‘But there’s so much of it,’ Mardina said. ‘It’s crushing. And what is it for? All these people labouring away, this gigantic engine they live in …’
Quintus joined them. ‘The apu is not a discreet man. Given a little flattery he has explained to me the essential purposes of this monster, this Yupanquisuyu.
‘It is the hub of a system of exploitation and expansion and control that spans sun, moons and planets – the Empire of the Four Quarters. The vast fertile expanses of the habitat feed the miners and engineers who work the worlds and moons across the solar system. The habitat is a source of people too, people to be trained up to mine those moons. And, as well, it is a recruiting pool for soldiers to fight the occasional necessary war – these days wars against internal rebels, since the Inca empire seems to span the whole planetary system. Oh, and the habitat supports the enormous establishment that sustains the Sapa Inca himself, son of the sun. Well, one must be seen to be wealthy and in control, mustn’t one? Our Caesars always knew that. Hanan Cuzco, his ghastly city in the airlessness of the hub, is the Sapa Inca’s Capitoline Hill …’
‘And there is one more objective,’ the ColU murmured. ‘One more purpose all this serves.’
Quintus nodded. ‘They have star vessels. Bigger than our Malleus, it seems, but no more advanced. They have many of them, in great fleets, which for more than a century, says the apu, have been swarming out to the stars, and—’
‘Building Hatches,’ Mardina breathed.
‘So it seems. On a far greater scale than we ever did.’
The ColU murmured, ‘And so it goes. Whatever the merits of this culture compared to any other, we can say one thing: it is better at building Hatches. As if it has been designed to serve the needs of those who would desire such a thing. And just as we would expect given our prior experiences of jonbar hinges.’
Quintus grunted. ‘Apparently so. But I would suggest we set aside such cosmic mysteries for now and focus on the needs of the present, which will be challenging enough.’
It turned out to be ten hours before the first stop – ten hours in fact before they reached the end of the altiplano. Since the ColU estimated that the train, running without a break, was averaging sixty Roman miles an hour, that gave Mardina another impression of the sheer scale of this artefact into whose interior she was busy tunnelling.
When the train finally slowed, night was falling across Yupanquisuyu. Mardina supposed they must fortuitously have been brought to the hub from space in the morning. She wondered vaguely how the mirror mechanisms worked behind the Inti windows, deflecting away the unending sunlight to emulate nightfall.
They got out at a waystation, which Ruminavi called a chuclla. Here there was a kind of refectory, and a place to wash, and shops where you could obtain food or even fresh clothes, and dormitory blocks – but the apu said they would not stay long before the train resumed its journey, with a fresh crew; they could sleep on the train, or not. Anyhow the grumbling legionaries had none of the credit tokens you needed to buy stuff at the shops. The Inca soldiers laughed at their frustration.
This small hub of industry and provision was set in the astounding panorama of Yupanquisuyu.
As the Romans bickered around the shops, Mardina once more walked alone, away from the station. Though by now it was evidently full night in the habitat, it was not entirely dark; the residual glow seeping from the light pools was clear and white, but so faint that colours were washed out. It was like the moonlight of Terra, Mardina thought, and no doubt that was by deliberate design. She could make out the sleeping landscape all around her, the terraces and fields. A little way ahead, though, the country began to break up into hills and valleys that were lakes of shadows. They would be descending soon, then, to lower country, and thicker air.
And to left and right the uplift of the landscape was easily visible, even in the night. The ColU had told her that a round world with the curvature of this cylinder would have a horizon only a mile away, compared to three miles on Terra. So, well within a mile, she could see the land tipping up, the trees and houses visibly tilted towards her. And the rise went on and on – there was no horizon, only the mist of distance – until the land became a tremendous slope, bearing rivers and lakes at impossible angles. Soon the detail was lost in darkness, and in the thickness of the faintly misty air. But then, as she raised her eyes further, she saw the roof of the world, an inverted landscape glowing with pinpricks of light. It looked like the dark side of Terra as seen from space, with threads of roads and the spark of towns clearly visible beyond its own layer of air and clouds. At this altitude the air was so clear it was as if she was looking through vacuum.
The apu joined her. He was chewing some kind of processed green leaf; he offered her some, but, moving subtly away from him, she declined. He said, ‘Quite a sight if you’re not used to it. And even if you are, it astounds you sometimes.’
‘It doesn’t look like the other side of a cylinder. It’s like another world suspended over this one.’
The ColU murmured in her ear, ‘That’s natural. The human eye was evolved for spying threats and opportunities in the horizontal plain, and so vertical perceptions are distorted—’
‘Hush,’ she murmured.
Ruminavi looked at her quizzically.
She said, ‘I can see we’ll be coming down from the puna soon.’
‘Yes. Which is why they put this chuclla here. The last stop before the descent. A place to acclimatise to the thinner air, if you’re coming the other way.’
‘And the land below …’
‘It’s a kind of coastal strip. The rivers pour down off the puna and spread out, and you have sprawling valleys, immense deltas. Very fertile country, nothing but farmers and fishers. They grow peppers, maize. Should take us half the time we travelled already to cross.’
‘Five more hours? And then what? You said a coastal strip. The coast of what?’
‘Why, of the ocean. Goes all the way around the waist of the world.’ He pointed to the sky, in the direction they’d been travelling, the direction he and his soldiers called east. ‘You can see it at night sometimes. Spectacular by day, of course. We’ll be crossing by the time the sun comes up.’
‘Crossing it?’
‘It’s spanned by bridges, for the railway, other traffic. We’ll go rattling across it without even slowing down.’
‘How long to cross the ocean?’
‘Oh, it’ll be getting dark again by the time we reach the eastern shore.’
The times, the distances, were crushing her imagination. Fifteen, twenty hours more, and she would still be travelling within the belly of the artefact. ‘And beyond the ocean?’
‘Ah, then we come to the antisuyu. The eastern country, all of this side of the ocean being the western, the cuntisuyu. And if you went on all the way to the eastern hub it would be another fifteen hours.’
‘But we won’t be going that far.’
‘Oh, no. Only five, six hours to home. My home and yours.’
‘Which is? What’s it like?’
‘Jungle. Hacha hacha. You’ll see.’ He grinned, his teeth white in the pale light. He held out his leaves again. ‘You sure you won’t have some of this coca? Makes life a lot easier to bear …’
She shook her head, and once more backed away from him. He followed, ineffectual, evidently drawn to her but, thankfully, lacking the courage or guile to do anything about it.
CHAPTER 43
On Per Ardua, that first ‘night’ after Beth and Earthshine came through the Hatch, it rained for twelve hours solid.