Harry Turtledove: Gunpowder Empire

“Lucinda's taking care of it, dear,” Marco Petro answered.

He sounded like someone holding on tight to his patience. His wife nagged. Jeremy had seen that before. The merchant turned toward the kitchen. “How are you coming, Lucinda?” “Ill be right there, Father.”

Lucinda Petra came out carrying a big tray of hammered copper. On the tray were an earthenware jar of wine, seven hand-blown glass cups, a loaf of brown bread, and bowls of honey and olive oil for dipping. In this world, only Lietuvans and other barbarians ate butter.

Lucinda was Jeremy's age. She had blue eyes like her father. She didn't have a big nose, though, or, as far as he could see, anything else wrong with her. She was the main reason he'd hurried into Polisso. He never had got up the nerve to tell her how cute he thought she was.

Even without his saying anything, Amanda could tell what he was thinking. “Stop staring,” she whispered.

“Stifle it,” Jeremy answered sweetly.

After Lucinda set the tray on a table, she poured wine for everybody. Agrippan Rome thought of wine the way a lot of Europeans did in Jeremy's world. Babies here started drinking watered wine as soon as they stopped nursing. As children got older, they watered it less and less. It was probably safer than drinking the water.

In his own world, there were good reasons not to let kids drink wine. They had plenty of other things to drink: water and milk that wouldn't make them sick, fruit juices, soda. They could get behind the wheel of a car and kill themselves and other people. And they were just starting out in life. Who his age or Amanda's was ready to take a place in the grown-up world?

There wasn't much else to drink here. There were no cars.

People started working at twelve or thirteen-sometimes at eight or nine-and worked till they dropped. The line between children and adults blurred. It was a different world. One whiff of the ripe, ripe air told how different it was.

Marco Petro splashed a little wine on the paving stones of the courtyard. “To the spirit of the Emperor,” he murmured.

Everyone else imitated the ritual. The traders would have done it with their customers. They did it among themselves, too, to stay in practice. The paving stones showed plenty of stains, some old, some new, If they hadn't, the locals would have wondered why. The most obvious answer was that the people here didn't wish the Emperor well. That would have been dangerous.

“By what you've sent back home, business has been good here,” Dad remarked, dipping a chunk of the brown bread into olive oil.

“Not bad at all,” Marco Petro agreed. “Hour-reckoners and mirrors, especially. Everybody who's anybody wants to pull out an hour-reckoner and see what time it is. All the people with hour-reckoners want everybody else to see them seeing what time it is. They want to show off, you know. And if you've been looking at yourself in polished bronze, or not looking at yourself at all, a real mirror seems like a miracle.”

Lucinda smiled. “They do wonder why we'd rather have grain than gold.”

“They always have,” Jeremy said. Talking about trade with Lucinda was easier than talking about other things. “As long as they don't wonder where it goes, everything's fine.”

“We make sure of that,” Aurora Petra said. Jeremy nodded. Most of the grain went back to the home timeline through the transposition chamber in the subbasement. Some went out in wagons, though: enough to make it look as if more did. That grain didn't go any farther by road than the chamber outside of town. The locals saw it leave Polisso. That was what counted.

“It'll be funny, going back to Cincinnati after living here for a while,” Lucinda said. “Do without things for a while, and they don't seem real any more.”

“It's like jet lag, only more so,” Jeremy said.

“That's just what it's like,” Lucinda agreed. Jeremy felt proud. His sister made a face at him. He ignored her.

“I hope things stay quiet with Lietuva,” Mom said.

“The guard at the gate was talking about Lietuvan spies,” Amanda put in.

“They aren't keeping Lietuvan merchants out of the Empire, so it should be all right,” Marco Petro said. The kingdom to the north and east ruled what were Poland and Belarus and Ukraine and the Baltic countries and some of European Russia in Jeremy's world. Every generation or two, it fought a war with Rome. Neither side ever gained much, but they both kept trying. No, human nature didn't change much across timelines.

Three

“Safe trip! God go with you!” Amanda called as Marco Petro and Aurora and Lucinda Petra left the house and strode toward the west gate of Polisso. They would leave Agrippan Rome through the other transposition chamber. As long as they were seen to leave the town and weren't seen to go out of this alternate, everything was fine.

“Thank you. See you before too long,” Marco Petro answered. He had a sword on his belt and carried a bow. He wore a quiver of arrows on his back. A leather pouch on his hip hid a pistol. That was for real emergencies, though. They had pistols here-long, clumsy, single-shot pistols. His neat little automatic was something else altogether.

A couple of skinny little boys in ragged tunics watched the traders leave. No one else paid much attention. They looked like ordinary people. Why get excited?

The Petri tramped down the street. They walked carefully because of the cobblestones. Tripping and breaking an ankle just when they were leaving would have been awful. The surface would get better on the flat paving stones of the highway. Still, the Petri didn't have to go very far.

Next to Amanda, Jeremy blew Lucinda a kiss. Her back was turned, so she didn't see it. Amanda sighed. Jeremy was socially challenged. He even knew it, but knowing it and doing something about it were two different beasts.

Mom called, “Safe journey!” too. Marco Petro turned and waved. So did his wife. They rounded a corner. Marco Petro started singing a song. Amanda could pick it out for a little while. The the noise of Polisso swallowed it up.

“Just us now.” Dad sounded cheerful about it.

Amanda wasn't so sure she was cheerful. Maybe Dad hadn't intended to, but he'd reminded her how alone they were here. Jeremy seemed to have the same feeling. He went into the house without looking at anybody else.

A gray cat darted up the street. It gave Amanda and her parents a wary green glance and kept on running. Mom said, “Maybe I'll leave some scraps in front of the door and see if we can make friends.”

“Good luck,” Amanda said. Cats here were more like wild animals than pets. They lived in towns because towns were full of rats and mice. They didn't want much to do with people.

“It could happen.” Mom was a born optimist.

“Let's go in and set up,” Dad said. “It's late now, so we may not have any new business today. If we don't, we will tomorrow.”

They took a few watches and mirrors and razors and Swiss army knives and arranged them on a display stand in a room near the front door. Most of the trade goods went into a strong room by the kitchen. A lot of houses in Polisso had strong rooms. This one was special. Local thieves couldn't come close to winning against technology from the home timeline. Burglar alarms with infrared sensors meant traders were waiting for them even before they tried beating modern alloys and locks that read thumbprints.

“We'd better get supper started,” Mom told Amanda.

Amanda made a face, but she went off to the kitchen. Like most alternates, Agrippan Rome had rigid gender roles. At home, Dad and Jeremy did at least half the cooking. Not here, even though the work was a lot harder here.

Supper was barley porridge. It had mushrooms and onions and carrots chopped up in it. It also had bits of sausage. The sausage came from a local butcher shop. Amanda carefully didn't think of what all might have gone into it. Whatever it was made of, it didn't taste bad. It had a strong fennel flavor, like Italian sausage on a pizza, only more so. Since the rest of the porridge was bland, that perked it up.