Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

Poole had more immediate concerns, however. He began to talk of his tentative plans to bring his family to Rome, and asked about schooling. Julia smiled and said that the Order provided education of a very high standard, including classes in English for the children of expatriates. It would not be difficult to find places for Poole’s children, if he so desired.

After some days of further negotiation, the decision was made, the deal done.

George Poole would stay in Rome for twenty years, in which time he played his part in the advance of a great tide of brick, stone, and mortar over the ancient gardens and parks. His two daughters completed their education with the Order. But Poole found himself spending a good proportion of his income on relieving the conditions of his laborers and their families, part of a great throng of three hundred thousand in the growing city by the end of the century, who found themselves sleeping under ancient arches or on the steps of churches, or in the shantytowns that sprouted in many open spaces.

Even so he went back to England wealthy enough to retire. But one of his daughters, somewhat to her parents’ disquiet, elected to join the Order herself when her tuition was complete.

“And that’s how a Poole came to Rome,” Peter said. “George, you have roots in the Order on both your mother’s side and your father’s …

“This stuff is incredible. And I believe I still haven’t seen the half of it. I think there has been a relationship between the Vatican and the Order that goes back to the founding of them both. Surely the Order has provided funds to the popes over the centuries. Surely it has provided refuge or support in turbulent times — perhaps it has sponsored one candidate for holy offices over another.

“And in that great scrinium you describe, which unlike the Vatican Archive hasn’t been burned by emperors or chewed by rats or plundered by Napolй on, there are secrets that no pope could bear to have revealed, even in these enlightened times. George, no wonder your tame Jesuit hovered over me all day. This stuff is explosive — your Order has got the pope by the balls! … George, you have to go back down there.”

“Show me Lucia,” I said to my sister.

She shook her head. “George, George—”

“Never mind the bullshit. Show me Lucia. ”

But she just sat back in her chair and sipped her coffee.

I tried to keep up the pressure, tried to maintain my angry front. But it was hard. For one thing we weren’t alone. Inside the Crypt, you were never alone.

I had finally succumbed to Peter’s pressure, confronted my own complicated fears, and returned to the Crypt.

This time Rosa brought me to a place she called the peristylium . It was a small chamber, crudely cut out of the rock — but it contained a kind of garden, stone benches, trellises, a small fountain. There were even growing things here, exotic mushrooms sprouting in trays of dark soil, their colors bright and unreal. The garden was obviously very old, its walls polished smooth by centuries of soft contacts. A small stand supplied coffee, sweets, and cakes. Anywhere else this would have been a Starbucks concession, but not here; there were no logos on Crypt coffee cups.

Like everywhere else, the little garden was full of the ageless women of the Crypt. It was like an open- air cafй in a crowded shopping street, maybe, or a crowded airport concourse, with a dense, fluid, constantly changing, never thinning crowd. But the grammar of this crowd was different, the way they squeezed past each other, smiled, touched — for all these people were family. They talked brightly, loudly, and continually, sitting in circles cradling their coffees, close enough that their knees or shoulders touched. They would even kiss each other on the lips, softly, but not sexually; it was as if they were tasting each other.

And, sitting with Rosa with our own coffees, I was stuck right in the middle of it, in a bubble of unending conversation, constantly touched — an apologetic hand would rest briefly on my shoulder, a smiling gray-eyed face float before me — and my head was full of the powerful animal musk of the Crypt. It was like being immersed in a great warm bath. It wasn’t intimidating. But it was damn hard to think straight.

As Rosa surely knew, which was why she had brought me here.

And on top of that I had to deal with my own complicated emotional situation. I still found Rosa’s face extraordinarily disturbing. She was, after all, my sister. She was so familiar , and something warm in me responded every second I spent with her. But at the same time it was a face I hadn’t grown up with, and there would always be a glass wall between us. It was quietly heart wrenching.

I tried to focus. “Rosa, if there’s nothing wrong, why not show Lucia to me?”

“There’s nothing that the doctors can’t handle. You’d only disturb her.”

“She came to me for help.”

She leaned forward and put her hand on my wrist — more of her endless touching. “No,” she said. “ She didn’t come to you. That hacker boyfriend found you.”

“Daniel isn’t her boyfriend.”

She sat back. “Well, there you go. Anyhow, I don’t think all this really has anything to do with Lucia.”

“All what?”

“Your insistence on coming back to the Crypt. This isn’t about Lucia. It’s not really about me . It’s about you.” Her eyes were fixed on me. “Let’s cut through all this. The truth is, you’re jealous. Jealous of me.”

“Rubbish,” I said weakly.

“You know I got the better deal, don’t you? Our family failed, as so many little families do.” She said that, little families, with utter contempt. “It wasn’t just the money problems … Mother and Father saw a way to give one of us a better chance. They knew that this opportunity was sitting here. It had to be me — this is mostly a community of women. If anybody should be envious, maybe it should be Gina, my sister, not you.”

And perhaps Gina was envious, I reflected. Perhaps that was what underlay her sourness, and her decision to get about as far away from Manchester and her past as she could.

But I protested, “I don’t envy you. That’s ridiculous. I just think the Order keeps getting in the way.”

“Of what?” Again she touched my wrist, and her fingers moved in that circular motion, a brief, tender massage. “Look, George — I can’t be separated from the Order. Can’t you see that yet? We come as a package. And if you want to ‘connect’ with me you have to deal with that.” She stood up and brushed down her skirt. “You came all the way to Rome to save me, didn’t you? What a hero. And now you’ve found out I don’t want to be saved, you’ve decided to rescue poor Lucia instead. But don’t you think you have a duty to figure out what it is you’re saving us all from?” She held out her hand to me. “What, are you stuck in that chair? Come on.”

Her tone of command, the outstretched hand, were compelling. And we had, oddly, become a center of attention, her standing, me sitting, a kind of eddy in the endless stream of people. I was surrounded by faces, all turned on me with a kind of half smile. I felt the most intense pressure to go with Rosa.

I drained my coffee, reached up, took her hand, and stood.

She was, of course, still working on my recruitment into the Order, or at least on neutralizing me as a threat. I knew that. She was following her own agenda. But by now, so was I.

We were brother and sister. What damaged goods we were.

Walking still deeper into the Crypt, we took the stairs.