Coalescent dc-1

by Stephen Baxter

  “That’s right. Just as we saw in the nursery. The future of the Order: every year a hundred warm bodies are passed into the great processing machine of the Crypt at one end, and a hundred cold ones carried out the other. Eh?”

  Lucia shuddered. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “But accurate enough. All right. But where do the babies come from, Lucia?”

  Lucia, uncomfortable, said, “The matres.”

  “That’s right. The matres, the mothers of us all. Lucia, you know that the Order is very old. Once the Order was small, and there were only three matres — like the three ancient goddesses in this alcove. But the Order grew, and we needed more babies, and the matres had to become nine, three times three. And then the Order grew again, and the nine became twenty-seven, three by three by three …”

  It didn’t seem at all strange to Lucia that to keep up an output of a hundred babies each of those twenty- seven must produce three or four babies each, every year.

  They came to a little alcove, carved into the wall. In the alcove, behind a thick slab of glass, stood three tiny statues, grimy with age, worn with much handling. They looked like women, but they all wore hooded cloaks. Perhaps they were figures of Befana, Lucia thought.

  Rosa touched the glass. “This is bulletproof … These are the first matres, the symbolic heart of the Order — just as the twenty-seven flesh-and-blood matres are its wombs.

  “But soon, the twenty-seven will become twenty-six. Maria Ludovica is not, in fact, the oldest of the matres, but she is the frailest. And Maria is dying, Lucia.” Rosa’s eyes seemed huge in the dark. “The last decade, as Maria has weakened, has been a time of turmoil, and more girls like you have emerged — who have become mature, I mean. It is the way of things. Soon somebody must replace Maria. The twenty-seven must be restored.”

  “You’re talking about me,” Lucia whispered.

  “It has taken me some time to convince certain others that you are the right candidate.” Rosa seemed proud, as if she had won some victory.

  Lucia felt only numb. She couldn’t imagine the consequences of what Rosa was saying. She could see nothing to connect her fifteen-year-old self to the wizened, pregnant old woman she had met. “But I am nothing,” she said. “A month ago I was starving to death because nobody would talk to me.”

  “In a way it was your — ah — breakout that helped me establish you as the right candidate. You have strength of mind, Lucia, strength of character. Not many of your contemporaries could have endured so much. And we need strength to face the future. The world changes, and the Order must change with it. We need a certain independence of thinking in our children, a will to accept the unfamiliar — even though there is a paradox, for to get by we all must accept our place in the Order, and not think too hard, as you know to your cost.”

  “It’s impossible,” Lucia whispered.

  “No.” Rosa took her arm. “Just a little hard to imagine, that’s all. And now, here is the man I want you to meet …”

  Lucia turned. The man was right behind them. She hadn’t heard him approach.

  He was perhaps thirty. He was taller than Lucia, and bulkier; his body looked a little soft, flabby, and his skin was pale. He wore casual clothes, a pale blue shirt and jeans. His hair was dark and neatly combed, but he had something of the features of the sisters, of Lucia and Rosa themselves.

  He smiled at her. And as he glanced over Lucia’s figure his gray eyes were alive with something of the intensity of the contadino boys.

  Rosa touched Lucia’s lips with one fingertip. “Don’t say anything. You mustn’t speak to each other. Lucia, this is Giuliano Andreoli. He’s a contadino, strictly speaking. But he’s actually your distant cousin — you can tell from the coloring — you can look him up in the scrinium if you like. He lives in Venice. He’s a bricklayer … I think that’s enough. Come now.”

  She took Lucia’s arm and led her away. Lucia looked back, but Giuliano was already out of sight, around the bend of the corridor.

  “I don’t understand,” whispered Lucia.

  “Reproductive biology, Lucia. To produce babies you don’t need just mothers, but fathers, too. Oh, of course, nowadays the new biotechnologies could make anything possible, but the ancient ways are the best, I think … Ninety-five percent of the babies born here are girls. Most of the boys leave after their schooling, and those who stay are mostly either homosexual or neuter.” Neuter: it seemed a strange, cold, clinical term. Rosa went on, “So where are the fathers to come from? From outside, of course — though we like to keep it in the family if we can.”

  Lucia stopped. “Rosa, please — who is Giuliano? ”

  Rosa smiled, but there was a wistful sadness in her expression. “Why, he’s your lover.”

  Chapter 28

  It would be a multiple ceremony, Regina decided, an overlapping celebration of life, motherhood, and complicated relationships.

  First there was the birth of Aemilia, daughter of Leda, Regina’s half sister, and niece to Regina herself. Then the girl Venus had reached her menarche. Venus was the daughter of Messalina, granddaughter of Regina’s aunt Helena. And at the center of it all would be the marriage of Regina’s own daughter Brica to the young, clear-eyed freedman Castor.

  It would all be held, she had decided, on the spring feast of Beltane when, according to the tradition of the Celtae, the warmth of the returning sun and the fertility of the earth were celebrated. Regina and Brica had been here in Rome for two years already, and it would be a nice reminder of her days with Artorius.

  Of course her elaborate plans immediately threw everybody into a state of confusion. For days the Order’s big communal house on the Appian Way was filled with the smells of cooking, with the din of clumsily practiced musical instruments, and with the hammering of nails as decorations were put up everywhere.

  Which was all, of course, according to Regina’s design. For they all needed a distraction from the looming presence of the Vandals, the dreadful horde of black-painted barbarians who were even now, so it was said, camping on the plains north of Rome.

  * * *

  On the day before the ceremony, Amator came to visit her, at the Order’s house.

  He walked into her small office and prowled around its shelves and cupboards, fingering the heaps of scrolls and wax tablets. His face was caked with cosmetics, with white powder on his cheeks and black lining to emphasise his eyes. Despite these expensive efforts he looked his age, or older, and, she knew now, he was plagued by ulcers and gout, the sicknesses of an indulgent old man. Today he seemed oddly nervous.

  “I see you have found yourself some gainful employment,” he said. “How long have you been here — two years? You have been busy. Busy, busy, busy.”

  She spread her hands over her scrolls and tablets, her seals with the Order’s kissing-fish symbol. “I deal in information. That is how things work, Amator. Businesses, cities, empires. You should know that.”

  “I had no idea you had developed such talents.”

  “There is much you don’t know about me.”

  “Perhaps I should have hired you, rather than Brica.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Amator. My ambitions have nothing to do with you.”

  He faced her. “You’re cool now that you don’t need my money anymore, aren’t you? And are these records of your Order’s work?”

  “Yes. But there is some history of the Order here — reaching back to the days of Vesta, in fact. I like to maintain such things. And—” She hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “There is something of myself as well.” She had begun to write out a kind of biography, the story of her own complicated life and the great events that had shaped it. “I want my granddaughters to know where I came from — how they got here. You have a starring role, Amator.”

  He laughed. “You should make it into a play. Your petty self-justification and trivial complaints would be a great favorite in the Theater of Nero.”
He turned around, arms spread, almost elegantly, like a dancer. “But none of this scraping and scribbling will do you a grain of good when the barbarians come. All they will want is your money. That and the bodies of your beautiful nieces.”

  “I have prepared for that contingency.”

  “You are a foolish and complacent old woman. The Vandals will slit your throat.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He gazed at her, curious, clearly trying to be dismissive, not quite succeeding.

  From her first days here she had, in fact, been preparing for the eventuality of breakdown. She had, after all, lived through it all before. Her life had been devoted to finding a safe haven for herself and her family. Rome itself, with its mighty walls and monuments of marble and eight hundred years of arrogant domination, would surely be more shelter than poor Verulamium had been. But still she had prepared what she thought of as a bolt-hole.

  For all his bragging, she saw that Amator was not nearly so well prepared. Good, she thought; the more vulnerable he was the better, for she was not done with him yet. Toward that end, in fact, she had made sure to invite him to the wedding of her daughter and the other celebrations. The more he was close to her, the more opportunity she would have to deal with him.

  “The ceremonies are not until tomorrow. Why are you here, Amator? Are you so sorry to lose a worker from your bread shop?”

  “Brica is a flat, dull girl. She has looks, but none of your spark, little chicken.” But his fencing was unconvincing. “I am more concerned about Sulla.”

  “Ah. Honesty at last. Your pretty boy.”

  Amator said tensely, “I was not aware until this morning that he is to attend your ceremonies. I had not intended to bring him.”

  “We gave him his own invitation.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I know why. Venus. ”

  The boy, whose true inclinations evidently did not match Amator’s own, had become besotted with Venus, granddaughter of Helena, and he had been invited to the girl’s coming-of-age ceremony.

  “I have no problem with that. The boy has a good heart.”

  Amator jabbed a finger at Regina. “I know you engineered this, you witch. You made sure they met, and encouraged their relationship thereafter. And I know why.”

  She smiled. “To hurt you? Amator, how could you think such a thing?”

  “Your revenge is petty, Regina.” But his face, under its mask of cosmetics, was contorted.

  “Sulla is just your bed warmer,” she said. “And evidently a reluctant one at that.”

  “Oh, perhaps it started like that. But now …” He paced. “Can you understand, Regina? Have you ever loved?”

  “I understand that you are a foolish and selfish old man,” she said coldly. “Your heart has been kept beating, and your cock hardened, by the soft body of this boy. But now he is growing away from you. And when he is gone, you will have nothing left.”

  “My life is not complete,” he said, sighing. “Of course I have a daughter — Brica — but she is not mine and never can be. I understand that; I accept it. And I have no son … I have named Sulla as my sole legatee. Do you see? The boy is no longer a servant, but my lover, my heir. He is the best part of me. And now, yes, now I fear I am losing him.”

  She shrugged, careful not to show any reaction to this news about his legacy. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this to me.”

  He hung his head. “Whether or not you have brought this cow-eyed niece of yours between us deliberately, I ask you to give him back to me. There — I submit myself to you. You have beaten me, Regina. Are you happy?”

  She made no reply.

  When he had gone, she summoned Amator’s boy, Sulla, to her office.

  Regina told him carefully that Amator was jealous and angry. That after tomorrow’s feast Sulla would not be allowed near Venus again. That Amator had been lying about his intentions regarding his legacy. That he saw the boy as useful for one thing only, his supple body, and that in future he planned not just to use Sulla himself but also to hire him out to some of his friends, for the sport of it. That Sulla would not be released from this servitude until he was too old to be attractive, or his body too damaged to be useful.

  She told Sulla all this briskly, and turned away to her work, as if uncaring of his reaction.

  * * *

  Regina had quickly become central to the working of the Order. The skills she had acquired as an administrator for Artorius for all those years were essential here.

  After she had met her mother at the Flavian Amphitheater, she and Brica had moved without regret out of their cramped apartment over the restaurant and into this grand house. Situated in an outer suburb beyond the ancient Aurelian Wall, it was a large complex of buildings in the traditional style, centered on an atrium and peristylium.

  But it was obvious that the estate had seen better days. It had once been the home of a senatorial family that, having backed the wrong candidate in one of Rome’s many fratricidal contests over the imperial purple, had fallen on hard times and had been forced to sell up. The water supply from the aqueduct system had failed and the bathhouse had been closed down. With many roofs leaking, and the paving in the atrium and peristylium cracked and weed-ridden, some of the other buildings had been abandoned, too.

  The Order itself hadn’t been much healthier than the estate. The numbers in the little community had been dwindling for some time, and when Regina arrived they were down to twenty-five. Those who remained were crammed into the surviving buildings, where they slept on bunks, stacked up like amphorae on shelves.

  Still, Regina and Brica had made themselves at home here. Regina had introduced her three sullen little goddesses into the estate’s small temple: once the lararium of a senator, and now the shrine of a new and more complex family. But she was careful not to provoke Christian wrath. It had long been a tradition for Romans to identify their own deities with those of the barbarian folk they encountered in the provinces. So the matres, she said, were manifestations of the virgin mother of Christ, their three faces representing the three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love.

  Regina had not been shy in forcing her opinions and suggestions on Julia and Helena, even from her first days.

  Money was the basic problem, as always. The Order was still essentially funded by savings from the last days of the Vestal Virgins, but that was a finite resource that was quickly running down. And as much of it was held in the form of gold coins and jewelry in underground caches, it was, Regina realized quickly, uncomfortably vulnerable to robbery. The only income came from the sporadic earnings of the Order’s younger members, in such jobs as Brica’s in Amator’s bakery. But that was too little and too uneven: few women had ever earned high wages in Rome. And the group was top-heavy with older members like Julia and Helena who had no earnings at all.

  Regina had immediately set about establishing a new stream of income.

  She decided that the Order should build on its core strengths. It was, after all, a community run by women, and now firmly founded on respectable Christian principles. And yet it was an open secret, which she saw no harm in leaking, that they could trace their heritage back to the Vestal Virgins, and to the pagan goddess who had kept Rome inviolate for eight hundred years. There were plenty of traditionalists, even among practicing Christians, who were attracted to such a combination. To reinforce the image she requested that all the members of the Order wear a simple costume she designed, a long and modest white stola marked with a stripe of purple — she had observed how the simple addition of the color purple to a garment reassured these Romans.

  It didn’t trouble Regina at all that such a sales pitch, based on Christian morality and pagan purity, required the holding of two contradictory beliefs at once.

  As to what they could sell to their traditionalist market, Regina, after some thought, settled on schooling. The education of the Empire’s young had always been a somewhat haphazard process. Only the sons of the rich could expec
t to enjoy a full education at all three of the traditional levels, primary, grammar, and rhetoric. Girls and lower-class boys often received only the most basic primary education, at which they were taught reading and arithmetic. But in difficult times parents wanted their daughters to be as well equipped as possible to cope with an uncertain future — and that meant giving them an education as good as any boy’s.

  And that was what Regina determined the Order would provide. Teachers of rhetoric and grammar would be hired, and an education for female students up to a level equivalent to a boy’s would be provided. During their teaching the students would be housed on the estate, and raised in a properly moral atmosphere. A fee would be charged, of course, but because teachers were shared among many pupils it would be at a much lower cost than if private tutors had to be hired by a single family.

  Regina managed to set all this up within three months. After six the first classes were being held. Among the anxious Roman population it had been a great success. By now, the numbers of girls and young women resident here had risen to a hundred, with many more on waiting lists. This had led to a frantic growth in the estate, with buildings being renovated and hastily extended to cope with the new arrivals. And the money was rolling in. She had even begun a scheme whereby through legacies to the Order a family could ensure the education and upbringing not just of daughters but even of granddaughters, in the next generation.

  Julia, Helena, and the other elders were more than happy to leave the running of it all to Regina, but it was trivial compared to the challenge of running Artorius’s dunon and his haphazard kingdom. She introduced her own subtle innovations. She stuck to her Celtae calendar, for instance; though she had once protested at its barbarian obscurity, she had grown used to its way of thinking.

  And in her new work, she was happy her own objectives were being fulfilled. She had never found a situation over which she had had so much control — never such an opportunity to achieve safety and security for Brica and herself. Indeed, in a sense the Order, dominated by her own relatives, was itself like an extension of her family.