Free New Found Land by John Christopher Page B

guessed the usual occupants had doubled up elsewhere to make room for them. In the morning they were given rations forthe onward journey. Late on the day after that, they found another village, and thereafter were never more than two or three days’ travel from human habitation.
    These Indians were quite different from the unsmiling Algonquians. At one village, where they arrived soaked from a rainstorm, a complete change of clothes was provided for them. The cloth was woven from bark fibres but far more comfortable than the skins they had been wearing and which, with the temperature so much higher, they were glad to abandon.
    Lundiga, however, insisted on retaining both her fur hat and her boyish disguise. That helped him, Simon felt, in adjusting to her transparent devotion to Brad; she just didn’t look like a girl. Another factor was that the devotion had a protective, in fact patronizing, aspect which was funny to observe, and which Brad found increasingly infuriating. In the end, when she had addressed him as “little Bradus” once too often, his resentment boiled over and he abused her roundly. She looked hurt for a moment, and Bos, who had developed a sort of fatherly fondness for her, rebuked Brad for his unkindness, reminding him what they all owed to her.
    â€œAnd she is a nice girl, Bradus. You are lucky that such a nice girl is fond of you.”
    Brad looked sullen. Simon thought it best to conceal his amusement. Lundiga rapidly recovered, and continued with her attentions. No, Simon decided, he was well out of that one.
    They had no reason for keeping track of time, and he had no notion how long their leisurely progress had continued. Weeks certainly. They had grown accustomed to it: one day and one village was very like the next.
    Then, on a morning spitting rain, they came over a wooded crest to see flat country ahead. It was bare rock for the most part, studded with rocky protuberances. But there was something else that caught the eye and brought a shiver of excitement to the mind. About a mile away the landscape was divided by a narrow band that ran roughly east-west and very straight. Simon stared in amazement. There was no possibility of its being a natural phenomenon: what they were looking at was a highway.

5
    T HEY RAN THE FINAL HUNDRED yards. The road was about fifteen feet wide, with a base of large, shaped stones and a surface of compacted chippings.
    â€œThis was not made by Romans,” Bos said. “The workmanship is not good enough.”
    There was disappointment in his voice. However impossible the notion of coming on a Roman road in this wild land, seeing a man-made highway after all this time of trackless woods must have been like a glimpse of home.
    Brad said: “No, certainly not Roman. It has to beIncan. They were the only people in America who built a road system.”
    â€œBut weren’t the Incas in South America?” Simon asked.
    â€œYes. They were centred around Peru, and the furthest north they reached was Ecuador. But that was a world where the Spaniards clobbered them in the early sixteenth century. A lot can happen in four hundred years. Things may have stayed static in Europe, but it looks as though they got moving over here. There’s one puzzling thing, though.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe Spaniards destroyed two American cultures, not one. A little while before Pizarro conquered the Incas, Cortés was wiping out the Aztecs. And the Aztecs were in Mexico, which is a lot nearer. These two empires never actually made contact.”
    â€œIn our world, they didn’t,” Simon said. “They must have done here, and I suppose they fought and the Incas won.”
    He could see Brad was ready for a prolonged speculation on the subject, which he felt he could do without.
    He said: “Anyway, what matters is that this is aroad we’re standing on, and if it’s not quite up to Roman standards, it’s not bad either.