Time Travel Omnibus Volume 1

by Anthology

  “What do you think about while you are a slave?” I asked.

  “Betty,” he replied, none too stoically.

  CHAPTER II

  One night two weeks later we were attacked by a band of cavalrymen.

  “Babylonians!” Slaf-Carch hissed in my ear. “Our chance!”

  We slaves fled back into the darkness, out of reach of the swords and axes. When the fight grew hot we dodged into the leaping shadows and did our bit throwing stones. I’ll never forget the smell of that desert dawn, nor the sight of flashing knives and falling heads. Sunlight showed our camp a shambles.

  The Babylonian cavalrymen won the fray, in the end, so we slaves were in fair enough luck. If the nomads had won they’d have cut us to bits for helping the attackers. As matters had turned, we had earned a reward—the right to be slaves for the Babylonians.

  Of course, those among us who were Babylonians and not foreigners were in double luck, for they were free.

  But no one was so lucky as Slaf-Carch. By a rare chance, this war party had been sent out by his own nephew, the rich young patesi of Babylon—Jipfur.

  We traveled all night, and those of us on foot were near exhaustion by dawn. Then patches of reflected sunlight appeared on the distant desert horizon to quicken our pace. Those sharp little rectangles grew before our eyes during the hours of travel that followed. For they were the buildings of Babylon, their glazed tile walls gleaming like mirrors.

  The glorious Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar! What a thrill for a wanderer from the machine-age! Speaking of machines, I craved one as never before—preferably a motorcar or an airplane. My legs threatened to fold up with every step.

  That afternoon summer clouds floated over the city, reducing Babylon’s glaring colors to pastel blues, yellows, lavenders. The city walls spread wide along the Euphrates, the palaces reared high, and a great multistoried ziggurat towered into the clouds. No twentieth century skyline was ever more breathtaking. As a matter of fact, only the tallest of New-World skyscrapers rose—or would rise, twenty-five hundred years hence—to a greater height than this magnificent ziggurat.

  It was twilight when we at last neared the city’s gates. Jipfur, the nephew of Slaf-Carch, rode out to join us, accompanied by two armored cavalrymen.

  “Noble Slaf-Carch, the patesi of Borbel, the brother of my mother, you have returned from the dead!”

  The meeting was replete with formal greetings—it was plain to see that Jipfur relished the dignified formalities to which his wealth and importance entitled him—but under the surface of conventional manners, Slaf-Carch’s deep gratitude showed through glistening eyes. No matter if his rescue had been coincidental; he was no less grateful for having been miraculously saved.

  Jipfur made the most of it. He rode back at the head of the procession, boasting that he had sent his cavalrymen against the nomads on a hunch that it would please the gods.

  We entered the gates of Babylon. The street crowds joined our procession, shouted praises to Jipfur.

  “Again Jipfur has won against the nomads!”

  “Jipfur has brought back the patesi of Borbel!”

  Jipfur smiled jubilantly, holding his pudgy head high, blinking his eyes wisely, nodding ever so slightly toward the wealthier merchants and their wives.

  Slaf-Carch was too happy to mind these egotistical antics. He was wearing a robe over his rags, now, and riding a cavalryman’s horse. He waved at the throngs and shouted jovially at old acquaintances. The warmth of this reception made me proud I knew him, even if he was a superstitious old coot.

  Yes, I was becoming entangled in Babylonian alliances in spite of myself.

  Eventually this night’s celebration ended, and I was glad. All the wonders of Babylon, including my first torchlight glimpse of the famous Hanging Gardens and the “Tower-of-Babel” ziggurat, could not impress me, on this tired night, half so much as Slaf-Carch’s hospitality.

  Once we reached his palace, at the small suburb of Borbel, and once I had shaved and bathed and feasted, I laid myself away in a comfortable bed for an indefinite season of sleeping. For Slaf-Carch had commanded that I was to be his special guest until my strength returned.

  And so, after more than eighteen months of hardships, I turned a corner—and it proved to be a swift turn in more ways than one.

  I lay in bed two mornings later, debating whether I felt equal to the task of rising and dressing, and had just given up the struggle and let my eyes fall closed, when I heard someone approaching my room.

  Then I was half aware that a servant-girl entered. I saw her through my eyelids, I suppose, for I was too groggy from sleep to raise my head and wink at her—or order her out, as you might have done. Still, I knew that there was something unusual about her—something disturbingly strange—

  She placed some fresh clothing on the foot of my bed, drew a curtain back from the window to admit the fresh yellow sunshine, picked up the empty water vase from my table. For a moment she looked down at me curiously—

  I don’t know whether my half-closed eyelids fluttered, but my pulse did. It struck me like a bolt of lightning: this girl was a blonde.

  Nowhere in all these months had I seen a single light-haired person, male or female, before this moment. The Fertile Crescent just didn’t have ’em. Maybe the soil wasn’t right, or the sun was too hot. In a land of sand-blown brunettes, here was an off-color female whose beautiful face, blue eyes, and yellow braids—not to mention breathtaking curves—were calculated to make kings hurl armies at each other.

  She was not only beautiful; her cleanliness and her make-up—though the latter was too cunningly achieved to be noticeable—were twenty-five centuries ahead of these times.

  She tiptoed toward the door with the water vase, being careful not to waken me. But my eyes were wide open now, and I called to her in English, with the gentleness of a dynamite blast: “Hey, there, you’re Betty, aren’t you?”

  The water vase crashed to the floor—I couldn’t understand why. I hadn’t meant to knock her off the Christmas tree, but she whirled on me with a show of anger.

  “Why do you scare me to death, you snail, you worm!” she blazed in Babylonian, marching over to my bed, shaking a scornful finger at me. “Are you some kind of earthquake, that roars and knocks vases out of people’s hands?”

  “Wait a minute. I—” Again I started to speak in English, but her rapid-fire Babylonian threw me for a loss. The language was rich in profanity. She called down the wrath of Shamash on me, and threw in the ill-will of Marduk and Ishtar for good measure. I pulled the covers up around my ears.

  By that time other servants and palace attendants were coming down the corridor to see what had caused the crash. To my surprise, the girl bent close to me and snapped, in a warning tone:

  “I’ll talk with you later—in English.”

  The broken pottery was swept up, though it couldn’t possibly be patched up, no more than could my peace of mind. Not that either had any value in this palace. Vases might be broken, slaves might be suspicious of Betty—or jealous; but the startling point of the incident was that Slaf-Carch himself came in and cleaned up the mess.

  Yes, he insisted on doing it, so that I, his guest, wouldn’t be disturbed by chattering slaves. But Slaf-Carch’s real reason, I saw plainly, was to perform a favor for Betty. He smiled at her, toothlessly, without the slightest air of superiority, notwithstanding the fact that he was the owner of this palace and all that was in it, including her. Suddenly I felt resentment.

  He stopped to exchange pleasantries with me, too, hoping I would feast with him soon; then, as Betty started off to her work elsewhere, he walked away with her.

  A jealous heat-wave did spirals around my neck for the rest of the day. It was a bad feeling for me, a guest, to have toward my benefactor. Which started me to thinking. If I could pay Slaf-Carch for this hospitality—if I could pull some strings so that I didn’t owe him anything, that would clear the decks considerably. Then. I could face him square
ly, tell him that a fifty-year-old Babylonian had no business getting that way about a nineteen-year-old foreigner-girl. Especially when there was a young foreigner-bachelor on the scene.

  All right, that settled it. I would pay cash for these few days of room and board—

  But my situation wasn’t as simple as I thought. Before I had been Slaf-Carch’s guest a full week, his rich young nephew Jipfur charioted out from Babylon and announced that he had come for me.

  “I’m very comfortable here, thank you,” I said.

  “According to the property laws,” Jipfur stated in his smooth but arrogant manner, “you are my rightful slave. You were taken from the nomads by my expedition. You have good muscles and will be worth all of ninety shekels, when properly nourished and put in working trim.”

  Slaf-Carch protested, but his nephew stuck stubbornly to his claim. Slaf-Carch shrugged and said, “Then I will buy Hal from you at once.”

  Jipfur rudely reminded him that he couldn’t afford me. The ugly truth was that Slaf-Carch’s business had run down badly during his two years of absence, his finances having been nominally in the hands of his nephew.

  So I was Jipfur’s property.

  “I regret,” said Slaf-Carch, placing his hand on my shoulder, “that I cannot purchase you now. But the time will come, and I will remember.” Then driving the hint of anger out of his resonant voice, he concluded with a remark characteristic of his generosity, “My family is so proud of Jipfur, with his dynamic business talents, I could not think of withholding from him any prestige he has earned. Go, and be a worthy slave for him.”

  As we started toward Babylon, the reins were placed in my hands. I had just as well learn to drive a chariot now, Jipfur said, if I were capable. Kish, the slave who was Jipfur’s personal attendant, stood beside me to teach me the tricks.

  Our wheels sung over the sandy tracks, we trotted down the palmy lane that led out of the suburb. Beyond the gates Jipfur snapped his fingers, and Kish, quick on the trigger, grabbed the reins out of my hands and stopped the horses.

  The cause of the sudden stop was the sight of three ugly partially-masked heads peering out of the tall cat-tails in the roadside marsh. I was at a loss to know whether they were humans or scarecrows, and Kish wasn’t much help when he whispered, “The Serpents.”

  To my surprise, Jipfur seemed to be on speaking terms with these ragged, uncouth, deformed creatures. He gave them a few simple orders, and they listened like three docile sheep.

  “Understand, I want you to keep apart,” Jipfur said. “There is territory enough to keep you busy separately. If people see you together too often you’ll lose your charm.”

  Our chariot rolled on, and neither Kish nor Jipfur made any comment to reveal what sort of charm those forlorn and sinister-looking wretches possessed. Kish was stiffly silent, as a good attendant should be, and I took my cue from him. Jipfur, oblivious to us, hummed pleasantly to himself.

  We swung off what was apparently the main road, took a by-lane past a square of irrigated farm land, and stopped only when we came to the bank of the Euphrates river. Here three female slaves were operating a shaduf, letting the pole down until the long bucket filled, then elevating it and pouring it into the irrigation trough.

  One of the workers was Betty.

  Jipfur stepped down from the chariot, walked over to them and asked for a drink.

  “Do you think he is thirsty?” Kish asked me.

  That was a strange question, coming from the lips of this slim, handsome, well-disciplined young attendant. Its cynicism told me volumes. Kish’s silence in his master’s presence was the silence of dynamite in cold storage. But he was opening the way to an understanding between the two of us. He added, “If that yellow-haired girl were at the top of yonder ziggurat, Jipfur would go there to be thirsty.”

  “Now that I think of it,” I said, “I’m thirsty too.”

  I chanced the wrath of my new master and all his gods by my bold action. I stepped down from the chariot, and before Jipfur came up from the water jug to give me a merciless bawling-out, I got in a sly word with Betty—and that was what really counted.

  “I’ve just been chained to Jipfur,” I said. “But I’ll break jail whenever you say—”

  “Here—one week from tonight,” she whispered, scarcely looking at me, “when the late moon rises.”

  Jipfur ordered me back into the chariot, and after he had finished his joking with Betty, telling her he had tried to buy her, but Slaf-Carch had wanted all of four shekels, and he knew she was only worth two, we drove back down the lane. And you can bet I memorized every turn in the road between that shaduf and the gates of Babylon.

  CHAPTER III

  One week later, an hour after midnight, I slipped out of Babylon and dog-trotted southward. I was a good hour ahead of the moon—only there wouldn’t be a moon tonight, or stars either. The blackness was broken only by the city’s torch lights and an occasional flare of lightning.

  No threatening storm could have kept me from my appointment. The past week of waiting had been like a year.

  Not that I hadn’t been busy every minute. Learning to work for Jipfur was no cinch. But, luckily for me, the tall lanky attendant, Kish, had tipped me off to the arrogant patesi’s pet peeves, and tutored me on those matters that every young slave ought to know. Such as, the best way to walk out of the master’s palace at midnight without being caught.

  Thunder rumbled over my head. “Betty won’t be there,” I kept telling myself. “The storm may stop her. Or Slaf-Carch—”

  Up went my temperature again! After all the talk I had heard the past week, the very thought of Slaf-Carch and Jipfur set me on fire with jealousy. The rich young nephew was determined to buy Betty before fall. His uncle was holding out stubbornly.

  I groped along through the darkness, praying cynically to Marduk to keep me between the irrigation ditches and stop me before I walked into the river. Then a streak of lightning burned across the horizon, and there were the black poles of the shaduf right before me, and there was Betty waiting. Her braids, blowing in the breeze, were platinum under the purple flash.

  “You are here,” I said in Babylonian. “Did anyone come with you?”

  “No one. I didn’t dare tell anybody I was coming.”

  Her fluent English was music to my ears. Her low voice was rich and melodic, and I couldn’t help thinking what an interesting study it would be on the vocoder.

  “Sporting of you to come,” I said. “It’s a queer time and place for a date, but if Babylonians go in for this sort of thing, far be it from me to—”

  “Don’t lead me into the river, Mr. Norton,” she said, and her fingers clinging lightly to my arm drew me back.

  “Just call me Hal,” I said, sensing that I was quoting a line no doubt trite even in these ancient times.

  “It’s good luck to be near the Euphrates,” said Betty, “but not so good to fall in it.”

  We sat on the sandy bank, enshrouded by darkness. Betty repeated a rhythmic little Babylonian proverb about the Euphrates and good luck. There was a legend, she said, that if you looked upon the Euphrates a certain number of times—the exact number being unknown—you would not die as other men. You would live on, and your manner of life would become a mystery to all men.

  “Very probably,” I said.

  “You mustn’t doubt it,” Betty declared. “The Babylonians can prove it. Have you seen a funny little flat-headed man who stands at the foot of the great ziggurat? He has stood there for generations, and they say he’ll still be there when the ziggurat is gone. That’s because he looked upon the Euphrates—”

  “The right number of times—yes. Very fanciful.”

  My slightly sarcastic interruption caused a momentary rift. I couldn’t conceive of Betty’s taking any stock in this balderdash, even though some of these superstitious ancients might choose to believe it.

  “Curious if true,” I added, after the silence had become oppressive. “I’ll stop
and talk with that funny little flat-headed man some day.”

  “He can’t talk—but he’s there.”

  “Can’t? Is he alive?”

  “He’s petrified—but he’s there.”

  I’m afraid I laughed rather too heartily. Betty didn’t intend any joke. With all the earnestness of a superstition-befogged Babylonian she clung to her fanciful story. He was there, she repeated, so in a sense he was living on, in a manner of life that was a mystery to all men.

  It was my turn to fall silent. Lightning flashed across the sky, raindrops began to spatter intermittently.

  “We’d better find shelter,” said Betty.

  She caught my hand and led me along the riverbank to an overhanging rock that protected us from the plopping drops. It was a shelter which the slaves often frequented, she said. I couldn’t see a thing until the purple lightning came. Then I caught sight of the shallow cavern we were in, a few yards above the broad Euphrates. Now all was black again, except for a few twinkling torch lights eight miles upstream—Babylon, asleep.

  “This river gets into your blood. It’s making me over. It will do the same for you.”

  “Not if I can help it,” I thought. Aloud I said, “I’ve got no business here. If there’s any way to go back to twentieth century America—”

  “I know how you feel. I pampered myself with the same sentiments for the first year.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Nearly three years.”

  “So you got trapped by the Colonel’s lousy line, too?” I said, at last enjoying an opportunity to uncork my compressed bitterness. “I suppose Milholland gave you the same pep talk he gave me—one week of the past—or two at most—a thousand dollars a week—fame and immortality for your contribution to his celebrated collection of animal voices?”

  “Something like that,” said Betty reflectively.

  “The guy’s a screwball.”

  “Definitely.”