Crossing Into the Empire

Mulreany is still asleep when the Empire makes its mid-year reappearance, a bit ahead of schedule. It was due to show up in Chicago on the afternoon of June 24, somewhere between five and six o’clock, and here it is only eight goddamned o’clock in the morning on the 23rd and the phone is squalling and it’s Anderson on the line to say, “Well, I can’t exactly tell you why, boss, but it’s back here already, over on the Near West Side. The eastern border runs along Blue Island Avenue, and up as far north as the Eisenhower Expressway, practically. Duplessis says that this time it’s going to be a 52-hour visitation, plus or minus 90 minutes.”

Dazzling summer sunlight floods Mulreany’s bedroom, high up above the lake. He hates being awake at this hour. Blinking, grimacing, he says, “If Duplessis missed the time of arrival by a day and a half, how the hell can he be so sure about the visitation length? Sometimes I think Duplessis is full of shit. —Which Empire is it, anyway? What are the towers in the Forum like?”

“The big square pointy-topped pink one is there, with two slender ones flanking it, dark stone, golden domes,” Anderson says.

“Basil III, most likely.”

“You’re the man who’d know, boss. How soon do we go across?”

“It’s eight in the morning, Stu.”

“Jesus, we’ve only got the 52 hours, and then there won’t be another chance until Christmas. Fifty-one and a half, by now. Everything’s packed and ready to go whenever you are.”

“Come get me at half past nine.”

“What about nine sharp?” Anderson says hopefully.

“I need some time to shower and get my costume on, if that’s all right with you,” Mulreany says. “Half past nine.”

It’s the Empire of Basil III this time, no question about that. What has arrived is the capital city from the waterfront all the way back to the Walls of Artabanus and even a little strip of the Byzantine Quarter beyond—the entire magnificent metropolis, that great antique city of a hundred palaces and five hundred temples and mosques, green parks and leafy promenades, shining stone obelisks and eye-dazzling colonnades. The Caspian Sea side of the city lines up precisely along South Blue Island Avenue, with the wharves and piers of the city harbor high and dry, jutting from the eastern side of the street. The longest piers reach a couple of blocks beyond Blue Island where it crosses Polk, stretching almost to the southbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway, which seems to be the absolute boundary of the materialization zone. A bunch of fishing boats and what looks like an imperial barge have been taken along for the ride this time, and sit forlornly beached right at the zone’s flickering edge, cut neatly in half, their sterns visible here in Chicago but their bows still back in the twelfth century. The whole interface line is bright with the customary shimmering glow. You could walk around the outside edge of the interface and find yourself in the Near West Side, which has been intruded upon but not harmed. Or you could go straight ahead into that glowing field of light and step across the boundary into the capital of the Empire.

One glance and Mulreany has no doubt that the version of the capital that has arrived on this trip is the twelfth-century one. The two golden-domed towers of black basalt that Basil III erected to mark the twentieth anniversary of his accession are visible high above the Forum on either side of the pink marble Tower of Nicholas IX, but there’s no sign of the gigantic hexagonal Cathedral of All the Gods that Basil’s nephew and successor, Simeon II, will eventually build on what is presently the site of the camel market. So Mulreany can date the manifestation of the Empire that he is looking at now very precisely to the period between 1150 and 1185. Which is good news, not only because that was one of the richest periods of the Empire’s long history, making today’s trading possibilities especially promising, but also because the Empire of the time of Basil III turns up here more often than that of any other era, and Mulreany knows his way around Basil’s capital almost like a native. Considering the risks involved, he prefers to be in familiar territory when he’s doing business over there.

The usual enormous crowd is lined up along the interface, gawking goggle-eyed at the medieval city across the way. “You’d think the dopey bastards had never seen the Empire get here before,” Mulreany mutters, as he and Anderson clamber out of the limo and head for the police barricade. The usual murmuring goes up from the onlookers at the sight of them in their working clothes.

Mulreany, as the front man in this enterprise, has outfitted himself elegantly in a tight-sleeved, close-fitting knee-length tunic of green silk piped with scarlet brocade, turquoise hose, and soft leather boots in the Persian style. On his head he wears a stiff and lofty pyramid-shaped hat of Turkish design, on his left hip a long curving dagger in an elaborately chased silver sheath. Anderson, as befits his lesser status, is more simply garbed in an old-fashioned flowing tunic of pale muslin, baggy blue trousers, and sandals; his headgear is a white bonnet tied by a red ribbon. These are the clothes of a merchant of late imperial times and his amanuensis, nothing unusual over there, but pretty gaudy stuff to see on a Chicago street, and they draw plenty of attention.

Duplessis, Schmidt, and Kulikowski wait by the barricade, gabbing with a couple of the cops. Schmidt has a short woollen tunic on, like the porter he is supposed to be; he is toting the trading merchandise, two bulging burlap bags. Neither Duplessis nor Kulikowski is in costume. They won’t be going across. They’re antiquities dealers; what they do is peddle the goodies that Mulreany and his two assistants bring back from their ventures into the Empire. They don’t ever put their own necks on the line over there.

Duplessis is fidgeting around, the way he always does, looking at his watch every ten seconds or so. “About time you got here, Mike,” he tells Mulreany. “The clock is ticking-ticking-ticking.”

“Ticking so fast the Empire showed up a day and a half early, didn’t it?” Mulreany says sourly. “You screwed up the calculation a little, eh?”

“Christ, man! It’s never all that precise and you know it. We’ve got a lot of complicated factors to take into account. The equinoctial precession—the whole sidereal element—the problem of topological displacement—listen, Mike, I do my best. It gets here every six months, give or take a couple of days, that’s all we can figure. There’s no way I can tell you to the split second when it’s going to—”

“What about the calculation of when it leaves again? Suppose you miss that one by a factor of a couple of days too?”

“No,” Duplessis says. “No chance. The math’s perfectly clear: this is a two-day visitation. Look, stop worrying, Mike. You sneak across, you do your business, you come back late tomorrow afternoon. You’re just grouchy because you don’t like getting up this early.”

“And you ought to start moving,” Kulikowski tells him. “Waxman and Gross went across an hour ago. There’s Davidson about to cross over down by Roosevelt, and here comes McNeill.”

Mulreany nods. Competitors, yes, moving in on all sides. The Empire’s already been in for a couple of hours; most of the licensed crossers are probably there by now. But what the hell: there’s plenty for everybody. “You got the coins?” he asks.

Kulikowski hands Mulreany a jingling velvet purse: some walking-around money. He shakes a few of the coins out into his palm. The Emperor Basil’s broad big-nosed face looks up at him from the shiny obverse of a gold nomisma. There are a couple of little silver argentei from the time of Casimir and a few thick, impressive copper sesterces showing the hooded profile of Empress Juliana.

Impatiently Kulikowski says, “What do you think, Mike, I’d give you the wrong ones? Nothing there’s later than Basil III. Nothing earlier than the Peloponnesian Dynasty.” Passing false money, or obsolete money that has been withdrawn from circulation by imperial decree, is a serious mercantile crime over there, punishable by mutilation for the first offense, by death for the second. There are no decrees about passing money of emperors yet to be born, naturally. But that would be stupid as well as dangerous.

“Come on, Mike,” Duplessis says. “Time’s wasting. Go on in.”

“How long did you say can I stay?”

“Like I told you. Almost until sundown tomorrow.”

“That long? You sure?”

“You think it does me any good if you get stranded over there?” Duplessis says. “Trust me. I tell you you’ve got until sundown, you’ve got until sundown. Go on, now. Will you get going, for Christ’s sake?”

There’s no need for Mulreany to show his transit license. The police know all the licensed border-crossers. Only about two dozen people have the right combination of skills—the knowledge of the Empire’s language and customs, the knack of doing business in a medieval country, the willingness to take the risks involved in making the crossing. The risks are big, and crossers don’t always come back. The Empire’s official attitude toward the merchants who come over from Chicago is that they are sorcerers of some kind, and the penalty for sorcery is public beheading, so you have to keep a low profile as you do your business. Then, too, there’s the chance of catching some archaic disease that’s unknown and incurable in the modern era, or simply screwing up your timing and getting stuck over there in the Empire when it pops back to its own period of history. There are other odd little one-in-a-thousand glitch possibilities also. You have to have the intellectual equipment of a college professor plus the gall of a bank robber to make a successful living as a crosser.

The easiest place to enter today, according to Kulikowski, is the corner of Blue Island and Taylor. The imperial city is only about four feet above Chicago street level there, and Kulikowski has brought along a plank that he sets up as a little bridge to carry them up the slight grade. Mulreany leads the way; Anderson follows, and Schmidt brings up the rear, toting the two bags of trade goods. As they pass through the eerie yellow glow of the interface Mulreany glances back at Duplessis and Kulikowski, who are beginning to fade from view. He grins, winks, gives them the upturned thumb. Another couple of steps and Chicago disappears altogether, nothing visible now to the rear except the golden flicker, opaque when seen from this side, that marks the border of the materialization zone. They are in the Empire, now. Halfway across the planet and nine centuries ago in time, waltzing once more into the glittering capital city of the powerful realm that was the great rival of the Byzantines and the Turks for the domination of the medieval world.

Can of corn, he tells himself.

In today, out tomorrow, another ten or twenty million bucks’ worth of highly desirable and readily salable treasures in the bag.

The imperial barge—its back half, anyway—is just on their left as they come up the ramp. Its hull bears the royal crest and part of an inscription testifying to the greatness of the Emperor. Lounging alongside it with their backs to the interface glow are half a dozen rough-looking members of the Bulgarian Guard, the Emperor’s crack private militia. Bad news right at the outset. They give Mulreany and his companions black menacing glances.

“Nasty bastards,” Anderson murmurs. “They going to be difficult, you think?”

“Nah. Just practicing looking tough,” says Mulreany. “We stay cool and we’ll be okay.” Staying cool means telling yourself that you are simply an innocent merchant from a distant land who happens to be here at this unusual time purely by coincidence, and never showing a smidgeon of uneasiness. “But keep close to your gun, all the same.”

“Right.” Anderson slips his hand under his tunic. Both he and Schmidt are armed. Mulreany isn’t. He never is.

He figures they’ll get past the guardsmen okay. The Bulgars are a wild and unpredictable bunch, but Mulreany knows that nobody over here wants to go out of his way to find trouble at a time when the weird golden light in the sky is shining, not even the Bulgars, because when the light appears and everything surrounding the capital disappears from the view of its inhabitants it means that the powers of sorcery are at work again. Events like this have been going on for 800 years in this city, and everyone understands by now that during one of the sorcery-times there’s a fair possibility that some stranger you try to hassle may come right back at you and hit you with very mighty mojo indeed. It’s been known to happen.

This is something like Mulreany’s 25th crossing—he doesn’t keep count, but he doesn’t miss an Empire appearance and he’s been a licensed crosser for about a dozen years—and he knows his way around town as well as anybody in the trade. The big boulevard that runs along the shore parallel to the wharves is the Street of the Eastern Sun, which leads to the Plaza of the Customs-Brokers, from which five long streets radiate into different parts of the city: the Street of Persians, the Street of Turks, the Street of Romans, the Street of Jews, and the Street of Thieves. There are no Jews to be found on the Street of Jews or anywhere else in the capital, not since the Edict of Thyarodes VII, but most of the best metal-workers and jewelers and ivory-carvers have shops in the quadrant between the Street of Jews and the Street of Thieves, so it’s in that section that Mulreany will make his headquarters while he’s here.

Plenty of citizens are milling around in the Plaza of the Customs-Brokers, which is one of the city’s big gathering-places. Mulreany hears them chattering in a whole bouillabaise of languages. Greek is the Empire’s official tongue, but Mulreany can also make out Latin, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, a Slavic dialect, and something that sounds a little like Swedish. Nobody is very upset by what has happened to the city. They’ve all had experience with this sort of thing before, and all of them are aware that it’s just a temporary thing: when the sky turns golden and the capital goes flying off into the land of sorcery, the thing to do is sit tight and wait for everything to get back to normal again, which it eventually will do.

He and Anderson and Schmidt slide smoothly into the crowd, trying to seem inconspicuous without conspicuously seeming to be trying to seem inconspicuous, and leave the plaza on the far side by way of the Street of Jews. There was a decent hotel seven or eight blocks up that way the last time he was here in the reign of Basil III, and though he doesn’t know whether the date of that visit, in Empire time, was five years ago or five years yet to come, he figures there’s a good chance the hotel will be there today. Things don’t change really fast in the medieval world, except when some invading horde comes in and rearranges the real estate, and that isn’t due to happen in this city for another couple of centuries.

The hotel is exactly where he remembers it. It’s not quite in a class with the Drake or the Ritz-Carlton: more like a big barn, in fact, since the ground floor is entirely given over to straw-strewn stables for the horses and camels and donkeys of the guests, and the actual guest rooms are upstairs, a series of small square chambers with stiff clammy mattresses placed right on the stone floors, and tiny windows that have actual glass in them, almost clear enough to see through. Nothing lavish, not even really very comfortable, but the place is reasonably clean, at least, with respectable lavatory facilities on every floor and a relatively insignificant population of bugs and ticks. A pleasant smell of spices from the bazaar next door, ginger and aniseed and nutmeg and cinnamon, maybe a little opium and hashish too, drifts in and conceals other less savory aromas that might be wandering through the building. The place is okay. It’ll do for one night, anyway.

The innkeeper is a different one from last time, a gap-toothed red-haired Greek with only one eye, who gives Mulreany a leering smirk and says, “In town for the sorcery-trading, are you?”

“The what?” Mulreany asks, all innocence.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know, brother. What do you think that ring of witch-fire is, all around the city? Where do you think the Eastern Sea has gone, and the Genoese Quarter, and Persian Town, and everything else that lies just outside the city walls? It’s sorcery-time here again, my friend!”

“Is it, now?” Mulreany says, making no great show of interest. “I wouldn’t know. My cousins and I are here to deal in pots and pans, and perhaps do a little business in daggers and swords.” He colors his Greek with a broad, braying yokel accent, by way of emphasizing that he’s much too dumb to be a sorcerer.

But the innkeeper is annoyingly persistent. “Merely let me have one of those metal tubes that bring near what is far off,” he says, with a little wheedling movement of his big shoulders, “and my best rooms are yours for three weeks, and all your meals besides.”

He must mean a spyglass. Binoculars aren’t likely to do him much good. Even more broadly Mulreany says, “Pots, yes, my good brother. Pans, yes. But miraculous metal tubes, I must say ye nay. Such things are not our commodities, brother.”

The lone eye, ice-blue and bloodshot, bores nastily in on him. “Would a knife of many blades be among your commodities, then? A metal box of fire? A flask of the devil’s brandy?”

“I tell you, we be not sorcerers,” says Mulreany stolidly, letting just a bit of annoyance show. He shifts his weight slowly from leg to leg, a ponderous hayseed gesture. “We are but decent simple merchants in search of lodging in return for good coin, and if we cannot find it here, brother, we fain must seek it elsewhere.”

He starts to swing about to leave. The innkeeper hastily backs off from his wheedling, and Mulreany is able to strike a straightforward deal for a night’s lodging, three rooms for a couple of heavy copper sesterces, with tomorrow’s breakfast of rough bread, preserved lamb, and beer thrown in.

Wistfully the innkeeper says, “I was sure at last I had some sorcerers before me, who would favor me with some of the wondrous things that the high dukes possess.”

“You have sorcerers on the brain,” Mulreany tells him, as they start upstairs. “We are but simple folk, with none of the devil’s goods in our bags.”

Does the innkeeper believe him? Who knows? They all covet the illicit stuff the sorcerers bring, but only the very richest can afford it. Skepticism and greed still glitter in that single eye.

Well, Mulreany has told nothing but God’s truth: he is no sorcerer, just a merchant from a far land. But real sorcerers must have been at work here at some time in the past. What else could it have been but black magic, Mulreany figures, that set the city floating in time in the first place? The capital, he knows, has been adrift for most of its lengthy history. He himself, on various crossings, has entered versions of the city as early as that of the reign of Miklos, who was fourth century A.D., and as late as the somber time of Kartouf the Hapless, right at the end, just before the Mongol conquest in 1412. For Chicagoans, the periodic comings and goings of the city are just an interesting novelty, but for these people it must be a real nuisance to find themselves constantly floating around in time and space. Mulreany imagines that one of the imperial wizards must have accidentally put the hex on the place, long ago, some kind of wizardy experiment that misfired and set up a time-travel effect that won’t stop.

“Half past ten,” Mulreany announces. It’s more like noon, actually—the sun’s practically straight overhead, glinting behind the spooky light of the interface effects—but he’ll stay on Chicago time throughout the crossing. It’s simpler that way. If Duplessis is right the city is due to disappear back into its own era about eleven o’clock Thursday morning. Mulreany likes a 12-to-14 hour safety margin, which means heading back into Chicago by seven o’clock or so Wednesday night. “Let’s get to work,” he says.

The first stop is a jeweler’s shop three blocks east of the Street of Jews that belongs to a Turkish family named Suleimanyi. Mulreany has been doing satisfactory business with the Suleimanyis, on and off, for something like a century Empire time, beginning with Mehmet Suleimanyi early in Basil III’s reign and continuing with his grandfather Ahmet, who ran the shop fifty years earlier in the time of the Emperor Polifemas, and then with Mehmet’s son Ali, and with Ali’s grandson, also named Mehmet, during the reign of Simeon II. He does his best to conceal from the various Suleimanyis that he’s been coming to them out of chronological order, but he doubts that they would care anyway. What they care about is the profit they can turn on the highly desirable foreign goods he brings them. It’s a real meeting of common interests, every time.

Mulreany gets a blank look of nonrecognition from the man who opens the slitted door of the familiar shop for him. The Suleimanyis all look more or less alike—slender, swarthy hawk-nosed men with impressive curling mustachios—and Mulreany isn’t sure, as he enters, which one he’s encountering today. This one has the standard Suleimanyi features and appears to be about thirty. Mulreany assumes, pending further information, that it’s Mehmet the First or his son Ali, the main Suleimanyis of Basil’s reign, but perhaps he has showed up on this trip some point in time at which neither of them has met him before. So for all intents and purposes he is facing an absolute stranger. You get a lot of mismatches of this sort when you move back and forth across the time interface.

A tricky business. He has to decide whether to identify himself for what he really is or to fold his cards and try someplace else that seems safer. It calls for an act of faith: there’s always the chance that the man he approaches may figure that there’s more profit to be had in selling him out to the police as a sorcerer than in doing business with him. But the Suleimanyis have always been on the up and up and Mulreany has no reason to mistrust this one. So he takes a deep breath and offers a sweeping salaam and says, in classier Greek than he had used with the innkeeper, “I am Mulreany of Chicago, who once more returns bringing treasure from afar to offer my friend the inestimable master Suleimanyi.”

This is the moment of maximum danger. He searches Suleimanyi’s face for hints of incipient treachery.

But what he sees is a quick warm smile with nothing more sinister than balance-sheet calculations behind it: a flash of genuine mercantile pleasure. The jeweler eagerly beckons him into the shop, which is dark and musty, lit only by two immense wax tapers. Anderson and Schmidt come in behind him, Schmidt taking care to bolt the door. Suleimanyi snaps his fingers, and a small solemn boy of about ten appears out of the shadows, bearing an ornate flask and four shallow crystal bowls. The jeweler pours some sort of yellowish-green brandy for them. “My late father often spoke of you, O Mulreany, and his father before him. It gives me great joy that you have returned to us. I am Selim, son of Ali.”

If Ali is dead, this must be very late in the long reign of Basil III. The little boy is probably Mehmet the Second, whom Mulreany will meet twenty or thirty years down the line in the time of Emperor Simeon. It makes him a little edgy to discover that he has landed here in the great Emperor Basil’s final years, because the Emperor apparently went a little crazy when he was very old, turning into something of a despot, and a lot of peculiar things were known to have occurred. But what the hell: they don’t plan to be dropping in for tea at the imperial palace.

Before any transactions can take place an elaborate ritual of sipping the fiery brandy and exchanging bland snippets of conversation must occur. Selim Suleimanyi politely inquires after the health of the monarch of Mulreany’s country and asks if it has been the case that unruly barbarians have been causing problems for them lately along their borders. Mulreany assures him that all is well in and around Chicago and that the Mayor is fine. He expresses the hope that the Empire’s far-flung armies are meeting with success in the distant lands where they currently campaign. This goes on and on, an interminable spinning of trivial talk. Mulreany has learned to be patient. There is no hurrying these bazaar guys. But finally Suleimanyi says, “Perhaps now you will show me the things you have brought with you.”

Mulreany has his own ritual for this. Schmidt opens one of the big burlap bags and holds it stolidly out; Mulreany gives instructions in English to Anderson; Anderson pulls items out of the bag and lays them out for Suleimanyi’s inspection.

Five Swiss Army knives come forth first. Then two nice pairs of Bausch & Lomb binoculars, and three cans of Coca-Cola.

“All right,” Mulreany orders. “Hold it there.”

He waits. Suleimanyi opens a chest beneath the table and draws out a beautiful ivory hunting horn encircled by three intricately engraved silver bands showing dogs, stags, and hunters. He rests it expectantly on his open palm and smiles.

“A couple of more Cokes,” Mulreany says. “And three bottles of Giorgio.”

Suleimanyi’s smile grows broader. But still he doesn’t hand over the hunting horn.

“Plus two of the cigarette lighters,” says Mulreany.

Even that doesn’t seem to be enough. There is a long tense pause. “Take away one of the Swiss Army knives and pull out six ball point pens.”

The subtraction of the knife is intended as a signal to Suleimanyi that Mulreany is starting to reach the limits of his price. Suleimanyi understands. He picks up one of the binoculars, twiddles with its focus, peers through it. Binoculars have long been one of the most popular trading items for Mulreany, the magical tubes that bring far things close. “Another of these?” Suleimanyi says.

“In place of two knives, yes.”

“Done,” says Suleimanyi.

Now it’s the Turk’s turn. He produces an exquisite pendant of gold filigree inlaid with cloisonné enamel and hands it to Mulreany to be admired. Mulreany tells Anderson to bring out the Chanel Number Five, a bottle of Chivas, two more pairs of binoculars, and a packet of sewing needles. Suleimanyi appears pleased, but not pleased enough. “Give him a compass,” Mulreany orders.

Obviously Suleimanyi has never seen a compass before. He fingers the shiny steel case and says, “What is this?”

Mulreany indicates the needle. “This points north. Now turn toward the door. Do you see? The needle still points north.”

The jeweler grasps the principle, and its commercial value in a maritime nation, instantly. His eyes light up and he says, “One more of these and we have a deal.”

“Alas,” says Mulreany. “Compasses are great rarities. I can spare only one.” He signals Anderson to begin putting things away.

But Suleimanyi, grinning, pulls back his hand when Mulreany reaches for the compass. “It is sufficient, then, the one,” he says. “The pendant is yours.” He leans close. “This is witchcraft, this north-pointing device?”

“Not at all. A simple natural law at work.”

“Ah. Of course. You will bring me more of these?”

“On my very next visit,” Mulreany promises.

They move along, after Suleimanyi has treated them to the spicy tea that concludes every business transaction in the Empire. Mulreany doesn’t like to do all his trading at a single shop. He goes looking now for a place he remembers near the intersection of Baghdad Way and the Street of Thieves, a dealer in precious stones, but it isn’t there; what he finds instead, though, is even better, a Persian goldsmith’s place where—after more brandy, more chitchat—he warily lets it be known that he has unusual merchandise from far-off lands for sale, meets with a reassuring response, and exchanges some Swiss Army knives, binoculars, various sorts of perfume, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and a pair of roller skates for a fantastic necklace of interwoven gold chains studded with pearls, amethysts, and emeralds. Even at that the Persian evidently feels guilty about the one-sidedness of the deal, and while they are sipping the inevitable wrapping-up tea he presses a pair of exquisite earrings set with gaudy rubies on Mulreany as an unsolicited sweetener. “You will come back to me the next time,” he declares intensely. “I will have even finer things for you—you will see!”

“And we’ll have some gorgeous pruning shears for you,” Mulreany tells him. “Maybe even a sewing machine or two.”

“I await them with extraordinary zeal,” declares the Persian ebulliently, just as though he understands what Mulreany is talking about. “Such miraculous things have long been desired by me!”

The sincerity of his greed is obvious and comforting. Mulreany always counts on the cheerful self-interest of the bazaar dealers—and the covetousness of the local aristocrats to whom the bazaaris sell the merchandise that they buy from the sorcerers from Chicago—to preserve his neck. Sorcery is a capital offense here, sure, but the allure of big profits for the bazaaris and the insatiable hunger among the wealthy for exotic toys like Swiss Army knives and cigarette lighters causes everybody to wink at the laws. Almost everybody, anyway.

As they emerge from the Persian’s shop Schmidt says, “Hey, isn’t that our innkeeper down the block?”

“That son of a bitch,” Mulreany mutters. “Let’s hope not.” He follows Schmidt’s pointing finger and sees a burly red-haired man heading off in the opposite direction. The last thing he needs is for the innkeeper to spot the purported dealers in pots and pans doing business in the jewelry bazaar. But red hair isn’t all that uncommon in this city and in all likelihood the innkeeper is busy banging one of the chambermaids at this very moment. He’s glad Schmidt is on his toes, anyway.

They go onward now down the Street of Thieves and back past the Baths of Amozyas and the Obelisk of Suplicides into a district thick with astrologers and fortune-tellers, where they pause at a kebab stand for a late lunch of sausages and beer, and then, as the afternoon winds down, they go back into the bazaar quarter. Mulreany succeeds in locating, after following a couple of false trails, the shop of a bookseller he remembers, where a staff of shaven-headed Byzantine scribes produces illuminated manuscripts for sale to the nobility. The place doesn’t normally do off-the-shelf business, but Mulreany has been able on previous trips to persuade them to sell books that were awaiting pickup by the duke or prince who had commissioned them, and he turns the trick again this time too. He comes away with a gloriously illustrated vellum codex of the Iliad, with an astonishing binding of tooled ebony inlaid with gold and three rows of rubies, in exchange for some of their remaining knives, Coca-Cola, cigarette lighters, sunglasses, and whiskey, and another of the little pocket-compasses. This is shaping up into one of the best buying trips in years.

“We ought to have brought a lot more compasses,” Anderson says, when they’re outside and looking around for their last deal of the day before heading back to the inn. “They don’t take up much space in the bag and they really turn everybody on.”

“Next trip,” says Mulreany. “I agree: they’re a natural.”

“I still can’t get over this entire business,” Schmidt says wonderingly. This is only his third time across. “That they’re willing to swap fabulous museum masterpieces like these for pocketknives and cans of Coke. And they’d go out of their minds over potato chips too, I bet.”

“But those things aren’t fabulous museum masterpieces to them,” Mulreany says. “They’re just routine luxury goods that it’s their everyday business to make and sell. Look at it from their point of view. We come in here with a sackful of miracles that they couldn’t duplicate in a hundred years. Five hundred. They can always take some more gold and some more emeralds and whack out another dozen necklaces. But where the hell are they going to get a pair of binoculars except from us? And Coke probably tastes like ambrosia to them. So it’s just as sweet a deal for them as it is for us, and—Hello, look who’s here!”

A stocky bearded man with coarse froggy features is waving at them from the other side of the street. He’s wearing a brocaded crimson robe worthy of an archbishop and a spectacular green tiara of stunning princely style, but the flat gap-toothed face looking out at them is pure Milwaukee. A taller man dressed in a porter’s simple costume stands behind him with a bag of merchandise slung over his shoulder. “Hey, Leo!” Mulreany calls. “How’s it going?” To Schmidt he explains, “That’s Leo Waxman. Used to carry the merchandise bags for me, five, six years ago. Now he’s a trader on his own account.” And, loudly, again, “Come on over, say hello, Leo! Meet the boys!”

Waxman, as he crosses the street, puts one finger to his lips. “Ixnay on the English, Mike,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Let’s stick to the Grik, okay, man? And not so much yelling.” He casts a shifty look down toward the end of the block, where a couple of the ubiquitous Bulgarian Guardsmen are lolling against the wall of a mosque.

“Something wrong?” Mulreany asks.

“Plenty. Don’t you know? The word is out that the Emperor has ordered a crackdown. He’s just told the imperial gendarmerie to pull in anybody caught dealing in sorcery-goods.”

“You sure about that? Why would he want to rock the boat?”

“Well, the old man’s crazy, isn’t he? Maybe he woke up this morning and decided it was time finally to enforce his own goddamned laws. All I know is that I’ve done a very nice day’s business and I’m going to call it a trip right here and now.”

“Sure,” Mulreany says. “If that’s what you want. But not me. The Emperor can issue any cockeyed order he likes, but that doesn’t mean anyone will pay attention. Too many people in this town get big benefits out of the trade we bring.”

“You’re going to stay?”

“Right. Till sundown tomorrow. There’s business to do here.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Waxman says. “I wish you a lot of joy of it. Me, I’m for dinner at Charlie Trotter’s tonight, and to hell with turning any more tricks here just now, thank you. Not if there’s a chance I’ll miss the last bus back to the Loop.” Waxman blows Mulreany a kiss, beckons to his porter, and starts off up the street.

“We really going to stay?” Schmidt asks, when Waxman has moved along.

Mulreany gives him a scornful look. “We’ve still got almost a bag and a half of goods to trade, don’t we?”

“But if this Waxman thinks that—”

“He was always a chickenshit wimp,” Mulreany says. “Look, if they were really serious about their sorcery laws here, they’d have ways of reaching out and picking us up just like that. Go into the bazaar, ask the dealers who they got their Swiss Army knives from, and give them the old bamboo on the soles of the feet until they cough up our full descriptions. But that doesn’t happen. Nobody in his right mind would want to cut off the supply of magical nifties that we bring to town.”

“This Emperor isn’t in his right mind,” Anderson points out.

“But everybody else is. Let Waxman panic if he wants to. We finish our business and we clear out tomorrow afternoon as scheduled. You want to go home now, either of you, then go home, but if you do, this’ll be the last trip across you ever make.” It’s a point of pride for Mulreany to max out his trading opportunities, even if it means running along the edge occasionally. He has long since become a rich man just on the twelve and a half percent he gets from Duplessis and Kulikowski’s placements of the artifacts he supplies them with, but nevertheless he isn’t going to abort the trip simply because Leo Waxman has picked up some goofy rumor. He detests Waxman’s cowardice. The risks haven’t changed at all, so far as he can see. This job was always dangerous. But the merchants will protect him. It’s in their own best interest not to sell the golden geese to the imperial cops.

When they get back to the hotel, the innkeeper grins smarmily at them out of his cubicle next to the stable. “You sell a lot of pots and pans today?”

“Pretty good business, yes,” Mulreany allows.

An avid gleam shines in the lone eye. “Look, you sell me something, hear? I give you a dozen girls, I give you a barrel of fine wine, I give you any damn thing you want, but you let me have one of the magic things, you know what I mean?”

“Gods be my witness, we are but ordinary merchants and let there be an end on this foolishness!” Mulreany says testily, thickening his yokel accent almost to the point of incoherence. “Why do you plague us this way? Would you raise a false charge of sorcery down on innocent men?” The innkeeper raises his hands placatingly, but Mulreany sails right on: “By the gods, I will bring action against you for defaming us, do you not stop this! I will take you to the courts for these slanders! I will say that you knowingly give lodging to men you think are sorcerers, hoping to gain evil goods from them! I will—I will—”

He halts, huffing and puffing. The innkeeper, retreating fast, begs Mulreany’s forgiveness and vows never to suggest again that they are anything but what they claim to be. Would the good merchants care for some pleasant entertainment in their room tonight, very reasonable price? Yes, the good merchants would, as a matter of fact. For a single silver argenteus the size of a dime Mulreany is able to arrange a feast of apples and figs and melons, grilled fish, roasted lamb stuffed with minced doves and artichokes, and tangy resinated wine from Crete, along with a trio of Circassian dancing girls to serve them during the meal and service them afterward. It’s very late by the time he finally gets to sleep, and very early when half a dozen huge shaggy Bulgarian Guardsmen come bashing into his room and pounce on him.

The bastard has sold him to the Emperor, it seems. That must have been him in the bazaar at lunchtime, then, watching them go in and out of the fancy shops. Thwarted in his dreams of wangling a nice Swiss Army knife for himself, or at least a fifth of Courvoisier, he has whistled up the constables by way of getting even.

There’s no sign of Anderson and Schmidt. They must have wriggled through their windows at the first sound of intruders and scrambled down the drainpipe and at this moment are hightailing it for the interface, Chicago-bound. But for Mulreany there’s a cell waiting in the dungeon of the imperial palace.

He doesn’t get a very good look at the palace, just one awesome glimpse in the moment of his arrival: white marble walls inlaid with medallions of onyx and porphyry, delicate many-windowed towers of dizzying height, two vast courtyards lined by strips of immaculately tended shrubbery stretching off to left and right, with crystalline reflecting pools, narrow as daggers, running down their middles.

Then a thick smelly hood is pulled down over his head and for a long while he sees nothing further. They pick him up and haul him away down some long corridor. Eventually he hears the sound of a great door being swung back; and then he feels the bruising impact of being dropped like a sack of potatoes onto a stone floor.

Mulreany remains weirdly calm. He’s furious, of course, but what good is getting into a lather? He’s too upset to let himself get upset. He’s a gone goose and he knows it, and it pisses him off immensely, but there isn’t a damned thing he can do to save himself. Maybe they’ll burn him or maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll be beheaded, but either way they can only do it to him once. And there’s no lawyer in town who can get him out off and no court of appeals to complain to. His only salvation now is a miracle. But he doesn’t believe in miracles. The main thing he regrets is that a schmuck like Waxman is home free in Chicago right now and he’s not.

He lies there for what feels like hours. They took his watch away when they tied his wrists together, and in any case he wouldn’t be able to see it with this hood on, but he knows that the day is moving along and in a matter of hours the interface between the Empire and Chicago is going to close. So even if they don’t behead him he’s going to be stranded here, the dumbest fate a crosser can experience. The ropes that encircle his wrists start to chafe his skin, and he feels nauseated by the increasingly stale, moist air within the hood covering his face.

Eventually he dozes: sleeps, even. Then he wakes suddenly, muddle-headed, not knowing where he is at first, feeling a little feverish, and starving, besides; he’s been cooped up in here, he figures, twelve or eighteen hours, or even longer than that. The interface certainly has closed by now. Stranded. Stranded. You goddamned idiot, he thinks.

Footsteps, finally. People coming. A lot of them.

They pull him to his feet, yank the hood off, untie his wrists. He sees that he’s in a big square stone room with a high ceiling and no windows. On all sides of him stand guardsmen in terrific Arabian Nights uniforms: golden turbans, baggy scarlet pantaloons, purple silk sashes, blousy green tunics with great flaring shoulder-pads. Each of them carries a scimitar big enough to cut an ox in half at a single stroke. Right before him is a trio of cold-eyed older men in the crimson robes of court officials.

They’ve brought him a hard crust of bread and some peppery gruel. He gobbles it as if it’s five-star-quality stuff. Then the chilliest-looking of the officials pokes him in the belly with an ornate wooden staff and says, “Where are you from?”

“Ireland,” Mulreany says, improvising quickly. Ireland’s a long way away. They probably don’t know much more about it here than they do about Mars.

The interrogator is unfazed. “Speak to me in the language of your country, then,” he says calmly.

Mulreany is utterly innocent of Gaelic. But he suspects that they are too. “Erin go bragh!” he says. “Sean connery! Eamon de valera! Up the rebels, macushlah!”

There are frowns, and then a lengthy whispered conference among the three officials. Mulreany is unable to catch a single word of it. Then the hood is roughly pulled down over his head and everybody leaves, and once more he is left alone for a long hungry time that feels like about a day and a half. Finally he hears footsteps again, and the same bunch returns, but this time they have with them a huge wild-eyed man with long, flowing yellow hair who is wearing rawhide leggings and a bulky woolen cloak fastened across the breast by a big metal brooch made of interlocked flaring loops. He looks very foreign indeed.

“Here is a countryman of yours,” the chilly-faced court official informs Mulreany. “Speak with him. Tell him where in Ireland you are from, and name your lineage.”

Mulreany, frowning, ponders what to do. After a time the newcomer unleashes a string of crackling gibberish, utterly incomprehensible to Mulreany, and folds his arms and waits for a reply.

“Shannon yer shillelagh, me leprechaun,” Mulreany offers earnestly, appealing to the Irishman with his eyes for mercy and understanding. “God bless St. Paddy! Faith and begorrah, is it known t’ye where they’d be selling the Guinness in this town?”

Looking not at all amused, the other says in thick-tongued Greek, “This man is no Irishman,” and goes stalking out.

They threaten him with torture if he won’t tell them where he really comes from. He’s cooked either way, it seems. Tell the truth and go to the block, or keep his mouth shut and have it opened for him by methods he’d rather not think about. But he knows his imperial law. The Emperor in person is the final court of appeal for all high crimes. Mulreany demands then and there to be taken before His Majesty for judgment.

“We will do that,” says the frosty-faced one. “As soon as you admit that you’re from Chicago.”

“What if I don’t?”

He makes disagreeable racking gestures.

“But you’ll take me to him if I do?”

“Most certainly we will. But only if you swear you are from Chicago. If you are not from Chicago, you die.”

If you are not from Chicago you die? It doesn’t make any sense. But what does he have to lose? One way they’ll rack him for sure, the other there’s at least a chance. It’s worth the gamble.

“I am from Chicago, yes,” Mulreany says.

They let him wash himself up and give him some more bread and gruel, and then they take him to the throne room, which is about nine miles long and six miles high, with dozens of the ferocious Arabian Nights guardsmen everywhere and cloth-of-gold on the walls and thick red carpeting on the floor. Two of the guardsmen shove him forward to the middle of the great room, and there, studying him with an intent frown as though he is looking at the Ambassador from Mars, is the Emperor Basil III.

Mulreany has never seen an emperor before. Or wanted to. He comes over twice a year, does his business, goes back where he came from. It’s merchants and craftsmen he comes here to see, not emperors. But there’s no doubt in his mind that this is His Nibs. The emperor is a trim, compact little man who looks to be about 99 years old; his skin has the texture of fine vellum, and his expression is mild and benign, except for his eyes, which are dark and glossy and burn with the sort of fire that it takes to maintain yourself as absolute tyrant of a great empire for forty or fifty years. He is dressed surprisingly simply, in a white silk tunic and flaring green trousers, but there is a golden circlet on his brow and he wears on his chest a many-sided gold pendant, suspended from a heavy chain of the same metal, that bears the unmistakable crossed-thunderbolt symbol of the imperial dynasty inlaid upon it in lapis lazuli. Standing just to his right is a burly florid-looking man of about forty, imposing and almost regal of presence, garbed in an absurdly splendid black robe trimmed with ermine. Dangling from his hand, as casually as if it were a tennis racquet, is the great scepter of the realm, a thick rod of jade bound in gold, which, as Mulreany is aware, marks this man as the High Thekanotis of the Empire, that is to say, the prime minister, the grand vizier, the second-in-command.

There is a long, long, long silence. Then finally the Emperor says, in a thin, faint voice that seems to come from ten thousand miles away, “Well, are you a sorcerer or aren’t you?”

Mulreany draws a deep breath. “Not at all, your majesty. A merchant is what I am, nothing but a merchant.”

“Would you put your right hand on the holy altar and say that?”

“Absolutely, your majesty.”

“He denies that he is a sorcerer,” the Emperor says pleasantly to the High Thekanotis. “Make note of that.” There is another great silence. Then the Emperor gives Mulreany a quick lopsided smile and says, “Why does the sorcery-fire come so often and take the city away?”

“I don’t know,” Mulreany says. “It just does.”

“And when it does, people like you step through the sorcery-fires and move among us bringing the magical things to sell.”

“Yes, your majesty. That’s so.” Why pretend otherwise?

“Where do you come from?”

“Chicago,” Mulreany says. “Chicago, Illinois.”

“Chicago,” the Emperor repeats. “What do you know of this place?” he asks the High Thekanotis. The High Thekanotis scowls. Shrugs. It’s obvious that he finds this whole event irritating and is already eager to ship Mulreany off to the executioner. But the Emperor’s curiosity must be satisfied. “Tell me about your Chicago. Is it a great city?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“In what part of the world is it to be found?”

“America,” says Mulreany. “In northern Illinois.” What the hell, he has nothing to lose. “On the shore of Lake Michigan. We have Wisconsin to the north of us and Indiana to the east.”

“Ah,” the Emperor says, smiling as if that makes everything much clearer. “And what is this Chicago like? Describe it for me.”

“Well,” Mulreany says, “it has, oh, two or three million people. Maybe even more.” The Emperor blinks in surprise and the High Thekanotis glares with such ferocity that Mulreany wonders whether he has made a slip of the tongue and used the word for billion instead. But three million would be amazing enough, he decides. The imperial capital is one of the biggest cities of this era and its population is probably around half a million, tops. “We have some of the tallest buildings in the world, like the Sears Tower, which I think is 110 stories high, and the Marina Towers, which are pretty big too, and some others. We have great restaurants, any kind of food you might want. The Art Institute is a really fine museum and the Museum of Science and Industry is pretty special too.”

He pauses, wondering what else to say. As long as he keeps talking they aren’t going to cut his head off. Does the Emperor want to hear about the dinosaurs at the Field Museum? The Aquarium? The Planetarium? He might be impressed by some statistics about O’Hare Airport, but Mulreany isn’t sure he has the vocabulary for that. Then he notices that the Emperor is starting to look a little strange—turning pale, rocking weirdly back and forth on the balls of his feet. His eyes have taken on a really odd look, a mixture of profound cunning and utter whackiness.

“You must take me there,” the Emperor says, whispering fiercely. “When you return to your city, take me with you and show me everything. Everything.”

The High Thekanotis makes a choking sound and his florid face turns an even brighter red. Mulreany is aghast, too. No imperial citizen has ever come across into Chicago, not even one. They are all terrified of the sorcery-fire, and they have no way of seeing beyond the interface anyway to know that there’s another city out there.

But is the old man serious? The old man is crazy, Mulreany reminds himself.

“It would be an honor and a privilege, your majesty,” he says grandly, “to show you Chicago some day. I would greatly enjoy the opportunity.”

“Not some day,” says the Emperor Basil III. “Now.”

“Now,” Mulreany echoes. An unexpected twist. The Emperor doesn’t want to chop off the heads of the sorcerers he has sent his police to round up; the Emperor just wants one to give him a guided tour of Chicago. This afternoon, say. Mulreany smiles and bows. “Certainly, your majesty. Whatever your majesty wishes.” He wonders how the old Emperor would react to his first glimpse of the downtown skyscrapers. He wonders what sort of greeting Chicago would give the Emperor. The whole thing is nutty, of course. But for him it’s a plausible way out. He continues to smile. “We can leave immediately, if you desire, your majesty.”

The High Thekanotis seems about to have a stroke. His chest heaves, his face puffs up furiously, he brandishes the jade scepter like a battle-axe.

But it’s the Emperor who keels over instead. The excitement of the prospect of his trip across the line has done him in. He turns very pale and puts his hands to his chest and utters a little dry rasping sound, and his eyes roll up in his head, and he pitches forward head first so rapidly that two of the guardsmen are just barely able to catch him before he hits the stone floor.

The room goes berserk. The guardsmen start moaning and chanting; court officials come running in from all directions; the Emperor, who seems to be in the grip of some sort of seizure, arches his back, slaps his hands against the floor, stamps his feet, babbles wild nonsensical syllables.

Mulreany, watching in astonishment, feels the High Thekanotis’s powerful hand encircling his forearm.

“Go,” the grand vizier tells him. “Get yourself out of here, and never come back. Out now, before the Emperor returns to consciousness and sees you again. Now.” The vizier shakes his head. “Chicago! He would visit Chicago! Madness! Madness!”

Mulreany doesn’t need a second invitation. A couple of guardsmen grab him under the arms and hustle him from the room and down the hall and through the palace’s endless hallways and, at long last, out through an immense arch into the broad plaza in front of the building.

It’s the middle of the day. The 52-hour visitation is long over; the gateway between the eras is shut.

Go, the High Thekanotis said. But where? Afghanistan?

And then, to his amazement, Mulready sees the interface still glowing in the sky down at the eastern end of town. So there must have been another match-up with Chicago while he was in the imperial hoosegow. He can get across after all, back to good old Chi. The Loop, the Bears, the Water Tower, Charlie Trotter’s, everything. Sprinting as if six demons are on his tail, he rushes toward the waterfront, jostling people out of his way. He’ll be coming back empty-handed this trip, but at least he’ll be coming back.

He reaches the Street of the Eastern Sun. Rushes out onto one of the wharves, plunges joyously into the golden light of the interface.

And comes out in a lovely green forest, the biggest trees he’s ever seen this side of California. Everything is wonderfully silent. He hears the chirping of birds, the twittering of insects.

Oh, shit, he thinks. Where the hell is Chicago?

He looks back, bewildered. The interface line is gone, and so is the imperial capital. There’s nothing here but trees. Nothing. Nothing. He walks for half an hour, heading east into the sun, and still he sees only this tremendous virgin forest, until at last he stumbles forward out of the woods and discovers himself to be at the shore of a gigantic lake, and then the awful truth strikes him with the impact of a tidal wave.

Of course. It’s an era mismatch.

The interface must have closed right on schedule, and opened again a little while afterward, but this time the Empire had lined itself up against some other sector of the time-stream very distant from his own. Just as the Empire that arrives in his Chicago is the one of Basil III sometimes and sometimes the one of Miklos and sometimes the one of Kartouf the Hapless, so too does the Empire of Basil’s time line itself up sometimes with Chicago-1990, and sometimes Chicago-1996, and sometimes Chicago-2013—

And sometimes, probably, the one of 1400 A.D. Or of 1400 B.C., not that it makes much difference. Before 1833, there wasn’t any city at all here beside Lake Michigan.

A mismatch, then. He has heard rumors of such things occurring. One of those little thousand-to-one glitches that hardly ever actually happen, and that you assume never will happen to you. But this one has. He’s known a few crossers who didn’t come back. Schmucks, he always figured. Now it’s his turn to be the schmuck. Mulreany wonders what it’s going to be like living on nuts and berries, and trying to kill a deer if he feels like having a little protein. It’s goddamned embarrassing, is what it is.

But he’s an optimist at heart. There’s cause for hope, right? Right? Sooner or later, he tells himself, the golden light will glow in the sky again behind him, and the Empire will return, and he’ll go through the interface to the glorious city beyond, and eventually, after skulking around in it for a while, waiting for the right Chicago to come along, he’ll go back across and find his way home.

Sooner or later, yes.

Or maybe not.