Household Gods

Nicole started to answer, but stopped. Blue Mountain coffee came from Jamaica, Kalossi Celebes from Indonesia, Kona from Hawaii, good old unexciting Yuban from Colombia. She didn’t know much about Roman history, but she was pretty sure those weren’t places the Romans had ever heard of.

Her employee seemed absolutely convinced she couldn’t make a go of a restaurant that didn’t serve wine. Nicole had no way of knowing whether she was right, not on her first morning in Carnuntum.

This was the only guide she had, the only hope of getting through without being labeled insane or worse. She’d seen it in movies, how the alien landed on earth with a head full of data but missing a few of the most important. He was always found out, and then he had to suffer. Did the Romans have police? Government agencies? Whatever they’d call the CIA?

She had to fit in, at least at first. She had to act normal, or people would ask too many questions, questions she couldn’t answer. “Very well,” she said grudgingly. “We’ll keep on serving wine. For now. But,” she went on, and that was firm, “I will drink water.”

The servant sighed deeply, the kind of sigh that said, You may be crazy, but you’re still the boss. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, meekly enough, and poured her a cup from a pitcher on the bar.

Because the cup was earthenware and not glass, Nicole couldn’t admire its crystal clarity as she would have liked. But when she sipped, she let out a sigh of pleasure. Now this was water, water as it ought to taste. What came out of the tap in Los Angeles was as full of chlorine as a swimming pool, and full of God only knew what all other chemicals. None of those pollutants here – just good, pure H₂O.

“See?” Nicole set down the empty cup. “This is what’s good for you.”

“Yes, Mistress.” The young woman sounded even more resigned, and even more dubious, than she had before.

A clatter from upstairs distracted them both from what might have been an uncomfortable pause. The servant smiled. “Here come the children, Mistress. They were sleepy today, weren’t they?”

“Weren’t they?” Nicole echoed. Her employee, fortunately, didn’t seem to notice how hollow her voice sounded. How in the world was she going to convince – how many? – children she’d never seen before that she was their mother? She had no idea what to do or say – no time to think, either, before they were on her.

4

IT went, thank God, better than she’d dared hope. It still wasn’t easy, not for her, but the kids, like the servant, seemed prepared to take her on faith. Why not? She looked like their mother. She sounded like their mother. Who else could she be?

By now she took in data as automatically, and almost as effortlessly, as she had when she was studying for the bar exam. As she had then, she shut out emotions that wouldn’t immediately serve her purposes, simply recorded them and filed them away to deal with later.

She had – Umma had – two children: a son named Lucius, who looked about eight years old, and a daughter called Aurelia, a couple of years younger. Aurelia reminded Nicole of Kimberley. It wasn’t just that they were near enough the same age, and it certainly wasn’t that they looked alike – Aurelia, naturally enough, looked like a smaller version of Umma. But the way she carried herself, the turn of her head when she looked at her mother, the prim little purse of her mouth, were all strikingly like Kimberley.

It struck Nicole rather strongly, if belatedly, that Umma might be one of her ancestors. The dream she’d had, the double spiral ladder of DNA, could have been the way she’d traveled here. Almost all of her great-grandparents had come to the United States from Austria. Carnuntum was – had been – would be – in Austria. Suppose their several-dozen-times great-grandparents had come from here, from this town?

What a chain of coincidences if it was true: that she should have honeymooned in Carnuntum, that she’d found the votive plaque, that it had become the constant occupant of her nightstand, even long after it stopped being a symbol of her marriage to Frank Perrin. And after that marriage had gone sour beyond all repair, when her job imploded on her and her whole life was falling apart, a prayer expressed as a wish had done the impossible, had brought her down through the long chain of genes into this one of all her myriad ancestors.

Another thought trod on the heels of the first. If Umma was her ancestor, then so was either Lucius or Aurelia – or, for that matter, so were both of them. She swallowed a sudden, nearly hysterical giggle. They were children, half her size. Hard to imagine that they’d grow up, have children of their own, and those would have children, and…