LITMIR.BIZ

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is terrible. We’ve also had some problems with the units — the oxygen leads are inefficient — but have managed at last to bring them on line. We now have fifty portables up and the colony’s impressive, if I say so myself.”

      Felix’s heart surged. He was proud of his mother. As the chief engineer for CosmoComm, a company that specialized in off-world projects, she was always travelling to distant regions, Mars, Deimos, the moon, and Ganymede, to ensure new portables were properly installed. Before her departure they’d toured the Clavius observatory, home to the earth’s biggest space telescope. Studying a screen that had projected scenes of Ganymede’s surface, they’d detected a tiny cluster of lights, from the outpost erected by the region’s first explorers. Barely able to control her excitement, she had revealed that she loved to construct portables because they formed the foundations for future cities and would spread human life even farther afield.

      “Apart from the units, there’s not much else to report,” she went on. “No, wait. Two days ago we were struck by a comet. It shook the moon’s surface and blasted a crater over two miles wide. But other than that, my routines are the same. I miss you badly and can’t wait to return. I’m getting tired of the same old view. Here, let me adjust the camera so you can see for yourself.”

      His mother’s face vanished and an alien landscape took shape. In the foreground was a plain of ice, with a brown hue due to the atmosphere’s ions. In the distance were hulking crags of rock, the result of prehistoric crater collisions: their rough-hewn peaks craned up to the sky, desperate to catch a glimpse of the sun, which wobbled into view once a week for three hours. Of course there wasn’t any greenery present — no trees, no shrubs, not a single blade of grass. And because there was a total absence of wind, everything was preternaturally still, as if Felix were looking at a photograph or painting.

      Jupiter was hovering above this landscape, seemingly within arm’s reach of its moon. It was … vast. At one stage the camera was pointed straight at the planet and its bulk took up nine-tenths of the sky. Like its moon, it was beautiful but forbidding.

      “Lonely, isn’t it?” she said, appearing again, “And do you know what the earth looks like from here? It’s no different from one of a billion stars. I sometimes find it hard to believe that on a tiny speck of light like that there are oceans, lakes, flowers, birds, trees, buildings, and crowds of people.”

      Felix nodded and was reminded, of all things, of his father’s place of work. The building contained millions of books on shelves that reached right up to the ceiling’s rafters. Exploring its aisles, he imagined each volume, with its collection of ideas, represented a world in miniature and that the repository itself was a universe …

      “On a more cheerful note,” she added, “My job here will be finished in a month. The trip home will take at least two weeks — I’ll be transferring twice, on Mars and Deimos — but in six weeks time we’ll be together.

      I can’t wait —”

      Her face dissolved and reassembled, like a pond whose surface has been broken by a pebble.

      “Oh dear,” she said. “The interference is increasing. I’d better say goodbye before the signal disappears. By the way, the disruption will be bad for awhile, so I might not call for the next three weeks. Take care, both of you. I love you with all —”

      The hologram ended before she finished her sentence.

      Felix glanced outside the living-room window. It afforded him a view of the city’s downtown region, with its mile-high skyscrapers whose totalium finish reflected the afternoon light. Strange to say, he was reminded of the ruins in the Roman Forum. Decrepit piles of brick and marble, the temples, basilicas, and pockmarked arches had at one time convinced each ancient Roman that his empire and wealth would endure forever. And now? The city’s aqueducts, roads, religion, buildings, and poems were long forgotten.

      “You are frowning. If the sun is bothering you, I can tint the window.”

      “That’s okay, Mentor. I’m enjoying the view.”

      “It is very fine.”

      “Populations think their ways will last forever. But I bet these buildings will vanish one day, like the Parthenon, the pyramids, or the Coliseum.”

      “A totalium structure should last eight hundred and sixty-two years on average.”

      “That’s not what I mean. I’m saying we don’t care about the people before us. A hundred years from now, who’ll remember we existed?”

      “Forgive me, Felix. I have not been programmed to address such feelings.”

      “Never mind. It’s my mother’s message. They always turn me inside out.”

      “You should sit outside until your father arrives. The tranquility will you do good.”

      “That’s a fine idea, Mentor. I’ll follow your suggestion.”

      Retrieving the Life of Crassus, Felix approached a door, which Mentor swiftly opened. Outside was a spiral staircase that led into a well-trimmed garden. As he stared into the greenery below, Felix was thinking that he’d lied to Mentor. His mother’s call didn’t bother him so much as the collapse of those two people that day. His instincts told him something odd was going on.

      Still, he had his lesson to think of. Descending the stairs, he put his worries aside and pretended he was entering the distant past.

      Crassus was standing in the thick of his army, forty thousand men, all told. They were in Assyria, in an empty plain, with the nearest source of water some ten miles distant. A small Parthian army crowned the hills before him. An hour ago their ranks had been thicker and their archers had fired constant volleys of arrows, pinning every Roman down and preventing battle at close quarters. Finally his son had led a cavalry charge and, in true Roman fashion, beaten the enemy back. Proud of his son’s manliness, Crassus was awaiting his return.

      “We should leave,” his legate Cassius advised. “Before the enemy regroups.”

      “I told you already,” Crassus growled, “when Publius returns, we’ll proceed to Carrhae.”

      “Where is he? He should have been back. If we don’t leave soon …”

      “We stay until he’s here!” Crassus thundered. “If not for his charge, we’d be riddled with arrows and …”

      A reverberation of drums interrupted — the Parthian way of sounding an attack. On the hill before them a blinding flash shone forth and a cloud of dust filled most of the sky: waves of Parthians marched into sight, archers in front, cataphracts behind, their heavy armour impervious to spear and gladius.

      “We should have left,” Cassius muttered.

      “Where’s my son?” Crassus clamoured. “And where are my horsemen?”

      As if in answer, the cataphracts raised their pikes on high. On each was fixed the head of a Roman. And there, on the tallest pike … Crassus would have groaned had his thirst allowed: staring back at him, his eyes fearfully wide in death, was the severed head of his beloved boy.

      As Crassus hid his face, the Parthians closed in for the kill …

      “Felix!”

      Seated beneath an apple tree, Felix raised his eyes from the Life of Crassus and watched his father slowly draw near. Dressed in a black Zacron suit — his taste in clothes was very old-fashioned — Mr. Taylor projected an air of formality yet was clearly pleased to be in the garden. The abundance of green was such a treat for his eyes, the grass, the shrubs, the two fruit trees, both of which were starting to blossom. A wall of bushes was broken here and there to accommodate flowers or the bust of a thinker. And along the garden’s boundaries was a high brick wall that blocked out everything except the sky’s expanse and the meandering clouds.

      With its vegetation and simple fixtures, it was hard to believe this sanctuary was perched on a terrace fifteen stories

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