Again, she didn't make anything special out of it. It was just the way this world worked. It was probably the way any world worked. But hunger was a much more common guest here than in Los Angeles in the home timeline.
Maria went into her owner's house. Amanda turned away and started back toward the house where she and Jeremy lived. Those words again-her owner. Words, and the ideas behind them, had enormous power.
But what can I do? Amanda thought unhappily. Even if she bought Amanda, set her free, and found her work where she could make a living-not always easy to do for a freedwoman-then what? How many slaves just like her would remain in Polisso afterwards? Up into the thousands, surely. How many in all of this Roman Empire? In Lietuva? In Persia? In the gunpowder empires in India? In China? Millions all told, without a doubt.
And Crosstime Traffic had only a few outposts in this whole world. Some problems were just too big to solve with what was available to tackle them. Amanda hated that, which didn't make it any less true.
Jeremy was sitting in the courtyard reading a poem when a cannonball crashed into the kitchen. The poem had kept him interested all the way through. It was in neoLatin, about a girl on a trading ship who'd been captured by Scandinavian pirates but escaped, and about her adventures getting back to the Empire. It wasn't great literature. It was more like this world's closest approach to reality TV. But it wasn't dull, not even slightly.
All the same, he dropped the scroll and jumped to his feet when half a dozen roof tiles exploded into red dust. A magpie that had been sitting on the roof flew away as fast as it could, screeching in alarm.
From her room, Amanda let out a startled squawk: “What was that?“
“We just got hit,” Jeremy answered. “I'm going to see how bad.”
There was a hole in the roof in the kitchen, and another one in the far wall. But the planks under the roof tiles weren't smoldering. The cannonball hadn't smashed any weight-bearing beams. No big cracks ran out from the whole in the wall. The stonework still seemed sound.
Amanda came into the kitchen behind Jeremy. As he had, she looked around. “We're lucky,” she said after a few seconds.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “I can put boards over the hole in the roof to keep the rain out till somebody really repairs it. And some plaster will take care of the one in the wall.”
“I suppose so.” Amanda hesitated. “Do you think we'll ever get back?”
In a way, the question came out of the blue. In another way, Jeremy had trouble thinking about anything else. How surprising was it that his sister felt the same way? Not very. He shrugged. “I have to think so. Whatever's gone wrong, it can't stay messed up forever.“ Why not? he wondered. It shouldn't have got messed up in the first place. Since it has, who knows how long it can stay that way?
He wondered whether Amanda would point that out. She didn't, not in so many words. Instead, she asked, “Do you think you could stand it if we had to stay here forever?”
“I wouldn't like it, that's for sure,” Jeremy answered. “Stand it? I don't know. What other choice would I have?”
“It would be horrible,” Amanda said.
He couldn't very well argue with that. They still had enough merchandise from the home timeline to make a lot of money, probably enough to keep them wealthy for the rest of their lives. But even the richest people in Polisso did without so many things anyone from the home timeline took for granted. It would seem a bare, empty life. They might as well be shipwrecked among savages. As a matter of fact, they were. “We just have to go on,” Jeremy said. “I don't know what else to tell you.”
His sister nodded. “It's what I keep telling myself,” she said. “Sometimes it lets me get through the day-most of the time, in fact. But when they go and knock a hole in the house-two holes in the house-even going on doesn't seem very easy.”
“Yeah. I know.” Jeremy cocked his head to one side. There was a new breeze in the kitchen because of those two holes. “I go down to the basement, and I try to send a message back home from the PowerBook, and it doesn't let me…”
“I go down there, too,” Amanda said. “Sometimes I don't even try to send a message. But the door opens when you touch the palm lock. The electric lights come on. The furniture looks like it comes from Home Depot or WalMart-and it does. There is a computer. I see all that stuff, and I remember we did come from the home timeline. It's not just something I dreamt or made up inside my head.“
Jeremy made himself grin. “If it is, we're both nuts the same way.” He spoke in a low voice-and in English. Making himself use his own language instead of neoLatin took a real effort.
And hearing English made Amanda blink. “That's right,” she said in the same tongue. “Will we ever be able to speak our own language to anybody but each other?”
“I don't know.” For safety's sake, Jeremy fell back into neoLatin. “I just don't know.”
Another cannonball screeched by overhead. It slammed into a house or shop not too far away. Jeremy and Amanda looked at each other. If the Lietuvans broke into Polisso or starved it into surrender, nothing they'd talked about would matter very much. They wouldn't have to complain about how empty even the richest person's life here was. They wouldn't be rich. They'd be slaves-or they'd be dead.
Amanda was sewing up a tunic seam when someone rapped on the door. She wanted company just then about as much as she wanted another head. But Jeremy was at the market square, and it might be business. With a mutter of regret, she put down the tunic. She walked out of the courtyard and up the entry hall. The door was barred. She took the bar out of its brackets, set it aside, and opened the door.
There stood Lucio Claudio, called Fusco. “Good day,” Amanda said, meaning anything but. “What can I do for you?”
“I am looking for Ieremeo Soltero,” answered Gaio Fulvio's man of affairs.
“He's not here right now,” Amanda said. “Can I help you?”
“I doubt it,” Lucio Claudio said. Amanda glanced over at the iron bar she'd just put down. No, you can't hit him over the head with it, she told herself. People would talk. It seemed a great pity. The local, who didn't know she was contemplating his sudden departure from this world, went on, “It has to do with the official report he submitted.”
“Oh. Then I can help you.” Amanda stepped aside and gestured politely. “Won't you come in? Would you care for some wine?”
“It is written in the classical language. How could you-?” But Lucio Claudio caught himself. He'd already done business with Amanda. “No. Wait. You have already proved that you are familiar with it.”
“That's right. I have. And I am.” Amanda's smile was anything but sweet. She repeated, “Won't you come in?”
Lucio Claudio's face said mere females had no business knowing classical Latin. It also said mere merchants had no business knowing the old language. And if the merchant happened to be a girl, or the girl happened to be a merchant… “Very well.” He didn't sound any happier about being there than Amanda was to have him there.
When she took him back to the courtyard, she pointed to the hole in the kitchen roof. Jeremy had put boards over it, but the roofer hadn't replaced the shattered tiles. As she pointed, a cannonball thudded home somewhere not far away. She said, “At a time like this, don't you have more important things to worry about than official reports? We submitted it on time. It's accurate. Isn't that enough to satisfy you?“
The local's swarthy skin darkened further, probably with annoyance. He said, “What could be more important than keeping complete and thorough records?”
“You're joking,” Amanda said. Then she realized he wasn't. In Agrippan Rome, records were at least as important as people. Another cannonball landed somewhere a little farther away. She asked, “Don't you think you ought to be worrying about keeping the Lietuvans out of Polisso? Shouldn't everything else wait on that?”