by Anthology
This quiet moment was interrupted as a handful of small meteors streamed green fire across the sky. Thunder chased their wake. Maker’s huge mouth parted in an angry roar at the injustice of it all, a world, his whole civilization, slaughtered by a rock from the sky! It was simply not fair!
The meteors were warning enough. It was time to depart. Nostalgia was pure foolishness, an unprofitable emotion. Groaning, Maker folded himself into the heart of his device, forcing long legs and stiff tail into postures they were never designed for. His huge, crested head went up into the sensory receptacle. At once, his mind took control of the crystal. Energies were focused, contained in countless convoluted chambers, poised to loose pent-up strength. But to where? The past? He had already lived that, it seemed a waste to revisit old arguments. The appeal of the unknown beckoned. Forming no specific date in his mind as a specific destination, he simply abstracted the notion of fleeing forward into the future in a mental gestalt the device could understand.
Far to the west, glimpsed through tall windows, something huge and bright parted the sky.
GO, he thought. JUST GO!
The Thing-That-Rearranges-Now-And-When folded sideways upon itself and was gone. The light of its transition was blinding, but even that was lost in the terrible glare that followed. The workroom’s thick granite walls whirled away like brittle parchment. The heat was terrible.
Maker sneezed and shivered involuntarily. Wherever he was, it was dark and damp and cold. His scales itched. He reached around to free his bent tail, pushed hard, and was ejected from the transport cavity. He thumped down onto a slick stone floor and found himself sitting in a puddle of icy water. His shout of displeasure came back at him in a profusion of deafening echoes.
Stiff and cranky, he got to his feet and felt at his apron for the pocket with the gas torch. The device roared into life at a touch, its bright yellow flame banishing the darkness. The shimmer behind him he identified as the time device, now glowing faintly as it rebuilt its energies.
A quick scan of his surroundings showed that he was in a large cavern. Here and there in the stone trapped sea shells glistened, prompting him to guess that the city’s high promontory had been plunged beneath the sea and then slowly raised back up as mountains. The dripping rock walls were hung with shadows, and from one such opening a cold breeze blew. Luck was with him, an exit.
Much relieved to be out of the damp, Maker stepped out into a starry night. A sliver of moon was hung above a strange forest of trees, very unlike the tropical vegetation he was acquainted with. Everything smelled strange. Before him was a road, unpaved dirt rutted with cart tracks. Primitive, yes, but just seeing the cart tracks made him give a long, satisfied rumble of relief. It proved that someone had survived the disaster. No doubt descendants of the southern refugees, many generations removed. Would they remember their long-lost great-grandfather after all this time?
Bending low, he studied the tracks scattered in profusion across the soft dirt: odd curved indentations, curious half circles lacking claw marks. Doubt nibbled at his confidence as he realized that these shapes were very unlike his own feet. “What strange beast could make marks like this?” He wondered aloud in bafflement.
A distant clatter made him extinguish the torch and stand up straight. Something was coming. An animal, large, and running hard by the sound of it.
Casting aside the doubt, and eager to meet the lucky survivors of his kind, Maker stepped out into the center of the road and struck a confident pose. Now others would know he too had lived, and by his wits, not luck. He only wished that his mate of many years could know of his triumph.
The bizarre beast that rounded the bend in the road made Maker’s mouth drop in surprise. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, a top-heavy, lopsided creature having four long legs, a narrow head atop a long neck, and a huge shiny lump on its back. Even odder, a long spine protruded from the right side of the beast. The spine had been thrust at the starry sky above, but as the creature caught sight of him, the spike dropped into a threatening horizontal position, and its tip looked very sharp and hard.
Two more of the creatures came around the bend, just behind the first. They lacked the spiked appendage, and both came to a sudden and unsteady halt as they too, spotted Maker blocking the road.
At that moment, the lead beast broke into a galloping charge, its spine aimed directly at Maker.
The new moon gave almost no light at all so, feeling uncomfortable in the darkness, Maker fired up the torch again and adjusted it to maximum brightness. As the yellow flame shot out, it gave an unexpected result. The charging animal staggered in fright and reared back on its hind legs. As it did so, the lump on its back—and with it the aggressive looking spine—fell off onto the road with a clamorous clash of metal.
Dead silence. Then the four legged animal screamed, reared, and galloped back the way it had come, abandoning that major part of itself that was lying still on the road.
Maker thrust the torch at this strange object in order to see it better. But as the flame brushed it the heap of metal made a great shout and stood up on two legs. Lifting the spine again to a horizontal position, it ran at Maker, angling to avoid the hot flame from the torch. Back at the bend of the road, the other beasts were making loud, apparently approving noises.
Was this some sort of ceremonial greeting? As Maker watched in bewilderment, the creature ran up and pushed the sharp tip of the long spike right against his left leg, where it wedged itself between two thick protective scales. Maker yelled and hopped backwards, but not before the creature struck at his waist with a long metal knife, severing the belt of the apron.
This was too much! Maker bellowed, reached down, pulled the spine free and broke it like a green stick. Then he snatched up the creature . . . easily done since it was but half his size . . . and began to peel off its metal plates. It made a terrible fuss about this, but Maker persevered until he had it stripped down to its pink, naked skin. Then, recognizing it as one of the squeaky pests that had infested his workroom, tailless and grown unnaturally large, he almost dropped it in disgust.
He was about to bestow a good stomping on the creature for giving him such a fright, when its two fellows launched a veritable hail of sharp sticks through the air in Maker’s direction.
Aggressive little vermin! This was intolerable!
Chucking the squirming beast that he held straight into the faces of his attackers, Maker retreated to the cave and rolled a massive boulder against the narrow opening to block it. The time device was now glowing brightly, fully recharged.
Maker gave a great sigh. If this was the future, it was a sore disappointment. His kind must have perished completely if vermin had taken over the world.
Mounting the Thing-That-Rearranges-Now-And-When,he wriggled inside and imaged another destination in his mind, this time being very specific about the date. The rainbow brightness came again and the device vanished with a sizzling pop, leaving only a steaming puddle on the cavern floor.
Crawling out into an already hot Cretaceous morning, Maker was delighted to see a barren, stony plain stretching away on all sides. Clusters of clay huts nestled under distant cliffs. The history scrolls had been specific about who had lived here. The huts belonged to the Shapers who would rear the first foundations of the city. Several had already seen him and were cautiously approaching.
Maker could not smile, his big, slab-sided face was not constructed for it, but he was very, very pleased. Therewas time, now. Fleeing to the southern continent had failed, and retreat into the future had proved impractical. He glanced up to where the full moon was just setting in the bright blue sky. The great glass on the mountain had shown the existence of other retreats circling in the starry void. With his knowledge and teachings, they would find the way to them. Or, perhaps even discover how to turn the destroyer itself.
This resurgence of hope filled Maker like a good meal. He missed his apron sorely, but there was nothing in it that he could not crea
te again, given time. He raked a muscular foot against the rock and sparks flashed from his talons. One thing was sure. This time, this world wouldnot become a sanctuary for verminous, squealing wallrats.
And, on the subject of vermin, at just that moment, many millions of years up the time stream, his lordship, the Right Honorable Sir Gregory James of George was standing bruised and bloody in a pub with all eyes on him. He was recounting how, that very night, he and his squires had come upon a most fearsome dragon rearing erect and challenging in middle of the East road, the creature spitting fire and bellowing like Satan himself, until Sir Gregory had fearlessly speared the beast. As proof of his encounter, the disheveled knight held up a singed length of shattered lance. Deep claw marks still marked the dense wood. He finished with a brave tale of how he and his squires had driven the fearsome monster into one of the caves of Hollow Wood and had sealed it permanently inside. But not before shaming the devil-beast by robbing it of its most basic possession . . . its trousers!
As the crowd in the common room shouted and howled with laughter at this wondrous deed, his squires came forward, straining to hold the great weight of Maker’s huge apron between them, its many pockets bulging with a host of mysterious and no doubt devilish devices. Tomorrow, Sir Gregory swore, they would do the Godly thing and put the whole of it into a great purifying bonfire ‘til only cinders remained.
Predictably, the crowd roared.
THE EDGE OF THE KNIFE
H. Beam Piper
Chalmers stopped talking abruptly, warned by the sudden attentiveness of the class in front of him. They were all staring; even Guellick, in the fourth row, was almost half awake. Then one of them, taking his silence as an invitation to questions found his voice.
“You say Khalid ib’n Hussein’s been assassinated?” he asked incredulously. “When did that happen?”
“In 1973, at Basra.” There was a touch of impatience in his voice; surely they ought to know that much. “He was shot, while leaving the Parliament Building, by an Egyptian Arab named Mohammed Noureed, with an old U. S. Army M3 submachine-gun. Noureed killed two of Khalid’s guards and wounded another before he was overpowered. He was lynched on the spot by the crowd; stoned to death. Ostensibly, he and his accomplices were religious fanatics; however, there can be no doubt whatever that the murder was inspired, at least indirectly, by the Eastern Axis.”
The class stirred like a grain-field in the wind. Some looked at him in blank amazement; some were hastily averting faces red with poorly suppressed laughter. For a moment he was puzzled, and then realization hit him like a blow in the stomach-pit. He’d forgotten, again.
“I didn’t see anything in the papers about it,” one boy was saying.
“The newscast, last evening, said Khalid was in Ankara, talking to the President of Turkey,” another offered.
“Professor Chalmers, would you tell us just what effect Khalid’s death had upon the Islamic Caliphate and the Middle Eastern situation in general?” a third voice asked with exaggerated solemnity. That was Kendrick, the class humorist; the question was pure baiting.
“Well, Mr. Kendrick, I’m afraid it’s a little too early to assess the full results of a thing like that, if they can ever be fully assessed. For instance, who, in 1911, could have predicted all the consequences of the pistol-shot at Sarajevo? Who, even today, can guess what the history of the world would have been had Zangarra not missed Franklin Roosevelt in 1932? There’s always that if.”
He went on talking safe generalities as he glanced covertly at his watch. Only five minutes to the end of the period; thank heaven he hadn’t made that slip at the beginning of the class. “For instance, tomorrow, when we take up the events in India from the First World War to the end of British rule, we will be largely concerned with another victim of the assassin’s bullet, Mohandas K. Gandhi. You may ask yourselves, then, by how much that bullet altered the history of the Indian sub-continent. A word of warning, however: The events we will be discussing will be either contemporary with or prior to what was discussed today. I hope that you’re all keeping your notes properly dated. It’s always easy to become confused in matters of chronology.”
He wished, too late, that he hadn’t said that. It pointed up the very thing he was trying to play down, and raised a general laugh.
As soon as the room was empty, he hastened to his desk, snatched pencil and notepad. This had been a bad one, the worst yet; he hadn’t heard the end of it by any means. He couldn’t waste thought on that now, though. This was all new and important; it had welled up suddenly and without warning into his conscious mind, and he must get it down in notes before the “memory”—even mentally, he always put that word into quotes—was lost. He was still scribbling furiously when the instructor who would use the room for the next period entered, followed by a few of his students. Chalmers finished, crammed the notes into his pocket, and went out into the hall.
Most of his own Modern History IV class had left the building and were on their way across the campus for science classes. A few, however, were joining groups for other classes here in Prescott Hall, and in every group, they were the center of interest. Sometimes, when they saw him, they would fall silent until he had passed; sometimes they didn’t, and he caught snatches of conversation.
“Oh, brother! Did Chalmers really blow his jets this time!” one voice was saying.
“Bet he won’t be around next year.”
Another quartet, with their heads together, were talking more seriously.
“Well, I’m not majoring in History, myself, but I think it’s an outrage that some people’s diplomas are going to depend on grades given by a lunatic!”
“Mine will, and I’m not going to stand for it. My old man’s president of the Alumni Association, and . . .”
That was something he had not thought of, before. It gave him an ugly start. He was still thinking about it as he turned into the side hall to the History Department offices and entered the cubicle he shared with a colleague. The colleague, old Pottgeiter, Medieval History, was emerging in a rush; short, rotund, gray-bearded, his arms full of books and papers, oblivious, as usual, to anything that had happened since the Battle of Bosworth or the Fall of Constantinople. Chalmers stepped quickly out of his way and entered behind him. Marjorie Fenner, the secretary they also shared, was tidying up the old man’s desk.
“Good morning, Doctor Chalmers.” She looked at him keenly for a moment. “They give you a bad time again in Modern Four?”
Good Lord, did he show it that plainly? In any case, it was no use trying to kid Marjorie. She’d hear the whole story before the end of the day.
“Gave myself a bad time.”
Marjorie, still fussing with Pottgeiter’s desk, was about to say something in reply. Instead, she exclaimed in exasperation.
“Ohhh! That man! He’s forgotten his notes again!” She gathered some papers from Pottgeiter’s desk, rushing across the room and out the door with them.
For a while, he sat motionless, the books and notes for General European History II untouched in front of him. This was going to raise hell. It hadn’t been the first slip he’d made, either; that thought kept recurring to him. There had been the time when he had alluded to the colonies on Mars and Venus. There had been the time he’d mentioned the secession of Canada from the British Commonwealth, and the time he’d called the U. N. the Terran Federation. And the time he’d tried to get a copy of Franchard’s Rise and Decline of the System States, which wouldn’t be published until the Twenty-eighth Century, out of the college library. None of those had drawn much comment, beyond a few student jokes about the history professor who lived in the future instead of the past. Now, however, they’d all be remembered, raked up, exaggerated, and added to what had happened this morning.
He sighed and sat down at Marjorie’s typewriter and began transcribing his notes. Assassination of Khalid ib’n Hussein, the pro-Western leader of the newly formed Islamic Caliphate; period of anarchy in the Middle Eas
t; interfactional power-struggles; Turkish intervention. He wondered how long that would last; Khalid’s son, Tallal ib’n Khalid, was at school in England when his father was—would be—killed. He would return, and eventually take his father’s place, in time to bring the Caliphate into the Terran Federation when the general war came. There were some notes on that already; the war would result from an attempt by the Indian Communists to seize East Pakistan. The trouble was that he so seldom “remembered” an exact date. His “memory” of the year of Khalid’s assassination was an exception.
Nineteen seventy-three—why, that was this year. He looked at the calendar. October 16, 1973. At very most, the Arab statesman had two and a half months to live. Would there be any possible way in which he could give a credible warning? He doubted it. Even if there were, he questioned whether he should—for that matter, whether he could—interfere . . .
He always lunched at the Faculty Club; today was no time to call attention to himself by breaking an established routine. As he entered, trying to avoid either a furtive slink or a chip-on-shoulder swagger, the crowd in the lobby stopped talking abruptly, then began again on an obviously changed subject. The word had gotten around, apparently. Handley, the head of the Latin Department, greeted him with a distantly polite nod. Pompous old owl; regarded himself, for some reason, as a sort of unofficial Dean of the Faculty. Probably didn’t want to be seen fraternizing with controversial characters. One of the younger men, with a thin face and a mop of unruly hair, advanced to meet him as he came in, as cordial as Handley was remote.
“Oh, hello, Ed!” he greeted, clapping a hand on Chalmers’ shoulder. “I was hoping I’d run into you. Can you have dinner with us this evening?” He was sincere.
“Well, thanks, Leonard. I’d like to, but I have a lot of work. Could you give me a rain-check?”