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anything from food in
Polisso. The only way to be perfectly safe would have been not to eat or
drink. Unfortunately, that had drawbacks of its own.
It doesn't feel like food poisoning, her mother said. Only an ache. It's not
bad. Just annoying. She hardly ever complained. When she did, Amanda worried.
But there wasn't time for much worrying. There wasn't time for anything except
chores from dawn till dusk: cooking and washing and cleaning and doing
business. After the bread went into the oven, you couldn't walk away and
forget about it till it was done. No thermostats here. Amanda had to watch the
fire and feed wood into it at the right rate to keep it from getting too high
or too low. Otherwise, the loaves would come out scorched or soggy. Either
way, they wouldn't be worth eating. All the work that went into making them,
starting with grinding grain into flour, would be wasted.
Mom used a flat wooden peel to slide the loaves out of the oven: the same tool
a cook at a pizza place used in the home timeline. After the bread had cooled,
Amanda ate a piece. She wished she could have said it was far better than
anything she could get at home because she'd helped make it herself. She
wished she could, but she couldn't. It was gritty. The quern that ground the
grain was made of stone, and tiny bits of it got into the flour. The bread was
also coarse-grained; the quern didn't grind as fine as modern milling
machines. And, in spite of everything, it had stayed in the oven a couple of
minutes too long. It was okay, but nothing to get excited about.
Her mother had some, too. Amanda watched to see if she had trouble eating. She
didn't seem to, even if she also looked disappointed at how the bread turned
out. Amanda asked, How do you feel?
I'm all right, Mom answered. Like I said, a nuisance, that's all. Have you
told Dad?
Yes, I've told your father. He's the one who wouldn't tell me. He wouldn't
want me to worry. Mom rolled her eyes. I don't want him to worry, either, but
I want him to know what's going on.
What if it... really is something? Amanda didn't want to say that. She didn't
even want to think it. She knew something about loss. Two of her grandparents
had died. But Mom and Dad were different. They were supposed to be there, no
matter what; they were the rocks at the bottom of her world.
Part of Amanda knew her parents were people. She knew things could happen to
people. The rest of her recoiled from that like a nervous horse shying from a
rattler. Move the rocks at the bottom of the world and you made an earthquake.
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Mom came over and gave her a hug. The very worst that can happen is that I go
back to the home timeline for a little while and get it fixed, whatever it is.
Then I come back here again. Okay?
Okay. Amanda hugged her back, hard. She was very, very glad for the
transposition chamber down in the subbasement here, just in case. Doctors in
Agrippan Rome not only didn't know anything, they didn't even suspect
anything. The really scary part was, they were better than doctors other
places in this world. Roman doctors got fat salaries teaching medicine in
Lietuva and Persia.
That evening, Jeremy got into an argument with Mom over nothing in particular.
He would do that every once in a while, mostly because he couldn't stand
admitting he might be wrong. He was right most of the time. That made it
harder for him to see he was wrong some of the time. It also made him a
first-class pain in the neck.
And tonight, it made Amanda furious. You leave Mom alone! she yelled at him.
Don't you know anything? Nothing made Jeremy madder than even hinting that he
was dumb. I know what a miserable pest you are, he said.
He would have gone on from there, too, but Dad held up a hand. That will be
enough of that, he said.
That will be enough of that out of both of you, as a matter of fact. There are
four of us here, and thousands of people in Polisso. If we can't count on each
other, we may as well go home.
It wasn't that he was wrong. He was right, and Amanda knew it. And he knew Mom
wasn't feeling right, so he'd taken that into account. But so did Jeremy. And
he kept steaming. He hadn't said all he wanted to, and he was itching to let
out the rest. He pointed at Amanda. She started it.
That's the oldest excuse in the world in any world, Dad said. She got the
first word, you got the last word, and that's plenty. If it goes on from
there, the only thing you'll both do is get angrier. What's the use? Answer
me, please.
Jeremy didn't. Maybe he wanted to. He probably did, in fact. But arguing with
Dad was usually like playing chess against the computer at the high level. You
could try it, and it would make good practice, and you'd even learn something,
but you wouldn't win.
Mom sat quietly through the whole thing. She often did during squabbles. Dad
enjoyed stamping on fires, and she didn't. But she seemed too quiet tonight.
Or maybe I'm imagining things, Amanda thought. She knew she sometimes borrowed
trouble. She couldn't help it, any more than Jeremy could help being a
know-it-all. But she feared this trouble didn't need borrowing. It was really
here.
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