Charles Stross - The Family Trade

She tracked after the human figures, focused on the stockade. ‘There’s a gate in the stockade and a platform or tower behind it. Something big’s in there, behind the wall, but I can’t see it from here. A long house? No, this doesn’t look… wrong period. These aren’t Vikings, there’s, uh-”

Around the curve of the stockade an ox came into view, dragging some kind of appliance-a wooden plough, perhaps. The man walking behind it looked as tired as the animal. “They’re all wearing those blankets. Women too. That was a woman feeding the chickens. With a headscarf wrapped around her face like a Muslim veil. But the men wear pretty much the same, too. This place looks so poor. Neglected. That guy with the mule-it must be the equivalent of a BMW in this place!”

Miriam felt distinctly uneasy. History book scenes were outside her experience-she was a creature of the city, raised with the bustle and noise of urban life, and the sordid poverty of the village made her feel unaccountably guilty. But it left questions unanswered. ‘This could be the past; we know the Vikings reached New England around the eleventh century. Or it could be somewhere else. How can I tell if I can’t get in and see what’s inside the stockade? I think I need an archaeologist.”

Miriam crouched down and began to snap off photographs. Here three hens pecked aimlessly at the dirt by an open doorway, the door itself a slab of wood leaning drunkenly against the wall of the hut. There a woman (or a man, the shapeless robe made it impossible to be sure) bent over a wooden trough, emptying a bucket of water into it and then lifting and pounding something from within. Miriam focused closer-

“Wer find thee?” Someone piped at her.

Miriam jolted around and stared: The someone stared right back, frozen, eyes wide. He looked to be about fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in rags and barefoot: He was shorter than she was. Pipecleaner arms, legs like wire, big brown eyes, and a mess of badly trimmed hair in a pudding-bowl cut. Time slowed to a crawl. That’s a skin infection, she realized, her guts turning to ice as she focused on a red weal on the side of his neck. He was skinny, not as thin as a famine victim but by no means well-fed. He had a stick, clenched nervously in his hands, which he was bringing up-

Miriam glared at him and straightened up. Her right hand went to her hip pocket, and she fumbled for the treacherous opening. “You’ll be sorry,” she snapped, surprised at herself. It was the first thing that entered her head. Her hand closed on the butt of the pistol, but she couldn’t quite draw it-it was snagged on something.

Oh shit. She yanked at her pocket desperately, keeping her eyes on his face, despite knees that felt like jelly and a churning cold in her gut. She had a strong flashback to the one time she was mugged, a desperate sense of helplessness as she tried to disentangle the gun from her pocket lining and bring it out before the villager hit her with his stick.

But he didn’t. Instead, his eyes widened. He opened his mouth and shouted, “An solda’des Koen!” He turned, dropping the stick, and darted away before Miriam could react. A moment later she heard him wailing, “An solda!”

“Shit.” The gun was in her hand, all but forgotten. Terror lent her feet wings. She clutched her camera and ran like hell, back toward the forest, heedless of any noise she might make. He nearly had me! He’ll be back with help! I’ve got to get out of here! Breathless fear drove her until branches scratched at her face and she was panting. Then the low apple trees gave way to taller, older trees and a different quality of light. She staggered along, drunkenly, as behind her a weird hooting noise unlike any horn she’d heard before split the quiet.

Ten minutes later she stopped and listened, wheezing for breath as she tried to get her heart under control. She had run parallel to the path, off to one side. Every instinct was screaming at her to run but she was nearly winded, so she listened instead. Apart from the horn blasts, there were no sounds of pursuit. Why aren’t they following me? She wondered, feeling ill with uncertainty. What’s wrong? After a moment she remembered her camera: She’d lost the lens cap in her mad rush. “Damn, I could have broken my ankle,” she muttered. “They’d have caught me for-” she stopped.

“That look in his eye.” Very carefully, she unslung the camera and slid it into a big outer hip pocket. She glanced around the clearing sharply, then spent a moment untangling the revolver from her other pocket. Now that she had all the time in the world, it was easy. “He was scared,” she told herself, wondering. “He was terrified of me! What was that he was shouting? Was he warning the others off?”

She began to walk again, wrapped in a thoughtful silence. There were no sounds of pursuit. Behind her the village hid in the gloom, like a terrified rabbit whose path had just crossed a fox on the prowl. “Who are you hiding from?” she asked her memory of the boy with the stick. “And who did you mistake me for?”

It was raining again, and the first thing she noticed once she crossed over-through the blinding headache-was that Paulette was bouncing up and down like an angry squirrel, chattering with indignation behind the camcorder’s view-finder. “Idiot! What the hell do you think you were doing?” she demanded as Miriam opened the passenger door and dumped her pack on the backseat. “I almost had a heart attack! That’s the second time you’ve nearly given me one this week!”

“I said it would be a surprise, right?” Miriam collapsed into the passenger seat. “God, I reek. Get me home and once I’ve had a shower I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

Paulette drove in tight-lipped silence. Finally, during a moment when they were stationary at a traffic light, she said: “Why me?”

Miriam considered for a moment. “You don’t know my mother.”

“That’s-oh. I see, I think. Anything else?”

“Yeah. I trusted you to keep your mouth shut and not to panic.”

“Uh-huh. So what have you gotten yourself into this time?”

“I’m not sure. Could be the story of the century-the second one this week. Or it could be a very good reason indeed for burying something and walking away fast. I’ve got some ideas-more, since I spent a whole day and a half over there-but I’m still not sure.”

“Where’s over there? I mean, where did you go?” The car moved forward.

“Good question. The straight answer is: I’m not sure-the geography is the same, the constellations are the same, but the landscape’s different in places and there’s an honest-to-god medieval village in a forest. And they don’t speak English. Listen, after I’ve had my shower, how about I buy supper? I figure I owe you for dropping this on your lap.”

“You sure do,” Paulette said vehemently. “After you vanished, I went home and watched the tape six times before I believed what I’d seen with my own two eyes.” Her hands were white on the steering wheel. “Only you could fall into something this weird!”

“Remember Hunter S. Thompson’s First Law of Gonzo Journalism: ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get weird’?” Miriam chuckled, but there was an edge to it. Everywhere she looked there were buildings and neon lights and traffic. “God, I feel like I spent the weekend in the Third World. Kabul.” The car smelled of plastic and deodorant, and it was heavenly-the stink of civilization. “Listen, I haven’t had anything decent to eat for days. When we get home I’m ordering take out. How does Chinese sound?”

“I can cope with that.” Paulette made a lazy right turn and slid into the slow-moving stream of traffic. “Don’t feel like cooking?”