He grunted. “Isn’t it obvious? To keep her away from Mardina and the Xin slave boy. We’ve enough troubles already. Now then, ColU, tell me where to begin with this well-remembered map of yours . . .”
63
In the end it was more like two months before Titus Valerius, having returned from his scouting expedition with Clodia, declared that they were ready to depart.
They broke camp. Everything useful and lightweight was loaded onto Beth’s cart, or was stored on improvised packs on the walkers’ backs. They loaded as much as they could of the food store Beth had begun, cooked and dried and packaged up. Titus had decreed that they would forage as they moved, saving as much of their store as possible. The ColU itself was on the cart to relieve Chu of his burden, bundled up in a blanket and lashed in place.
The camp had been Beth’s home since she had first come here through the substellar Hatch with Earthshine. Stef watched her regretfully closing down her array of homemade clocks.
At last Stef found herself helped up onto the cart, with Beth at her side. Titus handed Stef the lightweight ropes that constituted the cart’s rudimentary steering system.
“Thanks,” Stef said sourly. “So the old lady is baggage on the trip.”
Titus scowled at that. “Yes. You’re the oldest. You’ll walk the least. Your job is to control the cart. But you will get off that cart and walk when I tell you, because I need you to stay fit and healthy.” He had a sheaf of bits of parchment and paper on which he’d worked out his schedule for the trip, tucked under his damaged arm. “It’s all in the plan.”
Stef sighed. “I hate to be a burden.”
“Just do as you’re told.”
“Yes, Centurion!”
Beth held Stef’s hand. “I wouldn’t worry about it. He thinks of you as a soldier, if maybe a wounded one, or he wouldn’t be so tough on you.”
Stef grunted. “Well, I was military myself. I guess you’re right. With men like Titus, it’s when they’re nice to you that you have to worry.”
“And as for walking . . .” Beth patted the frame of the cart. “Be careful what you wish for. This is my design, remember, and we’re not exactly overstocked with tools and raw materials, especially since Ari and Inguill took so much of the good stuff. If this gets us halfway to the terminator, I’ll be impressed.”
“Oh, I think we’ll do better than that,” Stef said, though she spoke more in hope than expectation as she looked back at the cart.
The basis of it was the frame of “wood”—actually split-open trunks of stem-trees from the substellar forest—lashed together with rope and vines that Beth had begun to build. It rode on wheels of wood rimmed with rope. Rims of steel or iron would have been better, but they didn’t want to take the time to build a forge to achieve that, and they’d brought spare wheels.
In addition, the ColU had ordered that sled-like rails should be fixed to the cart’s underside, an obvious preparation for the icy dark-side journey to come. And, under the direction of the ColU and Titus, the cart had even been made ready to serve as a shallow-draft boat. The sides had been built up and the whole had been made waterproof, with a coating of the marrow that you could extract from any stem or the trunks of the forest trees. The “marrow” wasn’t marrow but a complex organic product in itself, capable of a kind of internal photosynthesis based on the abundant heat energy available from Proxima. The travelers disregarded this biological miracle, and were only interested in using it as a kind of sticky gunk to seal cracks in their cart.
Stef thought it was all a marvel of improvisation and ingenuity, but they could only hope their preparations were adequate to meet the challenges ahead.
At last they were ready to go. Under Titus’s rough direction, they formed up into a kind of column. The cart, of course, needed pushing and pulling, and Titus himself, Clodia, Mardina and Chu were assigned to that duty, two ahead, two behind. They’d have some help from Beth, but she was spared the worst of the work. In her late fifties, she was being treated as another honorary old lady, to Beth’s irritation and Stef’s amusement.
“This is it, then,” Titus cried. “A journey around this strange world—a journey that begins with a single step.” He drew his pugio, his dagger, and held it aloft. “Are you ready for war?”
“Yes!”
“I said—are you ready?”
“Yes!”
“Then we advance!” He settled into his own padded harness, positioned his damaged arm, and leaned into the traces.
The cart jolted into motion, nearly throwing Stef off in the very first moment.
So it began.
• • •
Titus and Clodia had scouted out their route well. It roughly tracked the trail created by Earthshine and then followed by Ari and Inguill, but from the beginning it was almost all downhill—or at least on a gentle declining slope—and led through reasonably open country, following the water courses that threaded away from the high ground of the substellar plateau. The “draft animals” seemed pleasantly surprised to find that the exercise wasn’t as hard as they might have feared, although Stef kept her mouth shut about that, given that she didn’t have to share in the labor.
Titus called a halt after about a quarter of an hour, so that people could make minor adjustments to boots and harnesses and other bits of clothing. Then they pressed on for another half hour, until Titus called another stop for water, and then another half hour when he rotated the crew, with Beth slipping into the traces vacated by Mardina.
After just three hours—Stef guessed they’d gone only five or six miles—Titus decreed that they were done for the first day.
The rest were anxious to keep moving now they’d started, with the thousands of miles that lay ahead of them weighing heavily on their minds. But Titus was nothing if not an experienced marcher, and he knew what he was doing. He had them all strip off their boots, bathe their feet in a stream, and then slip into the loose, open camp sandals he’d had them make. This first day, unpracticed, it would take them longer than usual to make camp, to get into the routine of digging a latrine ditch and gathering food and collecting water, and Titus wanted to be sure they did all this properly. Also Titus wanted to check over the cart, to see if it was passing this ultimate test of roadworthiness. They had spare parts and pots of marrow to fix up obvious flaws.
“Come on, come on!” Titus chivvied them as they got to work. “When Roman legionaries are on the march they set up camp every night—”
“Sure they do.”
“And you don’t hear a word of complaint—”
“Sure you don’t!”
“Why, I remember once on campaign—”
“Save it, Titus Valerius!”
Once the labor of the camp building was done, and they were gathered around the fire they’d built for the night, Stef could see the wisdom of Titus’s management. They’d all encountered unexpected difficulties, even if Stef’s had been only the lack of a cushion under her bony behind. And they were all more tired than they’d expected to be. But they’d got through the day, they’d done everything Titus had demanded of them, and they knew now they only had to repeat this routine in the days to come.
Before they bundled up under their blankets and clothing heaps to sleep, huddling together under Beth’s stretched-out tent, Titus came around one more time, accompanied by Clodia with a simple medical pack. The legionary insisted on checking everybody’s feet, for bruises, chafing, incipient blisters. “Now that you’re all soldiers on the march, you’ll learn that your most important items of equipment are your feet. Look after them and the rest follows. And the sooner you’re all capable of doing this for yourselves, the better.”
“Good night, Titus Valerius.”
“Good night, auxiliaries . . .”
And, after Titus had done his round, Stef heard rustling, saw shadows slip through the dim light und
er the canopy. They were unmistakable: Chu Yuen and Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson, clutching blankets, hand in hand, making their way out from under the canopy and into the shade of the forest.
• • •
The next day they made better progress. And the day after that, better still.
Stef made a deliberate effort not to count the days, not even to try to estimate the distance traveled. She knew she could leave that kind of management to Titus and the ColU. And besides, she slept better if she tried not to think about the monumental journey ahead. She thought of this as a new way of life, a long tunnel of routine that was going to fill her days for the foreseeable future. Sleep, break camp, march, make camp, sleep . . . Without beginning, and without end.
But, gradually, the country began to change.
They descended from the substellar high ground, and the haulers began to lose the benefit of the downward slopes Titus had cunningly scouted for them. On the other hand, the weather on the lower ground, away from the permanent low-pressure system over the substellar point, became milder, less turbulent. Day by day there was less wind and rain. And the vegetation around them responded. Now the broken forest that characterized the relatively unsettled substellar gave way to more open country, with forest clumps separated by broad swaths of ground-hugging, light-trapping vegetation.
During the long hours between the days’ marches, the ColU had Chu carry it out into the country away from the camp to inspect the changing terrain. Out of curiosity, and when she had the strength, Stef followed them—often with Beth, who was curious to see more of what had become of this world that she still thought of as home.
At the end of one unremarkable day, they walked side by side over a plain almost covered in sprawling green leaves, like tremendous lilies, Stef thought. Systems of three leaves united at a central stem, covering the ground, and basking in Proxima light. When she knelt down to look closer she saw that the leaves were firmly anchored to the ground by fine tendrils, covering every square centimeter. No competitor was going to swipe this plant’s growing space, this share of the starlight. It was a very Arduan scene. But when she dug her hand into the ground beneath the leaf, she came up with what looked like an authentic sample of terrestrial soil, complete with an earthworm, a thing like a woodlouse, and other creeping terrestrial creatures.
As they walked back to camp, Stef gradually got a broader sense of the wider landscape. With the star static overhead, and every square centimeter of ground colonized thickly by the green of life, this part of the world was like a huge, collective, cooperative system, optimized over time to extract every scrap of energy from the light falling from the sky. Stef felt as if she were in some huge greenhouse, old and decayed, the glass choked by lichen, moss and weeds—with here and there a vivid splash of Earth life embedded in the rest.
• • •
In the middle of the next day they came to the bank of a river, wide, placid.
Stef clambered off her bench and hobbled over to Titus. He was standing with his one good hand on his hip, staring out at the water, grinning. “This is as far as I came with Clodia, during our scouting trip. Well, I judged we need come no farther. This river clearly flows out of the substellar point,” and he waved his hand back in the direction of Proxima, “and, no doubt fed by many tributaries, continues to flow in a roughly southeasterly direction. Well, you can see that. Now, Stef, tell me I’m no surveyor. Madam, I present a highway as straight and true as any Roman road. And now, for a time at least, we can all ride in comfort, as you have been all the way from our first camp.”
“Aye aye, cap’n.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I imagine that didn’t translate . . .”
They made camp in the usual manner. Then they got to work reassembling their cart into a small boat—detaching the wheels and axles, going over the seals with their marrow caulking, and digging out paddles they’d crudely made from dead stems lashed up with rope.
In the breaks, they took advantage of the river, washing their feet and clothes, dunking their whole bodies luxuriously in water that ran refreshingly cool. But Titus banned any swimming. Though the river ran with a strong current, it was obvious that the bed was choked with life, and he didn’t want anybody getting caught up in that.
It took them forty-eight hours before they were ready to embark. After so long on the road, many days already, they had all learned not to rush.
As with their first day’s walk, Titus decreed that their first jaunt in the boat would be a short one, to ensure they ironed out any flaws. He made sure that those to whom he entrusted the paddles had fabric wrapped around their palms for protection, and ponchos improvised from lightweight survival blankets to keep off the spray. They even had to wear their light camp sandals, so that their boots, precious items of equipment, could be bundled in waterproofs. It was all detail with Titus, Stef observed.
It visibly infuriated Titus that, lacking an arm, he couldn’t manage a paddle himself. But he insisted on riding at the stern, where a crude rudder had been attached.
Once they were all loaded aboard, their stuff lashed down, Chu shoved them off from the bank with a mighty jab of his paddle against a rock, and they drifted out toward the center of the river. Titus was at the stern with his rudder, Stef at the prow with her back to the river. Of the four rowers, Chu and Clodia sat together to Stef’s right, and Beth and Mardina, mother and daughter, to her left. For the first couple of miles they were all silent, save for Titus’s curt commands: “That’s it, we’ll keep to the center where it’s deepest . . . Paddle a bit less vigorously, Chu and Clodia—you’re too strong and you’re shoving us to the bank. We’ll balance you up better when we stop . . . That’s it . . . If we can let the current take the boat away without us having to do any work at all, I’ll be happy . . .”
Stef found herself anxiously watching the deck under her feet, looking for leaks. She had crossed interstellar space in kernel-drive starships, and had even walked between realities through a technology that was entirely alien. And yet a ride in this ramshackle craft, with just a few meters of water beneath her, was somehow more terrifying than all of that.
But they hadn’t gone far before she was distracted by the atmosphere in the boat itself. Mardina glared at Chu and Clodia, and Clodia glared back.
“Ouch,” Stef said at length. “I never heard a silence so loud. What the hell’s the matter?” But of course she anticipated the reply.
“Her,” Mardina burst out, pointing a finger at Clodia.
Clodia looked ready to leap across the boat and take her rival on.
“Sit still,” Titus commanded his daughter. “Wield your oar. You too, Mardina. Snarl at each other if you must, but you will not imperil this vessel . . . What’s this about?”
Clodia glared. “Do you really not understand, Father?”
Titus sighed. “Being not entirely without senses—yes, Mardina, Chu, I’ve seen you two sneaking off in the night.”
Chu hung his head, Stef observed, as if he were still a slave who had been caught doing wrong.
“But,” Titus said heavily, “that doesn’t mean you’re lovers. Just because you sleep together. I mean, I remember once on campaign—”
Clodia growled, “Oh, Father.”
“Well—whether or not, Mardina, I don’t see what your problem is with Clodia.”
Mardina flared. “You see us sleep together but you don’t see what she’s doing? The way she’s sitting beside him now. The way she looks at him. Leans against him. Holds onto his arm when the boat rocks—”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Actually, Titus,” Beth said with a rueful smile, “I noticed the same thing. I don’t think there’s any malice, though, Mardina. I don’t think she can help it. Look, girls, the problem isn’t with the two of you, or with Chu. It’s just that there’s only the three of you, three youngsters—
in this boat, on this whole wretched planet. This problem was always going to come up.”
Mardina glared at her. “Oh, how helpful that is, Mother. So what do you suggest we do? Kill each other over Chu, the way those colonists did on Per Ardua like you’re always telling me?”
“Ideally we will avoid that,” Titus said with a dangerous calm. “But while you three work it out, here are the military rules. We’re on a mission here. And we also face a challenge to survive, as simple as that. You three can bed-hop as much as you like,” and he kept his eyes averted from his daughter as he said it. “But if you come to blows, if I get a hint of a sniff of suspicion that you’re putting us all in danger—why, then, I’ll put a stop to the whole business. I’ll cut your pecker off, slave boy, and skin it and use it as a wind sock. Let’s see these young women fight over you then.”
Chu seemed to think that over. “It would be a big wind sock, sir—”
“Shut up.”
For a time they progressed down the river in silence.
Then, from inside its waterproof wrapping, the ColU spoke up. “Well, this is awkward. Shall we sing a song? There’s one you may remember, Beth, from your childhood, with Yuri Eden and Mardina Jones—not that we had a boat in those days. Row, row, row your boat . . . Come, please join in . . .”
As they drifted on down the river its voice echoed from the life-choked water.
64
With time the great waterway broadened and deepened, with many tributaries flowing into it from the surrounding land, just as Titus had predicted.
Then there came a day when “their” river passed through a confluence and became a tributary of a much wider river still. Soon the flow was so wide that it was difficult to make out the far bank. “We lucked out,” Stef said. “We found the local Mississippi.” But of her companions, only the ColU and Beth knew which river she meant, and even Beth, Arduan-born, wasn’t sure.
Ultima Page 43
