One of the sunbeams fell on the bust of the Roman Emperor behind the altar. Honorio Prisco III was a middle-aged man with a big nose, jowls, and a bored expression. As far as Jeremy could tell, he wasn't a very good Emperor. He wasn't a very bad Emperor, either. He just sort of sat there.
The sunbeam also highlighted a line around his neck that looked unnatural. The lower neck and top part of the chest on the bust never changed. The head and upper neck did whenever a new Emperor took the throne. A peg and socket held the two parts of the bust together. A new Emperor? Take the old ruler's portrait off the peg, pop on the new. There you were, easy as pie, ready to be loyal.
Several pinches of incense already smoked on the altar. Off to one side, a priest in a white toga-only priests wore togas these days-wrung the neck of a dove for a man who wasn't a Christian of any sort.
Dad set his incense bowl on the altar. Jeremy and Amanda and Mom followed suit. Several lamps burned on the altar. By each one stood a bowl full of thin dry twigs. Each member of the family took a twig and lit it at a lamp. They used the burning twigs to light their incense, then stamped them out underfoot.
Four thin twists of gray smoke curled upward. Along with his parents and sister, Jeremy said the prayer required of Imperial Christians: “May God keep the Emperor safe and healthy. May his spirit always be the spirit of truth and justice. Amen.” They all bowed to the bust of Honorio Prisco III, then turned away from the altar.
That prayer didn't say the Emperor was divine. It did say that the people who made it cared about him and wished him well. It was hardly religious at all, not in the sense Jeremy would have used the word back home. It was more like pledging allegiance to the flag. It showed that the people who did it willingly took part in the customs of this country.
Not far from the altar, two ordinary-looking men stood talking in low voices. They weren't being rude. They were quietly making sure the prayers were made the way they were supposed to be. People who didn't like being watched couldn't have stood living in Agrippan Rome.
That was one of the traders' biggest problems here. The locals weren't just curious. They were snoopy. About everything. Jeremy glanced over at Amanda as the family left the temple. That fellow to whom she'd sold the blue-plate special-that was how he thought of the big blue pocket watches-had talked about making them submit one of the Empire's dreaded official reports about how they could turn out such things when nobody else here knew how. Dad would have to figure out a way around that.
Out in the market square, a herald was shouting, “Hear ye! Hear ye! The great and mighty Emperor of the Romans, Honorio Prisco III, has declared that the Roman Empire will keep the peace with the Kingdom of Lietuva for as long as King Kuzmickas chooses to keep it!”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Jeremy asked. “It doesn't sound like it means anything.” A lot of the proclamations the government put out didn't sound as if they meant anything.
But Dad said, “It means we're liable to have a war. Lietuva has wanted to take this province away from Rome for years. And if King Kuzmickas does decide to go to war, the Emperor is saying he'll get all the fight he wants.”
Border provinces like Dacia did sometimes change hands between Agrippan Rome and Lietuva. In the Middle East, Mesopotamia-Iraq in the home timeline-and Syria went back and forth between the Romans and Persians every so often. But the heartland of each great empire was too far from its neighbors to be conquered. The ruling dynasties might change, but the empires went on and on.
Oddly, gunpowder made that more true, not less. Hearing as much had puzzled Jeremy at first. But it made sense if you looked at it the right way. Cannons could knock down the strongest fortress or city wall. And cannons, here, were also very, very expensive. Only central governments pulling in taxes from huge tracts of land could afford to have a lot of them. That meant anybody who rebelled against the central government was likely to lose. He wouldn't be able to get his hands on enough cannons to fight back well.
There had been gunpowder empires in Jeremy's world, too. The Ottoman Turks, the Moguls in India, and the Manchus in China had all run states like that. In his world, though, Europe had had lots of countries, not one big, overarching empire. They'd competed, kicking technology and thought ahead and leading to the scientific and industrial revolutions.
Competition here was weaker. The dead hand of the past was stronger. This is how they did it in the good old days carried enormous weight in Agrippan Rome… and in Lietuva, and in Persia, and in the two gunpowder empires that split India between them in this alternate, and in China. The Japanese here were pirates who raided China's coast, the same as the Scandinavians did in Europe.
A beggar with a horrible sore on his face held out a skinny hand to Jeremy and whined, “Alms, gentle sir?”
Jeremy gave him a sestertio, a little copper coin. “That was a mistake,” Dad said with a sigh.
“How come?” Jeremy asked. “Look what happened to the poor man.”
“For one thing, that sore is probably a fake,” Dad said. “And if it's not a fake, he probably picks at it and rubs salt in it to keep it looking nasty. Beggars' tricks are as old as time. And for another… Well, you'll find out.”
And Jeremy did, in short order. He'd given one beggar money. All the other beggars in the market square hurried toward him. He might have been a magnet and they bits of iron. They showed off blind eyes, missing hands and feet, and sores even uglier than the first man's had been. None of them had bathed in weeks, if not years. Most of them called for coppers. Some, the bolder ones, screeched for silver.
“I can't give them all money,” Jeremy said in dismay.
“Which is why you shouldn't have given it to any of them,” Dad “said. ”Just keep walking. They'll get the message.“
Little by little, the beggars did. By ones and twos, they drifted back toward their places in the square. Some of them cursed Jeremy, as much for getting their hopes up as for not giving them any coins. Others didn't bother. They might as well have been merchants. If business in one place didn't suit them, they'd look somewhere else.
“Did they try to slit your belt pouch?” Dad asked.
After checking, Jeremy shook his head. “No.”
“You're lucky.”
“I am lucky,“ Jeremy said slowly. He didn't mean it the way his father did. ”I don't have to live the way they do.“ A day in Polisso taught more about human misery than a year in Los Angeles. ”Most of what's wrong with them, a doctor back home could fix in a hurry. I've always had plenty to eat, and a house with a heater that works.“
“Coming here can make you feel guilty about living the way we do at home,” Amanda said.
Jeremy nodded. That was what he'd been trying to say. His sister had done a better job of putting it into a few words.
“There's nothing wrong with the way we live,” Dad said. “Anybody who says poverty makes you noble has never been poor-really poor, the way these people are. But you were right. We are lucky that we don't have to live like this all the time.“
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. Even when they were in Polisso, they didn't live just like the locals. They had links back to the home timeline. If something went wrong, they could get help or leave. They had a swarm of immunizations. They couldn't come down with smallpox or measles or typhoid fever or cholera. Smallpox didn't even exist any more in the home timeline. They had antibiotics against tuberculosis and plague. The locals didn't-they had doctors who believed in the four humors and priests who prayed. One was about as much use as the other-as much, or as little.
A drunk lurched out of a tavern. He stared around with bleary, bloodshot eyes, then sat down next to the doorway. He wasn't going anywhere, not any time soon. Some things didn't change from one timeline to another. Jeremy's also had its share of drunks, and probably always would.
“Make way! Make way! In the name of the city prefect, make way!” bawled a man with a loud voice.
Up the street came a gang of slaves carrying fire
wood to heat the water in the public baths. They were skinny, sorry-looking men, all of them burdened till they could barely stagger along. They belonged to Polisso, not to any one person. That made their lives worse, not better. Because they didn't serve anyone in particular, no one in particular cared how they were treated. The overseer shouted out his warning again.
Neither Jeremy nor anybody else in his family said much the rest of the way back to the house. That gang of slaves reminded them again all how lucky they really were.
Four
The smith's name was Mallio Sertorio. He used his dirty thumbnail to pull one tool after another out of the Swiss army knife. Big blade, small blade, file, corkscrew, awl… When he found the little scissors, an almost comic look of surprise spread over his face.
“How do they do that?” he muttered, more to himself than to Amanda.
“I am only a trader,” she answered. “I do not have the secrets of the men who made these knives.”
“Of course you don't-you're only a girl,” Mallio Sertorio said. That wasn't what Amanda had said, and didn't endear him to her. He extracted a screwdriver blade. That puzzled him. Screws here were made by hand, and uncommon. But he poked at the blade with his thumb. “Fine workmanship. And very fine steel, too.”
“We sell only the best.” Amanda nodded.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” The smith nodded, too. “I want to buy this one and take it apart, to see if I can learn the secrets these fellows know.” He pulled a tweezer out of its slot. “Isn't that clever?” he crooned.
“I'll be glad to sell it to you,” Amanda said. “What you do with it afterwards is your business.” She didn't think he would learn much. A couple of smiths in Polisso had already started selling imitation Swiss army knives. They were bigger and clumsier and held fewer tools.
“Do I have to pay grain?” Mallio Sertorio asked. “Grain is a nuisance. I'll give you silver. I'll even give you gold. You can buy grain yourself, or anything else you want.”
“Grain is what we want,” Amanda answered. Grain and other food from the alternates helped feed the crowded home timeline. Oil fed the petrochemical industry. The list went on and on.
“I have to have this,” Mallio Sertorio said. “Do you understand? I have to have it. I am not a young man. You, you have your whole life ahead of you, but I am not young.“ He scratched at his mustache. Like his hair, it was grizzled. ”I have spent thirty years learning my trade. I am good at it, as good as any man in Polisso, as good as any man in the whole province of Dacia.“
“I'm sure you are,” Amanda said softly. People in Agrippan Rome liked to swagger and brag. They often made themselves out to be richer or more clever or more skilled than they really were. This didn't sound like that. Mallio Sertorio was stating the facts as he saw them.
“Thirty years.” The smith set down the Swiss army knife. His hands-hands callused from work and scarred by cuts and burns-bunched into fists. “Thirty years, and I see this, and I also see I might as well be an apprentice in my first day at a smithy. How did they do this work?“
Machinery your culture won't invent for quite a while, if it ever does, Amanda thought. But she couldn't tell him that. Instead, she had to repeat, “I don't know.” She felt embarrassed, even a little ashamed. How was a man with nothing but hand tools supposed to match this mechanical near-perfection? And even if he did somehow do it once, how could he keep on doing it again and again?
Mallio Sertorio saw that, too. People in Agrippan Rome were ignorant, yes. They weren't stupid. He said, “You have dozens of these knives, don't you? Hundreds of them, even? But each one has to take months, maybe a year, to make. How?“
Amanda didn't say anything. She didn't see anything she could say. It probably wouldn't have mattered. Mallio Sertorio was talking to himself-to himself, and to the Swiss army knife. “How?” he said again. “Whatever the answer is, by the gods, I'll find it.” He picked up the knife and held it out to Amanda. “I will buy this. Write me up a fancy contract in old-fashioned Latin. You want grain? I'll get you grain. I must have this. I've got so much to learn.”
The smith had to make his mark on the contract. Amanda witnessed it. “You know how many modii of wheat?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he answered. “I know numbers. Words- especially in the old language-words I'm not so good with.”
At supper that evening-bread, cheese, and a stew of rabbit, onions, garlic, and parsnips-Amanda mentioned the smith's driving urge to know. Her mother nodded. She said, “That's one of the things we want here.”
“You bet,” Dad said. “That's why we sell them things that aren't impossibly far ahead of what they can make. There's a story about an African who saw an early airplane, but it didn't mean anything to him-it was magic. Then he saw a team of horses pulling a carriage. He laughed and clapped his hands and said, 'Why didn't I think of that?' It was beyond what his people knew how to do then, but not too far beyond. This culture has been stuck in a rut for a long time. Along with everything else we're doing, maybe we can help shake it loose.“
“Then what happens?” Amanda asked.
“With luck, things go forward here,” her father answered. “By themselves, gunpowder empires don't change very much or very fast. A poke here and a poke there, though, and who knows? In a few hundred years, this may be a different place.” He sounded as if he were sure he would come back here to see the changes.
To Amanda, a few hundred years didn't begin to seem real. She had enough trouble trying to figure out where she'd be and what she'd do when she got out of high school year after next. She wasn't going to worry about whether Agrippan Rome had its own industrial revolution a long, long way down the line.
One of the reasons Jeremy's folks brought him and Amanda to Agrippan Rome with them was so they'd look normal. Everyone here expected grownups to have children. Who else could take over the family business after they were gone? That meant he and his sister had to go out into Polisso and do the things kids their age did here. They had to be seen doing them, too. If they weren't out there being visible, what point to bringing them along?
The trouble with that was, Jeremy didn't like most of what the kids his age in Polisso did. A lot of those kids were already working hard at their trades. When they weren't working, they gambled with dice or knucklebones. They played sports different from the ones he knew, and they didn't seem to care if they maimed one another. Or they went to the amphitheater. Jeremy didn't have the stomach for that.
Here, the Roman Empire had never lost its taste for blood sports. People swarmed into the amphitheater to watch bears fight wolves. They gave condemned criminals to lions. Thousands cheered as what they called justice was done. And they set men against men. Gladiators who won their matches were heroes here, the way running backs and point guards were at home. Gladiators who didn't win were often dragged from the arena feet first.
People here said seeing bloodshed made for better soldiers. Of course, people here also said the sun went around the Earth. They said some men were slaves by nature. They said there were one-eyed men and men with their faces in the middle of their chests off in some distant corner of the world. They said the streets in China were paved with gold. (In China in this alternate, they said the streets in the Roman Empire were paved with jade. The Chinese were no less ignorant than anybody else.)
That Jeremy was a visitor in Polisso didn't make things any easier. People picked on him because he came from somewhere else. It could have been a farm more than ten kilometers from town as easily as Los Angeles in the home timeline. And Polisso had its street gangs, too.
Things could have been worse. By local standards, Jeremy was very large. That made some of the town's less charming inhabitants think twice. Unfortunately, they often hunted in packs.
As much as he could, he stayed out of the alleys and lanes that wound between the main streets. Anything could happen there. The bigger streets, on the other hand, were pretty well patrolled. Gangs mostly steered clear of men wit
h muskets, armor, and short tempers.
Mostly, though, didn't mean always. And the vigili couldn't be everywhere at once. Three locals came up to Jeremy on the street just around the corner from where he was staying. They were his age or a little older: one of them had the fair beginnings of a beard. None of them would ever belong to the Polisso Chamber of Commerce. The one with the shaggy chin said, “You're not from here, are you?”
That was a loaded question. If he said yes, they'd call him a liar and jump on him. If he said no, they'd call him a stranger-and jump on him. Even if none of them came up much past his chin, one against three made bad odds. Sometimes people didn't come back from summer trading runs. He said, “No,” but then, before they could jump on him, “But I've got some new jokes from Carnuto.” The town to the west was a reasonable place to say he'd come from.
And the prospect of jokes was enough to make the punks pause. They could find people to beat up any old time. Jokes were something else, something special. In a world without the Web, TV, radio, movies, and recorded music, entertainment was where you found it. “All right, let's hear 'em,” said the gangbanger with the whiskers. The other two nodded, trying to look tough. Plainly, they followed his lead. He leaned forward and stuck out his jaw. He was better at being menacing than his pals. “They better be good.”
“They are.” Jeremy hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. The jokes came from a real Roman joke book called The Laughter-Lover. Dad had got it so the family could have jokes to tell that came from Rome, not from Los Angeles. Trouble was, by Los Angeles standards, they were some of the lamest jokes in the world. With luck, things were different here. Without luck…
“Go on, then,” Whiskers said.
“A halfwit wanted to see what he looked like when he was asleep, so he stood in front of the mirror with his eyes closed.”
Jeremy waited for the punks to commit literary criticism on his person. Instead, they grinned. They didn't laugh out loud, but they didn't start kicking him, either. The skinnier one of the pair behind Whiskers got up the nerve to speak for himself: “Tell us another one.”
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