Harry Turtledove - In High Places

"That's how you speak French and Arabic so well," Jacques said.

"Sure it is." Her smile lifted only one corner of her mouth. "I found out how hard it is without implants when I had to learn to talk with Emishtar. Her language was related to Arabic, the way French and Spanish are related to each other, but it still wasn't easy."

"I saw her a couple of days ago," Jacques said. "The same court that was questioning me was going to ask her things, too.

Was that here or back in Spain? I have trouble remembering. I've flown back and forth too many times now."

"People who grow up in the home timeline say things like that," Annette said. "See how well you're starting to fit in?"

She was joking. He knew it, but couldn't help answering seriously: "I don't know if I'll ever fit in here. I can feel how far from home I am. Is Emishtar going to stay here, too?"

That made Annette stop joking. "Maybe she'll try," she answered slowly. "If you think this world is hard for you to get used to, though, it's a lot harder for her."

"She's older than we are," Jacques said. "She's probably older than both of us put together. That makes her more set in her ways than we are."

"That's part of it," Annette agreed, "but that's only part of it. Your alternate is different from the home timeline, Jacques—"

"I'll say it is!" he broke in.

"Yours is different, but hers is a lot more different," Annette said. "Your people know about gunpowder. You have Christians and Muslims and Jews. Her people still use bows and arrows. There was no Roman Empire in her alternate, so nobody like Jesus ever lived there. Christianity never happened. And without Christianity, Islam wouldn't happen, either."

"You don't say anything about Jews," Jacques said.

"Maybe there are Jews there. We don't know that alternate very well yet," Annette said. "Judaism got started before that world and the home timeline separated. But if there are, they'll have different ideas from ours about what being a Jew means."

"Are they really Jews, then?" Jacques asked. "Are the Christians in this home timeline really Christians? How can they be? They don't know anything about Henri."

"That's a good question," Annette told him. "It depends on how you look at things. People in the home timeline would wonder if the Christians in your alternate are really Christians. They would say you added Henri to your faith, not that we don't know him here. Christians in most alternates have beliefs more like ours than like yours, because Henri didn't become God's Second Son in them."

"But Henri is the Second Son!" Jacques exclaimed. "The way you make it sound, the only reason we have Henri and other, uh, alternates don't is because the dice turned up with four sixes for us and with different throws for the rest of them."

To his dismay, Annette (whom he still wanted to think of as Khadija) nodded. "What other reason is there?"

"Because God gave Henri to us," Jacques said stubbornly.

"Well, I can't prove God didn't do that," Annette said, and Jacques felt a little better. But then she asked, "How can you show God did do it, though? And why did He do it that way in your alternate but not in the others?"

He started to tell her the Final Testament proved what God had done. He feared he knew what she would say if he did. The Final Testament was a thing of his alternate, not a thing of all the alternates. Unhappily, he asked, "Is this why some people in this alternate don't believe in God?"

"Maybe some," Annette answered. "People have all kinds of reasons for believing or not believing, though. Why they do, why they don't—that's not simple."

"Nothing here is simple." Jacques wished Annette would tell him he was wrong. She didn't. She just nodded again.

When Annette talked with Emishtar, they used the same mix of Arabic and her language as they had while they were slaves. Nobody in the home timeline knew Emishtar's tongue well enough yet to prepare a scan Annette could learn through her implant.

"When I come here, I think you people must be gods or devils," Emishtar said. "You have carts that go by themselves. You fly through the air like birds. You have pictures that talk. You make it hot when you want. You make it cold when you want. You have so much food. You have the thing that keeps the food fresh. You have the medicine to make my teeth stop hurting. I think they never stop, but you make them stop. You kill my lice, too."

"We're only people," Annette said. They had both just testified against a Crosstime Traffic official in Seattle. So had Bridget Mallory. Annette continued, "We know how to do things your people don't, that's all. It doesn't make us better or worse—only stronger." Stronger was hard enough. They could blow up the world. They hadn't for the past century and a half, but they could.

"I see it," Emishtar said. "People act like people. Not just like my people—you have different customs, different gods, uh, god—but people. Some good, some bad, some wise, some foolish. People with strength of gods or devils."

She had no idea what people in the home timeline had done to one another. Maybe she was lucky. "What do you think about living here?" Annette asked.

Her friend shrugged. "I don't know. To learn a language . . ."

With an implant, learning to speak and understand would be easy. She would have to learn to read and write, though, too, to become fully a part of the home timeline.

"I would have to learn about your strange god," Emishtar went on. "Only one? For everything? It seems foolish. And many of your customs are so strange. Maybe I just go home again."

Annette wasn't sure Emishtar could do that. The authorities might keep her away from her own alternate because she knew so much more than she should. Crosstime Traffic tried to interfere with the other alternates as little as it could while it did business with them. Those were the rules, anyhow.

Annette's mouth twisted. Quite a few Crosstime Traffic people hadn't played by the rules. Spanish authorities were still trying to figure out how they'd got an illicit transposition chamber.

All sorts of governments were looking at Crosstime Traffic more closely these days. By the nature of what it did, the company was the most multinational of all multinationals. It had to have tentacles all over the world to travel to the most interesting and profitable spots in other alternates.

Up till now, Crosstime Traffic hadn't faced a lot of regulation. It was the engine that drove the home timeline's prosperity. No-body'd wanted even to pluck a pinfeather from the goose that brought home so many golden eggs.

But if Crosstime Traffic people went into business for themselves, if they took slaves and became masters, if they let other twisted people from the home timeline play at being slaves (Annette thought of Bridget Mallory and shivered) ... If they did all those things—and they did—maybe (no, certainly) they needed to be watched more closely.

Emishtar tapped Annette on the arm. Even in ordinary clothes, the woman with the crooked front teeth looked out of place in the courtroom waiting room. The way she sat, the way she looked around, said she wasn't used to the furniture or to the fluorescent panels in the ceiling.

"If you have to come to my village for the rest of your days," she said, "could you do that? Would you want to do that?"

"I... could," Annette said. "Would I want to? No. I have to say, we have so many more things than you do, I would not be happy there."

"It is for me like the other side of a plate," Emishtar said.

"You have too many things. I do not know what to do with them. I do not see how I can ever learn."

"You are new here," Annette said. "You may change your mind when you learn more about the way we do things. You may decide you like not working as hard as you did. You may decide you like having enough to eat all the time."