John Birmingham - Stalin's hammer:Rome

The head waiter arrived with two glasses of prosecco, rescuing Harry for the moment.

“I believe we are ready to order,” he said, pointedly ignoring Duffy’s question.

“Excellent, excellent,” the waiter replied, lifting himself up on tippy toe each time. “And Your Highness, and your lady friend, you will be having …?”

Julia forcefully injected herself into the exchange. “We’ll be sharing the truffled mushroom, and the salad with arugula and pear and Gorgonzola, and I’ll be having the veal. With lemon.”

“But of course, of course,” the man said quickly, unsettled by her aggressive manner.

Harry put away the mad grin that wanted to break out and run wild all over his face. He knew all about Julia’s issues with old-school gender roles, but in his experience, 1950s Italy wasn’t that much different from what he recalled of its twenty-first-century descendant. He wondered whether Duffy had spent much time in Rome before the Transition, smacking Italian men upside the head for being so presumptuous as to call her “ bella .”

“That all sounds bloody marvelous,” he conceded. “We’ll go with that, except I’ll have the pig’s knuckle instead of the veal. We’ll settle on wine after the bubbles.”

Their waiter retreated, keeping an eye on Duffy as he withdrew, possibly relieved to get away from the table with his testicles attached. It had been more than ten years since the uptimers had arrived in this world, and in places like California, London, and Sydney, where they had settled after the war, their strange ways were now largely accepted. Indeed, much of the cultural and political baggage they brought with them-particularly their odd and unsettling ideas about women and race and sexuality and other identity issues-had been taken up by enough of the temps that it was sometimes difficult, at least initially, to pick a genuine uptimer from a contemporary who’d completely bought into the future and its promises. Harry was reminded of Julia’s two colleagues earlier in the day. They would have been children when Kolhammer’s fleet emerged from the wormhole on top of the US Pacific Fleet heading to Midway back in ’42; yet from a quick look at them, you would never have known they hadn’t stepped out of their own wormhole from the future. Not unless you knew what to look for. He did, and it made him wonder just how weird and off target the twenty-first century of this world was going to be when they finally got there.

It was rare for Harry to find himself contemplating uptime these days. Temporal theory had been taken out of the hands of science-fiction writers and placed in the care of well-funded faculties at universities like Berkeley and Oxford. The currently accepted consensus was that the future he had come from still existed. But so did the alternate future that Dr. Manning Pope had created aboard the Nagoya by exiling them all here. And an infinite number of other futures as well.

That was why Harry, along with most sensible people, had stopped bothering to worry about such things. There was no point, unless you were Albert Einstein or Stephen J. Hawking-who was still only eleven years old and studying with the great physicist in California, while receiving gene therapy for the motor-neuron disease that had not even manifested itself yet within his tiny frame.

Yes, best not to bother oneself with the infinite fucking Rubik’s Cube of chance and probability that the Transition has brought into the world. Or this one, anyway .

He took a long swallow from the prosecco, which he enjoyed as much as he ever had any drink back up in the twenty-first. Possibly more so. Life here was easier for Harry Windsor than it had been at home. Even something as simple as a date with Duffy-and they were definitely dating-involved much less farting around and unpleasantness with the press than he had ever managed with Pippa back up when.

“Still waiting,” said Julia.

“Sorry … Misspent youth. It catches up with a fellow, you know. I killed a lot of brain cells in my twenties.”

“We all did. But come on, really. You invited me to Rome. Is this going to be it for us-a quick dinner and a shag-or is there any chance you’ll get away from whatever villainy you’re up to this week? I don’t believe for a moment you’re only here for that ridiculous film or the trade talks.”

The waiter returned with a plate on which sat a single large mushroom, steaming, lightly sheened with oil, garnished with shreds of deep green flat-leaf parsley, and smelling strongly of truffles. He sliced it in half before leaving them to their appetizer. The restaurant was full now, the buzzing crowd split evenly between locals and foreigners, mostly Americans and Brits, just like them.

“The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is hardly villainy,” Harry said. “It’d have to be a shitload more interesting to qualify as that … And I am actually doing my bit for the film,” he added, almost apologetically. “It’s a big deal for Pinewood, and expected to earn quite a few quid for them, and the tax man after he takes his considerable cut. But you guess right-I have a full dance card at GATT. Mostly as a glorified greeter for the embassy. Half a dozen wretched fucking cocktail parties and dinners where I get to tell a few war stories, listen to lots more, and do whatever Her Majesty my young grandmother’s government asks of me to justify my rather generous income from the civil list.” He paused for a second. “I’m afraid I have one on later tonight, in fact.”

Duffy ignored the admission that they wouldn’t be seeing each other later. “Regimental pay not good enough for you?” she asked as she carved off a small wedge of soft, perfectly braised mushroom. “Lost it all on fast women and slow horses?”

“Something like that,” said Harry. “But I’m staying on for a couple of days after the gabfest wraps up. I thought we might take a drive down to the Amalfi coast, have a few days down there? Presumptuous of me, I know, but I presume you can get away?”

Julia waved off any problems with an airy flick of one hand. The candlelight in the restaurant sparkled and flared in a couple of bejeweled rings, but it was the scars on the back of her hand that stood out. And the calluses on her knuckles and palm. They looked a lot like Harry’s scars.

She no longer worked as an embedded combat reporter. They didn’t have them here, and even if they did, Julia Duffy would not have needed to work. She had invested wisely after the Transition and was now a very wealthy woman. The few freelance commissions she took on these days, she did for her own amusement and interest. She had found at war’s end, that she was a woman who bored easily. Her scars, like Harry’s own, she had collected on battlefields long past, and off in the long-lost future.

“Pfft,” she scoffed. “Presume away. I only came out here to catch up with you. It’s been a while, Harry.”

Julia spoke these last words with just a hint of reproach. But he knew her well enough to understand that much of that reproach was meant for her alone.

“I’d love to get away for a couple of days with you,” she continued. “I sometimes find … I don’t know … Do you ever find yourself getting tired of them?”

She let her eyes wander around the room. He assumed she meant the temps. And yes, he did get tired of them. Of their whole world, in fact.

“Those girls I was working with this afternoon-and they really were girls in so many ways, not women. I’m mentoring them. That’s what happens when you get a bit long in the tooth to do anything really awesome for yourself anymore. You teach others to be awesome. Anyway, they’re great girls, and tough as nuts, even though they got a bit giggly around you. The smaller one with the dark hair, Jessica, reminds me a lot of Roseanna. They both mean well, and they’re like total zealots and converts to the cause, so they’re never going to grief you with any of that tiresome bullshit the temps still go on with.”