‘No, quipucamayoc. A discussion of my origin will reveal much. I am a ColU. The Romans call me Collius. Once I was part of a much larger engine. My task was to farm, to dig the soil of other worlds.’
Inguill was evidently trying to master her fear, Mardina saw. ‘You fit into no category of thing I have seen before.’
‘You are shocked, and it is understandable,’ the ColU said. ‘Believe me, I am merely a made thing. I am like a quipu. I am a device for storing and manipulating information. I am more sophisticated – that’s all. I have machines to enable me to speak, and others that enable me to hear, through devices carried by the boy, Chu Yuen. Who serves me faithfully, by the way.’
Inguill pursed her lips. ‘What do you think, tocrico apu?’
Ruminavi looked just as scared as Inguill was, but more cunning, Mardina thought. ‘I think that that would be a fine trophy to present to the Sapa Inca and his court. A talking jewel! And if it can sing or recite poetry – can you tell fortunes, Collius?’
‘I can do far more than that, Inguill, as I think you know.’
She stared at the device. ‘Can you restore the order that has been lost?’
‘That is my goal, quipucamayoc,’ the ColU said softly. ‘Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson is a descendant of those I was created to serve.’
Mardina was startled to be brought into this, and blushed.
‘I can understand that,’ Inguill said. ‘Everybody needs someone to protect. To give purpose to one’s life, one’s work. For me it is the Sapa Inca, who personifies the Tawantinsuyu and the billions under his protection …’
‘And billions yet unborn,’ said the ColU.
‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. Oh, put that thing away, boy, put it back where it’s safe.’
Chu picked up the processor unit reverently, and stowed it away in its layers of packing in his bag.
Quintus grinned. Evidently, Mardina thought, with Inguill disconcerted by the vision of the ColU, he felt more confident, more in control. ‘So, quipucamayoc. We are exchanging gifts. Your turn again, I think …’
‘Well, let me overwhelm you.’ Now she lifted a heavy frame out of the trunk; Titus had to help her lower it to the ground. Mardina studied this curiously. It was a frame of ornate wood within which fine wires ran, up, down, side to side, front to back, with knots of some kind of thread in a multitude of colours resting on the wires. Mardina saw that the positions of the wires, the knots, could be adjusted with the use of levers and switches.
Inguill saw her looking. ‘What do you think of this, child?’
‘It’s beautiful.’
Inguill smiled. ‘It is. Most well-designed devices are. But what do you think it’s for?’
‘It looks like a kind of quipu. I’ve only seen simple ones before, like the ones used by the inspectors when they come to assess the mit’a obligation of the ayllu. They reminded me of abacuses. This is more complex.’
‘You will have to show me an abacus. But you are right, child, that’s surprisingly perceptive.’
‘Thanks,’ Mardina said drily.
‘This is a quipu, a kind of quipu, capable of storing a large amount of information. The knots record numbers, the colours names. And it can be interrogated by means of these controls.’ She looked around at them. ‘You should not overestimate this. In Cuzco the Great Quipu Repository is a building of four mighty towers, with jars full of quipus stacked floor to ceiling. That is our record store; this can only be a digest. Nevertheless – ColU, can you read a quipu? Could you read this?’
‘With some instruction, and with the help of Chu Yuen – yes. But what will I learn?’
‘It is our history,’ said Inguill said. ‘A kind of compendium, by many authors. It depicts what we know of the ages before our own history began with Yupanqui, eight centuries ago. And it tells of our glorious campaign of global conquest, including the subjugation of the Romaoi and the Xin. And finally our expansion to the planets, and even the stars, with the use of the energies of the warak’a.’
‘I will study it closely,’ the ColU said, ‘and instruct these others.’
Mardina felt unreasonably excited by this, by the gift of a history book. ‘We might be able to figure out the jonbar hinge—’
‘Hush, child. Not yet.’
Inguill, of course, missed none of this exchange.
Titus snorted. ‘Well, I for one am always ready for a history lesson. Why, I remember once on campaign—’
‘Shut up, Titus Valerius,’ Quintus said mildly, watching Inguill, evidently intrigued. ‘I suspect it’s no accident that the quipucamayoc has given us a history text, for history is what this meeting is all about, isn’t it? History – or histories?’
Inguill nodded. ‘I have the feeling I know a good deal less than you do, at this moment. On the other hand I have the power to do a lot more about it. Rather than press you for a response – I have one last gift.’ Again she dug into the trunk.
This time she produced a scrap of white fabric, grimy with rust-coloured dust, torn from a garment, perhaps – and stained by what looked like brown, dried blood. She smoothed this out on the lid of the trunk.
Mardina leaned over to see. The fabric itself looked strange, with thick threads that were shiny where they were ripped. And stitched to the scrap was a kind of insignia, she thought, a triangle of thick cloth, edged in gold around a background field of blue-black. In the foreground was an arc of a red-brown planet, girdled by a swooping line, the schematic path of some kind of aerial craft. The craft itself was shown as a clumsy affair of tubes and boxes and shining panels, roughly stacked. Hovering over all this was an eagle, wings outstretched, holding some kind of branch in its talons – an olive? And there was Latin lettering around the edges of the triangle.
‘The eagle is the best-worked element of the thing,’ Titus Valerius murmured.
‘That’s true,’ said Mardina, entranced, puzzled.
The ColU inspected the insignia through the slate carried by Chu. ‘Quipucamayoc, where did you get this?’
‘You don’t recognise it?’
Quintus shrugged. ‘Obviously not.’
‘And yet here is this lettering, in the Romaoi style. Can you read this?’
Quintus picked out the words, letter by letter. ‘GERSHON – YORK – STONE. These mean nothing to me. Names, perhaps? But this – this is the name of one of our gods. Or at least, his Greek cousin. ARES.’
‘Yes. I’ve been looking this up. Ares – the god you call Mars. And Mars is the name you gave to the fourth planet, is it not? Which we call Illapa, after an aspect of the sky god, the thunder deity. And is the eagle not an emblem of the Romaoi?’
The ColU repeated, ‘Inguill, where was this found?’
‘Where do you think? On Illapa, of course. On Mars! Near the wreckage of a crashed craft – oh, centuries old, we think. But not far from the warak’a field, the gateway—’
The ColU said, ‘Gateway? Do you mean a Hatch?’
‘Stop,’ Quintus ordered. ‘We must take this one step at a time.’
Chu dropped his eyes, as if he might be blamed for the ColU’s impertinence.
‘You see,’ Inguill said now, ‘what puzzles me is this. In our history there is no record of the Romaoi reaching Illapa. Or reaching space, beyond the home world – or even, actually, mastering flight in the air. We put a stop to such ambitions when we burned their capital and subjugated their people and their territories. But you,’ she said now, staring at Quintus, ‘you – and now we must tell each other the truth – you came from a history that was not like the one recorded in our quipus,’ and she tapped the frame of the machine she had produced for emphasis. ‘Not like it at all. I think you came from a history where, somehow, the Romaoi survived, and prospered, and founded ninety legions, and got off the planet, and flew around the place in ships with names like Malleus Jesu—’