Ultima (9 page)

Ari Guthfrithson frowned. “Would you have me apologize for my whole history? And is
your
history so laudable?”

McGregor murmured, “We're missing the point here, Penny. Forget your judgments. We need to learn as much about this world as we can while we've got the chance.”

Penny nodded. “You're right, of course, since it looks like we're going to be stuck here.” She thought it over. “The
Ukelwydd
is following a high-inclination orbit around the Earth—around Terra. That is, the orbit is tipped up at an angle to the equator—”

“That is intentional, of course,” Ari said, “so that our track takes us over Pritanike and the landing grounds of Kaledon.”

“But that means we get to fly over a good span of latitudes. And as the planet turns beneath us, with time we get to look down on a swath of longitudes too. Give me a few hours with a slate, and I'll capture what I can. Then with some educated guesswork maybe we can figure out the story of this world . . .”

Twelve hours later Penny called her companions, with Ari, back to the observation lounge. She'd found a way to project slate images onto a blank wall, and had prepared a digest of her observations of the turning world beneath.

She showed them landscapes of dense urbanization, the cities glowing nodes in a wider network of roads and urban sprawl. “Welcome to Terra,” she said drily.

“This is Europa—Europe. Some of the oldest Roman provinces. Give or take the odd invasion from Asia, this whole swath from the Baltic coast in the north to the Mediterranean in the south has been urbanized continually for more than two thousand years, and the result is what you can see. Many of the denser nodes map onto cities we're familiar with from our own timeline, which are either successor cities to Roman settlements—like Paris, for instance—or, in places the Romans never reached in our timeline, they follow the geographic logic of their position. Hamburg, Berlin. The nature of the country is different farther north, the Danish peninsula, Scandinavia. Just as heavily urbanized, but a different geography.”

“The heartland of my people,” Ari said. “You may have images of the canal which severs the peninsula from the mainland. A very ancient construction, which was widened extensively when kernels became available.”

Penny goggled. “You're telling me you use kernels to shape landscapes as well? On
Earth
?”

“This is Terra, Penny,” McGregor said evenly. “Not Earth. I guess that's their business.”

Penny showed images now of a desolate coastline, an angry gray sea, ports and industrial cities defiant blights on the gray-brown landscape. “This is northern Asia,” she said. “In our reality, the Arctic Ocean coast of Russia. There never was a Russia here, I don't believe. But nor is there any sign of a boreal forest at these latitudes. Even the sea looks sterile—nobody fishing out there—and no sign of any Arctic ice, by the way, though we haven't been able to see all the way to the pole.”

Ari shrugged. “It is dead country. It always has been dead. Good only for extraction of minerals, methane for fuel.”

Penny tapped her screen. “I'm going to pan south. The extent of the main Roman holdings seems to reach the Urals, roughly. Whereas you have the Xin empire, presumably some descendant of the early Chinese states we know about, extending up from the north of central China through Mongolia and eastern Siberia, all the way to the Bering Strait. In Central Asia, though—”

More craters. A desolate, lifeless landscape.

This made Beth gasp. “What happened here?”

Ari sighed. “The steppe was historically always a problem. A source of ferocious nomadic herdsmen and warriors, who, whenever the weather took a turn for the worst, would come bursting out of their heartland to ravage the urban communities to the west and east. Finally Xin and Rome agreed to administer those worthless plains as a kind of joint protectorate. It is an arrangement that worked quite well, for centuries. Mostly.”

McGregor's grin was cold. “Mostly?”

“Wherever two great empires clash directly there will be war. And when weapons such as the kernels are available—well, you can see the result.”

Penny said, “Here's the Xin homeland. Again there seems to be a historical continuity with the cities and nations we know about from the early first millennium . . .”

Some of the images had been taken at night. Half a continent glowed, a network of light embedded with jewel-like cities—and yet here and there Beth could see the distinctive circular holes of darkness that must be relics of kernel strikes.

Ari was watching Beth, as much as he was following the images. “Your reaction is different from the others. You seem—dismayed.”

“That's one word for it. I grew up on an empty world.”

“Ah. Whereas all this, in comparison, billions of us crammed into vast developments—”

“How do you breathe? How do you find dignity?”

“You mean, how will
you
live here?” He smiled. “Beth Eden Jones, you, of all the crew of the
Tatania
, are by far the most intriguing to me. The most complicated. If fortune allows it, I hope to be able to help you find a place in this, the
third
world you have had to learn to call home . . .”

Penny said now, “As Ari has told us, the rest of the world is a kind of playpen for the three superpowers of Eurasia. Here's Australia.”

Beth saw arid crimson plains like a vision of Mars, pocked with the circular scars of explosions, the rectangular wounds of tremendous mines.

“Mined by the Xin,” Ari said.

“My mother was from Australia,” Beth said. “I visited once. What happened to the native people here?”

Ari looked at her curiously. “What native people?”

“Africa,” Penny announced, pulling up image after image. “To the south, extensive mining and farming by the Xin, it seems. To the north, the Sahara—but look at it . . .”

The desert was covered by a grid of huge rectilinear canals.

Ari said, “One of the Romans' most significant projects. And they are slowly succeeding in making the desert bloom, as you can see. But there is a danger that in years to come, as they advance their colonies ever farther south—”

“And the Xin work their way north from their southern farmlands,” McGregor said, “they're going to meet in the middle, and clash. It will be Central Asia all over again.”

“Let us hope not,” Ari said fervently. “But, yes, those of us
druidh
who devote their efforts to projections of the future see this as one possibility.”

“Here's South America,” Penny said.

“Or Valhalla Inferior,” Ari said mildly. “A battleground between the Xin and the Romans for centuries.”

Beth saw farmland and mining country cut across by vast river systems, and scarred by swaths of desert. “What about Amazonia?”

Penny said drily, “You'd never know the rain forest had ever been there. And again, we'll probably never know what happened to the indigenous populations.”

In North America, images taken in the dark of night showed a band of fire that Beth thought roughly followed the Canadian border with the United States.

Penny said, “The continent is relatively undeveloped. There's a big city of some kind on the site of St. Louis, another in Massachusetts. Other than that, small towns and army bases. There is what looks like a Roman legionary fortress on the site of downtown Seattle, for instance, where I grew up—I looked to see. And this is the only place on the surface of the Earth where it looks like there is active warfare in progress.”

Ari said, “This is an arena I know well—I have served here. We Scand reached this country first, more than a millennium ago, and then the Brikanti followed us—and the Romans, some using Scand ships, came soon after. Now, to the north is Brikanti country, once thickly forested, where we extracted wood for our oceangoing ships. Our principal city, near the east coast, is called Leifsholm. To the south, farmland developed by the Romans, a great breadbasket. Their own provincial capital, on the course of a mighty river, is called Messalia. We meet at the latitude of the inland seas. There are no great cities here. In a sense it is a question of tradition, of history. The old countries, Europa and Asia, are where you build cities, whether you are Xin or Roman or indeed Brikanti. The rest of the world is to be exploited.”

Penny said, “That border country looks like a war zone.”

“So it is,” Ari said. “The Romans like to send their legions marching north. We oppose them with fortresses and counterraids.”

“I thought you guys cooperated. You run interstellar missions together, for instance.”

Ari shrugged. “We cooperate when we fly to the stars, while warring on Terra, in the Valhallas. It is a kind of game. Lethal, of course, but a game. The Romans give their legions marching practice and their generals triumphs. We, conversely, enjoy tripping them up. It is not logical, but when has the politics of empire ever been rational? We must retain our separate identities somehow, Penny Kalinski. And after all, the Romans did consider invading Pritanike once. You don't forgive something like that.”

Penny shook her head. “A continent as one vast military training ground.”

“But what else is such a barren continent good for?”

“You'd be surprised,” Penny said fervently.

McGregor said, “So, an endless three-way war, now extended out into the solar system, it seems.”

“It has gone this way for centuries,” Ari said. “It is our way, evidently—”

“Giving away our strategic secrets, are you,
druidh
?”

•   •   •

Beth turned to see Kerys the
trierarchus
, the ship's commander, walking into the cabin through the door at the rear. She was followed by a solid-looking Earthshine, an impressive display of virtual projection from the unit in which the old Core AI was stored.

Ari came to a kind of attention. “That wasn't my intention,
trierarchus
. I believe that I have learned as much about the home of Beth Eden Jones and her companions as I have revealed about ours.”

Lex McGregor grinned. “And I bet that's true, you slippery little rascal.”

Kerys walked to the window, hands clasped behind her back, and peered around, beyond the glowing surface of Earth, into space. “Well, our rivals cluster close. They wait on a decision on how we are to dispose of you, the crew of the
Tatania
. And, needless to say, my superiors at Dumnona have devolved the decision to me.”

Lex McGregor said evenly, “My heart aches for you.”

Kerys arched an eyebrow. “A fine way to talk to an officer who holds you dangling by the testicles.”

McGregor barked a laugh.

“What am I to do with you yourself, for example, General Lex McGregor? Look at you, old and gray, your prime a distant memory. What possible use are you? I might throw you over to the Romans; you might make them laugh, briefly, if they dump you in the arena with a gladiator or two.”

McGregor grinned, fearless. “I'd like to see them try
that
. Madam, I would have thought my value is obvious. I come from an entirely different military tradition, an entirely different spacefaring background.” He tapped his grizzled pate. “And now all that experience can be put at your command. But,” he said severely, “I come with strings attached. I want my crew with me, Golvin, Kapur, the others—all five of them. Without them I could not function, and would not try. Conversely, throw even one of them to the Romans or the Xin and I will follow.”

“Your loyalty is commendable,” Kerys said, her face kept carefully blank. “You, Penelope Kalinski: frankly your value is obvious even to me. The philosophies and mathematics you display, the technologies you wield—if you spent your remaining years teaching Brikanti students even a fraction of what you know, you could be of immeasurable value.”

Penny nodded her head. She was composed, Beth thought, unmoved, as if she'd thought her way through this already. Penny said, “I can think of worse ways to spend my life. I would need Jiang with me, of course.”

“We can debate that,” Kerys said neutrally. “As for you, Beth Eden Jones—”

She stared closely at Beth, and Beth found herself touching the tattoo that sprawled over her face, a relic of her childhood on Per Ardua: a mark the Brikanti seemed to regard as savage.

“I can vouch for her,” Ari said quickly, forestalling whatever judgment Kerys was about to pronounce. “
Trierarchus
, she is in many ways the most interesting of all. She was born and grew up on the planet of another star! Embedded in a system of native life of which we have no knowledge—as you know, our ships found no such life on any planet of the star Proxima. She was brought back to Terra as a young adult, and as an outsider she is probably a better witness to that culture than any of these others. Again I cannot say precisely what I would learn from her, given time, but—”

“All right,
druidh
,” Kerys said, raising a hand. “You've made your point.”

“Which leaves me,” Earthshine said silkily.

“Indeed. And you present the greatest challenge of all. The machinery that sustains you is impossibly far beyond our understanding—I would have no way of knowing if it represented some kind of danger to my country.”

“Nor what its potential might be,” Earthshine said, “if you were able to learn from it.”

“Very well. But what of
you
?” She walked around him, inspecting him; she passed a hand through his arm, making pixels scatter in the air, and Beth saw Earthshine flinch as his consistency protocols were violated. “What are you? Not a man. Are you any more than a puppet? Is there a mind in there?”

“I have been accused of being insane,” he said, smiling coldly. “Can one be insane without a mind? And let me remind you what I have stored, in my artificial mind, my roomy memory: the secrets of what made the
Tatania
fly. The hulk you captured is scrap metal. And I have all the records we brought with us of our reality, and everything we achieved there.”

Kerys frowned, but Beth could see she was intrigued. “Such as?”

“Let me show you. Please, do not draw your weapons . . .” He gestured in the air, cupping his hands.

An image congealed before him, a sphere maybe a half-meter across. The bulk of the surface was gray-white ice glistening in the light of an invisible sun, but the blue and green of life sprawled in great patches under curving lids of glass.

Ari gasped. “It is beautiful.”

“It is a world. An asteroid, what you would call a Tear of Ymir. The largest of all—you must have given it a name; we call it Ceres.”

“To us this is Höd,” Ari said. “After the blind half brother of Baldr, favorite child of the old gods.”