In the up-timers’ world-that of the rather improbable year 2000 AD that had been home to the even more improbable democratic republic of the United States of America-almost all risk had been reduced dramatically. War, shipping, mining-even flying huge rockets to the moon-had to satisfy safety requirements that were almost comical by Ruy’s standards. For people born in his time, great undertakings inevitably involved great risk. The seas routinely swallowed sailors, the mountains buried miners, and pestilences and famine took their toll upon all the children of the Earth, no matter their location or station in life. Life was a gamble, at best.

But not in the twentieth century, evidently. When a child or a mother died during birth, it was deemed an uncommon tragedy. In Ruy’s world, the same event was simply a reminder that the attempt to create life often ended in death.

The up-time elimination of risk had even extended to war itself. The Americans’ medical knowledge and practices made many mortal wounds survivable. Ruy himself was alive only because of these up-time skills. A lethal belly wound from a sword-he had been horribly outnumbered by those assassins, after all! — had turned out to be simply a morning’s challenging surgery for the second, or maybe only third, ranking physician among the three-thousand-plus up-timers.

Ruy looked over at the third-ranked surgeon who had performed the medical miracle to which he owed his continued existence and smiled. Sharon Nichols was a medical prodigy in this world. The surgery that had saved Ruy had been performed before the cream of Venice’s medical community, ensuring her immediate stardom as a Dottoressa of international renown.