Copyright © 2010 by Shane
Tourtellotte
First published in Analog Science Fiction
and Fact December 2010
Marcia Balbi tapped the shoulder of her freedman, just as
the wagon rolled through the Porta Superior town gate. "I'll
get off here, Alastor," Marcia said. "You collect the new
plough and drive it home. I'll walk back."
"Yes, domina," said Alastor, unruffled: he was used
to this arrangement. He reined in the oxen long enough for
Marcia to step down, then drove straight ahead. Marcia cinched
up her stola to keep its hem out of the dust and mire,
and made a right turn toward the familiar workshop, the clang
of metal already reaching her ears.
Nobody greeted her at the door, as everyone was at the main
worktable, hammering away at a perplexing gridiron of metal
bars. A smaller table near her held a collection of gears and
a clock face, so there was little doubt about today's project.
Remnants of earlier work stood on shelves along the walls: a
crank and boiling chamber for the steam-driven mill that
ground out his fire-powders, pots of binding glue, and a few
discarded hand molds for printing type. In the far corner, a
pendulum clock marked the time, unheard over the din.
She took a step closer, and finally caught one laborer's
eye. He lowered the hammer he had been about to swing, and
leaned toward the older man nearby who had still not noticed.
"Quintus Julius, you have a visitor."
"You mean a customer? Then -- aah."
Quintus Julius Americus did not look like an extraordinary
man. He wore a smudged tunic and sandals, like his hired
workmen. He stood something over medium height, but his
shoulders slumped and his gray hair was starting to thin. A
rustic beard covered his chin, its gray fading toward white.
He had shaved for his recent trip to Roma, where fashion only
abided a bare chin, but began re-growing his beard the day he
returned home. He did not look like anyone who would appear on
a marble bust, even if some people -- including Marcia --
thought he might deserve it.
"Marcia, salve," Americus said with a smile. "What
brings you here today?"
"I came into town with Alastor," said Marcia. "He's
collecting our new plough. There won't be room in the cart for
me on his return, so I thought you could see me home."
The workers, used to such obvious pretenses, all encouraged
Americus with their usual familiarity to help his lady. "Nice
try, boys," Americus said, "but we still have work. It's not
tenth hour yet, and you're not getting--"
A chime interrupted him. The clock in the corner, pendulum
swinging in its stately arc, had just rung the hour. The
laborers all laughed, Marcia nearly joining. Americus could
only yield with good humor. "That's why we're building this
one: better accuracy. Very well, let's clean up the shop, then
we can all go home."
Soon after, he and Marcia were out of town, walking south
on the footpath along the down-sloping Via Flaminia toward her
farm. His gait was still stiff, maybe slower than usual. She
made no comment, as always, merely adjusting her own pace and
drawing her mantle over her head against the sun.
Marcia talked briefly of her day's work, mostly preparing
for sowing of the winter wheat, then asked about his day.
Americus spoke of a few curious customers, and a funny story
one of his workers had told, but stuck largely with the new
clock project. He always had new ideas.
He went on smoothly, few promptings needed to encourage the
flow. That gave Marcia a chance to listen close, hoping to
catch some clues to the puzzles that still surrounded this man
after more than two years.
The greatest mystery was why this man, of all people, was
so terribly sad.
He hid it, of course. He hid many things, most concealed
better than his misery. Some of them hidden very well indeed.
He arrived in the spring of 726 ab urbe condita: a
north-bound wanderer on the Via Flaminia, past middle age,
weary beneath a heavy pack, and obviously not from these
parts. His dusty tunic was of excellent material, better than
someone who needed to walk would usually wear. It wasn't local
linen. Might it be Egyptian?
He spied her watching him from the garden, and approached
with an upraised hand. "Domina, salve. I am a traveler,
named Americus. Might I speak to the lord of the house?"
His name was strange, his Latin peculiar, and his accent
barbarian. His assumption was also mistaken. "The house is
mine, viator," she said, standing and brushing dirt off
her hands. "My husband is dead."
"Oh, my apologies, lady. May I ask if you are willing to
take on a boarder?" His lips gave a curious curl. "I have come
as far as I need to."
Marcia didn't have much to offer a boarder. The farm had
been just adequate to support the household when Aulus had
been alive. After he joined Caesar Octavianus's army and
perished of disease at Actium -- she had struggled terribly to
support herself, the two children, and their slave.
That was all the more reason to get some money while she
could. It might preserve her a while from needing to sell out
to the big local landholders or to accept one of the
opportunistic suitors she had had. That might be worth
admitting a stranger into the household, with all its
unknowable risks.
But she did not fear this man. Something about his fancy
tunic
before she had married, Marcia's family
cognomen had been Ralla. This literally meant a tunic
of fine fabric, just like his. She didn't believe strongly in
omens, having seen so few in her life, but this one ...
She named a price as high as she dared, three
sestertii a day, and prepared to haggle. Instead,
Americus rummaged through his pack and produced a small,
shining ingot, stamped with unfamiliar characters.
"Will this suffice for the first four months?" he asked.
Stunned, Marcia quickly said yes, and held out her hands. The
ingot was genuine silver, and if later she learned he had
underpaid about a tenth, she still thought herself far ahead
in the bargain.
Despite his oddness, Americus adapted himself to the
household. Granted, he seemed unaccustomed to rising at dawn
or earlier, to the limited variety of the food, or even to
having his main meal properly at midday. He was used to an
easier, richer life. Yet he humbly adjusted himself to their
ways, not something Marcia would expect of most rich folk.
After two days of settling in, he finally made his first
excursion into town early one morning. "Well, I'm off to
Narnia," he told her with that curious smile of his. The name
of the town was always an unspoken joke with him, and Marcia
had never learned the secret.
More surprises sprang out of his pack in Narnia. He had a
large stash of goods that he began trading for money. Rumors
soon began flying that he was a thief, plying stolen wares
upon them. The rich folk of Narnia, and the surrounding towns
he visited, didn't believe it, or didn't care. They gladly
bought his cinnamon sticks, his silks, his pearls. They
hesitated at the dye it didn't have the distinctive smell of
true Tyrian purple but the color was right, and someone
finally bought it. Probably Quintus Seius Avitus, parading
himself about like a Senator.
Then there were those little blue pills Americus sold to
Gnaeus Labienus Flaccus. What a scandal that was as
long as the supply held out. What Gnaeus Labienus then tried
in place of the Blue Fives, as he called them, was a worse
scandal, and not nearly as enjoyable.
Americus could have lived very well on his proceeds.
Instead, he rented that modest workshop on the edge of town,
and didn't even think of leaving Marcia's farmhouse. He said
he liked the peace of the countryside, liked walking to work.
Not even now, when his legs labored, did he rethink that.
Soon, he and the skilled freedmen he hired for the workshop
began producing things. Remarkable things.
"It's because metals expand a little as they grow warmer,"
Americus was saying, explaining why the new pendulum for his
clocks was so complicated. "Clocks will thus run a little
slower in summer. But different metals, like iron and lead,
expand at different rates. I can use the lead rods, running
up, to balance out the iron rods running down, and the
pendulum will stay the same length, however hot or cold."
"I
see." Marcia said nothing for a moment, working it out
in her head. "Could you use this somehow to make your clocks
run properly? Twelve hours from sunrise to sunset, whatever
the season?"
Americus grimaced. He had this rigid, almost Greek notion
of hours being the same duration year-round, as opposed to the
more natural Roman concept. "I couldn't make that work," he
said, "even with this innovation. But this will keep time much
more precisely than any water clock or hour candle ever
invented."
His grimace worsened. Marcia knew it was his legs. She made
an exaggerated brush of her forehead, nearly dislodging her
mantle. "I've gotten warm. Could we sit at the milestone and
have a drink?"
"Certainly, Marcia."
Another hundred short paces brought them to the fifty-fifth
milestone. He sat on the stone bench left there for travelers,
while Marcia got them water from the nearby fountain, fed by
Narnia's local springs. They refreshed themselves in
comfortable silence, before Marcia got them walking again.
Americus grunted as he stood.
"I'd gladly stay longer," said Marcia, "but the sun keeps
its own time."
Americus smirked. "A fair point. Let's go."
She might tease him, but she truly respected his mechanical
clock. It was one of his earliest inventions, one that sold
well to the richer families of Umbria and Tuscania. This new
variety might revive that market.
She heard the clop of hooves and the growl of wheels behind
them. Knowing those sounds intimately, she was calling out
"You have the plough, Alastor?" before she had turned her
head.
"Certainly, domina." It sat gently swaying in the
back. "There's even a little space left for the two of you, if
you wish."
"No, go on home. We'll be there soon." Americus watched the
oxen trudge past with only a hint of regret.
That was another of Americus's innovations, of course, with
both its wheels and the iron sheeting laid over the wood
blade. He sold several, for rather low prices, before letting
some local carpenters and ironworkers build the design for a
share of their takings. Marcia was sure they were cheating
him, and just as sure that Americus knew and didn't care. It
was enough, apparently, to endear himself strongly to the
local farmers.
He did not endear himself to local scribes with his
printing press, but he had anticipated their resistance. He
argued to the scribes that they were naturals for typesetting
jobs: literate, intelligent, good at fine work and at avoiding
mistakes. His calculated flattery didn't convince them all,
but it convinced enough. Many of them even adopted his novel
ideas about adding spaces between words and marks after
sentences, to simplify reading.
Nobody embraced his notions for new letters, the
bottom-curved I and rounded V, but he took that rebuff in good
humor.
Thanks to his flourishing printing shops, books were much
more plentiful, and cheaper. Marcia had even bought a couple
herself, without his prodding. She was not used to reading for
pleasure, but she had gotten through Cicero's
Philippics, mainly on her shared detestation of Antony.
His printing method didn't work properly on scrolls, but
Americus had a solution. He was so proud of his codex,
flat pages bound together at the margins. Marcia almost hated
to show him an old ledger of Aulus's from the Pharsalus
campaign. Julius Caesar had beaten Americus to this idea,
though now it could have a wider application.
That hadn't been Americus's sole disappointment, or the
worst. He had so much faith in his steam engines, and if he
had troubles building them on the grand scale he envisioned,
they still worked well on smaller scales. His richer customers
were glad to use them for curiosities, toys to amuse
themselves and impress their friends, but his vision to use
them for works on a massive scale went unappreciated.
And why should he have expected otherwise? Why build a
hulking, boiling, bashing, scalding machine to do the work a
couple dozen slaves could do, and probably better for their
having some measure of intelligence?
Americus threw himself against that pragmatic barrier,
railed against it, and could not budge it. The rebuff left him
stumped and dismayed -- until he decided that if competition
against slave muscle demanded more power, he'd produce more
power.
Once again, he had planned ahead. He sank much of his early
earnings into scouring the countryside to find and buy
nitrum, an obscure mineral. Once he had managed to
purify it to his liking he called the result "salt-stone" --
he combined his stocks with sulfur and charcoal, mixing them
in a bronze mill powered by one of his disdained steam
engines.
The result on the day of his first experiment was a
thunderclap that, in time, reached the ears of the Princeps
himself.
Enough of this fire-powder could blast through earth or
even stone, doing the work of hundreds or thousands of
laborers in a flash of flame. That people could use,
for road-building, quarrying, a host of constructive purposes.
Destructive ones as well: it could change the art of
siege-craft forever.
Americus could not produce it fast enough, for lack of
nitrum. He set up a strange alternative source that
involved ageing urine and wood-ashes, but it needed almost a
year to produce anything. Fortunately, someone simplified the
matter. Augustus bought up the secrets of fire-powder as a
state monopoly, for a rich bounty of money and what was far
more, the citizenship.
He went to Roma a few months ago, along with the jumped-up
Quintus Seius Avitus as his nominal sponsor, to meet the
Princeps and receive the citizenship from those majestic
hands. He came home with his new name: Quintus to honor his
sponsor, Julius to honor Augustus for granting him the
citizenship and Americus as his cognomen, as that was
who he was.
What he didn't bring home was happiness. He should have
been in exaltation on his return to Narnia, but Marcia saw
through the mask of his appearance, to the despondency
beneath.
Americus's talk had wound down, much like his clocks if
neglected. "What are your next plans," Marcia asked him,
"after you master this problem?"
Such thoughts usually raised his mood, but this time it did
little. He had a couple notions -- using glass and silver to
make an improved mirror, attaching a steam engine to a cart to
drive it without animal power -- but they sounded perfunctory.
"And we know how nobody likes my steam machines, except for
playthings," he grumbled.
Americus usually brimmed with ideas, and with enthusiasm
for them. His joy was in imagining and creating. It was when a
project ended that the melancholy asserted itself, no less
painful in the wake of success than of failure. As it was
taking him now, in the letdown after his day's work.
None too soon, they were home. She left him at the front
door, with a cheerfulness she feared was wasted on him, to do
the rounds of the farm. He would probably retreat to his
bedroom and work on his plans and diagrams. Maybe that would
let him feel better.
She found Alastor and the new plough in the shed, and gave
the new implement her inspection and approval. She sent him to
the pen to feed their chickens, pigs, and sheep -- they could
be shorn soon -- and went to the olive grove herself.
The old trees wouldn't need harvesting for more than a
month, so she paid attention to the new ones. Alastor had
freshly manured them this morning, and they were all growing
well. It would be another three years before they began
yielding, and when they did, the olives and their oil would
bring good prices.
Americus's rent payments had risen steadily, always on his
initiative. The money had first been a buffer against
destitution, then a stepping-stone to something akin to
prosperity. Marcia used the money cautiously who could know
when Americus might depart? -- but made steady improvements on
the farm. Better tools, more sheep for wool and cheese, a few
other animals for the luxury of meat, and of course the olive
saplings added to the four old trees. It took away land for
grain, but the days when her family needed to depend on the
farm for all its food were fading into the past.
The only trouble came when Marcia bought Eudokia.
A second slave was a great help in the household, but it
left Americus disturbed, almost affronted. It was not long
before he quietly began offering to buy both Eudokia and
Alastor, with the intent of freeing them. His notions about
slavery were in some ways admirable, but also shockingly
naοve.
Still, both of them had good characters, not unworthy of
liberty. She finally reached a quiet compromise with her
boarder. Marcia would do the freeing, as was proper for the
head of a household, but Americus would provide the money she
would pay them as their wages. He overpaid, naturally, but
that hadn't yet made them indolent, or insolent. They worked
as hard as before, and if Marcia knew anything about men and
women, she'd have a marriage to celebrate soon.
She made her way back to the house, with plans to set the
children to a few last chores before vesperna. She
found them in the atrium playing, to her slight surprise, with
Americus. It was his game, of course: using letter tiles to
spell words across a demarcated board.
Marcilla pointed at the tiles she and her elder brother
were playing together. "It spells 'volup,' Aulus. Play
it."
"There's no place to play it. We need to cross somewhere.
And don't tell him our -- oh, Mother."
Marcia looked down sternly. "Is this how you finish your
work, children?"
"They told me they finished their chores before we got
home," Americus said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have played with
them."
"We did, mamma, we really did," Marcilla said. "I swept the
atrium, and Aulus brought in the firewood and water, and
everything."
Marcia looked along the atrium floor, taking her time. She
couldn't have them think her indulgence came easily. "Very
well, but be sure to finish the game before we eat." Her
decision brought cries of thankful joy from the children, and
a small nod from Americus.
He had applied his covert persuasion again regarding their
education. On most local farms, a boy of nine and a girl of
seven would be working most of the day, with maybe a couple
hours for someone in the family to give them lessons. Americus
thought they should be schooled in town, offering to pay the
teacher's fees -- and for Marcilla as much as young Aulus,
which was a pleasant surprise to Marcia.
She told him no. And he let the matter drop. He didn't
coerce her; he didn't use his money as a cudgel. She changed
her answer days later, giving the assent she always meant to,
once she was convinced that he did not mean to impose himself
as the new master of the family. Most men she knew would, in
like circumstances, but Americus granted Marcia her control,
and her dignity.
He had never even made any kind of advance on her. As she
looked back, watching him play his ingenious little teaching
game with her children, she regretted that, and not for the
first time.
She knew Americus had once had a wife, and that she had
died, violently. Perhaps the wounds that inflicted made him
unwilling to yield to Venus again. It could even be the reason
for his greater melancholy, but she did not think so. One got
on with life: at least she had after losing Aulus.
Marcia helped Eudokia in the kitchen, doing those little
things she had meant Marcilla to do. The game in the atrium
reached its end just as the clock -- one of Americus's,
naturally -- chimed the hour. She brought out the vegetable
bowl as Aulus hurried to the table. "And did you win, son?"
"No, Mother. Americus is too smart."
Marcilla joined him. "Very smart. But we'll do better than
him someday. Someday soon."
Americus patted their shoulders. "I'm sure you will." He
put on a smile, but Marcia saw straight through it. She could
do nothing for his pain now, though, except possibly distract
it.
Vesperna was mainly what was left over from noontime
cena. Plenty of garden vegetables filled the bowls,
while one plate held the last scraps of cold chicken. Everyone
sat at the table together, their distinctions of age and
station set aside.
Even with her raised circumstances, Marcia had never cared
to buy couches for dining. It would cost something of the
closeness: of having Eudokia right by her as she traded gentle
words with Alastor, of seeing her children working together to
pick individual favorites from the vegetable bowl, and of
Americus's quiet, benign company at her right hand.
The meal passed with its familiar pleasantness. Americus
seemed as happy as everyone else at the table. Perhaps he was
happy, for this moment. Marcia still had not plumbed the
sorrow beneath, but there was always tomorrow. She offered him
the chicken platter, thinking to keep this moment happy.
Marcia ate her jentaculum of bread and cheese
quietly in her bedroom, as dawn crept through the window
shutters. Aulus and Marcilla were already off to Narnia for
school, though she didn't recall Americus walking with them,
as he usually did. Perhaps he had left earlier.
She was finishing off her last crust when she heard the
sob. She listened close, and heard it again. No muffling could
disguise whence it issued, or from whom. Her first thought was
to try to ignore this unexpected breakdown -- but a more
determined thought moved her.
Marcia strode into the atrium, waving away both Alastor and
Eudokia before they could approach his room. She swept aside
the doorway curtain, and looked down at Americus, sitting on
his bed, his fists balled up against his eyes.
"I don't need anything, Eudokia," he moaned. "Leave me."
"I will not."
He started at the unexpected voice, and seemed to shrink,
mortified at his exposure. "Forgive me, my Marcia. I've had a
bad morning, that is all."
"It's more than one morning." She stepped inside, keeping
her voice low, however useless it might be in keeping the
servants from eavesdropping. "You've suffered for longer than
that, much longer. It's time I knew why."
Americus said nothing, hoping for some escape Marcia wasn't
going to grant him. "I could demand to know as your landlady,
but," she said, her hand outstretched, "I'd prefer to hear it
as your friend."
His pain and bewilderment faded, and he began to stir.
"Yes. I suppose it's finally time." He rose unsteadily, taking
Marcia's hand. "I can explain this best down by the river.
Will you walk there with me?"
"Certainly, my Americus." She glanced past him, to his
cluttered worktable. "But would you go ahead of me? I have to
give Alastor and Eudokia instructions. I'll catch up as soon
as I can."
"Very well." Americus walked out of the room, and Marcia
quickly snatched up the bread he had left uneaten on his
table. Once he was out the front door, she hastened to the
kitchen, where the servants had withdrawn.
"You," she snapped, pointing to Alastor, "why are you
idling, with the fields un-ploughed? And Eudokia, help him
somehow. Pull up stones, or weed the garden, or anything, but
out of this house!" They fled the resurgence of her old temper
as fast as they could manage.
Once they were safely gone, Marcia opened the larder to
take out a little cake of far grain, and then a second.
She went to the hearth, and the lararium next to it,
the statuette standing within its cupboard. Carefully, she
placed a cake inside the hearth, taking care not to smother
the fire with her offerings. The familiar smoke and odor rose
into her nostrils.
Marcia made sacrifice to the lar familiaris, the
household guardian spirit, most mornings, but today she had a
particular boon to ask. She put in the second far cake,
then took Americus's wedge of bread, tore it in half, and fed
one piece to the flame. She then knelt before the lar's
cupboard. Her prayers were a cascading jumble, but the same
desire moved them throughout.
"
Show me how to help him ... he has enriched our household,
allowed us to show you greater honor ... part of this
familia, as though born here ... grant him your
protection ... grant me the wisdom to help him ..." She continued
her devotions as long as she dared, before starting off after
Americus.
Across the Via Flaminia, the land sloped, steeply in
places, down to the Nar. She soon spied Americus, skirting the
woods of oak and chestnut that formed the south border of
Marcus Titurius Sabinus's land. She reached him just ahead of
a sharper slope.
He looked curiously at her hand, where she realized she was
still carrying part of his bread. "I thought you might want
it," she said, offering it. He took the bread, but only tucked
it inside his tunic.
"I suppose you're ready to talk, not eat." He replied with
a silent, pensive nod. The ground beneath their feet turned
steeper. "Will you take my arm?" Marcia offered.
Americus declined, determined to traverse the ground
unaided. His face twitched with pain, and the effort to
suppress it. Finally, with a sigh, he spoke. "You've told me a
few times how clever you think me with devices and such."
"You needn't be falsely modest with me. You're a master of
invention. Even Augustus knows this."
"Very well, I'm a master. In fact, you probably think me
capable of building any contraption you can imagine."
"Well
perhaps not anything," Marcia said, "but I
wouldn't say it was impossible."
Americus chuckled, a dry and stony sound. "An excellent
choice of words, my dear Marcia. For back home quite close
to Roma, actually -- I had some part in building a device many
people thought utterly impossible."
He hesitated, only pretending to concentrate on his footing
to justify his silence. Marcia had to prod him. "Tell me."
Americus looked over, ready to read her face. "A
time-traveling machine."
Marcia stopped. Sensations rushed through her, wonder and
awe and enlightenment, but no doubt, not even an instant's
worth. This was power worthy of a god, even if Americus was
far from a god.
Americus diffidently turned away. He looked down at his
hands, slapped one with the other, then shook his head as
though disappointed in their solidity. "I wasn't the true
inventor, of course," he said, starting to walk again. "Others
formulated the theories. I was only building things to their
specifications."
"But still ... so where are you from? I mean, when?"
That elicited a smile. "The 'where' was not far outside
Roma, as I said. I was actually born elsewhere, a place no
Roman has ever traveled."
"Called America, I presume."
"Precisely. But I met ... the woman I would marry, and
followed her to Italia." His voice quavered. "Without her, I
never would have been involved with the time machine."
"And the 'when'?"
"If you can believe it, something over two thousand years
in your future." The number staggered her, but again there was
no doubt. "It's an age of a million remarkable inventions, and
I have only copied a few of the older and more practical ones,
here and now. But the time machine was the greatest of them
all."
"Truly, yours was an age of wonders. But not of perfection,
was it? If it could not keep Sofia safe?"
He looked sharply at her. "No. It wasn't. Let's head to
that rock there," he said, pointing to a flat boulder wide
enough for both of them to sit.
"I'm sorry I hurt you, Americus, but you did say once she
was killed by bandits. Or was that a story you used, to
conceal the impossible truth?"
"It was ... close enough to truth. Sofia was murdered, and I
suffered. I suffered terribly." He swallowed. "And then a week
after Sofia died, I saw her."
They reached the rock, with an excellent view of the Nar
River below. Marcia put her arm around his shoulders as he
lowered himself gingerly, and let it linger there a second as
she sat beside him. "Thank you," he said absently.
"I knew it was a hallucination, of course. I went to my
doctor for an explanation. She did tests, and then more tests,
and then she told me what I had: the earliest stages of Lewy
body dementia."
Marcia shuddered. She did not know what a Lewy was,
but she understood dementia.
"Hallucinations are a classic symptom. They gave her a
lucky clue. I had a couple years before serious problems would
develop -- more serious than being haunted by my dead wife
but of all our miracles, a cure still wasn't one of them. I'm
going to fall apart, physically and mentally, until I'm
helpless and senile.
"It's a terrible way to die, and it scared me so much. I
wanted to die, right then, to end the agonies I had and the
agonies coming." His head sank. "But I couldn't. I just was
not capable."
The bald statement disturbed Marcia. She turned away, to
hide the flush of disgust, even of contempt, his admission
brought. He noticed anyway.
"Yes, perhaps that makes me a coward. Or perhaps my
Christian upbringing had deeper roots than I knew."
Marcia turned back. "Christian?"
"Something after your time. A widespread religion in the
future, one of whose teachings is of the evil and futility of
suicide. Faith in our God lets us bear whatever may come."
"So, like the Stoics, then?"
"No. Well, maybe a little, but it doesn't matter. Whatever
the reason, I couldn't overcome my nature. It left me
trapped."
In the midst of pitying Americus, Marcia thought of her own
Aulus. He had proved his bravery before age twenty, fighting
for Julius Caesar. His service gained him his land, which
brought him his wife, and then his children. And all of those
were not enough to hold him when Octavian and Antony began to
clash. Withholding his service felt like an act of cowardice,
despite what he had done before. So he went, and he died.
Strange, for her to realize that brave Aulus and fearful
Americus were the same in this way. Each man had his nature,
and neither could escape it. So she could not truly despise
Americus for a coward, or a Christian, or whatever.
"I needed a way to escape," Americus said, "any way. And
almost like a vision, I saw this one: coming to this time and
place. I knew the language and the history; I was in Italia,
so the spatial displacement was no great problem. I took a few
days to prepare: gathering goods to support me and my work,
collecting plans for my inventions, paper and pens"
"But why?" This sudden torrent had left Marcia baffled.
"Did you hope to find a cure here?" she asked, and his face
instantly showed he hadn't. "So what could this accomplish?"
His smile was as sad as his earlier weeping. "To achieve
indirectly what I could not do by my own hand. To end my life
mercifully by preventing myself from ever having existed."
This was nonsense. From any other person, she would take
these words as a token of madness. Only because this was
Americus was she incredulous instead of purely disbelieving.
He saw the incredulity, accepting it as if expected. "I
will try to explain. Take a look at the Nar."
The river was still partly shadowed by the hillside,
turning its olive-gray waters to a clouded darkness. The Nar
flowed south passing the town, then curved west near where
they sat, running down to a small shipyard they could just see
past the woods. Birds followed the course of the river, well
above the water but below Marcia and Americus.
He stretched out his arm. "Say that today is there, below
us. My era would be down there, by the docks. Time in its
natural course flows from the past," he said, waving toward
Narnia, "to the present, to the future."
"And you found a way to walk upstream along the bank."
"More like a leap, but yes. I came here and I began carving
a new channel for the river, intending to change its course.
Your time didn't originally have all the inventions I've
brought to it, so the flow of time, of the river, is now
different. Once time is running in its new course, the old
riverbed would dry up. The future from which I came would be
gone. I would never have been."
Marcia envisioned what he was saying, imagining the Nar
cutting through the hillside on the opposite bank and off into
the distance. "Does time truly work that way?"
He sighed. "Nobody really knows. The scienti" He
grimaced. "Latin doesn't have the word, or really the concept.
Call them 'natural philosophers,' instead. They were able to
design the time machine, make it work, without fully
understanding why it worked, what physical laws it followed.
That's part of why nobody went through before I did: everyone
feared what effects it might cause in their present."
"But you knew? Or thought you did?"
"Most of us thought we knew. There were many
congenial mealtime arguments about which overarching theory of
time travel was the true one. I had my ideas, but they
dismissed them. I wasn't one of them; I didn't understand." He
pounded a fist into his thigh, a startling burst of violence.
"But their theories were such violations of common sense!"
"More so than causing yourself never to have existed?"
Americus winced at the sharp question, but made no
reproach. "Judge for yourself, my Marcia. Their most popular
theory was that, instead of diverting the river, my actions
would instead make two branches, co-existing.
"You're about to say that makes sense but the same theory
states that this same thing happens every time some decision
is made in the world. When we sat here instead of walking
farther down the valley; when you came into my room rather
than letting me weep in privacy." He pointed down to a black
bird cruising above the river. "When that jackdaw flew
straight instead of turning left or right. Down to the tiniest
instance where something could happen one way or another, it
happens both ways.
"And each time, the river splits, and splits again, and
again, into millions of millions of channels. The waters
constantly dividing and re-dividing, until there's less than a
drop for each time-stream -- and that drop is itself dividing
even as you look at it. Either that, or there are infinite
waters gushing from nowhere to fill each riverbed. Absurdity,
whichever way you turn."
He slumped, drained from his outburst. "I am not a genius,
Marcia, just a practical man. I didn't have the great ideas, I
just built what other geniuses had imagined. Much like I've
done here." Marcia took this in somberly. "So I'm not so
loftily intelligent that I can make myself believe garbage
like that."
Marcia covered her mouth, faking a cough to cover a laugh.
"I do find it hard to credit -- but then I am practical like
you. Surely I am no genius. But I wonder ..."
"Yes?"
"When engineers change a river's course, it's against the
natural inclination of the river. It wants to flow where it
is. Could time act the same way? Could it seek its old bed,
guided by ... by whatever's underneath, its own hills and
valleys? Could it regain its course, before the shipyard
downstream, so you would remain alive?" Americus stared.
Marcia turned aside. "I'm sorry if that's terribly stupid."
"Marcia, no." He took both her hands. "That theory,
regression to the original, an idea the experts struggle with,
you've just intuitively grasped after five minutes' exposure
to temporal theory. Why, next you'll be re-inventing
Polchinski's paradox."
"I -- what--?"
"Oh, don't mind me. I'm babbling. Anyway, all my inventions
should have prevented that. We should have diverged so far
from the original history that all my changes couldn't be lost
or forgotten.
"But ... it hasn't worked that way. Maybe my works will
vanish into history, or maybe making a second branch of time
doesn't erase me from the first. I'll never know why, but I
was wrong." His voice cracked. "And I'm trapped."
"You mean you cannot return home?" Marcia said. "Has your
machine broken? Can you not repair it?"
"It didn't travel with me. It doesn't carry you like a
wagon; it hurls you like a catapult. Somebody back home could
have located me and pulled me back home, but that would have
happened by now. I'm never going back. I'll be here until I
die and through everything that comes before then."
He was trembling, barely holding himself together. Marcia
waited quietly, not daring to speak any unwise word that would
shatter him. He finally spoke in a whisper. "I saw her this
morning, Marcia. I saw Sofia."
Marcia nodded gravely. "I'm sorry your hallucinations have
come again."
"Oh, I've had them these past two years. I've learned to
recognize and ignore them." His voice was rising; the shakes
were worsening. "But I couldn't remember--" He turned his eyes
on Marcia, and tears were welling there. "Not until you spoke
it yourself -- I couldn't -- oh, Marcia, I couldn't remember my
wife's name!"
It all came pouring out, the anguish and terror and
helplessness. Marcia took him in her arms, laying his head on
her lap, stroking him as she might Marcilla after a nightmare.
And she began to think.
"It's going to come on me fast now," he sobbed. "I've had
the muscle stiffness slowing me down, and now the tremors are
coming. Soon I'll be confused and delusional or maybe I am
already. How would I know?"
"You aren't. Trust me." The notion that his stories of
time-traveling were a grand delusion flashed briefly through
her mind, before she killed it.
"But I will be. Nothing can stop it, hard as I tried." A
short, hideous laugh escaped him. "I came so far, and it got
me nowhere."
He lapsed back into tears. Despite her quiet disappointment
that he could not be stronger, Marcia let him cry himself out.
She needed the time to compose her own emotions, and her
thoughts. When she was as sure of herself as she could be, she
spoke.
"Quintus Julius Americus, are you asking me to help you
die?"
He jolted upright, pulling out of her arms. He managed to
compose himself and start to summon some bravery, but a gentle
pat stopped him before he could speak.
"No, I see you aren't, and I'll admit I'm relieved. So that
leaves us with one good solution, Americus. I'll have to marry
you."
She shocked him again, but happily with none of the
revulsion of last time. He needed three tries before he could
stammer out, "What can you mean?"
"I mean you will need someone to look after you in your
decline, someone attentive and caring. Who else but me -- but I
am too practical a woman not to seek fair compensation."
Americus looked ready to bolt: perhaps it was only his
stiff legs that kept him seated. "There's no need for you to
suffer on my account, Marcia. When the time comes, I will
depart as I came. I'll leave you no burden to bear."
"Oh, Americus," Marcia said, "for all your intelligence,
you still don't understand us Romans. You've been a part of my
household for over two years. We are in hospitium
together; we have obligations to each other that cannot be cut
loose casually. Certainly not when I won't let them be." She
waited as he digested her words, and his itch to flee
weakened.
"I would care for you no matter what," she continued, "but
I appeal to that obligation between us, and to your sense of
fairness. That, I know, is very strong. I trust, entirely,
that you would never exploit the power you had over me as my
husband."
He reached to clasp her hands. "I wouldn't. Of course not."
He looked down at his hands, surprised at what they had done,
though he didn't let go. "But what else would you expect of
me?"
Marcia was halfway home. He hadn't said no; she now needed
to bring him to a yes. She opted for candor, knowing he'd
respect that. "It's simple. You would draw up a will, in which
we would inherit everything. The money, the inventions, all of
it. We would never fear poverty again. That is my price."
Americus pondered this. "I do know something of Roman law.
As my wife, you could only inherit a third of my estate."
"That's right. A third for me, a third for Aulus, and a
third for Marcilla. Simple enough."
He nodded. "Yes. But then what about Alastor and Eudokia?
And my workers?"
"Oh--" She stopped herself just short of an unwise outburst.
"You've been generous to them in the past, and I'm sure you'll
be likewise in the future. But on this point, I must insist."
She shifted her hands so they now clutched his. "I've hard a
hard life, sometimes very hard. I've learned I must be
practical -- even now, when it would be so easy to give way."
The spoken plea lingered in her eyes. The surprise that
came to Americus this time was a slow dawning. "My Marcia, I ...
I never knew. I never imagined."
"Come now, you must at least have imagined. There's been
gossip in Narnia these two years, gossip I never really tried
to deny."
"Oh, I heard that. I ignored it. Resentful women, maybe a
few disappointed men."
Marcia smiled at that. "I have refused a few men in the
last five years. But not today."
Americus began to smile, but it drained away. "I'm not sure
what kind of a husband I could be to you."
"You would be the man you've always been. Kind to me, good
with my children, excellent at -- oh, wait. You mean sex, don't
you?"
He spluttered, turning red. Marcia was amused at his
reacting like a sheltered maiden, until she remembered his
trading days. "Those Blue Fives. You wish you had them back
now, don't you?"
"I -- I -- I confess, Marcia, I had those pills because I
needed them myself, while Sofia was alive. Now ..." That smile,
unbidden, crept back. "The change in diet, I suppose, has done
me some good."
Marcia didn't hide her smile, letting it shine like a lamp
in a doorway, beckoning. He looked into her eyes with the
warmth of a kindling desire
until he turned to the ground,
trying to look introspective.
"My Americus, what holds you back?" She almost spoke
Sofia's name, but Marcia sensed she could not defeat this
woman in a direct fight. She chose a more oblique approach.
"Is it that you are forbidden to remarry?" She held his hand
tight in both of hers. "Does your stern Christian god also
demand that a widower must remain alone?"
Americus raised his eyes toward the far distance. A minute
passed in silence, then another. Marcia almost missed it when
he began to squeeze her hand tighter.
"No. He does not."
The wedding came within the month, on the earliest
auspicious day. Marcia lent her tunica recta and
flame-colored veil to Eudokia for her ceremony two
nundinae later. And none too soon: Eudokia began
getting sick in the mornings almost before the last garlands
had been taken down.
Much of the daily routine did not change. Americus walked
into Narnia most mornings to work, making incremental
improvements on his creations. Marcia arranged to be in town a
few more afternoons to walk home with him. Now that she knew
what she was looking for, she did see the progress of his
infirmity: a twitch of the hand, a blank expression, a
snappish reply.
She did not see the despair.
Perhaps the passing joys of a newlywed were making him
forget his pain. Or perhaps all he had needed was someone else
to support and fortify him, the one thing he had lost at the
worst time. Whatever the case, he had gained from being a
husband again.
This balanced the scales, for Marcia could count herself
satisfied to be a wife again. Sometimes very satisfied.
Which made it all the harder on the January day when he
disappeared.
Nobody saw or heard him leave the house, and he never
reached the workshop. By noon, Marcia had her servants, his
workmen, and even some neighbors scouring town and country for
him. She climbed down the valley, in the teeth of a biting
cold wind, to search along the Nar herself.
Had a fit of confusion seized him, sending him wandering?
Americus's wits had been weakening at times, but not deserting
him. She did not believe it.
Had his happiness been a sham, and he had finally mustered
the courage to end himself? Now, while the pleasures of life
still outweighed the pain? She could not believe it.
Marcia stopped next to a large flat rock, and scanned the
banks of the Nar from town to shipyard. She could see one
walking figure far downstream, but that full head of black
hair could not be Americus's. She called his name, but only
the echoes answered.
A pair of jackdaws flew up the river, then separated,
turning left and right. Her memory sparked, Marcia thought of
that day again. Could it have happened? Could the river
finally have diverged?
Impossible: he himself had conceded his mistake. Besides,
what new change had he wrought in the last four months?
Marcia thought of Eudokia, how she was already showing. Her
hand glided down her cloak, settling upon her belly. And she
wondered.
She would wonder the rest of her days.
Back to Top
Read "Tips for the Budget Time-Traveler"
Back to Home Page
|