The Corridors of Time

5

White sunrise mists rolled low across a drenched earth. Water dripped from a thousand leaves, glittered in the air and was lost in brush and bracken. The woods were clamorous with birdsong. High overhead wheeled an eagle, the young light like gold on its wings.

Lockridge woke to a hand shaking him and blinked sandy lids. “Huh? Whuh—No—” Yesterday had drained him, he was stiff and dull in the head, aching in his muscles. He looked into Storm’s face and fumbled to recognize her, to know and accept what had happened.

“Rise,” she said. “I have started the fire again. You will prepare breakfast.”

Only then did he see that she was nude. He sat up in his sleeping bag with a choked-off oath of amazement, delight, and—awe was perhaps the word. He had not known the human body could be so beautiful.

Yet his instinctive reaction died at once. It was not only that she paid him no more attention than if he had been another woman, or a dog. One does not, cannot make passes at Nike of Samothrace.

And a remote bass bellow, thundering down the forest till a flock of capercailzie took flight with enough wings to blot out the sun, distracted him. “What’s that?” he cried. “A bull?”

“An aurochs,” Storm said. The fact that he was really here, now, personally, stabbed into him.

He scrambled from the bag, shivering in his pyjamas. Storm paid the chill no heed, though dew lay heavy in her hair and gleamed down her flanks. Is she human? he wondered. After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve got ahead of us, not a trace of strain—Superhuman. She made some mention of genetic control. They’ve created the man beyond man, off in the future. She wouldn’t need much trickery to start the cult of the Labrys down in Crete, centuries ago. Only herself.

Storm squatted and opened one of the bundles from the cabinet. Lockridge took the opportunity to start changing behind her back. She glanced around. “We will need contemporary clothes,” she said. “Our gear will excite sufficient gossip. Take the other costume.”

He could not resent her ordering him about, but undid the package. The wrapping proved to be a short cloak of loosely woven wool, blue from some vegetable dye, with a thom brooch. The main garment was a sleeveless bast tunic that he pulled over his head and belted with a thong. Sandals tied onto his feet and a birdskin fillet ornamented in a zigzag pattern went around his head. In addition he got a necklace, bear’s claws alternating with shells, and a leafshaped dagger of flint so finely worked as to look almost metallic. The haft was wrapped in leather, the sheath was birchbark.

Storm surveyed him. He did the same to her. Female dress was no more than sandals, headband, necklace of raw amber, a foxskin purse slung from the shoulder, and a brief skirt decorated with feathers. But he scarcely noticed those details.

“You will do,” she said. “Actually, we are an anachronism. We are dressed like well-to-do clanfolk of the Tenil Orugaray, the Sea People, the aborigines. But you have short hair and are clean-shaven, and my racial type—still, no matter. We will be travellers who have had to purchase our clothes locally when the old ones wore out. That practice is common. Besides, these primitives have small sense for logical consistency.”

She pointed to a little box that had also been in the bundle. Open that.” He picked it up, but she had to show him how to squeeze to make the lid curl back. Within lay a transparent globule. “Put that in an ear,” she said.

Throwing aside a midnight lock of hair, she demonstrated with a similar object. He remembered now the thing she wore in her own left ear, that he had taken for a hearing aid, and inserted his. It did not impair his perception of sound, but felt oddly cool, and a momentary tingle ran over his scalp and down his neck.

“Do you understand me?” Storm asked.

“Why, naturally—” He strangled on the words. They had not been in English.

Not in anything!

Storm laughed. “Take good care of your diaglossa. You will find it rather more valuable than a gun.”

Lockridge wrenched his mind back to observation and reason. What had she actually said? Gun had been English and diaglossa didn’t fit the pattern of the rest. Which was—Gradually, as he used the language, he would find it to be agglutinative, with a complex grammar and many fine distinctions unknown to civilized man. There were, for instance, some twenty different words for water, depending on what kind might be involved under what circumstances. On the other hand, he was unable to express in it such concepts as “mass,” “government,” or “monotheism”: at least, not without the most elaborate circumlocutions. Only slowly, in the days that followed, would he notice how different from his own were notions like “cause,” “time,” “self,” and “death.”

“The device is a molecular encoder,” Storm said in English. “It stores the important languages and basic customs of an era and an area—in this case, northern Europe from what will someday be Ireland to what will be Esthonia, plus some outside ones that might be encountered like Iberia and Crete. It draws energy from body heat, and meshes its output with the nerve flow of the brain. In effect, you have an artificial memory center added to your natural one.”

“All that, in this cotton-pickin’ little thing?” Lockridge asked weakly.

Storm’s wide smooth shoulders lifted and fell. “A chromosome is smaller and carries more information. Make us some food.”

Lockridge was downright glad to escape to the everydayness of camp cooking. Besides, he had gone to sleep supperless. The bundles included metal-sealed materials that he didn’t recognize; but warmed up, the stuff was delicious. There were only a few meals’ worth, and Storm told him impatiently to abandon the remnants. “We will live off hospitality,” she said. “That one frying pan is so magnificent a gift as to warrant a year’s keep, even at Pharaoh’s court.”

Lockridge discovered he was grinning. “Yeah, and what if some archaeologist digs it up out of a kitchen midden, four thousand years from now?”

“It will be assumed a hoax, and ignored. Though in practice, sheet iron will scarcely last that long in this damp climate. Time is unchangeable. Now be still.” Storm prowled the meadow, lost in her own thoughts, while he cooked. The long grass whispered about her ankles, dandelion blossoms lay at her feet like coins scattered before a conqueror.

Either there was some stimulant in the food, or motion worked the stiffness out of Lockridge. When he raked the fire wide and covered the ashes with dirt, and Storm said smiling, “Good, you know how to care for the land,” he felt ready to fight bears.

She showed him how to operate the gate control tube and hid it in a hollow tree along with their twentieth-century clothes—though not the guns. Then they assembled their packs, put them on, and started.

“We are going to Avildaro,” Storm said. “I have never been there myself, but it is a port of call, and if a ship does not happen by it this year, we will hear where else.”

Lockridge knew, from the thing in his ear, that “Avildaro” was an elided form of a still older name which meant Sea Mother House; that She to Whom the village was dedicated was, in some way, an avatar of the Huntress Who stalked the forest at its back; that its people had dwelt there for uncounted centuries, descendants of the reindeer hunters who wandered in as the glaciers receded from Denmark and turned to the waters for their life when the herds followed the ice on into Sweden and Norway; that in this particular region they had begun to farm as well, a few generations ago, though not so much as the immigrants further inland from whom they had learned the art—for they still followed Her of the Wet Locks, Who had eaten the land across which their boats now ventured and Who likewise ate men, yet gave the shining fish, the oyster, the seal, and the porpoise to those who served Her; that of late the charioteers of Yuthoaz, who knew Her not but sacrificed to male gods, had troubled a long peace—He stopped summoning those ghostly memories that were not his. They blinded him to the day and the woman beside him.

The sun was well up now, the mists burned off and the sky clear overhead, with striding white clouds. At the edge of the primeval forest, Storm cast about. Beneath the oaks, underbrush made a nearly impenetrable wall. She took a while to find the trail north: dim, narrow, twisting in light flecks and green shadows among the great boles, beaten more by deer than by men.

“Have a care not to injure anything,” she cautioned. “Woods are sacred. One must not hunt without sacrificing to Her, nor cut down a tree unless it is first propitiated.”

But they entered no cathedral stillness. Life swarmed about, briar and bramble, fern and fungus, moss and mistletoe crowding under the oaks and burying every log. Anthills stood to a man’s waist, butterflies splashed the air with saffron and dragonflies darted cobalt blue, squirrels ran among the branches like streaks of fire, a hundred kinds of bird were nesting. Song and chatter and wingbeat reverberated down the leafy arches; more distantly, grouse drummed, a wild pig grunted, the aurochs challenged all earth. Lockridge felt his spirit expand until it was one with the wilderness, drunk on sun and wind and the breath of flowers. Oh, yes, he thought, I’ve been out often enough to know this sort of existence can get pretty miserable. But the troubles are real ones—hunger, cold, wet, sickness, not academic infightin’ and impertinent income tax forms—and I wonder if the rewards aren’t the only real ones too. If Storm guards this, sure, I’m with her.

She said nothing for the next hour, and he felt no need himself to talk. That would have taken his mind off the sight of her, panther-gaited beside him, the light that was blue-black in her hair, malachite in her eyes, tawny down her skin until it lost itself in shadow between her breasts. Once there crossed his memory the myth of Actaeon, who saw Diana naked and was turned to a stag and torn apart by his own hounds. Well, he thought, I’ve escaped that—physically, anyhow—but I’d better not push my luck too hard.

This arm of the forest was not wide. They emerged by mid-morning. Now north and west the land reached low, flat, to a shimmer on the horizon. Grasses rippled in a breeze, isolated copses soughed, light and shade ran beneath the clouds. The trail widened, grew muddy, and wound off past a bog.

At that place, abruptly, Storm halted. Reeds rustled around a pool, which was thick with lilypads where frogs jumped from a stork. The big white bird paid the humans no attention, and Lockridge’s new memory told him storks were protected, taboo, bearers of luck and rebirth. A curiously shaped boulder had been rolled to the marge for a shrine. From the top, each year, the headman flung the finest tool that had been made in Avildaro, out to sink as a gift to Our Lady of the Ax. Today only a garland of marigolds lay there, offered by some young girl.

Storm’s attention was elsewhere. The muscles stretched out in her belly and she dropped a hand to her pistol. Lockridge stooped with her. Wheel tracks and the marks of unshod hoofs remained in the damp ground. Someone, perhaps two days ago, had driven through these parts and—

“So they have come this far,” the woman muttered.

“Who?” Lockridge asked.

The Yuthoaz.” She pronounced the name with an umlauted u and an edh. Lockridge was still mastering the technique of using a diaglossa, and could merely summon up now that this was what the local tribes of the Battle Ax culture called themselves. And the Axe of those sun-worshipping invaders was not the tree-felling Labrys: it was a tomahawk.

Storm rose, tugged her chin, and scowled. “The available information is too scanty,” she complained. “No one thought this station important enough to scout out intensively. We don’t know what is going to happen here this year.”

After a moment, musingly: “However, reconnaissance certainly established that no large-scale use of energy devices occurred in this area during this entire millennium. That is one reason I chose to go so far back, rather than leave the corridor at a later date when the Wardens are also operating. I know the Rangers are not coming here. Thus I dared leave the corridor in the first year of this gate; it will be accessible for a quarter century. And—yes, another datum, a report recorded from a survey party out of Ireland, whose time portals are a century out of phase with Denmark’s—Avildaro still stands, has even grown to importance, a hundred years hence.” She shifted her pack and resumed walking. “So we have little to fear. At most, we may find ourselves involved in a skirmish between two Stone Age bands.”

Lockridge fell into step with her. A couple of miles went by in footfalls through the blowing grass, among the scattered groves. Save for an occasional giant, spared because it was holy, these coastal trees were not oak but ash, elm, pine, and especially beech, another tall invader that had begun to encroach on Jutland.

As the trail rounded such a stand, Lockridge saw a goat flock some distance off. Two preadolescent boys, naked, sun-darkened, with shocks of bleached hair, were keeping watch. One played a bone flute, another dangled his legs from a branch. But when they spied the newcomers, a yell rose from them. The first boy pelted down the trail, the second rocketed up the tree and vanished in leafage.

Storm nodded. “Yes, they have some reason to fear trouble. Matters were not so before.”

Lockridge pseudo-remembered what life had been for the Tenil Orugaray: peace, hospitality, bouts of hard work separated by long easy intervals when one practised the arts of amber shaping, music, dance, love, the chase, and simple idleness; only the friendliest rivalry between the fisher settlements scattered along this coast, whose people were all intricately related anyway; only contact for trade with the full-time farmers inland. Not that these folk were weaklings. They hunted wisent, bear, and wild boar, broke new ground with pointed sticks, dragged rocks cross-country to build their dolmens and the still bigger, more modern passage graves; they survived winters when gales drove sleet and snow and the sea itself out of the west against them; their skin boats pursued seal and porpoise beyond the bay, which was open in this era, and often crossed the North Sea to trade in England or Flanders. But nothing like war—hardly ever even murder—had been known until the chariot drivers arrived.

“Storm,” he asked slowly, “did you start the cult of the Goddess to get the idea of peace into men?”

Her nostrils dilated and she spoke almost in scorn. “The Goddess is triune: Maiden, Mother, and Queen of Death.” Jarred, he heard the rest dimly. “Life has its terrible side. How well do you think those weak-tea-and-social-work clubs you call Protestant churches will survive what lies ahead for your age? In the bull dance of Crete, those who die are considered sacrifices to the Powers. The megalith builders of Denmark—not here, where the faith has entered a still older culture, but elsewhere—kill and eat a man each year.” She observed his shock, smiled, and patted his hand. “Don’t take it so hard, Malcolm. I had to use what human material there was. And war for abstractions like power, plunder, glory, that is alien to Her.”

He could not argue, could do no more than accept, when she addressed him thus. But he remained silent for the next half hour.

By that time they were among fields. Guarded by thorn fences, emmer, spelt, and barley had just begun to sprout, misty green over the dark earth. Just a few score acres were under cultivation-communally, as the sheep, goats, and wood-ranging pigs, though not the oxen, were kept—and the women who might ordinarily have been out weeding were not in sight. Otherwise, unfenced pastures reached on either hand. Ahead blinked the bright sheet of the Limfjord. A grove hid the village, but smoke rose above.

Several men jogtrotted thence. They were big-boned and fair, clad similarly to Lockridge, their hair braided and beards haggled short. Some had wicker shields, vividly painted. Their weapons were flint-tipped spears, bows, daggers, and slings.

Storm halted and raised empty hands. Lockridge did likewise. Seeing the gesture and the dress, the village men eased off noticeably. But as they approached, an uncertainty came over them. They shuffled their feet, dropped their eyes, and finally stopped.

They don’t know exactly who or what she is, Lockridge thought, but there’s always that about her.

“In every name of Her,” Storm said, “we come friends.”

The leader gathered courage and advanced. He was a heavy-set, grizzled man, face weathered and eyes crow-footed by a lifetime at sea. His necklace included a pair of walrus tusks, and a bracelet of trade copper gleamed on one burly wrist. “Then in Her names,” he rumbled, “and in mine, Echegon whose mother was Ularu and who leads in council, be you welcome.”

Thus jogged, Lockridge’s new memory sent him off into a professional analysis of what had been implied. The names given were genuine—no secret was made of the real ones for fear of magic—and came from an interpretation by Avildaro’s Wise Woman of whatever dreams one had during the puberty rites. “Welcome” meant more than formal politeness: the guest was sacred and could ask for anything short of participation in the special clan rituals. But of course he kept his demands within reason, if only because he might be host next time around.

With a fraction of his awareness, Lockridge listened to Storm’s explanation as the party walked shoreward. She and her companion were travellers from the South (the far-off exotic South whence all wonders came—but about which the shrewder men were surprisingly well-informed) who had gotten separated from their party. They wished to abide in Avildaro until they could get passage home. Once established, she hinted, they would make rich gifts.

The fishermen relaxed still more. If these were a goddess and her attendant wandering incognito, at least they proposed to act like ordinary human beings. And their stories would enliven many an evening; envious visitors would come from miles around, to hear and see and bring home the importance of Avildaro; their presence might influence the Yuthoaz, whose scouts had lately been observed, to keep away. The group entered the village with much boisterous talk and merriment.