Ultima by Stephen Baxter

subject of scrutiny. And as they watch us, they watch each other too.”
    McGregor grunted. “And everybody is armed to the teeth.”
    â€œThat’s the idea. The fact that there is a native Xin among you, or so we would classify Jiang Youwei, makes the situation that much more complex;
all
sides feel they have a claim. At some point the
trierarchus
, as the command authority on the spot, will need to decide whether it is worth the risk of trying to transport you to Brikanti territory on the ground, or else to give you up to either Rome or Xin—or even to cast you adrift in your
Tatania
and let them fight it out over you. For we Brikanti, you see, are a small and nimble power who strive to stay safe by not being trodden on by either of our world’s lumbering giants . . .”
    Penny Kalinski joined them now, entering through the door at the back of the cabin. Swimming easily in the absence of gravity, she looked comfortable in a loose-fitting Brikanti costume of tunic and trousers. She was carrying a slate, and sipping something from a covered pottery mug. “Watered-down mead,” she said to Beth. “Pleasant stuff.”
    Beth had to smile. “You look as if you fit in here, Penny.”
    â€œWell, what can you do but make the best of it? I doubt we’re going home any time soon. Even if ‘home’ still exists, in any meaningful sense. So what’s going on? I heard we were due to pass over Britain; I wanted to come see.”
    Lex McGregor did a double take, turned to the panorama of the world below, and frowned at what he saw. “Really?
That’s
Britain? What the hell?”
    Beth, a stranger to Earth, had comparatively little preconception about what she expected to see, looking down on Britain / Pritanike. She saw a kind of archipelago, a scatter of islands off the shore of a greater continent to the east. There was a grayish urban tangle laid over the green-brown of the countryside on the eastern coast of the larger of the islands, nearest the continent; she saw the glitter of glass and metal, arrow-straight roads. And in the mountainous country of an island to the far north she saw tremendous rectangular workings that looked as if they might rival the minefields of the lunar
maria
.
    Lex said grimly, “I was born in England. The southern counties, Angleterre. I have seen my home country from space many times. But I do not recognize
that.
Half of it’s missing altogether.”
    Penny touched his shoulder. “History’s been different here, Lex. Rome in the west never fell, apparently. Here, they industrialized centuries before we did. With the consequences you’d expect.”
    â€œGreenhouse gases. Deforestation. Sea level rises?”
    â€œThat’s it. It will all have gone a lot farther and a lot earlier than in our timeline.
We
had the great twenty-first century crisis of the climate Jolts, the heavy-handed repair work of the Heroic Generation. Maybe here, as it unfolded more slowly, they understood it all less—maybe they cared less—and just adapted to it. I think we can expect to see the coastlines transformed all around the world. Lowlands lost, like south and east England here.”
    McGregor squinted. “That big sprawl in northern England looks like it’s centered on York.”
    â€œThat is Eboraki,” said Ari. “The capital of an independent Pritanike since the days of Queen Kartimandia herself, she who defied Rome. It has always been a city of war. Later, in the early days of contact between my own ancestral people and the Brikanti, for some years Eboraki was held by us. It was a Scand city, not a Brikanti one.”
    Penny grinned. “But all that’s a long time ago. Forgive and forget?”
    â€œAt least we Brikanti and Scand loathe each other less than we loathe the Romans and the Xin. Now Eboraki is the capital of a world empire—though we have no emperors.”
    Lex