Gunpowder Empire

by Harry Turtledove

  Amanda wished that hadn’t occurred to her just then. Every once in a while, things happened to you where it didn’t matter how smart you were or how well you remembered or how clearly you felt. Getting stuck in Agrippan Rome sure looked like one of those things. Amanda didn’t see what she or Jeremy could have done to stop that.

  He started to say something else, but some more noise outside the house made him stop. “What now?” Amanda exclaimed. “Lietuvans again?”

  “Doesn’t quite sound like that,” Jeremy answered, and he was right. These shouts sounded happy and excited. They didn’t have the fierce, baying undertone that had been there when people jeered the Lietuvans out of Polisso. He said, “We’d better go find out.” Amanda nodded. Her brother didn’t need to think very clearly to have that straight.

  She got to a window just in time to see and hear another herald coming up the street. “War!” he shouted. “Lietuvan soldiers have crossed the border. We have begun the fight to drive them back. Because the gods love us, we will win. War! Hear ye! Hear ye! War is declared!”

  Seven

  Jeremy had thought bullets and cannonballs would start flying as soon as war between Rome and Lietuva was declared. That was how things worked in his world—not that people there bothered declaring war any more. They just launched missiles and sent tanks over the border. Things were more formal here. The gunpowder empires clung to rituals and customs that had their roots in the days of ancient Greece. And even if bullets and cannonballs flew fast here, too, armies didn’t. They were tied to the speed at which a man could march and a horse-drawn wagon could roll. Nobody went anywhere in a hurry, not in the world of Agrippan Rome.

  The people of Polisso took advantage of the time they had before the Lietuvans arrived. More soldiers came into the town, these troops tramping up from the south. More wagons full of wheat and barley came with them. As far as men and supplies went, Polisso was ready to stand siege.

  Whether the walls were ready was another question. They were made of thick stone, sure enough. But even thick stone walls fell down if enough cannonballs hit them. In the home timeline, people had solved that by building huge earthen ramparts instead of stone walls. They weren’t so impressive, but they worked better. A cannonball that hit piled-up earth didn’t go crash! It went thud! and buried itself without doing much harm.

  Nobody here had figured that out yet. It had taken two or three hundred years to see in the home timeline, and wars there had been a lot more common than they were here. There, in the centuries right after the invention of guns, Europe had been crowded with a whole slew of kingdoms and principalities and duchies and independent archbishoprics and free cities and even the occasional republic. Somebody was always fighting somebody else, and either coming up with new tricks on his own or stealing the almost-new tricks somebody else had come up with a few hundred kilometers away.

  It wasn’t like that here. Almost all of Europe belonged to either Rome or Lietuva. Almost all the Near East belonged to either Rome or Persia. The gunpowder empires did fight among themselves. But they usually fought once a generation, more or less. There wasn’t the unending strife that had lit a fire under change in the home timeline.

  And now is the time, Jeremy thought. Joy and rapture.

  The first Lietuvan cavalrymen reached the outskirts of Polisso eight days after news of the declaration of war. They attacked a wagon train bringing still more grain into the town. Jeremy heard the details only later, in the market square. At the time, all he noticed were a few distant bangs, like Fourth of July fireworks at a park a couple of kilometers away. The big, clumsy matchlock pistols cavalrymen here carried couldn’t be reloaded on horseback. The Lietuvans did most of their damage with bow and sword and lance.

  Most of the time, they would have set fires all through the fields around Polisso. Not much point to that today, though, because it had rained the day before. The horsemen trampled long swaths through the green, growing wheat, then rode back the way they’d come.

  Several of the wagons rumbled past the house where Jeremy and Amanda were living. Some of the animals that pulled them had been hurt. Some of the men who drove them had been hurt, too.

  Jeremy gulped at the sight of bandages strained—soaked—with blood. He gulped even more at the sight of flesh punctured by bullets or split by swords. Some of the wounds had been roughly stitched up in the field. The drivers and guards who’d been hurt moaned or wailed or screamed.

  In Los Angeles in the home timeline, Jeremy saw gore at the movies or on TV or in video games. He’d hardly ever run into the real thing himself. Oh, he’d gone past a restaurant once not long after a shooting, and he’d seen a few traffic accidents where people got hurt. But he’d never seen so many men other men had hurt on purpose before. And he’d never had the feeling, This could happen to me. He did now.

  Doctors ran toward the wounded drivers and guards. They might do a little good. They had long-handled probes for digging out bullets. They could sew up sword-cuts and set broken bones. But all they had to fight pain while they worked was opium, which wasn’t nearly enough. And all they had to fight infection was wine.

  Injured men screamed louder when the doctors splashed it on their wounds. Jeremy would have screamed, too. Rubbing alcohol stung like the devil when you put it on a little scrape. Splashing something full of alcohol on a gaping cut…Just the idea made him shudder.

  Wine wasn’t that good a disinfectant—better than nothing, but not great. And there was more filth in this world than in the home timeline—far more. Some of those wounds would fester. When they did, there was nothing to do but drain them and hope for the best. A lot of the time, that wouldn’t be enough, either. Some men would die of fever. No one in this alternate could do a thing about it.

  About half an hour after the wagons came into Polisso, someone knocked on the front door. Jeremy opened it. Waiting in the street was a lean, dark man in a tunic of good wool but without too much embroidered ornament. After a second or two, Jeremy recognized him. “Good day, sir,” he said politely. “You’re Lucio Claudio, aren’t you?”

  “Called Fusco. Yes, that is correct.” Lucio Claudio nodded. He had the air of somebody who liked to dot every i and cross every t. “I have the honor to act as man of affairs for Gaio Fulvio, called Magno.”

  “Yes, I know. Won’t you come in?” Jeremy stepped inside. “We can sit in the courtyard, if you like. Would you care for some wine and honey cakes?”

  “Thank you. That would be pleasant.” By the frown ironed onto Lucio Claudio’s face, he had trouble finding anything pleasant. But he was being polite, too.

  Jeremy sat him down on a bench in the courtyard. He—politely—admired the flowers. Jeremy went into the kitchen to get wine and cakes for the two of them. While he was there, Amanda came in and hissed, “What’s he want?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Jeremy answered. “He hasn’t said.”

  His sister looked daggers in the direction of Lucio Claudio. “He’s a snoop.”

  “Well, who here isn’t?” Jeremy said. “He’s Gaio Fulvio’s man, too, and Gaio Fulvio is a big wheel in this town. People say he’s got Sesto Capurnio in his back pocket. I wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t just ignore his man of affairs.”

  “Don’t trust him,” Amanda said fiercely.

  “I don’t intend to.” Jeremy picked up the tray. “No matter what you think, I’m not dumb.”

  “Don’t be, that’s all.” Amanda scowled at him.

  He carried the refreshments out to Lucio Claudio. Gaio Fulvio’s man of affairs praised the cakes—once more, politely. He spilled out a small libation for the gods and muttered a prayer before he drank any wine. He waited for Jeremy to do the same. Jeremy did, but in place of the prayer said only, “To the spirit of the Emperor.”

  “You are a Christian?” the local asked, frowning.

  “Yes, we’re Imperial Christians,” Jeremy answered.

  “It is permitted,” Lucio Claudio admitted. His face sai
d it wouldn’t be if he had anything to do with the way things worked. He took another sip of wine, then gave a grudging nod. “Not bad.”

  “Glad you like it,” Jeremy said, even if the man of affairs hadn’t gone that far. “I hope your principal is pleased with his hour-reckoner?”

  “He is.” Again, Lucio Claudio sounded as if he was admitting something he would rather not have. “He is,” he repeated, “though he does still wonder how you few merchants are the only ones who sell such marvelous devices.”

  “Hour-reckoners are not the only things we sell, you know,” Jeremy said proudly. “We have fine razors, too, and mirrors of wonderful quality, and knives with sharp blades and many attached tools.”

  Amanda had told him to be careful. He’d said he would, but he hadn’t. He’d started bragging instead. And that turned out not to be such a good idea just then. He couldn’t even blame the wine. He’d had only a sip.

  Lucio Claudio smiled. It was the sort of smile an evil banker in a bad movie might have given when he foreclosed on a widow’s mortgage. “Yes, I do know about these things,” he said. “So does Sesto Capurnio.”

  Uh-oh, Jeremy thought, too late. He did his best to cover up: “I’m sure he hasn’t got any complaints about quality or value.”

  “No.” Lucio Claudio didn’t like admitting that, either. But the shark’s-teeth smile didn’t slip from his face. “Because of the many, ah, unusual matters pertaining to your family, he now requests and requires an official report on your activities.”

  What Jeremy thought this time wasn’t, Uh-oh. It was, Damn! An official report meant imperial bureaucrats were going to take a long, close look at the traders from Crosstime Traffic. That was the last thing he wanted. Well, no. He shook his head. The last thing he wanted was to be cut off from the home timeline. He had that. Now he had this, too. Talk about adding insult to injury….

  Maybe he could stall if he couldn’t get out of it. He said, “Regulations state that an official report must be requested in writing.”

  “So they do. And why am I not surprised that you know those regulations very well?” Lucio Claudio had a nasty sarcastic streak. He also looked to be enjoying himself. From his belt pouch he pulled a rolled-up sheet of papyrus sealed with a ribbon and a big, blobby red wax seal. He aimed it at Jeremy as if it were a pistol. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” Jeremy said, meaning anything but. He broke the seal and unrolled the papyrus. It was what the local had said it was. In the most complicated classical Latin at his command, Sesto Capurnio—or more likely his secretary—ordered an official report on the deeds and practices of the Soltero family. Jeremy looked at when the report was due, as if it were one for school.

  Three weeks. He sighed. It could have been worse. They could have wanted it day after tomorrow. If they were really suspicious, they would have wanted it day after tomorrow. Of course, if they were really suspicious, they would have torn the house apart for answers.

  But answers they wanted, even if they were willing—for now—to ask instead of tear. The more Jeremy looked at the written request, the less happy he got. The bureaucrats of Agrippan Rome took pride in their attention to detail. They’d outdone themselves here. They wanted to know how every item Crosstime Traffic traders sold was made. If that information wasn’t available, they wanted to know where the traders got each one. They wanted to know how much the traders paid for each. They wanted to find out about profit margins. They were curious about why the traders always wanted grain, not cash.

  “This is a mistake.” Jeremy pointed to that question. “We take silver. Ask Livia Plurabella if you don’t believe me.”

  “Let me see.” Lucio Claudio examined the paragraph. He scratched his chin. “Do you claim the error makes the official request invalid?”

  “I could,” Jeremy said. Gaio Fulvio’s man had to know as much, too. Any mistake on an official document invalidated it. That could be true even in the home timeline. Here, it was as much an article of faith as the cult of the Emperor.

  “If you do, I will return with a revised request,” Lucio Claudio said. “I do not know when I will return. I do know the date on which we want your official report will not change—unless it moves up.”

  The Romans also wanted to know where Jeremy and Amanda’s folks had gone. He’d already explained that to Sesto Capurnio. If they were still asking, the city prefect didn’t much like what he’d heard. At least he wasn’t sending men to dig up the basement and see if Mom and Dad’s bodies were there. That was something—a very small something.

  “I won’t make the claim,” Jeremy said. Lucio Claudio looked smug. Jeremy added, “I am going to remind you there’s a war on, though. If King Kuzmickas and the Lietuvans lay siege to Polisso, I don’t know if I can get the official report in on time. Flying cannonballs make it hard to write.” He didn’t want Lucio Claudio thinking himself the only one who could be sarcastic.

  “I suggest you get to work on the report now, then.” Lucio Claudio sounded just like a teacher when a student complained about too much work. “The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish.”

  Thanks a lot, Jeremy thought. He almost said that out loud. Just in time, he swallowed it instead. He already had enough problems here. Why make things worse by offending Lucio Claudio? Sitting there eating honey cakes and sipping wine with him made the next half hour the most uncomfortable time Jeremy had ever spent. It wasn’t a year before the local finally left. It only seemed that way.

  Amanda looked up from the official request to her brother. She said, “Well, I know the best thing we can hope for.”

  “What? The Lietuvans blow up Polisso?” he asked.

  “No. Mom and Dad get back before we have to give the prefect the report.”

  “Oh.” Jeremy thought about that. He nodded, but not as if his heart was in it. “We can hope, yeah, but I just don’t know. Something’s got really messed up in the home timeline. If it hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been stuck here by ourselves so long already.”

  It wasn’t that he was wrong. He was right. He was, in fact, much too right. Amanda had done her best not to think about why no one had sent them any messages, why no transposition chamber had shown up in the subbasement—or, for that matter, in the cave a few kilometers away.

  If the Lietuvans besieged Polisso, that cave wouldn’t do the Crosstime Traffic people much good. They’d be on the outside looking in. Could they get through a whole army? Maybe, but Amanda didn’t see how.

  She had to look at staying here not just for a summer with her folks, but forever. Forever. She couldn’t imagine a scarier word. Only one thing kept her from breaking down and crying in something as close to panic as made no difference. She didn’t want Jeremy laughing at her for going to pieces like a girl.

  It never occurred to her to wonder how close Jeremy was to going to pieces himself.

  “Sooner or later, they’re bound to come after us,” he said. Was he talking to convince her, or to convince himself? “They can’t just leave us here.” If he’d stopped there, it would have been a pretty good pep talk. But he went on, “I wish I knew what happened at the other end.”

  “Maybe…” Amanda let her voice trail away.

  “Maybe what?” Jeremy asked.

  Amanda said the worst thing she could think of: “Maybe somebody…found Crosstime Traffic.”

  People from the home timeline had only been traveling to the alternates for about fifty years. They hadn’t discovered all of them. The math said they probably couldn’t discover all of them. They hadn’t even scratched the surface of the infinite swarm of alternates that were out there. They sure hadn’t discovered anyone else who could go from one timeline to another.

  But just because they hadn’t discovered anyone like that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone. In a timeline that had branched off from theirs long, long ago, other people might have figured out how to go crosstime five hundred years ago, or five thousand. They might have their own trading zone—or their own
crosstime empire. And if they did, and if they noticed newcomers…they might not be friendly. They might not be friendly at all. That could be very bad news indeed.

  “Nice, cheerful thought, all right,” Jeremy said. “But I don’t believe it. Why now? Why not before?”

  “I don’t know,” Amanda said. “But why not now? If you’ve got a good reason, I’d love to hear it.”

  She really hoped her brother would come up with something. Jeremy was smart. And he was a year older. Most of the time, that didn’t matter. Every once in a while, it did. If he knew why crosstime travelers from a faraway alternate couldn’t have found the home timeline, that would have been wonderful.

  But he just said, “It doesn’t seem likely, that’s all.”

  “Getting stuck here doesn’t seem likely, either!” Amanda burst out. “But we are! Why?”

  “Something went wrong somewhere—that’s got to be it,” Jeremy said, which was true but wasn’t reassuring. “It doesn’t mean the home timeline’s been invaded by one where Alexander the Great discovered transposition chambers.”

  “It could mean that. You know it could,” Amanda said.

  “It could mean all kinds of things. Bombs. Earthquakes. Who knows what?” Jeremy was trying very hard to be reasonable. “Why come up with something that’s never happened before and probably isn’t happening now?”

  “Because I never got stuck in an alternate before,” Amanda blazed. The more reasonable Jeremy tried to be, the less reasonable she wanted to be.

  He went right on trying: “It has to be something natural, something possible, for heaven’s sake.”

  “What’s so impossible about somebody else discovering crosstime travel?” Amanda asked. “We did ourselves, and we worry about it on some of the timelines that aren’t far from ours. Why not somebody else, a long time ago?”