by Joe Corso
“Now that the bracelets are off your wrists, do you think that you can get us back home?”
“I don’t know. I feel strange without them on, that’s for sure. But I don’t quite feel myself yet either, and that’s a problem for me. I tried creating a portal, but I had no luck. I really don’t understand what’s happened to me. I thought that without the bracelets on, it would have been a piece of cake to create a portal to take us home. Look, what I wanted to tell you was we have to find the portal that took us here. It’s been my experience that the portals manifest themselves in pairs of two or more, but never just one. I believe when we find that portal, we’ll find its mate somewhere close to it.”
“Hell, if that’s the case, then what are we waiting for,” Dukie said excitedly.
“Not so fast,” Lucky replied. “We have to first pay our respects to Rufio. After all, he did welcome us into his home, fed and clothed us, and gave us a room to sleep in. And don’t forget he also had his blacksmith Hermann take the bracelets off of my wrists. Let’s stay another night and tomorrow morning, we’ll ask him to have someone take us back to where we killed the boars. It’s a straight run through the deer path, so I don’t think we’ll have a problem finding the portal.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Nicky said.
“Yeah and it gives me another night to romance Tia,” Dukie happily murmured, causing eyebrows to be raised.
“Romancing Tia?” both Lucky and Nicky vocalized, wondering where Dukie found the time to romance the pretty Tia.
That night, Lucky lay in bed, thinking about the titanium bracelets Mueller had put on his wrists. They were things of beauty, and a lot of intelligent thought went into their creation, and they were designed just for one purpose. And that was to neutralize Lucky’s ability to create a portal. He remembered the feeling he had when he bonded with the energy coursing through the circuitry in the bracelet, and then feeling it flow out of the bracelet and through his body . . . and he thought; through my consciousness. That energy still remained within him. No one could have figured on this unintended consequence happening, not even Mueller. Unintended consequences happen sometimes when you are dealing with the unknown. Lucky’s father once told him that when the first atomic bomb was being tested in New Mexico, the designers of the bomb were afraid that by exploding the bomb, it could trigger a chain reaction, which would cause greater destruction. It never happened, but that was what the scientists were looking at - an unintended consequence. There was no question about it. The bracelets had upset his vibratory frequency, and by doing that, they upset his evolution towards whatever it was that God was leading him. Then he thought about it for a minute. If this was happening, then this must also be part of God’s plan. Not that Lucky was ever a believer in a so-called God. But things had been happening to him. Unexplainable things - like being able to see the time portals, and being able to use them to take him where he wanted to go in the past. He had evolved to a point where he could alter his body’s vibratory frequency to where he could walk through a so-called solid substance like a wall or door. He was still the reckless, devil-may-care tough guy he always was, but now he added the possibility of an all-powerful, all knowing God into his core thinking. He slept a little sounder this night, because somehow, he knew that everything would be all right.
Even though the three of them learned that the Romans only ate one meal a day and didn’t believe in breakfast or lunch, the boys made their way to the kitchen, where Lucky and Nicky met a smiling Dukie waiting for them, holding a pan of freshly baked bread. He told the cooks to bake an extra loaf of bread, and pour three jugs of cold goat’s milk for him and his friends.
“What would you guys do without me? I’ll tell you what you’d do. You’d starve,” he said jokingly. Nicky took a sip of the goat’s milk and winced.
“Don’t you guys tell anyone that I drank goat’s milk. Ya hear?”
When they finished their meal, they made their way to the inner vestibule, where a slave told them that Rufio Albio was entertaining some friends. A servant approached Rufio, and told him the three strangers would like a word with him. He nodded, turned, and looked toward the waiting room, and seeing his three guests, he smiled and waved for them to enter. Lucky explained to him that they would be leaving today if his plan worked out, but he needed a guide, someone to take them back to the spot where they killed the boars. Lucky told Rufio that he had to find a portal, or doorway that would take him home, and he could only do that by finding other portals. He tried hard to communicate to him that he needed to find a way home.
“I have you to thank for the bracelets being removed.”
Rufio waved his hand in dismissal. He wanted to hear more about the portals Lucky mentioned.
“I was glad to be of some small service to you; now please continue what you were saying. Your story fascinates me.”
Lucky told Rufio, that when a portal manifests itself, there is always a second one nearby. He needed to find that second portal if he had any chance of finding his way home.
“Come; I will take you myself. I know the area where you killed the animals. In fact, I know every inch of my property, having hunted and explored every cubit of it. We’ll take horses; it’s quicker that way. Then, if you are successful in finding your portal, I will take your horses back with me.”
He signaled to his slave. “Go to the stable and tell the stable master to bring five horses to the front of the villa.”
“Yes, master.”
The slave left the villa and rushed to the stables. A little while later, he returned.
“The horses are ready, master.”
“Good. Come. Let’s get started. I’m anxious to see if you are successful in finding your portal.”
Lucky and his friends, Rufio, and the stable master, walked the horses slowly into the dense woods to the deer path, where the horses seemed to know where they needed to take their riders, and they took them directly to the clearing where the men killed the wild boars.
“Here we are. Now what do you want to do now?”
Lucky laughed to himself. He had come full circle. Here he was, looking for another portal just like he did when he first discovered them. It had been so easy when he could create a portal, rather than finding one, wondering where it would take him. Right now, he had no choice. He’d try creating a portal when this adventure was over, but right now, he had to find a way out of here, and finding a portal was his only hope. He just wished that it would be like it was when he first discovered them.
A portal had to show itself, but he wasn’t sure that it would; yet he knew he had to keep trying. He reasoned that he managed to create the portal that took them here, so if he could do it once, he could do it again - and again. Or until his powers returned and he could create a portal on the fly instead of always having to search for one. Rufio led the men through the foliage surrounding either side of the narrow path until they came to the portal.
“Here it is,” Lucky yelled. “Let’s start from here. I want to begin a circular search pattern starting from right here.”
Lucky had not gone more than twenty feet when he spotted the third portal. It was to the left of the path about twenty paces into it, and it lived by a large tree.
“I found it. Over here, guys.”
Rufio joined them, but he didn’t see anything unusual. Lucky walked over to him. “Rufio, before we leave, I want to thank you for your hospitality. I meant what I said. If you ever need me, meditate on my name, and I’ll hear you through the centuries. Right now, I’m very weak psychically, but I’m confident that in time I will regain my strength, and when that happens, I’ll know when you need my help. Goodbye, friend.”
Lucky turned and grabbed the arm of each of his friends and stepped into the portal and disappeared. Rufio felt privileged to have been here to witness this miracle, and he smiled, knowing that Lucky and his two friends came as he was told, from the future. But the stable master, feeling faint after witnessing three m
en disappear before his eyes, dropped to his knees either to prevent himself from passing out, or from fear of what he had just witnessed, and in supplication, he said a prayer to the Roman gods.
CHAPTER 22
1944: SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE
The men stepped out of the portal and found themselves in a pillbox, with four dead Nazi soldiers. They could hear sporadic explosions and gunfire close to them, with an occasional bullet thudding into the sandbags surrounding them. Nicky took a peek over the pillbox and shuddered. He was staring at a landscape of utter desolation straight out of Dante’s Inferno. Buildings and houses destroyed, some still in flames, the streets littered with bodies, some civilians, but mostly soldiers. The clanking of metal coming from close behind them, and the roar of an engine shook them back to reality. They ducked as a German tank rolled over their pillbox. “Lucky, get us out of here before we get killed,” Dukie yelled to him.
The tank looked enormous to Lucky as it stopped about fifteen feet from the pillbox. As he looked up at the behemoth, he noticed the tank’s turret start to turn, the swastika prominently displayed on its side. “Looks like we’re somewhere in Europe during the Second World War,” Lucky said.
Nicky pointed at the tank. “Hey, look. The kraut tank is lining up to fire at the guys pinned down over there. Can you see them?”
“Yeah, I see one of them. But what can we do about it?” Dukie said.
“I know what I’m gonna do about it. This may not be our war, but we’re still Americans, and I’m not gonna let some Goddamned kraut bastard kill any of our men if I can help it.” Nicky looked down at the dead German soldiers. “Let’s get their weapons and see if we can help those guys out.” Nicky crawled over and searched them. They had hand grenades on them; he removed all he could find, and he lobbed a few to Lucky and Dukie. He pulled lugers from the Germans’ holsters and checked the clips to make sure they were loaded, and then he tossed the boys a luger each, and pocketed the extra ammo they had on them. “Come on; let’s stop that tank. It passed right over us and they never knew we were here, so let’s surprise them and put them out of commission before they kill some more of our guys.”
The three men crawled over the pillbox and ran the few extra yards to where the tank had stopped. Its turret was turning, positioning itself for a shot. They jumped up onto the back of the tank, and they made their way towards the officer whose head was sticking out of the turret, facing a bombed out group of stores. He was pointing at the burned out store, busy screaming orders at where to fire their cannon.
Lucky hollered over the roar of the tank’s engine to pull the pins from the grenades, and then he motioned for them to drop them into the tank after they killed the officer. Nicky shot him once in the head and, as the officer fell into the tank, three hand grenades followed him down. The men quickly jumped off the tank and ran to the safety of the pillbox, and just as they hit the pillbox, the tank shuddered once, twice, three times as the grenades exploded, killing everyone inside it. Lucky hoped that killing the Germans, which was something he studiously avoided, wouldn’t affect history.
When the smoke cleared, a lone G.I. stood and waved to them as he walked out from the burned out building towards them. “Hey! Nice job. I thought it was over for me. You guys speak English?”
Nicky replied, “Yeah. We speak English.”
“I don’t see you wearing any uniforms; are you guys with army intelligence?”
Lucky shook his head. “Just passing through; we saw that you were in trouble and figured that you could use a little help.”
The American laughed. “Sheeit, I thought I was a goner. I’m sure glad that you were here to help out. But what in hell are you guys doing out here alone, with no support? I mean, you’re not soldiers; you’re civilians for Christ’s sake. Come on; tell a fellow American what you were doing out here? But before you do, let’s get out of here; a platoon of krauts passed by here a little while ago, and they may double back.”
“We’re looking for something,” Lucky said as he warily looked around for any signs of danger.
“By the way, my name is Angelo Tramonti.”
“Nice to meet you, Angelo. I’m Lucky, and these two misfits are Nicky and Dukie.”
“You sound like a New Yorker, Lucky.”
“Yeah, we’re from New York . . . Queens, New York.”
“No kidding. I’m from Queens too, Long Island City. If you take the BMT line and get off at Bliss Street, you’d practically be in my living room. Get down. I can smell krauts, and I know they’re all around us.” They hunkered down behind a log, hoping that they’d somehow make it out of the fix that they now found themselves in.
“Look Angelo. I need to know where the hell we are.”
Angelo laughed. “You mean to tell me that you don’t know where you are? I mean, come on. You’re walking around blowing up tanks and you don’t know where you are? Boy, that sure beats all.”
“Angelo. Stop with the talking and tell us where we are.”
“You’re in southern France. I’m with the First Airborne Task Force. We were supposed to rendezvous with the U.S. Seventh Army, but I got blown way off course by a rainsquall and landed in this god-forsaken forest near this bombed out town, lost and lonely. That is,” he said, smiling, “until you guys showed up. We were part of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France. It was supposed to happen on August 15, 1944. How successful it was, I have no idea, because I’m over here trying to save my ass, while the entire First Airborne, with amphibious assault by Seventh Army, along with a force of French First Army, are busy trying to liberate Southern France. Get ready. Here they come.” Angelo pulled two container cartridges from his jacket. “Look, when they get close, I’m gonna drop smoke on them.”
“Smoke?” Nicky said.
“Yeah, smoke. My old man fought in WW1 and he told me always to carry smoke with me. You never can tell when you’ll need it. So I’ve been carrying it all through the war. Get ready. When I throw the smoke grenades, we’ll make a dash around their flank over to the left.” Angelo pointed in the direction they’d make their escape to. “Got it?”
“Yeah. We got it.” The Germans weren’t aware that they had four Americans trapped when Angelo threw the smoke. During the confusion that ensued, the four men made their escape. Lucky ran through the dense smoke and he came out of the smoke into a clearing, and that was when he saw the portal. “Stop. Come back here.” Nicky and Dukie stopped running and ran back to Lucky. Angelo stopped too, but was confused. Why did they stop? he wondered. “Angelo, get over here fast.” Angelo double-timed it to where Lucky was waiting. “Hold onto Nicky’s arm.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” Angelo grabbed Nicky by the arm. “Now follow me,” Lucky ordered. The Germans heard their voices and they ran to where they thought they’d be, but no one was there.
“What the hell is happening? I can’t breathe. Get me out of here!”
“Relax, Angelo. This’ll be over in a minute.” A moment later, they stepped out onto a warm tropical paradise, complete with palm trees and ocean with clear blue water.
“What the hell just happened? Did we die and go to heaven? If we aren’t dead, then how the hell did we get here?” Angelo asked as he stared at his surroundings, bewildered.
“Look guys, why don’t you stay here and relax, while I go and look for another portal. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find one that’ll take us back home.”
“I don’t know how we got here, but I’m not one to complain.” Angelo said gleefully. “Not with all of this around me. I’m gonna take advantage of this before I wake up.” Angelo had been stripping as he talked; he was down to his skivvies and was running toward the blue waters of whatever ocean this happened to be. “I can’t wait to get this mud and dirt off of me,” he yelled back at the guys. The island wasn’t a large island. It was maybe five miles, by three or four miles. The palm trees had plenty of coconuts on them, and if they could catch some fish, that woul
d provide food for them while they were here. But Lucky wasn’t interested in remaining here. He wanted to get home, and after that, he wanted to get back to his princess and his son. It would kill him if he discovered that he had lost his powers, and couldn’t return to the 12th Century and to the woman he loved.
Lucky did what he always did when searching for a portal. He walked around the outer perimeter of the island, and then he narrowed his search area by moving inland about ten feet. He would continue doing this until either he ran out of search area, or he found his portal. Like his name, he was lucky, because before he walked one mile, he found a pair of portals. While his friends and new buddy Angelo were cavorting in the crystal clear blue waters surrounding the island, he decided to see what was on the other end of the portals. He stepped into the closest one, took baby steps to the other end, and looked out. He was in ancient Japan. Two women wearing colorful kimonos and men dressed in traditional Japanese clothing walked along the dirt road. The women were clacking along in their gators, or wooden shoes, which gave them a sort of short slide step, very feminine and unique to the Japanese. Then he noticed four men wearing swords, a long sword, and a shorter one. They must be samurai, he thought. They walked along the dirt road with a swagger that told people to get out of their way. You dared not incur their wrath because they didn’t need much of a reason to start a fight. The four men could have been Ronins, samurai without a master, and a samurai without a master was dangerous, because they could kill at the least provocation. Lucky was determined to chance a look behind him, to see if there was anything that might tell him where he was, but he had to wait until the samurai passed the portal. It seemed like an hour but it was no more than a few minutes before the two women, and the four samurai passed by him, without being aware that a stranger from the future had been observing them. They passed him, and he had a moment where no one was in sight, so he stepped out of the portal and looked behind him and he noticed a painted sign saying “EDO” with an arrow pointing the way. Edo, he knew, was ancient Tokyo. He chanced another look to see if a portal was anywhere near him. Nothing. There were no portals that he could see, so he stepped back into the portal and remained there a few minutes to watch the Japanese women as they walked past him, chatting. They hadn’t changed much through the centuries from when he was stationed near Tokyo while in the army. He admired their femininity and grace and it seemed to confirm his belief that Japanese women were the ideal women. They were taught how to please a man, they were feminine, and they were the most loyal women in the world. But unfortunately, he couldn’t take advantage of that fact even if he wanted to because he didn’t speak the language fluently. Just a few words and possibly a sentence or two. Besides, he had his princess, whom he loved more than any woman he had ever been with. He shook his head and backed out of the portal.