Ultima

75

Earthshine’s protective egg broke open around them, just as it was supposed to, dumping Mardina, Chu and the baby on the floor of the Hatch pit, with all their bits of gear.

But the Hatch lid was open above them. Looking up, Mardina saw a slice of what looked like the roof of a dome—higher, more solid-looking than the one Earthshine had built.

Mardina clutched her baby and stared at Chu. “Alive,” she whispered.

“Alive. But where?”

“Or rather, when?”

Gwen, half asleep, yawned hugely.

“Come on,” Mardina said softly. “Let’s get out of here.”

They had a lightweight, fold-up ladder fabricated by Earthshine for just this instance. They dug it out of the baggage and the shell shards littering the pit, quickly set it up against the wall, and Chu scrambled up. He didn’t look around, Mardina saw; he had eyes only for his family, still in the pit. He reached down. “Pass her up.”

Mardina took a couple of steps up the ladder, and then, clumsily, passed up the bundle that was Gwen. They fumbled the handover, making Gwen squirm and grumble, and they laughed.

“Look at us,” said Mardina. “Two idiots, traveling in time.”

“But we’re here.”

“That we are.”

Once Chu had Gwen safely in his arms, Mardina scrambled quickly out of the pit herself, and took back the baby.

Then they stood together and faced a new world.

They stood on a smoothly finished floor of neatly interlocking tiles. Over their heads soared that dome, and now that she could see it fully, Mardina could make out its scale; it was indeed much wider, taller than Earthshine’s improvised tent. There were smaller buildings, structures under the dome, banks of machinery, some kind of towering monument at the very center of the dome—there was a smell of industry, of electricity, and all of it brilliantly lit by suspended fluorescent lamps.

In this first moment, clutching the baby, Mardina could take in none of the detail. She looked up at the sky, which was easily visible through the dome.

“No Andromeda,” said Chu. “A starry sky. And look…”

There was one very brilliant pair of stars, close to the zenith.

Mardina raised herself on the balls of her feet, rocked up and down. “How does the gravity seem to you?”

“The same as before. And you?”

“Yes… I think we’re still on Per Ardua. But a younger Per Ardua. Before the double-star system they all spoke of from the olden times broke up and drifted away. Maybe that’s it up there, the Hoof of the Centaur. We have our star charts. Maybe with those we could figure out where we are—or rather, when.”

“Or,” Chu said, “we could just ask.” He pointed to the center of the dome.

Where a woman stood with her back to them, making some kind of note on a scroll. She stood beneath that central monument—which, Mardina saw now, was a pillar of stone, finely worked, engraved with what looked like Latin letters to Mardina, but she didn’t recognize the words, and it had a kind of lightning-bolt sculpture of steel at the very top.

And an animal came bounding around the corner of the monument, heading straight at them.

A dog? No. It ran on two legs. It was feathered green and crimson, as gaudy as any Inca priest she’d ever seen, like a running bird, perhaps. But its head was huge, and nothing like a human’s, nothing like a bird’s, a big blocky head dominated by a huge jaw—a jaw that opened now, and the animal roared.

They’d both been frozen with shock. Now Chu reacted. With one hand he pulled Mardina and the baby behind his body, and with the other drew his pugio dagger and took a stance. “Stay back!”

The woman by the monument turned at the noise. “Halt, Hermann!”

To Mardina’s huge relief, the beast slowed immediately, skidding to a halt on the smooth floor. She saw now that its feet were clawed, each talon longer than Chu’s pugio. For a heartbeat it stared at its prey with evident anguish.

“Komm! Hermann, komm!”

The feathered beast hung its head and loped away.

The woman approached the new arrivals, her hand resting on a weapon at her belt. She wore a uniform of jet-black, with lightning flashes at the collar and sleeves. She wore no hat, and her gray hair was pulled back tightly from her forehead. She was old, Mardina saw immediately, though she walked confidently enough. And she looked hauntingly familiar.

“Wie heißen Sie?”

Mardina, clutching Gwen, murmured to Chu, “Put your dagger away…”

“Was machen Sie hier?”

Mardina stared at the woman. It was Stef Kalinski. Or Penny. Or, Mardina thought wildly, another Kalinski twin. “You!”

But the woman had eyes only for Chu. Just as Mardina had recognized her, now she, evidently, recognized Chu.

The woman dropped to one knee and hung her head. “Verzeihung, Eure Exzellenz.”

Chu just stared back, astonished.

Always another door, Mardina thought. Just as grandfather Yuri had said. “Let me handle this.” She handed the baby to Chu, spread her hands, and walked forward, toward the kneeling stranger.