And Quintus Fabius once more proved he was a more than competent leader. In fact he seemed to relish the challenge of the situation.

On the very first night in the antisuyu Quintus had the legionaries construct the rudiments of a marching camp, with a rectangular perimeter wall of dirt and timber with rounded corners, and ditches for drainage and latrines, and the start, at least, of permanent structures inside: a training ground, a principia for the centurion, barracks blocks and storehouses. It was a lot smaller than would have been built by a full legion on the march, of course. There were less than fifty men here, a little more than half a full century in the Roman system. Nevertheless, Mardina thought, as a demonstration of Roman competence and adaptability, it clearly impressed the locals. And right from the beginning of their time here the exercise reassured the legionaries that – whatever else might become of them, whatever this strange place was, and Mardina suspected some of them were pretty puzzled about that – they were still Romans, still legionaries, and all they had learned over years of training and experience still counted for something.

And Quintus was very careful that the legionaries preserve and respect a huaca, a local shrine – little more than a heap of stones – that happened to fall within the domain they were given to set up their camp.

Soon they had their fields laid out and ploughed. It was hard work. The lack of draught animals, and a paucity of machines away from the richest ayllus, meant there was a reliance on human muscle. But for all they grumbled Romans were used to hard work.

There seemed to be no seasons here, as far as Mardina could tell from interrogating baffled locals, though she supposed a cycle of shorter and longer days, a ‘winter’ created by selectively closing some of the light pools, could have easily been designed in. But then much of the Incas’ original empire on Terra had been tropical, where seasonal differences were small. This did mean that growing cycles, and the labour of farming, continued around the year; you didn’t have to wait for spring.

Yet life wasn’t all work. They might have to pay the mit’a, but the legionaries soon learned they didn’t have to go hungry. If you fancied a supplement to your vegetable-based diet you could always go hunting in the rainforest, where there seemed to be no restrictions on what you took as long as you were reasonably frugal about it. There were big rodents, which the ColU called guinea pigs, that provided some satisfying meat, even if they were an easy kill. Smaller versions ran around some of the villages.

The lack of alcohol was one enduring problem. It seemed to Mardina that the local people didn’t drink, in favour of taking drugs and potions of various kinds. Chicha, the local maize beer, was officially used only in religious ceremonies. After a time Quintus turned a blind eye to the illicit brewing of beer.

As for the drugs, the most common was coca, the production of which was part of the mit’a obligation. But you could grow it anywhere, it grew wild in the forest, and everybody seemed to chew it, from quite young children up to toothless grandmothers. Some of the legionaries tried it, taking it in bundles of pressed leaves with lime, and a few took to it; they said it made them feel stronger, sharper, more alert, and even immune to pain. Medicus Michael officially disapproved, saying that the coca was making your brain lie to you about the state of your body.

With time, the villagers started to invite the Romans to join in feasts to celebrate their various baffling divinities. The adults passed around the coca, smoked or drank various other exotic substances, played their noisy pan pipes, and danced what Mardina, who did not partake, was assured were expressions of expanded inner sensation, but looked like a drunken shambles to her. The children would hang lanterns in the trees, and everybody would sing through the night, and other communities would join in until it seemed as if the whole habitat was echoing to the sound of human voices.

The local people would always look strange to a Roman or Brikanti eye, Mardina supposed. The men wore brilliantly coloured blanket-like tunics, and the women skirts and striped shawls and much treasured silver medallions. But they grew tall and healthy. Sickness was rare here. The medicus opined that most diseases had been deliberately excluded when the habitat was built, and it was kept that way by quarantine procedures of the kind the legionaries had had to submit to on arrival. And, if you ignored the forest-bird feathers that habitually adorned the black hair of the men, and the peculiar black felt hats with wide brims that the women sported, the people could be very attractive, with almost a Roman look to their strong features.

On the other hand, Mardina supposed, to these legionaries exiled by a jonbar hinge from their wives and families and all they knew, almost any woman would be attractive.

One by one, the legionaries began to form relationships with the women of the village. The Sapa Inca’s own clan was polygamous – although it was said that the true heirs to the empire were always born of the closest family of all, of the Inca marrying a favoured sister – but the villagers, at least here in the wilds of the antisuyu, were ferociously monogamous. Quintus said only that he was pleased how few of these new loves were already married, and how few passion-fuelled disputes he was having to resolve.

But he did have to mediate conversations with the legionaries and the local leaders about birth control. Contraceptives were free at the tambos, and so were abortions, though Mardina got the sense that the operations could be risky, such was the state of medicine here. Your choice about having children was up to you, but the population size was carefully monitored by the imperial authorities, and if the average birth rate of an ayllu went above two children per couple without the appropriate licences, there would be, it seemed, penalties to pay.

Even though many of the younger local men watched Mardina, or spoke to her, or tried to bring her into the narcotics-fuelled dances, she kept herself to herself. Some attention she got wasn’t so welcome, such as from the tocrico apu Ruminavi. She soon learned from local gossip that he was a married man with kids as old as she was, but he didn’t seem able to keep his eyes off her, and Clodia, when she visited.

For now she kept everybody at bay.

‘I’m just not ready for it,’ she confided once to Clodia, daughter of Titus Valerius, as they patiently weeded their way through a field of maize. Clodia was still just fifteen, but she and Mardina were closest in age in the Roman party, and the only two young women.

Clodia was more wide-eyed about the local boys. ‘What about that Quizo?’

‘The one who always wears the hummingbird feathers?’

‘That’s the one. I’d be ready for him any day of the week …’

Mardina playfully ruffled her hair. ‘Sure you would, and in a few years you’ll eat him alive. But for now – it’s different for you, Clodia. At least you’ve still got your father here.’

‘Ha! The big boss of me. Well, you can keep him …’

Mardina said patiently, ‘It’s just that we’ve all been through so much. We passed through the jonbar hinge. We lost everything we knew. And even before that, I knew that my own mother was from another world again, from before another jonbar hinge, and how strange is that? Now here we are in this strange place where nobody speaks Brikanti or Latin, and nobody’s heard of Jesu or Julius Caesar …’

‘Well, I like it here,’ Clodia said defiantly. ‘I always liked living in camp when we were at Romulus, and I wanted to train as a legionary. Now there’s nobody to tell me I can’t.’