In High Places Read online

  So if the innkeeper scratched his head and muttered to himself . . . then he did, that was all. It didn't matter if he thought the Kleins were peculiar. If he thought they were peculiar because they didn't belong to this alternate . . . that would matter. But he didn't. He had no reason to. Some people drank only water. Some people fed their dogs better than they fed themselves. He thought they were peculiar like that—strange, yes, but harmless.

  Dad took a big brass key off his belt to open their room. The big brass lock on the door looked just like the ones they made here. No local burglar could hope to beat it, though. It was brass only on the outside, case-hardened twenty-first century steel within. Dad's key had a microchip that shook hands with one inside the lock. Without that handshake, the lock wouldn't open, period—exclamation point, even. The same kind of lock secured the shutters over the windows.

  After they went inside, Dad used another lock and a stout wooden bar to make sure the door stayed closed. He plopped himself down on one of the stools in the room—-only nobles here sat on chairs with backs. "Whew! It will be so good to head for home," he said in Arabic.

  "Oh, yes," Annette held her nose. "I can't wait to get back to air that doesn't stink."

  "People back there complain about pollution." Her mother had to use the Arabic word that usually meant a religious offense. No one here worried about polluting the environment, or even knew such a thing was possible. People just wanted to take what was there to be taken. Mom went on, "The home timeline has to be careful, too. I understand that. But anybody who's ever smelled a low-tech alternate will tell you there's pollution, and then there's pollution." As Annette had, she held her nose.

  "Even getting back to Marseille will be good," Dad said. "I didn't think we'd land in any trouble up here, and we haven't, but it could have been bad trouble if we did. We're a long way from anybody who could give us a hand."

  Staying inconspicuous made things harder. They couldn't carry assault rifles here. They couldn't drive an SUV between Marseille and Paris. Actually, that might have been just as well. What passed for roads here would have murdered any car's shocks in nothing flat. They traveled on foot, on horseback, and by boat. Dad had an automatic pistol, but it was disguised like the locks. It looked like one of the big, clumsy weapons the locals used. And it was for the worst emergencies only.

  Mom sighed. "This poor alternate. Since the plagues, it's had nothing but bad luck."

  "As long as we don't catch it," Annette said.

  "You can say that again." Dad bent and knocked on the leg of his stool. They knocked on wood for luck here, the same as they did in the home timeline. A surprising number of small things were the same. All the big things were different.

  Annette felt like sighing, too. "Europe was all set to take off. It did in the home timeline—all the explorations, and the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Here—"

  "Everybody died," Mom said. That wasn't how Annette had intended to go on, which didn't mean it wasn't true.

  "No Scientific Revolution anywhere but in Europe in this alternate, either," Dad said. "The Muslim world knows some things the Europeans—what's left of them—don't, but the Muslims don't know how much they didn't know before the plagues."

  "Thomas Aquinas and al-Ghazzali," Annette said. Her father nodded. They'd drilled that one into the Kleins in their briefings. In the home timeline and here, the Christian saint and the Muslim holy man had asked the same question—was scientific research compatible with religion?

  Aquinas had said yes. He said there could be no conflict between religion and science. All knowledge, to him, was one. He made Aristotle's logic fit inside the Christian faith. In the home timeline, that helped pave the way for the Scientific Revolution.

  Al-Ghazzali had believed just the opposite. He thought scientific research undermined faith, and he thought faith was more important. In the home timeline, Aquinas' view dominated western Christianity. Al-Ghazzali's prevailed in Islam.

  Al-Ghazzali's ideas prevailed in Islam in this alternate, too. If anything, the Great Black Deaths here had only made those ideas stronger. If God could do such a thing, how could any man hope to understand Him or His works? Muslims in this alternate feared and distrusted science. They clung to religion, and they clung to it hard.

  The irony was, al-Ghazzali was right about whether science undermined faith. St. Thomas Aquinas was wrong. Studying science did weaken belief in God and in traditional religion. A lot of experience in the home timeline and in alternates with breakpoints more recent than this one's showed as much.

  That studying science could also lead to a richer, healthier, more comfortable and more knowledgeable life on earth . . . was beside the point if you thought religion the be-all and end-all. Just about everyone in this alternate felt that way. Some people in the home timeline still did, too. Every so often, they used the products of science—explosives, radioactives, tailored viruses— to try to make their point.

  "By the time Western Europe got its people back, it wasn't the same kind of place any more," Mother said.

  Europe had needed more than two hundred years to get back to where it had been before the plagues came. It never took off, the way it had in the home timeline. That was partly because Muslims had reconquered Spain and Portugal and reoccupied Italy. It was also partly because of the Second Son and the Final Testament. Henri's take on Christianity wasn't as hostile to science as Islam was. But Aquinas' certainty that science and God went hand in hand was one more plague victim in this alternate.

  "I wonder why China didn't do it," Annette mused.

  In this alternate, the Manchus still ruled China. No pressure from Europe had weakened their dynasty there. China was the biggest, strongest, richest country in the world. But it wasn't much further along than it had been at the breakpoint, either. Some Emperors favored scholarship, some didn't. The ones who didn't tore down what the ones who did had built. In this alternate as in the home timeline, great Chinese junks under Zheng He had visited Arabia and East Africa in the 1410s. They'd taken Chinese porcelain to Africa and a giraffe back to China. But no Chinese ships had made the journey again in all the centuries since. Trade stayed in the hands of Arab and Indian and Malay middlemen.

  Scholars in the home timeline still argued about why things turned out this way. They would go on arguing, too, till they knew a lot more—and probably even after they knew more. Arguing, testing ideas against evidence, moved scholarship ahead.

  "China has always been very good at how," Dad said. "It hasn't been so good at why. Being good at how will make you more comfortable in the short run. In the long run, finding out why things work the way they do makes for bigger changes."

  "Some people say you need to believe in one god first, before you can believe there's one why behind everything," Mom added. "If you explain things by saying they happen because this imp is fighting with that spirit, how are you going to look deeper?"

  "So you think that's true?" Annette asked.

  "I don't know. It can't be the whole answer—I'm sure of that," her mother replied. "But it may be part."

  It seemed neat and clean and logical. Of course, plenty of things that seemed neat and clean and logical were also wrong. "I'll be studying all this stuff when I get to college, won't I?" Annette said.

  "You'd better believe it," Mom said. Dad nodded.

  So did Annette. Travel across timelines was the biggest thing that had happened to people since the discovery of the New World, maybe since the discovery of writing and the wheel. As far as Annette was concerned, anybody who didn't want to get involved with it probably would have thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the world or that wheels ought to be square. If seeing all the different ways things might have turned out didn't interest you, odds were you didn't have a pulse.

  And the home timeline needed the alternates, too. They had all the things the home timeline was running out of when Gal-braith and Hester discovered crosstime travel. Trade for a little
here, trade for a little there—the alternates would never miss it. Sink oil wells in a world where men had never evolved, and you could take whatever you needed.

  Not everything was perfect. When was it ever? Some diseases had reached the home timeline. These days, biotech usually blunted them in a hurry. People who didn't work for Crosstime Traffic often complained the company had too much power. Annette thought they would have grumbled the same way about scribes back when writing was new. CT had to be the most closely watched company in the history of the world. The early days had seen a few scandals—again, nothing was perfect. But nobody's found any trouble like that for as long as she'd been alive.

  "College," she murmured.

  Her father chuckled. "Seems far away, doesn't it, when you're in a world where you get sick because your humors go out of whack, where they've forgotten what the Romans used to know about plumbing, and where they've got markets to sell human beings just like we've got markets to sell beans and watermelons?"

  "Markets to sell human beings. Slave markets." Annette's mouth twisted. She'd seen one of those markets, down in Marseille. She understood that people in this alternate needed other people to do their work for them. They didn't have machines, the way the home timeline did. Even if she understood that, the idea of slavery gave her the cold horrors. To sell people like beans, to use them—or use them up—like farm animals . . . The day was cool, but that wasn't why she shivered.

  Mom understood. She reached out and set a hand on Annette's shoulder. "It's a nasty business," she said. "Our hands are clean of that, anyhow."

  "They'd better be!" Annette exclaimed. "We shouldn't just sit back and watch it, though. We ought to try to stamp it out."

  "Where we can, we do," Dad said. "In an alternate like this, it's not easy. People here don't think slavery's wrong. They think it's natural. And it helps make the wheels go round. Sooner or later, the time will come when that's not so. But it hasn't got here yet."

  To Annette, sooner or later might as well have been forever. To anybody in this alternate who was bought and sold like a bushel of beans, sooner or later was much too late. She could understand what Dad was driving at. Even in the home timeline, people hadn't started questioning slavery till the eighteenth century. Nobody—except maybe the slaves—questioned it here. Annette's heart said that was wrong, that was wicked, that needed to be changed yesterday—if not sooner.

  It wouldn't happen. She knew that, too. Crosstime Traffic had way too many other more urgent things to worry about. Too bad, she thought. Oh, too bad!

  Jacques worked hard on his pike drill. He wished he were a musketeer. But he was big and strong. That helped him most of the time, but it didn't help make his wish come true. Size and strength counted for more with a pike than they did with a musket. Jacques didn't suppose he could blame Duke Raoul for making sure the men best suited to the pike were the ones who used it.

  His target was a post driven into the ground. He lunged, withdrew, lunged again. The gleaming iron head of the pike tapped the post at what would have been belly height. He imagined the post was one of King Abdallah's men, a bearded infidel screaming, "Allahu akbar!" He'd scream, all right, when the spearhead went home. Jacques stretched forward and lunged again.

  "That's very smooth," a dry voice said from behind him.

  Jacques whirled. There stood Duke Raoul. He was a little gamecock of a man, short and skinny but tough. He had a long face, a scarred cheek, a pointed chin beard going from seal-brown to gray, and the coldest blue eyes Jacques had ever run into. Those eyes saw everything that went on in Paris, and almost everything that went on in the Kingdom of Versailles. They even saw the pike drill of a no-account young soldier.

  "I thank you, your Grace. I thank you kindly," Jacques said.

  "If you bend your back leg a little more, you'll be able to extend the lunge," the duke said. "Let me show you." He took the pike from Jacques. He might not have been big, but he was plenty strong—he handled the sixteen-foot shaft like a toothpick.

  Raoul went through the same drill as Jacques had. Watching him, Jacques was much less pleased with his own performance. Oh, he wasn't bad. But Duke Raoul was supple as a dancer, quick as a serpent. Jacques wouldn't have wanted to face him across a battle line.

  After just enough work to break a sweat, the duke straightened and handed back the pike. "Here—run through it again," he said. "Remember that back leg. It really does make a difference."

  "I'll try, sir." Jacques did his best. He still felt clumsy and slow next to Raoul. And he had to think about that back leg now.

  Thinking was bad on a battlefield. It cost time. You needed to do, on the instant. Speed counted for so much. But he did see he could extend the lunge that way. Reach counted, too.

  Duke Raoul was nodding. "Not bad. You were trying to bend that leg. I noticed. Now you've got to keep doing it till it turns into a habit."

  "Yes, sir. I was just thinking the same thing. I don't want to have to try to remember it if I'm out there fighting."

  "Don't blame you. I wouldn't, either. But keep practicing— it'll stick. 'Patience is rewarded. The fool shows his folly and gives way before the end.' So Henri said, and I'm sure He's right." Duke Raoul paused. Then he changed the subject even faster than he'd shifted the pike: "Tell me—what do you think of the traders from Marseille you were talking with the other day?"

  How did Raoul know about Muhammad al-Marsawi and his wife and daughter? Jacques hadn't said anything about them. Had the boatman talked to the duke? Did Raoul have spies in the market square? "What do I think, your Grace?" Jacques echoed. "I wonder if the daughter is pretty." At the least, an answer like that bought him time.

  It made Raoul laugh. "That I can't tell you. I don't know anybody who's seen her without her veil. You don't want to mess with things like that. Offend a woman from King Abdallah's country and we're liable to have a war on our hands." A clear warning note rang in his voice.

  "Oh, I know, your Grace," Jacques said quickly. He didn't want the duke to think he was stupid enough to do something like that.

  "All right. Good." Raoul stroked that neat, pointed beard. With his clever face and cold eyes, it made him look a little like the Devil. Jacques couldn't imagine anyone, not even King Charles, having the nerve to come out and say that to Raoul. After the pause for thought, the nobleman went on, "Did you notice anything . . . odd about those Muslims?"

  "Odd?" Jacques scratched his head. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir. They did seem to be clever people—not just Muhammad but his wife and daughter as well."

  "Yes, I've heard that from others as well. I've said it myself, in fact—I've met them." Duke Raoul paused again. "How many other women from down south do you know—or know of—who have much of anything to say in public? They're rich, too, these traders, or at least a long way from poor. Did they have any slaves or servants with them?"

  "Not that I saw." Jacques did some more scratching, and hoped he wasn't lousy again. "That is funny, isn't it?"

  "Well, I've never heard of any other Muslims with goods as fine as theirs who didn't," the duke said. "I don't know what it means. I can't swear it means anything. But when you find something that doesn't fit in with the rest of what you've seen over the years, you start wondering why it doesn't."

  He'd had many more years than Jacques to form patterns like that in his mind. For the first time, Jacques began to see getting some wrinkles and some gray in your hair might have advantages. Did they make up for bad teeth and sore joints and all the other ills of age? Not as far as he could see, but they might be there even so.

  "Another thing," Raoul said. "Did they speak French while you were around?"

  Jacques had to think about it. "Yes, they did," he answered after a moment. "I know some Arabic, but not a whole lot."

  "Good you know some," Raoul told him. "How did the traders sound to you?"

  "I don't know." Now Jacques was lost. "Like people speaking French. How are they supposed to sound?"

 
; "Like this, the way most people from down in the south sound." Duke Raoul talked through his nose, as French-speakers from the south did. He was a good mimic. And he'd noticed what Jacques had missed—those traders didn't talk like that. He went back to his usual way of speaking to say, "If you listen to them, you'd think they came from Paris, wouldn't you?"

  "Yes, your Grace, you would," Jacques agreed. "What can that mean?"

  "I don't know, any more than you do," the duke said. "But I'd like to find out. How would you like to give me a hand?"

  "Me?" Jacques almost dropped the pike. "What do I have to do?"

  "Well, they're going back to Marseille soon. They won't travel by themselves, not unless they're idiots—and they aren't. They'll go in a group, with other southbound traders," Raoul said. Jacques nodded. That was how things worked, all right— numbers brought safety. The duke pointed a scarred forefinger at him. "How would you like to be a guard in that company?"

  Jacques bowed. "Whatever you want me to do, your Grace, you know I'll do it." You had to talk that way around Duke Raoul. If he thought you didn't want to do something he told you to do, he wouldn't tell you to do anything—and you'd never move up if he ignored you. Jacques wanted to move up, and winning the duke's favor was a good way to do it. Besides, he really did want to do this. Raoul had made him curious. "How can I serve you best?" he asked.

  "Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut," Raoul answered bluntly. "Think you can manage that? Some people can't. If you're one of them, say so now. I won't hold it against you—I'll be glad you're honest. You'll get other chances, I promise. But if you go along and you mess things up by blabbing ... I won't like that a bit."

  He had ways, painful ones, of making his dislike felt. Jacques gulped a little, but he managed a nod. "I don't talk out of turn, sir," he said.