Hypatius heaved himself up out of his chair, took the wine jug, and led us into what was apparently the dining room. Torches were lit on the walls, and in the center was a low, three-sided table surrounded by couches. Apparently you reclined while you ate, because Hypatius got carefully down onto a couch, lay on his side, with pillows propping up the top of his body, and gestured to us to do the same. I did it, but I felt stupid and uncomfortable. Palta brought in a plate of fruit, and we ate some grapes and figs. This was followed by slices of roasted pork and fresh bread, which we were supposed to dip into a dish of olive oil, followed by a dessert of roasted almonds. There wasn't any silverware; there weren't any napkins. You took what you wanted from the plates, and you wiped your mouth with your hand, or your sleeve.
Palta served us in silence. She didn't make eye contact; she didn't stare at our clothes. Her expression never changed. Meanwhile Hypatius kept drinking wine and praising Terra, and Via, and Hieron—and himself. He was a viator, like Affron and Valleia. A viator was a traveler, someone who used Via to go to other worlds; only viators wore those purple robes. It was the most prestigious role in the entire priesthood of Terra; only the most talented, most dedicated people became viators. They were the ones who brought back wisdom from other worlds, and tried to provide wisdom to those worlds in turn, like Affron with his sermons. But Hypatius thought the role had outlived its usefulness. "We have the wisdom we need," he said. "Better to stay here on Terra and implement that wisdom. That is what I have chosen to do. And, of course, traveling to other worlds is not without its risks. Some viators never return from their journeys, alas. And that is such a waste of talented people."
He then started talking about his important role in overseeing trade regulations or something. I couldn't follow any of it. Maybe it was me, or maybe it was him—after a while he sounded pretty drunk. When Palta came to take away the nuts he pulled her down onto the couch next to him and patted her thigh. "Palta is a good girl," he said to us. "But quiet." He turned to her. "You should make some noise once in a while, my little sparrow."
Palta removed his hand from her thigh, stood up, and left the room without saying a word. Hypatius sighed. "So young," he murmured. "So..." he didn't finish the sentence. He got to his feet and stood unsteadily by the couch. "Nothing to be done," he muttered. "But I must show you your cubiculum. Bedroom, as you say in English. It has only one bed, but I hope it will suffice." He bellowed something to Palta, and she returned with a lamp. He led us back out into the atrium, then into a small, plain room with nothing in it but a bed and a low table. "Very nice," he murmured, "very nice. Toilet across the atrium over there," he said, waving his hand vaguely.
He left the lamp on the table, then staggered out of the cubiculum and into another room towards the front of the house. We could hear him muttering to himself as he went.
Carmody and I stood there, listening to him.
"Well," Carmody said finally. "We meet again, Larry."
"Why did Valleia want you here?" I asked.
He shrugged. "She found me while looking for you—I'm not sure how. At first she thought I could help persuade you to come here to Terra—you're the person Affron wanted. That wasn't likely, I explained to her. But I also explained to her about my other problem."
"You were stuck in my world, once the portal disappeared."
"Indeed. I was living in a cheap motel in the next town over from Glanbury, working as a laborer and cursing my decision to use the portal."
"Did she offer to take you back to your world?"
"She suggested that it might be possible. What did I have to lose? But you, Larry—you had a lot to lose. You were home with your family, weren't you? Safe and sound, at last. Why are you here?"
Why? I couldn't begin to explain it. "I guess I wanted to help Affron," I said.
Carmody shook his head. "That can't be all, can it? I expect you were bored, after all your adventures in my world. You wanted something more than your ordinary life, something different."
"I suppose it's something like that."
"I fear you've gotten more than you bargained for."
"You, too."
"Yes, perhaps."
Carmody went off to use the toilet, and I thought about what he had said. Had I been bored? Maybe, just a little. But that wasn't it; that wasn't why I had stepped back into the portal. Was it?
Carmody came back a few minutes later. "Indoor plumbing was certainly one advantage of your world compared to mine, Larry," he said. "I'm pleased to see Terra has it as well."
"I kind of got used to chamber pots and outhouses."
"Well, in your world I got used to flushing toilets and hot showers."
I went to the bathroom myself, and it made me homesick. No light switch; no shower stall; no toothbrushes. Instead I saw a couple of gross little statues of a naked man and woman. As I crossed the atrium I heard activity from a room at the back of the house; it was Palta cleaning up, I supposed. Back in our cubiculum, Carmody had found a thin blanket that he he'd placed over the bed. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and taking off his running shoes.
"What do you think will happen to us?" I asked.
"I haven't the slightest idea. I'm very worried about Valleia—and Affron, I suppose. She explained a bit about the turmoil here. This man Hypatius seems eager to minimize it, but it is serious. It turns out there are weapons here—very powerful weapons—and Tirelius and his followers want to use them to expand the priests' empire to cover all of Terra. Valleia, Affron, and others are opposed to this. And that seems to be the reason Affron was put on trial."
"That doesn't sound like what Hieron wanted."
"No, it doesn't. But we seem to be on the losing side at the moment. Which may make it difficult for us to get back home."
Carmody got into bed. I took my shoes and pants off. I felt my cell phone in my pants and took it out. I tried calling home—and how stupid was that? Nothing happened. Here my phone was just a hunk of metal and plastic.
I got into bed next to him. The mattress and pillow were thin. But I was used to that sort of thing from Carmody's world. I was used to sharing a bed with someone. I was used to a lot of things that a kid from Glanbury shouldn't have been used to.
We talked a while longer, and then I turned off the lamp. After a while I heard Carmody starting to snore, but I couldn't get to sleep. The noise from the kitchen had stopped. Back home, was Matthew asleep? How had Cassie's rehearsal gone? What was Kevin doing? And Vinnie Polkinghorne, and Nora Lally, and Stinky Glover, and all the other people I knew in Glanbury?
Were they worried about me? Did they miss me?
Somehow I didn't feel the same sense of... desolation that I had felt that first night with Kevin when we were in Carmody's world, stuck in a refugee camp in Boston and then later in a jail. You wanted something more than your ordinary life, something different. I thought about that dizziness I had felt sitting on the ground with Valleia as I tried to make up my mind whether to leave with her. It was as if my mind had actually gone away someplace on its own—somewhere out into the multiverse—and found it hard to come back.
I loved my family.
But here I was.
I must have fallen asleep eventually, because I had the sense of waking up and wondering where I was, what was going on.
Then I remembered about Terra, and Valleia, and Carmody lying on the other side of the bed, and my heart sank.
Something else was different, I realized. And then I understood what it was.
A figure was standing silently in the doorway to our room, staring in at us.
It was Palta.
I sat up in bed, my heart pounding, and stared back at her.
"Whatever you do," she whispered in English, "do not trust Hypatius."
And then she disappeared.
Chapter 5
I fell back asleep then, and when I awoke it was daylight, and I was alone in the bed. I got up and found Carmody and Hypatius in the dining room, eatin
g breakfast.
"Ah, there you are," Hypatius said. "Salve! Good day, that is. You are just in time." He gestured for me to sit down. His eyes were bloodshot, but otherwise he seemed okay after all the drinking he'd done the night before. "Eat," he said, gesturing at the fruit and cheese and bread. "And then we go to the baths."
I looked at Carmody. He shrugged.
"We shall have to see about new clothes for you," Hypatius went on. "We'll visit a shop after we bathe."
"Can't we wear our own clothes until we find out if they'll let us go home?" I asked.
"No, no, that is not possible. These clothes—" he gestured at us—"so confusing. Not for the priests who understand about Via—they will find you unusual, but not inexplicable. Is inexplicable the right word? But ordinary people—those who live in outer Urbis, for example—they think of Via simply as a source of wisdom from the gods. They wouldn't know how to make sense of you."
"Why don't you tell people the truth?"
Hypatius sighed. "It is much simpler this way, you see. For everyone."
"We could just tell people the truth," I pointed out. "Carmody and me."
"They wouldn't believe you. They'd rather think you came to Urbis from Barbarica."
"What's Barbarica?"
"Oh, I beg your pardon, the lands beyond the Roman empire."
"Where barbarians come from," Carmody said.
"Precisely."
We ate breakfast. I missed drinking orange juice—just like I had in Carmody's world. But otherwise the food was great. I wondered if Palta had risen early to bake the bread, or had she bought it somewhere?
Soon we got up and prepared to leave. While Hypatius was in the bathroom I looked into the kitchen. It was a small room with an open hearth in one corner and a sink in another. Palta was sitting at a table in the middle of the room, chopping a carrot. She stared at me and said nothing.
"What did you mean last night—about Hypatius?" I asked.
Her eyes moved towards the bathroom, and then back to me. She didn't reply. Finally I turned away.
So we left her in the house and walked to the baths, which were in a large, ornate building just off the central plaza of the castellum; the central plaza was called a forum, according to Hypatius. I had heard of the Roman Forum in World History, but apparently every neighborhood had its own forum.
At the baths we went first to a changing room, where we got out of our clothes and wrapped towels around ourselves. From there we entered a room sort of like a sauna, where everyone sat on benches and relaxed. On the walls were frescoes of people having sex; I tried not to stare at them, but I caught myself looking at them more than once. Hypatius greeted everyone and gestured at us, presumably explaining who we were. Then he sat down and chatted with his neighbors.
"There were public baths like this in ancient Rome," Carmody said to me. "Everyone used them."
I tried to remember more of what I'd learned about Rome in World History. Julius Caesar, gladiators, aqueducts, roads... not much. "Did they have all these dirty pictures and statues in ancient Rome?"
"I believe they did, Larry. Sexual practices were far different back then."
I didn't know whether I liked that or not.
After a few minutes Hypatius led us into an even hotter room, more like a steam bath. "So refreshing," he murmured, closing his eyes.
And it was. After that we went into a room where I got the first massage of my life, and from there into a large open-air pool. No one was swimming, though; they just stood around and talked while musicians played in the corner. Again, the music sounded weird—like the harmonies weren't quite right. Finally we got out, dried ourselves, and returned to the changing room. "Now we can face the day," Hypatius said. "Come, then, and we will dress you suitably."
We walked to the forum and entered a shop with a sign above it that said Vestimenta. Inside, a little man with a fringe of gray hair bowed deeply to Hypatius from behind the counter and gave us the usual puzzled look. Hypatius spoke to him and gestured to us, and he came out from behind the counter to measure us. Then he went into the back room of his shop.
"I told him that you are newly arrived from Barbarica," Hypatius explained, "and you need new robes—you need to look like normal Romans."
While we waited, Carmody asked, "Why does Barbarica still exist? Why don't the priests take it over, the way they took over the Roman empire?"
Hypatius shook his head. "That's a complicated question, you see, and one on which there is much disagreement. There are limits to communication in a world without the wondrous inventions Larry talks about. This makes control difficult over long distances. We could rule those far-off places if we chose, but it would be quite difficult."
"What if people in Barbarica come up with those inventions?" Carmody asked. "What if they invent guns in China and invade your empire?"
Hypatius waved the question away. "We have our ways of ensuring that such things don't happen. The barbarians all fear us, even if we do not rule them. They know when they go too far."
The shopkeeper came out of the back room then with an armful of robes and sandals. The robes were plain dark brown and made of cotton, I think. We tried them on right there. My robe and sandals fit well enough, although I felt like I was wearing a costume.
Hypatius nodded his approval when we were done. "That is much better," he said.
"Do the color of the robes signify anything?" Carmody asked.
Hypatius shook his head. "Some colors are reserved, like the purple of the viator. But these robes are suitable for anyone."
"We can keep our regular clothes, right?" I asked. "For when we go back home."
"If you must," he sighed.
He said something to the shopkeeper, who provided us with a satchel into which Carmody and I put all the clothes from my world. "I trust I'll never have to wear those things again," Carmody muttered.
"Didn't you become a Patriots fan?" I asked, pointing to his sweatshirt.
"I couldn't begin to understand the game they played," he replied. "I bought that at a used clothing shop because it was cheap. People in your world have far too many clothes."
Hypatius gave the shopkeeper some coins. The man bowed deeply to all of us, and we left his shop. "Now I must go to the palatium," Hypatius said. "I will return for dinner this evening. Till then you are welcome to do whatever you like in Urbis. Do you know the route back to my house?"
Carmody nodded. That was a good thing, because I had no idea.
"Fine, fine. Palta will prepare your lunch—if she is at home. I fear that she likes to disappear during the day when I'm not there. Doing what, I have no idea. She's a troublesome little sparrow, but quite lovely."
Then he walked away, signaling to a carriage driver. That left Carmody and me on our own. We sat on a bench at the edge of the forum and stared in silence for a while at a fountain where water jetted up through a statue of naked boys.
I thought about home. The search parties would definitely be out now. My photo would be on the news. My mother would be a wreck. She'd be blaming herself—she should never have left me out of her sight. What would Kevin say? Would he tell anyone about the portal? They wouldn't believe him if he did. And if I didn't return, there would be no relief for my family, no answer to the mystery. Ever.
And it was all my fault. What was the matter with me?
But also: why was Valleia so surprised when I told her I had returned home at the instant I left. Why didn't she not want me to talk about that at Affron's trial? If I had done it once, why couldn't I do it again? Or was that an example of Affron's "magic"?
I had no idea. I glanced at Carmody. Lieutenant William Carmody, soldier in the army of the United States of New England. Key aide in the nation's successful war against the forces of Canada and New Portugal. I didn't like him very much. But I didn't really dislike him either. He had taken care of Kevin and me when we first arrived in his world, but he had also used us. And now he was my only friend here on Terra.
I realized I didn't know much about him. Was he married? Had he left behind a wife and kids? Did he miss his friends?
"Very strange, eh, Larry?" he said. "To be in this world, wearing these clothes?"
"Yeah," I agreed.
"Do you want to explore Urbis?"
"Not particularly."
"I suppose I could start teaching you Latin, although I might get a lot wrong."
"I don't want to learn Latin."
Carmody sighed and then pointed. "Look," he said, "we can see the temple from here."
I looked where he was pointing, and he was right. The temple of Via loomed above us on a hill in the distance. The portal was so close—maybe a couple of miles away. But soldiers were guarding it, and even if we managed to use it, we had no idea where it would take us. I really didn't want to end up in some totally different universe. Maybe I'd have to learn Chinese. Maybe I'd have to deal with dinosaurs.
We fell silent. Finally Carmody stood up. "We can't sit here all day," he said. "Let's go."
He started walking, and I followed, carrying the satchel with our old clothes in it. My sandals seemed a little too big for me, but they were comfortable enough. Carmody led us directly to Hypatius's house. It was empty; Palta wasn't there. "What do you think Palta's story is?" I asked Carmody.
"She's likely just a servant," he said. "But I wonder, are viators celibate? Do they take wives and husbands? Do they have children?"
"Palta's too young to be Hypatius's wife," I pointed out. "She's my age Also, she knows how to speak English." I told him what she had said to me in the middle of the night.
Carmody nodded. "Yes, I think it's wise not to trust Hypatius. Or anyone, really."
We spent the day in the viator's house. It really was small, compared to our house in Glanbury. And there wasn't much stuff. Very little furniture except for tables, no closets filled with clothes, only a few books—and they were hand-lettered. Didn't they even have printing presses here?
TERRA (The Portal Series, Book 2) Page 4