Margo's eyes widened. "Those are slaves!"
"Ostia is a trading port," Malcolm pointed out. "And slaves are big business. Rome has had a slave economy for centuries."
She followed the barge's progress until it passed out of sight beyond a bend, then shivered. They rounded another curve in the river and the new port came into view. Ostia was just visible in the distance, more than two miles away across silty salt marsh. The new port rose from the marshes as though the gods themselves had set the giant stones in place.
Margo breathed, "Wow!"
For once, Malcolm shared her awe.
Two curving breakwaters had been constructed across the entrance to an enormous excavation. The main harbor-some one-hundred-seventy acres of it had already been dug and flooded. Between the two breakwaters, Roman engineers had built an artificial island A tall tower rose toward the bright sky, incomplete as yet. An artificial channel connected the newly dug harbor with the river.
Malcolm dragged over the bag containing his ATLS and log and slung it across his chest, bandolier style, then risked a quick scan with a digitizing camera which hooked into the log like an ordinary scanning mouse. He photographed the entire panorama, then steered for the middle of the Tiber. Now that he'd seen the whole layout, he was dying to get a closer look. Margo leaned over the prow like an excited kid.
"What's that?" Margo asked, pointing to the tower. "A temple of some kind?"
"No. Much more important."
She glanced around, brow furrowed. "Like what?"
He grinned. "A lighthouse.
"A lighthouse?" Margo laughed. "I never thought about ancient people building practical things like lighthouses, but I guess they'd need one, wouldn't they? Especially to navigate around that island in the fog."
"Yes. It's almost finished. Claudius will dedicate the new harbor this year, although construction will continue through A.D. 54 under Nero, after Claudius' death. Get your log. I want you to start recording your impressions. Just open the flap on your bag a little and press voice record."
She did so, draping the bag around her own neck and shoulder much as he had.
"Wow That's really something, Malcolm.- She began describing everything in sight, then started asking questions. "How long must it have taken to dig all that out? Months? Years? And look at those walls. What is that? Stone? Or concrete? And look at those piers. They're solid stone! How'd they get those blocks into place? Say, what's that?"
Malcolm grinned. Watching Margo's mind come alive was almost as much fun as studying the new port to satisfy his own scholarly itch. They moved on downriver and spent the day in Ostia, prowling the wharves while merchants offloaded cargo for the river voyage up to Rome and manufactured goods arrived for export to the far-flung provinces. Ostia's harbor was so badly silted, the town was already showing the effects of lost business to overland routes. Eventually, even Claudius' fine new harbor would silt in and everything would come overland from Naples-until Trajan would finally build his non-silting, hexagonal-basin harbor. Almost sixty years from now, Ostia would come into her true glory as a port. But even now, Ostia was an impressive little city.
Malcolm took her to the barracks of the vigiles and explained the function of the special cohort.
"Firemen?" Margo echoed. "I thought Benjamin Franklin invented fire departments."
"Say, you have been doing that American history reading, haven't you? Very good. In a manner of speaking, he did. But the Romans had a special fire-fighting brigade to protect the grain port and there was even a private company in Rome. Of course, its main job was to arrive at a fire and convince the owner to sell out cheap before putting out the blaze ... ."
"That's awful!"
"Free enterprise in action," Malcolm grinned. "The owner got filthy rich."
Margo huffed Malcolm's gut response disturbed him to his core. C'mon, Malcolm, she's your student. But he couldn't help the fact that Margo was doing seriously troubling things to his bodily chemistry.
"Come on, I'll show you the Mithraeum and the Temple of Vulcan."
Margo giggled. "The guy with the ears?"
Malcolm gave her his best disapproving scholar's glare, which reduced her to fits of laughter.
"I'm sorry," she laughed, "but it always tickles me. And you look so funny when you're irritated."
He sighed, feeling suddenly old. Was a man old at thirty-six? Old enough for a bubbly eighteen-year-old to consider funny ...
It was just as well. He needed complications in his life the way a flock of turkeys needed Thanksgiving. Malcolm adjusted the fit of his slave's collar and gestured to his "master."
"This way, if you please. The buildings you see here are the collegia of the boatmen, professional guilds with considerable clout in Ostia. Down that way are the warehouses and if we look off to the southeast, we can just see the roof of Ostia's Temple of Cybele ... ."
Margo waited until Malcolm had fallen asleep, then quietly dressed in the darkness and slipped out of their rented room. She wanted to get away by herself to think. What with lessons and down-time adventures, she hadn't really found five whole minutes to just think about the enormity of what she was doing. She knew she was taking a risk, going out at night, but Ostia wasn't Rome. Besides, I need to prove I'm ready to solo.
Margo gained the dark street without raising an alarm. She leaned against the wall and let go her breath, then grinned. So far so good. When her eyes adjusted, Margo caught her breath. The sky ... Clearer even than a Minnesota winter night, the sky was so filled with stars Margo lost whole minutes just gazing upward.
Everybody should see a sky like this, just once be for they die .... Margo had met folks who'd never seen anything but the murky yellow glow that passed for night in places like New York. Maybe if they saw a sky like that they wouldn't feel so ... so self-important.
Feeling keenly her own insignificance, Margo found her way to the docks. Wooden hulls creaked in the night Wind flapped in loose sails, sang through slack rigging. Where ships rode quietly at anchor, a few braziers burned on high stern decks, marking the presence of night watchmen. Margo found a stone archway near the entrance to one long pier and settled in the shadows. Far away, drifting on the spring wind, she could hear a magical chorus of frogs and insects from vast salt marshes. Margo sighed. I'm really sitting on a dock two thousand years before I was born.
She'd planned this moment all her life. So why wasn't she happy? Malcolm Moore's smile flitted into her awareness, causing her pulse to dance like mating butterflies. Malcolm Moore was more than a good teacher. He was becoming a good friend, maybe the best friend she'd ever found. She was grateful for that, but...
But what?
But deep down, you're afraid of him, that's what. And she wasn't sure she wanted to be, which scared her even worse.
Starlight silvered the rolling breakers. In her own time, the sea had wiped out some of the world's greatest cities. Margo didn't understand all the science and stuff that had caused The Accident. All she knew, was a burning need to grasp the opportunity before her. And she would grasp it. Come hell, high water ... or Malcolm Moore. How much time was left? She counted backwards in her head. Three months. Margo bit her lip. Was she being foolish, rushing her training just to prove him wrong?
"I have to! I just have to ..."
Her father's voice, angry and slurred, slapped her from out of the past. "You'll turn out same's her! Filthy, stinking whore-"
My mother was not a whore
All those years ago, Margo had wanted to shout it back at him. Not shouting it had probably saved her life. But not saying it then or now-didn't change facts. Everyone else had said it: the cops, the news people, the foster parents who took her out of a hospital bed and gave her a home in another town. Even the judge who'd eventually passed sentence on her father had said it: Margo, trying to rebuild her life, had turned a dry-eyed mask to the world to hide the pain.