis. “Not like it at all. I think you came from a history where, somehow, the Romaoi survived, and prospered, and founded ninety legions, and got off the planet, and flew around the place in ships with names like Malleus Jesu—”

  “You know about the ship?”

  “Of course I know! Your men are hardly discreet, Quintus Fabius, at least with the women they take into their beds. So, did the eagle of the Romaoi fly over Illapa, in a ship called Ares?”

  “Not that I know of,” Quintus said. He sighed, and seemed to come to a decision. “Yes, Inguill—some of us Romans did indeed fly beyond Terra. I did. And I studied the early exploration of the planets at the academy at Ostia, during my officer training. This Ares should have been a heroic legend, even if it crashed! And the evidence you produce suggests it did. But I never heard of it.”

  The ColU said, “There may be another explanation.”

  Inguill pursed her lips. “You mean, another history.”

  “You are quick to understand, quipucamayoc. Yes, I—and Mardina’s mother—came from a different history from these Romans. Who came in turn from a different history from yours. And in that history we had space explorers who wore patches like these. Rome did not survive, not as the empire, but we still used relics of its culture—the Roman alphabet, for instance.”

  “Of course you did,” Quintus said complacently.

  “The eagle may have been used, not as an emblem of Rome, but of America—which was a great country in the continent of Valhalla Superior.”

  “So,” Quintus said, “are you telling us that this Ares was sent to Mars by this ‘America’?”

  “No,” said the ColU unhappily. “It’s not as simple as that. In my history, America never went to Mars—not with people, not alone. The first to Mars were Chinese—Xin. Other nations followed, but as a group, the United Nations, which included America. There was no Ares.”

  Mardina was becoming confused.

  Inguill, though, seemed to be grasping all this strangeness readily. “So this was yet another history,” she said. “One like the history that produced you, ColU. But not identical. One where this—”

  “America.”

  “—sent a craft to Illapa. Yet here is this patch, this scrap of evidence—the wreck of a ship, on Illapa, my Illapa. And the odd thing is—”

  Ruminavi barked laughter. He looked, as if his head were spinning, to Mardina. He said, “After that list of impossibilities, you say the odd thing—”

  Inguill ignored him. “The odd thing,” she persisted, “is that we would not have found this—I mean scouts from the Inca’s navy would not have discovered it—if not for the sudden appearance, in the ground of Illapa, of a field of warak’a, a portal, where none had been found before. Not before you came.”

  “The portal,” the ColU said. “The Hatch. And that is the most significant thing, of all we have discussed—”

  “Enough,” said Inguill abruptly. She stood, massaging her temples. “You flatter me for my ability to learn, ColU. I never thought I could learn too much, too quickly—I need air. You and you and you,” she pointed at Mardina, Quintus Fabius, and Chu with ColU, “walk with me. We will plot together, like conspirators.”

  Ruminavi got to his feet too, evidently troubled. “Quipucamayoc, we are far from civilization here. I fear for your safety if—”

  “Oh, don’t fuss, apu. What harm will I come to here? Save for having my grasp of reality shattered, and that has already happened. Have your soldiers follow me if you must, but keep their distance—unless any of them knows any comforting philosophy . . .”

  50

  Outside the house, Inguill led the way, striding stiffly and rapidly, heading out of the ayllu toward the forested edge of the clearing. A pair of soldiers tracked her, never more than an arm’s length from the quipucamayoc. Quintus followed a few discreet paces behind, with Mardina and Chu to either side. Chu, who probably didn’t get as much exercise as he should, was soon panting from the pace Inguill set.

  But Quintus patted his back. “Don’t worry, lad. She’ll soon run out of puff. Look how stiffly she walks . . . She spends too long staring at her quipus—as I used to with my command papers before we came to this place and I have to play at being a farmer—it is nerves and tension that propel her, and all that will soon work itself out of her system.”

  Sure enough the quipucamayoc was slowing long before she reached the forest border. She stood, panting, gazing up at the trees. The two soldiers trailing her took watchful positions, surveying the terrain.

  Inguill gestured. “Look at that,” she said. “To be a tree! Tall, patient, ancient. You need never know that the sunlight on your leaves comes through Inti windows, or that the thick earth around your roots is processed rubble from a shattered moon. Let alone worry about which strand of a quipu of realities you belonged to. A tree is a tree is a tree. What do you think, Quintus? Would you be more content as a member of a forest like that?”

  The centurion grinned. “Only if I was the tallest, quipucamayoc. And besides, some of my legionaries may as well be trees, for all the sense they have.”

  She laughed. “Legionaries, eh? So you admit what you are.”

  He shrugged, saying no more.

  She walked on, at an easier pace. “Let’s sum up what we have, then. Several histories! And I had enough trouble memorizing one.” She counted them on her finge
rs, fingering the knuckles like quipu knots, Mardina thought. “First, my own, this glorious realm ruled by the Sapa Inca. Second, the one where you upstart Romaoi and Xin and others still squabble. Third—” She looked to Chu.

  “Third,” the ColU said, “we have what we have come to call the UN-China Culture. A world of high technology, myself being an example, but relatively little expansion beyond the home world.”

  “Fourth, then, the Ares history. Like yours, but with bold explorers striking early for Illapa. Very well—”

  “And don’t forget the Drowned Culture,” Mardina said brightly. “My father worked that out. That makes five—”

  “I don’t think you’re helping, Mardina,” Quintus growled.

  “And the jonbar hinge Stef Kalinski spoke of, when she discovered she had a sister she had never suspected existed before. That’s six!”

  “Thank you, Mardina.”

  The ColU said, “Clearly these histories do not coexist, but they overlap, to a small degree. Scraps of one may be discovered in another.”

  “Like my Ares insignia,” Inguill said.

  “Yes,” Quintus said. “And like my own century, my ship, which survived one jonbar hinge.”

  “And myself and my companions,” said the ColU, “who have survived two hinges . . . Quipucamayoc, we have taken to calling the transitions between worlds jonbar hinges. The derivation is complicated and irrelevant.”

  Inguill tried out the words. “Shh-onn-barr hin-ch. Very well. A name is a name. But to label something does not mean we understand it.”

  “Indeed,” said the ColU. “The replacement of one history by another is not a tidy matter. Scraps remain.”

  “Do we know how these transitions are made? How one history is cleared away, like a dilapidated building ready for demolition, to be replaced by another?”

  “Judging by our experiences, the termination of one history is generally accompanied by disaster. War. The release of huge energies from the kernels—which you call the warak’a.”

  “Which is something to be avoided.”

  “Yes—” Quintus growled, “Who is making these transitions happen is a more pertinent question, perhaps.”

  “Very well—who, ColU?”

  “We don’t know. Not yet. We have some clues. Inguill, you said your people on Mars—Illapa—discovered a new field of warak’a, a new Hatch—our word for the portal you found.”

  “Hat-sch. Very well. We know how to build them, of course.”

  “As did we,” Quintus said. “We Romans. You jam the kernels together—”

  She waved a hand at the artificial sky. “Our ships roam the stars. Everywhere we go, we take the warak’a—of course, or rather they take us. And everywhere we go, we build Hatches.”

  “As did we,” Quintus repeated.

  “But why?” the ColU asked. “Why do you do this? Who told you to?”

  Inguill glanced at the Roman, and both shrugged. Inguill said, “The warak’a are a gift from Inti, the sky god. That seems evident—a rare benison from our gods, as opposed to a punishment. And the Hatches are always found with them. Wherever we travel, we make more Hatches as a tribute to the gods. It seems to work . . . At least, we have not yet been punished for it, so we deduce this is the correct course of action.”

  “As with us,” Quintus said. “Though you seem to be more industrious at it than we ever were.”

  “Yes,” the ColU said. “That’s it. Whatever the nature of the change, whatever the cultural details, each new draft of a civilization is better at building Hatches. My culture, as far as I know, built no Hatches at all. You Romans did pretty well. And the Inca—”

  “We litter worlds with the things,” Inguill said. “This is the triumph of our culture. And now I discover that we have been somehow manipulated to achieve precisely this goal? Our whole history distorted!”

  Mardina studied her. “And that makes you feel . . .”

  “Angry, child. Angry. Whoever is doing this, it is hard to believe it is a god. For what god needs a door in the ground?”

  Mardina herself felt oddly exhilarated. The flood of revelations and new ideas made her feel as if she were jumping recklessly off a cliff edge, or diving from the axis of Yupanquisuyu and plummeting to the ground, laughing all the way down . . .

  The ColU said, “Inguill, your discovery of a Hatch on Mars, Illapa, has changed everything. Because when we emerged into this time stream, past the latest jonbar hinge, it was just as a Hatch appeared on Mars. That was on the Romans’ version of Mars. This new Illapa Hatch is an obvious link to the underlying . . . strangeness. Well, we must pursue Earthshine—”

  Inguill frowned. “Who?”

  “I’ll explain. But for now we must get to Illapa.”

  “How?” asked Inguill bluntly. “The imperial authorities would not allow it. Even I could not authorize it.”

  “I have a plan,” said Quintus Fabius smugly.

  • • •

  When the centurion had explained his ideas, it took a while for Inguill to stop laughing.

  “Are you insane?”

  “Oh, quite possibly.”

  She looked at him, smiling. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? To lay up here in Yupanquisuyu, steal some food, fight your way out, and fly off into space, to found some new Rome of your own? Ha! No wonder you Romaoi rolled over when the Inca armies landed on your shores. Look—you won’t get as far as the ocean. The awka kamayuq patrols will stop you.”

  “All right,” Quintus said angrily. “Then do you have any better ideas?”

  “Well, I’m prepared to concede you need to get to Illapa, if Collius says so. We humans together need to understand the agent that is meddling with our destinies. But you’re not going to walk out of here.” She sighed. “The Sapa Inca’s advisers would do nothing to help. They are pretty fools, angling and maneuvering, of no intellect or ability. Conversely, the administrators who actually run the empire are just that—quipu-pluckers, with no imagination whatever. Which leaves the task to me—and you. For the only way you’ll do this is if I help you.”

  Quintus frowned. “You would do that? How can we trust you?”

  “We have no choice, Centurion,” the ColU said. “I see that now.”

  “And I barely trust myself,” Inguill said, a little wildly, Mardina thought. “At the very least I will be committing a crime by smuggling you out of here—out of the light of the Sapa Inca’s rule . . . And at the worst, I suppose, my meddling might itself result in one of these catastrophic changes you so eloquently described. On the other hand, if I manage to slay this particular jaguar, a greater service to the empire is hard to imagine. Perhaps history will forgive me—”

  “If history survives at all,” said the ColU.

  “Indeed.” She stopped pacing and faced Quintus. “In some ways it is what we share that interests me, rather than what divides us. We both sail the seas of space; we both build the ColU’s Hatches. We both name planets after our antique gods. And we share other legends—so my spies inform me.” She glanced up at an Inti window. “We call the nearest star to the sun just that—Kaylla, which means ‘near.’”

  “As we call it Proxima,” said the ColU. “Meaning ‘nearest’ in Quintus’s tongue.”

  “And our sailors of space have a legend of the furthest star of all, where the gods lay their plans against us, or plot the catastrophes of the end of time: the pachacuti. We call this undiscovered star Karu, which means ‘far.’”

  “As we speak of Ultima,” Quintus mused. “Yes. We do have much in common.”

  “And is Ultima where we will find the Hatch builders? I must get back to Cuzco. There’s much to prepare if we are to pull this off, and the more time they have to fester, the more plots tend to unravel. But we need more . . . We need a way to divert the attention of the Sapa Inca and his advisers a
t Hanan Cuzco from your break-out attempt.” She looked now at Mardina. “And, given what Ruminavi has belatedly confessed to me about his mit’a collecting in your ayllu, or his failure there—if I am risking the sacrifice of everything, my career, even my life, I must ask you to risk a sacrifice too.”

  Mardina frowned. “Me?”

  “Not you, child. Your friend, Clodia Valeria. You must be prepared to sacrifice her. But you, Mardina, may be the key to making it happen . . .”

  51

  Before beginning the march to the ocean, Quintus Fabius inspected his troops.

  As the trumpet sounded, the men of the century formed up in orderly ranks, their cloaks on their backs, their marching packs at their feet, their improvised or purloined weapons at their belts. This was the first time they had turned out as a proper century of the Roman army since arriving in this habitat.

  The centurion walked the ranks, murmuring quiet words to individual men, inspecting patched and improvised uniforms—and their weapons. In return for other favors, mostly labor by burly legionaries, the local smith had eventually turned out a variety of weapons, including a decent steel gladio and pugio and pilum for most of the men. Many of them had helmets too now, simple steel bowls with a lip to protect their necks and cheeks. Few had body armor, though many wore a subarmilis, a heavy quilted undergarment designed to help with the load of a breastplate. The folk of the ayllu had done all this out of sight of the Inca’s inspectors, treating it as a kind of game, a way to get back at the overbearing tax collectors. The legionaries hid as much as they could in the open. They even had a big rock water tank that they surreptitiously used to sharpen their swords.

  Quintus came to Orgilius. The man had been a signifier, a century standard bearer, but now given a field promotion by Quintus to aquilifer, bearer of the whole legion’s eagle standard, in the absence of the rest of the Legio XC Victrix anywhere in this reality. Indeed Quintus had hired a particularly skilled local metalworker to make for them a reasonable facsimile of the old standard, given to the legion by a grateful Emperor Veronius Optatus seven centuries before. It seemed a suitable reward for Orgilius, one of the more intelligent of the legionaries, who had picked up the Quechua tongue readily and made friendships with local people, even with a few of the officials and military types who visited the ayllu. He had become a source of information upon which Quintus increasingly relied. Yes, Orgilius deserved his new honor—even if it was all Quintus had to give him.