The Way Back

by A Bertram Chandler

  They got him down at last. He collapsed onto the deck, huddling there in the pool of sea water that ran from his ragged clothing. Grimes turned in his chair to look at him. He was obviously a Semite; in this part of the world that was to be expected. He was paralyzed with terror—and that was not surprising. He stared up at his rescuers while his hands clawed at his black, straggling beard. He was trying to say something, but words would not, could not come.

  Mayhew said, "I'm getting some sense out of his mind, John, but not much. He's too frightened. He thinks we're angels or something . . ."

  "Mphm." Grimes turned back to his controls, shutting the hatch then cutting the lift. The pinnace fell to the sea, submerged rapidly to periscope depth as the pumps sucked water into the ballast tanks. It was not a moment too soon. The rain squall was almost over; in another two or three seconds the little spacecraft would have been clearly visible from the surface ship.

  Yes, she was still there, clearly visible through the thinning veils of rain. She was still there, and riding much more easily. This must have been the clearing squall. The wind was dropping and the sea was much less rough and, very soon in this land-enclosed expanse of water the swell would be diminishing. The shipmaster would not be needing a sea anchor now.

  "I've got . . . something . . ." said Mayhew. There was something odd about his voice.

  "Out with it, Ken," ordered Grimes.

  "He . . . he was a passenger aboard that ship. Some kind of preacher. He was bound for . . . Ninevah. His name . . ."

  "I don't think you need to tell me," said the Commodore. And he thought, But we have a temporal reference point. Once we get back on board the Quest, with her data banks, we shall be able to pinpoint ourselves in Time.

  Chapter 12

  "Well," demanded Grimes irritably, "what have you found out? We haven't much time left, you know. Sonya insists that our friend be put ashore on a deserted beach not one second later than three days after his rescue . . ."

  "We must keep to the script," stated Sonya firmly.

  "Script? What script? Damn it all, I hoped that by rescuing Jonah we should be able to find out just when we are—and what do we find? What does our data bank, our fabulous electronic encyclopedia have to tell us? Just that the Book of Jonah is only a legend, a piece of allegorical fiction, and that the Great Fish symbolizes Dagon or some other ichthyological deity. What does it matter if we keep him aboard the Quest three days, three weeks, or three months? Or three years . . ."

  "We mustn't tamper with history," she said.

  "History is always being tampered with," he grumbled.

  "Yes. But not at the time when it's actually happening."

  "There has to be a first time for everything," he said. But he realized that they were all against him. None of the Quest's crew was religious—but they all had their superstitions. Holy Writ is Holy Writ. And here, under heavy sedation in the ship's sick bay, was living proof that there is more to the Bible than mere mythology.

  "Better stick to the script," said Williams.

  "It would be the wisest course," agreed Carnaby.

  Grimes looked around at the faces of his other senior officers, saw that all of them were in favor of returning the castaway to land. He couldn't help grinning. So the unfortunate man was a double Jonah, as it were, first thrown overboard from the surface vessel, now to be ejected from the spaceship. But it was a pity. Further probing by Mayhew and Clarisse could well have turned up information of value.

  "So we put him down," said the Commodore heavily, at last. Then, to Mayhew, "But you must have found something out, Ken . . ."

  "Given time," murmured the telepath, "we can promise to crack any nut you throw onto our plate. But we haven't had the time." He paused. "How shall I put it, sir? Like this, perhaps. Just imagine that you are trying to question somebody with whom you share a common language, but that this somebody is so terrified that he screams wordlessly, without so much as a second's break . . . That's the way it is. Oh, we can read thoughts, to use the common jargon, but it helps a lot when those thoughts are reasonably coherent. His are not."

  "So he's still terrified?"

  "Too right he is. Try to look at it from his viewpoint. He's in the belly of a great fish. He has every right to be terrified."

  "Like hell he has. He's being pampered worse than any VIP passenger aboard a luxury liner. Specially cooked meals, served by our most attractive stewardesses . . ."

  "Whom he regards as succubi just waiting for the chance to dig their painted claws into him to drag him down to Hell . . ."

  "But can't you and Clarisse get into his mind, to calm him down?"

  "Don't you think that we haven't tried, that we still aren't trying? Given time, we should succeed. But three days just aren't long enough."

  "And the three days are almost up," said Sonya, looking at her watch.

  Grimes sighed, got up from his seat, led the way from his quarters to the control room. He looked at the periscope screen, but Faraway Quest was above the clouds; nothing was visible but a restless sea of gleaming white vapor. But Carnaby had constructed a chart and proudly showed it to the Commodore. "We're here," he said, stabbing with a pencil point at the dot with the small circle around it. "Here" appeared to be over the sea. "And there," he added, "is the city . . ."

  Grimes took the pencil. "And we land," he said, "here. As far as we could see before the cloud covered things it's a nice little well-sheltered bay. And it should be no more than three days' not very strenuous walk from the coast to the city. I suppose that it is Ninevah?"

  Nobody answered him.

  "Mphm." He played with the dividers, measuring off the distance. "I still think that it would save trouble all round if I took the pinnace down after dark and landed our passenger right at his destination."

  Sonya quoted solemnly, "And the Lord spake into the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go into Ninevah, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Ninevah, according to the word of the Lord. Now Ninevah was an exceeding great city of three days' journey . . ."

  "Is the amphibian ready, Commander Williams?" asked Grimes.

  "All ready, Skipper," replied Williams.

  "Then let's get it over with," said the Commodore.

  * * *

  He handled the small craft himself, bringing her down from the mother ship in a steep dive, levelling off just before he hit the water, landing on the sea about half a kilometer from the shore. He had decided against landing on the beach itself; perhaps to have done so would have constituted a deviation from the script. The little bay was not as sheltered as it had looked from the air; there was a moderate westerly swell running and the pinnace wallowed sickeningly. Grimes was not at all surprised to hear somebody in the passenger cabin abaft him being violently ill. He felt sorry for the native, assuming (correctly) that it was he; the combination of seasickness with overwhelming terror must be almost unbearable. Then he ignored the miserable sounds and the unmistakable reek of vomit, concentrated on running in at right angles to the line of breakers. The aerial survey had shown that there were no submerged reefs to worry about—but it would do the pinnace and her occupants no good at all if she were allowed to broach to, if she were rolled over and over and dumped violently onto hard sand. He applied lift so that the craft became barely airborne; in the unlikely event that there were any observers ashore this would not be obvious.

  He skimmed over the surf, steering for a tall, solitary palm tree. He roared over rather than through the shallows. Then, gently, he cut the inertial drive, dropped down to the dry sand with hardly a jar. He turned in his seat, saw that Sonya and Mayhew were standing and were supporting the native between them. The poor devil was in a sorry state, looking at least half dead with fear and nausea. But his troubles were almost over. (Or were they just starting?)

  "Take him out, John?" asked Sonya. />
  "Yes, as long as you're sure that it's according to the Book."

  "It has to be," she said coldly.

  The 'midships door opened and the little ramp extended itself. Sonya and Mayhew guided the man—he looked like little more than a bundle of filthy rags—towards the opening. He seemed in no condition for a forty-kilometer walk—but he, too, would have to follow the script.

  With blessed solidity under his bare feet, with familiar sights around him, he recovered fast. But he fell prone, trying to embrace the earth. At last he sat up, looking down at his hands, through which he was dribbling a stream of golden sand. There was an incredulous smile on his dark, bearded face—a smile that swiftly faded as his regard shifted upwards, as he saw the beached amphibian still there. Hastily he looked away, staring inshore, drawing renewed strength from the prosaic (to him) spectacle of rolling dunes, clumped palm trees and a serrated ridge of blue mountains on the horizon. He got shakily to his feet and started to walk, with surprising vigor, heading inland, away from the accursed sea and its denizens.

  "Another satisfied customer," muttered Grimes.

  Sonya and Mayhew got back into the pinnace and as soon as the craft was sealed the Commodore lifted her and set course for the waiting Faraway Quest.

  Chapter 13

  Back aboard the Quest Grimes went straight from the boat bay to his quarters, accompanied by Sonya and Mayhew. He sent for Williams and Clarisse. She, of course, did not need to be told all that had happened; she had been in telepathic communication with her husband throughout. And it did not take long to put Williams into the picture.

  Then, "I intend to land tomorrow morning, at dawn," announced Grimes.

  "Will it be wise?" queried Sonya. "As I've said before, and as I keep on saying, we must not tamper with history."

  "Have we done so?" countered her husband. "Shall we do so? This last episode has established, I think, that we are already a part of history."

  "Never mind history, Skipper," put in Williams. "You look after yourself, and let history look after itself. I'm tellin' you this; unless the boys an' girls get some sort o' break, you're goin' to have a mutiny on your hands."

  "As bad as that, Billy?"

  "As bad as that. For days now we've been hangin' over one little spot of empty ocean, with nothin' to look at but sea an' clouds. It's even worse than bein' in orbit. It's a case of so near an' yet so far."

  "Ken?"

  "I should have told you before, John, but I thought you knew. In any case, I've been keeping my prying to a minimum. And you don't have to be a telepath to be aware of the unhappy atmosphere that's permeating the ship. You don't have to be a mind reader to overhear remarks such as, 'He and his pets get down to the surface any time they want to. Why shouldn't we?' "

  Grimes grinned humorlessly. "I know, I know. That's why I've decided to make a landing."

  "I still say that it's risky," stated Sonya flatly.

  "How so?"

  "It's obvious. Or should be. There . . ." she made a down-sweeping gesture . . . "we have a world whose civilizations, such as they are, are very little advanced beyond the Stone Age. Here we have a ship packed almost to bursting with the technology of our time. What sort of impact shall we make?"

  "A very light one," said Grimes, "if I set the old bitch down with my usual consummate skill."

  She waited until the others had stopped laughing then said coldly, "You know very well what I meant."

  "Yes. I know. And I still say, 'a very light one.' Only the very crudest technology would mean anything to those people down there. Anything beyond it will be, so far as they're concerned, magic . . ."

  "And isn't that just as bad, if not worse?"

  "No. Remember that Terran mythology is full of legends of gods who visited Earth from beyond the stars. Quite possibly some—or most—of those legends are based on fact. Quite possibly we are part of the mythology. Quite possibly? No. We are part of the mythology."

  "Jonah . . ." said Mayhew.

  "Yes."

  "But how do you know," argued Sonya stubbornly, "that our Jonah was the Jonah? After all, it must be a very common name in this here and now. Perhaps the real Jonah was rescued from a watery grave a couple of centuries ago. Or perhaps it won't happen for another hundred years."

  "Please don't stretch the long arm of coincidence to breaking point," the Commodore admonished her.

  "But there is such a thing as coincidence. And I still think that by too-intimate contact with the people of this period we're liable to shunt the world onto a different Time Track."

  "And so, to coin a phrase, what?" he demanded.

  "Then quite possibly we shall never be born. Not only shall we find it impossible to return to our own Time but we must just . . . vanish. We shall never have been."

  Grimes laughed. "And you can say that, quite seriously, after all the peculiar strife, timetrackwise, that we've been in already . . . Really. What about my carbon copy whom we met, not so long ago? Even though his ship wasn't a carbon copy of my ship . . ."

  "And his wife far from being a carbon copy of yours. So you'd prefer Maggie Lazenby to me, is that it?"

  "I never said anything of the kind. And what about that poor old Commander Grimes, passed over for promotion but still in the Survey Service, commanding that utterly unimportant base . . ."

  "I seem to remember that Maggie was mixed up in that affair, too."

  "And so were you." Grimes was playing with his battered pipe, wishing desperately that he had the wherewithal to fill it. (Had tobacco grown around the Mediterranean Basin in ancient times, as well as in North America? It would be worth finding out.) "Get this straight, Sonya. There's no possibility of our cancelling ourselves out. From every second of Time an infinitude of world lines stretches into the Future. Some, perhaps, are more 'real' than others. Or more probable. All will be real enough to the people living on them. And we were—or will be—born on at least one of those tracks. At least one? Now I'm talking nonsense. In any case, I'm pretty sure that we shall not influence the course of history. After all, you can't have steam engines until it's steam-engine time."

  "And what fancy theory is that?"

  "It's more than a theory. The steam engine is a very ancient invention. But it was hundreds of years before anybody thought of putting it to work. When Hero made his primitive steam turbine there was no demand for mechanical power. And there'll be no demand for our sophisticated machinery in this Time.

  "We land tomorrow."

  "That will be the wisest course of action, John," said Mayhew slowly. "So far, all hands are still with you, but there's considerable discontent. All hands? All hands, that is, with the exception of those bloody Pongoes. What they are thinking, I don't know. But they are a minority and quite incapable of taking over the ship."

  "You say, 'so far.' "

  "Yes. So far. As long as you let your people get away from this tin coffin for a while they'll remain loyal. If you don't, if you keep them cooped up, anything might happen."

  "I still don't like the idea of landing," said Sonya stubbornly. "I think that it's asking for trouble."

  "Whatever we do is asking for trouble," Grimes told her. "We could return to Mars—and get ourselves blown out of the sky. We could scour the Universe and die of old age before we found another habitable planet. Earth, after all, is Home—and we have come Home. Let's make the best of it."

  "You're the boss," she said resignedly.

  Chapter 14

  The Isles of Greece . . .

  That phrase, that scrap of half-remembered verse, possessed a magic insofar as Grimes was concerned. And there were the memories, too, of that odd planet called by its people Sparta, that Lost Colony with its culture modelled on that of the long-dead City State. He would have liked to have seen what the real Sparta was like . . . He could have made his landing in Egypt or in Palestine, in Italy or in Spain, in Carthage—but he decided upon Greece. He was unable to recollect his Terran geography, even with the mind-p
robing assistance of his telepaths, and the ship's data bank was no help at all, but it didn't matter. The outlines of the Archipelago were unmistakable enough, even if he could not say just where Sparta or Athens stood, or would stand. He relied upon his instruments to select what appeared to be a good landing site—flat, between sea and mountains, on the bank of a small river. The descent at sunrise was standard survey practice; the almost level rays of light would show up every irregularity and then, once the landing had been made, there would be a full day to get settled in—or during which to decide to get the hell out.