Gunpowder Empire

Out trooped the students. They were saying, “Have a great summer,” too, and, “See you senior year,” and, “See you online,” and all the other things Jeremy had said and heard ever since the first grade. Somebody from another class started singing,

“No more stylus, no more screen, No more teachers-they're obscene.”

Other boys and girls-mostly boys-joined in right away. People always did. Jeremy couldn't see why. Kids escaping school had probably sung that song since the days of the Pyramids.

Jeremy waved to Michael Fujikawa, who was coming out of a room a few doors down. When they were smaller, they'd got together almost every day during summer vacation. Not now. Now it was, “See you in September.” They both said it at the same time, and not just because they didn't live two houses apart any more.

“Good luck in your alternate,” Jeremy added.

“Same to you,” Michael said. His parents traded in an Asian-dominated alternate world, the same as Jeremy's did in Agrippan Rome. In the alternate where the Fujikawas worked, Chinese fleets had kept Europeans out of the Indian Ocean. Trade patterns and all later history were very different there. These days, Japanese warlords dominated China in that alternate, as German warlords had dominated the Roman Empire here. Michael went on, “It'll be good getting back. I'm starting to know people over there, too.”

Jeremy nodded. “So am I. But it's not the same. It can't be the same. Too many things we know, but we can't tell them.”

“Yeah.” Michael walked on for a few steps. Then he said, “Friends are one thing. I wonder what happens if you fall in love in an alternate.”

“People have,” Jeremy said. “They say people have, anyway. It's usually supposed to be a mess. I don't see how it can be anything else.” He didn't even want to think about that. Instead, he changed the subject: “I miss the days when we could fool around together all summer long.”

“Me, too. Text messages just aren't the same,” Michael said. “I wish there was bandwidth enough for video between alternates.”

“There is-if you're a gazillionaire,” Jeremy said. That disgusted him. If you were rich enough, you could get whatever you wanted. If you weren't, you had to put up with e-mail as primitive as it had been a hundred years earlier. Even still-photo attachments were iffy.

“We'll be glad to see each other when school starts, that's all,” Michael said.

“Sure.” Jeremy nodded again. “You be careful, you hear?” That wasn't idle advice. Michael was going to a violent place. What warlords there wanted, they reached out and took. People who didn't like it could easily end up dead.

“You, too,” Michael told him.

“Me? Don't worry about me. I'll be fine.” Jeremy laughed. “Hardly anything ever happens in Agrippan Rome. The Empire's more than two thousand years old there, and they've spent all that time making it more complicated. You have to fill out sixteen different forms before you can swat a fly, let alone catch a mouse.” He was exaggerating, but only a little.

“Be careful anyway,” Michael said. “If you're not careful, you get in trouble.” Jeremy's folks always said the same thing. He didn't mind it so much from his friend. Michael pointed. “There's your sister.” He waved. “Hi, Amanda.” When he and Jeremy were smaller, he'd done his best not to notice her. Now he was polite.

“Hi, Michael,” she said, and then started, “'No more stylus, no more screen-'”

“Not you, too!” Jeremy broke in.

“Why not?” Amanda said. “They sing the same kind of song in Polisso, where we're going.” She started a chant in neoLatin.

“In my alternate, too,” Michael said, and sang in the Japanese-Chinese pidgin merchants used there. That didn't mean anything to Jeremy, who'd never soaked up the language through his implant. Michael had taught him a few phrases, most of them dirty, but he didn't hear any of those. He'd done the same for his friend with neoLatin, which was an excellent language to swear in.

“Here comes our bus, Jeremy,” Amanda said. “Last time this year. I like that.”

“Everybody likes that,” Michael said.

Jeremy grabbed his hand before getting on the bus with Amanda. “We'll message back and forth all the time.”

“Sure,” Michael said. “See you. So long, Amanda.”

“So long,” Amanda said. As she and Jeremy climbed into the bus, she added, in a low voice, “I didn't used to think much of Michael, but he's okay.”

“He is the best of men,” Jeremy said in neoLatin. His sister poked him in the ribs.

She sat down with a girl she knew. Jeremy sat in the seat right behind her. Somebody in the back of the bus sang out, “'No more stylus, no more…'” Jeremy stuck his fingers in his ears. The guy who'd sat down beside him laughed.

People called good-byes as their friends got off the bus. They waved through the windows. The ones who'd left waved back and then headed home. Some would go out to the alternates for the summer. Some would work here. Some would just take it easy till September. Lucky, Jeremy thought.

Jeremy and Amanda got out at their stop. He hurried up the street toward their house. “What's the rush?” Amanda called.

“Don't you want to finish packing so we can leave?” Jeremy asked. He wished they could have left weeks ago. Amanda didn't need to think very long. She caught up with him in three long strides. They went on together.

Amanda's stomach didn't have time to do more than lurch on the suborbital hop to Romania. Then weight returned, the sky went from black to blue once more, and down they came, outside of Bucharest. “Now for customs,” Jack Solters said. “That'll take longer than getting here did.”

Amanda thought her father was exaggerating. He turned out not to be. They stood in line for an hour and a half before a man in a muddy brown uniform examined their passports with microscopic care. He took their thumbprints and retinal prints and compared them to the data in the passports. “Purpose of your visit?” he asked. He spoke with a thick accent. Romania wasn't a wealthy country. Not many people here had implants. The customs man had learned English the hard way, the old-fashioned way. It showed.

“We are in transit,” Dad answered. “We are doing business in an alternate.”

“Papers,” the customs man said.

“Right here.” Amanda's father handed him a thick sheaf of them. Some were in English, others in Romanian. The official called over another man in a fancier uniform. They put their heads together and talked in their own language. Amanda thought she recognized a word here and there. Romanian and the neoLatin she knew both sprang from classical Latin, though they'd gone in different directions.

Dad spoke up in fluent Romanian. He'd learned it through his implant. The man in the fancier uniform answered him. They went back and forth for a minute or two. The Romanian gestured. He and Dad stepped off to one side. They talked some more. Then they smiled and shook hands. After that, everything went smoothly. The junior customs man stamped the Solters' passports. No one searched their bags. They went on to the rental-car counter.

As they drove the little, natural gas-powered Fiat north and west up Highway E-68, Jeremy said, “What did you do, Dad? Slip him a couple of hundred benjamins?”

“Of course not,” their father answered. “That would be illegal.”

At the same time, Mom pointed to the dome light. Jeremy looked blank. Amanda got it right away. She grabbed her stylus and scribbled on the screen of her handheld. She showed it to Jeremy: the car's bugged, dummy.

He stared at the dome light. Amanda couldn't figure out why he would do that. For somebody who was smart-and Jeremy was, no doubt about it-he could act pretty foolish sometimes. A microphone right out there in the open where anybody could see it wouldn't make much of a bug.

“Oh,” Jeremy said-much later than he should have. “Sure.”