Out in the market square, a herald was shouting, “Hear ye! Hear ye! The great and mighty Emperor of the Romans, Honorio Prisco III, has declared that the Roman Empire will keep the peace with the Kingdom of Lietuva for as long as King Kuzmickas chooses to keep it!”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jeremy asked. “It doesn't sound like it means anything.” A lot of the proclamations the government put out didn't sound as if they meant anything.

But Dad said, “It means we're liable to have a war. Lietuva has wanted to take this province away from Rome for years. And if King Kuzmickas does decide to go to war, the Emperor is saying he'll get all the fight he wants.”

Border provinces like Dacia did sometimes change hands between Agrippan Rome and Lietuva. In the Middle East, Mesopotamia-Iraq in the home timeline-and Syria went back and forth between the Romans and Persians every so often. But the heartland of each great empire was too far from its neighbors to be conquered. The ruling dynasties might change, but the empires went on and on.

Oddly, gunpowder made that more true, not less. Hearing as much had puzzled Jeremy at first. But it made sense if you looked at it the right way. Cannons could knock down the strongest fortress or city wall. And cannons, here, were also very, very expensive. Only central governments pulling in taxes from huge tracts of land could afford to have a lot of them. That meant anybody who rebelled against the central government was likely to lose. He wouldn't be able to get his hands on enough cannons to fight back well.

There had been gunpowder empires in Jeremy's world, too. The Ottoman Turks, the Moguls in India, and the Manchus in China had all run states like that. In his world, though, Europe had had lots of countries, not one big, overarching empire. They'd competed, kicking technology and thought ahead and leading to the scientific and industrial revolutions.

Competition here was weaker. The dead hand of the past was stronger. This is how they did it in the good old days carried enormous weight in Agrippan Rome… and in Lietuva, and in Persia, and in the two gunpowder empires that split India between them in this alternate, and in China. The Japanese here were pirates who raided China's coast, the same as the Scandinavians did in Europe.

A beggar with a horrible sore on his face held out a skinny hand to Jeremy and whined, “Alms, gentle sir?”

Jeremy gave him a sestertio, a little copper coin. “That was a mistake,” Dad said with a sigh.

“How come?” Jeremy asked. “Look what happened to the poor man.”

“For one thing, that sore is probably a fake,” Dad said. “And if it's not a fake, he probably picks at it and rubs salt in it to keep it looking nasty. Beggars' tricks are as old as time. And for another… Well, you'll find out.”

And Jeremy did, in short order. He'd given one beggar money. All the other beggars in the market square hurried toward him. He might have been a magnet and they bits of iron. They showed off blind eyes, missing hands and feet, and sores even uglier than the first man's had been. None of them had bathed in weeks, if not years. Most of them called for coppers. Some, the bolder ones, screeched for silver.

“I can't give them all money,” Jeremy said in dismay.

“Which is why you shouldn't have given it to any of them,” Dad “said. ”Just keep walking. They'll get the message.“

Little by little, the beggars did. By ones and twos, they drifted back toward their places in the square. Some of them cursed Jeremy, as much for getting their hopes up as for not giving them any coins. Others didn't bother. They might as well have been merchants. If business in one place didn't suit them, they'd look somewhere else.

“Did they try to slit your belt pouch?” Dad asked.

After checking, Jeremy shook his head. “No.”

“You're lucky.”

“I am lucky,“ Jeremy said slowly. He didn't mean it the way his father did. ”I don't have to live the way they do.“ A day in Polisso taught more about human misery than a year in Los Angeles. ”Most of what's wrong with them, a doctor back home could fix in a hurry. I've always had plenty to eat, and a house with a heater that works.“

“Coming here can make you feel guilty about living the way we do at home,” Amanda said.

Jeremy nodded. That was what he'd been trying to say. His sister had done a better job of putting it into a few words.

“There's nothing wrong with the way we live,” Dad said. “Anybody who says poverty makes you noble has never been poor-really poor, the way these people are. But you were right. We are lucky that we don't have to live like this all the time.“

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. Even when they were in Polisso, they didn't live just like the locals. They had links back to the home timeline. If something went wrong, they could get help or leave. They had a swarm of immunizations. They couldn't come down with smallpox or measles or typhoid fever or cholera. Smallpox didn't even exist any more in the home timeline. They had antibiotics against tuberculosis and plague. The locals didn't-they had doctors who believed in the four humors and priests who prayed. One was about as much use as the other-as much, or as little.

A drunk lurched out of a tavern. He stared around with bleary, bloodshot eyes, then sat down next to the doorway. He wasn't going anywhere, not any time soon. Some things didn't change from one timeline to another. Jeremy's also had its share of drunks, and probably always would.

“Make way! Make way! In the name of the city prefect, make way!” bawled a man with a loud voice.

Up the street came a gang of slaves carrying firewood to heat the water in the public baths. They were skinny, sorry-looking men, all of them burdened till they could barely stagger along. They belonged to Polisso, not to any one person. That made their lives worse, not better. Because they didn't serve anyone in particular, no one in particular cared how they were treated. The overseer shouted out his warning again.

Neither Jeremy nor anybody else in his family said much the rest of the way back to the house. That gang of slaves reminded them again all how lucky they really were.

Four

The smith's name was Mallio Sertorio. He used his dirty thumbnail to pull one tool after another out of the Swiss army knife. Big blade, small blade, file, corkscrew, awl… When he found the little scissors, an almost comic look of surprise spread over his face.

“How do they do that?” he muttered, more to himself than to Amanda.

“I am only a trader,” she answered. “I do not have the secrets of the men who made these knives.”

“Of course you don't-you're only a girl,” Mallio Sertorio said. That wasn't what Amanda had said, and didn't endear him to her. He extracted a screwdriver blade. That puzzled him. Screws here were made by hand, and uncommon. But he poked at the blade with his thumb. “Fine workmanship. And very fine steel, too.”

“We sell only the best.” Amanda nodded.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” The smith nodded, too. “I want to buy this one and take it apart, to see if I can learn the secrets these fellows know.” He pulled a tweezer out of its slot. “Isn't that clever?” he crooned.

“I'll be glad to sell it to you,” Amanda said. “What you do with it afterwards is your business.” She didn't think he would learn much. A couple of smiths in Polisso had already started selling imitation Swiss army knives. They were bigger and clumsier and held fewer tools.

“Do I have to pay grain?” Mallio Sertorio asked. “Grain is a nuisance. I'll give you silver. I'll even give you gold. You can buy grain yourself, or anything else you want.”

“Grain is what we want,” Amanda answered. Grain and other food from the alternates helped feed the crowded home timeline. Oil fed the petrochemical industry. The list went on and on.

“I have to have this,” Mallio Sertorio said. “Do you understand? I have to have it. I am not a young man. You, you have your whole life ahead of you, but I am not young.“ He scratched at his mustache. Like his hair, it was grizzled. ”I have spent thirty years learning my trade. I am good at it, as good as any man in Polisso, as good as any man in the whole province of Dacia.“