Coalescent dc-1

by Stephen Baxter

  “Or as a hunter knows her quarry.”

  “Well, you have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “You know my biography, but I have heard nothing of you since that long-ago night of exuberance and foolishness, which I had all but forgotten.”

  “ I haven’t forgotten. After that ‘night of exuberance,’ you left me pregnant. You or your German boyfriend. Verulamium fell. Because of the money you stole from your father we couldn’t escape to Armorica. I was forced to trek, pregnant, across the country. I gave birth in an abandoned roundhouse of the Celtae. I was seventeen years old.

  “I spent twenty years trying to make a farmstead work, scraping my food from the ground. But I raised your daughter, as you can see. Later we were overrun by the forces of a warlord called Artorius. Perhaps you have heard of him; he is ambitious. I saved my life and your daughter’s by sleeping with him. Again I survived.”

  He glared at her. “Yes, you survived, little chicken,” he said coldly. “And here you are with your demanding eyes and nagging voice. Why have you abandoned your barbarian warlord to come to Rome?”

  “I want to find my mother.”

  He nodded. “I remember the stories you used to tell of her. She must be old — probably dead by now. Why do you want to find the woman who abandoned you?”

  “Because she is my family. Because she owes me a debt. As you also owe me, Amator.”

  He smirked. “And what is it you want from me?”

  “Only a little,” she said evenly. “I will need time to find Julia. You will give us that time. Provide us somewhere to live — not here; the stink of your boy is too strong. And a little money.”

  “I am not as rich as you may think I am, Regina.”

  “And no doubt your tastes are expensive. Then give us work. Brica can serve in your shop, perhaps.” She ignored Brica’s bemused reaction; she would deal with her later. “My demands will be reasonable — only what I need. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “So that’s why you’ve trekked across Europe, with your doe-eyed daughter in tow. Extortion! How delicious. And if I refuse?”

  She shrugged. “I am persistent and dogged. I will explore all facets of your character and your past with your patrons, and other equites, and your business contacts in your guilds. Oh, and your boy — was his name Sulla?”

  “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” he flared. “This is not Britain. This is Rome. Things are done differently here.”

  “Then,” she said mildly, “no one will be disturbed when I tell them how you groomed me for your pleasure from the time of my menarche, and the way you used me on that night in Verulamium. I wonder now if that had something to do with your preference for boys. Perhaps on some level women disgust you, Amator? Perhaps you set out deliberately to hurt me? Oh, and of course I will tell them how you abandoned your obligations to your child all those years ago, and how you destroyed your father’s life with your theft—”

  He leaned toward her, his depilated eyebrows flaring red. “You can’t harm me, little chicken.”

  “Perhaps not. But it will be interesting to try.”

  He held her gaze for long heartbeats. She kept still, refusing to show how her heart was hammering — for if he called her bluff she had no alternative plan.

  But then he laughed. “I always did like you, Regina. You had a spark. It wasn’t just your boyish little body, you know.” He clapped his hands and ordered his perfumed boy to bring more wine.

  Pina was no support.

  Chapter 25

  “You got what you wanted, didn’t you? You wanted your contadino. You wanted something nobody else has.”

  “No, I—”

  “Now you’re different. Congratulations.”

  Lucia thought she saw something in Pina’s face as she said this, just a flicker of remorse or pity. But Pina turned her back, just like the rest.

  * * *

  Nobody would speak to her. No, it was worse than that. Nobody would even look at her. It was as if waves of disapproval spread out from Rosa and Pina, eventually engulfing everybody Lucia knew.

  She was never physically isolated — that was impossible in the Crypt — but everywhere she went she was alone in a crowd. At work in the scrinium, her work assignments were left on her desk or as impersonal email messages. They were instructions that might have been sent to a robot, she thought, a thing without identity. In the dormitory, little knots of conversation would unravel as she approached. In the refectories people would turn away and talk as if she weren’t there. Cut out of the endless babble of gossip, it was as if a great story were moving on without her.

  Listen to your sisters. That was another of the three great slogans of the Order’s short catechism, incised on every nursery wall, repeated endlessly. But how were you supposed to listen when nobody would speak to you?

  Now she was excluded, it had never been so apparent how closely everybody in the Order lived. People walked together, talking endlessly, arms linked, hips bumping together, heads bowed closely, lips brushing in platonic kisses. Sometimes, in the refectories, you would see groups of ten or fifteen or even twenty girls, joined one to the next by linked arms or hands on shoulders, or bodies pressed together. At intense moments people would grab each other’s arms and shoulders, even kiss. At night, too, it wasn’t uncommon for two, three, or four to cluster together in a few pushed-together beds, whispering, kissing, at last sleeping in each other’s arms. There was nothing sexual in any of this, for there was nothing sexual about the sisters. As slim as seven-year-olds, they huddled together innocently for companionship and warmth.

  But not Lucia, not anymore. Nobody came near Lucia, no nearer than a yard or two, never near enough to touch. It was as if she were trapped inside a big bubble of glass, around which people walked without even noticing what they were doing.

  Or it was as if she smelled bad. And perhaps she did, she came to wonder. Sometimes, when she walked into a crowded room, she would detect a subtle scent, a kind of milky sweetness, gentle and welcoming. It was the smell of the sisters. By comparison her smell must be of blood and sweat, of a rutting animal, as if she was a beast in the field, not a human being like the others at all.

  Once she was aware of it the scent of rut seemed to fill her head, day and night. She took to showering, two, three, four times a day, scrubbing at her skin until it was raw, and changing her clothes all the time. But still that stink gushed out of her body, a foulness that she couldn’t escape — for it was the essence of her.

  It went on and on. Food seemed to lose its flavor; it was like trying to eat cardboard or grass. It got to the point where she couldn’t sleep. She would lie there alone in her bed, listening to the whispers and giggles and gentle snores that drifted around her. The lack of sleep and her poor diet soon wore her out. She dragged herself to work. But the work seemed as pointless as the rest of her weary days. In her spare time she would simply sit alone, silently loathing herself, aware of every pore in her skin oozing blood and dirt.

  After a month of ostracism, she suffered violent stomach cramps. She staggered to a bathroom and endured half an hour of dry retching, bringing up nothing but acidic bile that burned her throat.

  * * *

  Rosa came to sit opposite her in the refectory. “I saw you in the bathroom.” Her tone was analytical, not sympathetic.

  Lucia had been sitting alone, without touching the cooling plate of food before her. She tucked her hands between her thighs, head down. Over her head an elaborate mosaic design showed the Order’s kissing- fish logo.

  “You know why you’re ill, don’t you? You’ve hardly eaten for a month. Or slept, by the look of you. The weight is falling off you.”

  “I don’t care.” Lucia’s voice was scratchy. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to anybody, exchanged a single word. It must have been days, she thought.

  “You feel like you don’t exist. As if you’re not really here. As if this is a dream.”

  “A nightmar
e.”

  “We aren’t meant to be alone, Lucia. We’re social creatures. Our minds evolved in the first place so we could figure out what is going on inside other people’s heads — so we could get to know them, help them, even manipulate them. Did you know that? We need other people to make us fully conscious. So if you’re alone, if nobody is looking at you or talking to you, it really is as if you don’t exist.”

  “Everybody hates me.”

  Rosa leaned forward. “Can you blame them? You let us down, Lucia. The Crypt is a calm pond. You threw a great big rock into that pond, making a huge splash, sending ripples back and forth. You upset everybody.”

  Lucia dropped her head.

  Rosa asked, “Do you remember what happened to Francesca?”

  Lucia frowned. She had forgotten about Francesca.

  Francesca had been a sister from Lucia’s dormitory, neither more or less popular than anybody else, never standing out from the crowd — but then nobody did. Then, one day, suddenly Francesca hadn’t been part of the group anymore. Everybody else, including Lucia, had simply stopped talking to her.

  It was just as was happening to Lucia herself.

  “Francesca was a thief,” Rosa said sternly. “She had an obsession for jewelry and accessories — sparkly, glittery things. She would steal from her sisters. She built up a cache under her bed. Of course she kept it all secret. When it was discovered — well, naturally, nobody wanted to talk to her again.”

  Lucia had never known about the thefts, about why Francesca’s exclusion had come about. But then, you never asked questions like why. It had been easy, she thought wonderingly, easy just to ignore Francesca, to behave as if she didn’t exist — for in a way she didn’t anymore. As for Lucia, she had just gone along with what everybody else had been doing, as she always did, as she had been encouraged to do since she was a toddler, never questioning. She had scarcely noticed when Francesca had literally disappeared, when the pale solitary ghost in the refectory or the dorm had evaporated, never to return.

  “What happened to her?”

  “She’s dead,” Rosa said. “She killed herself.”

  Despite her own turmoil, Lucia was shocked. Dead, for a handful of cheap jewelry? How could that be right ? … She should not think such thoughts. Yet she couldn’t help it.

  And she became afraid.

  “I can’t change,” she said desolately. “Look at me. I’m a big stupid animal. My head is full of rocks. I stink. I know you can smell it. I can’t help it, I wash and wash …” Though her eyes prickled, no tears came. “Maybe it’s better if I die, too.”

  “No.” Rosa reached forward, pulled Lucia’s arm out from under the table, and took her hand. It was the first time anybody had touched Lucia for weeks. It was as if an electric current ran through her. Rosa said, “You’re too important to lose, Lucia. Yes, you’re different. But the Order needs girls like you.”

  Lucia said weakly, “Why? What for?”

  But Rosa drew back, subtly, breaking the touch.

  You weren’t supposed to ask. Ignorance is strength. It said so, in big letters on the wall before her. Lucia said quickly, “I’m sorry.”

  Rosa said, “It’s okay.” She stood up. “Everything’s going to be okay, Lucia. You’ll see.”

  Lucia, weak, starved, sleep-deprived, clung to that. In her dazed, hurting state, all she cared about was that her isolation should end. And she did her best to ignore the small voices in her head that even now asked persistent, impertinent questions: How can it ever be made okay again, how, how? And what do they want of me?

  * * *

  Rosa booked Lucia into the downbelow hospital.

  The doctors said her condition wasn’t too serious, though she had lost more weight than was healthy for a girl her age. She was given some light medication and put on a special diet.

  Rosa encouraged Lucia’s friends to come visit her. They came slowly and shyly: Pina the first day, Idina and Angela the second, Rosaria and Rosetta the next. At first they stared at Lucia with wide, curious eyes, as if she hadn’t been among them for weeks — and, in a sense, she hadn’t. They talked to her, feeding her little dribbles of gossip about what had been going on during her “absence.”

  It took three days before any of them could touch her without flinching.

  But gradually Lucia felt old connections mending, as if she were a bit of broken bone being knitted back into the whole. The change in her mood was astonishing. It was as if the sun had come out from behind clouds.

  After a week in the hospital the doctors discharged her. She was sent back to her dormitory, and her work in the scrinium, though the doctors insisted she call back every few days for checks.

  She knew she should not reflect on any of this, nor analyze it, but simply accept it. She had to learn again to live in the moment.

  Brica went to work in her father’s bakery.

  Chapter 26

  When she was with Regina, Brica remained withdrawn, sullen, somehow defeated. But away from Regina, Amator reported, she was more open, lively, willing, and she would socialize with the younger workers when the day was done. Amator was no doubt embellishing the truth; Regina was sure he would not miss an opportunity to slide a knife blade of difference between mother and daughter. But she didn’t begrudge her daughter her bit of happiness.

  As soon as the money from Amator started to come through, Regina began to search for her mother.

  What made that hard was that so much of Rome was so obviously unplanned. The historic core of the city had always been the seven hills, easily defended in the days when Rome had been just one of a number of squabbling communities. The first Forum had been built in the marshy valley that nestled between the hills’ bluff protective shoulders.

  But since then, away from the monumental heart, the city had simply grown as it needed to. The streets wandered haphazardly, following the meandering tracks of animals across fields that now lay far beneath the strata of rubbish under her feet, nothing like the arrow-straight highways laid out in the provinces. The only orderly development that had ever been possible was when fire or some other disaster had laid waste to part of the city, giving a rare chance to rebuild. It was whispered that once the Emperor Nero had deliberately started a fire in the central districts to make room for the House of Gold he planned to build for himself.

  And yet in this sprawling chaos there were, oddly, patterns.

  She could see it in the shops, for instance. There were distinctive artists’ quarters, jewelers’ quarters, fashion quarters. You could see how it happened. Where a successful bakery business opened, like Amator’s, other food stores were attracted, selling fish oil or olives, lamb or fruit. Soon you had a district that became renowned for the quality of its food, and subsidiary businesses like restaurants might be drawn in. Or you might find folk of a similar inclination drawn together by common interests: thus Amator’s house on the fringe of the Trajan complex was one of several in the area owned by grain and water magnates. Then there were more subtle, short-lived changes, as one area became more fashionable for some uncanny reason; or as another became more prone to crime and disorder, thus attracting more criminals and driving out the law abiding.

  The way the city somehow organized itself struck her deeply. The growth of the city, street by street, building by building, had been driven not by any conscious intent, not even by the will of the emperors, but by individual decisions, motivated by the greed or nobility, farsightedness or purblindness that afflicted every human being. And out of the millions of small decisions made every day, patterns formed and dissipated, like ripples on a turbulent stream; and somehow, out of these patterns, the soul of the city itself emerged.

  Remarkable it may be, but she feared it might take her years to get to know this mighty nest of a million people. She decided that the best thing to do to shorten the search was to let Julia come to her.

  Using Amator’s money, she began to make her name known wherever the better-heeled people
gathered, in the more prominent baths and restaurants and theaters. She went to the temples, too — not just the new Christian churches that had been sprouting throughout Rome since the days of Constantine, including his mighty basilica over the tomb of Saint Peter, but also the older temples to the pagan cults. She hoped that if her name got to her mother one way or another, Julia might be drawn — by curiosity, shame, even the remnants of love? — to come seek out her daughter. Regina knew the odds were long, but she had no better idea. She got no quick result, however.

  And as their weeks in Rome turned into months, Regina was not surprised by a further development: Brica fell in love again. He was a boy called Castor, a customer of the store, a young freedman of good bearing and intelligence who had quickly risen to a position of some responsibility, working for one of the grander senatorial families.

  Brica obviously expected Regina to oppose the match. But Regina kept her counsel. Even when Brica defiantly said she wished to marry the boy, Regina gave her blessing. She paid for a betrothal ceremony and banquet, and even provided a small dowry to Castor’s family. This would normally be paid by the bride’s father — and it had actually come out of Amator’s money, if unwillingly extracted.

  Brica had to live; Regina accepted that. She had no desire to control her daughter’s every movement. It was enough that her own longer-term goals should be fulfilled. Even a wedding would not hamper that. After all, somebody would eventually have to be the father of Brica’s children, Regina’s grandchildren, and better a Roman boy with prospects than a doltish apprentice of Myrddin.

  Besides, anything that encouraged Brica to learn better Latin must be a good thing.

  It was more than three months after their arrival in Rome, as the leaves of summer had already begun to brown, that the mysterious package arrived for Regina. It was brought by a slim young girl with startling gray eyes, who would not leave her name.