own for it, but nobody cares about that.
Greeks? I thought King Alexanders people were Macedonians.
Bloom shrugged. Greeks, Macedonians. They let us use this place, however. We have to wait, I'm afraid. I have a carriage arranged to take you to the city in an hour, by which time were due to meet another party coming down from Anatolia. In the meantime, please, come and rest. He indicated the mud hovels.
Her heart sank. But she said, Thank you.
She struggled to get her luggage off the train carriage. It was a bison-fur pack strapped up with rope, a pack that had crossed the Atlantic with her.
Here. Let my boy help. Bloom turned and snapped his fingers.
The strange, silent man reached out one massive hand and lifted the pack with ease, even though he was hefting it at the end of his outstretched arm. One of the straps caught on a bench, and ripped a bit. Almost absently Bloom cuffed the back of his head. The servant didnt flinch or react, but just turned and plodded toward the village, the pack in his hand. From the back Emeline could see the servants shoulders, pushing up his ragged robe; they were like the shoulders of a gorilla, she thought, dwarfing his boulder of a head.
Emeline whispered, Mr. Bloomyour servant What of him? He isnt human, is he?
He glanced at her. Ah, I forever forget how newcomers to this dark old continent are startled by our ancestral stock. The boy is what the Greeks call a Stone Manbecause most of the time hes as solid and silent as if he were carved from stone, you see. I think the bone-fondlers on Earth, before the Freeze, might have called hI'm a Neanderthal. It was a bit of a shock to me when I first came over here, but you get used to it. None of this in America, eh?
No. Just us.
Well, its different here, Bloom said. Theres a whole carnival of the beasts, from the man-apes to these robust species, and other sorts. Favorites at Alexanders court, many of them, for all sorts of sportif they can be caught.
They reached the low mound and began to walk up it. The earth here was disturbed, gritty, full of shards of pottery and flecks of ash. Emeline had the sense that it was very ancient, worked and reworked over and over.
Welcome to the Midden, Bloom said. Mind where you step.
They came to the first of the habitations. It was just a box of dried mud, entirely enclosed, without windows or doors. A crude wooden ladder leaned up against the wall. Bloom led the way, clambering up the ladder onto the roof and walking boldly across it. The Stone Man just jumped up, a single elastic bound of his powerful legs lifting hI'm straight up the seven or eight feet to the roof.
Emeline, uncomfortable, followed. It felt very strange to be walking about on some strangers roof like this.
The roof was a smooth surface of dried mud, painted a pale white by some kind of wash. Smoke curled out of a crudely cut hole. This squat house huddled very close to the next, another block whose walls were just inches from its neighbors. And when Bloom strode confidently over the gap to the next roof Emeline had no choice but to follow.
The whole hillside was covered by a mosaic of these pale boxy houses, all jammed in together. And people moved around on the roofs. Mostly women, short, squat and dark, they carried bundles of clothing and baskets of wood up out of one ceiling hole and down through another. This was the nature of the town. All the dwellings were alike, just rectangular blocks of dried mud, jammed up against each other too closely to allow for streets, and climbing about on the roofs was the only way to get anywhere.
She said to Bloom, Theyre people. I mean, people like us.
Oh, yes, these are no man-apes or Neanderthals! But this is an old place, Mrs. White, snipped out of an old, deep timeolder and deeper than the age of the Greeks, thats for sure, nobody knows how old. But its a time so far back they hadnt got around to inventing streets and doors yet.
They came to one more roof. Smoke snaked up from the only hole cut into it, but without hesitation Bloom led the way down, following crudely-shaped steps fixed to the interior wall. Emeline followed, trying not to brush against the walls, which were coated