The house of Falco proved to be an airy, sunlit place, with high ceilings, wide open windows, smelling pleasantly of freshly cut wood. Half a dozen men and one woman were at work when Falco and France arrived. The woman was Mrs. Falco, called “Bacca,” though that seemed to be her nickname, not her real name. She was a plump woman with her graying hair drawn back in a tight bun. Her face was friendly, and she smiled when France was brought in.
“Who’s this?” said Bacca.
“New boy,” Falco replied. “What’s your name, by the way?”
France knew his name, but when it came time to say it, it came out “Gallus.”
Falco grunted approval. With Bacca following, he led France through the front room of the house outdoors to a courtyard. There, workmen were sharpening tools, sweeping up wood shavings, or hammering away on what looked like a pile of window shutters. Falco greeted his men with single syllables while Bacca introduced them. They were all older than France by a good many years—most were in their thirties—and one, Quercus, was at least sixty. France was sort of amused that one man’s name was Nero. He didn’t resemble the dissipated emperor of history, being lean and hard muscled from years of carpentry.
Lunch at the house of Falco was intimate. The workmen set up a trestle table on the shady side of the courtyard and brought a couple of benches out of the house. Bacca set out wicker platters of fruit, olives, and fat, flat loaves of bread. A tall clay pitcher held some amber liquid the men drank with great relish. France sipped some. It was apple cider, well fermented. He looked around for water. Not seeing any, he asked.
“Of course, a lad like you should drink water, not fiery stuff like these old men. They need it to keep their hearts going all afternoon!” said Bacca.
“Drink enough and it puts me to sleep,” Quercus said.
“Breathing puts you to sleep,” Nero declared. The men laughed, all except Falco. He grunted twice.
When the master was finished, the meal ended. The men drifted back to work. Bacca cleared the table. France got up, but Falco asked him to sit down again.
“You know reading?” France said he did. “Writing?” Of course, though France had no experience with Latium methods. He remembered something from school about Romans writing on wooden tablets covered in wax.
“Numbers?”
“I am good with numbers,” France said.
“Good.”
Falco went into the house and returned with a couple of tightly wound scrolls. He put these before France, who unrolled the top one carefully. It was a carefully drawn plan of a large house. Falco asked France to read the measurements written inside the room plans.
“‘Fourteen feet, eight digits,” he read. Something about that bothered France. Prompted to go on, he read other lines and numbers. As Falco rolled up the first plan, satisfied, it struck France what was wrong with what he had just seen.
The plans used Arabic numbers! Roman numerals were letters, of course: I, V, X, C, and so on. Falco’s plans were plainly labeled with familiar Arabic numbers: 14, 8, 76. It was a small discrepancy, but it had a big meaning.
Ever since the Carleton had lost communication and then gone aground, no one had any idea what was happening to them. All the crazy theories France’s fellow travelers advanced about time travel or the Bermuda Triangle were rubbish. They weren’t back in time. There was no Republic of Latium in ancient times to start with, and no one in the Roman Empire used Arabic numerals. France didn’t know as much history as Hans, but he knew Hindu-Arabic numbers didn’t reach Europe until the Middle Ages, centuries after the Roman Empire fell. They had not gone back in time. It was still 2055, and the Carleton people were being held against their will in some kind of weird, all-pervasive theme park. But where were they, and how could they get home?
Falco smacked him lightly on the side of the head. “Wake up,” he said. France had gotten lost in his speculations. His new master—but not his owner, he realized—wanted him to copy a set of house plans but increase the dimensions by a factor of four. Equipped with ancient drafting tools—a reed pen, a pot of oily black ink, an unmarked hardwood ruler, and a piece of old felt to blot excess ink, France set to work.
A couple miles away, Jenny sat nervously on a cold marble bench. The priestesses of Ceres had left her there, in the courtyard of the temple without any instruction. It was beautiful there, with well-tended plants and shrubs, and a high wall of honey-colored sandstone encircling the sacred precinct of the temple.
The temple itself, set back from the street on a path paved with chips of white quartz, was not as imposing as Jenny had imagined. She thought she was going to a severe, Parthenon-like place, as imposing as the facade of the British Museum, but she was wrong. The temple of Ceres was small but elegant, round instead of rectangular. There were columns all around of the simplest kind (Doric? Ionic? Jenny tried to remember her junior- year art history class), entwined with vines. A low white dome topped the temple. Along the top of the colonnade were fancy stone pots filled with lush, growing plants. Jenny wondered how the priestesses watered them way up there.
Suddenly she felt a curious tug, as if someone invisible had given her gown a gentle pull. She looked around, but no one was in sight. Then she heard a low, female voice call out, “Genera,” and Jenny knew that was her Latin name. She got up, unsure where to go. Something tugged at her again, only this time it felt more like her insides were being pulled, not just her clothes. Alarmed, Jenny waved her hands to ward off the unseen summons.
“Genera, come.”
The voice called her again. It seemed to come from within the temple. Jenny followed the path, ascended the few steps, and crossed the shaded patio to the open doors of the temple. She passed through an antechamber crowded with offerings—bundles of lilies and iris, baskets of fruit, even sheaves of cattails tied together like miniature sheaves of wheat. The antechamber was cool and dim, but beyond the sun shone down through an atrium in the temple dome. Someone was waiting for her there. Jenny entered into the presence of the goddess.
Under the dome was a fine, slightly larger than life-sized statue of a woman. A shaft of sunlight fell directly on the image of Ceres, who leaned lightly on a long staff topped by a garland of leaves. Her hair was done up in a long braid, which was then wrapped around her forehead like a crown. The statue was carved from some kind of smooth, pinkish stone, polished to a soft sheen. She was dressed in real clothing like a peasant woman, though the garments were made of fine, shimmering cloth.
It was a beautiful work of art, but it was only a statue, and whatever awe Jenny felt quickly gave way to annoyance. She didn’t believe in goddesses, especially stone ones that pretended to speak.
“I did speak,” said a warm, mature woman’s voice.
“It’s a nice trick,” Jenny replied loudly, looking around for the concealed priestess who was doing the talking. “But this is wasted on me.”
“You do not believe?”
“In gods and goddesses? Not bloody likely.”
Instantly a piercing pain lanced through her chest. Jenny’s heart felt as if she was impaled on a steel stake. She gasped and fell to her knees, hands clasped to her heart.
“It always takes force to convince unbelievers. Beauty and mystery are not enough. It takes pain, does it not?”
The pain was real enough. Jenny trembled from head to toe. Sweat ran in streams from her nose and chin.
“Stop . . . !” she wheezed.
“A little longer, and you will believe,” said the voice.
Jenny fell on her side, hands clutching at her ravaged heart. Her vision shrank to a narrow tunnel. All she could see were the feet at the base of Ceres’s statue.
“Enough.”
The pain ended so suddenly, Jenny was unable to draw a breath.
“Stand, believer.”
From crushing pain, Jenny was filled with absolute well-being. Her vision cleared, and the terrible cramps in her chest were replaced with healing warmth. She practically leaped to her feet. The rush to her head was like winning a dozen gold medals and setting a dozen new world records.
“You are strong,” said the voice. “Go forth and use that strength in my service.”
Jenny gazed up at the benevolent face of the statue. “I-I will.”
Priestesses appeared behind her. They tried to take her by the arms, but Jenny would not let them. She backed away from the image of Ceres, never taking her eyes off it.
“You are accepted by the goddess,” said Scipina. “Come. I will instruct you in your duties.”
They passed outside. The formerly empty courtyard around the temple was now well populated with drably dressed workers, all women, busily pruning, watering, or cultivating the garden surrounding the temple. Scipina directed one of the gardeners to surrender her tool to Jenny. A lean, dark-haired woman of about forty handed over a pair of iron shears. Jenny stared. It wasn’t the tool that startled her. She quickly smothered her surprise. Taking the shears, she went where Scipina directed and began clipping off dried-up blossoms from an enormous bed of iris.
Jenny knew the woman who gave her the shears. She was the ship’s signals officer, Ms. Señales. She was supposed to be dead—Jenny saw her go down with the other officers when the Carleton sank, but there she was, alive and serving the great nature goddess. Though she and Jenny were only a handshake apart when the tool was passed, there was no recognition in Ms. Señales’s eyes. It was clear she had no idea who Jenny Hopkins was.
“I know you,” she said. “From the ship?”
“You are mistaken, dear sister. We have not met before,” said Ms. Señales.
Jenny seized her hand. “Are you sure?”
Scipina broke her grip. “It is forbidden to touch an elder of the temple.” To Ms. Señales she said, “Go and make yourself pure again.”
Jenny watched the Carleton’s signals officer go. She had a thousand questions bubbling in her head, but to the stern Scipina she simply said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know all the rules yet.”
“We will forbear,” said the priestess. “Because you are new. Next time you transgress, there will be correction.” Jenny put a hand to her heart, remembering the pain.
She clipped dead flowers for a long time. The pain Jenny had endured was considerable, but it took more than punishment to change her mind. None of these weirdoes knew how hard she trained—the muscle aches, the pinched nerves, running on bad knees, or how she placed second at the 2052 Champions Club Cup with an untreated broken wrist.
Something else: the “goddess” left a clue behind about the source of her power. When Jenny got up, freed from the terrible pain, she distinctly smelled the sharp tang of ozone. Ozone, she knew, was made when high voltage electricity passed through ordinary air. Ceres, however dangerous, was plugged into a wall socket somewhere.
As the sun set on the day, the Carleton’s people were scattered across Eternus Urbs. Hans Bachmann was face to face with an enigma of his own. His master, the scrivener Piso, had all the equipment Hans expected a Roman scribe would have: racks of drying parchment, pots of ink made from soot and olive oil, and long tables where patient workers hunched, copying one long manuscript onto fresh scrolls. What Hans did not expect to find was a hand-powered printing press with cast lead type.
“Magister, what is this?” Hans asked, stunned by the sight.
“You are a bumpkin,” Piso replied. “I thought you were educated! Do you not know the stilus apparatus, the writing machine?”
“I know what it is, magister! I never thought to see one here! It is . . .” He started to say “It is an anachronism!” but he didn’t know how to say it. Nor could he find a way to say the printing press was invented a thousand years after the Roman Empire fell, so how could there be one in the Latin Republic?
“We’re very modern in Eternus Urbs,” Piso said. “The barbarians of Ys or Ardennus may not have writing machines, but we certainly do.”
Hans examined the press closely. It resembled the ones he had seen in Mainz, in the Museum of Printing. It had a heavy frame of wood and a big hand-cut wooden screw held together with wooden pegs. The bed on which pages were printed was a slab of marble. Lying in a frame on the bed were lines of backward letters cast in lead. Hans tried to read the backward text.
“Here, dolt,” said Piso, handing him a printed broadsheet. It was a big sheet of paper, thirty inches square. In bold Latin font it proclaimed:
BARBARIANS ON THE FRONTIER!
THE WOLVES OF YS AMBUSH REPUBLIC TRAVELERS!
CONSUL SEPTIMUS GLORIORUS VOWS REPRISALS
XVIII LEGION RECALLED FROM THE NORTH TO FACE THE BARBARIAN THREAT
THE FIRST CITIZEN’S WATCHWORD IS VIGILANCE!
In smaller type, the broadsheet described debate in the Senate about how best to punish Ys for its insults to the Republic. Hans soon grew bored reading it. Even in this weird retro republic, government proclamations were unbearably dull.
Piso had an order to print two thousand of these sheets. All over the city there were simple kiosks where government information sheets were posted. Apparently, Piso had been busy printing these sheets lately. Ys was being very troublesome, which was good for Piso’s business.
“We met some Ys soldiers,” Hans began, but Piso walked away to bawl out one of his employees for dropping a small jar of ink.
Hans thought he might get to operate the press, but no such luck. Piso set him to scanning finished sheets hanging on clotheslines in the sunny courtyard in the center of his house. It was bright there, and hot while the sun was out. Not a breath of wind stirred inside the four walls. Hans inspected sheet after sheet for errors or misprints. When he finished a batch of fifty or so broadsheets, a pair of skinny boys came in, took them down, and hung up fresh ones. Only 1,950 to go, Hans thought wearily.
When he did find a poorly printed letter, he had to write it in by hand with a slim, brushy-tipped pen. At first Hans tried to match the rigid Roman font with his brush strokes, but after thirty or forty corrections, he simply wrote in the correct letter and let it go at that. If Piso noticed, he didn’t complain.
After sundown, most of Piso’s workers went home. Being a desolo, an “abandoned one,” Hans would eat and sleep in Piso’s house.
He ate with the family. Piso’s wife, Avia, was a slim, dark-haired woman who barely spoke in her husband’s presence (a situation he seemed to prefer). Piso had two sons, Castorius and Pollux, who were twins. Castorius was in the army, in the city’s X Cohort. Pollux worked for his father but had his own home next door.
Piso also had a daughter, Lidicera. She looked a lot like her mother, with smooth black hair down to her waist, sharp black eyes, and advanced ideas of her effect on men. She served Hans during dinner, leaning over him to pour wine mixed with water in his cup, passing him a platter of olives and hard-boiled eggs. She was pretty hot, and she knew it. Hans instinctively knew if he showed her any attention, Piso would throw him out on the street—and maybe have him beaten for daring to covet the boss’s daughter.
Of all the people Hans had met in this strange Roman fantasy world, Lidicera was the only one who asked him where he came from and what he did before he reached the Republic. He tried to tell her (and her mother and father, seated nearby) about Germany and Europe in the twenty-first century. He couldn’t. Though his memory of his own past life was clear, when he got to a term for which there was no word in Latin, he simply could not speak. He tried to say “personal data device, airplane, European Union,” or any modern place-name in Germany and found himself unable to render any of these things in Latin. He felt foolish, brow furrowed and stammering as he tried to describe the Carleton and his voyage.
“Ships are unsafe,” Piso said flatly. “I’d never get on one.” Hans asked why.
“They sink, don’t they?”
“I can’t imagine living anywhere but the Republic,” Avia said. “All those barbarians . . .”
“Were there girls with you on your voyage?” asked Lidicera.
“Yes, quite a few.” Hans wondered where Jenny, Julie, Eleanor, and Linh were right now.
She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. “Were they pretty?”
Hans glanced her way and saw everything she wanted him to see. He quickly shifted his gaze to his employer, who was gnawing a roasted chicken leg with frightening efficiency.
“I suppose so,” Hans said. “One girl was—” He thought about the shipwreck. “They were all brave and intelligent.”
“Is that so important?”
“I think so.”
Lidicera smiled a lot. Apparently, she found him amusing. Fortunately for Hans, when her father finished dinner, the meal was over for everyone. Avia lit a lamp and led Hans to his place to sleep. It was in the attic, among stored bundles of printing paper and tall jars of parchment rolls. A pallet of straw and a very dusty blanket were his bed.
“Good night,” Avia said. “Somnus take you soon.”
He was tired. His knee ached, too, though he thought it was getting better. Avia left with the lamp, leaving Hans in total darkness. When his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw slender white beams of light filtering in through chinks in the terra-cotta tiles. Exploring, he found a hatch in the roof. It was heavy, but he got it open. Cool air rushed in.
The light was from the moon. He hadn’t seen it in so long, he’d almost forgotten to expect it. Because it was so full and round, Hans wondered how he had missed it for so many nights.
He could see down to the street. People came and went, some on horseback but most on foot. A trio of young men staggered past, singing a drunken song about Luxuria’s House of Pleasure. Must be a brothel, Hans thought.
Someone touched his arm lightly from behind. Hans almost leaped through the hatch.
Lidicera laughed, covering her teeth with her hand to muffle the sound.
“Nervous, aren’t you?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, alarmed. Visions of the dead soldier who tried to molest Julie Morrison and the others filled his head. If Piso appeared, Lidicera was the just the type to cry rape.
“It’s my house. I go where I please. What were you looking at?”
He moved away as far as the hatch frame would allow. “The moon.”
“I like her, too.”
“‘Her?’”
“Diana, the goddess.” Lidicera held out her tan arms to the white globe in the sky. “‘Pale goddess, queen of virgins, keep me safe,’” she recited.
She looked at Hans. “I used to say that every night.”
“Oh? What do you say now?”
“Now I pray to Venus.”
A muffled voice downstairs called Lidicera. Hans suggested she go.
“Yes, yes. It’s only your first night here.” Lidicera faded into the shadows. Her voiced drifted back. “I hope you’re with us a long time, Ioannus.” That was Johann, rendered in Latin. When Lidicera said it, it sounded like “Yonus.”
Angry words drifted up through the floor when Lidicera met her mother. Hans closed the hatch and went to his meager bed. It took a surprisingly long time for him to fall asleep.