by Steve White
“Well,” argued Jason, “maybe you could let us off somewhere on the coast.” He had no plan anyway; he’d known all along that this was going to have to be sheer improvisation.
Sotades’ scowl was unabated. “That island’s coast is all cliffs, except for a few inlets—and there are villages overlooking all of those. You couldn’t possibly get ashore unobserved.”
“There must be a way!” Jason summoned up the map of Taphos again, knowing that his eyes must be taking on an unfocused look that was unlikely to improve Sotades’ opinion of his sanity. The red dot glowed tantalizingly …
And, as Jason looked, it turned the color of clotted blood and flickered out.
Malfunction in the display , came the automatic thought. He enlarged the scale to take in the entire archipelago, and their ship.
The dot that marked Nagel’s whereabouts still glowed steady and scarlet.
Sheer, howling panic seized Jason’s mind. He felt strong hands grasping his upper arms. He deactivated the display, blinked, and looked into Sotades’ gruffly solicitous face. He saw Deirdre peering over Sotades’ shoulder, with Perseus and Nagel in the background.
“What’s the matter? What happened?” Deirdre’s voice was charged with concern.
“Nothing,” he said, as firmly as he could manage. “Everything’s all right.” He met her eyes—the eyes of the woman who trusted in his ability to get her home.
Hell, no, everything’s not all right! he wanted to scream.
The TRD was supposed to be effectively indestructible. Its molecular-level circuitry was solidly embedded in a sphere of super-dense metal. To the denizens of lower technological levels—even the twenty-first century, the most recent attainable era—the thing would seem nothing more than a small ball bearing, hardly bigger than a BB, a little heavier than it ought to be. Smashing it with a sledgehammer, or throwing it into a fire, would do nothing. Reducing it to plasma would serve … but anything that could do that would leave the individual in whom it was implanted too dead to care. And anyway, such things were beyond the capabilities of earlier eras.
But , thought Jason, face to face with nightmare, we never knew what truth was lurking behind some of those earlier eras’ myths, did we?
He pulled himself together. It didn’t necessarily follow that Deirdre’s TRD had been destroyed. Maybe the “gods” had the capability to do that, but it was also possible that they had something that could block the transponder, and that they had now moved the TRD inside that something. He had to proceed on that assumption, because the alternative was hopelessness.
He shook Sotades off. “Really, I’m fine,” he assured his companions. He gave Deirdre a smile, but said nothing. A mocking inner voice reminded him of what he had once told Nagel about worrying people with things they didn’t need to know. He turned back to the shipmaster.
“Listen, Sotades, we’ve got to get to that cavern!” The TRD’s last known location. “Maybe … Perseus, are you a strong swimmer?”
“Of course.” There was no boastfulness in the Hero’s voice, just a mild surprise that the question was even being asked.
“Good. Sotades, after dark I want you to bring us in as close to that inlet as you dare. Perseus and I will swim the rest of the way.”
“I’m coming too!” flared Deirdre, drawing an astonished look from Perseus.
“So will I.” Nagel’s voice held a sense of obligation rather than enthusiasm.
Jason considered. He could use Deirdre’s imperfectly healed wound as an excuse to exclude her. But she was entitled, given what was at stake for her. As for Nagel, Jason’s first impulse was to tell him to remain on the ship. But if he, Jason, didn’t get back, he doubted the historian would survive long in this world. He might as well let Nagel tag along.
“Very well,” he told Deirdre. “You’re in, if you think your left arm is up to it.” Perseus’ astonishment grew comical, and Sotades clearly shared it. Jason turned to Nagel. “You’ll also have to keep up.”
“I can swim,” the historian pouted. This, Jason knew, was true. It was one of the abilities would-be time travelers had to demonstrate to the Authority’s satisfaction before being allowed to venture into the past.
“All right. Now let’s get as much rest as we can. It’s going to be a long night.”
*
The night was very clear, and there were more stars out than anyone had seen from Earth’s surface since electric lighting had become ubiquitous in the late twentieth century. This despite a three-quarter moon that lay a silver trail across the waters.
That moon was fortunate, for it enabled them to see where they were going. The bulk of Levkas’ three-thousand-foot mountains occluded the star fields to the west. Southwestward, the outline of Ithaca was visible, as were other islands in other directions. But as they slipped into the dark water their attention was focused on the cape that loomed up ahead.
They were all stripped to the minimum. The men wore loincloths through which they had secured their weapons: Jason’s and Perseus’ sword-daggers and the knife with which Nagel might conceivably do some good. Deirdre also had a knife, thrust through the sash of the light tunic she wore. She could actually have gotten away with less than that in this culture, where above-the-waist female nudity was standard for ritual purposes and acceptable elsewhere. But twenty-fourth-century human civilization had reverted to clothing standards whose conservatism would have surprised the people of three centuries earlier.
They struck out for the headland. Jason used the kind of survival breaststroke that sacrificed speed for endurance—a trained swimmer could sustain it for about as long as he could have walked. Perseus’ technique was one to which Jason couldn’t even put a name; all he could say was that it was powerful. He also got the impression that the Hero could have kept it up all night. Perseus was obviously holding back in deference to Jason—all the more so inasmuch as Jason himself was letting Deirdre and Nagel set the pace.
They rounded the headland and entered the cliff-walled inlet that lurked behind it. In a line of four, heads bobbing darkly above the moon-glistening waters, they swam along the western cliff. Jason watched the sheer rock face for the opening he knew must be there. Finally it appeared, barely visible in the moonlight—a cavern vast beyond Jason’s imaginings, its opening at least sixty feet high and almost that wide. They swam up the central channel, into a subterranean world whose darkness was relieved by flickering fires up ahead and whose silence was broken by the soft nighttime fluttering of the gulls and swallows that nested above among the stalactites.
From Sotades’ description, the water here was almost as deep as the ceiling was high, and the chill of it began to seep into their bones despite their exertions. But further along it grew more shallow until it finally formed a gravel beach where the pirate galleys were drawn up. Normally, the pirates—a dark, beak-nosed breed of obscure origin, though including in their ranks renegades of all stripes—lived in villages perched like eagles’ nests atop the cliffs. Only a few would be down here with the ships in their deep-water shelter at any given time—especially at night. Those few had built the fires that gave Jason and his companions light to swim toward.
Jason briefly activated his map display to confirm his recollection. There was no possible doubt: this was the last confirmed location of Deirdre’s TRD. But what could have happened to it here in this primordial marine cavern, among these primitives whose muttering voices echoed among the cathedrallike spaces?
He raised an arm above the water and gestured toward the right. The others followed as he swam to the narrow strip of gravel that lined the cavern wall. It was so narrow, in fact, that they could only move along it in single file. They began to edge along it toward the moored ships and the fires and the clusters of men around them.
Jason told himself to look on the bright side. There were no sentries out. Why should there be? Who would be crazy enough to voluntarily come into the innermost lair of the Echinadian pirates? Who, indeed? gibed Jas
on’s inner critic.
The figures of the pirates showed in silhouette against the firelight as they sidled closer. Something else was visible in that flickering light: a crudely carved statue, seemingly of a very stylized man, standing against the cavern wall. The pirates—who, come to think of it, seemed oddly quiet and subdued—cast occasional uneasy glances toward it. Odd, Jason reflected. You don’t usually think of pirates as being all that religious… .
He dismissed the thought as one of the silhouetted figures detached itself from the group and walked along the narrow gravel shingle in their direction. But they hadn’t been spotted; the man, oblivious to the four motionless figures in the darkness, put one of the ships between him and the group, faced the water, and hitched up the front of his kilt.
Jason smiled; evidently some standards of modesty prevailed even among this lot. And it gave him his opportunity. He stepped silently out of the shadows and, as the sound of tinkling water stopped, grasped the pirate around the neck in a choke hold. Jason dragged the struggling figure back into the darkness, where Perseus placed his swordpoint against the pirate’s belly just under the rib cage, putting an end to his thrashing. Jason relaxed his hold just enough to let him breathe.
“Tell us the truth and you won’t get hurt,” Jason whispered into his ear. “At least one god came here, bringing a little box of a strange material, right?”
The pirate, his eyes bulging, nodded.
“Very well. I’m going to let you speak. Tell us what happened to that box, and where it was taken. If you raise the alarm, it will be the last sound you ever make. Understand?”
The pirate nodded again.
“Good. Perseus, back off a little.” Jason eased up on the pirate’s throat.
The pirate drew a deep breath, let it out, and … ” Help ! Summon the gods! “
Sheer, startled surprise at that scream held Perseus motionless for a heartbeat. Then he rammed his sword in and upward.
It was too late. The other pirates leaped to their feet and came running.
Jason cast the dead pirate aside. Now what did he want to do that for? he wondered in a calm corner of his mind as he drew his sword and stood to face the onrushing gang. Behind them he saw one man face the idol and say something in an unknown language—another display of unexpected piratical piety. Perseus had already turned on them, waving his bloody sword and bellowing a war cry.
They halted, screamed, and drew back in obvious terror.
Perseus, looking boyishly pleased with himself, turned to Jason with a smile … which instantly turned to a look of blank horror. Nagel and Deirdre, Jason saw, were staring in the same direction with the same expression. He turned and looked behind him, and saw the being that was emerging from the water.
It was a biped, somewhat larger than a man—although its exact height was difficult to judge, for it stood with a forward-leaning posture balanced by a long thick tail that ended in flukes. What it stood on were webbed feet, and the two arms ended in hands that weren’t really hands but rather clusters of four long claws connected by thick webbing. The body was bulky but lithe, with what looked like gills to the side. The incongruously slender neck supported a long, narrow head tapering from a large braincase behind to a snout or muzzle which held small nostrils and a lipless mouth. The eyes were large and dark, and nictitating membranes periodically blinked back and forth across them like antique camera shutters. The ears were mere holes, protected by bony ridges. The skin was lightly scaled, and as far as could be told in this dim light it was gray-green, shading to light gray on the belly. The being was nude save for a kind of harness bearing unfamiliar devices.
It wasn’t until later that Jason took in all these details. In that first instant, he could absorb the overall impression … and feel a tantalizing sense of familiarity, as though he ought to recognize the being. He was thinking about it when the mouth opened and the alien spoke in a strange Achaean: indescribably accented as a result of being produced by nonhuman vocal apparatus, but with the fluency of long, long practice.
“Come with me.” One of the strange hands pointed at the water.
Jason could only stare.
Then he heard a commotion among the pirates. Beyond them, beside the idol, there was a wavering in the air, not at all like that caused by rising heat, but rather a disturbance of something more fundamental, of reality itself.
“Quickly!” said the alien. “Follow me if you wish to live!” Without another word, the being turned with a sinuous twist of its entire body that would have been impossible for the human skeleton, and dived smoothly into the water.
At that instant, Jason remembered the source of that half familiarity.
At the same instant, the region of disturbance beside the idol seemed to solidify into a circle within which something other than the cave wall behind it was visible. The tall form of a “god” appeared in that circle, silhouetted against whatever it was that lay beyond.
Jason came to quick decision. “Follow him!” he yelled at the others.
They stood, held in the grip of shock.
“I said move!” He grabbed Perseus and shoved him toward the water. “Dive in and follow him!” He turned to Deirdre and Nagel, who at least knew of aliens and didn’t consider them supernatural.
“What … what … ?” stammered Nagel.
“Never mind! Jump in and swim underwater, both of you.” A sudden afterthought struck him. “And … whatever happens, don’t tell that alien that we have interstellar travel.”
They both stared at him in bewilderment.
“I said move! ” He turned toward the water. Perseus was still paralyzed.
“What are you, too cowardly to follow me?” Jason yelled. Perseus jolted as though an electric shock had gone through him.
Jason could only hope it was enough to get the Hero moving. He took a deep breath, dived into the cold, deep water and struggled downward. Below, a light glowed.
He took time for a look backward over his shoulder. Three other forms had entered the water. Without taking time to feel relief, he continued downward toward the light.
That light was the oval interior of a vessel with sleekly submersible lines. The bubble which normally covered it was raised and the alien was there, motioning to them.
As soon as they were inside, the bubble clamshelled shut and the water began to flow out of the compartment to the sound of pumps. They were all feeling the agony of suffocation clamp around their chests by the time the water level dropped below their heads and they were able to gasp for air.
The alien was paying them no heed. He was too busy at the controls. (Jason found himself thinking of the being as “he” despite the absence of any recognizable sexual organs.) The humans sat down in what appeared to be recliners designed for their host’s species—they had openings to accommodate the tail, which made them awkward seating for the human form. They did so none too soon; the vessel was already moving, and when the last of the water drained from the compartment the alien manipulated additional controls, and the vessel surged with what Jason recognized as the amazing acceleration of a supercavitating submarine using reactionless propulsion. In the dim glow of the outside lights, they saw the underwater walls of the cavern flash past and then vanish. They were in open water.
Still gasping, Jason turned to Perseus. “I beg your pardon for what I said,” he began … but the Hero wasn’t hearing him. And his eyes weren’t blinking. And his mouth wasn’t closing, even though a trickle of saliva oozed down from one corner of it. He was staring fixedly at the gleaming high-tech interior with its artificial lights, and the being in front who was piloting it, and his mind had simply shut down under an unacceptable overload of the incomprehensible. At least it would be a while before he was in any shape to take up the little matter of what Jason had called him.
Jason examined his other two companions. Nagel was having more difficulty breathing than anyone, but he seemed in no danger. Deirdre seemed to be in the best shape of any of th
em, with neither Perseus’ paralysis nor Nagel’s apnea. “Are you all right?” he asked her.
She nodded jerkily. “Yes, I think so. And I won’t even bother asking you what the hell is going on here. But … what did you mean about not telling—?”
He shushed her with a gesture. “I’ll explain later. For now, let’s just say that I recognize his race.” He indicated their still-preoccupied pilot.
“You do? I’ve met some nonhumans, but never any like him.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Jason said, lowering his voice. “In our era they don’t exist anymore.”
Chapter Eleven
After a while, with the marine cavern well behind them, the alien turned off the outside lights, reduced the bubble’s inboard illumination to a dim red glow, and allowed the little craft to drift. In the semidarkness, their weariness began to creep up on them, and Jason felt he could easily have dozed off.
But then their rescuer-cum -pilot stood up and approached them, and Jason came instantly wide awake.
The alien examined Perseus with eyes whose nictitating membranes left them fully exposed in this light, then spoke in his indescribable but intelligible Achaean. “Your companion appears to be in shock. I will give him a sedative that is appropriate for your species.” They watched in silence as the being applied what appeared to be a hypospray injector to the Hero’s arm and extended the recliner to full horizontal position. No covers were needed; the passenger compartment’s air temperature would have been uncomfortably high had their garments been less scanty and less wet.
“Thank you,” said Jason as Perseus began to snore. “I think he was somewhat … overwhelmed.”
“Understandable.” The alien turned his strange eyes—there was no visible distinction between iris and pupil—on the humans. His expression, if any, was unreadable. “He is obviously native to this time.”