by Chuck Dixon
“What bandit has the balls to face a Roman army on the march?” Pulcher seethed.
The bowman thought of the Romans pissing themselves in fear and the six dead legionnaires lying in pools of their own blood. He said nothing.
Pulcher stood squinting into the glare off the roadway.
“You have orders, sir?” the bowman asked after a while.
“Go back to your own optio and tell him that he will divide your force into two units. You will move ahead of the infantry as a screen.”
“They are on horses. We cannot catch them,” the bowman said.
“If they stop, if they attempt to strike us again, you will engage,” Pulcher said, red-faced.
The bowman thought again of the thunder and the Romans struck down as though by the gods.
“Go!” Pulcher roared and sent the pair of Assyrians on their way with a kick.
The century, sweating under the weight of layers of leather armor, hefted their javelins and shields at the bark of the optio. They moved forward at a trot, eyes on the ledges above, searching for they knew not what.
27
Questions Beget Questions
Samuel left the hotel the following morning to purchase the list of items, or their nineteenth-century equivalent, at the local shops. His clothing was odd, but not so outrageous that it couldn’t be explained away by his being a foreigner. Caroline’s appearance would be scandalous, with her denim maternity jeans and shoes that allowed her ankles to be seen.
Caroline was exhausted from hunger, stress, and the lack of sleep the night before. She’d given birth just two days before, relative to her anyway, and this was not any kind of recommended course of recuperation. Reminding herself that her female ancestors probably dropped babies and went right back to work in the fields, as the cliché goes, did little to comfort her.
She dozed on and off as she nursed Stephen with what had to be the last of her milk. She thought about what Samuel revealed to her the night before as she faded in and out of a restless sleep.
Her first questions were about the means of direct travel they made between the present and the past without an intermittent stop at a tube chamber of any kind. He explained that there were set places on the planet where through-field generators were in place and programmable by anyone with a calibrating device. The field openings could be pre-programmed, but the target destination had to be chosen with a generous allowance for variations. Calibrations in the field were simply not as exact as those made in the more stable laboratory environment of a tube chamber.
Locations for the field generators were chosen for the length of time their locales had remained unchanged. The alley they traveled through had remained virtually unchanged for centuries. They were safe as long as the target date was kept within the time frame in which the unnamed alley existed as they found it. If not safe, then at least within an acceptable level of risk.
“That sounds like shooting blind,” she said. “What if we came out in broad daylight in the middle of a garden party?”
“The mist helps to mask any sudden arrivals,” he said with a bland expression.
“Then it’s all fast talking and a hasty exit?”
“That is what it often comes to.”
She coaxed him into showing her the calibration device. It was a smooth metal band that covered his right wrist below his bandaged forearm and above the leather gloves that he never removed. It was perhaps four inches at its longest point and fit snugly to the skin. Frankly, she found it a letdown. There were no details on the surface, no visible controls, no displays, no way to discern how it operated. He told it worked on touch and was directly keyed into his own physiognomy.
“Each calibrator is customized to the individual user,” he said.
“How can you make such complex calculations by touch alone?”
“I did not say touch alone.”
“Is there a telepathic component?” she said, aching to touch the mysterious metal wristlet. “You think about your temporal destination?”
“It is more complicated than that, more of a symbiosis. The device reads the chronal patterns created by my unique physical structure. There’s really no language to articulate it. It just seems to happen.”
She wasn’t sure if he was humoring her because he thought she was out of her scientific depth or if she really was out of her scientific depth. Or perhaps the technology was so intuitive for him that there was simply no way to explain it to her. Like a five-year-old who can use a pad device but cannot convey how what does it to grandpa, who didn’t grow up with such devices.
“The future you come from, the world you were raised in, is different from ours,” she said.
“It doesn’t do to talk about it,” he said without expression. “If our work succeeds that world may not exist. Nothing is written in stone, and nothing is inevitable.”
“But what is it like? You can’t blame me for my curiosity, Samuel.”
He sat a moment regarding the baby cooing and squirming gently in her arms.
“It is a bleak place without choice. It is an anthill where each day and each year marches by without change, without love and with nothing to look forward to. Some are mollified by simple comforts and enforced stability. Others live out their lives as drudges, slaves—drones in a hive. It is a place where the flame in the human heart has been exchanged for a cold light.”
“That’s beautiful in its own way. Horrible words but well-spoken,” she said and fought the urge to reach for his hand.
“They’re not mine. They belong to my mentor. He did not write them down. I committed them to memory. He was executed for his thoughts but they live on in all he met.”
He stood up from the table. A bar of sunlight was reaching across the floorboards from the street windows.
“The shops will be open. I will take your list. Do not answer the door. I will be back with food then find the other items you will need to enable you to leave this room.”
He left the suite without a farewell.
Caroline rested her head against the lace antimacassar draped over the high seat back. She closed her eyes. She was exhausted, but her thoughts kept turning back to Samuel’s words.
The man was a living paradox and, if what he said was true, her son shared the same qualities. And how those qualities would manifest themselves, she had no idea. She feared for her child even as she realized that every parent fears for their child. Only their fears were more than unfocused worries of the unknown.
Caroline felt her anxieties were sharpened to a degree by the scant amount of knowledge she had about Stephen’s unique condition. The empty look in Samuel’s eyes as he recited those words about his world frightened her. She could only hope that the Rangers’ latest operation would alter conditions enough to prevent that eventual future from occurring. That by their actions, they would spare her child the fate that Samuel Renzi suffered.
Here, alone in a Parisian hotel, she was overcome by a sense of isolation every bit as painful as what she suffered in a cave as a captive of man-eating primitives an epoch ago. At least, stranded though she was in prehistory, someone knew where she was, knew and cared and could come to retrieve her or, failing that, mourn for her loss.
But here her only lifeline was a man she barely knew, who was unknowable. If something happened, if he never returned to this room, she and her child would be trapped here with no one aware of where and when they were. They would be left to lead their lives in a time that was not their own and die many years before their birthdates.
Merciful sleep overcame her at last. With the baby breathing softly in her arms, she slipped from consciousness into a dreamless void.
Samuel returned to the room with a sack of food. Bread, butter, cheese, a jug of milk, a slab of smoked meat, and a bottle of white wine. Also a bar of soap and a comb. He had three or four newspapers as well, one in English. Caroline awoke and set the sleeping baby at the center of the bed, surrounded by pillows. She sat at the table a
nd ate like a truck driver. She even had a sip of the wine.
“I could find no fresh fruit or vegetables,” he said. “The city is under siege. Food is expensive and in short supply.”
“So, I shouldn’t ask a lot of questions about this?” she said, poking the flank of meat with a fork.
“I am not certain I could provide more than a guess.”
“You’re not eating?” she said around a mouthful of Brie and bread.
“My needs are taken care of,” Samuel said.
“Are you a vampire, Samuel?”
His bewildered expression in response to that made her laugh hard enough to spit food across the table. It was the first time she witnessed a wrinkle in his unflappable cool.
She munched a strip of the shoe-leather-tough meat while making him a list on a sheaf of foolscap she found in a desk. Stephen would need cloth diapers or muslin rags, should commercially-made diapers not be available. She was no expert on the history of infant care or an expert of any kind in the care of babies, for that matter.
“I’ll need clothes and shoes. Find a dress I can wear outside. And a hat to match. It’s winter here, so I’ll need a coat and a hat. A scarf or shawl as well. Another dress to wear inside. And something for Stephen. I guess a few of those pullover dress-things. They dressed boy and girl babies the same back then. I mean, here and now.”
“What about sizes? I have never purchased clothes for a woman,” Samuel said, taking the list.
“I wear a size seven shoe. That’s roughly seven inches in length. Make it eight to give me some toe room. You can guesstimate the rest from my height. The clothing sizes probably won’t be that standardized even in Paris.
“Buy some thread, scissors, and needles. I can tailor the clothes some. I have the excuse of having just given birth, so that covers any frumpiness. It’s not like we’ll be doing anything social, right? Oh, and a bassinet or something like it for Stephen to sleep in.” She handed him back the list after making her additions to it.
“I will.”
“Do you have the money for this?” she asked.
“I have funds. Several million in period francs.”
“How is that possible?” she asked. “How long did you have to plan for this contingency?”
“My life is a series of contingencies,” he said, heading for the door.
“Wait,” she said.
He stopped and turned, his hand on the knob.
“What do I do if something happens—if you don’t come back? Have you prepped for that contingency?”
“I have left funds in the desk drawer. They should keep you indefinitely,” he said.
“A lifetime?” she said.
“I will be back. If I cannot return, then I have left word of where and when you can be found.”
“With whom, Samuel?”
“With myself,” he said.
“I suppose that will have to do, right?” she said.
“There are worse alternatives.” Samuel departed without saying anything further.
She pulled the desk drawer open and found a thick pile of paper money decorated with images of a seated woman wearing a robe. By it was a cloth sack of coins. She spilled some on the table. Thick, shiny discs decorated with the profile of Napoleon the Third. There were several thousand francs here. She had no idea of their current worth. Back in the present, they wouldn’t get her far. In this time, they might be worth a small fortune or be made nearly worthless by the inflation that comes inevitably with war. She spread the coins and found among them several hundred in American double eagles. What contingency did they serve?
Caroline replaced the bills and coins in the drawer and locked it. She placed the key in the pocket of her coat. She looked over the newspapers while she finished the heel of bread that remained.
The papers were dominated by the news of war with Prussia. Otto von Bismarck was featured in cartoons and drawings. The Prussians and their allies were closing on Paris from the north and south, taking a new French fort almost daily.
The stories mentioned Moltke and Prince Frederick as well as General Trochu and Wilhelm, the future Kaiser whose son would command Germany in the First World War. Napoleon III had been taken captive months earlier. She knew that Germany was not a nation at this time, just a collection of kingdoms, duchies, baronies, and principalities.
She recalled, from a required European history course years before, that this war was key in Bismarck’s strategy of “blood and iron” to unite the German people under one flag.
She could remember bits and pieces of other facts but had no sense of the overall course of the war or details of its outcome. This troubled her, and she searched her mind for what else she knew of this current conflict. At the moment, she desperately wished she had five minutes with Google or even Wikipedia to check a simple timeline of events.
She knew that France lost this war decisively. But what form did that take? She cursed herself for not paying more attention in required history courses or to the boring presentations of tour guides. Her area was physics. History wasn’t terribly interesting to her unless it dealt with the sciences. Now that she needed the advantage of being from the future to inform her as to what to do next, she was coming up ignorant. But she was as clueless of what the next few months held for Paris as anyone living their life out in these years.
The date at the top of the front page of Le Figaro was 4 January 1871.
The date troubled her. Searching her mind for the source of that unease was maddening. Caroline went into the bedroom and lay down by the sleeping baby and was soon asleep.
She awoke, startled, to the baby crying.
Caroline was not aware at first where she was. The room was dark, and she fumbled for the switch of a lamp by the bed. Of course, there was none there. She held Stephen to her and allowed her eyes to adjust to the gloom. She exposed her breast for Stephen to nurse and held the warmth of him against her. Her breath was visible in the cold room. She would see to the stove in the next room once the baby was fed.
Propped up against the headboard, she listened to the sounds coming through the drapes. On the street, she could hear the tramp of boots punctuated by shouted orders. The marching men would come and go with long silences between. It was after curfew, and there was no movement outside. The stillness outside was near complete. It was hard to believe that Paris lay unseen all about her. It was more like a graveyard.
In the stretches of quiet, the faint echoes of a rumbling cadence reached her ears. She thought at first it was thunder, but it was too constant, too insistent. It was cannon fire. Was it the guns of the city’s defensive forts at Saint-Denis and Vincennes or the answering batteries of the invading army? Or was it both? The booming reached her as a leitmotif through the glass, resonant enough to cause unease, not close enough to cause alarm.
She decided instead to concentrate on the contented grunt of her son suckling at her breast. Caroline clung to this moment. This was all that mattered, all that was real to her. The rest was a surreal dream or half-recalled movie.
Stephen sated and burped, she found matches and lit an oil lamp. She held the baby to her shoulder and carried the oil lamp into the next room and lit some candles there. In the guttering glow, she found piles of clothing for her and the baby, along with more groceries and an open wicker basket large enough for the baby to sleep in. There was also a bundle of folded rags she could use for diapers.
All of the clothing was meant for her and the baby. There was nothing here for Samuel. She looked for a note of any kind but found none. Still, Caroline knew he had left them alone again, and she had no idea for how long.
She folded a blanket to make a cushion in the basket and, after negotiating a change of diapers, laid Stephen inside and covered him with a second blanket to keep out the chill. She then got a fire going in the iron stove and fed it from a fresh pile of split wood set on the hearth. Samuel had thought of everything.
Soon the little room was comfortably warm
, the baby snug in his new bed and the food that needed to be kept cold set on the sill against the icy-rimed pane of the window.
Those simple chores completed, Caroline sat at the table and allowed herself the luxury of a good long cry.
28
Run and Gun
“I almost feel bad for them,” Jimbo said, his eye near the cup on his scope.
“I don’t,” Bat said, lying prone by his side.
They were both sighting on the bowmen trotting over the crest of a stony hill. Long shadows stretched before the running men as the sun sank low in the sky behind. The shadows reached like fingers for a pool of darkness spreading over the land below. The road moved through more open country here. The walls of the ravine gave way to broken hills created by massive flooding an epoch before.
Perhaps the deluge of the Torah, Bat thought, the first of God’s promises made good. The bowmen followed doggedly, never seeming to need rest even as the day wore on to darkness.
The team could easily stay ahead of them on horseback. But the archers would eventually catch up and, following a few hours behind them, the infantry column. The slow-motion chase was distracting from the search for the wayward slave caravan. The solution was clear to all, the Pima and the Israeli would provide a rearguard to slow pursuit and even halt it entirely. If these guys, as good as they were, took enough punishment they’d give up the game.
“Come on. You got to show respect. These guys are hard-chargers. Covering twenty miles or more double-time,” Jimbo said and moved his view to follow one archer hopping down the slope from one shelf of rock to another.
“They’re Syrians. They’re the oldest enemy of my people,” Bat said.
“I thought that was the Philistines.”
“Oldest living enemy. We killed all the Philistines.” She let out a long sigh and the rifle kicked back into her shoulder. On the hillside four football fields away, a man was tumbling lifelessly down the slope leaving a plume of rising dust behind him.