Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

“You’re wise.”

He laughed. “No. Just a survivor, like you.” He took her hand with an odd gentleness. “Listen to me,” he said intensely. “That old fool Myrddin is full of legends … He says I must become Dagda for these people.”

“Dagda?”

“The Good God — but the most humble of gods. All that you promise to do, I will do myself alone … But Dagda needs a Morrigan, his great queen. And at Samhain,” he whispered, “the time of reconciliation, the god of the tribe and the goddess of the earth come together, so that the opposing forces, of life and death, dark and light, good and evil, are balanced once more.”

“What are you suggesting, Artorius? … We fight, you and I. We are in constant conflict.”

“But life itself results from the interplay of opposing forces. That’s the point.”

“You foolish man. I am old, and no goddess. Find yourself a younger woman.”

“But none of them has your strength — not even your daughter, beautiful though she is. You, you are my Morrigan, my Regina, my queen.” He cupped her cheek and leaned close to her, his breath flavored with the meat and the beer, his eyes bright.

She looked into her heart. There was no affection there, not even lust. There was only calculation: If I do this, will it increase my chances of keeping Brica alive another day? Only calculation — but that was enough.

She stood, and let him lead her out of the hall. She looked back once to see Carausias’s eyes on her, rheumy, but a mirror of her own coldness.

The elevator, having risen up through the nested levels of the Crypt, delivered Lucia and Rosa Poole to a small front office. Rosa nodded to the staff. They walked out to the street, emerging into thin November sunlight. They both squinted at the brightness. Rosa donned small fashionable-looking sunglasses, while Lucia pulled on her heavy blue-tinted spectacles, of the kind issued to every member of the Order.

This was a modern district of residences, shops, and businesses, just off the Via Cristoforo Colombo, a broad, traffic-heavy avenue that snaked south from the center of Rome, running roughly parallel to the ancient Appian Way. Rosa led Lucia to a small taxi rank; they had to wait a couple of minutes for a cab to arrive. The air was clear, crisp, not very cold.

Lucia wasn’t sure where Rosa was taking her. The older woman had barely spoken two sentences to her since calling for her in the scrinium . But there was no escape, any more than from her periods.

Lucia suppressed a sigh. She had forgiven Pina for what had felt like another betrayal. Pina had only done what would have had to be done eventually; in her way she had tried her best to help. Lucia just had to endure whatever was to come.

The cab took them north toward the city center. They passed a breach in the massive, ugly old Aurelian Wall and headed northeast, driving through the areas dominated by the old imperial ruins, to the Piazza Venezia.

The Venezia was the heart of the Roman traffic system. It was just a broad field of tarmac sprawling before the Vittoriano , the grandiose Vittorio Emanuele monument erected to celebrate Italy’s national unity, a mound of pillars and marble that loomed over the skyline, even dominating the imperial relics. The Venezia was crowded with traffic that seemed to be flying in every direction, and Lucia quailed when the cabdriver launched his vehicle into the mob, horn honking briskly. Gradually, as cars edged this way and that, nobody apparently giving way to anybody else, a route forward opened up, bit by bit, and the driver made his way to the exit he wanted, for the west-running Via del Plebiscito.

To Lucia’s surprise, Rosa took her hand in her own. Rosa smiled, her eyes hidden. “Listen, I know how you feel. I know how difficult this is for you.”

Sitting in the cab, apparently unperturbed by its jolts as it lurched forward through the traffic, Rosa was elegant, cool, and her narrow face with its strong nose seemed kind, though Lucia could not make out her eyes. She was tall, taller than Lucia, certainly taller and more slender than most Order members, who tended to be short and somewhat squat. But then, as everybody knew, Rosa was one of the few at the heart of the Order who hadn’t been born in the Crypt. Though she had come to the Order as a child, her fluent Italian still bore traces of England, short vowels and harsh consonants.

“At school we come up here every week,” Lucia said. “To the city, I mean. Even so I can never get used to it.”

“What, exactly? The crowds, the noise — the light?”

“Not that,” Lucia said, thinking. “The chaos . Everybody going every which way, all the time.”

Rosa nodded. “Yes. You know that I’m something of an outsider. Well, I always will be, and it’s not to be helped. But it does give me a certain perspective. There are some things about the Crypt that we all take for granted, and we notice only when they are taken away. In the Crypt everything is orderly, calm, and everybody knows what she is doing, where she is going. Even the temperature is controlled, the air clean and fresh. But out here it’s quite the opposite. Out here is anarchy, everything out of control. And now you, Lucia, feel that even your own body is out of your control. And you fear—”

“I fear I don’t belong anymore,” Lucia blurted.

The driver had a broad head, all but hairless, with a band of greasy pores above his collar. He looked about fifty. At her slightly raised voice, he turned, glancing in his mirror. His speculative gaze was heavy on her; she looked away.

Rosa said, “You won’t be turned out — out into this messy chaos — if that’s what you fear. In fact, quite the opposite. You’re more likely to be drawn into the center.”

“The center?”

“You’ll see. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Lucia. The Order needs you.” Rosa smiled. “It’s just that you may be needed for something other than record keeping or calligraphy … Ah. Here we are.”

Lucia was, of course, full of questions. But the cab was drawing to a halt, and there was no time to ask.

She got out of the cab to find herself in the Piazza di Rotonda. The square was thronged with tourists bustling between ice cream stalls and cafй s. She stood before the blocky walls of a great building that loomed over them like a fortress — and indeed, said Rosa, it had been used as a fortress in the Middle Ages, as had been most of Rome’s ancient buildings; the brick walls were, after all, six yards thick. This was the Pantheon.

Rosa pointed to a ditch around the walls. “See that? The road level is higher than the base of the building. Since this place was built the rubble and dirt has risen like a tide … Come.” She took Lucia’s hand.

They walked under the great colonnaded portico at the front of the building. Though the height of the tourist season had been the summer, the space among the great gray columns was crowded by people,

many in shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps and with tiny cameras in their hands. In the Crypt everybody was trim, neat, and would get out of each other’s way without having to be shoved. Not here. The people all seemed grossly overfed and clumsy to Lucia. It was like being in a herd of cattle — slow-moving and aggressive cattle at that.

And then there were the boys, and even some of the men, who looked at her, stared in fact, with a calculating intensity, a greed that made her shudder.

But there was one boy whose gaze seemed clearer. He looked perhaps eighteen, with a pale face, high forehead, and red hair in which sunglasses nestled. He stared, too — he seemed fascinated by her — but there was an innocence in his gaze. He actually smiled at her. She flushed and looked away.