He shoveled some dirt into a basket, then turned to one of the slaves swinging a pick. "If you had to, how would you fight these people?" he asked in quiet Arabic.
"How?" The Muslim paused to wipe sweat off his forehead with his arm. "Carefully, by God—that's how." He also spoke in a low voice.
Jacques laughed, but it was one of those painfully true jokes. "What could you do against them? Hope to catch one alone and stab him in the back?"
"Probably your best chance," the other man agreed. "Odds are bad, though. I wouldn't want to try it at all, not unless I had to. I'd have about as much chance as a farm dog going up against an armored man."
One of the remaining guards strode toward them. "Enough chatter," he said. "Pay attention to what you're supposed to be doing."
With a sigh—a soft, quiet sigh—Jacques shoveled more dirt into the basket. That other slave swung his pick. The guard turned around and walked away. / might jump him from behind, Jacques thought. I know about the safety, thanks to Khadija.
If he could get a guard's musket and shoot all the other guards right here before they realized he understood how to use the weapon . . . Well, then what? The sound of gunfire would bring more guards. They would open up while he was still explaining to the other men who would snatch up muskets what a safety was and how to move it so their new firearms would shoot. And he could only talk to men who spoke Arabic.
He was ready—he was eager—to take chances to be free. But he saw the difference between taking chances and committing suicide. Trying to jump a guard and steal his musket seemed suicidal. Too bad, Jacques thought. Too bad, too bad.
What would happen if he just tried to run away? Again, he didn't need to be a monk or a scholar to figure that out. They would go after him, and they would probably catch him. When they did, they would make him very unhappy. He didn't know how, but he was sure they would. Anybody whose slave tried to run away would punish him once they got him back. These people seemed likely to be very, very good at punishment.
He glanced over at another guard. Even if he could grab a musket, even if he could arm his fellow slaves, even if he could get rid of all the guards and capture the manor and kill the master, he'd still be stuck here. He couldn't go back to the Madrid from which he'd been yanked, much less to the Kingdom of Versailles.
But there was a link between this place and Madrid. The transposition chamber. He had no idea how to make it work. He didn't, no. Khadija does. She belongs to these people, but she's not bad like most of them.
He wondered how he was so sure. He knew her better than he knew the ones who'd enslaved him. And she's too pretty to be bad. He did laugh at himself this time, and loaded another shovelful of dirt into the basket.
Eight
Day followed day. Annette quickly lost track of which day of the week it was. That didn't seem to matter. About all she had to measure time were the ripening of the vegetables and the slow swing of the sun to the south. The weather got cooler—cooler, yes, but not really cold.
Emishtar greeted the sun with a prayer every morning. At first, it was just noise to Annette. A few words at a time, a few phrases at a time, she learned to understand the whole thing. It was rather pretty. It was also another sign of how much time she'd spent here. Too much, too much, she thought.
More slaves, men and women, came up from the subbase-ment one night. They were blonds and redheads, with fair, freckled skins and eyes of blue or green or gray. When summer's full heat came back, they would roast. None of the slaves spoke a language they understood, while theirs made no sense to anyone else. The guards could shout at them and make sense, but the guards had implants, so they were able to learn languages in a hurry.
What alternate were the newcomers from? One where Crosstime Traffic did business? Or one like this, where the slavers had it all to themselves? Annette couldn't tell on her own, and had no way to ask.
With the newcomers getting the hardest jobs, some of the women who'd been tending vegetables became house slaves. When Annette stayed put in the garden plot, Emishtar said, "They should have brought you in. You are too smart for this." Her Arabic was getting pretty good, too.
"I do not mind," Annette said.
Emishtar laughed. "I know why you do not mind, too. That is one of the things that can happen to a slave woman."
"I do not want it to happen to me." Annette was proud of herself. She just said it. She didn't scream it.
"It can happen to you if you stay out here, too," the older woman said.
"Don't remind me," Annette answered in Arabic—she didn't know how to put that into Emishtar's language.
Emishtar either understood it or figured out what it had to mean. She laughed again. "I do not think you have to worry so much, though, not for a while," she said.
"No? Why not?" Annette asked.
"The master and the guards will try the new ones. They are new. And they look strange. That will make them seem . . . interesting."
Annette thought Emishtar was half right. Blondes and redheads might seem unusual to the older woman, but they wouldn't to somebody from the home timeline. Still, the rest of what the older woman said was true. The blondes and redheads were the new fish, so they probably would seem extra interesting for a while. Who'd said variety was the life of spice? Annette didn't think it was Ambrose Bierce, even if it sounded cynical enough to come from him.
While they were in the garden plots, the guards spent most of their time yelling at the new slave women. The language they used was oddly musical. It reminded Annette a little of an Irish brogue. On a visit to the west of Ireland a couple of years before, she and her folks had stopped at a pub for lunch. She'd needed a while to realize most of the Irishmen and -women eating and drinking there were speaking Erse, not English. The sounds of the older tongue had flavored the way they spoke hers.
So maybe these are Celts, too, she thought. Their looks argued for it. But that didn't say anything about which alternate they'd been stolen from.
They exclaimed at the hoes and trowels and three-tined cultivators they were supposed to use. To Annette, the tools were the most ordinary things in the world. They looked like Home Depot or Wal-Mart specials. They likely were—Annette's skirt had a label that said Wal-Mart—made in Bangladesh on it. Why get anything fancy and expensive for slaves? But they seemed something special to the fair-skinned women.
Watching them, Emishtar smiled, showing off her crooked front teeth. "When I first come here, I thinks tools very good, too," she said.
"They're all right." Annette didn't want to get excited about them.
"Gooder than all right." Emishtar's grammar slipped—so did Annette's a lot of the time—but she made herself understood. She went on, "All tools this kind, all tools that kind, all same. AW just the same. All good, smooth handles. Not too heavy. Not too—" She paused and raised an eyebrow, looking for help.
"Light?" Annette said. She picked up a pebble and easily tossed it up and down. "Light."
"Light. Yes. Thank you. Is the word." Emishtar nodded. "Not too heavy. Not too light. All good to use."
To her, as to the—Celtic?—women, tools were made one at a time, by hand. No wonder they got excited when they saw several that were just alike. / should have figured that out sooner, Annette thought, feeling dumb. She might take mass production for granted, but people from a low-tech alternate wouldn't. To them, it was as strange and marvelous as a transposition chamber, maybe more so.
Once she'd read a story—she didn't know if it was true—set in the days when high technology hadn't yet spread all over the home timeline. An African from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere had to come into the big city for some reason or other. He saw an airplane flying overhead, but it didn't mean much to him. Maybe he thought it was magic, or maybe he didn't realize people rode inside it. Then he saw a two-horse team pulling a carriage. He laughed and snapped his fingers and exclaimed, "Why didn't I think of that?"