The Corridors of Time

by Poul Anderson

  ‘Are you afraid of me, Lynx?’

  ‘No, of course not. We’ve been through too much together.’

  Auri hugged him close. Face buried on his shoulder, she stammered, ‘If I were yours, they, they, they would know that was right. They would know this was the Goddess’ will which had been fulfilled. I would have a place among them again. Would I not?’

  He dared not confess she was entirely correct. She would always have a special standing. But once her new unguessable destiny was no longer potential but actual, for the whole world to see, awe would be lost in ordinariness and she be granted plain, easy friendship.

  ‘I don’t think any other man will ever dare touch me,’ Auri said. ‘But that’s best. I don’t want anyone but you.’

  Damnation, you idiot! Lockridge raged at himself. Forget her age. She’s no American highschooler. She’s seen birth and love and death her whole life, she’s run free in woods where there are wolves and paddled skin boats through storms, she’s ground grain with stones and dressed skins with her teeth, she’s outlived sickness. North Sea winters, a war, a trip that’d have had most grown men gibberin’. Girls younger than she is – and she’s older than Shakespeare’s Juliet – are already mothers. Can’t you set aside your stupid inhibitions and do her this one kindness?

  No. That day in the skiff, he had come very close to surrender. Now he faced dreadfulness. He could only hold to his course by keeping his mind filled with Storm. If he came back alive, he would demand as his payment that she let him forsake all else and follow her. He knew she was indifferent to what he might do with any chance-met female. But he no longer was. He couldn’t be.

  ‘Auri,’ he said, cursing his own gaucherie, ‘my work is not done. I must depart soon, on Her business, and I don’t know if I will ever return.’

  She gasped, clutched herself to him and wept until both their bodies shook. ‘Take me with you! Take me with you?’

  A shadow fell across them. Lockridge looked up. Storm stood watching. She carried the Wise Woman’s staff, wreathed with hawthorn; she must have gone forth to bless the people now hers. Dark hair, dress of ocean, cloak of rain, fluttered in a sudden gust, around the tall form.

  Her smile was unreadable, but not like the one she had bestowed on him in the Long House. ‘I think,’ she said with an edge to her tone, ‘I shall grant the child her wish.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hu the Warden did not expect trouble on his way home. Lock-ridge was certain to reach Brann, during the interval between Storm’s departure for the twentieth century and her enemy’s devastating counterblow. That fact was in the structure of the universe.

  However, details were unknown. (Like the aftermath, Lockridge thought bleakly. Did he or did he not get back alive? The margin of error in a gate made it unfeasible to check that in advance.) If nothing else, Ranger agents who observed Hu’s party might deduce too much. He proceeded with caution.

  Even by daylight, unpursued, in the company of a hero and a god, Auri was terrified of the tomb entrance to the corridor. Lockridge saw how forlornly she stiffened her back and said, ‘Be brave this one more time, as you were before.’

  She gave him a shaken, grateful smile.

  He had protested Storm’s decree. But the Warden queen dropped her imperiousness and said mildly, ‘We have to get accurate data on this culture. Not mere anthropological notes; the psyche must be understood in depth, or we can make some terrible mistakes in dealing with them as closely as I now plan to. Skilled specialists can learn much by observing a typical member of a primitive society exposed to civilization. So why not herself? She can’t be more hurt than she has been. Would you put someone else in her anomalous position?’ He couldn’t argue.

  The earth opened. The three descended.

  They met no one on their trip futureward. But Hu took them out in the seventh century A.D. ‘At this gate, Frodhi rules the Danish islands,’ he explained. ‘Also here on the mainland is peace, and the Vanir – the older gods of earth and water – are still at least coequal with the Aesir. A little further on, the Rangers will drive us back and the Vikings begin to sail. We are too likely to encounter enemy agents in that part of the bore.’

  Remembering those he had fought, Lockridge grimaced.

  Winter lay on the world outside, snow crusted between the bare trees of a forest still enormous, the sky cold and featurelessly gray. ‘We can move at once,’ Hu decided, ‘safe from ground observation. Not that it matters if some native spies us. However—’ He touched the controls of his gravity belt. They lifted.

  ‘Lynx, where are we?’ Auri exclaimed. ‘There cannot be so much beauty!’

  Lockridge, used to the spectacle of clouds seen like blue-shadowed white mountains from above, had more interest in why they flew warm through this frigid air. Some radiant-heating gimmick? But watching the girl’s eyes grow bright, Lockridge envied her a little. And the rebirth of her laugh heartened him.

  Denmark fell behind. Germany, frontier land of Christendom, was hidden by the same vapor mass until, after an hour, the Alps stood forth sharp on the world’s rim. Hu got his bearings and presently took his followers down below the overcast. Lockridge glimpsed a village, sod-roofed timber cabins within a stockade in the middle of an otherwise empty winterscape. The ground was hilly, rivers ran black across a thin snow blanket, ice rimmed every lake. One day this would be called Bavaria.

  Hu went as quickly as he could on a slant toward a certain high ridge. When they were down, he gusted a quite human sigh of relief. ‘Home!’ he said.

  Lockridge looked about. Craggy and gloomy, the wilderness pressed in on him. ‘Well, everyone to his own taste.’

  Hu’s chiseled features reflected annoyance. ‘This is the Koriach’s land: an estate of hers in the future, and therefore hers throughout the whole of time. No fewer than seven corridors were established hereabouts. One has a gate on this quarter century.’

  ‘But not on my own period, eh? So she couldn’t have gone to Germany from America. I wonder, though, why she didn’t figure to head back from Neolithic Denmark by this route, instead of via Crete.’

  ‘Use your brain!’ Hu snapped. ‘After meeting those Rangers in that corridor – you were there, you should know – she estimated too great a probability of doing so again. Only now, when we have Brann, is this a reasonably safe course to follow.’ He walked off. Lockridge and Auri came after, the girl shivering. Her bare feet made the frozen ground creak.

  ‘Hey, that’s not good,’ Lockridge said. ‘Here.’ He picked her up. She snuggled happily against him.

  They hadn’t far to go. Within a shallow cave, Hu opened the ground. Light from a ramp mingled with the dull day-glow.

  They rode to tomorrow in silence that made the throb of energies seem the louder. Once they transferred, passing through a gate into a tunnel which, physically, existed in the twenty-third century, and so through another gate into the corridor Hu wanted. Lockridge’s pulse accelerated and his palate went dry.

  At the end, beyond the threshold, he found an anteroom more spacious than any other he had seen. The floor was richly carpeted; red drapes hung between multitudinous lockers. Four guards in green brought guns to brows, a salute, when Hu appeared. They were unlike him but curiously similar to each other: short, squat, flat-nosed and heavy-jawed.

  Hu ignored them, searched in a cabinet, and extended two diaglossas. Lockridge removed his from the Reformation period, to make room in that ear. ‘I will take it,’ Hu said.

  ‘No, I’ll hang on to it,’ Lockridge replied. ‘I’ll want to talk with my buddy Jesper again.’

  ‘Do you understand me?’ Hu said. ‘I gave you an order.’ The guards moved near.

  Lockridge lost his temper. ‘You know what you can do with your orders,’ he said. ‘If you understand me. I’m her man – nobody else’s.’

  Almost, the Warden came to attention. His face blanked. ‘As you wish.’

  Lockridge pursued his little victory. ‘You can also f
urnish me a pair of pants. This Neolithic rig hasn’t got pockets.’

  ‘You will receive a pouchbelt. Come along… please.’

  The guards had not followed the exchange, which was in Cretan. But it was disturbing how they sensed what had happened and shrank back. Lockridge inserted the new diaglossa and activated his mind in the way he had somewhat mastered to bring forth specific information.

  Languages: two major ones, Eastern and Western, Warden and Ranger; others survived among the lower classes of either hegemony. Religion: here a mystical, ritualistic pantheism, with Her the symbol and embodiment of all that was divine; among the enemy, only a harsh materialistic theory of history. Government: he was sickened by the rush of data on Ranger lands, underlings made into flesh-and-blood machines for the use of a few overlords. Not much came to him concerning the Wardens. This was clearly not a democracy, but he got the impression of a benevolent hierarchical structure, its law derived rather from tradition than from formal innovation, power divided among aristocrats who were at one with their people, more like priests or parents than masters. Priestesses, mothers, mistresses? Women dominated. At the apex were the Koriachs, who were – well – something in between a Pope and a Dalai Lama? No, not that either. Odd, how sketchy the account was. Maybe because visitors got the local scene explained to them viva voce.

  The palace opened before Lockridge and he forgot his doubts.

  They hadn’t taken the ramp, but floated up a shaft to emerge high in the great building. A floor bluish green, where inlaid patterns of bird, fish, serpent, and flower seemed nearly alive, shone acre-wide. It was warm and soft underfoot. Columns built from jade and coral soared to a height he could scarcely believe. Their capitals exploded in a riot of jeweled foliage. But no less lovely were the plants that grew between them and around a central fountain. He recognized little in those crimson, purple, golden, sweet-scented banks; a science two thousand years beyond his had created new joy. The vaulted roof was colored transparency, the whole rainbow melted into a mandala that caught the eye and bespoke infinitude, no cathedral window had been so grave and gorgeous. The walls were clear. He saw through them to a landscape of gardens, terraces, orchards, parks, the hills were aglow with summer. And … what was that enormous curve-tusked majesty, walking out from among the trees, dwarfing the deer herd … a mammoth, brought across twenty millennia for a sign of Her awesomeness?

  Seven youths and seven maidens, alike as twins, slim and beautiful in their nudity, bent the knee to Hu. ‘Welcome,’ they chorused. ‘Welcome, you who serve the Mystery.’

  Only one evening dared the Wardens grant Lockridge before he went on his mission. Too many spies were about, they explained.

  Luxuriously robed, he sat with Auri in a thing neither chair nor couch, that fitted itself to every changeable contour of their bodies, and feasted on foods unknown to him, untellably delicious. The wine was as rare, and turned the world into dreamlike happiness. ‘Is this drugged?’ he asked, and Hu said, ‘Dismiss your prejudices. Why should one not use a harmless euphoriac?’ The Warden went on to speak of potions and incenses that opened the door to a sense of Her veritable presence in everything which existed. ‘But those are kept for the most solemn rites. Man is too weak to endure long the godhead in him.’

  ‘Woman may do so oftener,’ said the Lady Yuria.

  She was high in. Storm’s councils, fair-haired, violet-eyed, but with her cousinship plain to see in the Diana face and figure. More women than men were at the board, and took clear precedence. A family resemblance marked them all, both sexes handsome, vital, ageless. Their conversation was a glittering interplay in which Lockridge was soon lost; he gave up trying to participate, leaned back and enjoyed it as he would music. Afterward he had no firm idea of what had actually been said.

  They retired to another hall where colors shifted in hypnotic rhythm through floors and walls. Servants cat-footed about with trays of refreshment, but there was no visible source for the melodies to which they danced. His diaglossa taught Lock-ridge the intricate measures, and the Warden ladies were supple in his arms, blending their movements with his until two bodies became one. Though the scale was strange to him, he was more deeply moved by this music than by most else he had known in his life.

  ‘I think you must have subsonics along with the notes,’ he ventured.

  Yuria nodded. ‘Naturally. But why must you have a name and an explanation? Is not the reality enough?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m just a barbarian.’

  She smiled and drew closer in the figure they were treading. ‘Not “just.” I begin to see why you found favor with the Koriach. Few of us here – certainly not myself – could be such adventurers as she and you.’

  ‘Uh… thanks.’

  ‘I am supposed to care for your young friend – look, she has fallen asleep – she won’t need me this night. Would you care to spend it with me?’

  Lockridge had thought he wanted only Storm, but Yuria was so much like her that every desire in him shouted Yes! He needed his whole will to explain that he must get rested for tomorrow. ‘When you get back, then?’ Yuria invited.

  ‘I shall be honoured.’ Between the wine, the music, and the woman, he had no doubt of his return.

  The Lady Tareth danced by with Hu and called gaily, ‘Keep some time for me, warrior.’ Her partner grinned without resentment. Marriage was a forgotten institution. Storm had remarked once, with some anger, that free people had no property rights in each other.

  Lockridge went to bed early and happy. He slept as he had not done since he was newborn.

  Morning was less cheerful. Hu insisted he take another euphoriac. ‘You need a mind unclouded by fear,’ the Warden said. ‘This will be difficult and dangerous at best.’

  They went out for some practice with the devices the American would be using, to make real for him the knowledge imparted by the diaglossa. High they flew over endless parkland. Near the limit of their trip, Lockridge spied a dove-gray tower. At the fifteen hundred foot summit, two wings reached out beneath a golden wheel, to make the ankh which signifies life. ‘Is that on the edge of a city?’ he asked.

  Hu spat. ‘Don’t speak to me of cities. The Rangers build such vile warrens. We let men live next to the earth their mother. That’s an industrial plant. None but technicians are quartered there. Automatic machinery can do without sunlight.’

  They returned to the palace. From outside, its roofs and spires made one immense subtly colored waterfall. Hu conducted Lockridge to a small room where several others waited. They were men; war, like engineering, was still largely a male provenance, short of that ultimate level on which Storm operated.

  The briefing was long. ‘We can get you within several miles of Niyorek.’ Hu pointed to a spot on the map before him, the east coast of a strangely altered North America. ‘After that, you must make your own way. With your beard shaven off, a Ranger uniform, your diaglossa and what additional information we can supply, you should be able to reach Brann’s headquarters. We have ascertained he is there at this moment, and of course we know that you will see him.’

  The drug did not keep Lockridge’s belly muscles from tightening. ‘What else do you know?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘That you got away again. It was reported to him – it will be reported – that you escaped to a time corridor.’ Hu’s gaze came back hooded. ‘Best I say no more. You would be too handicapped by a sense of being a puppet in an unchangeable drama.’

  ‘Or by knowing they killed me?’ Lockridge barked.

  ‘They did not,’ Hu said. ‘You must simply take my word. I could be lying. I would lie, if necessary. But I tell you as plain truth, you will not be captured or killed by the Rangers. Unless possibly at some later date … because Brann himself never found out what became of you. With luck, however, you should emerge from the corridor through another, pastward gate, slip out of the city, and cross the ocean to this place. There you will know how to get back to the present. I hope to greet you within thi
s month.’

  The bitterness faded in Lockridge. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to details.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was no full-dress fighting in this era, or there would have been no Earth. Somewhere, sometime, when one side or the other believed it had grown strong enough, the great onslaught would be launched; but its nature was unguessable by the combatants themselves. Meanwhile the hemispheres were fortresses and skirmishes were incessant.

  The Warden spaceship screamed on a long curve, westward and downward across an ocean where a storm had been generated for this night. At the end of that trajectory, a voice said, ‘Now,’ and Lockridge’s capsule was ejected. Meteor-like, it streaked through wind and rain, aflame with the violence of its transit. The ship came about and raked for altitude.

  Lockridge lay amidst incandescence. Heat buffeted him; his skull rang with vibration. Then the weakened pod burst open and he cast himself free on his gravity belt.

  So fast was he still going that the force field was barely able to shield him from a stream that would have torn him asunder. The hurricane raved about his screen, blackness, lightning, and a wall of rain. Waves grabbed upward at him, spindrift smoking off their crests. As his speed dropped below the sonic, he heard the wind skirl, thunder crash, waters roar. A blue-white flare cut through the weather and left him dazzled for minutes. The explosion that followed struck his ears like a hammer. So they detected us, he thought stunned, and shot a firebolt at the ship. I wonder if she got away.

  I wonder if I will.

  But so small an object as a man was engulfed by the tempest. Nor were the Rangers likely to be on the alert for him. They would only expect their enemies to take this much trouble for a major operation and could not know that the sending of a single agent was indeed one.

  History said he was going to reach Brann’s castle.

  Climate control fields pushed the storm away from the coast. Lockridge broke into clear air and saw Niyorek.