Household Gods

working just fine.”

“Just like that,” Dr. Feldman said with the flicker of a smile.

They parted on good terms, all things considered. Nicole settled down in front of the TV feeling surprisingly unsettled. She was sure — but she wasn’t. Before she went home, she decided, she was going to make a stop. If she turned out to be wrong… If she turned out to be wrong, she’d need that appointment with the neurologist. And she’d be just as eager as Dr. Feldman to get to the bottom of whatever had happened.

22

Nicole got her walking papers with a breakfast of scrambled powdered eggs, rubbery toast, and canned fruit cocktail. She was allowed to take another shower, just as delicious as the first, and to put on the clothes that had come in the bag: bra, panties, white Reeboks, a pink top she seldom wore because she hated the color, and pink socks, both of which went well with faded jeans.

Dawn must have done the packing. The pink top gave it away. So did the coordinated colors. Frank paid as little attention to his own clothes as he could get away with, and even less to anyone else’s. Unless it was a woman, and she wasn’t wearing enough of them. That, he noticed.

Dressed, if casually, and ready to face the world, Nicole called Frank to let him know she was coming. She got the machine, which was fine with her. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to him; when she got home would be more than soon enough.

The nurse who wheeled her downstairs and the staffer who signed her out both looked at her somewhat oddly. As she claimed her purse from the safe, she realized what it was. Sympathy. They thought she minded that she was checking out alone, with no family to help her, and no one to drive her home. It was a rather Roman attitude, when she stopped to think. But she was profoundly modern. She was glad she was alone. She needed time to sort things out — and she certainly wouldn’t get that once she’d gone back to being Kimberley and Justin’s mommy again.

Her purse came from the safe in its own good time. There was a note taped to it: Car is in section D-4. over by the California Tumor building. The words were scribbled in Frank’s angular handwriting. No best wishes, no nothing — only what needed saying, and that handled with as much dispatch as possible. Very much in character for Frank.

They wheeled her out to the door, and no farther. Beyond that, she was on her own. She stood in front of the medical center, with its glass and steel and concrete behind her, and the expanse of asphalt in front of her. It was awash in sunlight, drenched with it. She blinked and squinted and, after a long, dazzled moment, remembered to rummage in her purse for her sunglasses. They cut the force of the light, made it bearable — but even with them it was brighter than it had ever been on the banks of the Danube.

When she could see again, and when her lungs had accustomed themselves to the sharp dusty smell of a California street, with its undertone of auto exhaust and its eye-stinging hint of smog, she made her way toward the building with the horrible name. The oncology group that inhabited it had obviously never heard of PR.

By the time she’d taken three steps into the lot, she was sweating. The day would be well up in the nineties, maybe triple digits. She hadn’t felt — she didn’t think she’d felt — weather like that for a long time.

She found section D-4, and her dusty, nondescript Honda. It felt strange to do all the usual things, unlock the door, get in, fasten the seatbelt, hold her breath till it finally, reluctantly, agreed to start. She drove out slowly. Her reflexes were coming back, and rapidly, but she didn’t trust them, not yet. Five minutes from the hospital — two or three miles, give or take, farther than she’d ever gone from Carnuntum — at the corner of Victory and Canoga was a Bookstar that opened at nine in the morning.

It was just opening when she got there. She parked the car and hurried in past the employee who was still straightening displays. In Carnuntum she’d have received a greeting, and been expected to stop and talk. But this was L.A. She was ignored completely, and she ignored the staff in return. She paused to get her bearings, reeling a little in the presence of so many books — so much information, and so many assumptions about it: that the population was universally literate, or nearly so; and that the technology existed to make the printed word available everywhere, to everyone who wanted it.

The children’s section was its usual determinedly cheerful self. Nicole approached it quickly, but with a kind of reluctance. Yes, there was the book she’d noticed a week or two before — or a year and a half, depending on how she wanted to look at it. She pulled it off the shelf, taking a moment to enjoy the heft and feel of it, before she let her eyes focus on the cover. There was the bear in ceremonial armor, and the small pig beside him bearing a legionary standard. Both were accurate as to details. She remembered that pleated skirt, oh too well. And that standard as it had gone by in parade.

So maybe that was what she’d spun the whole of the dream out of, from this and from any number of movie epics. Maybe -

With trembling fingers, Nicole opened Winnie Ille Pu and began to read. And she could. She could read the Latin translation of the book she’d read to Kimberley so often in English. She read it just as easily as she’d read Winnie the Pooh.

“I was,” she whispered. “I was there.” Nothing could have happened to her in six days of unconsciousness at West Hills Regional Medical Center to make her read Latin as easily as she read the daily paper. Liber and Libera had given it to her as a gift, a sort of bonus for traveling in time. Obviously they’d let her keep it when they sent her back. Forgot I had it, probably, she thought, not uncharitably. Gods were busy beings. Why shouldn’t they leave her with a gift she couldn’t use, and a proof she needed?

She almost took Winnie Ille Pu up to the register, but she stopped. She’d found the proof she needed. If she took the book home with her, someone would ask questions she didn’t want to answer. She could do without the book — and if she could, she would. There was a lesson of Carnuntum in action.

She had to get herself home. Yes, that came next. She was desperately eager to see Kimberley and Justin, and yet she was almost afraid. What if they saw something in her, some change? Frank would never notice, and Dawn was too conscientiously nice to say anything, but kids were kids. If Justin started to scream at the sight of her, and Kimberley wanted to know, loudly, why Mommy was different — what would Nicole say? What could she say?

That she’d been sick and now was better, that was what. And that she was really, really glad to be home with her kids again.

Frank’s Acura was in the driveway, filling it. That was Frank all over. Nicole sighed and parked on the curb. Her heart thudded as she extricated herself from the car, shouldered her purse, and walked — not so briskly as usual — toward the front door.

It had been only a week for the kids, but so much longer for her. There were going to be things about them she’d forgotten, things that might arouse questions. But — she shrugged. She’d got by with Lucius and Aurelia. She’s manage here. Here, at least, she knew what she was doing. Even with all the strangeness, the sense of belonging, of fit. was unmistakable. This was her world. She knew its rules. She could improvise without getting into trouble.

Just for a moment, she wondered how Umma was faring, back on the other side of time. Had her own spirit returned, to be confused by all the changes? Or was her body lying in her bedchamber as Nicole’s had lain in the hospital: empty, untenanted? In that world, that was a death sentence. There were no facilities for maintaining people in comas. She’d die, or her body would, if her spirit was already long gone.

No. Nicole wouldn’t think that way. Gods didn’t have to be fair, but she persisted in thinking that they might choose to be. They’d have brought Umma back. And she’d have found a way to cope with the sudden shift in time. Lucius would do well, and Julia, who’d been both friend and ally to Nicole for so long. She even paused to mourn Aurelia, and Titus Calidius Severus who’d been her lover and her friend.

Then she stood in front of the door. Before she could fumble for her keys, it opened. Dawn stood there: blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, cheekbones, and ripe figure on display in tight T-shirt and short cutoffs — Barbie come to life. She was smiling. She actually looked — and sounded — pleased to see Nicole. “Nicole! I’m so glad you’re feeling better.”