On the Rocks

by Peter Rhodan

  The other soldier, whose name he couldn’t remember, interrupted him this time. “Sir? I’m pretty sure that girl is still following us.” He paused to see if Arturo reacted then continued when Arturo turned his to look at him. “Should I do anything about it?”

  Arturo looked back down the track but could not see anyone. But then he was a star ship driver not a planetary scout. “No. I imagine she feels more secure keeping near us. We’ll not worry about her for the moment I think. Keep an eye on her though.”

  “Sir.” The man answered and dropped back behind the cart to his mate. While Arturo returned to the conundrum he now found himself in. There was no point in rushing through an industrial revolution so he could get back to civilisation if there was no Federation to get back to yet, and wouldn’t be for another five thousand years or more. And if he did make changes would not these changes then wipe out the future he had come from? Oh god. What happens if I do make changes? Do I just disappear? He tried to remember what little he had read about time travel and paradoxes without a lot of success. It was not an area he had ever been particularly interested in.

  He spent the next few hours going round and round in his head not reaching any real conclusions. Causality had to mean that if he made actual changes here then he had to disappear because the future he was from would not be there anymore, some other future would be created instead. Or would it? Maybe there were alternate time-lines, something he had read a little about but not something that science had proven. But if that was not the case, if he made changes here and now, was he condemning the future he knew to non-existence? Or was it simply that he would never achieve anything lasting and basically disappear from the historical record and things would go on as per his history books? Well, he supposed that was the most likely scenario if Maximus came south and rolled over his forces. Then there was the point that regardless of whether this was an alternate timeline or not, if he did make changes successfully what was the point? There was no civilisation to get back to anyway. Either he was stuck in the past of his own timeline or was in an alternate timeline, but either way this was the only planet humanity was on. God what a mess! He grimaced to himself mentally and felt a headache coming on.

  They reached Dervent with his head still full of these circular conundrums. He introduced Melwyn to Valerius and his son Julianus and organised somewhere for Melwyn to stay while the whole school thing was sorted out. Coel bought one of the new ploughs, tried to refuse payment for helping transport the books before finally accepting a few coins from Arturo and then headed back to Alauna. Oween still had not returned from his voyage and Arturo found himself missing his irascible aide, particularly as he discovered he could not really share his problems with Ceri or Valerius. Ceri was to busy with his iron works and Valerius was too, well, too Roman.

  The next morning he dressed plainly and went out to the practice area the soldiers had set up to the west of the fort and decided to do a serious bout of exercises with his sword. He could not remember all the proper stances and moves from his kendo training of years ago but he had made up two fairly long sequences for training purposes and resolved to run through both them. He was never going to be the swordsman Oween was, or Radovas for that matter and was not ashamed to admit it! After his experiences in the Battle of Wern as it was being called, he’d resolved to keep well behind the front lines in the future. At the same time, this barbaric society required he pretend to a certain personal martial attitude he had never been required to show as a star ship officer. Hopefully the physical exertion would take his mind of the conundrum he had been struggling with.

  He was about half way through the second set when he realised he was being watched by someone on the other side of a rough rock wall that marked the northern edge of the training area. The wall was only a hurried marker to define the training area rather than any sort of defensive position and would made over into something more substantial at some point down the track. The person watching was using a small bush growing on the far side of the wall as extra cover which made it hard for him to discern exactly who it was. They did not look to be a large person so he put it down to their being one of the village kids and ignored the secret watcher for the moment.

  He finished his training and considered confronting the person lurking in the bush but decided he’d rather get into the bath house and wash the sweat off so headed there. The duty soldier already had the coal fire going so it was not long before he was able to enjoy a warm, if not actually hot, wash and then rinse off in the cold bath. He still wasn’t sold on this hot and cold business of the Romans and made a mental note about water supply, heating and piping so he could have a good old-fashioned shower at some point.

  Once the tax base built up he should be able to build a pipeline from one of the mountain lakes, the interlocking pipe design he had come up with had worked for small pipes and there was no reason the design could not be scaled up and combined with steam power to provide a water supply the like of which these people had never imagined. His efforts at improving hygiene amongst the troops, by making them use boiled water for things like cleaning small wounds was already spreading amongst the civilians. He resolved mentally to find someone to be a doctor, and then laughed because this was about the third time he’d made that mental note.

  His little army was at least starting to look professional. A local plant produced an effective blue green dye that his men’s uniforms were all dyed in. The extra production of cloth the new loom design he had introduced had resulted in a drop in the price by almost a third while production was nearly twice what it had been before Arturo arrived. Each soldier now had a plain fatigues outfit, a parade uniform that was also for wear when not engaging in training or manual labour, a combat uniform that was thicker and had applied padding at key points and eventually each would have a dress uniform. This was still being developed but included bright scarlet at hems, collar and a stripe on the outside of the trousers.

  A simple scale armour had been developed from rectangular plates of iron flattened then die cut with holes punched at the same time for leather ties, these then being sown to a padded leather vest cum coat. At present the coverage was not great but it was easy to mass produce and provided the men who lacked their own armour with some protection. Having several uniforms and being expected to keep them clean was a novel experience for the more barbarous recruits, like the Scotti, but they were gradually settling into a composite body. Already word was getting around because there was a trickle of men turning up applying to join the small force. It was only a fellow arriving here one day and then another a few days later but the army kept steadily growing as a result. He was beginning to worry about having enough money to pay them all, although he could get more gold from the shuttle wreck easy enough. Silver and bronze were the problem and he needed to increase the number of those types of coins in circulation.

  Arturo met with Melwyn for much of the morning going over things he thought were needed, like adding a space between words and differentiating u from v. He also introduced Melwyn to the concept of punctuation which made sentence structure clearer and which with the other modifications that would help make teaching easier. He left Melwyn to start drawing up some simple teaching aids which he intended to be amongst the first things run off the printing press he was planning to build with Hwillam down in Wern. Which reminded him he needed to get that guy he’d used for the coin dies to start work on the first batch movable type letters. The jeweller fellow down the coast had turned out to be a dud.

  He also had the fellow prepare the first design for a coin of their own. He didn’t intend to use it till things were sorted with Maximus but the design could run up. On the obverse there was the winged victory holding a laurel wreath and sword with the word Wern over her head and the number 1163 in Arturo’s new number system below her feet. On the obverse were the letters SPQR around the upper part, a large numeral 1 in the centre and the words Imperium Romanum around the lower part. When he finally a
pproved production it would be the new one ass coin.

  All this kept him quite busy and not thinking about the whole changing history problem that he faced. But late in the afternoon he began brooding on the matter again. After being short with a couple of people, he grabbed some food and rode out of town towards the lakes. When he reached the end of the first lake he tied the horse to a tree with plenty of grass immediately available and climbed up the side to Oween’s mountain shack so he could cogitate in solitude. Not that solitude actually helped he found. By moving a little over to the side the of the mountain he found he could see the lake his shuttle had crashed into and the dark form of the shuttle was clearly visible under the water, which filled him with a heavy sense of melancholy. The depression was both for the two dead crew still entombed in the shuttle but perhaps even more for the life he had enjoyed and friends he had lost somewhere in the future.

  Then there was his wife and children. Oh god. He would be reported lost. How would Cherise take it, he wondered. At least her parents were nearby to help her and the kids through it all. His parents would be upset at his reported loss as well of course, but they had never been a close family and they halfway around the globe from he and Cherise had settled. While he felt regret for the pain they would suffer it was sort of an abstract feeling not an empathic one like he had for his wife and kids.

  In fact, the more he considered things the more he realised that apart from his wife and, surprisingly, her parents, he had no real close friends back up-time. Being a navy officer sort of prevented close friendships except with fellow officers aboard ship and then once you transferred ships that closeness was lost. Certainly, if you ran into each other again the friendship would return, often as if no time had intervened, but he had no close friends he had seen regularly for decades now, not like he would have had in a civilian job where he would have worked with the same people for years on end. It was interesting that he had never really felt lonely despite a lack of close friends. Being an officer, he always had crew to watch over and duties to perform and he supposed that had masked the problem. Then, like everything, you get used to things being the way they are. Only now they weren’t!

  He lay back and rested against the rock, still warm from the unusual afternoon sun and tried to make sense of everything once more. Melwyn had a copy of Caesar on scrolls for god’s sake, so there was no doubt he was on Earth in the past. He remembered reading Caesar in naval College and wondered idly if the text had changed over the millennia. Which left the question of what should he do? Was there anything he could do? Was his arrival here going to cause some sort of historical reset? Was this some alternate time line? Was whatever he tried to achieve doomed to failure so that the historical record remained unchanged? Was there any point in him doing anything at all? His Federation was not out there and wouldn’t be for another five thousand years.

  At some point he must have dozed off while trying to mentally wrangle with all these conflicting problems because he suddenly woke up and it was cold and nearly dark. The clouds had blown in and were settling so his spot would be soon mist shrouded wo would become damp on top of the cold. And he knew he wasn’t alone. Just as he had that night when he first met Oween he knew there was someone there. He felt the presence was just to his right and surreptitiously tried to move his hand to where he had laid his sword down. He heard a quiet female voice say “Ah, You wake.”

  He turned his head and the girl he had saved from the two men was perched about two meters away watching him like a hawk. “Urgh.” He muttered still rather groggy from the catnap. A quick shake sorted his head out in the brisk air. “What are you doing here?” He asked.

  She grimaced, half sad, half amused. “Watching out for you. Not smart lying here in mountains all alone and going to sleep.” Her voice was in a dead pan monotone, but that didn’t hide the obvious criticism of his actions that were in her words.

  He sat up and scowled right back at her. “Why are you following me around?” He demanded.

  She moved back a little and shrugged. “You saved my life. Now I belong to you.”

  He groaned. Not another life debt bonded person. Oween was bad enough. “My people do not hold with slavery.” He said at last, waiting to see her reaction.

  She made a little open and closing motion with her hand. “I not your slave. I not anyone’s slave now. Never be slave again. Die first.” Her look becoming intent and her voice hardening with emotion. She looked off into the distance seeing something he could only guess at then turned her face back to him and smiled. “You good man. I protect you from bad men.”

  He smiled. “I am not a good man really. I am not even from this time. Do you know that? No one does. But I know the future, or at least what was the future. And now I can change that. Or can I? And even if I can, should I?” He stopped suddenly realising what he’d said. He was getting addled thinking about all this time stuff.

  Her eyes narrowed as she studied him for a moment. “Do you think you are a god then?” Her voice was questioning, but devoid of sarcasm.

  He laughed, partly at the idea, partly at the primitive concept. There were only a few religions based on a belief in a god, or gods for that matter, left in his time and all were poorly followed. “No god here. Just me.” He answered.

  She stood up and placed her hands on her hips. “Then do not presume to act like a god. Can you see the future? Do you know what is meant to be or not meant to be?”

  He stared blankly at her. Was she right? What if there was no causality at all? There were no gods as far as he was concerned but that didn’t mean he was right. “No, I do not know what is meant to be or not meant to be. Or at least I know what our historians recorded. But I can change that history because I am from the future and know what is to come.” He paused and stood up, sat down and scratched his head then waved his hand while swinging his gaze back t her.

  “I have knowledge no one in this time possesses. I would introduce things here and now that were not developed for another thousand years or more. Do you understand? I can bring to this time the knowledge that will take another thousand years or more to accumulate." He took a breath and watching her reaction. "But in so doing do my actions will wipe out the future I am from and five thousand years of history? How can I be here now if I can then do things that will destroy the future I came from and so make it impossible for me to be here? It makes no sense. Surely the history that produced me has been written and therefore I will not be able to re-write it. And if that is so then even if I try to change the future I am bound to fail it would seem. So why bother even trying?”

  She considered him for a time. Finally, she shook her head. “I was slave for all my life. My parents died slaves. When my mother sickened and died no one cared or even offered much help. Yet I did not give up. I studied and watched and learnt how to escape. If you are real man you do not give up or give in. if you re-write history, what of it. For me it does not exist because it has not happened yet. And if it does not happen how can I miss it.” She looked around and bent to pick up some loose dirt and gravel which she let sprinkle through her fingers. “This is real. Here and now is real. You cannot know what the future holds so do not worry about what might happen. Worry about where you will sleep tonight.” She finished.

  He suddenly realised it was getting quite dark and laughed. “Yes. Over there is a shack. It is getting too dark to climb down the mountain this late so we can sleep there and return to Dervent in the morning.” He did not wait for her to acknowledge this but headed for Oween’s shack carefully stepping his way there in the glom.

  She eventually followed and although she seemed wary to be in such close proximity to him once they had entered the shack. When he did nothing more than check the beds for bugs and such before lighting a fire to keep them warm she relaxed a little. He had brought some dried fruit which he shared with her and then made himself comfortable, well as comfortable as the poor sleeping arrangements allowed and made to go to sleep. She appa
rently waited to make sure he truly was asleep before following suite Arturo guessed as he glimpsed her still sitting up before he finally nodded off. His sleep was troubled at first by the uncomfortable mattress thing he was lying on. He had forgotten how bad Oween’s sleeping arrangements were! When he did finally fall into a deep sleep, he dreamed of giant Imperial battle stations blowing up his ship over and over.

  He awoke in the predawn, stiff, cold and damp. He didn’t feel at all rested as he made his way outside to where the latrines had been, moving slowly and quietly so as not to disturb her. He returned to find her awake despite his efforts to be quiet and after she had performed her morning bodily functions out of sight of him they shared the remainder of his fruit and headed back down to the valley. His horse had strayed from where he had left it but was easily found and as it was still bridled he was able to catch it fairly easily. The girl, whose name he still did not know, refused to double up behind him and seemed perfectly happy to trot along beside the horse as they returned to civilisation. As they neared the town she disappeared off somewhere when he was not paying attention and he chose not to search for her.

  Radovas and Meries were very glad to see him, having become rather worried over his sudden disappearance! he apologised profusely for scaring them and promised to keep them informed next time he wanted some alone time. The whole idea of him going off to be alone seemed to offend them but then there really was not a lot they could do about it, especially with Oween away. Just one more thing to add to the accounts of his strangeness!