And then everything, even the ball game, came to a stop. A herald went through the streets shouting, “All who are not Roman citizens or legal residents have two days to vacate Polisso! By order of the most illustrious city prefect Sesto Capurnio, and the most noble and valiant garrison commander Annio Basso, all who are not Roman citizens or legal residents have two days to vacate Polisso! After that, they may be arrested. Their property may be seized. They may be sold as slaves. Hear ye! Hear ye! All who are not…” He started over again, as loud as he could.
“That doesn't sound good,” Jeremy said.
“Sounds like a war, all right,” Fabio Lentulo agreed. “Don't want any stinking Lietuvans around to open the gates at night or something.”
“Why would they want to do that?” Jeremy asked.
The silversmith's apprentice looked at him as if he'd just lost his mind. “Because they're Lietuvans,” Fabio said with exaggerated patience. “They'd rather have their stupid King rule here than the Emperor, gods bless him. They'd rather have everybody bow down to their stupid gods, too-Perku-nas and all the others nobody ever heard of. What do you want to bet they're throwing Romans out of their ugly old towns, too?“
What Jeremy would have bet was that Fabio had never been more then ten kilometers outside of Polisso in his life. He had no way of knowing whether the towns in the Kingdom of Lietuva were ugly. For that matter, he had no way of knowing whether King Kuzmickas was stupid, either. But he believed those things, because he lived in the Roman Empire. If he'd lived in Lietuva, he would have thought the Emperor was stupid and Roman towns were ugly and Roman gods were stupid. Nationalism wasn't as strong in this world as it was in the home timeline, but it existed.
Fabio Lentulo suddenly looked like a ferret that had spotted a mouse. “I know where some of those lousy Lietuvans live,” he said. “They won't be able to take all their stuff with them-not if they've only got two days to pack. The plundering ought to be juicy.”
“No, thanks,” Jeremy said. “Leave me out.”
“Why not?” Now Fabio really couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Who knows what all they'll have to leave behind?” But Jeremy shook his head. The apprentice stared. “You ore weird. What's wrong with plundering a bunch of rotten foreigners?”
“I don't care that they're foreigners,” Jeremy answered. “They're merchants. So am I. I wouldn't want anybody plundering me if I had to get out of town.”
“Is that the Golden Rule thing Christians go on and on about?” Fabio asked.
“Well-yes,” Jeremy said, surprised the local had heard of it.
Fabio Lentulo might have heard of it, but he wasn't much impressed. With a scornful wave, he said, “Bunch of crap, if you ask me. You do your friends all the good you can and your enemies all the harm you can, and that's how you come out on top.”
The ancient Greeks and Romans had believed the same thing. Plenty of people in Jeremy's world still did, but they mostly pretended they didn't. In Agrippan Rome, Christianity hadn't changed morals as much as it had back home. People here were more openly for themselves than they were in the home timeline.
Maybe that explains why they don't worry about owning slaves, Jeremy thought. If somebody was a slave, didn't he have it coming to him? Jeremy liked the idea-for about half a minute. Then he remembered all the men who'd owned slaves in the South before the Civil War… and who'd called themselves good Christians. He sighed. Things weren't so simple as they looked at first.
He saw things like that more and more often as he got older. He'd begun to suspect that no small part of growing up was seeing that more and more things weren't so simple as they looked at first. Trouble was, he liked being sure. Watching certainties disappear under the magnifying glass was a jolt every time.
You could, of course, pretend things were as simple as you'd believed when you were a kid. You could-if you didn't mind living a lie. Or maybe if you just refused to look facts in the face. Some people did. Lots of people did, in fact. Jeremy wondered how.
Then he had to make a quick grab to keep the ball from hitting him in the eye. Fabio Lentulo screeched laughter. “I thought you'd gone to sleep there,” he said. “If you had, I was going to slit your belt pouch.”
Jeremy threw the ball back. “To the crows with you,” he said, an insult the locals often used. “Good to your friends and bad to your enemies, you said? Am I your enemy, if you want to steal from me?”
“My enemy? Nah.” The silversmith's apprentice shook his head. “But you sure were acting like a dopey friend there.” He heaved the ball high in the air.
After a run that involved dodging two women and almost tripping over a dog, Jeremy caught it at his belt buckle. Willie Mays had invented that kind of catch a century and a half before his time. He'd seen old video. He wasn't so smooth as Willie Mays, but he was plenty smooth enough to impress Fabio Lentulo. “Let me try that!” the apprentice called.
Jeremy flung it high. Fabio staggered-he almost tripped over that dog, too-and tried his own basket catch. The ball thudded to the cobbles at his feet. Jeremy jeered. Fabio Lentulo came back with something just as nasty. They both laughed. The game went on.
Every day, Amanda would go into the secret part of the basement, hoping to see a message on the PowerBook's screen. Every day, she would be disappointed. Every day, she would try to send her own message. Every day, the computer would tell her she couldn't. And every day, she would go back up to the main level wishing none of this were happening.
Wishes like that were worth their weight in gold. Amanda knew as much. Knowing didn't keep her from making them. Every day no message came, every day she and Jeremy remained cut off in Polisso, was an argument no message would ever come, an argument they'd stay cut off forever. She thought about Livia Plurabella. If she was stuck here, would she turn into someone like that in another twenty-five years? Wondering what you would be like when you grew up was scary enough when you were doing it in your own world. When you might be stranded forever in a place where you didn't want to live…
Then again, stranded forever might be stretching things. The Lietuvan traders still left in Polisso got out of town the day after the city prefect and the garrison commander finally issued the order expelling them. Some of their wagons rattled past the house where Amanda and Jeremy were staying.
Amanda peered out through one of the handful of narrow windows that opened on the street. Traffic in Polisso was as insane as usual. That meant the Lietuvans couldn't get out of town in a hurry, no matter how much they wanted to. It also gave the locals the chance to pay them a not so fond farewell.
“Get out!” “Never come back!” “Gods-cursed blond barbarians!” Those were a few of the nicer good-byes people yelled. The rest… Amanda had heard some vile things at Canoga Park High. What the people of Polisso called the departing Lietuvans would have made the toughest kid there turn green.
They didn't just call them names, either. They threw things. They had nastier things to throw than they would have in Los Angeles. Squishy vegetables and balls of manure were bad enough. But the stench of rotten eggs seemed ten times worse. Amanda couldn't get away from it, either. The windows had no glass. Closing the shutters didn't do a dollar's worth of good.
The worst of it was, the Lietuvans had to take the abuse. If they'd tried to hit back, they wouldn't have got out of Polisso alive. If they'd tried to hit back, the people in the street wouldn't have thrown dung and rotten eggs. They would have thrown rocks and jars instead. They probably would have mobbed the foreigners, too. And so, stone-faced, the Lietuvans pushed on toward the gate. They tried to keep the flying garbage from spooking their horses and mules and oxen too badly. They also tried to duck so they didn't get too filthy.