Mardina could see it would be just a short walk to the next transport, which was a kind of carriage on rails, one of a series, pulled by a heavy engine at the front. The rails of the track swept down the flank of the mountain.
“Ah,” the ColU said as he was carried out by Chu, “another railway system. A universal, it seems, across the timelines, common to all engineering cultures. Quintus, please ask Ruminavi what powers it—what is the motive force behind the engine?”
It took some moments of interrogation before the answer was extracted from the apu, and at that Quintus had to flatter him to make him brag about the mighty achievements of the Incas. The train, which he called a caravan, ran on the capac nans, the roads of the gods, which spanned this habitat from end to end. Ruminavi said the engine, which had a name something like “llama,” was powered by a warak’a, derived from an old Quechua word for “sling”—and which turned out to be the Inca term for a kernel…
But Mardina, as she stepped out of the carriage, stopped paying attention to mere words. This steep mountainside was choked with green and swathed in mist, the moisture dripping from the crowding vegetation. The air was damp and fresh—but thin, hard to breathe, and she had a sense of altitude. Above her head, patchy clouds obscured her view of the higher mountains, which lifted islands of green into the air, like offerings. And beside the path that led to the railway, flowers bloomed in thick clusters with vivid colors, yellow, orange and purple, and tiny birds worked the flowers, flashes of brilliant blue.
The apu was watching her. He seemed to be admiring her show of interest, at least in comparison to the soldiers who stamped along the trail, already complaining about the state of their feet in a full gravity. “Cloud forest,” he told her, a term that took some translating by the ColU.
“And I suppose there’s a big band of this too all around the rim of the world.”
“That’s how it’s designed. Come. It gets even prettier farther down.” But he smiled at her a little too intensely, as if drinking in every detail of her face, her skin.
Mardina drew away and walked back to her group.
Once aboard the train they had to wait a full hour before it was ready to pull away.
There were many coaches bearing passengers, but the legionaries were herded into rougher carts evidently intended for freight. The legionaries grumbled as they settled down, complained about the thinness of the air, the food grudgingly supplied by Inca troops—fruit, meat, water—supplemented by biscuits and other rations they’d brought in their packs from the Malleus. And, as soldiers always did whenever they got the chance, they tried to sleep.
Meanwhile more trains came rolling into the hub station from the habitat interior, laden with goods, foodstuffs, timber. The ColU speculated that some of these goods must be meant for export from the habitat, perhaps to other space colonies, as well as supplying the big hub city.
At last the train pulled away.
At first the descent was alarmingly steep and rapid. Looking ahead, sitting on a wooden bench and with her head resting against a window, Mardina saw that they soon descended below the level of the cloud forest and into more open air. Now they emerged from the last foothills of the mountains and came to a flat plain—flat at least in the direction of travel—marred by ranges of low hills and gouged by the valleys of sluggish rivers. This land was the puna, the prefect said. The great plain itself was uninspiring, Mardina thought, as they sped across it, nothing but grass and shrubs on arid land. But if Mardina looked sideways she could distinctly see the upward curve of the landscape, as if she was traveling through some tremendous valley. Sparks of artificial light and palls of smoke on those sloping walls must mark townships, and she saw the iron glint of rail tracks and roads.
And there were people everywhere, farming the land in great fields and on terraces. The buildings they lived in were unassuming hut-like structures, although the larger townships featured complexes of massive warehouses that the apu said were tambos, imperial facilities for storing food. Every so often they saw a larger structure yet, compounds surrounded by walls with multiple terraces like huge steps. These were pukaras; they were obvious fortresses. Their walls were of a rough, dark stone that the ColU speculated might be rock from the dismantled moon.
But some features of the landscape were less recognizable, to a Brikanti eye. At rail junctions and springs, even on particular outcroppings of rock, there were small shrines that the Incas called huacas, with carved idols, poles, cairns, hanks of human hair—once, even what looked like a mummified human hand. It was as if the landscape was permeated by the presence of gods and spirits. Away from the sparse human settlements it was as if nothing existed on this eerie plane but the train on its track, and the markers of the gods.
Quintus had a conversation with the apu, steadily interrogating the little official about the nature of the world.
The ColU summarized this for Mardina. “This engineered landscape, the puna, is the equivalent of what was called the altiplano in my Culture. In Valhalla Inferior, this was a plain of tremendous extent, very amenable to cultivation. And high, two miles or more above the level of the ocean. Just as it seems to be here, judging by the thinness of the air. Again, they re-create their culture from Terra.”
“But there’s so much of it,” Mardina said. “It’s crushing. And what is it for? All these people laboring 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.”