The High-Tech Knight

by Leo Frankowski

  “There aren’t that many of them. Look, I shouldn't be talking about this. I made a vow.”

  “As you wish, Stargard. What about all these fights you been in?”

  “Well, four times I’ve been attacked by crazy people on the road. I defended myself. What more is there to say?”

  There was no question of our proceeding that day. Uncle Felix wouldn’t have stood for it. It was raining again and anyway, Sacz was a full day's ride away. It was best to leave in the morning.

  I never quite left the table that afternoon. With dinner completed, more beer was brought, with a few snacks: -sausages, cheeses, breads, cold pies, preserved meats, .smoked fish, puddings, spreads, pickled fish, pickled cabbages, pickled pickles, and a vast pile of etceteras.

  It was Tuesday, but somehow a holiday had been declared. Maybe it was the rain and maybe it was the fact of our visit. Or maybe these people always acted that way.

  Chessboards and checker sets were broken out, as well as a half dozen board games I’d never seen before. There was Nine Man Morris, which had elements of tic-tac-toe and Chinese checkers. There was Fox and Geese, a chase-and-capture game, and Cows and Leopards, a vastly more complicated variant. There was Goose, a race game.

  Furthermore, every game seemed to have a skill variant and a chancy gambling variant. Uncle Felix got me into a game of Byzantine chess, which was played with normal chesspieces but on a circular board. He further insisted that we play it with dice. You had to roll a one to move a pawn, a two to move a knight, and so on.

  If none of the moves permitted by the dice was possible by the rules of chess, you lost your turn; if you were in check, you had to roll the right dice to get yourself out of check or you lost your turn. Then your opponent had to roll the right dice to take your king to win. This resulted in some very strange games and I’m glad I wouldn't bet him. Anyway, I think his dice were loaded.

  Sitting and playing board games suited my mood, but Sir Vladimir was feeling far more energetic. He had Krystyana, Annastashia, and a half dozen or so of Uncle Felix’s ladies playing something called The Last Couple in Hell. I never quite figured out the rules, but it involved a lot of running around and screaming.

  People wandered in and out, bringing things, eating things, and taking things. At least three conversations were going on at any one time and the noise never stopped. Children and dogs wandered through and were petted, spanked, or ignored as the case required. Uncle Felix almost never used a proper name. He just pointed and yelled, and things happened.

  I never figured out who were family and who were servants; perhaps they weren’t too clear about it themselves. When Uncle Felix yelled, people jumped, but not always the same people who jumped last time. The girl who brought in a steaming plate of braised meat promptly sat down with us to help us eat it. Later, Uncle Felix pinched her butt; up till then I'd been sure that he'd been patting his daughters and pinching the servants.

  Try to imagine a friendly, loosely organized madhouse with sound effects. Intimidating, but you grew to like it.

  After six hours of continuous eating and drinking, Uncle Felix got up, belched, and announced that supper was served.

  They really had killed a fatted calf and two men brought it in on a spit. Having already done a full day of heroic trencher duty, the best I could do was dawdle at my food. Uncle Felix looked at me, genuinely hurt.

  “There’s something wrong with the food?”

  We were back in our best clothes, only slightly the worse for wear, the next morning. The sky was gray and we were all still logy from too much to eat and drink the day before, so we were mostly silent on the way to Sacz.

  The land and climate around Sacz were identical to Uncle Felix’s, but the living was far worse. The leader sets the tone of an organization, and the tone of Sacz was bad. Half the fields were unplanted and I don't just mean those lying fallow. The forests were encroaching on the farmland. Those fields that had been planted were rank with weeds.

  The cottages were hovels and the people were listless, lackadaisical, uncaring. You had the feeling that they thought that nothing they could do would improve things, that nothing really mattered. Most of them looked underfed.

  In Poland, every man, even a sworn peasant, had the Right of Departure. If things got bad, he could sell out or abandon whatever property he owned and move elsewhere. It was a little like the bankruptcy laws of modem times. Well, around Sacz, anyone with any gumption had already left.

  I decided that hunting was so important to Baron Przemysl because he was such a poor manager his lands and people would not produce enough to support him; wild game was the only thing that he had to eat, so he was hard on poachers.

  Baron Przemysl was a grimy, gouty, disagreeable person. He produced a Tadaos much whiter and thinner than I remembered. Tadaos was speechless while the baron carefully, publicly counted the ransom money. He shook his head, blinked at the sunlight and rubbed the scabs where the shackles had been on his wrists. Having lived in his own filth for almost a month, he stank monumentally. I stayed upwind of him, but the baron didn’t seem to notice the smell.

  Once the baron had finished his long, slow count, he turned and limped away without so much as a thank-you or an invitation to supper, and it was late in the day. I decided not to tell him how to cure his gout.

  “You came! By God in Heaven, you came!” Tadaos yelled suddenly.

  “Yes, I came. Now get on one of the mules and let’s get out of this pig's sty.”

  But once mounted up, he said, “My bow, Sir Conrad, do you think I could get my bow?”

  Tadaos’s bow was an English longbow and pretty special. He was a fantastic shot with it, and I didn't know how much of that was the man and how much was the equipment. The guard at the gate was a graybeard in rusty armor. After some argument, haggling, and suggestions of violence, he produced bow, quiver, and arrows for eight pence. A bargain, except that the equipment was Tadaos's in the first place.

  “And my boat. Sir Conrad, do you suppose that there is any chance of getting back my boat?” On this point the oldster was adamant. - None. The boat had been confiscated along with the cargo, and both had been sold.

  “Then I am a boatman without a boat. What is to become of me?”

  “I can tell you that,” I said. “You’re coming along with me. I'm not going to charge you for my traveling expenses and I'm not going to hold you responsible for all the trouble I've gotten into on this trip. But I just shelled out four thousand pence to save your neck and I'm going to get it back, somehow. You once hired me at three pence a day plus food. That's what I'll pay you until you work off your debt.”

  “You’re a hard man, Sir Conrad.”

  “Huh. That’s the first time anyone's ever said that. Well, come along, gang. There's one more stop to be made before we head home.”

  I had been transported to the thirteenth century while sleeping in the basement of the Red Gate Inn. I didn’t know how that was accomplished but the answer just might be in that inn. In all events, I meant to go there.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We were fortunate to find a decent-enough inn that evening. They wouldn’t let Tadaos in until he had taken a bath, which I considered to be a good recommendation for the place.

  The innkeeper set up a wooden tub in the courtyard, checking the wind with a wet thumb to be sure that Tadaos stayed downwind of the dining room. It was filled with hot water and Tadaos was tossed a bar of brown soap from beyond flea-jumping range.

  He was ordered to strip and get in. A servant picked up his old clothes with a long stick and carried them off, the stick pointing carefully downwind, to be burnt. They changed the water three times before poor Tadaos passed muster and was permitted to rejoin humanity. Even then, he was probably aided by the fact that it was getting dark.

  I also got a bill for washing down the mule Tadaos rode in on.

  One of my outfits fitted Tadaos fairly well, with the cuffs and sleeves rolled up, but I wouldn’t l
et him cut it down permanently, not one of my nifty embroidered outfits!

  “It’s just as well that Cousin Przemysl didn't invite us in for supper,” Sir Vladimir said, “His table is terrible.”

  I inquired of the innkeeper about the Red Gate Inn and was told that I shouldn’t go there. It had been struck by lightning and was inhabited by devils.

  Slighting the competition a little was one thing, but that was ridiculous. When I pressed him further, he assured me that I could get there by staying on the trail we had arrived on. I couldn’t possibly miss the place, if I was fool enough to go there.

  I couldn’t tell my friends why the trip was necessary, and Sir Vladimir was not happy with this extension to our vacation. He wanted to go back and play hero some more at Wawel Castle. Krystyana and Annastashia were solidly on his team. It got to be a nagging contest, three against one.

  “Okay. Then don’t go to the Red Gate Inn. I'm not sure I wanted you along anyway. Stay right here tomorrow with the girls. I'll take Anna and run up to the Red Gate Inn in the morning. She's fast enough to make it there and back in a single day, where the whole party would take two days easy. Anyway, Anna has been acting like she wants a good run, and we can't do that with you guys along.”

  Sir Vladimir and the girls gave their grudging approval to the plan, and we called it a night.

  The next morning I was saddling Anna when Sir Vladimir came over. “Sir Conrad, I spoke rashly last night. Let me accompany you today.”

  “Thank you. Apology accepted. But if you go, the girls will insist on going and then with those stupid palfreys, we’d have to move at a crawl. Anyway, we can hardly leave them here unprotected. Anna and I won't have any problems.”

  “Still, I’d feel better if I went along. And let's bring the ladies. There's no need for undue haste.”

  “Maybe I need a little time to myself. Anyway, I’m going alone. Don't bother following, you know you can't keep up.”

  I’d left the horse barding and fancy clothes behind. This was a factfinding mission and the less attention I attracted, the better.

  Anna went like the wind. She could travel as fast with a big armored man on her back as a thoroughbred racehorse can with a little jockey aboard. And she could keep up that speed all day, not for just a single mile.

  It was an exhilarating joy to ride her across flat land and on mountainous trails it was stunt-flying and motorcycling and a carnival ride all in one. More than those, because we were closer to the ground than any stunt plane ever flew for long and no motorcycle could have maintained our speed over these trails. And on a carnival fide, deep down inside you really know that you are safe. This was reality!

  We went for about an hour without passing anyone on the trail. Then we came to a pleasant brook with a nice bit of pasture and we stopped for a while. The cook at the inn had packed me a lunch. In the Middle Ages, it was customary to get up at dawn but eat your first meal at ten in the morning. Dawn, I could take, since without decent lights there wasn’t much sense to staying up late. But I've always eaten a big breakfast, and a year in this barbarous time still hadn't changed my desire for that.

  We ate. Anna was cropping the lush grass and keeping a sharp lookout.

  “Anna, would you come over here, please?”

  She trotted over.

  “Anna, what’s two plus two? Tap it out with your foot.”

  She tapped her foot four times.

  There was once a famous German showhorse called Clever Hans that had everyone, including his trainer, convinced that he could do simple arithmetic. It wasn’t until many years later that a psychologist proved that Hans was reading the body language of the person asking him the question. He would start tapping his foot and as he started approaching the right answer, his questioner would involuntarily stiffen up a bit. When he got to the right answer, the trainer would relax a little and Hans would stop tapping his foot.

  I had to know if Anna’s nodding and shaking her head in response to questions was the Clever Hans sort of thing, or if she really was an intelligent being in the guise of a horse.

  “Okay. Now give me three minus one.”

  She tapped twice.

  “Now the square root of nine.”

  She looked at me inquisitively, sort of tilting her head sideways, the way a dog does. “Do you know what a square root is?”

  She shook her head no.

  That tore it. I knew what a square root was and if this was the Clever Hans thing, she would have tapped out three. Down deep, I’d been expecting it all along. Anna was an outstanding creature. She was physically, mentally, and morally superior to anything a horse had a right to be.

  “Anna, are you really a horse?”

  She stared at me for a second, then shook her head no.

  “Are you a human being?”

  She shook her head.

  “Some kind of machine, then?”

  No.

  “Some sort of alien? From some other planet?”

  No and no.

  “Are you naturally born? Some sort of mutant?”

  Yes and no.

  “You were born naturally and are not a mutant?”

  Yes.

  “Anna, I came to this country in some kind of a time machine, I think. At least it was a strange vault in the subbasement of an old inn. Do you know about time machines?”

  Yes and no.

  “Let me try again. Are you in any way connected with any individual or group that has anything to do with a time machine?”

  “Yes’

  “Do you know how such a device works?”

  No.

  “Well, at least that tells me that you’re somehow connected with some pretty high technology. Are you the result of some high technology? Bioengineering?”

  Yes and yes.

  “But you were born naturally… oh, of course. Your ancestors were bioengineered.”

  Yes.

  “You’re from the future then?”

  No.

  “The past?”

  Yes.

  “There was some kind of lost civilization in the distant past?”

  Yes and no.

  That stumped me for a bit. How could it be there and not there? Technology requires a civilization. Doesn’t it?

  “You were the product of a civilization?”

  Yes.

  “Was that civilization in the distant past?”

  Yes.

  “Then why-okay, it was there but it was not lost.”

  Yes.

  “I guess that figures. If you’ve got a time machine, there's no way for anything to get lost. Back to you. You're an intelligent bioengineered creation.”

  Yes and no.

  “You’re doing that to me again. You, or at least your ancestors, were bioengineered.”

  Yes.

  “And you’re intelligent.”

  Yes and no.

  “You’re intelligent but not as smart as me.”

  Yes.

  “If that’s true, you're not far behind me. I haven't seen you do anything dumb yet and God knows that I've pulled some boners lately. Anna, you obviously understand Polish. Can you read it?”

  Yes.

  “Can you write?”

  No.

  “Anna, if I made up a big sign with all the letters and numbers on it, could you point to them one after the other and spell things out?”

  Yes and no.

  “You could try but your spelling isn’t very good.”

  Yes.

  “Good enough. We’re going to have that sign made up as soon as we get back to Three Walls.”

  “Anna, you’re too intelligent to be treated as an animal. As far as I'm concerned, you are people. I don't own you, but I'd like to stay your friend. Is that okay with you?”

  Yes.

  “Would you like to work for me., doing just what you have been doing all along?”

  Yes.

  “I pay most of the men back at Three Walls a penny a day. Is that all
right with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. We’ll make it retroactive to the time I met you in Cracow. That means that you have about three hundred pence in back pay coming. I might as well hold your money for you, but if there's anything you want to buy, let me know. Okay?”

  Yes.

  “Would you like to swear to me, just like all the other people have?”

  Yes, vigorously.

  “Then we’ll do it. But to do it right, we ought to have witnesses, so I suppose we should wait until we get back to Three Walls. Okay?”

  Yes.

  That was one of the best moves I ever made.

  Getting ready to go again, I said, “Anna, we need more words than just yes and no. How about if shaking your tail means you don’t care one way or the other and that yes-no thing you've been doing means that I haven't asked the right question?”

  Yes-no.

  “I guess I deserved that ’ Are the above two communication symbols acceptable to you?”

  Yes.

  She was as literal-minded as a computer. “Eventually, we’re going to have some long talks, but for now, is there anything that you are unhappy with that I can do something about?”

  Yes.

  It took another round of “twenty questions,” but I found out what it was. She thought the food was fine and she didn’t mind the work. People treated her well enough and she liked traveling. She didn't mind a saddle but the bridle annoyed the hell out of her. Would I please take the damn thing off?

  “Happy to, my friend. Of course, you never paid much attention to it anyway.”

  We continued south, and higher into the High Tatras, a part of the Carpathians. Some purists claim that Tatras are part of the Beskids and the Beskids are part of the Carpathians, but call them what you will, they’re half again higher than anything in New England. To me, they are the most beautiful mountains in the world, and I have loved them ever since my father took me up there when I was a little boy.

  It was a bright day with clear mountain skies and clean highland air. Anna was making good speed and many Slavic songs were written to be sung on horseback, to the rhythm of the horse’s hooves. I was singing “The Polish Patrol” and in a fine mood when I came across the most dejected-looking man I'd ever seen. He was sitting by the road with his arms on his knees and his head on his arms.