Gunpowder Empire

Mom added, “Besides, a lot of the people who teach those training courses have never been out in the alternates themselves. Saying, 'Never do this,' is a lot easier when you've never had to worry about doing it yourself.”

“Once you've gone out and seen some of the things people do in the alternates, a lot of the time you do want to change it. You can't help yourself. It's ugly,“ Dad said.

“What exactly are you saying?” Jeremy asked. “Are you saying we shouldn't pay any attention to what they tell us in the training sessions? Why do we have them, in that case?”

He liked authority no better than anyone else his age. If the stuff they fed him was pointless, he didn't want to have to go through it.

“No, I'm not saying that. You do have to pay attention,” Dad answered. “But what you run into in the real world-in the real alternates-isn't just the same as what they tell you about in training. When you get out on your own, you have to use your own judgment. Amanda did that. We're not mad at her. We're proud of her.”

Amanda looked so smug, Jeremy wanted to hit her. He didn't like her getting praised when he didn't. She probably didn't like him getting praised when she didn't. That wasn't his worry, though. That was hers.

Then Mom said, “We're proud of both of you, as a matter of fact. It sounds like you did a great job here. You're not supposed to be on your own yet. You're especially not supposed to be on your own in the middle of a war.”

Dad's chuckle had kind of a nasty edge. “The locals probably figured you bashed out our brains and buried us in the cellar.”

“That's not fu

“They sure did,” Jeremy agreed. “If they'd been any more suspicious, they would have tried digging down there. That wouldn't have been so good. They would have found all the grain we were storing, and they might have found the concrete over the subbasement.” He spoke quietly, so only the people in the courtyard could hear.

“They couldn't get through it,” Amanda said.

“No, but they sure would have wondered why it was there,” Jeremy said. “Locals aren't supposed to wonder about us at all.“ He'd learned that in a training session, too. He'd never thought to doubt it, either. It seemed too obvious to need doubting.

By then, Dad's grin had fallen from his face. He poured himself another cup of wine. “I thought I was joking,” he said.

“Nope.” Jeremy shook his head. “They do wonder about us. We sell things nobody else has. We sell for grain, not silver. They think that's weird, too. I don't know what we can do about it. Move out of Polisso, maybe, and start up again somewhere a long ways off. That would buy some time.”

“Less than you think,” Dad said. “News doesn't move fast here, but they keep records. They keep records like you wouldn't believe, in fact. There's bound to be a file on us back in Rome. Nobody's ever come out here to ask question, so they can't think we're real important. But if we showed up in Spain or Britain instead of Polisso, news of that would get back to Rome, too. And a clerk who'd seen the one file would also see the other one. He'd wonder why we disappeared here and set up shop there. And somebody would start asking questions then. Or am I wrong?“

Jeremy thought it over. He didn't have to think very long. He'd already had his own run-ins with the bureaucracy of Agrippan Rome. “No, you're right. I hope we don't have to pull out of here and start over on some other alternate that looks a lot like this one.”

“That would be a nuisance,” Dad agreed. “I wouldn't want to have to say we've lost our grip on Agrippan Rome.” Jeremy and Amanda both made horrible faces. Dad gri

“One good thing,” Amanda said: “Even if the locals here found out we're from crosstime, they couldn't do anything about it. As long as we could jump into a transposition chamber, we'd be safe.”

“True enough here,“ Mom said. “But there are alternates where they have the technology to go crosstime themselves if they ever get the idea. Some of those aren't nice worlds at all. Crosstime Traffic has to be real careful in places like that.”

“It might be better if we didn't go to those places ourselves,” Jeremy said. “Then we couldn't give ourselves away.”

“It might, but it might not, too,” Dad said. “If they found out how to build transposition chambers on their own and we didn't know till we bumped into them on some alternate where we were both working… well, that wouldn't be so good, either. So we stay and we watch and we try to be careful and we worry. Sometimes-a lot of the time-there are no clear answers, only hard choices.”

Jeremy thought about that, too. It reminded him- reminded him uncomfortably-of his own worries after he and Amanda got stuck here. He said, “Things don't seem as black-and-white to you as they do to me, do they?”

Dad and Mom looked at each other. They both started laughing at the same time. Jeremy started to get mad. Dad saw that, too. He held up a hand. “No offense,” he said. “Honest, none. It makes us feel good that you're growing up. It really does. It's just that-”

“You don't know how right you are,” Mom broke in.

“You sure don't,” Dad said. “That's what you'll do between now and when you're as old as we are. One of the things you'll do, anyway. You'll find out how right you are.”

“The older you get, the more complicated things look,”

Mom said. “That's not because you'll get smarter. You'll just get more experience.”

“You won't get more RAM,” Dad added. “But you'll have a lot more programs and a lot more files on your hard disk that you can use and read.”

Not all of Dad's comparisons made sense to Jeremy. That one did. He said, “What do we do if somebody from a nasty alternate figures out how to go crosstime?”

Mom and Dad looked at each other again. They didn't laugh this time. Slowly, Dad said, “I don't know. I don't think anybody else knows, either. What do you think we ought to do?“

“A lot depends on when we find out they're doing it,” Amanda said while Jeremy was still chewing on it. “We can do things if we catch them quick that we can't if they have a chance to spread out.”

She was right. Jeremy could see as much. He said, “I just hope it doesn't happen, that's all.”

“Well, so do I,” Dad said. “But it probably will. It's almost bound to, sooner or later.” He raised his winecup in a toast. “Here's hoping it's later.”

They all drank to that.

Two days later, the Robinson family came into Polisso. As Jeremy and his kin had before them, they walked in through the western gate. As far as anyone here was concerned, they came from Carnuto. They were all small and dark. For looks and size, they fit in better than the Solters family did. They too had a boy and a girl. The boy, Michael, was thirteen or fourteen. The girl's name was Stephanie. She was Jeremy's age, and pretty enough almost to make him sorry he was leaving. That was all the more true because she seemed very impressed about what he and Amanda had gone through during the siege.

Amanda noticed Jeremy noticing Stephanie. She got him aside and asked, “Well, are you going to tell her all about what a hero you were?”

“No!” He shook his head violently. That hadn't even crossed his mind. He said, “I never even want to think about that again, let alone brag about it.”

His sister eyed him. After a few seconds, she nodded. He felt oddly relieved. He might have just passed a test, and an important one. Amanda said, “All right.” She started to turn away, then seemed to decide that wasn't enough. “Better than all right, in fact. I wouldn't like it if you got all bloodthirsty on me.”

“You don't need to worry about that,” Jeremy promised. “I saw that guy get shot when I was up on the wall at the start of the siege. It wasn't movie blood or video-game blood. It was real. I could smell it.“ He shuddered. ”And it could have been me as easy as him. Nothing but dumb luck, one way or the other. Anybody who goes on about how glorious war is, should have been there, you know what I mean?“