The Traveler #YA #SciFi #TimeTravel

Posted: September 8, 2019/Under: Uncategorized/By: Christine Young

The Traveler: Tenobius’ Time Machine has crashed in Imperial Rome, and he can only return to the present if he can fix it himself, with help from Argus the Street Kid.

The Traveler: YA, SciFi, Time Travel

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BLURB: The Traveler

Argus survived on the streets of Rome using his skill and his wits, but he had never seen anything like the Crazy Man, Tenobius. Tenobius looked odd, and couldn’t speak Latin properly, but he had magical things and metal teeth. All Tenobius wanted to do was to repair his Dreamship (with Argus’ help) and go home. What Argus could not know was that Tenobius was a Time Traveler, and his Dreamship was his crashed Time Machine. To get home, he had to rebuild it using only what he could find and make in ancient Rome.

EXCERPT: The Traveler

“Argus?”

It took me a moment to recognize the voice. It was either Metellus or Arncus, one of Marcus’ goons. By the time I realized that, he had one of those big hands on my shoulder. I thought about running, but I was hemmed in, and he was too close. I turned and saw that it was Arnicus.

“He wants you,” said the apprentice.

“I don’t care. Marcus has no call on me. He paid me off, and I’m no ‘prentice.”

“Not him. The Crazy Guy wants you. Tenobius.”

“Oh. What for?”

“How would I know? He’s crazy. You can ask him yourself.”

“Oh, no. He’s a good guy, but he’s got no call on me, either.”

“Well, Tenobius says he wants you, and Marcus says to go find you. If I come back without you, Marcus’ll take it out of my hide, so you’re coming with me.”

Arnicus’ tone left no room for haggling. He exerted pressure with his hand to turn me around, and we started walking back to the smithy. I tried making a break for it once, but he was prepared for that.

That’s what I get for being too concentrated on my goals, and not keeping my eyes open to what was around me. I had been watching the moneychanger, and I could tell he was getting sloppy in his job. He wasn’t paying attention to the silver on his table, and the pile was starting to build up and was about to fall. A swift and clever fellow could…but it was at that point that I felt Arnicus’ hand on me.

He propelled me into the backroom, where I saw there were several new things set up — the thing with the large wheel for pulling wire, and another thing that looked like a table with a vertical rod above it. Tenobius was working on this when we came in.

“Here,” said Arnicus, pushed me in, and left.

“Argus!” said Tenobius, looking up.

His face brightened, and broke into a big smile.

“Hi, Tenobius,” I said, then couldn’t figure out what else to say. “You’ve been busy.”

“Where have you been? I need your help.”

“You’re talking better, too. How long has it been?”

“I need your help.”

“I helped you already. It looks like you’re doing well.”

“You don’t. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll buy you a bowl of stew.”

I was shaken by his getting straight to the point. I hadn’t eaten yet, so his offer made my belly agree, even if the rest of me didn’t. We went.

~ * ~

Tenobius knew his way around by now. He took us straight to Madame Nux’s stand and bought two small pots of stuff. It had real meat in it, and I hadn’t had any in days. I ate it all down as Tenobius watched. We’d taken a spot under the shade tree, and no one was trying to push us out of the way. We could talk.

“I’ve been working with the apprentices,” he said. “They’re good if you tell them what to do, but they don’t want to think. I have to tell them every step. I didn’t have to do that with you.”

“Is that what you want? You want me to come back because they’re too stupid?”

“It’s not just that. You know how to find things. I need to find a lot more things so I can get home.”

“Are you still planning to get home by selling beads? Because that string you made looked terrible.”

“Oh, I’m getting better,” he said.

He reached into his tunic and took out another string. This set was beautiful, at least compared to the first set he showed me. It was made of the Egyptian glass beads, all strung on the finer wire that Tenobius made. They were all uniform beads this time, and the necklace looked much more professional. He put it back, away out of sight.

“I’m not selling them. I need them for myself.”

I was going to ask him why, but he went on again.

“There are others things I need to find. I don’t know my way around, but you do.”

“Are you going to steal them?”

“I have enough money from our wire to buy things now. I do know the money will not last. You can only sell so much wire, even in Rome. I’d like you to help me. There’s something we need to talk about first.”

“Yeah? What?”

“That. Your attitude. You act differently. I’m not sure why. I think maybe you’re afraid of me. Is that it?”

How do you answer someone who asks you that? I finished my stew.

“You’re a strange guy.”

“Yes, I know I must seem that way”

“You’re very strange. Nobody’s like you. You didn’t speak right, but now you’re speaking well, in a very short time. You know all these strange things that nobody else does, but you don’t know your way around the city. Did you fall off a boat? Are you an escaped slave? Where did you come from?”

“Far away.”

“If you want me to come back, I want to know more than that. I want to know why your eyes are so strange. I want to know why you have metal teeth.”

“Metal teeth? What do you…? When did you see my teeth?”

“When you open your mouth wide. You put your hand over your mouth when you yawn, but you didn’t when you were laughing in the Temple theater.”

“Metal teeth. I don’t…. Oh, by the gods. I don’t have metal teeth.”

“I’ve seen them. I know the look of metal. I worked in the smithy, by the gods. Do people have metal teeth in your country?”

Tenobius looked at me for a long time, then away, up into the branches of the tree. Finally he looked back at me. He sighed.

“Yes. They do. In a way. Look, you must have seen people with rotten teeth. Missing teeth.”

“Yeah. Old people, mostly.”

“Well, we have special doctors who drill out the rot in a tooth and repair it with things. Sometimes they repair it with metal.”

“They don’t.”

“They do.”

“How do they get it to fill in. How do they get the right shape? They’d have to have the hands of jewelers, and do it in your mouth.”

“Look, I’m not one of them, but I do know they study for a long time. Do you know about Liquidsilver?”

“Liquidsilver?”

“Yes. It’s called Live Silver, too. Water Silver. Quicksilver. It’s bright and shiny metal that’s a liquid.”

I had seen it. Publius had a little jar with a couple of drops in it that he showed me once. The Live Silver stayed in little balls and rolled around without getting the inside of the jar wet.

“Yes.”

“Well, they have a special way to mix it with other metal, and the mixture is like putty. They push it into the place they drilled and let it harden, then they carve it into the right shape with their drills.”

“Like the pump drill? I don’t see…”

“They have special drills on handles with pulleys. The first ones had foot pumps, but they have better ways to do it now.”

“Like they have an apprentice pumping it?”

“Sort of.”

“If you told me this as a story, I’d say you were lying. But I’ve seen your mouth.”

“Would you rather have me tell you that a magician turned my teeth into metal?”

“I’m not stupid. They really have machines that clever where you’re from?”

“A lot of them.”

“Why did you leave a place like that?”

“That would take a long time to tell. Just say I didn’t plan to move out. I wanted to see other places. I wanted to see your Roma.”

“And now you can’t go home.”

“I hope I can. It won’t be easy. I need your help.”