And Tiso explained her plan.

  61

  The negotiation didn’t happen the next day. Or the next.

  They had to wait all of four days for the next Sirian gondola to come down the River, with a fresh couple of officials – a different pair of surly Palace Guards, it looked like to Mela, so not Tibor – to make fresh demands for the township’s tribute. Mela was aware that troops had been sent out in advance of this appointment, evidently surveying the encampments, the food stocks, such as they were. And they seemed to have done a head count of the newcomers, Tiso’s people. A weapons count too, maybe. A threat assessment. She would.

  But this time was different. This time Mela took Selta, Tiso and Tenn, Mela’s father, down to the dock, to meet the imperial gondola. This time they had authority on their side – or so Mela felt.

  Tenn was frail, exhausted as usual. But he wore his imperial uniform with pride, as he faced his replacements on the gondola – and, before they could get much past introductions, he made his demands on behalf of his daughter and Tiso, and their ragged peoples, in the formal language of Empire.

  Demands that Mela and Tiso be taken into the city, aboard this very gondola, to negotiate formally with a senior official – ideally the Minister for Immigrant and Hinterland Affairs herself, he insisted. ‘And,’ he said to his replacements in the gondola, pointing a bony finger, ‘don’t you dare tell me you don’t have the authority to pass on this poisoned fruit. I’m an old hand at that game …’

  The officials seemed nonplussed – but agreed to take Tenn’s party with them.

  ‘Ha!’ Tenn said, gathering up his robe and preparing to step into the gondola. ‘This way, Mela, this way, Tiso, Selta … I knew it would work. You just have to make them uncertain. Jokers like this will always kick anything novel upstairs – anything that might imperil their own personal position. Because you can always be cast out beyond the Wall yourself, you know …’

  The boat crew, all women this time, kept the gondola steady as the passengers climbed aboard, then poled briskly, pushing the craft upstream. The ride was smooth.

  Mela tried to imagine what Khem and Farrell would have made of the luxury of this river craft, painted a heavy imperial purple, with cushions so deep she could barely feel the frame of the gondola beneath her.

  Soon they passed into the deep shadow of the bridge under the Wall. Mela tried not to think about the enormous weight of the masonry above her head, held up there only by the grace of some long-dead engineer’s calculations.

  Soon enough they emerged into the light.

  And she saw the Empire of Sirius for the first time.

  Time seemed to stop, so intricate, so crowded was the view.

  When she glanced sideways, Selta, and even the tough, cynical Tiso, were staring, open-mouthed. Staring at mountains looming on the horizon – looming over a landscape still hundreds of kilometres deep, Mela realised, their peaks floating like clouds.

  The Heartlands had been visible from afar, across hundreds of kilometres, during their long walk north. The world was flat; you could see the mountains as far away as the murk in the atmosphere allowed you to. But when they had come huddling up against the Wall that great barrier had blocked out this view.

  Now they were revealed once more. And somewhere up there was mighty Sirius itself, the world’s greatest city, and capital of the world empire. Briefly Mela strained to see, looking for a glance of light off metal or glass.

  But for now it was not the River or the Dam or even the distant Mountains that caught Mela’s bewildered attention.

  It was the living blanket that washed across much of the landscape ahead, a vivid green and white and yellow, the colours of a variety of smartcrops. And tucked into that broad panorama she saw splashes of grey and brown that must be settlements, villages, towns, even cities themselves. She hadn’t yet got a sense of perspective, but she could see that the land rose steadily towards the Heartland peaks, and that this pattern of settlement continued deep into the landscape as far as the eye could see.

  Tenn, moving awkwardly in the gondola, grabbed her hands. ‘Come now,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t be overwhelmed – that’s what they would want. Why, this view was probably designed to evoke that very reaction. To batter down the provincials and the barbarians and other underclasses. It’s not magic, it’s just big.

  ‘And you’ve surely seen some of it before.’ He pointed ahead. ‘The Heartland Mountains themselves. And this is the River, just the same old River that ran down through Procyon. Remember? But now, look, you can follow its course, back towards its ultimate source in the Heartland. See how that big tributary joins it, not far upstream? … Ah, look. And see there, the pale white line at the foot of the mountain range? That is the Dam, which has controlled and directed the water of the River for the benefit of the Empire and its people and their prosperity for – well, for centuries, since the Empire tightened its grip on the whole world. And all of mankind.’

  Tiso murmured, looking at the greenery, ‘That is an awful lot of smartcrop.’

  ‘And an awful lot of people to consume it,’ Mela said. ‘And still not enough, apparently.’

  ‘No. Not if they are taking what’s ours too.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss,’ said Tenn.

  The gondola approached a low dock, where another couple of crew waited with ropes to tie up the craft.

  Tenn was the first to stand, cautiously. ‘Come now. The gondola is tied up, but it may rock as you disembark … Let the crew help you …’

  Once off the gondola, Mela looked back, and got her first glimpse of the Wall from the inside.

  While the exterior, needing to be defended, was a blank surface broken only by window slits, this interior side was like an intricate carving, Mela thought at first, with walkways and shafts built into the fabric, and with large structures clinging to the inner surface, like fungi to a rock. It was a striking sight to stand here and look up at it – and even more startling to look to left and right, and see the same pattern stretching off as far as her eye could follow.

  ‘Yes,’ her father murmured in her ear.

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all like this. Three thousand kilometres of it, all around the Heartland. Don’t be dazzled. Come now.’

  They started to walk, slowly, away from the landing platform.

  Tenn said as they went on, ‘Once I was given a tour – of the Wall, I mean. Not for pleasure; I was supposed to understand roughly how it works, how it is provisioned, and so on. Inside it’s like a warren, a warren of stone, where people live for years at a time, with barracks and kitchens and infirmaries and training areas and store rooms. The Wall is itself a nation, of sorts. Or a great human machine. All of it connected by walkways and ladders and stairs.

  ‘I know for a fact that your brother, Tabor, has served here. After his experience as a Guard at Procyon, and particularly on the Fence Watch. I think he had a youthful dream of serving in this place one day. Some Fence this is! Some Watch …!’

  ‘And some romance you spin.’ A woman’s voice, oddly familiar. ‘But this will probably be all you’ll see of the Wall today.’

  Mela whirled. For a moment she thought the woman approaching, flanked by Guards, might be her own mother. Something about the intonation, the phrasing – the contempt.

  It wasn’t her mother. It was Bel Petro.

  She wore a kind of trouser suit, crisp, clearly expensive. Her hair, cut in that unique way Mela remembered, half of it shaven from her scalp. Yes, Bel Petro the land speculator, who – it had seemed to Mela – had lured her mother into so many risky transactions.

  But Bel had known her mother. Had even loved her, perhaps.

  She couldn’t help it. She blurted, ‘Do you see her? My mother? Is she here?’

  ‘If I did see her,’ Bel Petro said coldly, ‘she would have no place in this transaction.’

  Mela glanced at her father, who shrugged and turned away.

  Selta stepped forward, strong, frowning. Quite unintimidated, Mela saw with admiration, though she was just as much of an outsider as Mela was.

  Selta said now, ‘So you mention a transaction. Glad you’ve paid that much attention at least.’ She looked around, with a kind of aggressive confidence. ‘Shall we talk?’

  This was a tactic they had discussed in advance. The imperials would expect Mela or her father to take the lead. Perhaps a blunt, self-confident young doctor would throw them off balance.

  But Mela wasn’t surprised when Bel returned her glare, without giving ground. ‘You misunderstand the situation,’ she said coldly. ‘And my role. I am here to assess whether you should be given the time to make your case at all.’

  Selta wasn’t put off by that. ‘Then I’d better get to the point. I would think that even you must have observed that our world is shrinking. And with it comes a certain shift in the demographics.’

  Bel frowned. ‘“The world is shrinking.” Are you a child—?’

  Now Mela stepped up. ‘This is Year Six. Are you aware of what that means? Do you look, even in imagination, beyond this great, useless Wall of yours? Do you see? Do you see? Here is your Empire and its Provinces, inside its Wall, yes, still intact. You still have four-fifths of what is left of the world’s land. But outside, the ledge where our people live is now only fifty kilometres deep, and diminishing rapidly.

  ‘And yet you demand food of us. And yet you tax us. Can you see? Can you see the imbalance?’

  Bel seemed to be thinking it over. She pursed her lips. ‘Actually you make a case. Not a good one, but coherent at least. Yes, it does seem futile seeking further tribute from you. Perhaps we should simply seal the Wall against you. Entirely, all around the world. At least then we would not have to put up with your racket. Do you know that the clamour of your children, crying in the night, actually affects property prices in communities just within the Wall? Not the moral anguish, you see, just the noise nuisance —’

  Mela took a step forward at that. Selta grabbed her arm, pulled her back. Mela felt she was ready to kill this woman.

  ‘Well, that’s one possibility,’ Tiso said calmly to Bel. ‘That we sit around with our weeping children and wait for the Perimeter to wash over us. There are other choices.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You open the gates. You let us in. All us “uncivilised”, all around the world – we have a lot of contacts now. And it would cost you so little. Given our tiny numbers compared to the hordes that must swarm here, within the Wall, in Sirius itself.’

  ‘And why should we do that? What would we gain?’

  ‘Fair questions. Let me tell you about the distribution of people outside this Wall,’ Tiso said. ‘I should know. I’ve spent a lot of time since Procyon travelling, working it out – listening to other travellers’ accounts.

  ‘The strategic distribution.

  ‘People aren’t uniformly spread around the world, what’s left of it, around the rim. Of course not. We all need water. And so, as the world has shrivelled, we Immigrants have tended to congregate in the valleys of the four great rivers, or near them. And we have followed the courses of these rivers as they shrank back …

  ‘So what you have now is a very uneven distribution of people. Lots and lots of people clustering around the heads of the rivers – or rather, the places where the Wall is breached to allow the river water to flow through – just as right here.

  ‘Ah. You frown. Do you anticipate my logic, Bel Petro?’ She waved her hand at the Wall behind her. ‘You think of this feature as a bridge, perhaps. In fact a more accurate term would be a culvert. A channel built to allow excess water to flow away, under this Wall … Think about that.

  ‘And you have lots of needy and resentful people, sitting right here. Right by your culvert. Think about that.

  ‘Think. Just suppose they took a mind to block your outflow channels. The land is pretty flat this side of the Wall, it seems to me. You’d quickly get a flood backing up deep into your paradise, here. How many people would be displaced, and how quickly? And this area is obviously a key food source. How much smartcrop would be lost? How many would die? Also, that sodden ground would start undermining the Wall itself, precisely at its weakest points. Do you still have any surveyors working in this paradise of yours?’

  Bel was keeping her cool, Mela saw. ‘We need no surveyors. We have troops. Weapons. We will scatter you—’

  ‘We have a lot of determination, and a good length of Wall to retreat around. And nothing to lose. We would come back.’

  Mela had the instinct that this was the moment for her to make a counter-offer. ‘You should listen, Bel. Whatever you are now, you were in business. This is a decent proposition – a little food, comparatively, to avert a crisis that could destabilise the whole Empire. In fact—’

  ‘Enough.’ Bel glared at them all. ‘How I despise you people. I always have. Yes, your mother too, Magistrate Mela. Even as I used her to rob her own people. Even as I explored her clumsy body. Yet you have a certain rat-like cunning. I will speak to those in authority about this …’ She turned away, then looked back to Mela. ‘By the way. Do you wish me to tell your mother you are still alive? Or would you rather she believe you dead?’

  And with that she turned away, every step, every gesture, radiating contempt.

  They clustered together now, Mela with her father, her faithful friend Selta, and this unpredictable new ally, Tiso.

  Now Tiso let out a deep breath, as if deflating. ‘I waited my whole life to say that. Or something like it.’

  ‘But we won,’ Tenn said gently.

  ‘Oh, yes. We won. Whatever winning means, in this scrap of a world we have left. Come on. Let’s get out of this … park. And tell our people that they will soon be moving again: into the Provinces.’

  She turned and led the way back to the water, where their gondola waited, in the shadow of the Wall.

  And Mela began the job of processing this confirmation that her mother was still alive.

  Once formal permission was given, it took only a few days for the Immigrant groups led by Mela and Tiso to combine forces, pack up, and move through the Wall and into the land the imperials called the Provinces. Rather than have them swim or ride through the culvert, reluctant Wall Guards opened up long-sealed doorways and allowed most of them simply to walk through.

  Then it took a few weeks to set up a new combined community, deep within the Provinces, indeed close enough to see the complex face of the imperial Dam, just to the north. It would have a regular food supply, gathered from smartcrop fields around, and was relatively lightly taxed.

  And it had several deepshafts, where lines soon formed up, once again. Despite this victory, the end of all things was just as close as it had been.

  They called their settlement New Procyon. That was Vitae’s idea. ‘Every community accretes its own history … Why not us?’

  Life settled down after a few weeks. Mela got back to work, consumed by the everyday running of the community – with much liaison now with Tiso, and frequent visits from Mela’s father – and a messy, tentative dialogue with the imperial authorities.

  And four more years wore by.

  John Hackett

  AD c. one trillion years

  62

  Hackett was used to waking from deep, induced sleep by now. As used as he would ever be. It was more like surfacing from an anaesthetic than waking, a process of reassembling the inside of his head, then a gradual sense of his own body, and only then the world around him.

  This time he woke twice.

  The first time, a man’s face hovered over his. He was bald, oddly tanned – as if by the light of a different sun, he thought.

  ‘Do you know your name? Do you know who you are?’

  ‘I’m John Hackett. Who the hell are you? And what are you doing on my ship?’

  The guy smiled. ‘Well, you were adrift, my friend, you had some kind of unlucky break out there between the stars. And lucky for you my job is to search for technological artefacts lost between the stars, although I’d have sooner found an alien treasure ship … Couldn’t leave you drifting.’

  ‘My Perseus … never drifts.’

  ‘Tell that to your insurers. Look, I’m going to patch you up and send you back home. OK? My name is Captain Ralom Ssagla, of the Cognate. I’ll leave a record of all this, and … Hackett? Hackett? …’

  A glare of light above him.

  A second waking, then. He could be anywhere. Any when.

  Somewhere a machine beeped, steadily. He mumbled a protest. Millions of years in the future and they still had medical machines that beeped.

  A face above him, round, a Moon face, blurry craters where the eyes should be. ‘What was that? John Hackett—’

  ‘I said—’ His mouth was a sand pit. ‘I said, the bleeping machines … Forget it.’

  He had no real sense of his body, just a kind of general numbness. Nevertheless he tried to sit up. He actually made it, part way.

  His vision, slowly clearing, revealed a sleep chamber not dissimilar to the one he remembered being inserted into, back in the long-lost year of five billion AD. Itself now five billion years gone, if the mission had followed its plan.

  There were two other beds in the room, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a hospital room in the twenty-second century. If it ain’t broke … Both of the other beds were occupied.

  He tried to think.

  He turned his head to the person standing over him. A woman. Slender, grave, her skin tone like copper.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘In deep space. In what you would call the Oort cloud. Where the comets used to be.’

  The edge of the Solar System, then. ‘How’s my ship?’

  She smiled. ‘The Perseus? You would ask about that first. Before your friends, before your own condition. Well, she struck a reef, you might say. She’s fine now. In dry dock, I think you would call it. A maintenance facility attached to this habitat. Receiving lots of loving attention. She is a famous antique as well as an exploration ship. Lots of invaluable data in the memory banks … She was adrift for a long time, but the Galaxy is a quiet place these days, and her maintenance mechanisms kept her safe.’