“And the bright object at the center—”
“Another star cluster. Very dense. It’s thought there is a black hole in there, with the mass of a million suns.”
“I don’t see any aliens.”
He traced out the rings. “These rings are expanding. Hundreds of miles a second. And the less structured clouds are hot, turbulent. It’s thought that the big rings are debris from massive explosions in the core. There was a giant bang about a million years ago. The most recent eruption seems to have been twenty- seven thousand years ago. The light took twenty-five thousand years to get here — it arrived about two thousand years ago; the Romans might have seen something … If you look wider you can see the debris of more explosions, reaching much deeper back in time, some of them still more immense.”
“Explosions?”
“Nobody knows what causes them. Stars are simple objects, George, physically speaking. So are galaxies, even. Much simpler than bacteria, say. There really shouldn’t be such mysteries. I think it’s possible we’re seeing intelligence there — or rather stupidity.”
I laughed, but it was a laugh of wonder at the audacity of the idea. “The Galaxy center as a war zone?”
He didn’t laugh. “Why not?”
I felt chilled, but I had no clear idea why. “And how does Kuiper fit into this?”
“Well, I’ve no idea. Not yet.” He pulled up an image of his own face on CNN. “I’m hoping that if I can tap into the interest in Kuiper, I’ll get resources to push some of these questions farther. For instance, there may be links between the core explosions and Earth’s past.”
“Links?”
“Possibly the explosions tie in with extinction events, for instance.”
“I thought an asteroid impact killed off the dinosaurs.”
“That was a one-off. There have been eighteen other events. You can see it in the fossil record. Eighteen that we know of …”
I lifted my mug to my lips, but found it drained of coffee. I put the mug on the computer table and stood. “I ought to start my day.”
He looked at me doubtfully. “I’ve gone on too long. I’m sorry; I don’t get much chance to talk; most people wouldn’t listen at all … You think I’m a crank.”
“Not at all.”
“Of course you do.” He stood, looming over me, and grinned. Again there was that disarming self-
deprecation, and I sensed, uncomfortable again, that he really was glad to have renewed his connection with me, regardless of my reaction. “Maybe I am a crank. But that doesn’t mean the questions aren’t valid. Anyhow, you’re the one with the abducted sister.”
“That’s true. I ought to go.”
“Come back and tell me what you find.”
Chapter 7
Magnus sat cross-legged, hunched over the little wooden game board.
Magnus was a great bear of a man with a head the size of a pumpkin, it seemed to Regina, a head so big his helmet seemed to perch on top of it. But then, his helmet wasn’t actually his but had been passed on to him from another soldier, just as had his sword and shield. Meanwhile his cowhide boots and his woolen tunic and his cucullus, his heavy hooded cloak, had all been made in the village behind the Wall, nothing to do with military issue at all. That awkward secondhand helmet had a dent in it, big enough to have held a goose’s egg. Regina wondered sometimes if the mighty blow that had inflicted the hollow had been the cause of the original owner’s “retirement.”
For all his bulk Magnus was a patient man, which was why Aetius approved of him as a companion for Regina. After five years on the Wall she thought she knew her way around, but some of the rougher soldiers, she had been told in no uncertain terms, were not suitable companions for the prefect’s twelve- year-old granddaughter.
Magnus was a good man, then. But he was so slow. His great ham of a hand hovered briefly over the board, but then he withdrew it.
“Oh, Magnus, come on,” Regina pleaded. “What’s so difficult ? It’s only a game of soldiers, and we’ve barely started. The position’s simple.”
“We haven’t all got a prefect’s blood in our veins, miss,” he murmured laconically. He settled himself more comfortably, his spear cradled against his chest, and resumed his patient inspection of the board.
“Well, my backside is getting cold,” she said. She jumped to her feet and began to pace up and down along the little tiled ridge behind the battlements.
It was a bright autumn day, and the northern British sky was a deep, rich blue. This was a sentry’s lookout point, here on the wall of the fortress of Brocolitia — in fact, strictly speaking Magnus was on sentry duty right now — and she could see across the countryside, to the farthest horizon in every direction. The land here was rolling moorland, bleak even at the height of midsummer, and as autumn drew in it was bleaker still. There was no sign of life save for a single thread of black smoke that rose toward the sky, far to the north, so far away its source was lost in the mist that lingered even now, so close to noon.
And if she looked to left or right, to east and west, she could see the line of the Wall itself, striding away across a natural ridge of hard, black rock.
The Wall was a curtain of tiled brick and concrete, everywhere at least five times a man’s height. A steep-sloped ditch ran along the north side. It was clogged with rubbish and weeds — and in some places the detritus of battles, broken sword blades and dented shields and smashed wheels; sometimes the hairy folk from the north would creep down to scavenge bits of iron. To the south, beyond the line of the road that ran parallel to the Wall, was another broad trench called the vallum. The vallum had been filled in here and there, to provide easier access between the fortresses on the Wall itself and the muddy little community of huts and roundhouses that had, over the generations, grown up to the south.
It was thrilling to think that the Wall’s great line was drawn right across the neck of the country. On a clear day she could see the sentries walking back and forth along its length, all the way to the horizon, like ants on a bit of string. And while on the north side there was nothing but moorland, heather, and garbage, on the south side there was a whole string of communities, inhabited by the soldiers and their families, and those who lived off them. It was like a single town, some of the soldiers said, a Thin Town eighty miles long, a belt of drinking and whoring and cockfighting and gambling, and other vices she understood even less.
But much had changed during the Wall’s long lifetime — so she had learned from Aetius’s dogged teaching. The threat the Wall faced had evolved. Compared to the scattered, disunited tribes faced by Hadrian who’d built the Wall in the first place, today’s great barbarian nations, like the Picts to the north of the Wall, were a much more formidable proposition.
Once, Aetius said, the Empire’s military might had been like the snail of a shelclass="underline" break through it and you were into the soft, defenseless core of the settled provinces. After the disastrous barbarian incursions of the recent past, that lesson had been learned well. For all its imposing presence, today the Wall was only part of a deep defensive system. Far behind the line of the Wall there were forts in the Pennines and farther south, from where any barbarian incursion could be countered. And north of the Wall itself there were more forts — though few of them manned these days. More effective were the arcani who worked among the northern tribes, spies spreading dissension and rumor and bringing back information about possible threats.