Harry Turtledove: Gunpowder Empire

He was in touch with Michael Fujikawa again, too. His friend was back from his summer in alternate North China- and back to school at Canoga Park High. You're lucky, Michael wrote. You don't have to worry about history homework and Boolean operators.

Lucky, my left one. Jeremy answered. For one thing, I was scared Amanda and I would be stuck here for good-except it wouldn't be very good. And besides, think of all the work I'll have to make up when I do get back.

Poor baby. Here's the world's smallest violin playing “Hearts and Flowers” for you, Michael sent. Jeremy laughed. His grandfather had said that, and run his forefinger over the top of his thumb when he did to show the violin. The joke had to be ancient. Jeremy had never heard it from anybody but Grandpa. He wondered where on earth Michael had picked it up.

His friend went on, I am glad you two are okay, though. I knew something was wrong when we got cut off. Terrorists, I heard. That's no fun. Lucky they didn't have nukes.

“Gurk!” Jeremy said when that showed up on the Power-Book's monitor. Ordinary explosives and tailored viruses were bad enough. Nukes… Terrorists didn't have an easy time getting them, but bad things happened when they did. And how would anybody have rebuilt the transposition chambers if even vest-pocket nukes had gone off in them?

One thing happened after the Lietuvans went away- Jeremy and Amanda started selling pocket watches and mirrors and razors and Swiss army knives hand over fist. That wasn't just because they'd given them to King Kuzmickas, either. Their goods had always had snob appeal. But now Polisso's rich seemed to realize they wouldn't need to spend their last denari on grain. And so they started spending their money on luxuries instead.

After Amanda sold a blue-plate special, Jeremy said, “Shame we can't start taking payment in grain again, not in silver. But they'd still come down on us for hoarding if we tried.“

“Anybody who comes here from now on will have a hard time insisting on grain,” Amanda said. “I wish that hadn't happened.” She found more things to worry about than Jeremy did.

Shrugging, he said, “I don't know what else we could have done. We didn't have any place to put more grain once the transposition chambers stopped coming. Even if we did, people would have stopped giving it to us after the siege started. They didn't worry so much about money.”

“I suppose,” Amanda said, in a tone of voice that meant she was still worrying about it.

Jeremy didn't have the patience to straighten his sister out. (He also never wondered about how much patience she needed to get along with him.) He left the house and went over to the market square to see what sort of gossip he could pick up. (He thought of it as news.)

When he got there, he saw workmen busily repairing the city prefect's palace. Sesto Capurnio wouldn't have to worry about drafts or a leaky roof for very long. Ordinary people? What was the point of being rich and powerful if you couldn't get your roof fixed ahead of ordinary people? Masons patched holes with cement. Carpenters' hammers banged.

“Good thing the temple next door didn't get hurt too bad,” said a man in the market square. “The gods would have to wait their turn, too.”

“The gods can take care of themselves,” another man answered. “That's probably why nothing much happened to the temple. But what about the poor so-and-sos who got their shacks knocked flat? What are they going to do?“

“Same as always,” the first man said. “They'll get it in the neck.” By the way he spoke and dressed, he wasn't a rich man himself. When he talked about what happened to the poor, it was from bitter experience.

“I don't suppose the city prefect would have got hungry if the siege had gone on, either,” the second man said.

The first man laughed. “Not likely! City prefects don't go hungry. That isn't in the rules. If you don't believe me, just ask Sesto Capurnio.”

“I'll tell you what I believe,” his pal said. “I believe you're going to get in trouble if you don't stick a sandal in your big, flapping mouth.” For a wonder, the first man did shut up.

Jeremy bought a handful of pickled green olives from a vender with a crock of them that he wore tied around his neck with a leather strap so that it bounced against his belly. Jeremy savored what salt and vinegar could do for olives. He spat the pits onto the cobbles of the market square. He wouldn't have done that back in the home timeline, but things were different here.

What would I have been like, if I'd got stuck here for twenty years and then gone home? he wondered. Would I have done things like that without thinking about them, because everybody did them here? I bet I would.

Somebody came into the square at a run. People looked up. That was out of the ordinary, which meant it might be important. And sure enough, the man yelled, “News at the gate! Our army beat the lousy Lietuvans! They're on their way home, fast as they can go!”

People in the square didn't all jump up and start cheering. They nodded to one another, as if to say they'd expected as much. Had they? Maybe some of them had. But others wouldn't want to show that they'd thought anything else was possible. And one man said, “Why didn't our army come six weeks ago? Then we wouldn't have had to go through so much trouble.”

Another merchant said, “We're lucky they didn't wait till next spring, or till five years from now.”

He laughed to show he meant it for a joke. The men who heard him laughed, too, to show they knew it was one. Jeremy wasn't so sure. They might all have been kidding on the square. Agrippan Rome was so bound up in rules and regulations, all its wheels turned slowly. The army had to be less sluggish than most parts of the government. And it had done its job here, even if it hadn't done it very fast.

Would the Romans know what to do with freedom if they got it? They'd done without it for a long, long time.

Jeremy shrugged. It wasn't his worry, not any more. Sure enough, he was and felt like a visitor here once more, not somebody who might have to put down deep roots. And that suited him just fine. Not living in Polisso for the rest of his life, even if that meant going back to high school and catching up on everything he'd missed, seemed pretty good.

Everything is clean now, in both transposition chamber areas, Mom wrote. They're running a last few checks, and then we'll be able to come through.

Amanda raised an eyebrow when she read that. If everything were clean now, her folks should have been able to come straight through now. The technicians wouldn't be running more checks. She sighed. She could understand why they didn't want to risk letting a tailored virus loose in Agrippan Rome. Doctors here couldn't do anything about natural germs, let alone genetically engineered ones.

She said, “Answer. We'll see you when we see you, that's all. We miss you. It's already been too long. Send.”

The words-minus the opening and ending commands- appeared on the PowerBook's screen. They would also appear on the monitor Mom was looking at back home. When Mom and Dad came into Polisso again, word would be bound to get back to the city prefect. Amanda knew that Sesto Capurnio still half suspected she and Jeremy had knocked their parents over the head and buried them somewhere out of the way.

Well, I don't have to worry about what Sesto Capurnio suspects, not now, Amanda thought. She was just a tourist again, and she wouldn't even be that for very long. Burgers. Fries. Milkshakes. Sushi. Lamb vindaloo. Spit flooded into her mouth. She was tired of barley porridge and gritty brown bread.

It's been much too long, Mom agreed. You don't know how much we've missed you and worried about you. Well, it won't be much longer. I've got to go. See you soon.