The Dancer from Atlantis

III

In the instant beyond time when he was seized and borne off, Reid’s terror cried out: Oh, no! Not a stroke this soon in my life! ‘Then he tumbled back from the desolation that filled eyes, ears, lungs; but it was everywhere around him, it had him. The words flashed through: I’m dreaming. I’m delirious. I’m dead and in hell.

A wind boomed, mummy-dry furnace-hot, hissing with grit that whipped his skin.

The voices pierced his own and brought him jerkily about. Three! A yellow-bearded man in spike-topped helmet and chainmail; a short, leather-coated, fur-capped rider on a rearing pony; a tall, slender, woman in a knee-length white dress. And Duncan Reid. They shuddered, twenty or thirty feet apart and equally distant from the thing that, lay motionless.

Thing ... a tapered cylindroid, ten yards long by four yards maximum radius or thereabouts, coppery-shining and featureless. Or was it? An iridescent shimmer played in the air immediately over the surface, making the very shape impossible to tell with certainty.

The horseman got his mount under control. At once he snatched a double-curved bow that hung at his saddle, an arrow from the quiver beside, and had the weapon strung and armed. The blond man roared and lifted an ax. The woman drew a knife of reddish metal. Reid struggled to wake from this nightmare. A fraction of him noticed how his legs tensed to run.

But then the woman’s frantically flickering glance reached him. She uttered a new shriek, not of terror but what?—and dropped her blade and sped toward him.

“Hey!” Reid heard himself croak, weakly and ridiculously. “I, I don’t know—who are you? Where are we?”

She reached him, she flung arms about him, her mouth met his in a fierceness to break lips open against teeth. He lurched, almost falling. Her tears washed away the blood and trickled saltily onto his tongue. She kept sobbing words he could not follow except that he thought his name was among them, which was the final insanity. After a moment, when he had not returned her embrace or her kiss, she went to her knees. Her hair, fallen loose from a knot, hid her lowered countenance in midnight waves.

Reid gaped toward the others. They stared back. The sight of him and her thus together must have eased them the least bit, made them suppose this might not be a death trap. The bearded man lowered his ax, the rider stopped pointing his arrow at anyone in particular.

Silence, except for the wind and the weeping.

Reid drew three deep breaths. His pulse still racketed but was slowing; he no longer trembled. And he could think. That alone was a deliverance.

His’ senses had become preternaturally keen in the unknownness that poured through them. His cooling brain began to catalogue the data Dry heat; sun high in a cloudless brazen vault; baked soil where a few scrubby bushes and tufts, of harsh grass survived; blowing dust; not far away, a sea or giant lake. Every detail was strange to him, but every detail was there.

The same was true of the woman at his feet. He saw that her garment appeared to be homespun and that its blue border appeared to be vegetable dye. He saw that her sandals were stitched and had nothing but leather in them, being secured by straps tied halfway up the calf. He saw the smears of local dirt, and traces of older stains that any commercial bleach ought to have removed. She clasped his shoes. He felt the touch and noticed that her hands and feet were large but beautifully shaped, that the nails were pared short and carried no sign of polish, that her left wrist bore a wide silver bracelet studded with turquoises which was not Navajo work.

He could recall no dream so complete, dustgrain by dustgrain. And things held steady. He returned his gaze to a tussock and it had not become a toadstool. Events weren’t telescoped, either; they happened second by second, each instant a logical continuation of the last Real time?

Could you dream you were dreaming a real-time dream?

Whatever was happening, he didn’t see how he could lose by doing what was rational. He lifted his hands, palms outward, and forced himself to smile at the two men.

The fellow in armor did not exactly reply in kind, but he scowled less hard and walked closer. He held his ax, slant-wise before him, gauntleted hands well apart on the long shaft. When he halted, a couple of yards from Reid, he stood with knees slightly bent and feet at right angles. The architect thought: He’s not an actor. He knows how to use that thing. Otherwise he’d take a woodchopper stance, like me before I saw his. And his weapon’s been in service, too—that nick in the edge, that scratch in the blade.

Where have I seen this kind of battle ax before?

A chill flew up and down his spine; Axes quite like it on, the Bayeux Tapestry, carried by the English at Hastings.

The man growled what must be a string of questions. His language was as alien as the woman’s—no, not quite; it had a spooky, half-familiarity, must be related to one Reid had heard in foreign movies or while serving his hitch in Europe. The man made a truculent jerk of his head back toward the coppery object.

Reid’s mouth was too parched for him to talk other than huskily: “Sorry. I ... I’m a stranger here myself. Do you speak English? Parlez-vous français? ¿Habla usted español? Sprechen sie Deutsch?” Those were the tongues in which he had a few phrases. They got no response.

However, the man seemed to understand that Reid too was a victim. He slapped his broad chest and said, “Oleg Vladimirovitch Novgorodna.” After several repetitions, Reid caught the syllables.

It rocked him. “R-r-russki?” he stammered. Again persistence was needed to get past the barriers of accent.

Oleg nodded. “Da, ya yest Novgorodni. Podvlastni Knyaza Yaroslava.”

Reid shook his head, baffled. “Sovietski?” he ventured. Oleg tried to answer and gave up. Reid stooped past the woman, who had assumed a watchful crouch, and drew in the sand CCCP. He threw Oleg an inquiring lift of eyebrows. Everybody knew that much Cyrillic; it answered to USSR, and the Soviets claimed nearly one hundred percent literacy. But Oleg shrugged and flung his arms wide in a purely Slavic gesture.

The American rose. They peered at each other.

Oleg’s outfit had been too strange for the human to show through until now. His helmet, conical and rising in a spike, sat atop a padded cloth coif on which, between rim and shoulders, were sewn small rings. The sleeveless hauberk was made of larger rings, interlocked, falling almost to the knees. It likewise had a quilted undergarment, above a white linen shirt. That must be murderous here; the black iron was wet with the perspiration that ran off its wearer. At a brass-buckled belt were fastened a dagger and a leather purse. Trousers of coarse blue linen were tucked into gaily red and green boots. The gauntlets were leather too, strips of brass riveted on their backs.

The man looked thirtyish, about five feet seven or eight, tremendously wide and muscular. A slight paunch and jowliness didn’t lower the impression of bear strength. His head and face were round, snub-nosed, mustached, dense golden beard cropped under the jaw. Against the redness of a skin long exposed to weather, beneath shaggy yellow brows, his eyes were china blue.

“You ... seem to be ... a decent guy,” Reid said, knowing how foolish he was.

Oleg pointed at him, obviously demanding his name. The recollection of his chat with engineer Stockton—Christ almighty, half an hour ago in the middle of an ocean!—smote Reid like a physical blow. He staggered. The world spun around him. “Duncan,” he mumbled.

“Duncan!” The woman leaped up and sprang to him. He leaned on her till things steadied. “Duncan,” she crooned, half laughing, half crying, “ka ankhash Duncan.”

A shadow fell across them. Oleg bounced into battle posture. The horseman had joined their group. His bow was taut and his expression mean.

Somehow that rallied Reid. “Take it easy, friend,” he said, uselessly except for the tone, the smile, the palms lifted in peace. “We’re not conspiring against you.” He tapped his chest, gave his name, did likewise for Oleg. Before he could ask of the woman, whom he finally noticed was more than handsome, she said, “Erissa,” like a challenge.

The mounted man considered them.

Neither he nor his steed was prepossessing. The pony was a mustang type—no, not with that blocky head; rather, it resembled the tarpan of central Asia—dun-colored, shaggy, mane and tail braided, blue tassels woven in: an entire male, doubtless fast and tough but no show animal. It was unshod, its bridle of primitive design, saddle high-peaked fore and aft and short in the stirrups. From that saddle hung a full quiver, a lariat, a greasy felt bag, and a leather bottle.

The rider wore clumsy felt-soled shoes; full trousers of rough gray cloth, tied at the ankles, unbelievably dirty; a felt shirt which could be smelled ten feet off; a long leather coat, belted at the waist; and a round fur cap. For cutlery he had a knife and a kind of saber.

He was powerfully built but dwarfish, five feet three or so, bandy-legged, hairy except for the head. That was shaven, Reid learned afterward, leaving a single black tuft on top and behind either golden-ringed ear. The face was so hideously scarred that, scant beard grew. Those cicatrices must have been made deliberately, since they formed looping patterns. Beneath them, the features were heavy, big hook nose and flaring nostrils, thick lips, high cheek-bones, sloping forehead, slitted eyes. The skin was a weatherbeaten olive, the whole effect more Armenian or Turkish than Mongol.

Oleg had been rumbling in his whiskers. “Nye Pecheneg,” he decided, and snapped: “Polavtsi? Bolgarni?”

The rider took aim. Reid saw his bow was compound, of laminated horn, and remembered reading that a fifty-pound draw would send an arrow through most armor. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “Easy!” When the horseman glowered at him, he repeated the introduction; then, pointing to the shimmering cylinder, he acted out his bewilderment and motioned to include Oleg and Erissa.

The rider made up his mind to cooperate. “Uldin, chki ata Giinchan,” he said. “Uldin. Uldin.” Stabbing a begrimed fingernail from one to the next, he worked on their names till he had those straight. Finally he indicated himself again—all the while keeping his bow handy—and uttered a row of, gutturals.

Oleg caught the idea first. He made the same gesture. “Oleg Vladimirovitch,” he said. “Novgorodski.” He pointed and questioned: “Duncan?”

Who are you? Not you personally; what people do you belong to? That must be it. “Duncan Reid. American.” They were as bemused as everyone else was by Erissa’s “Keftiu.”

For her part, she seemed astonished and hurt that Reid was not more responsive to her. She slipped off to recover her knife. He recognized the metal as bronze. And the iron of yonder arrowhead was precisely that, wrought iron; and Oleg’s equipment was either plain iron too or low-carbon steel, and when you looked closely you saw that each ring, each rivet had been individually forged.

And at the end of a sentence, Uldin was saying of himself, “—Hun.”

He did not pronounce the word in Anglo-Saxon wise, but it rammed into Reid. “Hun?” he gulped. Uldin nodded, with a wintry grin. “At—Attila?” That drew blank; and, while Oleg tugged his beard and appeared to be searching his memory, the name clearly had no deep significance for him, and none for Erissa.

A Russian who felt his nationality was less important than the fact he hailed from Novgorod; a Hun to whom Attila meant nothing; a Keftiu, whatever that was, whose gaze lay with troubled adoration on ... on an American, snatched from the North Pacific Ocean to a desert shore where nobody else had ever heard of America.... The answer began to break on Reid.

It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be.

Because Erissa was nearest, he reached toward her. She took both his hands. He felt how she shivered.

She stood a bare three inches under him, which made her towering if she belonged to the Mediterranean race that her looks otherwise bespoke. She was lean, though full enough in hips and firm breasts to please any man, and long-limbed, swan-necked, head proudly held. That head was dolichocephalic but wide across brow and cheeks, tapering toward the chin, with, a classically straight nose and a full and mobile mouth which was a touch too big for conventional beauty. Arching brows and sooty lashes framed large bright eyes whose hazel shifted momentarily from leaf-green to storm-gray. Her black hair, thick and wavy, fell past her shoulders; a white streak ran back from the forehead. Except for suntan, a dusting of freckles, a few fine wrinkles and crow’s-feet, a beginning dryness, her skin was clear and fair. He guessed her age as about equal to his.

But she walked like a girl, no, like a danseuse, like a Danilova, a Fonteyn, a Tallchief, a leopard.

His smile wavered forth anew. She put aside both her trouble and her worship and smiled shyly in return.

“Ah-humph!” Oleg said. Reid released Erissa, clasped hands with the Russian, and offered a shake to the Hun, who, after a second, accepted. He urged them by gestures to do the same among each other.

“Fellowship,” he declaimed, because any human sound was good in this wasteland. “We’re caught in some unbelievable accident, we want home again, okay, we stick together. Right?”

He looked at the cylinder. A minute passed while he mustered courage. The wind blew, his heart knocked. “That thing brought us,” he said, and started toward it.

They hesitated. He waved them to come along. Erissa soared in his direction. He made her follow behind. Oleg muttered what was probably a curse and joined her. He seemed about ready to collapse in a pool of sweat. Uldin advanced too, but further back. Reid guessed the Hun was a pro, more interested in being able to cover a wide field with his archery than in heroics. Not that Oleg was equipped for anything but close-in fighting.

Beneath Reid’s shoes, dirt and gravel scrunched. His topcoat was smothering him. He took it, off and, thinking about possible sunstroke, draped it on his head for a crude burnoose. The hollow-voiced wind tried to blow it away. Behind the cylindroid, barrenness reached on, and on, and on, till horizon met sky in a vague blur of mirages and dust devils. The cylindroid was almost as hard to make out, within the shifting mother-of-pearl light-mist that enveloped it.

That’s a machine, though, he compelled himself to understand. And I, the only child here of a machine age, I am the only one who has a chance to deal with it.

How big a chance?

Bitsy. Pam. Mark. Tom. Dad. Mother. Sisters, brothers. Phil Meyer and our partnership. Seattle, the Sound, the Straits, the wooded islands, the mountains behind; Vancouver; funny old Victoria; the Golden Gate Bridge, upward leap of walls from the Rotterdam waterfront, Salisbury Cathedral, half-timbered steep-gabled delight of Riquewihr, a thatch-roofed but in a Hokusai print and those homes you were going to build; why does a man never know how much there was in his world before he stands at the doors of death?

Pam, Pamela, Pamlet as I called you for a while, will you remember that underneath everything I loved you? Is that true, or am I just posturing for myself? No matter. I’m almost at the machine.

The time machine?

Nonsense. A bilgeful of crap. Physical, mathematical, logical impossibility. I proved it once, for a term paper in the philosophy of science.

I, who recall well how it felt to, be that confidently analytical twenty-year-old, now know how it feels to be marooned without warning in a grisly desert, nearing a machine like none I had imagined, at my back a medieval Russian and a Hun from before Attila and a woman from no place or age bespoken in any of the books I read when I might have been being kind to Pamela.

Abruptly the iridescence whirled, became a maelstrom, focused its shiningness upon a single point of the metal thing. That point grew outward, opened as a circle, gave onto a dusk-purple space within where twinkled starry sparks of light. A man came forth.

Reid had an instant to see him. He was small, compactly built, mahogany in hue, hair a cap of black velvet, features broad but finely molded. He wore a prismatic white robe and transparent boots. In his hands he bore twin two-foot hemispheres of bright metal upon which were several tiny studs, plates, and switches.

He walked uncertainly, he looked very ill, and his garb was discolored by vomit stains.

Reid halted. “Sir—” he began, making the sign of peace.

The man reeled and fell. Blood ran from his mouth and nostrils. The dust quickly drank it. Behind him, the portal closed.