And this world was hardly a utopia, as she could see by glancing out of the window now. Compared to Pritanike, few machines were to be seen in these small fields. But she saw many people working, bent over the crops, carrying baskets of fertiliser or produce, even scraping at what looked like drainage ditches – people everywhere. And wherever the train passed, the people in the fields below stopped their work and lowered their heads, avoiding any chance of eye contact with the train’s passengers.
Ari Guthfrithson, sitting opposite, was watching her.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re not playing the games?’
He shrugged. ‘I fear my fragile relationship with my family would not survive a tense knucklebones contest. Here you are in the glorious realm of Rome. What do you think?’
‘That I’m glad we castaways from the UN-China Culture were picked up by a Brikanti ship rather than a Roman. The people working those fields – starships and slavery. What a contradiction.’
Ari shrugged. ‘When we were able to build machines more powerful than people and animals, we started to grow our economy on that basis, and slavery became old-fashioned. But Christ Himself, according to our Bible, kept slaves. It is not a sin.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘Lutetia Parisiorum is approaching.’
‘I visited this place once,’ Penny murmured, remembering. ‘Before, I mean. When Earthshine brought us here, my sister and myself, to show us the graveyard where our mother was buried …’
‘The rail line parallels the ancient road into the city from the south, which the inhabitants call the cardo maximus. It has always been the Romans’ habit to build their cemeteries outside the city walls.’
After more than twenty centuries of continuous habitation the cemeteries lined the road for many kilometres south of the city.
Even before the train reached the walls, Penny could see that the city was much less extensive than the Paris she’d known. Lutetia Parisiorum was a mere provincial city, not a national capital as in Penny’s home timeline. Still, the urban sprawl was extensive, under a dome of brownish smog.
The monorail cut through the stout walls, close to a road gate huge enough itself to have served as a fortress. Within the city multi-storey red-tiled dwellings crowded along straight-line streets, with spires and domes rising above the rest. Aqueducts snaked over the walls to deliver water, and Penny imagined an equally impressive network of sewers hidden beneath the ground. Many of the grander buildings, with domes and pillared porticoes, either copied the styles of antiquity or, presumably, dated from that long-gone age. But Penny could see more monorail lines laced over the city, and as her train slowed there was a crash of thunder from the sky, a glare of liquid light, as some kernel-powered spacecraft fled over the city towards orbit.
The monorail terminus was close to the river, the south bank of the Seine, and as the elevated train pulled in, Penny could see across the river to the Île de la Cité, no doubt blessed with a Latin name in this timeline, where a magnificent domed cathedral towered over a crowd of lesser buildings.
As the train drew to a halt, Jiang helped Penny out of her seat. It was only a short walk, Kerys promised, to the office of the provincial administration, where the passengers of the Malleus Jesu had been lodged since their passage to Terra. Penny braced herself for the walk, and an encounter she could barely imagine, with her sister, Stef Kalinski.
CHAPTER 25
They were guided into a very Roman reception room, all couches and tapestries and a mosaic floor, and servants scuttling around under the direction of a provincial official, a short, pompous-looking man in a crisp white toga.
And here were the strangers, standing together in an uncomfortable huddle, Penny thought. The group was dominated by a big man wearing breast armour and a thick military buckle. At his side were a couple more Roman military types, looking out of place in this rather fussy formal room, along with a middle-aged woman in the costume of a Brikanti, and an older man in a rather more practical-looking toga.
And there stood a boy, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old, with Asiatic features, a little plump, with some kind of well-padded pack on his back. He wore a drab tunic, and what looked like an ISF-issue slate rested on his chest, suspended from a chain around his neck. He was barefoot. Penny immediately guessed he was a slave. Jiang seemed drawn to the boy, who was perhaps a fellow Xin.
To Penny, all this was background. To her there was only one presence in the room. She stepped forward.
Their eyes locked, Penny and Stef Kalinski faced each other.
‘My God,’ Penny said at last, speaking English. ‘I never thought—’
‘Nor I, believe me,’ Stef said fervently. ‘I went through a Hatch to Proxima Centauri to get away from you. And then even further, to a star that turned out to be nine light years away. Only to be picked up by these alternate Romans and brought back home, to this.’
‘And in Paris again.’ Penny tried to smile, and failed. ‘Do you remember, all those years ago?’
‘Our mother’s grave. How could I forget? But I’m kind of surprised you can still remember.’ Stef walked around Penny, eyeing her. ‘So this is my future. I feel like Dorian Grey.’
‘I’m not that old. I’m eighty-nine now, Stef. Whereas you—’
‘Am a youthful seventy, thanks to a lot of Hatch-hopping and relativistic time dilation.’
‘Whatever we are, we are no longer twins, at least.’
Stef grinned malevolently. ‘Good. And, seeing you standing there with that damn stick, I feel like I somehow won.’
‘And I,’ said Penny tiredly, ‘feel like I’m too old to care. I wish you no harm, Stef. I never did.’
‘No. It was your sudden eruption into existence when I opened that damn Hatch on Mercury that did the harm.’
‘When we opened it … Oh, it’s all so long ago.’
The big Roman approached them, walking slowly, non-threatening. He said gently, in gruff Latin, ‘Colonel Stef Kalinski. Druidh Penny Kalinski. Though you are twins it pleases me it is so easy to tell you apart.’
Stef said softly, ‘I hope your Latin’s up to scratch, sis. The Romans don’t speak anything else.’
Penny nodded. ‘Quite right too – umm, Centurion?’
‘Indeed. I am Centurion Quintus Fabius, commander of the mission of the Malleus Jesu. These others you see here are members of my crew – my optio, Gnaeus Junius, my trierarchus the Brikanti Movena, Michael, our medicus. Oh, and the slave bears the remnant of Collius, your speaking machine.’
Penny stared at the boy.
‘Ordinarily at the end of a mission our crew would be dispersed, returned to our legion’s collegia for induction, leave and reassignment. Instead we have been given the unusual task of caring for the strangers we found on a planet of the distant star Romulus, at least until more formal arrangements can be made.’
Penny barked laughter. ‘I’m becoming used to the bureaucracies of empires. You mean, until your government and the Brikanti can come up with some category to file us away in.’
He grinned. ‘Well, I’m no clerk, lady, but I see the truth in what you say. But we welcome the task. You see the big man over there, with one hand? He is a legionary, a veteran; he is called Titus Valerius. For five years he has been the protector of the slave who carries Collius. It is a task he fulfils with joy. Of course the alternative for him would have been to remain with the permanent colonia under that distant star …’