“Yes, illustrious prefect.”

The illustrious prefect's face said he had a low opinion of all Christians, Imperial or otherwise. His words, though, were all business: “Do you swear, then, by your God and by your hopes for the Emperor's health, long life, and success that what you have stated is true and complete?”

“I do, illustrious prefect.”

“Go on, then-and thank you again for your generosity,” Sesto Capurnio added grudgingly.

“Thank you for your kindness, illustrious prefect,” Jeremy said. Sesto Capurnio turned around and looked at his collection of imperial heads. The Emperors stared back without a blink. Jeremy left the city prefect's house in a hurry. He had the feeling Capurnio might not have let him go if he stayed much longer.

Amanda sat in the courtyard with a customer. They both enjoyed the warm summer sun. House sparrows sat on the edge of the red roof tiles and chirped. A starling hopped around in the herb garden. Every now and then it plunged its banana-yellow beak into the dirt. Sometimes it got something good to eat. Sometimes it had to try again.

She could have seen house sparrows and starlings in Los Angeles, of course. Neither was native to North America. She didn't know how house sparrows had got there. At the end of the nineteenth century, a mad Englishman who wanted America to have all of Shakespeare's birds had imported ten dozen starlings to Central Park in New York City. He'd brought in nightingales, too. The nightingales promptly died out. There were millions and millions of starlings all over the continent. It struck Amanda as a bad bargain.

Her customer was a matron named Livia Plurabella. She was a little older than Mom, and would have been a beauty if smallpox scars hadn't slagged her cheeks. She took the scars in stride, much more than she would have in Amanda's world. Here, plenty of women-and men, too-had their looks ruined the same way. Men could hide pockmarks with a beard. Women had to make do with powder and paint. Livia Plurabella didn't even try. She must have known a losing battle when she saw one.

“Let me have a look at that one, if you please,” she said, pointing to a straight razor with a mother-of-pearl handle. “I like the way it gives back the sunlight.”

“Here you are, my lady,” Amanda said. The older woman was the wife of the richest banker in town. He wasn't a noble. In fact, he was the son of a freedman. Banking wasn't a high-class profession in Agrippan Rome. But, here as everywhere else, money talked. And money Marco Plurabello had.

His wife opened the razor. “Isn't that something?” she murmured. She seemed to admire the glitter of the sun off the edge even more than the way it brought out the pink and silver of the mother-of-pearl. She shaved a patch of hair on her arm. “Well!” she said. “Isn't that something?“ The blade was. of better steel and sharper than anything local smiths could make.

“If you strop it regularly, it will last you a lifetime,” Amanda said. That was true, even though women in Agrippan Rome shaved more places than they did in California. The notion of shaving with a straight razor made Amanda queasy anyway. Jeremy hadn't wanted to try it, either. A mistake with that thing wasn't a nick. It was a disaster.

Livia Plurabella looked at the bare spot on her forearm. She felt of it. “I believe you,” she said. By the way she brought those words out, she didn't use them every day. She closed the razor. It clicked. She waited, one eyebrow raised.

“A hundred fifty denari.” Amanda answered the unspoken question.

“Well!” the banker's wife said again. “I thought you would put the price in grain.”

“We've changed our policy there,” Amanda said.

“Sensible. Very sensible.” Livia Plurabella nodded. “I'll give you eighty for the razor.”

“I'm sorry, but no. We haven't changed our policy there at all,” Amanda said. “We don't haggle.” She still wondered how much trouble they would get into for taking money instead of grain. If Crosstime Traffic wanted to yell about that, the company was welcome to yell as much as it cared to. She and Jeremy had nowhere to store grain if they couldn't ship it out of Polisso. But they were trying to bend as few rules as they could.

Livia Plurabella frowned. It was the sort of frown that said, You can't possibly mean what you just said, kid. It was meant to intimidate Amanda. Instead, it made her mad. The matron said, “I don't know that I want this razor enough to pay one hundred fifty denari for it.”

“That's for you to decide, my lady,” Amanda said politely. “We've sold several at that price-or the equivalent in grain-and nobody's complained. If you want to keep on using something ordinary, though, go right ahead.”

Livia Plurabella frowned again. This time, she looked worried. Amanda hoped she was imagining other women having something she didn't. Amanda also hoped she was imagining the other women laughing at her because she didn't have it. Advertising was one more place where the home timeline had a long lead on Agrippan Rome. Amanda had seen a million commercials. Almost without thinking, she knew what buttons to push. And Livia Plurabella didn't know what to do when Amanda pushed them.

“I don't think you're being reasonable about the price,” she complained. But her voice lacked conviction.

Amanda pounced: “Oh, but I am, my lady. You admired the mother-of-pearl. It comes all the way from the Red Sea.” What little mother-of-pearl the Romans had did come from there. She went on. “And if you can find an edge like that on any other razor-”

“Any razor you don't sell, you mean,” the other woman broke in.

“Yes, that's right.” Amanda nodded proudly. “Everything we sell is of the best quality. If you can find something to match it anywhere else, go ahead and do that.”

She pushed another button there. People in Polisso couldn't get anything to match what the crosstime traders sold, and they knew it. Livia Plurabella's face said just how well she knew it. “Oh, all right.” She sounded angry-more angry at the world than angry at Amanda. “A hundred fifty denari. We have a bargain.”

“I'll write up your contract,” Amanda said, and she did. She hoped Livia Plurabella could read. Otherwise she would have to witness the local woman's mark. Even if she did, Marco Plurabello might still raise a stink and claim she'd cheated his wife. That wouldn't be true or just, but he was a power in Polisso. He wouldn't need truth or justice on his side to get what he wanted.

But Livia Plurabella proved to have her letters, as Amanda had hoped she would. If any woman in Polisso was likely to, a banker's wife would. “Let me have that pen, please,” the matron said, Amanda gave it to her. She wrote her name on both copies of the contract. “Here.”

“Thank you very much, my lady,” Amanda said.

“I'll send a slave with the money,” the banker's wife said. Her father-in-law had once been a slave. That didn't keep her from owning them. Amanda wondered why not. One of the harder things about living in Agrippan Rome was that there were so many questions she couldn't ask. One of these days- one of these years-scholars would look at history and literature and law and custom here and figure out some answers to questions like those. But Amanda wanted to know now.

The trouble with finding the alternates and visiting so many of them was that there were always more questions than answers. There probably always would be. There sure were now. Too many alternates, not enough people exploring them. The last time anything this important happened in the home timeline, Columbus discovered the New World. The alternates were far, far bigger than North and South America, and they'd been known for less than a lifetime. No wonder there were still so many things to learn. The wonder was that people from the home timeline had found out as much as they had.