Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

The corridor was crowded, of course. In the Crypt, everywhere was crowded. People smiled, nodded, and ducked out of the way as Rosa forged ahead. Almost everybody was female. Most people wore everyday clothing, but some wore simple cotton smocks that looked like nurses’ uniforms. Though most shared the usual lozenge-shaped features and smoky gray eyes — and even though everybody seemed young, not much older than she was — there wasn’t a single face here that Lucia recognized.

Lucia had heard bits of dormitory gossip that the Crypt might hold as many as ten thousand people in its great halls and corridors. That scarcely seemed credible — but then, wherever you looked, there were always more corridors, more chambers, stretching on into the electric-lit dimness: who was to say how far it stretched? She would never know, for she would never need to know. Ignorance is strength …

And it was possible, she thought now, that nobody knew the whole picture — nobody at all.

Here on the third level people stared at her openly. Their manner wasn’t hostile — some of them even smiled at her — but Lucia felt herself cringe. This wasn’t her place; they knew it, and she knew it. The pressure of those accusing glares made her long to flee back to where she belonged. She felt breathless, almost panicking, as if the air in these deep chambers were foul.

If only she could be like Rosa, who seemed to be accustomed to flitting between the stories with the ease of a dust mote in the Pantheon.

At last Rosa paused by a door. Lucia felt a vast relief. Whatever lay ahead, at least she was done with the ordeal of the corridor. Rosa opened the door, and let Lucia go through first.

She was immediately struck by a sense of richness. It was like a drawing room, she thought, with dark oak panels on the walls, and marble inlays in the floor, and furniture, tables and chairs and couches. The furniture looked as if it had come from a number of periods, perhaps as far back as the eighteenth century, but there was a wide-screen television, set in a large walnut cabinet. The furniture was heavily used: worn patches on the seat covers, scuffs on the table surfaces, even wear in the marble tiles on the floor. Clocks ticked patiently, their faces darkened by a patina of time. There was more of a sense of age here than in any room she had ever visited in the Crypt.

And there was a unique smell — sour, strong, quite unlike the antiseptic hospital smell of the corridor — something hot, animal, oddly disturbing.

At the center there was a bed, or a couch, the single largest piece of furniture in the room. There was somebody lying on the couch, still, frail looking, reading a book. There was one other person in the room, a young woman who sat patiently in a big, worn armchair, quietly watching the woman in the bed. Rosa nodded at the attendant, smiling.

Rosa led Lucia forward. Their footsteps seemed loud on the marble, but as they neared the bed they reached a thick rug that deadened the noise.

There was one large painting on the rear wall, Lucia saw now. It showed a melodramatic scene of a line of women, their clothing rent, standing before a mob of marauding men. The women were wounded and defenseless, and the intent of the men was obvious. But the women would not give way. The picture was captioned: 1527 — SACCO DI ROMA, the Sack of Rome.

The woman on the bed did not look up from her book. She was very old, Lucia saw. Her face looked as if it had dried out and imploded, like a sun-dried tomato, her skin leathery and marked with liver spots. Wisps of gray hair lay scattered on the cushion behind her head. On a metal stand beside her bed a plastic bag fed some pale fluid into her arm. A blanket lay over her legs, and she wore a heavy, warm- looking bed jacket, although the room seemed hot to Lucia.

This was Maria Ludovica, then, one of the legendary matres . She looked terribly old, tired, ill — and yet she was pregnant; the swelling in her belly, under the blanket, was unmistakable.

The stink was powerful here, a stink like urine. Lucia felt drawn, repelled at the same time.

Rosa leaned forward and said softly, “Mamma — Mamma—”

Maria looked up blearily, her eyes rheumy gray pebbles. “What, what? Who’s that? Oh, it’s you, Rosa Poole.” She glanced down at her book irritably, tried to focus, then closed the book with a sigh. “Oh, never mind. I always thought old age would at least give me time to read. But by the time I’ve got to the bottom of the page I’ve forgotten what was at the top …” She leered at Lucia, showing a toothless mouth. “What an irony — eh? So, Rosa Poole, who is this you’ve brought to see me? One of mine?”

“One of yours, Mamma. She is Lucia. Fifteen years old.”

“And you’ve reached your menarche.” Maria reached out with one clawlike hand; she compressed Lucia’s breast, not unkindly. Lucia forced herself not to flinch. “Well, perhaps she’ll do. Is she to be your champion, Rosa?”

“Mamma, you shouldn’t talk that way—”

Maria winked, hideously, at Lucia. “I’m too old not to speak the truth. Too old and sick and tired. And Rosa doesn’t like it. Well, I’ve stirred you all up — haven’t I? At least I can still do that. It’s just as when I’m ready to pup. I can see how it agitates them, all these slim breastless sisters. Their little nipples ache, and their dry bellies cramp — isn’t that true, Cecilia?” She snapped the question at her patient nurse, who merely smiled. “Well, I’m pregnant again — and I’m dying, and that’s stirred them up even more. Hasn’t it, Rosa Poole?” Maria cackled. “I feel like the pope, by God. White smoke, white smoke …”

Lucia remembered what Pina had said, about a disturbance in the Crypt going back years, of more girls like her — more freaks, she thought gloomily — coming into their menarche, instead of staying young, like everybody else, everybody normal. Perhaps the illness of this strange old woman really was having some kind of effect — perhaps it had somehow affected her .

If so, she resented it.

Maria Ludovica saw that in her eyes. “By Coventina’s dugs, there is steel in this one, Rosa. If she is your choice she is a good one.” That claw hand shot out again to grab Lucia’s arm. She whispered, “You know, child, I’m old, and shut up in here, but I’m no fool, and I’m not out of touch. Things are changing in the world, faster than ever, faster than I can remember. The new technology — phones and computers, wires and cables and radio waves everywhere — everybody joined up … We have many new opportunities to do business — don’t we, Rosa? You see, Rosa and her rivals know this. But they know that if it is to prosper in a time of change the Order must be based on the firmest of foundations. And I, a foundation stone, am crumbling. And so the rivals maneuver, through looks and glances, visits of their candidates and inquiries after my health, testing their strength against each other as against me—”

Lucia said, “Rosa, what does she mean?”

Rosa shook her head. “Nothing. She means nothing. Mamma, you should not say these things. There are no rivalries, no candidates. There is only the Order. That’s all there ever has been.”

Maria held her gaze for a few seconds, and then subsided. “Very well, Rosa Poole. If you say so.”

Rosa said, “I think the mamma is tiring, Lucia. I wanted you to meet her before—”

“Before I die, Rosa Poole?”

“Not at all, Mamma-nonna, ” Rosa said, gently scolding. “You’ll be giving us all trouble for a long time to come yet. Say good-bye, Lucia … Give Maria a kiss.”

Lucia could think of few things she would less rather do. Maria watched with her wet, birdlike eyes as Lucia took a step forward, leaned over, and brushed her lips against Maria’s imploded cheek. But despite its off-putting appearance it was just skin, after all, human skin, soft and warm.