She squeezed his hand, but that was all. She was thoughtfully silent, her eyes on the ground a few paces ahead of them.
“Lisa? What do you say?”
“Just exactly what are you offering me, Derron?”
“Look, yesterday when you were telling me about your new girl friends’ problems you seemed to have a very firm grasp of what this male-female business is all about.”
“You want me to live with you temporarily, is that it?”
“Lisa, nothing in our world can be permanent. At the staff meeting just now—well, I’m not supposed to talk about that. But things don’t look good. I want to share with you whatever good things may be left for us.”
Still silent, she let him lead her on stepping-stones across the park’s little stream.
“Lisa, do you want a marriage ceremony? I should have put that first, I suppose, and asked you formally to marry me. The thing is not many people are going to raise their eyebrows if we don’t have a ceremony, and by not having one we’ll avoid some delay and red tape. Would you think we were doing wrong if we didn’t have an official wedding?”
“I . . . suppose not. What bothers me is the way you talk about everything being temporary. I suppose feelings are included.”
“When everything else is temporary, yes! I don’t necessarily like it. But how can anyone in our world say what they’ll be feeling or doing or thinking a month or a year from now? In a year we’ll most likely all . . .” He let it trail off.
She had been searching, and now at last she found the words she wanted. “Derron, at the hospital I’ve absorbed the attitude that people’s lives can be made less temporary, now or any time. That people should go on trying to build, to accomplish things, even though they may not have long to live.”
Such thoughts had been his at one time. A year, a year and a half ago. A lifetime ago. With someone else. The girl’s face that he could not and did not want to erase from his memory came back again.
Lisa went on: “Look at Matt, for instance. Remember how badly hurt he was—?”
“I’m sorry,” Derron interrupted. Looking at the time, finding a valid excuse for getting away. “I’ve got to run, I’m almost late at the staff meeting.”
III
The scientists, by some combination of calculation and debate, had reached a consensus.
“It comes down to this,” their spokesman explained as the meeting resumed. “If we’re to have any chance of healing the break in Ay’s lifeline we must first immobilize the affected part—like putting a splint on a broken bone.”
“And how does one splint a lifeline?” demanded Time Ops.
The scientist gestured wearily. “Commander, the only thing I can suggest is for you to somehow put someone else temporarily in Ay’s place, to ride his ship on to Queensland and there play his part for a few days at least. The man could be given a communicator and sent dayto-day instructions. If the berserkers stood still for it, he might play out the rest of Ay’s life in its essentials.”
“How do we tell just what the essentials are?” someone broke in.
“We make guesses and keep watching our screens.” The scientists’ spokesman grinned faintly. “Gentlemen, I don’t know if a substitution scheme can be made to work over any length of time, nothing like it has ever been tried. But it should at least buy us a few more days of present-time in which to think of something else.”
Time Ops thoughtfully rubbed his stubbled face. “Well, substitution is the only idea we’ve got to work with at this point. But Ay is about twelve hundred years back. That means dropping a Modern to take his place is out, right?”
“Afraid so, sir. Mental devolution sets in at about four hundred years.” Time Ope thought aloud in his tired monotonous voice. “Does anyone suppose we could get away with using a slaveunit on this kind of job? No, I thought not. Then what’s left? We somehow enlist one of Ay’s contemporaries, who’s both willing and able to do the job.”
Someone suggested: “Appearance isn’t too much of a problem. Ay isn’t known in Queensland, except by reputation, when he first arrives there.”
Another offered: “We ought to be able to snatch his crew up to present-time and work on them a few days, get them to accept a substitute. Use pacifying drugs and hypnotic methods.”
“Good thinking, gentlemen,” said Time Ops. “Now let’s try to solve the first problem. Who is our substitute going to be?”
Surely, thought Derron, someone besides me must see where one possible answer lies. He didn’t want to be the first to suggest it—because of Lisa. But precious present-time was flowing away, and no one else saw it.
Derron cleared his throat, startling men who had forgotten his presence. “Correct me if I’m wrong, gentlemen. But don’t we have one man available who could be sent down to Ay’s century without losing his wits, because he comes from the even deeper past himself?”
There was nothing for Harl to do but take the ship on to Queensland. When he got there he would have to stand before King Gorboduc and the princess, look them in the face and tell them what had happened to Ay.
The other warriors would be spared that burden at least. Now, hours after the monster’s attack, they were still obeying Harl without question. The sun was going down, but Harl meant to keep them rowing right through the night, to hold off the mad demonstration of grief that was sure to come if he let the men fall idle now. They rowed now like blind men, sick men, walking dead men, not knowing or caring where the ship was steered, their faces blank with rage and shock turned inward.
Frequently the oars fell out of stroke, clattered together or splashed awkwardly along the surface of the sea. No one noticed. Torla groaned a death song as he pulled—woe to the next man who faced Torla in a fight.
Inside the purple tent, atop Ay’s treasure chest (another problem for Harl, that chest, a problem that would grow as rage and grief wore away) the winged helmet rested in a place of honor. It was now all that was left . . .
Ten years ago Ay had been a real prince, with a real king for a father. About ten years ago Ay’s beard had first begun to sprout, and Harl had first begun to serve as the young prince’s good right hand. And at about that time, also, the sickness of envy and the fighting for power had started in earnest among Ay’s uncles and brothers and cousins. So now Ay’s father and most of his house were dead, their kingdom lost and divided among strangers.
Ay’s inheritance had shrunk to the deck of a fighting ship, not that Had minded that for himself. Harl had not even complained about books and reading. Nor even about prayers to a man-god, a slave-god who had preached love and mercy and had gotten his bones split with wedges for his trouble.
Over the ship, or beneath it, there passed a sudden lurching change. It was a tilting, swaying motion, over in an instant, so that Harl wondered if the dragon had come back, rising from the deep to scrape his bulk beneath their hull.
The men all dropped their oars and once more drew their weapons. But there was no dragon to be seen, nor much of anything else. With a speed that hinted at the supernatural a mist had closed in round the ship. The red lingering light of sunset had blurred into a white glow diffusing through the mist. Even the waves were different, Harl noticed now. The air was warmer, the very smell of the sea had changed.
The men looked at one another in the strange light. They fingered swords and muttered about wizardry—
“Row slowly ahead!” ordered Harl, thinking it best to keep the men busy, though his sense of direction had for once been totally confused.
He went forward to be lookout, and before the rowers had taken fifty strokes he threw up a hand to halt them. Water gurgled round the backing oars. Only an easy spear-cast from the bow, a gentle sandy beach had materialized out of the grayness.
When the men became aware of this, their murmuring grew louder. They knew full well that a few minutes ago they had been far from any land.
“It’s certainly solid ground ahead!”
“Looks lik
e solid ground. I’ll not be surprised if it vanishes in a puff of smoke. Sorcery!”
No one disputed any longer that sorcery was at work. What, if anything, might be done about it was another question.
Harl called for a council. After some debate it was decided to row away from the beach, to see if they might get beyond the reach of whatever magic had them in its grip.
Sunset was now certainly overdue, but the garish light filtering down through the mist did not fade. In fact it brightened, for as they rowed the mist began to thin.
Just as they emerged from a fogbank, they came near driving their ship straight into a boundless black wall that rose from the sea. It was a wall with no edge or top in sight, rising and extending, curving back without limit around the sea and over the mist. From the foot of this wall the men in their tiny ship looked up into an enormous inverted bowl; they saw now that the bank of fog was illumined by fire thrown down from lights that looked as bright and high as sun fragments.
Men cried out prayers to all the gods and devils alive. Men shrieked that they had come to the sky and the stars at the end of the world. They almost broke their oars, spinning their ship and driving it back into the mist.
Harl was as much shaken as any of them, but he would die before he showed it. “Another enchantment, that’s all!” he barked. “Not a real sky or stars, but something put into our eyes by magic. Well, if there are wizards where who mean us harm, I say they can be made to bleed and die like other men!”
The others took some heart from his words. Here in the concealing fog, the world was still sane enough for a man to keep his eyes open and not go mad.
Harl gave the order to row back in the direction of the beach they had glimpsed. It was still there, real and solid. As the log-ship grounded gently Harl, sword in hand, was the first to leap into the shallows. The water was warmer than he had expected, and when a splash touched his lips he discovered that it was fresh, not salt. But by this time he was beyond being surprised at such trifles.
IV
One of Matt’s tutors stepped ahead of Derron, tapped on the door of the private hospital room, then slid it open. Putting his head into the room, the tutor spoke slowly and distinctly. “Matt? Here is the man named Derr on, who fought beside you in your own time. Now he wants to talk to you.”
As Derron entered, the man who had been sitting in an armchair before the television screen got to his feet, standing tall and erect, dressed in die robe and slippers that were general issue for patients.
In this man Derron could see no resemblance to the dying savage he had helped carry into the hospital. Matt’s hair had been depilated and was only now starting to grow back in, a neutral-colored stubble. Most of Matt’s face was covered by a plastic membrane, which served as skin while the completion of the healing process was held in abeyance. On the bedside table, half covered by some secondary-level schoolbooks, were several sketches and composite photographs, looking like variations on one basic model of a young man’s face. In his pocket Derron now was carrying a photo of a somewhat different face—Ay’s, caught by a spy device sent to skim near the young king for a few millionths of a second on the day he began his fateful voyage to Queensland. No machine of the Moderns had been able to get closer than that to the spacetime locus of the assassination itself—spacetime strongly resisted repeated interference in one spot.
“I am pleased to meet you, Derron.” Matt put meaning into the ritual phrase; his speech, like his tutor’s to him, was slow but distinct.
“I am pleased to see that your health is returning,” Derron answered. “And glad to see that you are learning so quickly the ways of a new world.”
“And I am pleased to see that you are healthy. I am glad your spirit could leave the metal-man it fought in, for that metal-man was very much hurt.”
Derron smiled. “Don’t let them con you with talk of where my spirit was. I was never in any danger there as you were.”
“Con me?” Matt had the question-inflection down pat.
The tutor said: “Derron means, don’t let us teach you wrong things. He’s joking.”
Matt nodded. He knew about jokes, but he had something serious in mind. “Derron, but it was your spirit in the metal-man?”
“Well—say it was my electronic presence.”
Matt glanced at the television in the wall. “Electronics I have learned a little bit. It moves my spirit from one place to another.” Some kind of historical documentary film was being shown at the moment.
“Moves your eyes and thoughts, you mean.”
Matt was firm. “Eyes and thought and spirit.”
The tutor said: “This spirit-orientation is really his idea, major, not ours.”
“I understand.”
From Operations’ point of view, the important thing would be that firmness in opinion, which would be a very good thing provided the right opinions were held. In these days many things could be taught very quickly to a good student, but character traits were not among them. “All right, Matt, in the spirit I was fighting beside you, though I didn’t risk my neck as you risked yours. When you jumped onto that berserker with arrows in your hands, I know your thought was to save me. I am grateful, and glad that now I can tell you so.”
“Will you sit down?” Matt gestured Derron to the room’s second chair and then reseated himself. The tutor remained standing, hovering in the background. Matt said: “My thought was partly to save you. Partly for my people there. Partly just to see the—berserker die. But since coming here I have learned that all people, even here, might be dead if we had not won that fight.”
That is true. Now other fighting, just as important, is going on in other times and places.” This was the opening for the recruiting speech he had been sent here to make, but Derron paused for a moment before plunging ahead. For the tenth time he wished that Operations had sent someone else to do the job. But the experts thought that Matt would react most favorably to a presentation by the man who had fought beside him. And to use Matt was Derron’s own idea, after all. He could wish now that he had kept his mouth shut at the staff meeting. But if he didn’t make this sales pitch now, someone else would.
With an inaudible sigh, Derron got down to business. “Already you have done very much for us, Matt, for everyone. But now my chiefs ask you to do more.”
He put the essence of the situation before Matt in simplified form. The berserkers, enemies of the tribe-of-all-men, had badly wounded a great chief in another part of the world, and someone was badly needed to take the chiefs place.
Matt sat still, heard the explanation through, his eyes steadily attentive above the plastic skin that masked most of his lower face. His first question was: “What will happen when the great chief is strong again?”
“Then he will resume his own place, and you will be brought back here to live a good new life. We expect that we will be able to bring you back safely, but understand that there will be danger. How much danger we cannot say, because this will be a new thing to do. But some danger, all along the way.”
Let him know that, major—don’t paint too black a picture, of course. It seemed to be left up to Major Odegard to find the proper shade of gray. Well, Time Ops might be watching over his shoulder now, but Derron was damned if he’d con Matt into a job that he, Derron, wouldn’t have volunteered for if it had been open to him. No, Derron told himself, he wouldn’t have volunteered. The chances of the mission doing any good were too uncertain. Death did not frighten him, but the chance seemed all too great that the volunteer might meet some unknown and unimaginable fate somewhere in the probability-space of half-reality, where the Moderns’ knowledge had only begun to reach.
“And if, in spite of all medicine, the great chief should die and can never go back to his own place?”
“Then it would be your job to continue in his place. We would tell you what to do when necessary. In this king’s place you would lead a better life than most men in history have had. And when you had finished
his span of years, we would try to bring you here, to live on still longer in our world, with much honor.”
“Honor?”
The tutor tried to explain.
Matt soon seemed to understand and went on to another point. “Will I take more magic arrows with me, to fight the berserkers in this king’s place?”
Derron thought. “I suppose you might take some weapon like that. But your main job will not be fighting berserkers, but carrying on in the king’s place.”
Matt nodded. “All is new, all is strange,” he said in his slow, precise voice. “I must think about it.”
“Of course.”
Derron was about to say that he could come back tomorrow for an answer, but Matt already had another question. “What will happen if I say no? If no one can be found to act for this wounded chief?”
“There is no way you can be forced to go. Our wise men think that if no one goes, the war will be lost, and all of us will probably be dead in less than a month.”
“And I am the only one who can go?”
“It may be so. You are our wise men’s first choice.” Derron supposed that some plan was under way to get a back-up man or two from the deep past. But anyone brought up now would be days behind Matt in training all along the line, and every hour was important.
Matt spread out his healed hands. “I must believe what you tell me, you who have saved my life and made me well again. I do not want to die in a month, and see everyone die. So I must go and take this king’s place if I am able.”
Derron sighed again, with mixed feelings. He reached into his pocket for the photo.
V
Time Ops, watching through a spy scanner, nodded with faintly surprised satisfaction. Odegard was a sharp young lad all right, using a smooth soft sell to get the volunteer to place himself on the right side of the argument.
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