Times Without Number

by John Brunner

  Kristina was still peering pale-faced from the window. As she saw him descend, she threw open the door and made to step down also. He gestured her to stay where she was.

  "I'll see if I can get one of the civil guards to escort you away," he promised. "This is no place for -- "

  "Miguel, if you throw my sex at me one more time I'll lose my temper! I'm coming with you. The guards have all the work they can cope with, and I'm not going to be left sitting in the carriage here when there may be something useful I can do!"

  Defiantly she jumped to the ground and belted the sash of her cloak around her in a businesslike manner. Displeased, but realising the futility of argument with this strong-willed young woman, Don Miguel took her arm and together they forced a way to the broad half-moon of pavement on to which traffic from the bridge debouched.

  Here the confusion was fantastic. A small detachment of soldiers with horse-borne light artillery had formed up at the parapet of the bridge as though expecting in assault at any moment, but their officer seemed to have realised that that was a false alarm and was detailing them now to help with crowd-control instead, occasionally pausing to look up- and down-river with a spyglass. On the south bank blurs of red could be seen, indistinct because of traces of mist rising from the water; these must be the fires the guard had told Don Miguel about. He wondered how many of the fugitives had lost the homes they had abandoned half-clad, and to what disaster . . .

  Having redeployed his men, the officer in charge of the artillery troop -- a handsomely uniformed young man on a fine roan gelding -- began to move in their direction, and Don Miguel attracted his attention by shouting and waving.

  "Miguel Navarro, Society of Time!" he introduced himself, cupping his hands to his mouth. "What's the chance of getting over the river to the palace?"

  The officer stared down at him as though he were mad. He said explosively, "To the palace? You're lucky to be here, aren't you, rather than there?"

  Don Miguel felt as though an icy hand had been lald on his bare brain. He said, "I'm afraid I've no clear idea of what's going on!"

  "No more have I -- " The officer's horse started at some alarm, and danced sideways three half-paces before willing to be quieted. "But whatever devilry it is, it's far worse there than herel Haven't you looked across the river? Here, take my glass!"

  He handed the instrument to Don Miguel, who set it to his eye and turned to the south. Instantly, what had been mere reddish blurs, half-masked by mist, formed a coherent pattern with what few landmarks could be seen. He burst out, "It's the palace that's on fire!"

  "Correct!" The officer laughed without humour, reclaiming the spyglass. "One of my men reported a minute ago that the roof is falling in."

  "But the King's there, and the Prince Imperial, and the Commander of the Society, and the Ambassador of the Confederacy -- !"

  The hand on his arm tightened. He glanced down at Kristina and saw that the colour had drained from her face. Yes: her father and her sister, too . . .

  "God knows what it's an about!" the officer said savagely. "But it's the biggest disaster in a hundred years, no question of that. The night on the other side of the river is alive with murderous shadows, killing and looting and burning."

  From near the waters edge, down-slope from the embankment, came a loud exclamation. "Someone out there -- swimming! Someone help him! Someone get him ashore!"

  "Sounds like a job I can tackle," the officer snapped, and dug his heels into his horse's flanks, departing with a sketched salute to Kristina. He called together three or four of his soldiers, who ran down with ropes to help the swimmer. Don Miguel and Kristina followed them. If by a miracle this was a man who had managed to get across from the south bank, he might have more exact news.

  They arrived as the man was being hauled out. He had spent his last strength, and could not stand; he collapsed face downwards on the ground. Don Miguel saw with horror that each of his shoulders was stuck with a short, vicious arrow, the barbs buried deep in the flesh. It was a miracie he had kept afloat.

  "Miguel!" Kristina whispered. "Isn't it your friend?"

  Don Miguel strode forward. "God's name," he said. "God's name, but it is. Felipe!"

  He dropped on one knee beside the stricken form, but the officer, dismounting, waved him back. "Wait!" he snapped. "Wait till they've drained the water from his lungs!"

  With a muttered apology Don Miguel drew aside, and a medical orderly from the artillery troop hurried up with a case of medicines. Like a huge waddling white owl a Sister of Mercy came after him.

  Aching, Don Miguel watched as they inspected the arrows and prepared to extract them and dress the wounds. He ignored the continuing noise from all around and was only dimly aware that the flow of refugees across the bridge had dropped to a final trickle of the sick, the aged and the very young.

  Abruptly his preoccupation was shattered by the rattle of a carriage from behind him, on the approach to the bridge. A harsh voice called out to its driver, telling him to go around another way.

  Then another voice was heard, speaking from the interior of the carriage, dry and precise. "But I must cross here and now to go to the Prince's palace. I must be there before midnight."

  Don Miguel's relief was so great he almost swooned. He started forward, waving and shouting at the top of his lungs.

  "Father Ramón! Father Ramón! Praise heaven you're here!"

  V

  The Jesuit master-theoretician of the Society of Time stepped down from his carriage, brows drawn together on his bird-like face as -- for what appeared to be the first time -- he surveyed the fantastic scene. The roadway looked like a just-abandoned battlefield, what with the sickly and lame refugees still hobbling past and the scattered belongings which earlier passers-by had found too heavy to carry any further.

  He said, "I fail to see, my son, why my arrival in the midst of this to-do should so excite you, but something tells me I ought to find out, even though I don't expect to enjoy learning the answer. Enlighten me."

  Rapidly Don Miguel summed up the situation as best he could: the mysterious attackers beyond the river, the setting on fire of the palace, the unknown fate of the royal family, the refugees streaming north, his being in the company of the Lady Kristina of Scania, her concern about her father . . .

  Father Ramón's expression grew more and more horrified.

  "I had no idea!" he exclaimed. "It's my practice to pray privately on the way to celebrate Mass, with the curtains of my carriage drawn. I did hear shouting and commotion, but I assumed that fights had broken out among the New Year revellers! Have you any idea what may be at the bottom of it all?"

  "I'm very much afraid that I may," Don Miguel said soberly, and described his encounter with the feathered girl in the middle of Empire Circle.

  He was appalled to see the expression on the Jesuit's face change still further, beyond mere horror to outright and unconcealed fear.

  "Do you know who this woman is?" he demanded.

  "Judging by your description, I think I do," Father Ramón answered heavily. "A costume not recognisably of the modern world, nor of any recorded period of history, a language you could not identify . . . But that is the worst possible conclusion we could jump to, unless we are goaded beyond any alternative. Is there any way we can get recent news of events the other side of the river?"

  "Ah -- yes, with luck there may be!" Don Miguel said. "Just before you arrived, Don Felipe Basso swam the river pierced with strange arrows. See, they're ministering to him on the river-bank." He pointed.

  Father Ramón headed towards the white silhouette of the Sister of Mercy like a shot from a gun. Don Miguel glanced at Kristina; it was clear from her paleness and her trembling lips that her self-control was stretched nearly to the limit. He put his arm around her reassuringly and led her in the wake of Father Ramón.

  The Jestuit was already kneeling at Don Felipe's side when they caught up. Turning his head to the medical orderly, he snapped, "Will he live?"
If the answer was negative, of course, Extreme Unction must precede any questioning. But the medical orderly, tossing bloody dressings into the river, gave a nod.

  "He's tough as oak, Father," he said. "He'll live."

  Don Miguel heaved a sigh of relief and bent close to listen to what Father Ramón might say. Before the latter could speak, however, Don Felipe had opened his eyes and recognised him.

  "Ah, you were lucky, were you, Father?" he whispered. "And . . . You too, Miguel? Heavens. I thought you were . . . No matter, though. That's not the important thing. God's wounds, what can have taken possession of them all?"

  "Speak!" commanded Father Ramón sternly. "Without fear or favour I charge you to speak unvarnished truth in the name of the Society!"

  Don Felipe closed his eyes again. Lips writhing, in halting whispers he outlined the dreadful tale.

  Partly, it seemed the trouble had been the fault of the Ambassador from the Confederacy, notoriously a sneering fellow and a dogmatic chauvinist. As Don Miguel had sardonically prophesied, he had scathingly dismissed the quality of New Year festivity in Londres as grossly inferior to what he could enjoy at home.

  Partly it had been the Prince. Imperial's fault. It was no secret that now, in his forty-first year, he was growing tired of waiting to succeed his long-lived father, and inclined to dispel his boredom in unprincely pastimes.

  And partly, said Don Felipe, it was the fault of Red Bear, whose weakness for firewater was equally well known.

  At some time in the evening there had been an exchange of sharp words. A royal temper flared; there was a reference to deporting the Ambassador tied face-to-tail on a donkey. Hovering around the fringes of the royal party, as ever eager for a smidgin of reflected glory, were two dangerous would-be conciliators: Don Arturo Cortés, and the Marquesa di Jorque.

  "Someone in authority should have smoothed things over," Don Felipe moaned. "Red Bear, or even the Commander! But that damned woman from Jorque hasn't any notion of tact! She brought up the subject of women's emancipation, and I think someone must have said men and women could never be equal, because there are some things like warfare which are entirely male -- and the Ambassador jumped on this as another chance to disagree on principle, and said the bloodiest and fiercest fighters in history were the Scythian Amazons, so the King said the Amazons were a myth, and appealed to Don Arturo, and . . ."

  Breaking off, he coughed violently, and pain from the arrow-wounds in his back convulsed him in agony. Waiting for him to recover, Father Ramón knelt at his side more rigid than a statue.

  "And then, my son . . . ?" he prompted finally.

  "I don't know," whispered Don Felipe. "All I remember after that is the terrible women with their bows and spears, swarming down the stairway leading from the central tower. I stood and fought with those who could fight, but they came on like devils, and in the end they shattered us to bits."

  His voice tailed away.

  "My father!" Kristina said in a high thin tone. "My sister! What became of them?"

  But there was no answer. The medical orderly dropped to feel Don Felipe's pulse. After a moment he turned to Father Ramón. "We must take him away and let him rest," he said. "Talking has greatly weakened him."

  Stiffly Father Ramón rose to his feet. Don Miguel drew him aside and whispered to him urgently.

  "I'm still in the dark about all this. Do you know who these 'terrible women' are?"

  "Almost beyond doubt," the Jesuit said in a dead voice. "Amazons . . . Yes, it hangs together. This is the way it must have happened. They wanted -- the fools! The fools ! God forgive me for condemning them so, but what other name can one use? Listen: they wanted to decide this question about women being valiant fighters, and they sought the answer where they should not have trespassed, beyond the bounds of our reality. Women such as the one you described to me are female gladiators from the court of King Mahendra the White Elephant, in a world where a decadent Indian usurper sits the throne of a Mongel empire governing all Asia and all Europe -- a world further distant from our own than any other which our researchers have explored."

  Thanks to having been made privy to the best-kept secret of the Society, the explanation made sense to Don Miguel. But he wished it could have been as meaningless to him as it was to Kristina, who had no inkling of the perilous tampering with reality which the Society had embarked on forty years before. She merely repeated as she looked from one to the other of her companions, "My father and sister -- what became of them?"

  He could only give her a meant-to-be comforting squeeze with the arm he had kept around her shoulders.

  "Yes -- yes, of come, I ought to have realised that . . . But I shouldn't be talking about abstracts; the thing's been done. By whom? Who could have breached this secret to the company -- surely not the Commander, even on his father's orders?"

  "No, not the Commander. For all that he possesses a degree of royal arrogance, he would not imagine he could flout natural law."

  "Then -- who?"

  "The leader of the expedition to that distant stream of history," said Father Ramón, "was Don Arturo Cortés." On the last word his mouth shut like a steel trap. There was silence between them, but the noise of the fugitives continued, and now, as bells pealed out to announce the imminence of midnight, they heard also the dry crackle of gunfire.

  The orderly and two soldiers were raising Don Felipe from the ground to set him on a wheeled invalid trolley. The movement disturbed him, and he gave a sudden cry.

  "Father Ramón! Where are you?"

  "Here, my son!" The Jesuit darted towards him.

  "Father, I did not tell you the worst!" Don Felipe babbled. "I saw them kill the King! I saw them shoot the Prince Imperial full of arrows, and they speared men and women alike as they tried to flee! I saw a girl flung from the head of the stairway to break her head open on the marble floor! I saw -- God's pity, Father, I saw such monstrous things!"

  "What?" said one of the soldiers helping to lift him. And, before Father Ramón could stop him, he had spun round to shout to his officer. "Sir! He says the King is dead!"

  A hush fell for an instant over all those within earshot of the cry, and was followed by a sound like a rising gale: "The King is dead! The King! The King!" The words spread swiftly, dying away across the sea of people like an echo.

  "Father Ramón, is there anything we can do?" demanded Don Miguel.

  For a long moment, his bird-like head bowed, Father Ramón did not answer. At last, however, he stirred and seemed to brisken. He said, "Well, there are some immediate steps, are there not? For example, you might find a civil guard and have criers sent to call in members of the Society who were not attending the palace reception, bidding them come at once to the Headquarters Office. This should be simple -- they'll mostly be passing this way to attend our Mass. Then . . . Have you a carriage?"

  "I had." Don Miguel stared in the direction of the spot where it had been left. "No, it's gone -- probably commandeered by the refugees. Anyway, it would be hard to force a carriage through this fear-crazed crowd."

  "So we'll take the horses from mine." Father Ramón shrugged. "It's many years since my aged bones spanned a horse's back, but needs must. To it, and quickly!"

  VI

  Never before had Don Miguel tried to ride at speed bareback, controlling his horse with carriage-reins and at the same time trying to comfort a weeping girl seated behind him with her head buried on his shoulder. It was half nightmare, half farce, and about the only thing which could have made it worse would have been if Kristina had followed the Empire custom of riding side-saddle instead of astride like a man. She would certainly have fallen off if she had.

  In spite of his lack of practice on horseback, Father Ramón made good speed, and Don Miguel had difficulty in making his own mount keep up, carrying double as it was. However, by digging his heels in vigorously, he forced the poor beast to follow close behind, and they galloped up the driveway to the Headquarters Office neck and neck. By now two o
r three more of the windows were lighted, and the front door stood ajar. At the sound of hoofs on gravel someone came running to the entrance. It was Jones, and in the light of the porch flambeaux it could be seen that one of his eyes was newly blacked.

  "She got loose?" Don Miguel cried in alarm, sliding to the ground and reaching to help Kristina dismount.

  "Yes, sir," Jones agreed unhappily. "And we had a terrible job tying her up again."

  "But you managed it?"

  "With the help of the man you left here, yes, sir. I'd never have coped with her on my own."

  And the poor fellow has lost his carriage for his pains, Don Miguel reflected briefly. Still, there were people in Londres tonight who had lost not only their livelihood but their lives. Time enough to consider such problems later. For the present, there was a grand catastrophe to attend to.