Ultima (37 page)

The palace of the Sapa Inca was, Mardina learned, not so much a palace at all as a city in itself, a fortified town within a town. Protected on all sides by thick stone walls faced with green tiles and sheets of gold, it was shielded from above by a stout steel grill, and by squads of axis warriors wearing some kind of rocket pack who flew continually in pairs over the compound—Cura said there was even an air shelter to be pulled over the whole compound should Cuzco's main dome fail.

But Mardina and Clodia were led past barriers and guards, straight into this most secure of sanctuaries. They were guided along a kind of ornate tunnel to a central block, and then through corridors and halls whose walls were covered with bewildering displays of colored tiles, some depicting people or animals, others showing only abstract designs.

It was here they said goodbye to Ruminavi for now, but his wife Cura rushed them along. “We must hurry,” said Cura. “It's a shame not to give you time to take in everything better. But there will be time later . . . And a shame of course that you're not more appropriately dressed, but that will be forgiven.”

Clodia said, “These are the best clothes we have, from the
ayllu
.”

“Believe me,
nothing
you brought will be suitable for Hanan Cuzco. And conversely, you will be given everything you need here.”

“But our luggage—”

“That will be kept in storage until it's time for Mardina to leave. That's the official plan at least . . .”

The girls exchanged glances at that. Mardina would be leaving, then, not Clodia, if the Incas got their way.

They came to a heavy door, armored, guarded and evidently airtight, and passed into another chamber of dazzling beauty through which they hurried, dragging themselves along rails and ropes. The deeper in they moved, Mardina noted, the more people they encountered. They all seemed slim and tall—even those not obviously axis-adapted—elegant, dressed in colorful finery, with elaborately prepared hair. Most had huge golden plugs in their earlobes. Many were very beautiful, even the servants, and Mardina remembered how the prettiest children of the provinces were taken away from their families to serve here. In the lack of gravity, they swarmed and swam in the air. To Mardina, rushing after Cura, it was like passing through a flock of exotic birds.

And where the girls from the
ayllu
passed, there were stares and sneers and pretty laughter behind raised hands. Mardina glowered back.

Clodia said, “There seem to be many soldiers here. I thought everybody loved the Sapa Inca—”

“Who protects and feeds them—of course they do,” Cura said. “It's his family that's the trouble. On the death of an Inca, his successor should be chosen by a council of the
panaqas
, factions within the family. But Incas generally have many sons by many wives—although the children by his full sister should have precedence. So while an Inca is healthy there is squabbling and maneuvering to gain his favor and that of the
panaqas
; when he starts to fail there is frantic negotiation among the factions; when he dies the succession can often degenerate into a bloody contest; and even when a winner is announced—”

“People hold grudges,” Mardina said. “I'm told it's often like that for the Roman emperors, or
was
, before.”

Cura smiled. “Educated people try not to worry about it. The bloodshed generally doesn't extend beyond the court itself. And it is a way of keeping the line strong; only the toughest survive.”

Now they had to work harder, pushing through crowds that were mostly streaming ahead the way they were going.

“I'm getting winded,” Mardina said. “What is it we're going to see?”

“Why, it's the procession of the Inca himself. You're lucky to have arrived on such a day, to see it in your very first hour here. Once a month he travels around Cuzco—I'm surprised you haven't heard of this even out in the
antisuyu.
”

Mardina glanced at Clodia. “I think most people out in the country gossip about who stole whose potato, rather than goings-on at court.”

“Well, that's their loss. And this particular month, every year, the Sapa Inca comes to the Hall of the Gaping Mouth.”

“What's that?”

Cura smiled. “You'll see.”

She led them through one last entrance—huge doors flung open—into a hall containing another three-dimensional crowd, more colorful, gorgeous people flying weightlessly everywhere, and axis warriors aloft, eyeing the populace suspiciously. The hall in some ways was like any other they'd passed through, brilliantly lit by vast fluorescent lanterns, the walls glittering with colored tiles.

But the floor here was different, for it was panelled with vast windows that showed the blackness of space below—a scattering of stars, a brighter point that might be a planet, the whole panorama slowly rotating as seen from this axis of the habitat.

Mardina was entranced. The vacuum itself was only a pace or two away. “We must be at the lowest level of the palace—the outer hull. What a sight . . .”

“Look, Mardina,” Clodia said.

“Makes me almost nostalgic—”

“
Look.
Above the windows, farther down the hall . . .”

Mardina looked up, drifting into the air to see over the crowd. Now she saw that to the floor's central window panes were attached upright glass tubes, a dozen of them. And in each of the tubes was a person—young, fourteen or fifteen or sixteen years old maybe, six boys and six girls. Their clothes looked expensive, their faces gleamed with oils, and each wore a dazzling headband studded with precious stones. All drifted weightless in their bottles. And each passively looked out with an empty expression, confused, even baffled, Mardina thought, as if they had no idea what was happening to them.

Clodia's observation was terse. “They look fat.”

Cura said, “Well, of course they do. They have enjoyed the Inca's hospitality—oh, for a month or more, since their selection for this procession. And of course only one will be chosen.”

“For what?”

But before Cura could answer there was a blast of horns. The people swarming in the chamber pressed back against the walls and ceiling as best they could.

And through this living archway a procession advanced.

First came a party of men and women dressed in brightly colored tunics in identical chessboard patterns. They moved in as stately a way as possible, Mardina thought, given they needed to use ropes and guide rails to advance. They glared at anybody in the way; they physically pushed people back or had the warriors remove them. They even swept bits of debris out of the air.

“Every one of them, even performing those menial tasks,” Cura breathed, “is a noble, a highborn . . .”

Next came a troop of noisy musicians, drummers and singers and players of horns and panpipes, and dancers who wriggled and swam in the air.

Following them came warriors, dressed in armor of heavy plates and with crowns of gold and silver on their heads. The armor, in fact, looked too cumbersome to wear in combat, and it took the soldiers a visible effort to propel their bulk through the air.

And then came a kind of litter, pulled through the hall by dozens of men and women in bright blue uniforms. The man carried in the litter looked almost lost in a heap of cushions to which he was strapped by a loose harness. His clothes were even more dazzling than his attendants'; it looked to Mardina as if his jacket had been woven of the feathers of gaudy rain forest birds. He wore a gold crown, and a necklace of huge emeralds, and a headband from which hung a delicate fringe, over his forehead, of scarlet wool and fine golden tubes. He was younger than Mardina had expected, slim, and not very strong-looking; perhaps the family faction he had behind him was tougher than he was.

Still, he was the Sapa Inca.

Cura pushed Mardina's head down. “You don't look him in the eye,” she said. “Nobody looks him in the eye unless he acknowledges them.”

From her peripheral vision, Mardina saw the Sapa Inca throw something out of his carriage. They were birds, she saw, a dozen small songbirds perhaps, but they were unable to fly in the lack of weight, unable to orient; flapping and tweeting, they spun pitifully.

Then one exploded, burst in a shower of feathers.

“One,” said Cura breathless. “They dose their feed with explosive pellets. It's quite random—”

Another rattling explosion, a gasp from the crowd.

“Two!”

And another. The tiny feathers hailed down close to Mardina's face this time.

“Three!”

And then a pause—a pause that lengthened, and Mardina seemed to sense, under the noise of the music, a vast collective sigh, as the remaining birds struggled in the air.

“That's it! Just three of twelve! The selection is made—number three it is. Look, Mardina, Clodia, the third compartment along . . .”

Mardina saw the one Cura meant. Standing on the window, above the vacuum, the third bottle contained a girl, slightly younger-looking than the rest, but just as bewildered. Just for a heartbeat she seemed to be aware that everybody in the hall, including the Sapa Inca, was looking at her. Fear creased her soft face.

Then a hatch opened beneath her. The puff of air in her bottle expelled her in a shower of crystals—frost, Mardina realized, condensing from the vapor in the warm air. Already falling into space, the girl looked up, her mouth open. Just for an instant she seemed not to have been harmed. Then she tried to take a breath. She clutched her throat, struggling in the air like a stranded fish, and blood spewed from her mouth.

All this just a few Roman feet from Mardina. People crowded so they could see her through the windows. They laughed and pointed, and some imitated the girl's helpless, hopeless struggle, as she receded from the window.

“You are not of our culture,” Cura whispered in the ears of Mardina and Clodia. “But can you see why this is done? Yupanquisuyu seems strong, solid. Yet just an arm's length beyond this window lies death—the Gaping Mouth. The Sapa Inca reminds us all of what will become of us if we fail to maintain the integrity of the habitat, even just for an instant. And it is just as the gods hover, angry, cruel, vengeful, an arm's length in any direction from our world. It is only the Sapa Inca and the order he imposes that excludes them from the human world. Do you see? Do you see?” She stroked Clodia's head. “And do you begin to see, now, child, why it is that you must die?”

The ejected girl had stopped struggling, to Mardina's relief. She drifted slowly away from the habitat, and then, as she fell out of the structure's huge shadow, she flared with sunlight, briefly beautiful.

Quintus Fabius walked to the crest of the ridge with Inguill the
quipucamayoc
, Michael the
medicus,
and a handful of his men: Titus Valerius, Scorpus, Orgilius the
aquilifer
with his standard, and Rutilius Fuscus, the century's trumpeter.

Once more, in the light of the new day, Quintus inspected his position. They were close to the hub here, having completed, with Inguill's help, their surreptitious journey from the western coast of the ocean by train and other Inca transports. They were in the foothills that characterized this part of the habitat—but just here they were in a relative lowland, a wide valley cut by a river fed by glacial melt. And beyond, the hub mountains rose up, clinging to the steel face of the hub itself.

“Certainly this ridge is the highest ground in the area,” Quintus observed.

“You're right about that, sir,” Titus rumbled. “The surveyors confirm what you can see for yourself.”

“Perhaps there was once flooding here,” Quintus mused. “Even a lake. Some of these landforms have a streamlined gracefulness. Is that possible, Inguill?”

The
quipucamayoc
shrugged. “The history of this landscape is of course a question of engineering, not of nature. I do know the landscape artists allowed the country to evolve through stages of its own, letting it form as naturally as possible. We are always aware of the limits of our knowledge. Give the gods of nature room to do what they do best—that was the guiding principle. So, yes, perhaps it was once a lake, in some early stage of its forced formation.”

“
Engineering.
” Quintus looked to where the mountains rose, one range after another, waves of granite topped by gleaming ice—ranges that curved upward, very visibly, to left and right, as if he were peering through some distorting glass. “Yes, one can never forget that this place is an artifact. Now, down to business. War,
quipucamayoc
, is all about the details—about place and time. As for the place: so, Titus—will this do for you?”

“The highest ground for miles around, sir, as you say. Let them come to us.”

“And as for the timing—”

Inguill said, “Ruminavi has reported to me that the
capacocha
ceremony is to go ahead this afternoon, as previously scheduled. Meanwhile my contact Villac the
colcacamayoc
is ready with the permissions and passes to get your party out through the hub portals to your space yacht.”

Michael said, “I can confirm that we managed to get messages out to the
Malleus Jesu.
We had men volunteer for the details that wash the Inti windows—the details work all day, every day. As the ColU predicted, the little transmitters and receivers in the earpieces it uses to speak to us were sufficient to exchange communications with the
Malleus
through the window glass.
Trierarchus
Eilidh knows what we're doing; we made a final check last night and she's ready for the pickup.”

“Good,” said Quintus. “So all we need to do is get the travelers up to the portal and ready to go. Oh, and fight a battle against the army of the Sapa Inca. So,
medicus
, what of the men?”

Michael shrugged. “The whole of this continent, the
cuntisuyu
, is at a higher altitude than the
antisuyu
where we've been living—miles higher. The air is that much thinner. However, we've rested here seven days. You've kept the men very fit. I'd judge that they are acclimatized—and they are as ready as they'll ever be to fight.”

Inguill frowned. “Should I be impressed?”

“You should,” Quintus said. “You see,
quipucamayoc
, though a battle itself may seem an arena of chaos to you, victory comes through planning and positioning, as well as reacting to circumstances during the combat.”

“Like the
chess
you have taught me.”

“That's the idea. And I'm hoping that your generals, who are used to facing nothing more challenging than rebellions by unarmed, untrained, undisciplined villagers, might prove as poor strategists as
you
are a chess player. We'll make our stand here. This may be no more than a skirmish—but it may also be the last battle a Roman army unit will ever wage.
Aquilifer
, set your eagle standard.”

“Yes, sir,” Orgilius said proudly.

Inguill anxiously scanned the sky, looking for Condors. “The imperial authorities will see that display.”

“Let them see us. The die is cast, as Julius Caesar once said.”

Titus Valerius stepped forward. “There's one detail, sir. If we're to give battle, you need an
optio
. Somebody who'll be there to kick the arses of the men in the rear ranks, and hold the formation for you. Now, Gnaeus Junius is of course off on the
Malleus Jesu.
So if I may, I'd like to volunteer for the job. Just for the day, you understand; I'm not angling for a field promotion or a rise in pay—”

Quintus clapped him on the shoulder. “You're a good man, Titus. But if you were to be taking part in this fight today, I'd turn you down; I'd want you at my side in the front rank, one wing missing or not. You're certainly not getting a pay rise.”

Quintus saw complicated expressions chase across the man's face. “Thank you for that, sir. But—are you saying I won't be in the century when we give battle?”

“I've a much more important task for you, Titus. Remember—the battle we fight today is only a diversion. The whole purpose of this is to get Collius, and your daughter and her companion, Mardina, out of this habitat, and then to Mars, where—well, as I understand it, Collius intends to challenge the strange entities at war over human history. Now, Titus, when everything blows up, I need somebody in place, up in Cuzco at the habitat exit, to make sure the final escape takes place. And indeed to provide protection on the way. Although if it does turn into a battle up
there
, we'll have failed.”

“That's where you want me to go, then, sir? But how?” He glanced down at himself. “I am an overweight one-armed Roman legionary in uniform. I might be spotted, you know, even by these slow-witted Incas. I remember once on campaign—”

Inguill said smoothly, “We've worked this out, your centurion and I. I'm going up shortly myself. I'll be on hand, with Villac and our other allies, to make sure Collius's party get to where they need to be. And you'll be at my side, Titus. As my
yanakuna
, my slave. A punishment for some outrageous behavior or other.” She grinned. “You're ugly enough, and surly enough, to make that convincing.”

Titus looked doubtfully at Quintus. “My place is at your side, sir.”

“No, Titus. Your place is at your daughter's side. Take care of Clodia. After all, she is putting her own life at risk in this game we play today, as much as any man of the legion. And, remember, I won't be leaving this place.”

“You won't?”

“Of course not,” Inguill said. “We can get a handful of you out, but there's no way we can break out fifty men.”

Quintus said, “And their wives and, in one or two cases, young families. It was always a dream that we would
all
be able to leave. No, the men's place is here, now, Titus, where Jesu in His wisdom has delivered us. And my place is leading them.” He peered into Titus's eyes. “I can see you haven't thought it through this far. Well, I wouldn't have expected you to. Trust me, Titus. Do as I say. Your daughter isn't coming back here, ever—so just be at her side, wherever she goes next, and protect the rest. That's your duty now.”

Titus was visibly struggling with this. But he growled, “Very well, sir.”

Inguill blew out from puffed cheeks. “Well, thank Inti that's resolved. We need to get moving, before it's too late. Look . . .” She pointed upward. “Your activities have been noticed, at last.”

A Condor craft hung high above the air, a very obvious eye in the sky.

Quintus grinned. “The moment approaches, then.” He clasped Inguill's hand. “You must go. Goodbye, then,
quipucamayoc
—I appreciate all you've done for us.”

She pursed her lips. “I don't see it as a betrayal of the Sapa Inca emperor, you know, as much as a challenge to these history-eating monsters we all face.”

“I understand that. And so we're on the same side. Go now—you too, Titus Valerius, and make sure you tell that daughter of yours what a fine Roman I believe she has grown up to be. Now let's get the century drawn up. Don't want them thinking it's a Saturnalia, do we? Give them a blast of the horn, Rutilius Fuscus . . .”