The Corridors of Time

19

Like every other war Lockridge knew of, this one demanded that the bulk of effort go into the unspectacular organising of things. Being shorthanded was equally familiar. With agents scattered the length and breadth of history, the time contenders were appallingly so. Storm Darroway was still worse off: practically alone.

She admitted that political jealousy was not the sole reason she had no support from her coavatars. Her scheme was radical, involved scrapping a considerable investment in the old, doomed civilisations elsewhere. Some of the Warden queens had been sincere when they informed her the payoff she swore could be gotten must be demonstrated before they would help. For the fact was, the time war seemed to bypass Bronze Age Northern Europe. Neither Wardens nor Rangers were known to be conducting significant operations in that thousand-year, thousand-mile stretch of space-time.

“But hey, doesn’t that prove you’re wrong?” Lockridge fretted.

“No,” Storm said. “It could just as well mean success. Remember, because of the corridor guardians, we in our age are ignorant of our own future. We can’t foretell what we are going to do next. Even such cause-and-effect circles as we used to trap Brann are rare, thanks to the uncertainty factor in the gates.”

Sure, sure. But look, sweetheart, you most certainly can check a past era, like this one, and find out whether any Of your own people are around.”

“If their work runs smoothly, what will we see? Nothing except the natives leading their everyday lives. When Warden agents are hidden from the Rangers, they are to a large extent also hidden from other Wardens.”

“Uh . . . I reckon so. The security problem. You can’t let your own cohorts know more than they have to, or the enemy’s goin’ to find out.”

“Furthermore,” Storm said haughtily, “this is my theatre. I will employ my own people, in what manner I see fit. The power I get will not be used just against the Rangers. No, I’ve some accounts to settle at home too.”

“Sometimes you scare the dickens out of me,” he said.

She smiled and rumpled his hair. “And other times?” she purred.

“You make up for it, in spades!”

But they had not long together. There was too much to be done.

Storm must remain in Avildaro, goddess, judge, maker of decisions and maker of laws, until the nation she was building had taken the shape she wanted. Hu must be her thread of contact with home and with Crete. Ordinary soldiers were useful only as couriers or guards; in this case, the men Hu had brought were not even required in that capacity, and she sent them back. Trained agents could not well be spared from other milieus. Most desperately she needed an able man to work with the tribes.

Lockridge went forth. Withucar and some warriors accompanied him. He had gotten quite fond of the red Yutho, they’d guested each other and drunk mead together and bragged till far into the night. Okay, so he’s not civilized, Lockridge thought. I reckon I’m not either. I like this life.

The ultimate object was to cement the people of the Labrys and the people of the Axe into one. That was certainly going to happen: Jutland would come into history as a nation, and even beyond Lockridge’s century remain identifiably itself. Likewise for many another region. The question was, would the Indo-European incursion which the Rangers had launched to destroy the old culture do so here, or would so much of the megalith builder survive, however disguised, that the Wardens could secretly but securely draw upon the Bronze Age North? Reports from the next millennium indicated the latter might well be the case, that the Rangers’ move was to recoil upon them in this part of the world.

But the founding of those kingdoms must be slow, both for lack of agents and because the event must look natural. (Must in fact be natural; a jerry-built empire like Alexander’s or Tamerlane’s was too short-lived to be of much value.) The first step was to bring the villagers around the Limfjord into a union more close and demanding than they had known before. For that, Storm had the awe of her own presence, and her Yuthoaz allies wherever force was necessary. At the same time, she had to league herself with the inland tribes, both aboriginal and newcomer. She sent Lockridge on the first such mission.

He would have preferred to go on horseback. But these shaggy, long-headed ponies had never been ridden, and it would take too long to break one. He walked. When they neared a settlement, he and Withucar got onto their chariots, set their teeth against the jouncing, and arrived in what this era took for dignity.

On the whole, though—even after what followed—Lockridge admitted he’d seldom had more fun. His pet recreation had always been to backpack into some wilderness area; now he could do it with Withucar’s liege men to carry the load. When they reached people, they were hospitably received, and he was fascinated to observe details that weren’t recorded in his diaglossa. (Which, gradually, he was ceasing to need, as repeated usage imprinted speech and customs on his natural memory.) In Battle Axe camps, rough ceremony was followed feasting. The ancient agricultural villages were a little wary at first: not scared, however, for they hadn’t had many clashes with the immigrants, the land being wide and thinly settled. They would begin with elaborate rituals. But they were apt to end with a celebration that would have raised twentieth-century eyebrows.

The message Lockridge bore was simple. The veritable Goddess had established Herself in Avildaro. She was not, as some had said, the enemy of Sun and Fire; rather, She was Mother, Wife, and Daughter to the male gods. The Powers desired Their children to be united as They Themselves were. To that end, the first of a series of councils would be held at Avildaro this midwinter, to discuss ways and means. All headmen were invited. Lockridge didn’t add, “Or else.” That would have been both antagonizing and unnecessary.

Some of what he saw and heard repelled him. But we’ll fix that, he promised himself. Mostly, he enjoyed the people. He couldn’t even call them less sophisticated than his own. Albeit tenuously, they had broad contacts: in the case of the Battle Axe tribes, as far as southern Russia. Their politics were almost as complicated as the twentieth century’s, on a smaller scale, and untainted by ideology; their mores were a good deal subtler; if ignorant of physics, historiography, or that pseudo-science called economics, they were wise in the ways of earth, sky, and humankind.

His route took him by a holy hill which would become Viborg, over country more fertile than what he had seen in the future; north to the surf and wide strands of the Skaw; southward again along the Limfjord. A small beginning. Yet he needed almost a month. The heaths were blossoming in purple and gold, sunrise saw hoarfrost and the leaves had begun to turn colour, before he reached Avildaro again.

That was on a day when the wind came brawling off the western sea, light and cloud shadow raced each other across the world, waves marched on the bay and on the puddles from last night’s rain. The forest tossed and shouted; stubblefields lay yellow and the meadow grass had become hay. A flight of storks went under the sun, Egypt bound. The air was chill, with smells of salt, smoke, and horses.

Lockridge’s party had been seen from afar. He rode through the Yutho encampment among lusty cheers, onto the no man’s land between it and the village. No Tenil Orugaray were out to welcome him.

Except Auri. She came on jubilant feet, calling to him over and over. He made his driver stop, swept her up and hugged her. “Yes, little one, I am fine, we had no trouble, of course I am glad to see you but I do have to tell the Goddess my story first—” He would have liked to give her a lift, but the chariot scarcely had room. She danced beside the wheels the whole way.

At the Long House, trouble touched her. “I will abide in my home, Lynx,” she said, and hastened off.

Withucar stared after her and scratched his beard. “A good bit of flesh, yon,” he said. “How is she with a man?”

“She’s a maiden,” Lockridge answered curtly.

“Eh?” Dismounting, the Yutho gaped. “Can’t be. Not among the Sea People.”

Lockridge explained what had happened.

“We-e-ell,” the chief murmured. “Well, well. But surely you’re not afraid of her?”

“No. I’m too busy.” Lockridge snapped his mouth shut.

“Ah, yes.” Withucar signed himself, though he also grinned. “You are favoured of the Goddess.” That was no longer cause for undue reverence, after he and the American had tramped the hills, hallooed after deer, cursed rain and unstartable camp-fires, and faced possible death together. “This Auri,” he said. “I’ve liked her looks erenow, but took without thought that she was yours. She does nuzzle up to you every chance.”

“We’re friends,” Lockridge said with rising irritation. “Were she a man, we would be oath-brothers. Any hurt done her is done me, and I’ll take revenge.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Still, you’d not wish her left single forever, would you?”

Lockridge could only shake his head.

And she is the inheritor of the old headman here; and you say the curse is off her—hm.”

Well, Lockridge thought with an odd sinking, that may turn out the best answer to her problem.

He couldn’t keep her long in mind, though. Storm waited.

In the presence of Hu and Withucar, she greeted him formally, and seemed only half to listen to his report. He was soon dismissed. However, she had given him a smile and said an English word: “Tonight.”

After that, and the easy comradeship of his past weeks, he didn’t want to spend the day among the Tenil Orugaray. They had changed from the merry folk he knew before, into a bewildered and sullen occupied country. A gap had opened between him and them; he was Her agent, and She had chosen to reveal some of Her more terrible aspects. He could have visited the Yuthoaz . . . but no, he would see their slaves. Auri? Well, that had become a rather difficult relationship. He hiked off alone. The sacred pool on the forest edge probably wasn’t too cold for him to wash off his journey’s grime.

He should have been happy. But something had gone sour. He chewed it over as the miles went past. Surely the peaceful unification of the two races was a good goal. And the Battle Axe men weren’t bad by nature; just sort of overbearing. Like untrained boys. That was it. They needed the fear of the Lord thrown into them. Specifically, they needed a respect for the humanity of the aborigines. At present, they were merely adding the Moon Goddess to their pantheon, with nothing except Her command to keep them from making booty of the Sea People. And no entire culture had ever respected another which gave no good account of itself in battle.

Progress, Lockridge thought sadly. Will man be any different, four thousand years from now? We white Americans may have robbed the Indian, but because he fought back, we’re proud of any Indian blood we may have. The Negro we plain despised, till my very own decades, when at last he stood up and slugged it out for his rights.

Maybe John and Mary’s people don’t have to have their noses rubbed in blood before they can honour a stranger. I like to think so. But how do we get from here to there?

Maybe that’s my job. To lay one single brick for their house.

Only how? The Yuthoaz know perfectly well they would’ve beaten the Tenil Orugaray if the gods hadn’t taken a hand. They’re here now, by Storm’s invitation, because they make better warriors. It’s fine to call a council and set up a king. But how do we escape a kingdom made up of master and serf?

Does Storm even want to?

No! Stop that!

He had been so lost in his brown study that he was almost to the pool before he saw what was going on. And they—seven young men and a girl from the village—were so intent that they hadn’t seen him coming.

She was stretched on the boulder from which tools were cast as offerings. While his companions stood by with mistletoe in their hands, the seventh man raised a flint knife above her breast.

“What the hell!” Lockridge bellowed.

He dashed toward them. They scattered back. When they saw who he was, fear turned them less than human, they grovelled on the earth while the girl came piecemeal from her trance.

Lockridge controlled his stomach and said in his deepest voice: “By Her name, I demand confession of your misdeeds.”

He got it, in stammerings and pleadings. Some of the details were left out, but he could fill those in for himself.

“Goddess” was no good translation of the word for what She was in this culture. The Japanese kami came nearer: any supernatural being, from this rock, or the tree whose pardon one asked before felling it, to the vast vague Powers that dominated the elements. Dominated, not controlled. There was no formal theology, no separation of the magical and the divine; all things had some mystical strength. He, Lockridge, had a frightful amount. Withucar could be his friend, but that was because Withucar did not expect the magic to be unleashed against himself. Auri, less fortunate, had no one at all who felt easy in her presence.

These of the kindly Tenil Orugaray saw their country invaded by Her will. They could have escaped to Flanders or England, as some had already done, but the instinct of homeland was too deep in them. Instead, they would try to raise powers against Her. They had heard tales of human sacrifice among the inland people, and knew those inlanders were still free—

“Go home,” Lockridge said. “I call no ill down on you. I will not tell Her about this. Better times are coming. That I swear.”

They crawled off. When they had gotten some distance, they ran. Lockridge sprang into the pool and washed himself savagely.

He did not return till after sunset. The weather had thickened, a rack of clouds blew from the sea, bringing cold and an early dusk. None were abroad in the village, and skins across the doorways shut him out.

Whatever his feelings, a man must eat, and Lockridge was bumming off the house which had been Echegon’s. He walked into a stillness. Smoke stung his eyes, shadows filled the corners and crowded close around the wan flicker in the firepit. Auri’s kin sat as if waiting for him: her mother the widow, who tonight reminded him of that woman who sheltered him from Istar’s hounds; her few remaining small half brothers; her aunt and uncle, plain fisher folk who watched him out of an absolute withdrawal; their own children, some asleep, some so far grown that they were still awake to cower from him. “Where is Ami?” Lockridge asked.

Her mother pointed to a dais. Wheaten hair spilled across the deerskin blanket. “She wore herself out weeping. Must I rouse her?”

“No.” Lockridge looked from face to shut and careful face. “What is the matter?”

“Surely you know,” her mother said, without even accusing him.

“I don’t. Tell me!” The fire jumped momentarily high, so its light played over Auri’s form. She slept with thumb inside fist, like a troubled child. “I want to help,” he groped.

“Oh. Yes, you were ever her friend. But what’s best for her?” the mother appealed. “We cannot be sure. We are only earth-dwellers.”

“Nor am I more,” Lockridge said, and wished they would believe him. “Well, then. This afternoon came that Yutho chief called

Withucar and asked that she be his . . . what is their word?”

“Wife,” Lockridge said. He remembered that Withucar had three.

“Yes. His alone. A kind of slave who must do his every bidding. Yet, well, you are wiser than us, and you know this man. He said we would all come under his protection. Is that true? This house has sore need of a guardian.”

Lockridge nodded. Protection has a price, he thought, but didn’t say so.

“Auri refused him,” the mother said wearily. “He answered that the Goddess had told him he could have her. Then she grew wild, and cried out for you. We calmed her a little and sought the Long House. The Goddess saw us, after a wait, and commanded Auri to join with Withucar. But they do such things differently among the Yuthoaz. It may not be until certain rites have taken place. So we brought her home. She raved of killing herself, or taking a boat alone—that would be the same thing—but at last she slept. What do you think?”

“I will speak to the Goddess,” Lockridge said unevenly.

“Thank you. I do not know myself what is best. She would be unfree with him, but are we not unfree already? And The Storm has commanded. Yet Auri could never gladly spend her life in such narrow streams. Perhaps you can tell her it’s best.”

“Or get her released,” Lockridge said. “I will go at once.”

“Do you not first wish food?”

“No, I am not hungry.” He dropped the curtain behind him.

The village was very dark. He must fumble his way to the Long House. The Yutho sentries let him through without argument.

Inside, the globes still glowed. Storm sat alone at the control board of a psychocomputer. In this heated place she wore a vary brief tunic, but he looked upon her without desire. She turned about, laughed, and stretched. “So soon, Malcolm?

“Well, I’m tired of extrapolating trends. The data are mostly guesswork anyhow.”

“Look,” he began, “we’ve got to talk.”

Her mirth went away and she sat quite still.

“We’re goin’ about this project wrong,” he said. “I figured the original people here would get reconciled to the new arrangements. But instead, while I was away, things went from bad to worse.”

“You certainly can switch moods in a hurry,” she said, chill of tone. “Be more specific. You mean that friction between the tribes has increased. What did you expect? What am I supposed to do, disown my good Yutho allies?”

“No, just take them down a peg or two.”

“Malcolm, my dear,” Storm said more gently, “we haven’t come to build a Utopia. That’s an impossible task anyway. What we are concerned with is the creation of strength. And that means favouring those who have the potential of being strong. Before you get too self-righteous, ask if the dwellers on Eniwetok will really want to be moved, to make room for your country’s nuclear tests. We can try to minimise the pain we inflict, but someone who refuses to inflict any has no business in this world.”

Lockridge drew back his shoulders and said, “Okay, you can outargue me whenever—”

Storm rose. Her look was shameless and enchanting. “Especially in one way,” she said.

“No, wait, damn it!” Lockridge protested. “Maybe we do have to be bastards, we humans. But not without any qualification. A man’s got to stand by his friends, at least. Auri’s a friend of mine.”

Storm halted. A while she stood motionless, then ran fingers down a night-black lock and said softly, “Yes, her. I thought you’d raise the question. Go on.”

“Well, uh, well, she doesn’t want to be in Withucar’s harem.”

“Is he a bad man?”

“No. But—”

“Do you want her to remain single: knowing how unnatural that makes her here?”

“No, no, no—”

“Is anyone else available to her?”

“Well—”

“Unless, perhaps, yourself,” Storm growled.

“Oh, good God!” Lockridge said. “You know I—you and me—”

“Don’t set yourself too high, my man. But as for this wench. If the races are to become one, there have to be unions. Marriage is too strong an institution for the Battle Axe people to give up; therefore the Sea People will have to accept it. Auri is the heiress of this community’s leadership, Withucar is as influential as any in his tribe. Both in practice and as an example, nothing better could happen than their marriage. Of course she threw a fit. Are you so ignorant you think she will never console herself? Nor love her children by him? Nor forget you?”

“Well, though—I mean, she deserves a free choice.”

“Who is there for her to choose, except you who don’t want her? Nor would it help the purpose if you did. You came in complaining of unhappiness among the villagers. The English are going to be still unhappier after the Norman Conquest. But a few centuries later, there are no Normans. Everyone is an Englishman. For us, here and now, that same process begins with Auri and Withucar. Don’t talk to me about free choice . . . unless you think every war should only be fought by volunteers.”

Lockridge stood helpless. Storm came to him and put her arms about his neck. “I believe Auri, in her childish way, calls you Lynx,” she murmured. “I would like to do that.”

“Aw—look—”

She rubbed her head on his breast. “Let me be childish now and then, with you.”

A Yutho voice called from beyond the curtain: “Goddess, the lord Hu asks to come in.”

“Damn!” Storm whispered. “I’ll get rid of him as fast as I can.” Aloud: “Let him enter.”

Spare and lithe in his green uniform, Hu trod in to bow. “I beg your forgiveness, brilliance,” he said. “But I was out on an aerial sweep.”

Storm tautened. “Well?”

“Most likely this means nothing. Still, I saw a considerable fleet beating across the North Sea. The lead ship is Iberian, the rest are skin boats. I never heard of such a combination. They’re plainly bound from England to Denmark.”

“At this season?” Awareness of Lockridge drained from Storm. She let him go and stood alone in the frigid light.

“Yes, that’s another paradox, brilliance,” Hu said. “I couldn’t detect advanced equipment. If they have any, it must be negligible. But they will be here in a day or two.”

“Some Ranger operation? Or a mere local adventure? These are times when the natives themselves look to new things.” Storm frowned. “Best I go glance at them myself.”

She fetched her gravity belt and fastened it about her waist, an energy pistol at the hip. “You may as well stay and rest, Malcolm, I won’t be gone long,” she said, and left beside Hu.

For some time Lockridge prowled the hall. The night was noisy with wind, but he heard a thrusting inner silence. And the gods so clumsily and tenderly hacked out of the pillars—did they look at him? Lord, Lord, he thought, what does a guy do when he can’t help somebody who cares for him?

What is truth?

A woman six thousand years hence told him her son had been burnt alive. But she knew the cause was good. Didn’t she?

Lockridge checked himself. He had almost gone through the veil of lightlessness. Brann had suffered and died behind it. His guts knotted. Why did they continue to maintain the thing?

Why hadn’t he asked?

I reckon I never wanted to, he understood, and stepped through.

This end of the house had not been refurnished. The floor was dirt, the seats covered with skins gone dusty. One globe illuminated the section; shadows lay in every comer. The black barricade cut off sound, too. The wind was gone. Lockridge stood in total quiet.

That which was on the table, wired into the machine, stirred and whimpered.

“No!” Lockridge screamed, and fled.

Long afterward, he got the courage to stop sobbing and return. He could do no else. Brann, who had fought as best he could for his own people, was not dead.

Little was left, except skin drawn dry across the big arching bones. Tubes fed into him and kept the organism together. Electrodes pierced the skull, jolted the brain and recorded what was brought forth. For some reason of stimulus, the eyelids had been cut away and the balls of the eyes must stare into the light overhead.

“I didn’t know,” Lockridge wept.

Tongue and lips struggled in the wreck of a face. Lockridge wasn’t wearing his diaglossa for Brann’s age, but he could guess that a fragment of self pleaded, “Kill me.”

While just beyond the curtain—her and me—

Lockridge reached for the machine.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

He turned, very slowly, and saw Storm and Hu. The man’s energy gun was out, aimed at his belly. The woman said urgently: “I wanted to spare you this. It does take time, to extract the last traces of memory. There isn’t much cerebrum by now, he’s really no more than a worm, so you needn’t feel pity. Remember, he had begun to do the same thing to me.”

“Does that excuse you?” Lockridge shouted.

“Will Pearl Harbour excuse Hiroshima?” she gibed.

For the first time in his existence, Lockridge said an obscenity to a woman. “Never mind your fancy reasons,” he gasped. “I know how you kept yourself in my country . . . by murderin’ my countrymen. I know John and Mary gave me an honest look at the way you run your own territory. How old are you? I got enough hints about that too. You can’t have done every crime you have done, except in hundreds o’ years, your own time. That’s why they’ve got the knife in you, back at the palace—why everybody wants to be the Koriach—she’s made immortal. While Ola’s mother is old at forty.”

“Stop that!” Storm cried.

Lockridge spat. “I’ve got no business wonderin’ how many lovers you’ve had, or how I’m just a thing you used,” he said. “But you aren’t goin’ to use Auri, understand? Nor her people. Nor anyone. To hell with you: the hell you came from!”

Hu levelled the gun and said, “That will suffice.”