by Isaac Asimov
“You’ll catch up some while we’re eating. Then I think we should go on north. We’re safe enough.
You’ll catch up to us tonight.”
“Probably,” said Hunter. “Now that the sun is replenishing my energy, I can jog alongside the horses I have with me. That will relieve them of the burden of my weight. However, they are still very tired.”
“We’ll be okay,” said Steve.
“I can accept this if you can assure me you will call at the first sign of danger so we can discuss it,” said Hunter. “And avoid all risks you can see.”
“Of course,” said Steve.
“Hunter out.”
Steve and Marcia went downstairs. The innkeeper hurried out with their breakfast of rice gruel with meat and vegetables in it, and a pot of hot tea. He retired as Steve and Marcia started eating hungrily.
When Steve had finally satisfied himself, he leaned back with a grin and sipped a little more tea. “That sure is familiar. It’s the same breakfast I’ve had in Chinese restaurants in our own time.”
“That’s true,” said Marcia. “I recognize it, too. In fact, much of the Chinese cooking in our own time is, at least in style, many centuries old. Even new ingredients, such as corn from the New World, have been available since the Age of Exploration. An excavation on the Old Silk Road in the late twentieth century revealed mummified dumplings virtually identical to what we eat now ….”
Steve grinned as she prattled on with another of her lectures. After seeing her genuinely scared and vulnerable last night, this lecture did not annoy him the way the earlier ones had. Now it just struck him as funny. While she talked, Steve ordered some meat-filled buns they could take with them on the road.
When Marcia finished her lecture, even the tea was gone. Steve got the duffel bag out of his room and paid the innkeeper. Then he and Marcia walked out to the stable and had the hostler saddle their horses, which had already been fed. Steve paid him, too, and mounted up.
Marcia grimaced as she swung into the saddle. “I don’t think I’ve ever used these muscles before. Not in this combination. It’s not like riding a bike or a motorcycle at all.”
“No.” Steve grinned. “That’s true.” He kicked his mount and turned up the road.
Marcia steered her horse after him. “Well, it’s a nice, clear, cool morning, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And we have a leisurely ride ahead. We don’t dare catch up to the travelers ahead of us, and we want Hunter to catch up to us if he can.”
“Good,” said Marcia, with a wry grin. “Slow and easy sounds just fine to me.”
Jane, Wayne, and Ishihara landed in early morning right outside a small peasant village. Several chickens and a couple of children darted away in surprise. Beyond the buildings of the village, Jane could see adults walking from the village into the fields with their farm tools.
As they got to their feet, Jane looked around in all directions. They were out of the mountains. Then she recognized the walls and towers of Khanbaliq a short distance away. In fact, she could see that they were fairly near the spot where Hunter had first brought his team from their own time.
She yawned and wondered if she would be able to sleep soon. Wayne also needed rest. She waited to see what her captors would do next.
An elderly man walked out of the house in the front of the village with an expression of concern on his face. He spoke sharply to the children, then stopped abruptly when he saw Wayne and Ishihara. The man bowed deeply to both of them.
Wayne and Ishihara responded in kind. Then Wayne leaned close to Ishihara and whispered something too low for Jane to hear. In turn, Ishihara spoke quietly to the elderly man, who nodded as he listened.
“Come on in,” Wayne said to her in a casual tone. “We’ll get some rest.”
Their host took them inside to a small room. It had two sleeping pallets of straw, covered with some sort of rough cloth. The single window was shuttered.
“Thank you, Lao Li,” Ishihara said to the villager, who bowed and left them alone.
“You and I both need a good night’s sleep.” Wayne looked pointedly at Jane. “Ishihara will remain with us both for safety and to make sure you stay with us.”
“I’m too tired to run off,” said Jane. She sat down on one of the pallets. “I guess this will do.” Then she looked up at Ishihara. “Just make sure you stay here. I don’t want to be left alone with him or in this village without you.”
“No harm will come to either of you,” said Ishihara.
Steve and Marcia rode slowly along the winding mountain road. Each time they crested a rise, he looked ahead for the travelers who had kidnapped Hunter and Jane the night before. Usually, they were too far ahead to see, but twice, when the terrain allowed him a particularly long view of the road ahead, he glimpsed the knot of riders moving north in the distance.
Several times during the day, Steve called Hunter just to make contact with him as he followed them.
Frequently, Steve stopped to allow Marcia some time to dismount and walk around; that was all they could do about her stiff muscles. They ate the food he had brought from the inn and kept on riding.
Late in the day, they rode in the shadow of a mountain as they came around a curve. Below them, in a narrow pass between two steep mountainsides, sunlight angled across a huge gate in a massive gray wall.
The wall had a rock base and high brick sides with crenellations across the top. A small town had grown up just inside the gate. Startled, Steve reined in to take a look.
Steve had seen pictures of the Great Wall of china, always long shots in which the wall snaked over the top of a ridge. Those distant shots had no reference by which a viewer could judge the’size of the construction. Now, seeing the wall in front of him at a distance he could judge for himself, Steve simply stared at it.
“Chuyungguan,” said Marcia. “That’s the name of this gate. I was able to visit it once in our time. The version standing now was restored in the twentieth century, but it looked the same as this one to me.”
Steve could see that this gate was in an important place. The arched gate ran under a watchtower, and high on each mountain to the east and west, another tower stood guard over the land. The narrow pass would be easy to defend, blocked by the Great Wall.
“How big is this thing?” Steve asked quietly. “How high are those towers?”
“The towers are about twelve meters high. They’re about twelve meters square at the base and angle inward as they go up to about nine meters square at the top.”
“‘About’?”
“They didn’t use the metric system back then. They had a measurement system of their own. I’m rounding off the fractions.”
Steve nodded, still gazing at it. “How high is the wall itself between the towers?”
“It varies. No shorter than about six meters and no higher than just over seven meters.”
“That thing is thick, too, isn’t it?”
“Just over seven and a half meters.”
“Is it solid rock? Or brick?”
“Neither. They raised the inner and outer faces of stone and brick first, then filled the space between them with earth or clay. They pounded it down and then paved a brick road over the top of the wall.”
“So they can march troops along the top.”
“Yes. Or ride four horses side by side.” She pointed to the three towers in turn. “They were placed within two bow shots of each other and they extend forward from the outer surface of the wall. The idea was that archers in the towers could reach attackers all along the front of the wall.”
“I’m impressed.”
“So were the Mongols.” Marcia smiled. “Genghis Khan failed in a couple of assaults on this gate. He finally took it when another Mongol army under a subordinate broke through another gate that was less well defended and came up behind the Chinese defenders here.”
“I guess no one needs it now, right? Kublai Khan rules on both sides of the wall.”
“That’s right. This gate has a small garrison, but in this time, it’s more of a checkpoint for travelers than anything.”
“Shall we ride on down? I guess the Polos will be down there somewhere.”
“Sure.”
14
STEVE ENJOYED THE view as they rode down the slope into the narrow pass. As they descended, the wall loomed larger and higher than ever, a magnificent edifice that seemed to be part of the mountain ridge on which it had been built. As they drew closer they could see that the individual stones in the wall were very large. When Steve remembered the wall had been built entirely by human and animal labor, with no modem machinery or robots at all, it seemed even more impressive. Dusk had arrived by the time they reached the town just before the gate.
On the watchtower over the gate, and along the top of the wall, soldiers were silhouetted against the sky, all of them looking away to the north.
Steve could see that the gate was standing open. Four uniformed soldiers stood guard inside the gateway, leaning casually on their spears and looking attentively at something beyond his sight on the far side of the gate. At the sound of hoofbeats as Steve and Marcia drew near, the guards glanced idly back over their shoulders, then resumed looking through the gateway.
“What are they looking at?” Steve asked. He could hear the shouts of men and the thunder of many hooves in the distance. “Sounds like a lot of riders. Whatever it is, the sentries don’t seem to be alarmed by it.”
“I have no idea.”
“Let’s go see.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Marcia shook her head vigorously. “No.”
“Come on, why not? You’ve been here before, but I haven’t. I want to see the wall up close. Do you think we can go up in one of the towers?”
“No!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Look, it’s a tourist attraction only in our time,” Marcia said anxiously. “I wouldn’t ask these soldiers just to show us around.”
“Why not?”
“To use a modern phrase, this is a functioning military installation, even if it’s not as important now as it used to be.” Marcia lapsed into her lecturing tone again. “And we aren’t Mongols; they see the Chinese as a conquered people. Asking to go up in the tower could raise the suspicion that we might attempt sabotage or espionage in some form.”
“Even an ordinary couple like us?”
“As soon as we ask to tour the watchtower, we won’t be ordinary anymore. We’ll look very odd. Like I said, this is not a place for tourists in this time.”
“Well … I see.”
“Good.”
“But we can still go find out what they’re looking at. I mean, the gate’s standing wide open.”
“I don’t think we should.”
“Well, look, we have to ask someone about the Polos anyway. They should know. Come on.” Steve kicked his mount and rode up to the gate.
“Well, be careful.” Shaking her head, Marcia followed him reluctantly.
“Should we speak Mongol to them?”
“No. Judging by their armor and their weapons, they’re Chinese.”
“They are?”
“Even under the khan, the Mongol armies and the Chinese armies are distinct.”
“Why don’t they have just the Mongol army now, if the khan is worried about the Chinese rebelling?”
“The Mongol army alone isn’t big enough to garrison the whole Chinese empire. The khan needs the Chinese army for that. The Chinese army is controlled by generals put in place by the khan, as Emperor of China.”
“Oh. Well, okay. I get the idea.” Steve felt that if he was polite and careful, he could at least see what had caught the attention of the sentries. Besides, if the Polos had passed through the gate, the sentries were the ones to ask.
As he reined in at the gate, the sentries turned to look up at him. All four were stocky, muscular young men. They seemed more resigned than wary.
“What is your business here?” One sentry, marginally taller than the others, straightened up.
“I have heard that the Polo family took this road in the last day or so,” said Steve. “Marco Polo and his father and uncle. I seek them.”
The other three guards also drew themselves up, suddenly interested. The Polo name obviously carried some importance. However, all four sentries looked at each other and shook their heads.
“They have not come this way recently,” said the first sentry politely. “We know their name, because they are favored by the Emperor. We have seen them on this road in past years, but not recently.”
Steve was startled, but he nodded courteously. He suddenly realized that Xiao Li’s story had been a falsehood from beginning to end. As soon as he could report to Hunter without local witnesses, he would.
Behind him, Marcia sighed audibly.
Steve pointed through the open gateway. Several large groups of men were riding in the distance, across patches of rugged, steeply sloped steppe surrounded by forest. “Who are they? What are they doing?”
The sentry frowned. “A local Mongol battalion has camped just outside the wall. They are practicing maneuvers, no more. After all, we are many miles from the borders of the Emperor’s empire here.”
“Really?” Apparently more comfortable now, Marcia rode up closer to Steve and looked out, too.
Steve could see hundreds of riders moving together in one group, their banners flying on upright lances.
In the distance behind them, a separate group was wheeling about, riding through a sharp turn. A third group of riders stood on a far hill, unmoving.
“That looks like fun,” said Steve.
“Don’t you dare,” Marcia whispered loudly.
“Calm down.” He grinned. “I’m not going out there. But I used to ride out in the Mojave Desert. My favorite horse was a half-quarter horse, half-Arabian mare.”
“These are Mongol horses.”
“I know. Arabians have more delicate features and more high-strung temperaments. But both are small, hardy desert breeds.”
“You still have your horse?” She looked at him with a new curiosity.
“No. I don’t have any of them now. But I miss that one the most.” He nodded to the sentries and reined his mount around. “Come on.”
Steve rode a short distance away from the sentries and all the small buildings in the little settlement.
Marcia followed him. When he was out of the hearing of everyone else, he leaned close to Marcia.
“We’ll pretend we’re talking to each other, since people can see us. I’m calling Hunter.”
“All right.”
“Hunter, Steve here.”
For once, Hunter did not answer.
“Hunter, you there?”
Marcia’s eyes widened as she looked at Steve.
“Hunter?”
Only static hissed quietly from the lapel pin.
“Maybe my transmitter’s broken,” said Steve. “Try calling him on yours.”
Marcia switched on her pin. “Hunter? Marcia calling. Steve and I have reached the Great Wall.”
She, too, received only static and shut it off. “What do you think happened?”
Steve turned to look back the way they had come. “Maybe nothing. He was about a half day’s ride behind us, and we’ve come through some very rugged country, much rougher than the ground we covered yesterday. The mountains block radio signals. He’s probably still coming.”
“Then why could we communicate last night?”
“It depends on the configuration of the mountains and passes. The signal can bounce, too. It’s impossible to predict exactly where it will go.”
“Then you think he’s still coming?”
“Yeah.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Steve looked at the sky. The sun had gone behind the mountains, and the sky was reddening with sunset. The air had abruptly chilled even in the brief time since they had arrived at
the gate.
Marcia waited, looking back up the road as though she hoped to see Hunter.
“Well, I guess we wasted a lot of time coming here,” said Steve.
“You think the Polos turned off the road somewhere along the way?”
“No,” said Steve. “If you remember, we haven’t passed any forks today.”
“I saw some paths. Hunting trails, most likely. These mountains provide game for the emperors.”
“I don’t think the Polos came this way at all. Xiao Li must have pulled a fast one from the very start. I should have figured that out last night, but so much was going on, I never thought it all through.”
“None of us did, with Jane and Hunter being carried off,” said Marcia. “But, as I asked you a moment ago, what are we going to do?”
“I guess we can take a room — two if you prefer — for the night. Hunter should arrive sometime later.
Tomorrow, we can go back to Khanbaliq.”
“Oh, no. Some of the same people must be here in one of the inns. — the people who kidnapped Hunter and Jane.”
“Well … that’s true.” Steve looked around. The little town had three inns with stables, some small houses, and seven taverns. “This is a strange place.”
“Yes, it’s just a road stop, really. Travelers would account for the number of inns, of course. But only the garrison of guards on the Great Wall could support that many taverns in a settlement this size.”
“Do they live in the houses?”
“No. They’re garrisoned in the towers along the wall. The houses must be owned by some well-to-do tavern owners or innkeepers who can live separately from their businesses.” She shrugged. “Hard to tell, really.”
“Look, that group of travelers stayed together all day. At least, every time I saw them, they were still together. If they’ve taken rooms in the same inn, then we have two others where we can stay.”
“But they might have split up. Besides, how are we going to know where they are?”
“Come on.”
Steve reined his horse back around and rode to the nearest inn, where he stopped with Marcia outside the stable. Most of the horses were out of sight, but the hostler was grooming one. Steve had been hoping to recognize the horses belonging to the other group, but he had not taken any special notice of them yesterday.