‘I want to be a teacher,’ Aphe insisted. ‘Or something like that. I don’t want to dig ditches and stuff. I know the whole world is coming to an end when I grow up. But there’s time for me to do that, isn’t there? Be a teacher?’

  She might have said more, but Gine covered her hand. Gine said, ‘When I was your age I wanted to be a joiner. Decorative furniture. I did get to do that, I was trained, but I had to give it all up when we left Procyon. Nobody needs joiners now.’ She sighed. ‘Or teachers.’

  They both looked at Mela with a mixture of hope and helplessness.

  And Mela knew she could do nothing for them. Nothing but help them face the truth. What am I, a counsellor? Vitae should have this job …

  ‘The truth is,’ she said now, as gently as she could, ‘your mother is right. We don’t need teachers. We won’t in a few more years’ time anyhow.’ Because there won’t be any point. Because the schools are already little more than child-minding day centres. Because the pupils will never grow up to apply their learning. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say that. ‘And there is more important work to be done, just to keep everybody – well, alive. Fit and fed and well. And that’s what the Reclamation is, you see …’

  Little Aphe just stared back at her dumbly.

  Please don’t cry.

  Mela thought about the line of people outside. She felt she couldn’t face any of them. She thought of her father, coming south to the Provinces, a rare excursion from the heart of empire, maybe bringing her a crumb of comfort, of support …

  Today just wasn’t working.

  She stood up, impulsively.

  ‘Look. I’m going to shut up shop for the day. I have to meet Vitae and my father anyhow.’ Hopefully. ‘You come along too. My father is working on the Reclamation project itself, with the imperial government. He might be able to … to explain it better than I can.’

  Gine and Aphe glanced at each other, and stood up. But Gine gave her a hard look.

  Mela could read it. Coward. You’re ducking your responsibility.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘You’re always sorry,’ Gine snapped. Then she looked away. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t … Of course I know it’s not your fault. All right. Let’s go talk to the Perseid.’

  Aphe was much too grown-up not to have missed the tension, Mela saw. ‘But he won’t be able to help us either, will he?’

  ‘He’ll try,’ Mela said, sweeping her keys off the table. ‘I’m trying. And that’s all you can ask of anybody, isn’t it? Come on. Now all I have to do is get us past that crowd at the door. I’ll have a lot of apologising to do …’

  She led them out through the house. As they passed, the panels on the walls dimmed one by one, and the rooms fell into darkness.

  51

  Before everywhere had got so overcrowded, the city of Deneb had been situated in what had been pretty countryside, just a few kilometres west of the River’s course – and easily accessible for imperial visitors, only about a hundred kilometres south of the Wall and the inner Provinces of the Empire, so some six hundred kilometres from Sirius at the very centre.

  In fact Deneb was a comparatively new city. Mela had learned that it had been designed and built from scratch late in the Empire’s development, as a cultural centre, even a vacation destination for visitors from the larger, inner cities further north. To residents of the crowded Provinces, or even of the capital Sirius, this pretty town in the Hinterland, with a sense of the exotic, maybe, but without any real danger – with the Province boundary and Wall only a few days’ ride to the north – was an exciting destination to holiday in, even a place to buy a second home. That was one reason, Mela knew, why Deneb had had room, seven years ago, to take at least some of the Immie march from Procyon. Many of its richer transient residents had already bailed out for the security of the Provinces, or Sirius itself, the very heart of Empire.

  Mela, coming late to all this, had actually begun to regard the place with a certain contempt. Deneb was like a toy, a scale model of a proper working town, run by money, not by honest labour. Or it had been.

  Contempt, yes. But she didn’t forget her undying gratitude that she had been allowed to stay here at all, with Vitae and Peri and Khem, and their straggling band of Immigrants.

  And she admitted to herself that, even with swarms of strangers clogging it up, strangers like herself – even with Reclamation gangs now demolishing swathes of housing and digging up parks to make room for yet more fields of smartcrops – it still had a certain beauty, an echo of a richer past.

  Especially at its centre, which was dominated by a dead straight canal that connected the city’s heart to the River. Much of the canal was a working waterway – and very busy now, as Immies from the south still came crowding in and the population still grew. So barges and other shallow-draught vessels pushed and jostled their way in and out of the city, bringing food, taking out waste. But that stretch at the very centre of the city was still picturesque, with delicate bridges spanning the canal, and the facades of once-grand hotels reflected in the calm water.

  At the foot of one of those bridges was a small café. Vitae had asked her to meet him here. The Perseid, never one for luxury, had found this little spot, come to love it, and always spoke highly of the food and drink here. But then, from the colour scheme, with a lot of emerald green amid the purple, Mela suspected the owners were Perseid sympathisers – though the city’s official creed was Starrist, as was the case throughout the Empire.

  So the brief note Vitae had sent on his arrival back at the city, saying that he was coming back from Sirius itself, with her father, hadn’t surprised Mela with the rendezvous he had chosen, at least.

  When she got to the café with Gina and Aphe, she found it crowded. It always was – everywhere was in central Deneb, all the time. But, today, in one corner, in the shadow of a wall, she saw the unmistakable green of a Perseid outfit – Vitae, of course. He was talking animatedly. He seemed to be trying to use the tablecloth to make some obscure point; he had rucked it up into a heap, and laid an inverted saucer on top.

  And beside him sat a gaunt, taller man, in a drab uniform, but with a splash of Perseid green, a ribbon, on his own breast – and a Magistrate’s sigil at his throat.

  It was him.

  She hadn’t seen her father since the chaos of the abandonment of Procyon. At times she’d thought she would never see him again. But here he was.

  She thought she was prepared. She wasn’t. Leaving Gine and Aphe behind, she pushed forward.

  When she got to the table, he seemed slow to react. Even to recognise her. Had she changed so much, in seven years?

  He blinked, as if his vision were giving him trouble. And then his eyes brimmed with tears.

  ‘It is you. It is you. I dared not dream – not even when dear Vitae came to Sirius to find me, give me his news, that you had made it here … Oh, Mela.’ He stood now, and embraced her. He was still taller than her, though more stooped, his hair thinner, greyer – he was more fragile, his embrace weak. She could feel his cheeks wet against her forehead.

  She hugged him back.

  ‘I have missed you so much,’ he whispered now. ‘I thought you were lost. I miss her.’

  ‘Yes. Ish. Me too.’

  ‘Your mother—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I see her rarely. She does love you, you know.’

  Mela shrugged. Such words meant nothing.

  They broke apart, and he sat back down. ‘Come. Sit. Are these your friends? Local to Deneb?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Vitae said. ‘Gine, Aphe, join us.’ They all sat, and Vitae snapped his fingers for service. ‘They’re from Procyon too. You might have recognised them, Tenn. The mother at least—’

  Gine introduced herself and her daughter. ‘You may not remember me, sir. But I remember you. I came before you once, for the paperwork when my husband and I bought our first home.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘And later we came to you to apply for our Permits when the Perimeter advance came, but they didn’t arrive.’

  ‘Did they not? Ah, ah. I am sorry. Well, I saw so many people in that role … Do you still have the property? Oh, stupid question. Procyon no longer exists. Sometimes I feel a little bewildered by all the changes we have all endured, the upheavals. Your husband, though. Is he well?’

  ‘He’s called Rafo, sir. And we have three children now, Aphe here, and little Suma, seven years old, and Hael, fourteen years old. It’s Hael I wanted to talk to Mela about today.’

  Tenn raised his eyebrows.

  Mela grinned. ‘I’m a sort of Magistrate by default, now, Father. No training, of course, no authorisation. I just try to remember what you did, and do it the same way. Or at least do no harm.’

  ‘Do you, by Perseus? Well, so Vitae here told me. I don’t deserve it, but you make me proud. I always did have high hopes for you, little one. High hopes. And your sister.’

  ‘I can vouch for that,’ Vitae said. ‘She’s her father’s daughter, Tenn.’

  An awkward silence.

  ‘I have always regretted the way I abandoned you on the day Procyon finally collapsed.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were doing your duty—’

  ‘It was agonising not knowing, for so long, what had become of you …’ He seemed to run down.

  And a sudden shower fell out of nowhere, out of an apparently cloudless sky.

  They huddled together under the awning over their table. Staff ran around putting up umbrellas.

  Drinks arrived, and a plate of sandwiches, delivered by a waiter with her hair and shoulders damp from the squall. She had protected the sandwiches, though.

  Aphe tucked in with enthusiasm. Gine was quiet, watchful – waiting for another chance to press Tenn, Mela suspected.

  ‘Unstable weather,’ Tenn said. ‘That’s something you see a lot of in the Heartland, and even in Sirius …’

  ‘Ah,’ said Vitae, sipping his tea, ‘there are good reasons for that—’

  Mela couldn’t hold back. ‘Oh, never mind the weather, Father! Tell me – tell me more about Mother.’

  Tenn smiled. ‘I see your mother rarely, as I said. She is well, as far as I know. She’s working at the centre. Of the Empire, I mean, the administrative centre.’

  Vitae grunted. ‘Where the money is.’

  Tenn pursed his lips. ‘I can’t deny that. It’s as if – you’ve lived through it yourselves – as if the whole population of the Empire is draining inwards, as the Perimeter contracts. And with that great flow of people comes a similar flow of wealth. In a way it’s just as it was in the old days. The closer you are to the centre the richer you get – until the Tide washes you away in your turn.’

  Mela nodded. ‘So Mother is doing what she always did. Buying and selling.’

  ‘But on a monstrous scale these days. An astonishing scale. At astonishing speed. It seems the world is quickening, even as the years dwindle down. Not that it will mean anything in the end.’

  Mela asked cautiously, ‘And Tabor?’

  ‘I’ve heard little,’ Tenn said. ‘And that little I’ve had to ask around for. You know that your brother was serving in the Fence Watch, subordinate to the Town Guards, during the abandonment of Procyon. He stayed in that role, officially, supervising the Immigrations north as they proceeded. But then the Procyon Guards, like all the abandoned cities’ militias eventually, were taken into the Imperial Army.’

  ‘The Army?’

  Tenn spread his hands on the tablecloth. ‘That’s all I know. His mother may know more – but I see little enough of her.’

  Mela knew she was scowling. ‘He didn’t help us, me, at all at the time of the evacuation. And now he’s in the Army. I bet he’s loving that.’

  ‘I’m sure he did his duty as he saw it,’ Tenn said, more severely. ‘And still does. He’s still my son. And if he ever needs forgiveness, he will get it from me, at least.’

  Suddenly Mela was a little girl again, getting a moral lesson from her father – after all this time apart. Resentment stabbed at her.

  Vitae said brightly, ‘Turbulent weather we’re having, you say.’

  Briskly changing the subject, Mela saw.

  ‘Don’t you think? Like that shower just now. And as I was about to explain to your father, I believe I understand why.’ Tenn tapped the rucked-up tablecloth before him, the upturned saucer on the top. And waited.

  Mela nodded, half-smiled. ‘Go on, then, Perseid. Tell us why you have ruined a perfectly good table setting …’

  He began to describe what he had learned, in evidently protracted sessions with the scholars of Deneb, some from Sirius itself.

  ‘Presumably the most learned people in all the Empire,’ Tenn broke in.

  ‘Maybe,’ Gine said, sounding unhappy, irritated. ‘If only because they got a chance at an education.’

  Mela patted her hand and murmured, ‘We’ll get to that.’

  Aphe looked around for more sandwiches.

  ‘Ah,’ Vitae said, ‘a fair point. But the best of the modern scholars is named Seviad, once of Rigel – before Rigel was lost. And I know you encountered her, once, Mela, when you made your jaunt to the Perimeter, all those years ago.’

  ‘I remember,’ Mela said. ‘Bright person. Seemed kind. She was out in the country, making some kind of measurement of the Tide.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Vitae said. ‘And she remembered you. There are many scholars in Sirius, and many of them claim expertise in the Substrate, or Tide as it is popularly known, and its properties. But most of them, as you may have insinuated, Gine, do nothing but rehash their education, look up the theories of their predecessors, and debate them afresh.

  ‘But Seviad goes further. Unlike her colleagues, she actually went out to the Perimeter to see for herself – to test, to measure. She has made many such trips, as that wall of destruction has advanced, year by year. As you know. The Perimeter Wardens grew to know and respect her.

  ‘And her most startling conclusion is that the Heartland is – hollow.’

  Tenn coughed on a sandwich crumb. ‘Sorry! Sorry, Vitae. You told me some of this, but I wasn’t expecting that.’

  Aphe was frowning. ‘Hollow mountains?’

  ‘Not exactly, child. I mean that the whole of the central upland, the centre of the world, capped by the Heartland mountain range, is hollow. It is essentially a fold in the Substrate which supports the world – no, not a fold, more as if it has been pushed up from below. A bulge. I was trying to show you, Tenn.’ He closed his fist around his rucked-up bit of tablecloth, and raised it upwards, slowly, miming great strength. ‘And the Heartland itself, the whole upland, sits on top of this hollow dome of Substrate. With, by the way, a great thinning of the rocky crust of the world, which everywhere lies over the Substrate.’ He tapped his upended saucer, balanced on top of the mound. ‘Just as you see here.

  ‘It makes sense if you think about it. The Substrate supports a kilometre’s thickness of rock, on top of which our world is built. But the Heartland Mountains are much higher than a kilometre. And so it is that, according to Seviad’s theories and measurements, the world’s rocky overlay is thinnest – the Substrate is closest – underneath the Heartland bulge itself. So what lies beneath must be hollow.

  ‘Think of it! Think of the consequences! You all know, I hope,’ and he glanced at Aphe, ‘that the Heartland dominates the world’s water cycles. No: better to say it shapes the global flow. When our River, like all the rivers, dumps its water over the Perimeter at the edge of the world, that water flashes to steam – to vapour – which then ascends and flows back, over the land, to the Heartland – because the Heartland, perhaps because of the high Substrate bulge, is colder than most of the world. There the water vapour cools, and rains out, and feeds the rivers at their sources. All of these global processes are controlled, in the end, by the shaping of the Substrate, over which our world sits like a mask on a face.’

  Aphe said sourly, ‘So is that why it rains on our sandwiches?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Vitae, with a big smile for the little girl. ‘That is because of the great shrinking of the world.’ He mimed an implosion with his hands, palms coming together. ‘It seems to be a principle – so I have been told by the mathematicians – that the larger such a system is, the more stable. I suppose you can see why. Our world-platform is now only one-tenth the diameter it was a thousand years ago. We can know this quite precisely from the records kept by scholars so long ago – scholars who had actually explored those lost wastes – records preserved to this day. They went out there and saw it, explored it from the civilised Heartland to the more remote regions, where once aurochs herds swept across vast smartcrop prairies. And you can see that while you might get mighty weather systems gathering across such a vast terrain, you are less likely to suffer sudden overturns, or showers blowing up out of nowhere, than you are today, when everything is contained and constrained inside a shrinking box of a world …’

  ‘But even so,’ Tenn said, ‘the great cycle continues, on other Earths if not this one. A Starrist would say, as the cycle has done for a hundred million million years. And on all the Earths of the Thousand Earths.’

  Aphe was wide-eyed. ‘And what do the Perseids say?’

  Vitae smiled. ‘We say that we want to find out for ourselves.’

  Vitae was a great preacher, as well as a good friend. But Mela had never quite shared his faith in the legend of Perseus, who would gather all souls together at the end of time – any more than she accepted the perfunctory answers her Starrist mother had given to her bewildered questions about living stars. To Mela, the world was as it was, and you just had to get on with it.

  Still, Gine and Aphe, for a time distracted from their fears for Hael, seemed captivated by all this, Mela thought, and that was all you could expect of a good story.

  Aphe asked, ‘So what are they doing about it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, the Empress.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The world.’