“That’s true,” I admitted and, feeling a bit reassured, went back to my soup.
The conversation was fragmented, uninhibited, and ran a bit to the sanguine. Two men to my right were holding a running argument as to whether one could or could not cut off a standing man’s head with a single one-handed swipe of a cavalry saber. An elderly naval type across the table was holding forth to anyone who would listen on the Battle of the Sea of Crete. That was back in ’32, when he was a junior lieutenant on the Coeur de Lion, flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, under Admiral of the Red, Sir Arthur Welsley.
After telling the story for thirty years, he had finally turned it into an epic poem, which he recited at full bellow, with appropriate table thumping. I remember the ending:
Though the decks ran red with the sea-washed blood,
And the mainmast cleft in twain;
Still the guns ran out to the quarterdeck shout
And rent the seas again.
The ensign shouted “load” while the Admiral strode
Down the deck with his white cockade
And inspected each gun with the calm of one
On a Sunday dress parade.
Now the enemy spoke with a mighty throat,
And the balls went whistling past.
And we replied with our last broadside,
And choked on the smoke it cast.
Then the smoke had cleared, and a few men cheered
As our enemy burst apart;
But more men prayed for that white cockade
Above the Admiral’s splattered heart.
“Splattered heart?” one of the women was brave enough to ask.
“Actually,” the poet confided, “he was hit by a cannonball. It turned him to grape jelly all over, but I couldn’t fit that into the meter.”
“Oh,” the woman said, turning green and putting down her fork.
Lord Gart, I noticed, wasn’t eating much, but he was drinking like a man with a secret stomach. His conversation dominated the table, not because anyone deferred to him, but simply because he had a voice like a tuba in full throat. He was discoursing on heraldry, and throwing around words like gules, argent, rampant, file, lozenge and the like. I thought I knew what most of the words meant, but the way he strung them together made no sense to me. I later learned a little about it, but still didn’t see the point. If your family crest is a silver dragon pawing the air on a red shield, why can’t you say that instead of “Gules, a dragon rampant, argent.”
Everyone disbursed without much formality after dinner. We were asked to stick around, as Lord Gart would want to see us shortly. He didn’t keep us waiting.
His office was large and severely functional. It was dominated by a great desk in one corner and by Lord Gart himself, sitting behind the desk. The office walls were covered with books, stacked and piled on ceiling-high shelves. Flanking Lord Gart, left and right, were Sir Thomas Leseaux and Captain LeClerk.
Lord Gart waved us into three seats facing the desk while he leafed through our writings and steadily swigged from a flagon of wine on the desk. Wine and brandy were his steady companions, but he never seemed in the least affected by them. It was as if his huge body burned alcohol as its rightful fuel. “Fascinating,” he said. “Utterly fascinating. Don’t you agree, Master Thomas?”
Sir Thomas Leseaux nodded thoughtfully. “It clears up several points,” he agreed in a crisp, clear tenor that would have held its own in any company but Lord Gart’s. “We have a variety of theories prepared,” he explained, “which will fit all the facts we are aware of. One of them is most certainly right, and we’re working out test procedures for the most likely. Every new bit of information we gather is of great use in either clarifying or eliminating some of our theoretical structures. Your stories will be of even greater utility, as they will help us establish the overall pattern in finer detail. We have many questions to ask, and I hope you’ll bear with me.”
“Well be glad to do anything we can to help,” Tom said. “I wonder if you could tell me....”
Sir Thomas held up his hand. “Please. I, in turn, will be glad to answer all your questions; but allow me to conduct the first interrogation.”
We nodded, and the questioning began. Most of the questions covered the times immediately before and after each blip, but a few of them ranged pretty far afield. Lord Gart showed a deep interest in as much information on the size, weight and speed of the Tiger tanks that attacked us as I could dredge out of my memory. Sir Thomas sent out for a variety of fabrics, and had Tom pick the one that most closely corresponded to the tent canvas that had collapsed around us. All of them asked questions from every possible angle about the flying saucers. As the French say, it marched.
The last part of the intensive quiz (worth a total of ten points, answer in brief sentences) was basically semantic. Sir Thomas recited a list of words and had each of us explain fully what every word meant, objectively and subjectively. Try it for fun sometime. Some of the words were: religion, chance, luck, magic, truth, science and country.
After this ordeal, Lord Gart leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “That seems to be it,” he said. “I thank you for your patience; you must have felt like felons before the bench during some of that questioning.”
“More like a doctoral candidate going up for his orals,” I replied. Sir Thomas chuckled.
“Turn about is fair play, as a lady of my acquaintance keeps insisting,” Lord Gart boomed. “What can we tell you? It’s getting late, so we’ll hold lengthy explanations until tomorrow; but is there anything we can answer now?”
“Well,” I said, “my basic question is simply what’s going on, but I guess that will have to keep.”
“If you mean in regard to the time-track hopping you seem to have developed a propensity for; I may have a partial answer for you tomorrow,” Sir Thomas said. “I’m working, you may be interested to know, with a fellow refugee like yourselves; a Dr. Immanuel Capabella. He comes from a time track much like your own, perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
We shook our heads, no.
“Ah, well. One track this side or the other, it’s hard to tell. No matter. One thing I can tell you. No, two things. One: this is what you would call a problem of parallel time tracks, only they seem to have become slightly acute. Two: this problem is a serious threat to us all; not only to those who have track-hopped, or those on this timeline, but the whole infinite universe of six-dimensional continuums in the immediate area of the sun, our star. It will probably encompass several of the local stars also, and may cover the entire galaxy we call the Milky Way. I doubt it can spread any farther, though.”
“That,” I said, “is reassuring.”
“One other thing,” Tom said. “All this reference we keep hearing to what you refer to as magic. What do you mean by the word?”
“Harrumph!” Lord Gart snorted. “Your turn, Sir Thomas. Let’s hear you do a little defining for a change.”
Sir Thomas smiled. “I’m very much afraid that we mean the same thing you do by the term. Real magic, you understand; not stage illusion, sleight of hand, or other forms of trickery. The magic your prestidigitators and illusionists are trying to sham. The magic of Sulayman the Wise, of Merlin and the great monk Johannes Magnus. That is what we mean by magic.
“But there is one important difference between our uses of the word. You see, here in our world, the world of the Angevin Empire, a world that split off from yours so long ago that we still have a Plantagenet on the throne, there is an additional factor. Magic works!”
We were silent for a moment after that bombshell, and then Tom spoke up. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
Lord Gart slapped his palm down on the desk. “Just that, my lad,” he growled. “Just that. What your world calls a bunch of superstitious crap, beg pardon my Lady, which anyone who claims to practice is a charlatan. This excepts stage magicians and illusionists, which we also have, who do not so much claim their feats are magic as de
fy you to show they’re not. At any rate, what on your world is considered superstitious, ah, balderdash, is on ours—here—known as the Art of the Possible. Magic works so well for us that we’ve never had to develop that hodgepodge of smelly machines that you call science.”
“Yes,” Tom said, looking at me and then back at Lord Gart. “I see.”
“You don’t believe?” Lord Gart asked. “You are, naturally, incredulous. No matter, the working of magic does not depend on your belief.” He waved a pudgy finger. “Can you show them, Sir Thomas?”
Sir Thomas Leseaux placed his hands together before his nose. “That, um, is not entirely accurate, my Lord. A lot of magic is, very definitely, dependent upon belief.”
Tom smiled.
“But,” Sir Thomas said, leaning forward, “a good bit of it isn’t. Take for example, Mr. Waters, the extraordinary predictive powers you suddenly developed over a deck of playing cards.” Sir Thomas snapped his fingers. “That ties it in! Of course, how blind of me. That’s the final factor.”
“We don’t consider that magic,” Tom said. “We call it telepathy.”
Leseaux stared at him contemplatively for a minute. “So you give it a name and that makes it scientific. All right, name this.” He took a brass tray from the desk and tossed it to Tom.
“What do you mean?” Tom asked. “It’s a tray.”
“Yes,” Sir Thomas said, taking a short, stubby wand from his sleeve. “Remember, I’m only a theoretical thaumaturgist; I usually leave this sort of thing to others. But we’ll give it a try.” He muttered something while tracing an intricate pattern in the air with his wand. “Now, toss it back.”
Tom shrugged and gave the tray a discus toss back. Sir Thomas pointed the wand. “Rama!”
The tray froze in midair, suspended four feet off the floor between Tom and the desk. We stared at it.
“Replax!” Sir Thomas said sharply, and the tray slowly settled back down on the desk. “That’s it, I’m afraid,” he said. “Not very impressive.”
“It’ll do,” I said “We, um, thank you for the demonstration.”
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning after breakfast, we received an invitation to join Sir Thomas in his laboratory behind the main house. As we approached we saw him standing in the doorway patiently listening to a short, paunchy man in a white bowler hat covered with arcane symbols.
“The apprentice problem,” the man yelled, punctuating his remarks by jabbing the air in front of him. “Incredible, simply incredible. After two years in the shop, this dolt can’t even work out a simple problem in the Law of Similarity. He gets mad at me one night, see; so he takes this wax doll from stock—right off the shelf. He daubs a little of my hair and stuff, even a couple of drops of blood from where I cut myself over the workbench. Says what he thinks are the right spells over it, then snaps off the right arm.”
“Malicious,” Sir Thomas said
“Yeah, but stupid. How do you think I find out? By breaking my arm? By even getting a pain in my arm? No. The next morning I walk into the shop and find all the other wax dolls have their arms broken. The nincompoop got the spell backward.”
“You were lucky,” Sir Thomas commented.
“Lucky! I put a spell of non conjunctus on the ungrateful brat and sent him back where he came from. Now I have to start interviewing apprentices again. Two years shot. Oh, well. Thanks for the formulary,” he patted an ancient brown book under his arm. “I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can.”
“No hurry,” Sir Thomas said. The little man gave him a quick handshake and trotted off down the path.
“Good morning,” we called, walking up to the door.
“Ah. Good morning to you. I hope you slept well. Lady Sylvia, I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?” Sylvia looked pleased. “What sort of surprise?”
“Something that arrived late yesterday. I didn’t find out until this morning. The Demoiselle Tia will take you over to it.” He turned his head and called, “Tia! Come out here.”
The short, black-haired girl came, almost skipping, out of a back room. “Hello,” she said. “I’ve been talking to the frogs.”
“The frogs?” I asked
“Yes. Sir Thomas has cages and cages of frogs inside. They don’t like being caged up, so I go in and talk to them sometimes; to cheer them up, you know.”
“Oh,” I said.
Sir Thomas looked with affection on his short, beautiful witch. “Tia is an amphibophile,” he told us.
“What’s that?” Tom asked, taking a step back from her as though she had a rare disease.
“My own term,” Sir Thomas said. “An amphibophile is the sort of girl who goes around kissing princes in the hope that one of them will turn into a frog.”
Demoiselle Tia smiled up at him, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the nose. “Come along,” she said to Sylvia. “See your surprise.” Hand in hand, the two girls skipped out of sight.
“Hem,” Sir Thomas said. “Now to business. I could use your assistance in a brief experiment, if you don’t mind.” We assured him that we didn’t mind.
“Good. Please come inside.” He took us into an inner room where a portly little man was scribbling on a blackboard. “This,” he introduced us, “is my good friend Dr. Immanuel Capabella.”
The doctor bobbed his head at us, mumbled “A pleasure,” and went back to his scribbling.
Sir Thomas took a bunch of papers from a table. “I think we’re very close to a complete solution to what’s been happening. The only question is whether we’ll have enough time. The situation is getting critical. These are the reports of the past few days, and the activity seems to have increased at an alarming rate. There are now so many ‘visitors’ that the new instructions are to keep them where they arrive unless there is something very special about their story. The last group of them to be sent here arrives today. Here are some of the other reports.” He leafed through the papers. “A gigantic building has suddenly appeared on a farm on the East Coast. There are so many people inside of it that the local food supply will have to be augmented. A tribe of natives, who seem to be at war with the Europeans on their own world, have suddenly attacked a town in the Midwest, holding it under siege until guardsmen arrived. Thousands of horseless carriages have appeared on a strip some four miles long and about a hundred feet wide. Also sightings of what you call ‘flying saucers’ are increasing. One assaulted a group of people at a field where a kite-flying contest was being held. There are hundreds of incidents like this, and the rate is tripling every day. By simple mathematics, the critical point will come inside of two weeks.”
“What can we do to help?” I asked.
“We need some final information on what you call the ‘blip,’ and we’re going to get it by a process of congruity. It’s the fastest way to check our formulas.”
“Fine,” Tom agreed. “Onward. You know, you remind me of someone, but I can’t figure out who.”
“I have a notion about that,” Sir Thomas said. “Perhaps some day I’ll tell you. Here, please put these rings on.” He handed us each a heavy gold ring with an ornate crest and covered with script.
“What now?” I asked, slipping the ring on my finger.
“Now, concentrate. I want you to tell me how close what you are about to experience is to what you call a blip.” He took a small piece of paper and wrote a formula, then rolled it up and slid it inside a third ring. “Alpha” he said, waving his stubby wand over the ring and paper, “et Omega. Simulcron!”
We were on the other side of the room. Poof, like that. No feeling or anything. One instant we were on one side of the room, and the next we were on the other.
“Wow!” I said.
“Was that about it?” Sir Thomas asked.
“That was quite something,” Tom said. “I’m impressed.”
“Of course. But, was it—did it feel like a blip?”
“No,” I told him. “There was no feeling. A
blip kind of wrenches your insides.”
“Hem. Let’s try this.” He repeated the process, changing the formula on the paper.
WHAP!
We were across the room again, but this time a mule had kicked us en route. “That,” I said, checking for broken bones, “was a bit strong. It didn’t twist, it slammed.”
“Hem. Yes. I think I see what you mean. Let’s try again.”
The seventh try proved to be the charm. As far as I could tell, it exactly duplicated the feeling of wrenching and dislocating of the blip, and Tom agreed. We did it twice more for luck, and then congratulated each other.
“Michael! Tom! Come see,” Sylvia called, running into the room.
“Come see what?” I asked.
“Come on, right outside.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door.
Outside Tia was standing on one foot, looking satisfied, and a white horse was cropping grass beside the path. “Very pretty,” I said, looking at the horse.
“Pretty? Is that all you can say?” Sylvia asked. “It’s Adolphus!”
Not until then did I notice the twisted, white horn. “Well, well,” I said. “So it is. Hello, Adolphus. How’ve you been?” He lifted his head and stuck out his tongue at me.
“Adolphus!” Sylvia said. “Don’t be like that.” She put her hands around his neck and petted his mane.
The little man who had been talking to Sir Thomas when we arrived was standing by the side of the path staring at Adolphus. “Say,” he said finally, “does he really need all that horn?”
Sylvia stamped her foot. “If you put one hand on him I’ll rip off your nose!” she declared.
“I was just asking,” the man said, He tipped his white bowler and walked away.
“Don’t worry about him,” Sir Thomas said. “He won’t bother you.”
“I’m not worried,” Sylvia said. “I warned him.”
“Hem.”
Sir Thomas told us to go away so he and Dr. Capabella could work, and hoped he’d have something for us that very afternoon.
Then it was time for my surprise.
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