Polarian-Denebian War 6: Prisoners of the Past

by Jimmy Guieu

  When she finished, Yuln told her husband, “Watching the villagers during our brief captivity, I noticed a young man whose left shoulder was dislocated. He was in pain and couldn’t use his arm. He’s in that hut, the second on our right. I’m going to get him and you can cure him. It’ll be great advertising.”

  A few minutes later Yuln came back leading the 15-year old by his right arm. He was nervous, looking all around him with panicked eyes. His left arm hung at his side; his shoulder bore the trace of a hard fall: dark bruises, scratches and scrapes.

  An anthropologist but also a medical doctor—Doniatchka was also one, too—Kariven walked up to him and asked Angelvin to help. He examined the bruise, felt the shoulder—making the patient wince and the ethnographer hold him more tightly—and concluded a recent dislocation, fortunately not separated. The head of the humerus was only slightly out of the glenoid cavity and most of the ligaments were probably still intact.

  All the men of the village, as fearful as the patient, watched the scene with nervous curiosity.

  “Dear, would you… calm this boy for a few minutes?” Kariven asked.

  Yuln nodded and projected into his mind soothing waves that did not block the pain but calmed the fears of the young, wounded Celt.

  “Now you, Bob. Hold him tight while I readjust. The only problem is if he wiggles around because this is going to hurt.”

  Kariven felt around and located the abnormal bulge of the humerus and very carefully pulled the arm while adjusting it.

  The patient screamed out in pain when the anthropologist popped the head of the humerus into the glenoid. He struggled to get free of his “torturers” but Angelvin hugged him tightly to his chest while his friend massaged the wounded shoulder with care.

  “He shouldn’t move it for four or five days. There are no splints here, so we’ll have to make due with what we can find.”

  In 15 minutes, the engineer Leconte, with the help of a Celtic sword, had split a piece of wood in two and as best he could “flattened” them out.

  Jenny, Yuln and Doniatchka went to search the shacks and came back carrying two rolls of linen and woven hemp that Kariven used to bind the makeshift splint to the arm, which was subsequently bound to the patient’s torso. The latter was totally astonished to feel his pain subsiding and hurried back to his shack.

  To all the Celts gathered round Yuln emitted these thoughts:

  “In a few days this young man will be able to use his arm again. He will be healed. Now let’s take care of the two sick women who are suffering without you being able to help them at all. Later we will teach you how you can take care of your own.”

  Within one hour Kariven and Donitchka—formerly, a doctor from the Moscow faculty7—diagnosed two intestinal infections, dermatosis, phlegmon of the throat and for the two young women an infection in the genitals following childbirth—a process in such deplorable conditions of hygiene that alas it was a problem known to all under-evolved peoples.

  The two doctors had to go back to the ship to get a medical bag and some sulfamides from the infirmary on board while the others stayed with the tribe.

  When Streiler and Harrington saw only Doniatchka and Kariven coming back they feared the worst, but their calm, smiling faces eased the worry about the fate of the others.

  “We came to get some medical equipment and drugs from the medical lab,” Kariven informed them. Seeing their astonishment Kariven explained their adventure.

  “Out of every bad comes some good,” Harrington mused. “During the overhaul of the time travel mechanism that I’m afraid could take weeks, you can borrow the gravito-magnetic helicopter for the altruistic mission you so nobly want to undertake.”

  The anthropologist frowned, “Do you really think we won’t be able to leave here for weeks?”

  “Afraid so. The circuits and internal devices of an electronic super-brain are child’s play compared to the Retrotimeship’s mechanisms.”

  Doniatchka noticed Streiler clenching his jaw and for a second raising his eyebrows. “Kurt!” she was upset at the idea that the two engineers could hide the truth from them. “Do you really think the ship is… beyond repair?”

  Streiler claimed that he had never had such a thought but his denial lacked conviction.

  Harrington sighed, “That is Kurt’s opinion. But I’m not beaten yet.”

  “Hell,” Streiler fumed, “I’m not beaten either but admit it, Red, we’re in a damn mess.”

  “I won’t deny it, but we’ve only been working at it for ten hours and it’ll take weeks to finish. At least wait until we’ve checked all the circuits before giving up.”

  His nervous temperament and a fruitless night of work made Streiler irritable. He grumbled and turned his back, leaning over the jumble of wires, lights, tubes, transistors and other parts that were a mystery to the profane. Several pieces of flooring had been removed around him, showing the incredibly complex mechanics buried under the cockpit.

  Just as Kariven and Doniatchka were stepping through the hatch Harrington said, “I think I should warn you not to alarm the others… prematurely, right?”

  The anthropologist looked at the young woman deep in the eyes and saw her silent but sad approval.

  “Understood, Red. Doniatchka and I won’t say anything. But don’t forget that Yuln is telepathic.”

  CHAPTER VII

  The sun had just sunk below the horizon and the indigo twilight was darkened the forest. On the beaten earth in the middle of the village the Celts had lit a big fire around which they were eating the last of their hunt in the company of the castaways of Time.

  In their anachronistic clothes of the 20th century, worn and torn and dusty, the “castaways” ate in silence, preoccupied and gloomy.

  Kariven was furtively watching his neighbor, Hyok, the chief of the clan, who was holding and using correctly his big iron fork. The modest eating tool—made by the villagers—was one of the first contributions of the time travelers to the Iron Age men. They learned pretty quickly how to make iron cutlery: forks, spoons and table knives. Moreover, they used them eagerly, imitating their teachers.

  Hyok was in the prime of life, a wide chest, hairy, long red-blonde hair and a square jaw with an upper lip supporting a big droopy moustache. He was gentle but knew how to show his authority wisely. Hyok incarnated both wisdom and strength in the heart of the tribe.

  The tree trunk on which he was sitting was also used by Yuln and her husband. The anthropologist seemed to be staring—without seeing it—straight through his wooden bowl. After finishing his huge leg of deer, he was meditating.

  After watching him for several minutes Hyok put his hand on his arm and said, “Master ate but was not hungry… Sad? Your friend Hyok sad too.”

  Pulled out of his reverie Kariven forced a smile. “I’m not sad, Hyok, but worried,” he answered in Celtic, a language he and his friends learned easily enough thanks to the precious knowledge of the ethnographer Angelvin8. “We’ve been here for almost five months and our ‘iron bird’ is still wounded. We’d like to go home to our… country but we have to wait… maybe a long time.”

  Hyok used the rudiments of French that Jenny and Yuln had taught him and said, “The other iron bird not good to go back?”

  “The helicopter?” the anthropologist smiled. “No, that little iron bird can’t take us all the way home.”

  “But you say Earth is round. If little bird fly and rest? In steps, rest the night, bird can go to other side of Earth, no?”

  How could he explain to this Celt of the Iron Age—who had already memorized the basics of geography—that their country was not on the other side of Earth but of Time?

  Not wanting to make him understand this abstract idea, Kariven kept it short and simple, “We will try to go back later. Tomorrow we will take you in the belly of our iron bird again. We will go west where the sun sets and visit new villages. You will help us like you’ve done so often to reassure the villagers and explain to them our desi
re to help, to heal and to teach them many useful things.

  “Later, when many moons have passed, you and your men will continue our work among others of your race living in this country. You will teach them to make the tools and instruments that we taught you to make. You will show them how certain plants and ‘rocks’ form powders or liquids that heal sickness or can be used to make other things. And even later their children and your children will find methods that we didn’t teach you.”

  Hyok’s gray-blue eyes sparkled with pride. Puffing out his chest he said, “Later Hyok big chief in big village when men come here often.”

  Yuln, sitting to the left of her husband, leaned over to look Hyok in the eyes. “Maybe you’ll be the chief of all villages one day, Hyok, it’s very likely. But never forget that only the good can help people become wise and knowledgeable. Conquests can get new land but they make the conquered people angry. Now, you don’t build anything solid on bitterness and hatred. We come from a country where bloody wars pitted peoples against peoples, where rivers of blood were spilled during a long reign of hatred. These peoples were strong, then very weak and unhappy after killing one another.

  “We know that even if you’re on the right path, alas, your successors can wander off it. But maybe with the example that you and your brothers are setting they’ll follow in your footsteps and imitate you… If they don’t, if they act like warriors, they’ll probably destroy everything you leave to them.”

  Hyok nodded gravely, thought for a minute, then objected, “We make good path. But warriors can come attack village. But how can good beat evil without swords, arrows and axes?”

  The ethnographer Angelvin pushed away the wooden bowl on the big table placed next to the fire and sighed, “That’s the eternal question. A wise people, loving arts and science—like you’re starting to be if you follow our teachings—is liable someday to be attacked by aggressive people. In this case, if it doesn’t make weapons, it’ll very likely be conquered.”

  “Si vis pacem, para bellum,9” Kariven quoted. “This adage, unfortunately, is relevant in every century. For the technical evolution and advanced morality of the Celts to have a chance of success, we have to think of teaching them different… and effective means of defending themselves against an eventual attack.”

  “In other words,” Leconte concluded, “teaching them for example how to extract sulfur and saltpeter, and how to prepare charcoal to give them—with these three basic products—the formula for gunpowder? Living in the Iron Age, the Celts will easily be able to improve the working of metals… in order to create simple cannons.”

  “Oh that, Maurice,” Yuln jumped in. “You’re going a little far and getting off track of our goals.”

  “Maurice and you are both right, dear,” Kariven said. “Teaching new methods of destruction—or defense—to these men is absolutely contrary to our principles. However, only these methods could really protect them against foreign invasion. I’m referring to the conquest of Gaul by the Romans between 125 and 51 BCE, around six or eight centuries from now. Basically, both ideas are valid… and contradict each other because the latter will cause a huge change in History, a thing we can’t allow.”

  Hyok, who had understood nothing of this conversation that was intentionally spoken in English, asked Kariven (splitting his name in two), “Kariv’en no answer. How to beat evil without swords?”

  “We were just talking about that problem, Hyok. The solution is very delicate. To defend yourself is normal if you are attacked, but you can’t take the initiative to spill other people’s blood.”

  “Hyok agree. No attack…” He glanced over at the paralyzing rifle hanging from a branch over the table and added, “We fight but not kill enemy if we have sleeping arrow.”

  Kariven and his friends smiled at this proviso and already saw a more humane stature in his thought.

  “With what we have at hand here, Hyok, we could never build these paralyzing weapons that you call sleeping arrows.”

  Disappointed by the response Hyok thought for a minute, then said, “We make hard swords if you teach Hyok to make hard.”

  The anthropologist smiled to his vocabulary. “Don’t think too much on the hard iron I talked about, Hyok, which we call steel. Making it is pretty complex and for the craft will need equipment that we’ll study together later if you think it’s possible to build.”

  Entering the long dining-living cabin of the Retrotimeship they greeted Streiler and Harrington with the usual, “Well?” Short and sweet, repeated almost every evening for five months when they came back from the Celtic village.

  Harrington rubbed his eyes, let out a sigh and in a cheerful voice that clashed with the weariness showing on his face, he said, “We’ve finally finished checking all the circuits and relays of the time travel mechanism.”

  “Really?” the three young women exclaimed together.

  “The Kinetempograph, or time measurer, is back in working order,” Streiler said.

  “And even if we can’t get back to our time, we now know where we got shipwrecked.”

  “And when?” Kariven asked.

  “In 757AD, May 19 using our calendar. Unfortunately the Kinetempograph isn’t enough for time travel. The breakdown we pretty much localized will need a few more weeks or maybe months to fix. It seems that some essential factor is escaping us and delaying our progress.”

  “Therefore,” Harrington pretended to be indifferent, “you have all time you want to continue your altruistic and peaceful education of the Celts.”

  The Chrysler Turbine of Commander Mark Taylor—attaché of the Strategic Air Command—purred to a halt on South Executive Avenue, having been stopped twice already by the FBI guarding the White House and the safety of the President of the United States.

  Commander Taylor and Lieutenant Clark, strapped into their elegant Air Force uniforms, climbed the winding steps of the White House. On the stoop once again two men asked to see their papers… all the while keeping their right hand in the pocket of their beige raincoat where a big caliber gun bulged.

  Commander Taylor showed them his invitation, signed by the President himself, addressed in his name and that of his subordinate. Once this final checkpoint was passed they could finally enter the holy of holies of the American federal capital: the White House. Two other G-men led them through the spacious rooms with floors shining like mirrors and soon they were brought to the President. He welcomed them with a friendly, even playful smile, which added to his amiable demeanor.

  “Commander Taylor and Lieutenant Clark,” he began after sitting them in front of his huge desk, “I’m going to give you a mission of utmost… danger. The future of the world might depend on its outcome.”

  He put his elbows on his desk, crossed his fingers and stared at the two men before continuing.

  “August 25, 1961, fifteen days ago, Professor Red Harrington and Kurt Streiler, whom you know from the first time travel you made together,10 asked to see me about an extremely important matter. Now, Streiler and Harrington… were coming from the future. Taking the Retrotimeship RT1 at the Nevada Center, where their laboratories are, they were coming from September 4, 1961, to ask me to make the French government evacuate the neighborhood around Champ de Mars in Paris on August 29. On that day the area would be carried away in a Space-Time fold, just like happened in Nagasaki on August 9. Your friends Jean Kariven, Michel Dormoy and Robert Angelvin were supposed to be carried away too… and not come back. As you’ll see in the report here, Kariven, his friends and their wives would have been thrown back and lost in 1843.

  “The orders for evacuating the threatened area were carried out by the French authorities and no Parisian disappeared, thanks to the wise precautions of Streiler and Harrington. But, as they were coming from a time when the event had already taken place, including the disappearance of your French friends, they returned to the Past, the day before the slip into the Space-Time fold, on August 28.

  “This day, on board the Ret
rotimeship, they brought Kariven, Dormoy, Angelvin and their wives with them after telling them what would happen the next day. Thus the three kidnapped couples avoided the problems they were going to face without knowing it.

  “With its rescue mission complete the Retrotimeship should have come back on September 4, 1961, where it was expected in the evening at Guyancourt, near Paris, an abandoned airfield under military guard. Well, on September 4, the Retrotimeship didn’t land and no one knows what happened to it. Now it’s been 11 days since the ship with the castaways in Time has disappeared. In all likelihood, for some unknown reason, the ship is lost somewhere in Time.

  “I’m asking you, therefore, to leave today in the Retrotimeship RT2 to search for RT1 in the Past. A special plane will take you to the Nevada Center this afternoon. It leaves at 1 pm from Bolling Air Force Base.11 I have no need to impress on you how important this mission is. Finding the castaways of Time is our primary concern. Not only because the passengers and the machine are priceless, but also because of the repercussions that might fall upon civilization from their intrusion in the recent Past.”

  The two officers exchanged a look that betrayed their pessimism, then Commander Taylor said, “Mr. President, you know very well the incredible difficulties that await us in searching for the RT1. These weird time slips in certain areas of the globe proves that the dimension of Time is seriously disturbed. A disturbance that we still don’t know the cause of. Some people think it’s the effect of atomic explosions on the curvature of Space. Others say that the solar system, in its course in the Apex,12 has run into a zone of unknown properties working on the Time Dimension. In fact, Science is lost at sea and we can’t blame it. If the RT1 had a breakdown, I hope that it didn’t turn off its automatic alert system and that we can find where or when it stopped in the course of Time. If not…”