“He paid her good money,” Howie said. “What’s he doing here?”
Brother Willibald smiled sadly. “Alas, poor Wight,” he said. “That Flower of Evil sold not herself. ‘Tis thou who art sold!”
It was impossible; Lillith would not do such a thing! Then he remembered: it had been her idea that he pretend to be slave, hpr idea that he walk behind. Come to think of it, just about everything since she had broken him out of that cage aboard the Alice had been her idea. There was but one thing to do with people like Lillith. Through his chosen instrument, Howie, the Lord of Hosts would strike her dead.
He reached for the revolver and remembered he no longer had it. He had nothing—no sandals, no chlamys, not even his dungarees!
The old man still faced him, looking for all the world like Howie’s Old Testament-tinted concept of the father he’d never had.
“Strooth, thou’rt sold,” Brother Willibald said. “Wilt thou accept the Penance with true Christian Fortitude or wilt thou rail against the Path which thy God hath set thee?”
Brother Willibald’s question took Howie unawares and abruptly shattered several of his more cherished illusions. Now, he finally remembered that his God had existed even before Christ. He was naked before his enemies, but not beyond jurisdiction. He was being punished by the merciful, compassionate, all powerful and eternal God—the Secret Named God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of Israel, God of Christ, God of Howie, God of Mercy, God of Vengeance.
He had been only too ready to sell, or at least rent, Lillith. Abruptly he burst into ragged cackling laughter. He was still giggling and whooping hysterically when the hot-eyed little man nudged him into the cold pool.
The chill sobered Howie. He climbed out considerably chastened to face his owner. “I’ve sinned and I’ll pay,” Howie said. “I’ll do whatever he says except one thing. Even God would never make me do that.”
Brother Willibald interpreted. The crowd marvelled at Howie’s amusing display of foreign obstinacy with varying degrees of amusement and cynicism. The hot-eyed little man’s lips began trembling again. He asked another question and when Brother Willibald answered at some length his shoulders drooped.
“He had no other Work for thee,” Brother Willibald interpreted.
Howie found it in his heart to be vaguely sorry for his owner. After all, Lillith had cheated both of them! Brightening, Howie turned to Brother Willibald. “Maybe you could buy me?”
“God’s Wounds!” the old man groaned. “Had I such Gold I’d buy myself.”
Howie stared. “Are you—?” he began.
Brother Willibald sighed. “I’d not been a day in this Cradle of Democracy before I was seized as a foreign Pauper and auctioned. Alack!” he sighed again, “and nevermore to taste the brown October Ale.” He mumbled incoherently for some moments, then noticed Howie again. “Mayhap I’ll resolve thy Plight,” he said. He spoke rapidly to Howie’s owner. The hot-eyed little man nodded and shambled sadly back toward the hot room.
Brother Willibald found Howie’s chlamys but misunderstood the young god shouter’s demand for his pants. It did not occur to Howie to say trousers, hosen, or bracae. Resigned to the loss, he strapped on his sandals. Brother Willibald led him out of the baths and around the block, up a flight of stairs. There Brother Willibald knocked and the door was unbarred by the loveliest creature Howie had surveyed in all his eighteen years.
She was short, more petite than Lillith, and her diaphanous stola displayed a tiny waist beneath firm breasts. Her long black hair was in a single braid, piled voluptuously into a crown. The face beneath that crown looked on Howie with every indication of delight. She led Howie into the atrium and signalled him to wait.
“Who is she?” Howie asked,
“Doth Chloe please thee?”
Howie was too stricken to answer.
Brother Willibald smiled a small secret smile and said nothing.
Another woman entered the room. Though there wasn’t the slightest resemblance, her stem, forbidding attitude reminded Howie of his mother. She surveyed the young god. shouter from all angles, looked at his teeth, and questioned Brother Willibald.
By the time the old man turned and said, “My Lady will buy thee,” Howie felt six inches shorter.
Remembering Chloe, Howie brightened. Brother Willibald showed him around and Howie tried to shake the girl from his mind long enough to remember which room was which. He was shown a pile of straw in the kitchen for the servants.
“How many are there?”
“Thou, I, the cook, and Chloe.”
Howie worried until the cook turned out to be a walleyed old crone with a slightly crooked back.
“Our Nightwatchman died,” Brother Willibald explained. “ ’Tis best that thou sleepest now.”
Considering the day’s adventures, it was commendable for Howie’s conscience that he lay awake all of thirty seconds. He had no way of knowing the hour when somebody shook him gently awake.
After mumbling incoherently and rubbing his eyes he saw Chloe, more desirable than ever, carrying a lamp which looked like a shallow teapot with a wick coming out the spout. It silhouetted her lithe young body beneath the transparent stola.
She led him from the kitchen’s discordant snores. They tiptoed across the atrium to another room and Chloe blew out the lamp. Howie groped blindly before his questing hands found her again. She had removed her stola and rubbed against him in pristine nakedness.
Howie shucked his chlamys and they performed mutual explorations. Preliminaries ended abruptly and matters became more serious.
Two hours sleep were not enough to make up for forty-eight hours without. Some minutes later those exploring hands shook Howie rather abruptly. He yawned and sighed in the darkness, remembering his daylight glimpse of Chloe. Again the night-game began. The farther it progressed the more puzzled Howie became. Chloe was small, with smooth firm flesh. Could these tremendous buttocks be hers? Would her belly wrinkle and droop? Could those firm breasts yield like masses of unbaked bread beneath his fingers?
He retreated to his side of the bed and sat, trying not to vomit. Was it the walleyed cook? No; she was shorter than Chloe. With a sinking feeling, Howie realized he had traded a master for a mistress.
He was feeling sorry for himself when he remembered Brother Willibald’s remark about penance.
“I got myself into this,” Howie gritted. “I’ll get myself out!” He threw himself back into bed and cleaved unto the unknown quantity.
Then something like a wet sandbag hit him in the small of the back and he knew no more.
On the Alice, all hands were gazing anxiously at the two Libumians. “Go below!” Joe shouted. “We’re going to jump and I don’t want anybody washed overboard.”
“Who steers?” Gorson asked.
“I do. Freedy, you ready?” he yelled down the scuttle.
“All ready, sir.”
The sail was all in, piled on deck in untidy mounds. Time enough to furl it if the jump was successful. The Libumians quickstroked and Joe knew they could, for a short time anyhow, make better time than the Alice under power. The jump had damned well better work! “All right,” he yelled, “throw the switch!”
The twisting, wrenching sensation was over in one subliminal flicker, like a misplaced frame in a movie. The Libumians had disappeared; the Alice was now in broad daylight and a calm sea.
Then he noticed Howard McGrath. The little god shouter was tangled in a heap of sail, and as he regained consciousness he began again his befogged and halfhearted attempts at lovemaking. Only when his head had cleared completely did he realize that the unesthetic heap of sail was not his recently-acquired mistress. Howie stopped suddenly, and stared around at the speculative, amused faces of his shipmates as they straggled up on deck.
Howie’s return was the last thing Joe had expected at that moment. Afterward he tried to analyze what went on inside his head at that moment. The young god shouter’s appearance neither surprised nor mystified
him. It must have been the sudden fruition of long subconscious cerebration—a mushroom of knowledge which burst into awareness after days of patient, probing subterranean growth. In other words, intuition.
Sympathetic magic, Joe sneered, for his explanation was about as scientific as sticking pins in dolls or removing warts with separated bean halves. But, magic or not, Joe knew Howie had returned because he was part of the original ship’s company. Something—aura, field, mystique-held them together and strove to replace everything sooner or later back into its own proper time.
Joe thought of the teeming mass of time mongrels belowdecks with a little shiver of foreboding.
“Where are we?” Gorson asked.
“Search me,” Joe said. “At least we’re away from those f—” He stopped, horrorstricken at the realization that he had been about to modify “Libumians” with a present participle unbecoming to an officer, gentleman, or professor of history. He’d have to watch himself if he ever hoped to lecture again.
Raquel came on deck, “¿Cuándo estamos?” she asked. Joe was amused that her precise Latin mind asked not where, but when they were. She stood upwind and her usual gamy stink was replaced by a fresh, unperfumed odor of healthy female. Joe remembered the oarmaster’s explanation of her former fetors and grinned.
Freedy’s tiny mouth formed a report. “Everything looks fine. Still’s in one piece. Nothing on the radio though; I swept every band.”
Joe sighed, then brightened. After all, it had taken two jumps to get here. Maybe something limited them to thousand-year jumps. If so, they must be roughly back in Raquel’s time. He looked around again. The sea rippled under a full sail breeze which drove them gently toward a bright, half-high sun. A slight ground swell hinted at shallow water but there was neither land nor breakers. He looked at the compass and tried to fix the time of day.
It didn’t look right. Reaching into the binnacle, he wiggled the gimbals. It wasn’t stuck. He spun the wheel and the compass card swung obligingly. He eased back on course and looked at the sun again. The weather was too balmy; he wasn’t in the Arctic. Where else could the sun swing so far north?
He groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Cookie asked.
Joe pointed at the compass.
“Ah don’t git it.”
Gorson crowded up and peered into the binnacle. “I do,” lie said sickly.
“Right,” Joe said, “Only Mahan knows where, but we’re in the southern hemisphere.”
Gorson sighed tiredly. “You guys furl those sails,” he said.
Joe nodded. “Run the jib and jigger up for steerageway.” He turned the wheel over to Guilbeau and went below.
Raquel stood in the doorway of his cubicle, silently watching as he pored over inadequate charts, looking for any salt water in the southern hemisphere which lay out of sight of land and shallow enough for a ground swell. The southern hemisphere was mostly water and they could be just about anywhere.
“You worry?” Raquel asked.
Joe turned to explain. “Do you know the world is round?” he asked.
“I have heard it said.”
“Do you believe it?”
She shrugged. “I am still not sure whether I believe in you.”
“Well, anyhow,” Joe said, “I’m not sure when we are. Maybe in your own time. But we’re on the wrong side of the world.”
“What will you do?”
He shrugged. “Keep trying. What else can I do? I’m sorry I couldn’t take you home.”
“Home?”
“Your own time. Wouldn’t you like to see your parents again? Didn’t you have a young man before you left home?”
It was Raquel’s turn to sigh. “So long . . .” she said. “I had no thought of ever seeing home again. Perhaps they still live.”
“The young man?”
“Man? Ah; I had no novio. Once a boy stood below my window. My father investigated. His family was not suitable so the boy was told not to walk down our street again.”
Cook produced rye bread and dried goat stew. All hands crowded in the galley. “So now what?” Dr. Krom asked.
Joe explained his theorizing about thousand-year jumps.
“What proof have you?” the old man asked.
“As much that I’m right as you have that I’m wrong,” Joe said, and silently damned the quibbling old man. Holy Neptune but he was tired! Would he ever get enough sleep?
Abe Rose choked down a lump of stringy meat and cleared his throat. Behind the black whiskers his mouth was slightly lopsided, as though still clamped around an imaginary cigar. “Why not jump again and see if we can pick up something on the radio?” he asked.
Joe was tempted to turn in but remembered what a night’s sleep had cost him the last time. “Square away the galley and set up the still,” he said.
He went on deck again. The ground swell was unchanged and there was still no land. The sun was slightly lower and farther left so he guessed it was midafternoon. Time jumps were getting his stomach as confused as jet travel.
Raquel appeared and they faced each other across the lashed wheel. “You are tired,” she said.
Joe agreed. “That’s the principal recompense for being captain.”
“You did not wish to take the other girls,” she pursued.
“No,” Joe agreed.
“Why did you take me?”
“Why uh . . . Well, you saved my life.”
“Is that all?”
“What can you expect?” Joe asked. “Admittedly, love at first sight is a great time saver, but I’d known you all of five minutes when you came aboard.” He paused. This wasn’t coming out the way he meant it to. How could he explain this gradual growth of confidence—his increasing ease in her simple, often pointless conversation? “After a time . . .” he began.
What he wanted to say was how nice it was to be around someone who was quiet when he needed silence—someone who made no demands nor expected him to solve all problems. He glanced up and she was gone. “Damn it!” If she had just stuck-around another moment he felt sure he would have found a way to say it. Oh well, some day he’d have more time.
The horizon was clear, the sea calm. At last they would be making a jump under less than frantic circumstances. This time Joe would be below, watching every dial and meter. Sooner or later he would control this phenomenon.
Dishes were cleared away. Inside its makeshift bell jar the still sat amidships of the galley table. The Alice’s crew and Ma Trimble crowded into an attentive circle. The blondes regarded the prospect of another jump with a monumental apathy. They scattered about the yawl, fixing each others’ hair, mending clothing. Up by the chain locker one blonde unravelled a tattered jersey. Joe wondered what she intended with the yarn. Not socks for sure; the Mediterraneans hadn’t invented them yet.
“All set,” Gorson reported. He humped over the vacuum pump. Cookie regarded the bell jar and slapped a dough patch over one point where the seal threatened to rupture.
Joe felt his stomach tighten. Would they materialize in the middle of a desert? Or a hundred feet above or below it? “You may fire when ready,” he said.
Freedy flipped the switch. Nothing happened. They waited for tubes to warm up. Still nothing. Freedy flipped the gang switch up to middle range and began cranking up the pot. Abruptly, vision shimmered for a microsecond and Joe felt that now-familiar twisting, as if gravity had gone off for half a heartbeat.
The blondes glanced up from their hair fixing. The girl unravelling a sweater up by the chain locker had disappeared. Up on deck, Joe guessed. He went up through the after scuttle and for a moment wondered if he hadn’t imagined the twisting sensation. The Alice still sailed herself under jib and jigger, beating gently toward the sun in a calm sea. Then he noticed: the ground swell was gone—they were in deep water!
Judging from the cloudless sky, they must be well off-shore.
He glanced at the binnacle and released a long-held breath. They were in the northern hemisp
here.
It was the emptiest ocean Joe had ever seen. The sky had a strange, leaden color and the sun shone like molten brass. Gently rippling water stretched in all directions toward a horizon which curved upward until the Alice seemed alone at the bottom of an immensely empty blue bowl. Which ocean, Joe wondered? There was not a bird in the sky, nor a weed in the water. He took a final glance around and went below.
Gorson and Cookie had dismantled the bell jar so it was safe to turn on the other gear. “Three hundred and ten fathoms,” Freedy reported. “No scattering layer.”
“Tried the radio?” Joe asked.
Freedy’s little mouth flew open. “Hadn’t thought of it,” he confessed, and flipped switches. Joe waited not very hopefully for the set to warm up. He knew there were immense stretches of practically sterile ocean, yet something about that absolute emptiness worried him. Maybe he’d read too many stories of atomic doom, but if he had overshot and landed ahead of his own time . . . He wished there were a geiger counter aboard the Alice.
Gorson nudged him and pointed at the barometer. Abruptly, Joe understood the emptiness and that weird yellow light, the absence of birds. How many hours did he have? He tried to remember what he knew about hurricanes and typhoons. According to the barometer this was going to be the granddaddy of them all.
The radio warmed up and Freedy started at the shortest band. Aside from clicks and pops of atmospheric electricity, nothing came in. Then Howard McGrath was pulling Joe’s sleeve.
Still wearing nothing but a pair of borrowed skivvy drawers, he hunched his shoulders and humped his thin body unhappily. “Mr. Rate,” he whispered, and glanced about embarrassedly. “Mr. Rate,” he whispered again, more urgently now, “it hurts when I pee.”
Joe clapped a hand to his forehead. Closing eyes tightly, he searched for an adequate phrase. None came. He lowered his hand and his elbow caught Ma Trimble in the ribs. “Talk yourself out of this one,” he growled.
“My girls were clean when they came aboard,” Ma Trimble snapped. “You think I don’t know the signs?” Joe turned to Howie. The god shouter swallowed and looked miserable. “I don’t know, sir,” he said. “Maybe it was Chloe, or the old lady. You see, I—”
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 16