The Corridors of Time

by Poul Anderson

  Lockridge fell into step with her. A couple of miles went by in footfalls through the blowing grass, among the scattered groves. Save for an occasional giant, spared because it was holy, these coastal trees were not oak but ash, elm, pine, and especially beech, another tall invader that had begun to encroach on Jutland.

  As the trail rounded such a stand, Lockridge saw a goat flock some distance off. Two preadolescent boys, naked, sun-darkened, with shocks of bleached hair, were keeping watch. One played a bone flute, another dangled his legs from a branch. But when they spied the newcomers, a yell rose from them. The first boy pelted down the trail, the second rocketed up the tree and vanished in leafage.

  Storm nodded. ‘Yes, they have some reason to fear trouble. Matters were not so before.’

  Lockridge pseudo-remembered what life had been for the Tenil Orugaray: peace, hospitality, bouts of hard work separated by long easy intervals when one practiced the arts of amber shaping, music, dance, love, the chase, and simple idleness; only the friendliest rivalry between the fisher settlements scattered along this coast, whose people were all intricately related anyway; only contact for trade with the full-time farmers inland. Not that these folk were weaklings. They hunted wisent, bear, and wild boar, broke new ground with pointed sticks, dragged rocks cross-country to build their dolmens and the still bigger, more modern passage graves; they survived winters when gales drove sleet and snow and the sea itself out of the west against them; their skin boats pursued seal and porpoise beyond the bay, which was open in this era, and often crossed the North Sea to trade in England or Flanders. But nothing like war – hardly ever even murder – had been known until the chariot drivers arrived.

  ‘Storm,’ he asked slowly, ‘did you start the cult of the Goddess to get the idea of peace into men?’

  Her nostrils dilated and she spoke almost in scorn. ‘The Goddess is triune: Maiden, Mother, and Queen of Death.’ Jarred, he heard the rest dimly. ‘Life has its terrible side. How well do you think those weak-tea-and-social-work clubs you call Protestant churches will survive what lies ahead for your age? In the bull dance of Crete, those who die are considered sacrifices to the Powers. The megalith builders of Denmark – not here, where the faith has entered a still older culture, but elsewhere – kill and eat a man each year.’ She observed his shock, smiled, and patted his hand. ‘Don’t take it so hard, Malcolm. I had to use what human material there was. And war for abstractions like power, plunder, glory, that is alien to Her.’

  He could not argue, could do no more than accept, when she addressed him thus. But he remained silent for the next half hour.

  By that time they were among fields. Guarded by thorn fences, emmer, spelt, and barley had just begun to sprout, misty green over the dark earth. Just a few score acres were under cultivation – communally, as the sheep, goats, and wood-ranging pigs, though not the oxen, were kept – and the women who might ordinarily have been out weeding were not in sight. Otherwise, unfenced pastures reached on either hand. Ahead blinked the bright sheet of the Limfjord. A grove hid the village, but smoke rose above.

  Several men jogtrotted thence. They were big-boned and fair, clad similarly to Lockridge, their hair braided and beards haggled short. Some had wicker shields, vividly painted. Their weapons were flint-tipped spears, bows, daggers, and slings.

  Storm halted and raised empty hands. Lockridge did likewise. Seeing the gesture and the dress, the village men eased off noticeably. But as they approached, an uncertainty came over them. They shuffled their feet, dropped their eyes, and finally stopped.

  They don’t know exactly who or what she is, Lockridge thought, but there’s always that about her.

  ‘In every name of Her,’ Storm said, ‘we come friends.’

  The leader gathered courage and advanced. He was a heavyset, grizzled man, face weathered and eyes crow-footed by a lifetime at sea. His necklace included a pair of walrus tusks, and a bracelet of trade copper gleamed on one burly wrist. ‘Then in Her names,’ he rumbled, ‘and in mine, Echegon whose mother was Ularu and who leads in council, be you welcome.’

  Thus jogged, Lockridge’s new memory sent him off into a professional analysis of what had been implied. The names given were genuine – no secret was made of the real ones for fear of magic – and came from an interpretation by Avildaro’s Wise Woman of whatever dreams one had during the puberty rites. ‘Welcome’ meant more than formal politeness: the guest was sacred and could ask for anything short of participation in the special clan rituals. But of course he kept his demands within reason, if only because he might be host next time around.

  With a fraction of his awareness, Lockridge listened to Storm’s explanation as the party walked shoreward. She and her companion were travelers from the South (the far-off exotic South whence all wonders came – but about which the shrewder men were surprisingly well-informed) who had gotten separated from their party. They wished to abide in Avildaro until they could get passage home. Once established, she hinted, they would make rich gifts.

  The fishermen relaxed still more. If these were a goddess and her attendant wandering incognito, at least they proposed to act like ordinary human beings. And their stories would enliven many an evening; envious visitors would come from miles around, to hear and see and bring home the importance of Avildaro; their presence might influence the Yuthoaz, whose scouts had lately been observed, to keep away. The group entered the village with much boisterous talk and merriment.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Auri, whose name meant Flower Feather, had said: ‘Do you truly wish to see the fowl marshes? I could be your guide.’

  Lockridge had rubbed his chin, where the bristles were now a short beard, and glanced at Echegon. He expected anything from shocked disapproval to an indulgent chuckle. Instead, the headman fairly leaped at the chance, almost pathetically eager to send his daughter on a picnic with his guest. Lockridge wasn’t sure why.

  Storm refused an invitation to join them, to Auri’s evident relief. The girl was more than a little frightened of the dark woman who held herself so aloof and spent so much time alone in the forest. Storm admitted to Lockridge that this was as much to confirm her own mana in the eyes of the tribe as for any other reason; but she seemed to have withdrawn from him too, he hadn’t seen a lot of her during the week and a half they had dwelt in Avildaro. Though he was too fascinated by what he experienced to feel deeply hurt, it had nonetheless reminded him what a gulf there was between them.

  Now, as the sun declined, he dug in his paddle and sent the canoe homeward.

  This was not one of the big skin coracles which went outside the Limfjord. He had already been on a seal hunt in one of those, a breakneck, bloody affair with a crew that whooped and sang and made horseplay amidst the long gray waves. Awkward with abone-tipped harpoon, he got back respect when they hoisted the felt sail; steersmanship was not hard for one who had used the much trickier fore-and-aft rig of a twentieth-century racer. His canoe today was merely a light dugout with wicker bulwarks, calling for no more care than a green branch tied at the bow to keep the gods of the wet under control.

  Still, reedy, but aswarm with ducks, geese, swans, storks, herons, the marsh fell behind. Lockridge paralleled the southern bayshore, which sloped in a greenness turned gold by the long light. On his left, the water shimmered to the horizon, disturbed only by a few circling gulls and the occasional leap of a fish. So quiet was the air that those remote sounds came almost as clear as the swirl and drip from his paddle. He caught a mingled smell of earth and salt, forest and kelp. The sky arched cloudless, deep blue, darkening toward evening above Auri’s head where she sat in the bows.

  Whoof! Lockridge thought. A nice day, but am I glad to be out of those mosquitoes! They didn’t bother her any … well, I reckon these natives are bitten so often they develop immunity.

  His itches weren’t too bad, though, not even the unsatisfiable itch for a cigarette; and what he felt was compensated for by the sense of water turned alive by his stroke
s and the rubbery resurgence of his muscles. Also, of course, by having a pretty girl along.

  ‘Did you find pleasure in the day?’ she asked shyly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Thanks so much for taking me.’

  She looked astonished, and he recalled that the Tenil Orugaray, like the Navajo, spoke thanks only for very great favors. Everyday helpfulness was taken for granted. The diaglossa made him fluent in their language but didn’t override long-established habits.

  Color stained her face and throat and bare young bosom. She dropped her eyes and murmured, ‘No, I must thank you.’

  He considered her. They didn’t keep track of birthdays here, but Auri was so slim, with such an endearing coltishness in her movements, that he supposed she was about fifteen. At that, he wondered why she was still a virgin. Other girls, wedded or not, enjoyed even younger a Samoan sort of liberty.

  Naturally, he wouldn’t dream of jeopardizing his position here by getting forward with the sole surviving female child in his host’s house. More important yet was honor – and inhibition, no doubts He’d already refused the advances of some he felt were too young; they had plenty of older sisters. Auri’s innocence came to him like a breeze from the hawthorns flowering behind her home.

  He must admit being a wee bit tempted. She was cute: immense blue eyes, freckle-dusted snub nose, soft mouth, the unbound hair of a maiden flowing in flaxen waves from under a garland of primroses and down her back. And she hung around him in the village to a downright embarrassing extent. However.

  ‘You have nothing to thank me for, Auri,’ Lockridge said. ‘You and yours have shown me more kindness than I deserve.’

  ‘No, but much!’ she protested. ‘You bless me.’

  ‘How so? I have done nothing.’

  Her fingers twisted together and she looked into her lap. It was so difficult for her to explain that he wished he hadn’t asked, but he couldn’t think of a way to stop her.

  The story was simple. Among the Tenile Orugaray a maiden was sacred, inviolable. But when she herself felt the time had come, she named a man to initiate her at the spring sowing festival, a tender and awesome rite. Auri’s chosen had drowned at sea a few days before their moment. Clearly the Powers were angry, and the Wise Woman decided that, in addition to being purified, she must remain alone until the curse was somehow removed. That was more than a year ago.

  It was a serious matter for her father (or, at least, the head of her household; paternity was anyone’s guess in this culture) – and, he being headman, for the tribe. While no women who were not grandmothers sat in council, the sexes had essentially equal rights, and descent was matrilineal. If Auri died childless, what became of the inheritance? As for herself, she was not precisely shunned, but there had been a bitter year of being left out of almost everything.

  When the strangers came, bearing unheard-of marvels and bestowing some as gifts, that appeared to be a sign. The Wise Woman cast beech chips in the darkness of her hut and told Echegon that this was indeed so. Great and unknown Powers indwelt in The Storm and her (Her?) attendant Malcolm. By favoring Echegon’s house, they drew off evil. Today, when Malcolm himself had not scorned to go out on the ever-treacherous water with Auri —

  ‘You could not stay?’ she pleaded. ‘If you honored me next spring, I would be … more than a woman. The curse would change to a blessing upon me.’

  His cheeks burned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as kindly as might be. ‘We cannot wait, but must be gone with the first ship.’

  She bent her head and caught her lip between white teeth.

  ‘But I shall certainly see that the ban is removed,’ he promised. ‘Tomorrow I will confer with the Wise Woman. Between us, she and I can doubtless find a way.’

  Auri wiped away some tears and gave him an uncertain smile. ‘Thank you. I still wish you could remain – or come back in spring? But if you give me my life again—’ She gulped. ‘There are no words to thank you for that.’

  How cheaply one became a god.

  Trying to put her at ease, he turned the talk to matters that were commonplace for her. She was so surprised that he should ask about potterymaking, which was woman’s work, that she quite forgot her troubles, especially since she was reckoned good at fashioning the handsome ware he had admired. It led her to remember the amber harvest: ‘When we go out after a storm,’ she said breathlessly, eyes alight, ‘the whole people, out on the dunes to gather what has washed ashore … oh, then is a merry time, and the fish and oysters we bake! Why do you not raise a storm while you are here, Malcolm, so you may have the fun too? I will show you a place I know where the gulls come to your hand for food, and we will swim in the breakers after floating chunks, and, and everything!’

  ‘I fear the weather is beyond my control,’ he said. ‘I am only a man, Auri. I have some powers, yes, but they are not really great.’

  ‘I think you can do everything.’

  ‘Uh … um … this amber. You gather it mostly for trade, do you not?’

  The bright head nodded. ‘The inlanders want it, and the folk beyond the westward sea, and the ship people from the South.’

  ‘Do you also trade flint?’ He knew the answer, having spent hours watching a master at work: chips flew from his stone anvil, against his leather apron, with sparks and sulfury smell and deep-toned ring of blows, and a thing of beauty grew beneath the gnarled old hands. But Lockridge wanted to keep the talk light. Auri’s laugh was so good to hear.

  ‘Yes, tools we sell too, though only inland,’ she said. ‘If the ship calls somewhere else than Avildaro, may I go with you to see it?’

  ‘Well… surely, if no one objects.’

  ‘I would like to go with you to the South,’ she said wistfully.

  He thought of her in a Cretan slave market, or puzzled and lost in his own world of machines and sighed. ‘No, that cannot be. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I knew it.’ Her tone was quiet, with no trace of self-pity. One learned in the Neolithic to accept what was. Even her long isolation in the shadow of wrath had not broken her capacity for joy.

  He looked at her, where she sat supple and sun-browned with one hand trailing in the clucking water, and wondered what her destiny was. History would forget the Tenil Orugaray, they would be no more than a few relics dredged out of bogs; before then, she would be down in dust, and when her grandchildren perished – if she lived long enough to have any, in this world of wild beasts and wilder men, storm, flood, uncurable sicknesses and implacable gods – the last memory of her gentleness would flicker out forever.

  He saw her few years of youth, when she could outrun deer and spend the whole light summer night giving and getting kisses; the children that would come and come and come, because so many died that every woman must bear the utmost she was able lest the tribe itself die; the middle years, when she was honored as the matron of the headman’s house, watched sons and daughters grow up and her own strength fade; age, when she gave the council what wisdom she had reaped, while the world closed in with blindness, deafness, toothlessness, rheumatism, arthritis, and the only time left her was in the half-remembered past; the final sight of her, grown small and strange, down into the passage grave through the roofhole that meant birth; and for some years, sacrifices before the tomb and shudders at night when the wind whimpered outside the house, for it might be her ghost returning; and darkness.

  He saw her four thousand years hence and four thousand miles westward: cramped over a school desk; dragging out an adolescence bored, useless, titillated and frustrated; marrying a man, or a series of men, whose work was to sell what nobody needed or really wanted – marrying also a mortgage and a commuter’s iron schedule; sacrificing all but two weeks a year of carefully measured freedom in order to buy the silly gadgets and pay the vindictive taxes; breathing smoke and dust and poison; sitting in a car, at a bridge table, in a beauty parlor, before a television, the spring gone from her body and the teeth rotten in her mouth before she was twenty; living in the hear
tland of liberty, the strongest nation earth had yet known, while it crawled from the march of the tyrants and the barbarians; living in horror of cancer, heart failure, mental disease, and the final nuclear flame.

  Lockridge cut off the vision. He was being unjust to his own age, he knew – and to this one as well. Life was physically harder in some places, harder on the spirit in others, and sometimes it destroyed both. At most, the gods gave only a little happiness; the rest was merely existence. Taken altogether, he didn’t think they were less generous here and now than they had been to him. And here was where Auri belonged.

  ‘You think much,’ she said timidly.

  He started and missed a stroke. Clear drops showered from the paddle, agleam in the level light. ‘Why, no,’ he said. ‘I was only wandering.’

  Again he misused the idiom. The spirit that wandered in thought or in dream, could enter strange realms. She regarded him with reverence. After a while when nothing but the canoe’s passage and the far-off cries of homing geese broke the stillness, she asked low. ‘May I call you Lynx?’

  He blinked.

  ‘I do not understand your name Malcolm,’ she explained. ‘So it is a strong magic, too strong for me. But you are like a big golden lynx.’

  ‘Why – why —’ However childish, the gesture touched him. ‘If you want. But I don’t think Flower Feather could be bettered.’