“This is Europa—Europe. Some of the oldest Roman provinces. Give or take the odd invasion from Asia, this whole swath from the Baltic coast in the north to the Mediterranean in the south has been urbanized continually for more than two thousand years, and the result is what you can see. Many of the denser nodes map onto cities we’re familiar with from our own timeline, which are either successor cities to Roman settlements—like Paris, for instance—or, in places the Romans never reached in our timeline, they follow the geographic logic of their position. Hamburg, Berlin. The nature of the country is different farther north, the Danish peninsula, Scandinavia. Just as heavily urbanized, but a different geography.”
“The heartland of my people,” Ari said. “You may have images of the canal which severs the peninsula from the mainland. A very ancient construction, which was widened extensively when kernels became available.”
Penny goggled. “You’re telling me you use kernels to shape landscapes as well? On Earth?”
“This is Terra, Penny,” McGregor said evenly. “Not Earth. I guess that’s their business.”
Penny showed images now of a desolate coastline, an angry gray sea, ports and industrial cities defiant blights on the gray-brown landscape. “This is northern Asia,” she said. “In our reality, the Arctic Ocean coast of Russia. There never was a Russia here, I don’t believe. But nor is there any sign of a boreal forest at these latitudes. Even the sea looks sterile—nobody fishing out there—and no sign of any Arctic ice, by the way, though we haven’t been able to see all the way to the pole.”
Ari shrugged. “It is dead country. It always has been dead. Good only for extraction of minerals, methane for fuel.”
Penny tapped her screen. “I’m going to pan south. The extent of the main Roman holdings seems to reach the Urals, roughly. Whereas you have the Xin empire, presumably some descendant of the early Chinese states we know about, extending up from the north of central China through Mongolia and eastern Siberia, all the way to the Bering Strait. In Central Asia, though—”
More craters. A desolate, lifeless landscape.
This made Beth gasp. “What happened here?”
Ari sighed. “The steppe was historically always a problem. A source of ferocious nomadic herdsmen and warriors, who, whenever the weather took a turn for the worst, would come bursting out of their heartland to ravage the urban communities to the west and east. Finally Xin and Rome agreed to administer those worthless plains as a kind of joint protectorate. It is an arrangement that worked quite well, for centuries. Mostly.”
McGregor’s grin was cold. “Mostly?”
“Wherever two great empires clash directly there will be war. And when weapons such as the kernels are available—well, you can see the result.”
Penny said, “Here’s the Xin homeland. Again there seems to be a historical continuity with the cities and nations we know about from the early first millennium…”
Some of the images had been taken at night. Half a continent glowed, a network of light embedded with jewel-like cities—and yet here and there Beth could see the distinctive circular holes of darkness that must be relics of kernel strikes.
Ari was watching Beth, as much as he was following the images. “Your reaction is different from the others. You seem—dismayed.”
“That’s one word for it. I grew up on an empty world.”
“Ah. Whereas all this, in comparison, billions of us crammed into vast developments—”
“How do you breathe? How do you find dignity?”
“You mean, how will you live here?” He smiled. “Beth Eden Jones, you, of all the crew of the Tatania, are by far the most intriguing to me. The most complicated. If fortune allows it, I hope to be able to help you find a place in this, the third world you have had to learn to call home…”
Penny said now, “As Ari has told us, the rest of the world is a kind of playpen for the three superpowers of Eurasia. Here’s Australia.”
Beth saw arid crimson plains like a vision of Mars, pocked with the circular scars of explosions, the rectangular wounds of tremendous mines.
“Mined by the Xin,” Ari said.
“My mother was from Australia,” Beth said. “I visited once. What happened to the native people here?”
Ari looked at her curiously. “What native people?”
“Africa,” Penny announced, pulling up image after image. “To the south, extensive mining and farming by the Xin, it seems. To the north, the Sahara—but look at it…”
The desert was covered by a grid of huge rectilinear canals.
Ari said, “One of the Romans’ most significant projects. And they are slowly succeeding in making the desert bloom, as you can see. But there is a danger that in years to come, as they advance their colonies ever farther south—”
“And the Xin work their way north from their southern farmlands,” McGregor said, “they’re going to meet in the middle, and clash. It will be Central Asia all over again.”
“Let us hope not,” Ari said fervently. “But, yes, those of us druidh who devote their efforts to projections of the future see this as one possibility.”
“Here’s South America,” Penny said.
“Or Valhalla Inferior,” Ari said mildly. “A battleground between the Xin and the Romans for centuries.”
Beth saw farmland and mining country cut across by vast river systems, and scarred by swaths of desert. “What about Amazonia?”
Penny said drily, “You’d never know the rain forest had ever been there. And again, we’ll probably never know what happened to the indigenous populations.”
In North America, images taken in the dark of night showed a band of fire that Beth thought roughly followed the Canadian border with the United States.
Penny said, “The continent is relatively undeveloped. There’s a big city of some kind on the site of St. Louis, another in Massachusetts. Other than that, small towns and army bases. There is what looks like a Roman legionary fortress on the site of downtown Seattle, for instance, where I grew up—I looked to see. And this is the only place on the surface of the Earth where it looks like there is active warfare in progress.”
Ari said, “This is an arena I know well—I have served here. We Scand reached this country first, more than a millennium ago, and then the Brikanti followed us—and the Romans, some using Scand ships, came soon after. Now, to the north is Brikanti country, once thickly forested, where we extracted wood for our oceangoing ships. Our principal city, near the east coast, is called Leifsholm. To the south, farmland developed by the Romans, a great breadbasket. Their own provincial capital, on the course of a mighty river, is called Messalia. We meet at the latitude of the inland seas. There are no great cities here. In a sense it is a question of tradition, of history. The old countries, Europa and Asia, are where you build cities, whether you are Xin or Roman or indeed Brikanti. The rest of the world is to be exploited.”
Penny said, “That border country looks like a war zone.”
“So it is,” Ari said. “The Romans like to send their legions marching north. We oppose them with fortresses and counterraids.”
“I thought you guys cooperated. You run interstellar missions together, for instance.”
Ari shrugged. “We cooperate when we fly to the stars, while warring on Terra, in the Valhallas. It is a kind of game. Lethal, of course, but a game. The Romans give their legions marching practice and their generals triumphs. We, conversely, enjoy tripping them up. It is not logical, but when has the politics of empire ever been rational? We must retain our separate identities somehow, Penny Kalinski. And after all, the Romans did consider invading Pritanike once. You don’t forgive something like that.”