Nova 4

GERARD E. GIANNATTASIO Protective Temporal Strike

Perhaps the author's tour of duty as an air force officer taught him to push on to victory despite all odds. The odds on finding a new twist to add to the literature of all the time travel twists that have come before are overwhelming. But he has done it.

Sylvie heard the door open: it wasn't locked. Out here in the country they never bothered. "Patti," she called, half laughing and wanting to share, "Patti, this recipe is outrageous!" She had white flour to her elbows and a smudge where she'd wiped her forehead.

"Patti?" She turned. "Oh! Hello."

The figure standing in the doorway of the kitchen wore gray leather: belts and bulges, boots tight to the calves, and a conical, visored helmet with featureless dark faceplate. The unfamiliar three-barreled gun pointed at her midriff surprised Sylvie less than the four-foot height of the bearer.

"Move away from the table." The voice was masculine, shocking in its depth.

Sylvie moved. "Okay," she said raising her hands aloft. "Can I get you something?"

"Do you always greet armed strangers with a civil tongue?"

"Well, you're my first."

"He could be your last." A second figure had entered. Feminine, slightly taller, wearing low slippers and a dark blue jump suit, she said, "Stitch her up, armed stranger."

The dwarfish figure brought his gun up slightly. Sylvie felt a prickling line run from below her rib cage to her left breast. She swayed. The feminine figure went out.

The man came forward, slinging his gun around to his back. He caught Sylvie and eased her to the floor. "How do you like armed strangers now?"

She tried to speak. He leaned close, then straightened. Another male figure had entered, a twin to the first.

"She knows at least one word you might not expect," the first intruder said.

"We are to bring her into the next room. And remember, she speaks the secret tongue."

"That is strange to contemplate."

They lifted her by feet and shoulders.

"Yes," the second said, "to have heard Mark Twain lecture, attended Eugene O'Neill's opening nights, seen the first lift-off from Cap Kay—"

Psychos, Sylvie thought as they carried her into the dining room. Psychos, but she wasn't surprised or frightened. She was spaced out, drifting. Like Oscar the Rhino. She smiled vaguely, remembering newscasts of Oscar being treated for toothache after the keepers had tranquilized him with darts from a special gun.

They set Sylvie on the sofa where she could see the cabin's door. The woman was with a third man, dressed in gray but taller than the rest—a veritable giant. Incongruously, at an angle away from his body, a crucifix rode on his left shoulder.

The woman smiled at Sylvie. "Excellent," she said. "Our Sylvia cannot be seen from the windows or door. Gentlemen at Arms, Master of Loth: posts please!" She walked outside. Full dark had fallen.

Sylvie watched, obscurely interested, as the three men moved knowingly about the room. The armed mites disposed themselves in the center. Crouching under table and armchair they reminded Sylvie of her small nephews playing guns.

The giant had taken his position against the wall by the door. Reaching his right hand to the crucifix he brought from behind his back a wide, pointless sword. Idly Sylvie measured his height against the massive Victorian sideboard. The giant was less than five and a half feet.

The woman reentered the cabin, spoke to the swordsman and went out. The giant squatted on his heels, sword stretched out before him, his attitude restful. The woman returned, satisfied. She passed out of Sylvie's vision into the short hall leading to the bedrooms.

The men were motionless. Time seemed not to decay in Sylvie's trance. She heard a car in the drive; footfalls on the porch. Patti opened the door, called her name, staggered and was caught by the miniature gunmen. They placed her on the sofa beside Sylvie and scuttled back under their table and chair.

The woman came from the bedrooms wearing Sylvie's bathrobe clinched tightly to her body. Her hair, long and blonde like Patti's, was piled loosely atop her head. She wandered about the dining room, walked out and back from the kitchen and sat with a magazine by the largest window. She repeated the routine twice, spending most of her time near windows.

The doorbell chimed.

"Just a minute!" she called. As the woman crossed to the opening door, the swordsman slithered up the wall, lifting his sword. A man leaped into the cabin with a gun thrust before him. Sylvie saw that his face was strange. A lady's stocking was pulled over his head and tied in a knot at the crown. A foot of tan nylon fell over the man's right ear. Another psycho, Sylvie thought.

The giant shifted his footing and the sword descended in a sweeping arc. It bit into the masked man's body between left collarbone and neck. The sword continued to descend, almost to the waist, pressing the body to the floor. It knelt with knees splayed, head lolling to the right and the squared-off blade pointing downward from the pit of its stomach.

Red spots were bright on the whiteness of the bathrobe. the woman looked down, unlaced the cloth belt and slipped from it. Tossing the soiled garment to the swordsman who caught it in his right hand, she walked, naked, toward the bedrooms and out of Sylvie's placid gaze.

The dwarfish gunners unrolled a slick black sack and forced it over the head and shoulders of the corpse. The swordsman eased his weapon from the still masked body's back, cleaning it on the bathrobe as it slid out.

When the body was completely encased, one dwarf balled the robe, wiped a small pool of blood from the wood tile floor and stuffed the garment into the sausagelike bundle against the corpse's feet. He twisted the open end closed, increasing the resemblance to a wurst. Grasping the ends, the gunners carried it from the cabin. The swordsman, towering over them, braced the door open.

Dressed again in her blue coverall and slippers, the woman entered the dining room. "Master of Loth," she said, "exhibit your instrument."

The swordsman came to Patti and Sylvie. Standing before them, he held the sword at eye level. Slowly he passed one side of the blade through their gaze, then the other. The sword was like none Sylvie had seen in museums or movies or books.

It was not a musketeer's rapier, a privateer's cutlass, a fencing foil, a Civil War saber or a knightly arm from the days of chivalry. The blade was almost rectangular giving it a stolid, thick look; but the edge was thin. With hardly any taper it ended in a square point. On one side were the names of months and days. Toward the point a throned Justice was finely engraved. Her eyes were unblinded and she held balance and pointed sword. The second side held only a droll saying:

In skilled hands

I make no headway.

When the display was ended the swordsman sheathed his weapon across his back. The hilt was chiseled in the form of a crucifix with a winged figure head downward upon it. The grip rose for three palm-widths above the nailed feet.

"Thank you, Master of Loth," the woman said. The swordsman turned and walked from the cabin.

The woman stood in front of Patti and Sylvie, arms folded loosely under her breasts. "Ladies,'' she said, "you live in dangerous days. Mend your stupid ways." As she left the cabin the lock snicked shut behind her.