‘And he,’ Stef said drily, ‘is neither human nor has a soul.’

‘I didn’t even find any evidence of the complex life we saw here before. When I was a kid. The builders, the structures they made, the other life forms like the kites in the air, the fish-analogues in the water courses.’

‘No animals?’ Titus snorted. ‘It doesn’t sound like much fun. You can’t hunt a tree.’

Clodia patted his knee. ‘Come, Father. Look on the bright side. We’re Romans, the only Romans in all this world. You could be the Caesar of Per Ardua.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘The world already has a Latin name. I never thought of that before. How strange.’

‘That’s a long story,’ Beth said. ‘I think my own mother was responsible.’

Titus growled and shook a leonine head. ‘There’s no value in conquering a wilderness. No farmers to tax!’

Beth said, ‘But there’s plenty of work to do here. I’ve made a start, with shelter, tools.’ She grinned. ‘I’ve dug a latrine ditch. With eight of us using it, we’d better get that extended, fast.’

‘We must save the compost,’ the ColU said gravely. ‘For the farm we will some day build.’

Beth went on, ‘The good news is there’s air to breathe, water to drink – I don’t know if we had a right to expect that on the far side of a Hatch on Mars. There’s even food to eat. Not just tea. I’ve found root vegetables, things like peas, beans, squashes, even something like maize I think but gone wild.’

All this was slowly sinking in for Stef. ‘Wild variants, of crop plants presumably brought from Earth. From an Earth.’

The ColU said, ‘They could be domesticated once more, given time and patience.’

‘Time, yes. ColU, how much time must it have taken for the various strains to drift so much?’

‘Not long,’ the ColU said. ‘Not nearly as long as, for example, it must have taken for the installation here at the substellar, whatever it was, to erode away to its foundations and then be covered over by metres of earth. That is a better indication of duration. There has evidently been plenty of time here for all this to happen – time behind us – even if, as I fear, there may be little time ahead of us.’

They all stared at the complex little unit, its glistening lights.

‘Textbook enigmatic,’ Stef said, annoyed.

Titus growled, ‘You know, that twisted piece of junk always seems so much less human when it isn’t in the bag on the boy’s back. When you can see what it really is. Do you have something you want to tell us, you glass demon?’

But the ColU was silent.

Beth broke in, ‘I’ll talk to it … I grew up with it, remember. We’ll figure out what’s on its mind, and what to do about it.’

‘All of which,’ Titus said, ‘is less of a priority than digging that latrine you talked about. We’ve got spades and other tools in the bundles of gear from the Malleus. At least in the army I was used to that.’ He rubbed his daughter’s shoulder. ‘As is my Clodia, who grew up in army camps.’

‘I can dig a ditch,’ Clodia said defensively. ‘I wanted to be in the army, before all this made a mess of everything.’

Stef studied Titus. ‘This won’t be the life you’re used to, Titus Valerius – or you, Clodia.’

‘We came here in pursuit of Earthshine,’ the ColU said simply.

‘Well, that’s true, but—’

‘The glass demon is right,’ Titus growled. ‘That was the mission we set ourselves. That was what I expected, and all I expected. That remains so.’ He glanced around, at the stem trees, the face of Proxima dimly visible through the canopy. ‘And this is where we have been brought – where Earthshine was brought. We must remember we are not the only agents in this matter. The beings who control the Hatches—’

‘The Dreamers,’ Beth said. ‘As Earthshine calls them. Among other more insulting names.’

‘We build these Hatches – we Romans, and you Incas,’ and he nodded at Inguill. ‘But we have no control over how they work, do we? Over what points they connect, how they take a traveller from this place to that, one world to the next. Any more than a trained ape shovelling coal into the maw of a steam engine has control over the layout of the track. Even Earthshine does not control this.’

And Stef knew he was right. In her own root reality the Hatch at the substellar of Per Ardua had been linked to a Hatch on Mercury, not Mars. Maybe it still was, in some higher-order dimensionality. But for this trip it was as if the points had been changed, the travellers rerouted …

Titus Valerius said, ‘The Dreamers sent Earthshine to this world, this place – if it is your Per Ardua or not – they could, presumably, have sent him anywhere. And they allowed us to follow. Yes – allowed! The Dreamers are like our old gods, before the light of Jesu filled the Empire – jealous gods who meddle endlessly in the affairs of humans. We have been brought here for a reason, even if we don’t yet see it ourselves, fully.’ Titus shook his huge head. ‘What we Romans do have is a sense of mission. Of purpose. As far as I’m concerned that mission remains to be fulfilled – and if the first step in doing that is to dig a latrine ditch, well, that was the first step in the winning of most of our provinces, I dare say, so let’s get on with it. Just as soon as that tea brews. Well, I remember once on campaign—’

Everybody stopped listening. Beth passed around cups and began to ladle out her tea, which was boiling at last.

And Stef looked over at Inguill and Ari, who had barely said a word since arriving in this new reality.

EPIGRAPH 3

In the heart of this world, as in a hundred billion others –

In the chthonic silence of an aged planet –

There was satisfaction.

The Dreamers understood little of the beings whose destinies they manipulated, little enough of the primary constructs of organic chemistry, let alone the second-order creature of silicon and metals that had been born in their industries, the creature that had done so much damage to the dreaming. United in wider coherences themselves, they comprehended little of individuality, of identity.

It wasn’t clear to the Dreamers if any of these creatures were truly intelligent at all.

So, to minimise the risk of a mistake, they had allowed the organic-chemistry creatures who had clustered around their silicon-metal leader to follow it to this place, this ultimate destination. Perhaps they were necessary to supplement its existence. Perhaps they even formed part of its intelligence, in some collective form. Perhaps this composite group could yet achieve an understanding beyond any individual, just as it was for the Dreamers.

In a sense, Titus Valerius was right. The group had been given a mission, of sorts, by the Dreamers. It had not been compassion that had led the Dreamers to reunite this group on this world at this time: to bring Beth Eden Jones back into contact with her daughter, and the father of the child. It had not been manipulation on a human level. It had been more a question of imposing order. Of tidying up loose ends.

But time was short, and ever shorter.

And the Dream of the End Time was blossoming into actuality.

CHAPTER 60

The new arrivals agreed to live to a clock and calendar based on what Beth had already set up – her twenty-four-hour cycle was some hours adrift of theirs, which they had brought from Yupanquisuyu. But that meant that they had to stay awake a few extra hours, that first night, and then they slept uncomfortably on improvised beds, mostly under the canopy.

Beth, more used to the conditions of Per Ardua, was happy to lie out in the open. And, Stef wondered, maybe that helped her to adjust to this company, to get over the resentment she must feel at this sudden intrusion into the little world she had been constructing for herself – even if her own daughter had been among the intruders.