But she also glimpsed what happened when things went wrong. In this empire of occupation and exploitation, the most common ‘crime’ was an attempt to evade the mit’a tax obligations. It was a chill moment when the tax assessors came, and worked through their records, manipulating their quipus with one hand. Some, it was said, could work the stringed gadgets with their toes. They saw all and recorded all. And the perpetrators of crime, after arbitrary hearings before the tocrico apu, could be taken away from the ayllu for punishment, out of sight.
Observing all this, in the camp Quintus Fabius enacted his own regime of discipline and punishment, intending not to let a single one of his legionaries fall foul of the Inca authorities.
Worse yet, however, for many families was the forcible removal of the young. There was a kind of ongoing recruitment drive for off-habitat workers, who would man the asteroid mines or crew kernel-powered freighters. But there was also a demand for recruits for service at the Cuzcos, or at another of the great imperial establishments – and the servants chosen were always the prettiest children, those with the sweetest nature. This service was compulsory, not volunteered like other professions.
This was an empire in which everything, including you, was owned by the Sapa Inca. In fundamental ways it was far less free than even the Roman Empire had been, back on Terra. Even so, Mardina could see how the great machinery of state worked to sustain its citizens. She wouldn’t hesitate to grab back her own freedom if she ever got the chance. But no doubt there had been worse empires in human history – worse times and places to be alive, even if you weren’t the Sapa Inca himself.
And then there was the sheer wonder of living here, in this tremendous building in space.
There was weather. There could be days more brilliant than any summer’s day she had known in Brikanti – hotter than Rome, said Quintus Fabius, even before it was a hole in the ground. Or there could be rain, even storms. The tocrico apu claimed that these were all under the control of vast engines commanded by the Sapa Inca’s advisers, but the locals, salvaging their ruined crops after one sudden hailstorm, were sceptical about that.
On warm clear nights, Mardina liked to sleep outside, if she could, sometimes with Clodia at her side, safe within the walls of a community that was slowly taking on the look of an Inca village embedded in a Roman marching camp. And they would look up at the ‘sky’. Of course there were no stars to be seen here. There were very few aircraft, even. The only craft operating above the ground were the government-controlled ‘Condors’ that passed along the axis region of the habitat, in the vacuum.
But the tremendous metal shell above was an inverted world, hanging above them, crowded with endlessly fascinating detail – even if the seeing through this lowland air was poor compared to how it had been on the high puna. The Inti windows glowed like pale linear moons, and Mardina could make out the blackness of forest, the pale silver of rivers and lakes. All this was cut through by the sharp lines of rail tracks and roads, connecting communities that glowed almost starlike against the background.
And sometimes, she and Clodia thought, they could make out shapes framed by those tangled lines. They were like figures traced out of the dense antisuyu forest up there by some tremendous scalpel. There was a bird, there was a spider, there was a crouching human. Maybe it was just Mardina’s eyes seeking patterns where none existed, the way the ancients had always seen animals and gods among the meaningless scatter of the stars of the night sky. Or maybe it was deliberate, a touch of uncharacteristic artistry in the huge functional architecture of this artificial world.
And if that was true, maybe there were similar etchings on her side of the world, great portraits hundreds of miles in extent, yet meticulously planned. Maybe from the point of view of some witness sleeping in the open on the other side of the habitat, lying there pinned by the spin of the cylinder, she was a speck lost in the eye of a spider, or the claw of a bird. Somehow it was a comforting thought to be so enclosed by humanity. Sometimes Mardina wondered if she would eventually forget the wildness of the outside, of the stars.
But there was wildness enough inside the habitat, in the dense green of the rainforest jungle that circled the ayllu village. The deep hacha hacha, where the antis lived.
CHAPTER 45
Mardina and Clodia had their first encounter with the antis on the day the strange mit’a tax assessment party came to call.
Unusually this was led by Ruminavi, tocrico apu, the deputy prefect himself. He arrived with the various inspectors and assessors with their quipus, and the tax collectors with their hand-drawn carts for the produce and samples they would take away – and a larger than usual contingent of soldiers in their woollen tunics and plumed helmets of steel-reinforced cane, and their armour of quilted cotton over steel plate, all decorated with scraps of gold and silver. Their only weapons were blades, whips, slings; just as in the space-going ships of the lost Roman Empire, projectile weapons and explosives were excluded from the interior of the habitat.
Mardina and Clodia, coming in from the field, recognised none of these men. Almost all the Incas’ soldiers, the awka kamayuq, were part-timers raised from the provinces, from ayllus like Mardina’s own community, with only a very small core standing army of specialists. But it was the practice to deploy soldiers from one province in operations in others, not their own homeland.
And Mardina noticed, as she had before, a kind of edginess in the way the soldiers walked, a sharp glitter in their eyes. The ColU speculated that this was the product of more drugs, of active agents to boost metabolism, muscle strength, even intelligence and cognition.
As this party made its way through the village, even going into some of the houses, the folk of the ayllu avoided looking into the eyes of these men, and the Roman legionaries speculated how it would be to fight these Inca soldiers.
Ruminavi, spotting Mardina and Clodia, came hurrying over to the two of them. He was dressed grandly, presumably to impress the taxpayers, in beaded and embroidered clothes and feathered armbands, and his thinning black hair braided. Even his sandals had silver studs. As almost everybody carried, he had a bag of coca at his waist.
Mardina watched him approach warily. ‘Do you want something of us, tocrico apu?’
‘Yes, I do.’ He glanced back at the party he was leading. ‘This is a special mit’a collection. I need you two to go and find some wild coca for me.’
‘Wild coca …’
‘A particularly potent and valuable strain has been reported in this area.’ He waved a hand vaguely at the green of the encroaching forest. ‘Go and take a look, the two of you – you’ll know it when you see it.’
Mardina and Clodia exchanged a suspicious look. Mardina said, ‘With respect, apu – why us? We aren’t native to this place. The ayllu must be full of people who know more about coca than we ever will—’
‘Do as I say,’ he snapped. ‘Look, Mardina – I know you don’t trust me.’ He gave her a forced smile. ‘But, believe me, I mean you no harm. Nor you, Clodia Valeria. I’m just a man, and a weak one at that, and I like to look … But I am here to protect you. You must go to the forest, now. And stay there until the mit’a party has left your ayllu. Now, girls, go!’ And he shoved them away, before hurrying back to the soldiers and inspectors.