by Ward Wagher
While he was a good German and took pains to be clean and neat, the concept of a shower was at once logical and unexpected. Quintan showed him the soap, and the washcloth. He knew what the towel was for, but once again the experience of the cotton terry was an unimaginable pleasure. He studied the shower and knew he really would not need to use it for another week, but it was enticing. Why not?
“I think Johann is in the shower, again,” Sally said as she walked past Quintan in the master fresher.
“He has probably never experienced anything like it,” Quintan chuckled.
“Maybe you ought to lay out his new clothes for him.”
“I should have thought of that, myself,” he said. He laid down the depilator. “Do not go away. I will be right back.”
“I would not think of it,” Sally laughed, as she stepped out of her robe, and into the shower.
Johann scrubbed himself carefully, as he enjoyed the hot water sluicing over him. Imagine not having to heat the water for a bath. He was not sure he liked the odor the soap left on him. But he had noticed everyone else smelled faintly of soap and wondered if his more earthy smell had offended them. These people, especially Quintan and Sally had made huge efforts to make him comfortable, and he did not want to insult them. So he scrubbed enthusiastically.
This small cubicle with the hot water falling from the pipe was such a marvelous wonder. Anna would be thrilled by something like this. He wished he could tell her about it. And then, he was seized with incredible grief. The fear that had been lurking in the background slammed into him with a force that caused him to slump against the wall of the shower. He somehow knew at that moment he would never see Anna again. Once before he had suffered that crushing sorrow when his first wife had died. And now, he had lost another. All he knew that she was alive somewhere else and he was as sure as anything in his life that he would never return. How would she fare? What would become of his children?
He turned his face to the wall and wept as the hot water rolled comfortingly down his back. Quintan had carefully laid the trousers and jacket on the bed in the apartment. He set the shoes in front and laid the socks over them. He laid out another set of underwear. After briefly inspecting his work, he stepped out of the bedroom, to hear broken-hearted sobbing over the sound of the shower. He stared at the fresher door for a moment, then shook his head.
“You poor man,” he whispered.
§ § §
Without a signal or a knock, the office door slid open, and the big, beefy man strode across the room and planted his fists on Arnold Gingery’s desk.
“Would you mind explaining to me, Arnie, how you could allow this incredible cock-up to occur?”
Gingery stood up, quickly. “Paladin, I... I...”
“Did I, or did I not tell you to ride heard on the scientists? Didn’t you understand me when I instructed you to allow them to just do research?”
“Paladin, I am sorry, but I was very careful to restrict the activities of Edgar. He was working late and decided to run an experiment with the apparatus. He did it without authorization.”
“This is precisely what we wanted to avoid. How could you be so careless?”
A tall, thin blond woman walked into the room, and up to the Paladin. “Darling, Arnie would not purposely allow something like this to happen.”
“Well, I should hope to heaven he wouldn’t.” He turned back to the administrator. “I can’t believe you let it happen.”
“Darling, sit down and take a deep breath.” The woman allowed an edge in her voice.
The paladin collapsed into the chair across the desk from the administrator. “Okay, Arnie, talk to me.”
Gingery remained standing. “Sir, things were fine when I left here that night. When I came in the next morning, they... they had this poor man whom the trans-temporal field generator had pulled in from his time. Sir, I did my job. This just happened.”
He hesitated and then spoke again. “I know I am responsible, Sir. I have my resignation prepared.”
The paladin swung his head back and forth. “Oh, I know it’s not your fault, Arnie. If I fired you, who would I get to ride herd on the scientists?”
Gingery sighed in relief and slipped into his chair. “Thank-you, paladin, but it is still a major setback.”
The paladin stared at him. “You still don’t understand, do you, Arnie? It may not have been your fault. But, it’s your lab. It really is your responsibility. That’s why I put you here!”
“There is no reason to be angry, Darling,” the blond woman said.
He glanced over at her. “Precious, I am rightfully just about as mad as I can be. That poor man. We dragged him how many years into the future, Arnie?”
“About eight-hundred, I think.”
“What if he had a wife and kids? He must be frantic.” The paladin choked. “He doesn’t realize his people are eight-hundred years in the grave.”
“Oh, Scott!” the woman said as she leaned over to put her arm around his shoulders.
The paladin sniffed and looked up at Gingery. “I’m sorry, Arnie. I’m not behaving well. This has reopened an old wound I thought had healed long ago. I guess I was wrong.”
“I don’t understand, Sir,” Gingery said.
“Never mind, Arnie. I really can’t talk about it right now.” He stood up. “Where is our refugee?”
Gingery stood up. “There is one other problem, Paladin.”
“Oh, crud. Now what?”
“Apparently our security has been compromised.”
“Can’t you do anything right?” the Paladin flared. “This just gets worse and worse.”
“I tried to comm you repeatedly, and was told you were off-planet.”
“I was out on Mars.”
“Oh, your son’s project?”
“Right. Rusty deserved for me to be there. Now what about the security compromise?”
“I could not get in touch with you, Sir. And I kept a tight lid on things here. Something leaked somewhere if you found out as much as you did.”
“Oh.” The Paladin scratched his head. “There’s no leak, Arnie.”
“But...”
“You’re going to have to trust me on this. We are still secure. Now, take us to see this poor man.”
Gingery led the paladin and his wife down the wide hallway around the perimeter of the lab. As they walked, they encountered several of the lab employees, who would nod deeply to their ruler. The need to greet each individual had the effect of settling down the paladin. He was less agitated when they walked into Edgar Forsenn’s lab.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Johann sat in a cubicle, located in one corner of the lab. A mug of coffee sat on the desktop at his elbow. He had, in times past, performed with a small group of singers in the coffee houses in Leipzig, and had developed a tasted for the brew. This stuff here was called coffee, but it was another of the few things he had experienced in this place that was not... excellent. It was barely passable.
On the desk in front of him was another of the marvelous devices that seemed to be everywhere. It was shaped like a book, but was solid, and made of metal, or glass or something. Sally had shown him what to do with it. When he touched a corner with his index finger, a pattern of lights and symbols appeared mysteriously in the air above the device. He could reach out and touch the symbols, and they felt at different times, wet, or slippery, or rubbery. She taught him to twist several of the symbols, and display a list of items. When he tapped an individual item with his index finger, music would come forth!
Johann managed to amuse himself for most of that morning by perusing the long list of items, which produced music. To his trained ear, some of it was very good. Other selections were... not so good. But, it was all interesting – and very different from his experience. He recognized some instruments, others sounded like familiar instruments, like violins or trumpets, but with a subtly different timbre. At least the intervals were well tempered.
Sally had showe
d him how to instruct another machine to produce coffee for him, such as it was. Yet another would produce sandwiches or sweets selected from pictures. He had learned how to place his hand on a spot next to the lab door, and the door would slide open at his command. He knew where the fresher was, so he could function independently, within limits. He knew Quintan and Sally were working with Edgar to correct the problem that brought him here, but from the looks on their faces, he suspected that returning him to Leipzig was not something they were convinced was possible. As he sat listening to this odd music, he prayed God would help them find a solution. He missed Anna and the children.
The door to the lab slid open, and a tall, blocky man walked into the room. He leaned over the top of the divider and looked at Johann with a friendly smile.
“Did you run out of things to do, or are you looking for inspiration?”
„Es tut mir Leid, Sir, aber ich verstehe Sie nicht.“ (I am sorry, Sir, but I do not understand.)
The man looked surprised and shook his head. “I am very sorry. I thought you were a lab employee. I suspect you are our guest.”
„Ich heiße Johann.“
“I think I understood that.” He pointed to himself. “I am Scott.” He pointed to the tall, rangy blond woman who had stepped beside him. “This is Kimberly.”
„Es ist mir eine Ehre Sie kennen zu lernen, Sir.“ (An honor to meet you, Sir.)
The man turned to the woman. “I wish we could understand him.”
“He must feel very lost here,” she replied.
“We’d better go talk to our unruly children, and see what they plan to do about this.”
The woman looked at Johann. “We will talk to you later.”
Johann looked curiously at the new people, as they walked away, and wondered who they were.
Edgar Forsenn spotted the paladin and his wife as they walked across the room, and jumped to his feet. He held his hands together behind his back and wrung them. Sally and Quintan Rogers looked up when Forsenn stood, then jumped to their feet when they saw who walked in.
“Well, Stanley, it’s a fine kettle of fish you’ve gotten us into,” the paladin said.
Forsenn looked completely confused. “Excuse me, Sir?”
The Paladin’s wife squeezed his arm. “Stop that, Scott!”
“Sorry,” he said. “A poor excuse for a joke, I guess.”
“I am very sorry, Paladin, but I have caused a disaster. This is the worst event in my life.”
“I’m not prepared to argue with you about that, Edgar. What I want to know is what you’re planning to do about it.”
“Well, we must send him back.”
“Can you do that?” the paladin asked.
“We must.”
The Paladin looked over at Quintan and Sally. “What do you think? Can we send him back?”
Sally shook her head. “That raises all kinds of questions about causality.”
“In other words, by sending him back, could we change his future, and write ourselves out of the story.”
“Right. I do not believe it is possible. If you start down that road in your thinking, you will run up against some hard limits in space-time theory.”
“We got him here. We should be able to send him back,” Forsenn said. He started rubbing his palms against his trousers. “We must.”
Sally frowned as she shook her head.
The paladin looked back and forth between them. “What I’m hearing is that you don’t even have a consensus on what you did. Ed, what were you thinking when you pulled the trigger on this thing?”
“I was not attempting to transfer anyone. The field calculations finally lined up for me, and I attempted to project a trans-temporal quantum singularity. It should have been unnoticeable to anyone it passed across. The readings confirmed the field reached across time.”
“Yes, and it bounced Johann onto his behind in the road in front of our groundcar,” Quintan interjected. “We nearly ran over him.”
“It should not have done that.”
The Paladin stepped forward and grasped Forsenn by the shoulders. “You’ve got to get past this impossibility. Something was clearly possible, Ed. It happened. Ergo, you had better start looking at the less likely possibilities. If the event did not match your calculations, I’m inclined to think the problem is somewhere in your math.”
“I just cannot believe that, Paladin. The calculations fit together so well.”
The paladin just raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, okay. I will tear the calculations apart and look at them again.”
“Thank you, Ed. Now, how are we taking care of our unintended guest?”
Quintan held up his hand. “He is staying with us for the moment.”
“Is that a problem? In the short term, anyway?”
“No, Sir. We have an apartment attached to our home. He seems to be comfortable there.”
“Okay. Keep track of your expenses. I’m not expecting you to do this out of the goodness of your heart.”
“But, Paladin,” Sally said, “that is exactly why we are doing this. Where else could he go?”
The paladin held up his hands. “I’m sorry. A poor choice of words. I am delighted you chose to take in this man – in any way you wish to describe it, he’s a refugee. I’m simply saying I’ll cover the cost. Honestly, in the long term, if we can’t send him back, it’s going to be my responsibility anyway.”
“I do not even want to think about that,” Sally said.
“Are you communicating with Johann?” the Paladin’s wife asked.
“Not really,” Sally said. “We are starting to pick up some common words.”
The Paladin snapped his fingers. “That I can do something about.” He pulled out his hand comm and stepped away from the others.
“Hey. I need some help here.” He spoke into the comm unit, but the others could not hear the response.
“We have a German here across the room from me that comes from about eight-hundred years ago.”
“No. An experiment in the lab had some unexpected results.”
“I don’t know about that, but he’s sitting across the room from me listening to music on a comp term.”
“You got it, buddy. I think you’re going to have to stick close until we get this settled.”
He listened some more. “Yeah, I hear ya. We’re probably going to need your help with that too.”
“Ciao.”
The Paladin folded the clamshell comm unit and slipped it into his pocket. He turned to face the scientists. “Well, I rustled up some help for Johann. It occurred to me that an AI could figure out how to speak German.”
“You have the comm code for an AI?” Forsenn asked.
“Yes, I do. But like everything else in this lab, it’s a state secret. I need to get back to Chicago. I want a status report from you at the end of each day. If something immediate comes up, you are to comm me directly.”
“Yes, Sir. What about Johann?”
“Take good care of him, Ed. He is our guest.”
As Johann listened to the music, a bright point of light blinked into existence above the device he thought of as a music box. As he stared at it, the point expanded into a bright line and then unfolded itself to form what looked like a drawing of a stilty-legged bird. It stepped from behind the display and faced him directly.
„Ich grüße Sie, Johann.“ (Greetings, Johann.)
„Gott im Himmel!“ Johann shouted, and slid his chair back.
„Was ist los?“ The bird asked.
The paladin walked over to the cubicle and looked down at the desktop. “I’ve told you before to lose the bird. It gives people the creeps.”
“I judged the anthropomorphism would be helpful for our disoriented visitor.” The warm, mellifluous voice said.
“Well, it didn’t help. And he’s clearly not disoriented.”
“Very well, Scott,” the bird sniffed. It then folded in on itself and winked out. “Is this better?”
Johann leaned back forward. „Wie kann das sein, dass ein Vogel sprechen kann?“ (How is it that a bird can speak?)
The voice responded. „Das war eine Figur. Sie war nicht echt.“ (It was a representation. It was not real.)
„Wer sind Sie?“ (Who are you?)
„Ich helfe den Leuten hier. Sie haben mich einberufen, weil ich Ihre Sprache sprechen kann.“ (I am a helper for the people in this place. They have enlisted me because I can speak your language.)
„Das ist eine weitere erstaunliche Sache über diesen Ort.“ (This is yet another amazing thing about this place.)
The Paladin shook his head, and turned to his wife. “Hopefully things are under control. Let’s get out of here before I start throwing things. I can’t believe they let something like this happen.”
She turned to the scientists. “There are some reasons you are not aware of as to why my husband is so upset about this event. Please keep us informed of your progress.”
“Of course,” Forsenn murmured as he bobbed his head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was quiet in the aircar as the Paladin and his wife flew north from Urbana. The pilot watched the instruments carefully, and also scanned the skies. The soft shuss of the air as it rushed past the vehicle was soothing. Yet, the Paladin clenched and unclenched his fists as he stared straight ahead. His wife leaned towards him.
“What are you thinking, Scott?”
He continued staring ahead for several moments, then shook his head and snorted softly.
“That poor man.”
“There is more to it than that, is there not?”
He turned and smiled sadly at her. “I guess seeing Johann’s predicament got me feeling sorry for myself again.”
She reached out and laid a hand on his. “Would you go back if you could, Scott?”
“Come on, Kimberly, that’s an unfair question. You shouldn’t put me on the spot like that.”
