Jeremy Solter is a teenager growing up in the late
21st century. During the school year, his family lives in
Southern California--but during the summer the whole
family lives and works on the frontier of the Roman
Empire. Not the Roman Empire that fell centuries ago, but
a Roman Empire that never fell: a parallel timeline, one
of an infinity of possible worlds. For in our timeline,
we now have the technology to move among these. Some are
uninhabitable; some are ghastly, such as the one where
Germany won World War II. But many are full of resources
and raw materials that our world can use. So we send
traders and businesspeople--but to keep the secret of
crosstime traffic to ourselves, these traders are trained,
in whole-family groups, to pass as natives.
But
when Jeremy's mother gets sick--really sick, the kind you
can't cure with antibiotics. Both parents duck out through
the gateway for a quick visit to the doctor. But while
they're gone, the gateways stop working. So do the
communications links to their home timeline. The kids are
on their own, and things are looking bad. The Lietuvans
are invading. The city is besieged. The kids are doing
their best to carry on business and act like everything's
normal, but there's only so much you can do when
cannonballs are crashing through your roof. And in the
meantime, the city government has gotten suspicious, and
is demanding a *full* report on how their family does
business, where they get their superior merchandise, why
they want all that wheat ...exactly the questions they
don't want to answer.