The Corridors of Time

2

September 14, her letter had said, at nine in the morning. Lockridge woke early, couldn’t get back to sleep, and finally went for a long walk. He wanted to say farewell to Copenhagen anyhow. Whatever the job Storm Darroway had for him, it would scarcely be here—not when he was directed to buy backpacking equipment for two, a rifle, and a pistol—and he had fallen in love with the city.

Bicycles swarmed the streets, weaving in and out of auto traffic, the last workward rush. Their riders didn’t have the beaten look of American commuters: placid portly men, young fellows in business suits or student caps, girls with fresh faces and blowing blonde hair, all openly enjoyed life. The glitter of Tivoli was like champagne in the blood, but you needn’t go there to taste the Old Vienna spirit. Sufficient was to walk down Langelinje, sea winds in your nostrils, ships bound by for the outposts of the world; stop to pay your respects to the Little Mermaid and Gefjon of the Oxen; go past royal Amalienborg, left along the canal through Nyhavn where centuries-old seamen’s taverns sleepily recalled last night’s fun, across Kongens Nytorv with a pause for a quick beer at an outdoor café; and on among Renaissance churches, palaces, counting houses, whose slender copper-sheathed spires pierced the sky with loveliness.

I got so damn much to be grateful to that woman for, Lockridge reflected, and not least that she had me arrive here three weeks ahead of time.

He had wondered why. Her instructions were to get ordnance maps and familiarise himself with the Danish topography, spend many hours in the Old Nordic section of the National Museum, and read several books that thoroughly explained the exhibits. He obeyed conscientiously, puzzled but not questioning his luck. There were ample chances for recreation, and no lack of companionship. The Danes were friendly, delightfully so in the case of two young ladies he had met. Maybe that was Storm Darroway’s idea: for him to recover from the ordeal behind him, and work off enough biological steam that he wouldn’t be making passes at her—wherever they were bound.

The reminder was jolting. Today! He quickened his steps. The hotel she had ordered him to use hove into view. Trying to ease the tension that gathered in him, he took the stairs to his room rather than an elevator.

He had not long to pace and chain smoke. The phone rang. He yanked it off the hook. The clerk said, in excellent English, “Mr. Lockridge? You are asked to meet Miss Darroway outside in fifteen minutes, with your baggage.”

“Oh. Okay.” For a moment he bristled. She was treating him like a servant. No, he decided. I’ve been so long in the northern states I’ve forgotten what a real lady expects. No reason to get a bellhop. He slipped a pack onto his shoulders, took the other one and his suitcase in his hands, and went down to check out.

A gleaming-new Dauphine stopped by the curb. She was at the wheel. He had not forgotten her looks, that was impossible, but when her dark head leaned out the window, he drew a breath and the Danish girls fell from his awareness.

“How do you do,” he said lamely.

She smiled. “Welcome back to freedom, Malcolm Lockridge,” the husky voice greeted him. “Shall we start?”

He put the gear in the trunk and joined her. She was wearing slacks and sneakers, but looked no less imperial than before.

She slipped the car into traffic with more skill than he could have shown. “Whew!” he said. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

“There is little to spare,” she answered. “I want to be across this country before nightfall.”

Lockridge pulled his eyes from her profile. “I, uh, I’m ready for whatever you’ve got in mind.”

She nodded. “Yes, I read you aright.”

“But if you’ll tell me—”

“In a moment. I gather you were acquitted.”

“Completely. I don’t know how I can ever thank you.”

“By helping me, of course,” she said with a touch of impatience. “But let us discuss your own situation first. I need to know what commitments you have.”

“Why—none, really. I’d no idea how long this job would take, so I haven’t applied for another. I can stay with my mother till I do get one.”

“Does she expect you back soon?”

“No. I stopped off in Kentucky to see my folks. Your letter said not to let on, so I only told them my defence had been handled by somebody rich who thought I was gettin’ a raw deal and now wanted me in Europe as a consultant on a research project that might or might not take quite a while. Okay?”

“Excellent.” She dazzled him with a look. “I did not misjudge your ingenuity either.”

“But where are we headed, anyway? What for?”

“I cannot tell you much. But, briefly, we are to recover and transport a treasure.”

Lockridge shaped a whistle and fumbled for a cigarette.

“You find that unbelievable? Melodramatic? Something from a bad novel?” Storm Darroway chuckled. “Why do people in this age think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe? Consider. The atoms that built you are clouds of sheer energy. The sun that shines on you could consume this planet, and there are other suns that could swallow it. Your ancestors hunted the mammoth, crossed oceans in row-boats, died on a thousand red fields. Your civilization stands at the edge of oblivion. Within your own body, at this instant, a war is fought without quarter against invaders that would devour you, against entropy and time itself. There is a norm for you!”

She gestured at the street, where folk were about their daily business. “A thousand years ago they were wiser,” she said. “They knew the world and the gods would go under and nothing could be done but meet that day bravely.”

“Well—” Lockridge hesitated. “Okay. Maybe I’m just not the Ragnarok type.”

She laughed. The car hummed onward. They were out of the old city, into a district of high apartment buildings, before she continued:

“I will be brief. Do you remember that the Ukraine rebelled against the Soviet government, a number of years ago? The revolt was savagely put down, but the fight lasted long. And the headquarters of the freedom movement was here, in Copenhagen.”

Lockridge scowled. “Yes, I’ve studied foreign politics.”

“There was a—a war chest,” she said, “that was hidden away when the cause began to look hopeless. Now, lately, we have found someone who knows the place.”

His muscles tautened. “We?”

“The liberation movement. Not for the Ukraine alone any more, but for everyone enslaved. We need those funds.”

“Wait a minute! What the dickens?”

“Oh, we do not hope to set free a third of the planet overnight. But propaganda, subversion, escape routes to the West—such things cost money. And nothing may be looked for from governments that blither of a détente.”

He needed time to collect his wits. So he said, “That’s right. I used to claim, in bull sessions and so forth, there seems to be a will to suicide in America these days. The way we sit up and beg for any kind word from anybody, whether or not he’s sworn to wreck us. The way we turn over whole continents to idiots, demagogues, and cannibals. The way, even at home, we twist the plain words of the Constitution to buy off any bunch of—never mind. My arguments didn’t make me any too well liked.” An odd exultation flitted across her face, but she said flatly: “The gold is at the end of a tunnel in western Jutland, dug by the Germans during their occupation of Denmark for an ultra-secret research project. The anti-Nazi underground raided that base near the end of the war. Apparently everyone there who knew of the tunnel was killed, because its existence was never revealed in public. The Ukrainians learned of it from a man on his deathbed, and took it over as a hiding place. After their revolt was crushed and they disbanded, their treasury was left. You see, those few who had been told about it would not betray their trust by appropriating the gold for their private use, yet they had no more cause. Most of them are dead now, of age or accident or murder by Soviet agents. The last survivors finally decided to let our organisation have the fund. I have been assigned to fetch it. You are my helper.”

“But—but—why me? You’ve got men of your own.”

“Have you never heard of using an outside courier? An East European might too likely be watched, or searched. But American tourists go everywhere. Their luggage is seldom opened at the frontiers, especially if they are travelling cheaply.

“Beaten into leaf, the gold can be sewn into our garments, the linings of our sleeping bags, and so on. We will go by motorcycle to Geneva and there turn it over to the proper person.” Her eyes challenged him. “Are you game?”

Lockridge bit his lip. The thing was too weird to swallow in a piece. “You don’t think they’ll wave us on with this arsenal I bought, do you?”

“The guns are mere precaution while we prepare the gold to go. We will leave them behind.” Storm Darroway fell silent a while. “I will not insult your intelligence,” she said gently. “This involves certain violations of law. They might become very great violations, if there is a fight. I need a man who will take the risks and is capable of meeting trouble, and tough if he must be, yet not a criminal tempted by the chance of personal gain. You seemed right. If I have been mistaken, I beg you to tell me now.”

“Well—that is—” Lockridge recovered some humour. “If you wanted James Bond, you sure were mistaken.”

She gave him a blank glance. “Who?”

“Never mind,” he said, largely to cover his own astonishment. “Uh—All right, I’ll speak plain. How do I know you are what you say? This could be an ordinary smugglin’ ring, or a con game, or ... or anything. Even a Russian stunt. How do I know?”

The city was falling behind, the road so clear that she could give him a long regard. “I cannot tell you more than I have done,” she said. “Another part of your task is to trust me.”

He looked into those eyes and surrendered with joy. “Okay!” he exclaimed. “You got yourself a smuggler.”

Her right hand fell on his left and squeezed. “Thank you,” she said, and that was ample.

They drove on in silence, through green countryside and little red-roofed villages. He ached to talk with her, but you wait for the queen to open conversation. They were entering Roskilde when he finally ventured: “You’d better give me some details. The layout and so on.”

“Later,” she said. “This day is too fair.”

He could not read her expression, but a softness lay on the mouth. Yes, he thought, in your kind of life you must grab after everything beautiful you can, while you can. They passed near the great three-spired cathedral and he wished he could find better words than, “Quite a church yonder.”

“A hundred kings lie buried there,” she said. “But under the market square are the still more ancient ruins of St. Lawrence’s; and before that rose, there was a heathen temple with the gable ends carved into dragon heads. For this was the royal seat of Viking Denmark.” Somehow it ran a shiver down his nerves. But her mood passed like a blown cloud and she smiled. “Did you know that the modern Danes call the Perseid meteors the tears of St. Lawrence? They are a people of charming fancies.”

“You seem right interested in them,” he remarked. “Is that why you wanted me to study up on their past?”

Her tone stiffened. “We need a cover story in case we are observed. Archaeological curiosity is a good excuse for poking about, in a land this old. But I said I do not wish to think about these matters now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Again she bewildered him with change. “Poor Malcolm,” she teased. “Is it that hard for you to be idle? Come, we are to be a pair of tourists, camping out at night, eating and drinking at poor men’s inns, winding down back roads and through forgotten hamlets, from here to Switzerland. Let us begin to practice the part.”

“Oh, I’m good at bein’ a bum,” he said, eager to please.

“Have you travelled much, besides your field trips?”

“Sort of. Hitchhiked around some, and used to go into the hinterlands on Okinawa when I had a pass, and took a leave in Japan—”

He was sophisticated enough to admire the skill with which she encouraged him to talk about himself. But that didn’t make the process less enjoyable. Not that he was given to bragging; however, when a gorgeous woman listened with so much interest, he naturally obliged her.

The Dauphine purred down the island, Ringsted, Sorø, Slagelse, and so to Korsør on the Belt. There they must take the ferry. Storm—she had awarded him permission to be on first-name terms; it felt like an accolade—led him to the restaurant aboard. “This is a good time to have lunch,” she said, “especially since drinks are tax free in international waters.”

“You mean this channel is?”

“Yes, around 1900 or so, Britain, France, and Germany held a conference and grew touchingly unanimous in their opinion that the straits through the middle of Denmark are part of the high seas.”

They sat down to akvavit and tall beer chasers. “You know an awful lot about this country,” he said. “Are you Danish yourself?”

“No. I have an American passport.”

“By ancestry, then? You don’t look it.”

“Well, what do I look like?” she invited.

“I’m blessed if I know. A sort of mixture of everything, that came out better’n any of the separate parts.”

“What? A Southerner with a good word for miscegenation?”

“Now come off it, Storm. I don’t go for that crap about would you want your sister to marry one. Mine has the sense to pick the right man for herself regardless of race.”

Her neck lifted. “Still, race does exist,” she said. “Not in the distorted twentieth-century version, no. But in genetic lines. There is good stock and there are scrubs.”

“M-m-m—theoretically. Only how do you tell ’em apart, except by performance?”

“One can. A beginning is being made in your current work on the genetic code. Someday it will be possible to know what a man is fit for before he is born.”

Lockridge shook his head. “I don’t like that notion. I’ll stick with everybody bein’ born free.”

“What does that mean?” she scoffed. “Free to do what? Ninety per cent of this species are domestic animals by nature. The only meaningful liberation is of the remaining ten in a hundred. And yet, today, you want to domesticate them too.” She looked out the window, to sunbright waters and skimming gulls. “There is the civilization suicide you spoke of. A herd of mares can only be guarded by a stallion—not a gelding.”

“Could be. But a hereditary aristocracy has been tried, and look at its record.”

“Do you think your soi-disant democracy has a better one?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’d like to be a decadent aristocrat. I just can’t afford to.”

Her haughtiness dissolved in laughter. “Thank you. We were in danger of becoming serious, were we not? And here come the oysters.”

She chattered so brightly through the meal, and afterward up on the throbbing deck, that he hardly noticed how adroitly she had turned the talk away from herself.

They drove off at Nyborg, on across Fyen, through Hans Christian Andersen’s home town of Odense—“But the name means Odin’s Lake,” Storm told Lockridge, “and once men were hanged here, in sacrifice to him.” And at last they crossed the bridge to the Jutish peninsula. He offered to take the car, but she refused.

The land grew bigger when they swung northward, less thickly populated, there were vistas of long hills covered with forest or with blooming heather, under a dizzyingly high sky. Sometimes Lockridge glimpsed kæmpehøje, dolmens surmounted by rough capstones, stark in the lengthening light. He made some remark about them.

“They go back to the Stone Age, as I hope you remember,” Storm said. “Four thousand years and more ago. Their like may be found all down the Atlantic coast and on through the Mediterranean. That was a strong faith.” Her hands tightened on the wheel; she stared straight before her, down the flying ribbon of road. “They adored the Triune Goddess, they who brought those burial rites here, Her of Whom the Norns were only a pallid memory, Maiden, Mother, and Hellqueen. It was an evil bargain that traded Her for the Father of Thunders.”

Tires hissed on concrete, the split air roared by open windows. Shadows lay deep in the folded uplands. A flight of crows winged from a pinewood. “She will come again,” Storm said.

Lockridge had begun to expect such passages of darkness through her. He made no reply. When they turned toward Holstebro, he checked the map and realised with a clutch at his throat that they didn’t have far to go—not unless she meant to skate across the North Sea.

“Maybe you’d better brief me now,” he suggested.

Her face and voice were alike uninterpretable. “There is little to tell you. I have already reconnoitred. We need expect no trouble at the tunnel entrance. Further along, perhaps—” Intensity flashed forth. She gripped his arm so hard that her fingernails pained him. “Be prepared for surprises. I have not told you every detail, because the attempt to understand would engage too much of your mind. If we meet an emergency, you must not stop to wonder, you must simply react. Do you see?”

“I-I reckon so.” It was good karate psychology, he knew. But—No, damnation, I’m committed. Crazy, stupid, quixotic, whatever you want to call me, I’m on her side—with no more advance warnin’ than this—whatever happens!

The blood raced in him. His hands felt cold.

Not far beyond Holstebro, Storm turned off the pavement. A dirt road snaked west among fields that presently gave way on the right side to a timber plantation. She pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the engine. Silence flowed across the world.