Coalescent dc-1

by Stephen Baxter

  Patrizia pressed Lucia’s gums, which had become spongy. “Good,” she said. “That’s normal. The effect of pregnancy hormones.”

  “My heart is rattling,” Lucia said. “Though I feel sleepy all the time, it keeps me awake.”

  “It’s having to work twice as hard. Your uterus needs twice as much blood as usual, your kidneys a quarter more—”

  “I am always breathless. I pant — puff, puff, puff.”

  “The fetus is pressing on your diaphragm. You are breathing more rapidly and more deeply to increase your supply of oxygen.”

  “I can feel my ribs spreading. My hips are so sore I can barely walk. I get pins and needles in my hands and cramps in my feet. I either have constipation or diarrhea. I am a martyr to piles. My veins make my legs look like blue cheese—”

  Patrizia laughed. “All this is normal!”

  “Yesterday I felt the baby kick.”

  Patrizia, for once, hesitated. “Perhaps you did.”

  “But this is my eighth week. I am still in my first trimester!”

  Patrizia looked down on her. “Somebody has been reading too much.”

  “Actually, I have been looking up the Internet from my cell phone.” And from that she had learned the startling fact that among contadino women a pregnancy would last nine months, and you would not expect to have more than one child a year …

  “There is nothing for you to learn on the Internet. Child, we have been delivering babies here for the best part of two thousand years — our way, and successfully.” She placed her hand on Lucia’s forehead. “You must trust us.”

  But after that conversation Patrizia took her cell phone away.

  In the weeks that followed, the changes in her body only seemed to accelerate. She was subject to many more tests, some of them conducted with very modern equipment. She had a chorion biopsy, and a fetoscopy, and an alpha-fetoprotein test, and amniocentesis. Her baby was imaged with ultrasound. She was astonished at its size and development.

  And then — just thirteen weeks after her sole intercourse with Giuliano — she went into labor.

  * * *

  Everything was a blur. She found herself squatting, naked, in a darkened room. Pina was behind her, supporting her under her armpits. Pina spoke to her, but she couldn’t hear what she said. There was little pain, for electrodes taped to her flesh were passing currents through her back.

  Patrizia was here, working competently, calmly, and quickly. And she was surrounded by women — Rosa, other doctors and nurses, even some of the matres, a great huddle of femaleness, touching her, stroking her belly and shoulders, kissing her softly, their lips tasting sweet, somehow reassuring.

  In the last moments there was a sense of calm, she thought. It was oddly like a church. People spoke softly, if they spoke at all, and every eye was on her. She was the center of everything, for once in her life, the whole Order following the rhythms of her own body.

  But it is only thirteen weeks, she thought, deep in her mind. Thirteen weeks!

  The labor was as rapid as the rest of the pregnancy. When the baby crowned, she felt a burning sensation around her vagina, and then only numbness.

  They showed her the baby briefly. It was a girl, a little crimson mass, but, Patrizia assured her, strong and healthy. Lucia held her, just for a moment.

  Then Patrizia gently took the baby back. The nurses wrapped the child in blankets, and receded out of sight. Patrizia pressed an infuser at Lucia’s neck, and the world slipped away.

  Chapter 32

  As she grew older, in the smoky, unchanging warmth of the Crypt, time flowed smoothly for Regina, despite her careful calendar keeping and record making. Still, she often thought back to the day of her last meeting with Ambrosius Aurelianus, and of her treatment of Agrippina. Her actions that day had had significant consequences — that day, at least, had become memorable.

  Three years after that day, Julia, the younger sister of Agrippina, reached the time for her own menarche — and yet no blood flowed. It was not until her eighteenth year, in fact, four years older than her sister, that her bleeding finally began, and even then it was fitful. Julia was a cheerful, competent girl, more confident in fact than her older sister, but it had been as if her body itself had been frightened by the treatment Agrippina had received from Regina, and had wished to postpone the same as long as possible.

  Regina welcomed this strange development — even though it scared her a little to think that such strange powers might exist in the world, in her.

  Some time after that, she heard of another consequence of that fateful day.

  Artorius had mounted his last campaign. Thanks to the treachery of his “ally” the imperial prefect Arvandus, he had finally been defeated, by the Visigoth king Euric. He retreated to the kingdom of the Burgundians, after which nothing more was heard of him. He certainly never returned to Britain; he was probably dead.

  Perhaps if she had stayed at his side, Regina wondered, her cunning might have kept him alive a little longer. But any money she had given Artorius, any support, would merely have been frittered away on one more campaign, one more battle, until death finally caught up with him.

  Ambrosius Aurelianus went on to greater glories, though. After Artorius, his own leadership qualities emerged, and his defeat of the Saxons at the battle of Mount Badon granted the British a respite. It was a feat that won Ambrosius the nickname last of the Romans.

  But more Saxons arrived to reinforce their petty coastal kingdoms. They pushed farther west and north, and the British, expelled from their homes, succumbed or fled, just as Artorius had long foreseen. And in the wake of the Saxons, Roman Britain was erased, down to the foundations. The despairing British were left with nothing but legends of how Artorius was not dead, but sleeping, his mighty sword Chalybs at his side.

  * * *

  There came a day when Brica’s womb dried.

  “But I am content,” Regina said to Leda, her half sister. They were sitting in the peristylium, the strange underground garden of the Crypt, where the mushrooms seemed to glow like lanterns. The three most senior women of the inner family were here: Regina herself, Leda, and Venus, granddaughter of Regina’s aunt Helena. “Brica has given me eight grandchildren — three boys, who have already started their apprenticeships in the world beyond, and five fine and beautiful workers for the Order. Nobody could do more.”

  “Yes, Regina.”

  “We are healthy stock — and our lives are long, in the shelter of the Crypt.”

  It was true. It was six years after the visit of Ambrosius Aurelianus. Regina was now in her seventies, and Brica herself was over fifty. Even at Rome’s height, few people had lived beyond forty, fewer still past fifty; and in the current times of turmoil, with rampant disease, poor supplies of food and water, and assaults from barbarians, that average was dropping steadily. But not in the Crypt.

  “And, as we live long, we stay fertile. But I am concerned for Brica herself.” Now that she was barren, Brica seemed exhausted, worn out by the relentless demands of childbirth; she drifted around the Crypt purposelessly. “We must make her comfortable, reassure her …”

  “But,” Venus said delicately, “there is the question of the nursery.”

  Regina said vaguely, “The nursery?”

  “The youngest child is already three,” said Leda. “We need more babies. We must maintain—” She gestured.

  “A flow.” Regina opened her gummy mouth and cackled. “Like the great sewers. We need to push babies in at one end of the system, to ensure a nice smooth flow of effluent at the other.”

  “Not quite the way I would have put it,” said Venus. Since being elected to the Council she had grown in confidence, and had developed a dry wit. “But, yes, you’re right.” She added delicately, “We need to decide on a — replacement — for Brica.”

  Leda nodded.

  Of course they were right; this was the logic of how they had been running the Order, already for more than twenty years
.

  It was the slow unfolding of the instinctive vision Regina had always held in her head. Space would always be limited here. If all the female members of the family proved as fecund as Brica, there would soon be no room left. So, just as Regina had ordered with Agrippina, only a handful of women were encouraged to have children at any one time. Their siblings and growing daughters were expected to assist these central mothers to bear more young, to raise more sisters, even at the expense of families of their own. They should stay childless through the use of contraceptives, or abstinence — or best of all by simply delaying their menarche through the mysterious workings of their bodies, as had happened to Brica’s second daughter Julia, and a number of other girls since.

  Rationing births in this way kept the numbers down, and ensured that the blood was not diluted, that the family bonds stayed as tight as possible. It worked. And if this kept up, Regina saw clearly, then in a few generations there would be nobody here but family, a great mesh of sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, a core locked together by insoluble bonds of blood and ancestry, able to cope with the inevitably cramped conditions of the Crypt.

  But the system threw up dilemmas, such as now. Brica’s fecund days were over, and a new mother must be found.

  “I suggest Agrippina,” Leda said. “Brica’s first daughter,” she went on to note, in case Regina needed reminding. “She has been patient since—”

  “Since the day I ruined her life?” Regina cackled again. “I hear the mutterings.”

  “Six years,” Venus said, “of coping with one little sister after another. Perhaps it is her turn.”

  “No,” said Regina thoughtfully. “Let it be Julia.” Agrippina’s younger sister.

  Leda frowned. “Agrippina will be disappointed.”

  Regina shrugged. “That’s not the point. Think about it. Let Agrippina be the first of the Order to go through an entire life devoted not to the selfish demands of her own body, not to her own daughters, but selflessly to her sisters. An entire life. She will be a model for others, an inspiration for generations to come. She will be honored.”

  Leda and Venus exchanged a glance. Regina knew they didn’t always understand her edicts. But then Regina didn’t always understand them herself.

  “All right.” Venus stood up. She was heavily pregnant herself, again, and she winced as she hauled herself to her feet. “But, Regina, you can tell Agrippina—”

  A messenger ran into the peristylium, flushed and excited, interrupting the women. Regina had been summoned to the imperial palace.

  * * *

  When she took herself out of Council meetings and the like and just walked around the growing Crypt, it sometimes startled Regina to realize there were already thousands of people involved in the Order, in one way or another.

  She thought of the Order as like the bulb of a fine fat spring onion. At its heart was the family: the descendants of the sisters Julia and Helena, now both long dead, and their descendants, including Leda, Venus, Regina herself, and Brica and her children. Aside from them, at any one time there were hundreds of students living either in the Crypt itself, or in the buildings the Order maintained overground. Beyond that there were workers with peripheral connections to the Order: for example, the peripatetic teachers and orators, the miners who tunneled steadily underground, even bankers and lawyers who managed the Order’s income and investments. And then there was a more diffuse outer circle of those who simply contributed to the Order, in cash or in kind: the families of students paying their fees, former students gratefully contributing through gifts or legacies to the establishment that had educated them so well.

  But in all this, the safety of the central family was paramount. That had been Regina’s goal when she had sacrificed her relationship with Brica to get her out of Britain and bring her here, and that was her goal now.

  She was satisfied with what she had done so far. But of course everything was temporary. The Order didn’t have to last forever — just long enough to shelter the family until things got back to normal. And she was becoming convinced that, yes, she had stumbled on a system that would work to achieve that goal.

  Her own end could not be far away. She knew that from the dreadful weakness she felt in the morning, her unfortunate habit of coughing up blood — and the disturbing sensation of a hard, immovable mass in her belly, like a giant turd that would not pass out of her system. It was just like the illness that had taken Cartumandua, she remembered. She did not fear her own death. All she feared was that the system might not be completed before she was gone. What had she missed? That was the question she asked herself every day. What had she missed? …

  * * *

  She had no idea why the Emperor wanted to see her, but she could scarcely refuse him. So, on the appointed day, she walked alone across the city.

  Rome had decayed visibly, even in the time she had lived here.

  Many of the aqueducts and sewers were in urgent need of repair. The public granaries were closed. Many monuments and statues had been looted and violated — indeed, people stole stone from them either for building projects of their own, or simply to burn the marble for lime. The drainage of some of the fields beyond the city walls had failed, and they were degenerating into swamps. Sometimes you would see dead cattle drifting down the swollen waters of the Tiber, and starvation and disease routinely stalked the poorer parts of the city. Many of the rich had fled to the comparative comfort of Constantinople; many of the poor had died.

  Regina was dismayed, but she had seen it all before. It was Verulamium or Durnovaria writ large. But still the Forum and the markets swarmed; even now it was a great city. And this was Rome; even now she was sure its mighty lungs of concrete and marble still swelled, and the city would recover.

  And as Regina approached the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill, even seventeen years after arriving in the city, she was awed.

  Itself three centuries old, the palace had been the residence of emperors since Domitian. It sprawled across the whole central portion of the Palatine, a complex of buildings several stories high, roofed by red tiles and coated in decorative stones of many colors. The imperial residence itself was said to be the size of a large villa, with baths, libraries, and several temples — even a private sports stadium — and yet it was lost in the greater maze of buildings. The palace was like a small town in itself, a sink toward which the resources of a continentwide Empire had once flowed.

  She was met by a retainer in the Via Sacra, to the northeastern side of the complex. She held her head up, ignoring the nagging pain inside, determined to show no weakness. She was led through two great arches, dedicated to the memories of the emperors Titus and Domitian, and found herself in a large paved area. It was the Domus Flavia that was her destination, the wing of the palace where official work was done.

  The Domus Flavia was built onto a large platform set on top of the hill. It consisted of several rooms set around a huge peristylium. The walls and floors were decorated with mosaics and imported stones; the colors were bright yellow, crimson, and blue, the lines of the rectangular patterns sharp. There was much business being done here, she saw; men walked this way and that, arguing earnestly, bearing heaps of papyrus scrolls or wax tablets. Despite the bustle, as with much of Rome there was a sense of shrinkage, of emptiness, as if these busy men were smaller than their ancestors. She wondered how it must have been two or three hundred years ago when this building really had been the hub of the whole world.

  A fountain set in the center of the peristylium was dry, its bowl mildewed, evidently long out of action. It made her think of her own long-lost childhood home; the fountain had never worked there, either.

  “Madam. I am Gratian.” The man who greeted her was tall, his hair white as British snow, with a thin, strong-nosed, elegant face. He was actually wearing a toga, a sight rarely seen nowadays. Gratian walked her toward one of the great buildings. It was a throne room; he called it the Aula Regia. “We will sit in the
shade, over wine …”

  Gratian was a senator, a close adviser to the Emperor — and a close relation. He was one of the cabal of rich and powerful men who actually controlled the imperial administration: though the Emperor Romulus Augustus bore two of the mightiest names in all Rome’s long history, he was but a boy.

  If the complex as a whole was impressive, the throne room was startling. The walls and floor were covered with a veneer of patterned marble, gray, orange, brown, green. The walls were fronted by columns, and in twelve niches stood colossal statues carved of night-black basalt. The room was covered by a vaulted concrete roof, and was oddly chill even in the heat of the day. The floor was warm, though, evidently heated by a hypocaust. At one end of the room was an apse where the Emperor received embassies and gave audiences. Today it was empty.

  Gratian led her to a series of couches set in a semicircle, where they sat.

  “If I am meant to be impressed,” she said, “I am.”

  Gratian actually winked at her. “It’s an old trick and not a subtle one. Rome herself has always been the emperors’ most potent weapon. Do you know the history of the palace? The Emperor Domitian made his great platform on top of the Palatine by leveling earlier buildings, or filling them in with concrete. It is as if this mighty complex has used whole palaces as mere foundations! …” His talk was smooth and practiced.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But this is power projected from the past, not the present.”

  He was apparently surprised at this sally. “But power even so.”

  A girl brought them wine — from Africa, Gratian said — and olives, bread, and fruit. She took a little of the wine, but watered it heavily; wine seemed to go to her head these days, perhaps because her blood was drawn by the thing in her belly.