by Don Wilcox
During that year and a half I had learned a lot of ancient language, but I detested having to use it. My roots were in the twentieth century. I couldn’t reconcile myself to starting life over—in an age that was past and gone.
Then one day, while on the block with seventy other bedraggled assorted prisoners waiting to be sold, I noticed that one of my fellow unfortunates was eyeing me curiously. We fell into casual conversation, as casual as possible against the auctioneer’s insulting blather about our respective worths in shekels.
“My name is Slaf-Carch,” said the man, smiling toothlessly through his steel wool whiskers. His voice was resonant. “I have seen members of your race before. You are from a foreign land.”
“And a foreign time,” I said, not expecting him to make anything of it.
His twinkling eyes fairly snapped at me. “You are the third,” he said, “who has made that claim.”
“The third what?”
“The third invader from a foreign land and time. You have the same delicate dialect as the other two. That is what caught my attention. Do you have a foreign name?”
“My name is Hal Norton,” I said. “Where are these other two you speak of?” Suspicions whipped through my mind. Had Colonel Milholland sent other twentieth-century envoys back to this age? I remembered having tried to probe Milholland on this, but he had evaded me.
“One was killed under the wheel of an Assyrian chariot,” said Slaf-Carch, stroking his bronzed bald head reminiscently. “The other is still my slave.”
“Your slave?” This struck me as being more than curious, since Slaf-Carch himself was at this moment being sold as a slave. Undoubtedly this grizzly-whiskered man “had seen better days, before some captor had knocked his teeth out.
The same nomad prince who bought Slaf-Carch began bidding on me, and an hour later, bought and paid for, we were tramping along the rugged foothills of the Fertile Crescent.
“You spoke of a slave with a dialect similar to mine,” I resumed, trudging along beside Slaf-Carch. “What was his name?”
“Her name,” Slaf-Carch corrected, “and a very odd name it is: Betty”
There wasn’t breath enough in me to comment. I needed to sit down and think this matter over, but the nomad prince and his guards had other ideas. We hiked on through the evening heat.
Obviously I wasn’t the only victim of Milholland’s time-trap. He had employed two other innocents in the service of his hare-brained hobby—one of them a girl. What price the voices of ancient animals!
“Does your Betty carry a black case like this?” I asked, indicating the vocoder.
Slaf-Carch knew nothing of any magic boxes. He probably would have been too superstitious to investigate, anyway. But he gave me other bits of information, enough to prove my assumptions. Both of my predecessors had demonstrated a strange interest in animals—an interest that had soon waned.
That night, long after the other slaves were asleep, Slaf-Carch and I were still talking. The red glow from the low fires gave his face intense lines. “I am eager to get back. If these nomads take us farther south, they shall lose us. We will escape.”
“Where does this slave, Betty, live?” I asked.
“At my mansion, in a village beyond Babylon, where I should be fulfilling my duties as the pate si,” he said. “By this time, many business matters will have gone undone. As for Betty, this autumn I must give her separate quarters along with my older women slaves so she can begin bearing slave children.”
“Just a minute, pal,” I blurted in English, then caught myself. In Babylonian I said pointedly, “Take my word for it, if Betty came from my land you can cancel that plan.”
“You do not know our ways, Hal,” he replied. “Betty has seen more of Babylon than you.”
I didn’t deny this. But it was as uncomfortable to swallow as a baseball. This girl might have had the hard luck to be stranded here and forced into the Babylonian slave system. But that didn’t mean she would desert all her own twentieth-century ideals and sentiments. If she had the good American spunk to fight this ancient balderdash, I would fight with her; if she didn’t, I hoped I would never meet her—in spite of being starved for some twentieth-century conversation.
Slaf-Carch sketched a picture in the sand to show me how beautiful Betty was. I couldn’t make anything out of it, but the fire in his eyes conveyed a strong impression.
“Let her go her own way,” I said shortly. “I’ll go mine.”
Slaf-Carch wanted to know what my way was. What, did I do back home, and what did I expect to do here?
His questions stirred me to the depths. It was the first time any fellow-slave had talked in terms of purposes. I answered proudly that I, too, was a man of vast importance in my own land and time, and had no doubt been sorely missed. I had planned to help analyze radio voices, using my vocoder—a matter which he wouldn’t understand—when my sudden time-transfer set my life back. No doubt my own civilization had simply marked time since my absence.
I snapped on a vocoder switch while we talked, thinking to demonstrate how easily I could break Slaf-Carch’s voice into its separate parts—pitch, resonance, volume, and consonant qualities. But in deference to his superstitions I snapped the thing off without showing him the results.
Meanwhile, the old grizzle-beard speculated futilely upon my chances to return to my native country.
“If we can break free and reach Babylon, then I may be able to help you back to your land and time,” he offered hopefully. “I have wealth. My nephew, Jipfur, is also quite rich.”
I shook my head, tried to explain. But the time element was a stumbler for him. He looked blankly and fell to drawing another sand sketch of his Betty.
However, these thoughts were no passing fancies with him. He persisted in digging into my history. I told him of my agreement to make a study of the voices of ancient animals; my arrival in the midst of battle; the stampede of Persian infantry, my months of slavery, my fights to hold on to my magic box—which was left to me only because its black color threw a superstitious scare into my captors. Those things he could understand much better than my burning desire for a bath, a shave, some Palm Beach clothes, a quarter ton of Neapolitan ice cream, and, most of all, a sudden lift back into my own century.
“Your trouble,” he counselled, “is that you are refusing to accept your real situation.”
“I don’t want to accept it!” I said so loudly that one of the guards snapped his fingers at me. “I want to get out of it.”
“Never hope to be lifted bodily out of trouble,” Slaf-Carch said. “Things don’t happen that way. I know. And I am much older than you.”
I was tempted to challenge this statement, but he continued:
“Dig your hands into the soil of the hour, wherever you are, and claw through your own troubles.”
“No more philosophy, please,” I protested. “I’ve been on a diet of it for eighteen months. If you could offer me a candy bar—”
“Take the lion by the mane,” he said sagely. “If your task is studying animals—”
“No animals, please,” I said. “I’ve lost ninety-eight percent of my respect for the man who set me on that wild goose chase—or rather, moose chase.”
“Then you must find other pastimes. The slaves are treated decently enough in this valley. They have a few hours each day to themselves. Besides, they need something to think about while they lift water at the shaduj. Something besides revolt “What do you think about while you are a slave?” I asked.
“Betty,” he replied, none too stoically.
CHAPTER II
One night two weeks later we were attacked by a band of cavalrymen. “Babylonians!” Slaf-Carch hissed in my ear. “Our chance!”
We slaves fled back into the darkness, out of reach of the swords and axes. When the fight grew hot we dodged into the leaping shadows and did our bit throwing stones. I’ll never forget the smell of that desert dawn, nor the sight of flashing knives and falling
heads. Sunlight showed our camp a shambles.
The Babylonian cavalrymen won the fray, in the end, so we slaves were in fair enough luck. If the nomads had won they’d have cut us to bits for helping the attackers. As matters had turned, we had earned a reward—the right to be slaves for the Babylonians.
Of course, those among us who were Babylonians and not foreigners were in double luck, for they were free.
But no one was so lucky as Slaf-Carch. By a rare chance, this war party had been sent out by his own nephew, the rich young patesi of Babylon—Jipfur.
We traveled all night, and those of us on foot were near exhaustion by dawn. Then patches of reflected sunlight appeared on the distant desert horizon to quicken our pace. Those sharp little rectangles grew before our eyes during the hours of travel that followed. For they were the buildings of Babylon, their glazed tile walls gleaming like mirrors.
The glorious Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar! What a thrill for a wanderer from the machine-age! Speaking of machines, I craved one as never before—preferably a motorcar or an airplane. My legs threatened to fold up with every step.
That afternoon summer clouds floated over the city, reducing Babylon’s glaring colors to pastel blues, yellows, lavenders. The city walls spread wide along the Euphrates, the palaces reared high, and a great multi-storied ziggurat towered into the clouds. No twentieth century skyline was ever more breathtaking. As a matter of fact, only the tallest of New-World skyscrapers rose—or would rise, twenty-five hundred years hence—to a greater height than this magnificent ziggurat,
It was twilight when we at last neared the city’s gates. Jipfur, the nephew of Slaf-Carch, rode out to join us, accompanied by two armored cavalrymen.
“Noble Slaf-Carch, the patesi of Borbel, the brother of my mother, you have returned from the dead!”
The meeting was replete with formal greetings—it was plain to see that Jipfur relished the dignified formalities to which his wealth and importance entitled him—but under the surface of conventional manners, Slaf-Carch’s deep gratitude showed through glistening eyes. No matter if his rescue had been coincidental; he was no less grateful for having been miraculously saved.
Jipfur made the most of it. He rode back at the head of the procession, boasting that he had sent his cavalrymen against the nomads on a hunch that it would please the gods.
We entered the gates of Babylon. The street crowds joined our procession, shouted praises to Jipfur.
“Again Jipfur has won against the nomads!”
“Jipfur has brought back the pate si of Borbel!”
Jipfur smiled jubilantly, holding his pudgy head high, blinking his eyes wisely, nodding ever so slightly toward the wealthier merchants and their wives.
Slaf-Carch was too happy to mind these egotistical antics. He was wearing a robe over his rags, now, and riding a cavalryman’s horse. He waved at the throngs and shouted jovially at old acquaintances. The warmth of this reception made me proud I knew him, even if he was a superstitious old coot.
“Yes, I was becoming entangled in Babylonian alliances in spite of myself.
Eventually this night’s celebration ended, and I was glad. All the wonders of Babylon, including my first torchlight glimpse of the famous Hanging Gardens and the “Tower-of-Babel” ziggurat, could not impress me, on this tired night, half so much as Slaf-Carch’s hospitality.
Once we reached his palace, at the small suburb of Borbel, and once I had shaved and bathed and feasted, I laid myself away in a comfortable bed for an indefinite season of sleeping. For Slaf-Carch had commanded that I was to be his special guest until my strength returned.
And so, after more than eighteen months of hardships, I turned a corner—and it proved to be a swift turn in more ways than one.
I lay in bed two mornings later, debating whether I felt equal to the task of rising and dressing, and had just given up the struggle and let my eyes fall closed, when I heard someone approaching my room.
Then I was half aware that a servant-girl entered. I saw her through my eyelids, I suppose, for I was too groggy from sleep to raise my head and wink at her—or order her out, as you might have done. Still, I knew that there was something unusual about her—something disturbingly strange—
She placed some fresh clothing on the foot of my bed, drew a curtain back from the window to admit the fresh yellow sunshine, picked up the empty water vase from my table. For a moment she looked down at me curiously—
I don’t know whether my half-closed eyelids fluttered, but my pulse did. It struck me like a bolt of lightning: This girl was a blonde.
Nowhere in all these months had I seen a single light-haired person, male or female, before this moment. The Fertile Crescent just didn’t have ’em. Maybe the soil wasn’t right, or the sun was too hot. In a land of sand-blown brunettes, here was an off-color female whose beautiful face, blue eyes, and yellow braids—not to mention breathtaking curves—were calculated to make kings hurl armies at each other.
She was not only beautiful; her cleanliness and her make-up—though the latter was too cunningly achieved to be noticeable—were twenty-five centuries ahead of these times.
She tiptoed toward the door with the water vase, being careful not to waken me. But my eyes were wide open now, and I called to her in English, with the gentleness of a dynamite blast: “Hey, there, you’re Betty, aren’t you?”
The water vase crashed to the floor—I couldn’t understand why. I hadn’t meant to knock her off the Christmas tree, but she whirled on me with a show of anger.
“Why do you scare me to death, you snail, you worm!” she blazed in Babylonian, marching over to my bed, shaking a scornful finger at me. “Are you some kind of earthquake, that roars and knocks vases out of people’s hands?”
“Wait a minute. I—” Again I started to speak in English, but her rapid-fire Babylonian threw me for a loss. The language was rich in profanity. She called down the wrath of Shamash on me, and threw in the ill-will of Marduk and Ishtar for good measure. I pulled the covers up around my ears.
By that time other servants and palace attendants were coming down the corridor to see what had caused the crash. To my surprise, the girl bent close to me and snapped, in a warning tone:
“I’ll talk with you later—in English.”
The broken pottery was swept up, though it couldn’t possibly be patched up, no more than could my peace of mind. Not that either had any value in this palace. Vases might be broken, slaves might be suspicious of Betty—or jealous; but the startling point of the incident was that Slaf-Carch himself came in and cleaned up the mess.
Yes, he insisted on doing it, so that I, his guest, wouldn’t be disturbed by chattering slaves. But Slaf-Carch’s real reason, I saw plainly, was to perform a favor for Betty. He smiled at her, toothlessly, without the slightest air of superiority, notwithstanding the fact that he was the owner of this palace and all that was in it, including her. Suddenly I felt resentment.
He stopped to exchange pleasantries with me, too, hoping I would feast with him soon; then, as Betty started off to her work elsewhere, he walked away with her.
A jealous heat-wave did spirals around my neck for the rest of the day. It was a bad feeling, for me, a guest, to have toward my benefactor. Which started me to thinking. If I could pay Slaf-Carch for this hospitality—if I could pull some strings so that I didn’t owe him anything, that would clear the decks considerably. Then. I could face him squarely, tell him that a fifty-year-old Babylonian had no business getting that way about a nineteen-year-old foreigner-girl. Especially when there was a young foreigner-bachelor on the scene.
All right, that settled it. I would pay cash for these few days of room and board—
But my situation wasn’t as simple as I thought. Before I had been Slaf-Carch’s guest a full week, his rich young nephew Jipfur charioted out from Babylon and announced that he had come for me.
“I’m very comfortable here, thank you,” I said.
“According to the prop
erty laws,” Jipfur stated in his smooth but arrogant manner, “you are my rightful slave. You were taken from the nomads by my expedition. You have good muscles and will be worth all of ninety shekels, when properly nourished and put in working trim.” Slaf-Carch protested, but his nephew stuck stubbornly to his claim. Slaf-Carch shrugged and said, “Then I will buy Hal from you at once.”
Jipfur rudely reminded him that he couldn’t afford me. The ugly truth was that Slaf-Carch’s business had run down badly during his two years of absence, his finances having been nominally in the hands of his nephew.
So I was Jipfur’s property.
“I regret,” said Slaf-Carch, placing his hand on my shoulder, “that I cannot purchase you now. But the time will come, and I will remember.” Then driving the hint of anger out of his resonant voice, he concluded with a remark characteristic of his generosity, “My family is so proud of Jipfur, with his dynamic business talents, I could” not think of withholding from him any prestige he has earned. Go, and be a worthy slave for him.”
As we started toward Babylon, the reins were placed in my hands. I had just as well learn to drive a chariot now, Jipfur said, if I were capable. Kish, the slave who was Jipfur’s personal attendant, stood beside me to teach me the tricks.
Our wheels sung over the sandy tracks, we trotted down the palmy lane that led out of the suburb. Beyond the gates Jipfur snapped his fingers, and Kish, quick on the trigger, grabbed the reins out of my hands and stopped the horses.
The cause of the sudden stop was the sight of three ugly partially-masked heads peering out of the tall cat-tails in the roadside marsh. X was at a loss to know whether they were humans or scarecrows, and Kish wasn’t much help when he whispered, “The Serpents.”
To my surprise, Jipfur seemed to be on speaking terms with these ragged, uncouth, deformed creatures. He gave them a few simple orders, and they listened like three docile sheep.
