The cosmonauts were led to a small group of men. They had saddled up half a dozen horses, and had harnessed two more to a small wooden-wheeled cart. The horses were stocky and undisciplined-looking, like their owners; they looked around impatiently, as if eager to get this chore over with.
"At last we're out of here," Sable grunted earnestly. "Civilization here we come."
"There is a Russian saying," Kolya warned. "Out of the frying pan..."
"Russian my ass."
The cosmonauts were prodded toward the cart. They had to climb aboard, hands still bound. As they sat down on the bare floor a Mongol man, strong-looking even by the standards of these people, approached them, and began to harangue them loudly. His leathery face was creased like a relief map.
Sable said, "What's he saying?"
"No idea. But we've seen him before, remember. I think this is the chief. And his name is Scacatai." The chief had come to inspect them during their first hours of captivity.
"This little asshole is going to try to make capital out of us. What were those words you used?"
"Darughachi. Tengri."
Sable glared at Scacatai. "Did you get that? Tengri, Tengri. We're ambassadors from God. And I'm not about to ride off to the Pleasure Dome with my arms tied behind my back. Let us loose, or I'll fry your sorry butt with a thunderbolt."
Scacatai, of course, understood nothing but the fragments of Mongolian, but Sable's tone carried the day. After more mutually incomprehensible argument, he nodded to one of his sons, who cut Sable's and Kolya's bonds.
"Good work," Kolya said, rubbing his wrists.
"Piece of cake," Sable said. "Next." She started pointing, at the Soyuz, and at the parachute silk stacked up against one of the yurts. "I want what's mine. Bring that silk to the cart. And the stuff you stole out of the Soyuz..." It took much gesturing to get this point across, but at length, with much bad grace, Scacatai ordered his people to load up the parachute, and bits of kit were brought out of the yurt. Soon the cart was incongruously piled high with parachute, spacesuits and other gear. Kolya checked that the emergency medical supplies and flare guns were there—and the components of the ham radio gear, their only possible line to the outside world, and Casey and the others in India.
Sable rummaged through the gear and dug out a life raft. She handed it ceremonially to Scacatai. "Here you go," she said. "A gift from Heaven. When we've gone, pull this toggle like so. You dig?" She mimed the action repeatedly until it was clear that the Mongol understood. Then she bowed, and Kolya followed suit, and they clambered onto the cart.
The horsemen set off, one of them leading the cart horses by a rope, and the cart lumbered into motion. "Thanks for the mutton, buster," Sable called back.
Kolya studied her. Bit by bit, starting from a position of utter weakness and vulnerability, she was assuming control of the situation. In the days since the landing she seemed to have burned her fear out of herself by an effort of will—but her intensity of purpose made Kolya uneasy. "You have nerve, Sable."
Sable grinned. "A woman doesn't get to the top of the Astronaut Office without learning to be tough. Anyhow, it's nice to leave with a little more style than when we arrived—"
There was a loud bang, a chorus of confused cries. Scacatai had pulled the ripcord on the raft. The Mongols stared in open-mouthed astonishment at this bright orange artifact that had exploded into existence out of nowhere. Before the village had receded into the distance, the children were starting to bounce on the raft's inflated rim.
* * *
The party made remarkably rapid progress. For hours on end the riders kept their horses moving at a trot, a pace that Kolya was sure would quickly exhaust the animals, but the horses were obviously bred for such treatment. The Mongols ate in the saddle, and expected the cosmonauts to do the same. They didn't even stop for toilet breaks, and Sable and Kolya learned to keep out of the way when a rider's volley of urine was caught by the wind.
As they traveled on, Kolya would sometimes glimpse sparks in the distance, floating silently above the ground. He wondered if these were examples of the "Eyes" Casey had described in India. If so, were the Eyes a worldwide phenomenon? He would have welcomed the chance to study one, but their track never brought them close, and the Mongols showed no curiosity.
Before the sun had climbed to its highest, they arrived at a waystation. It was just a huddle of yurts, lost in the middle of the emptiness of the steppe, but several horses were tied up outside, and Kolya glimpsed a herd of others, moving with the silence of distance across the steppe. As they approached, the riders rang a bell, and the keepers of the station came running out. The riders quickly negotiated with the keepers, exchanged their horses, and were on their way.
Sable grumbled, "I could have done with a break. The suspension on this thing is a little stiff."
Kolya gazed back at the station. "I think this must be the yam."
"The what?"
"At one time the Mongols held all of Eurasia from Hungary to the South China Sea. They kept it all unified with fast communications—a system of routes and waystations where you could change your horses. The Romans had a similar system. A courier could cross two or three hundred kilometers in a day."
"This isn't exactly a road. We're just riding over empty steppe. So how did these guys know how to find this place?"
"Mongols learn to ride before they can walk," Kolya said. "Crossing this vast plain, they have to be expert navigators. They probably don't even have to think about it."
Even when night came the Mongols rode on. They slept in the saddle, with one or two of them leading the others. Sable found the jolting of the cart kept her awake. But Kolya, exhausted by two sleepless nights, overstressed, overwhelmed by the oxygen-rich air of the steppe, slept from sunset to dawn.
* * *
At times, though, the riders did hesitate. They had to cross peculiar straight-line boundaries between bare, baked-dry steppe and areas of bright green grass, and other places where flowers lay scattered, wilting—and other areas, stranger yet, where banks of snow lay half-melted in pools of shadow.
It was obvious to Kolya that these suspiciously straight borders were transitions between one time slice and another, and that this steppe was stitched together from a myriad fragments drawn from different times of the year—even different eras. But just as the snow was melting in the warmth, the spring flowers were quickly wilting, and the summer grass screeds were mottled and curled. Perhaps there would be some recovery, some knitting-together, Kolya thought, after a full cycle of seasons. But he suspected that it would take more than a single year to assemble a new ecology from these timeshifted bits of the old.
The Mongol nomads could understand none of this, of course. Even the horses bucked and whinnied as they crossed these disturbing transitions.
Once the riders, evidently baffled, stopped at a site that seemed as empty and undistinguished as the rest of the steppe. Perhaps, Kolya speculated, a waystation had been sited here, and the riders couldn't imagine why they hadn't found it. The station was lost, not in space, but in time. The nomads, evidently a practical people, took this in their stride. After a brief discussion marked with much shoulder-shrugging, they moved on, but at a slower pace; evidently they had decided that if they couldn't rely on the waystations they should spare the horses.
In the afternoon of the second day, the character of the country began to change, becoming more broken and hilly. Now they rode through shallow valleys, sometimes fording streams, and passed copses of larch and pine. It was a much more human landscape, and Kolya felt relieved to be away from the oppressive unchanging immensity of the steppe. Even the Mongols seemed to be happier. As they pushed through one small stand of trees, one brute-faced young man leaned down to pluck handfuls of wild geraniums that he attached to his saddle.
The area was relatively densely populated. They passed many yurt villages, some of them large and sprawling, with smoke rising everywhere, the fine threads leaning in
the prevailing wind. There were even roads, after a fashion, or at least heavily worn and rutted trails. This part of the Mongol empire seemed to have come through the Discontinuity almost intact, even though it was studded with time-slice incongruities.
They came to a broad, sluggish river. A ferry had been set up here, a platform guided by ropes slung across the river. The platform was big enough for the riders, cosmonauts, horses and even the cart to be loaded on and transferred in one go.
On the far bank they turned south, following the river. Kolya saw that a second great river snaked across the countryside, glistening; they were heading for a mighty confluence. Clearly the nomads knew where they were going.
But at the foot of a hill, close to a big oxbow loop of one of the rivers, they came to a slab of stone, closely inscribed. The nomads slowed and stared.
Kolya said grimly, "They haven't seen this before, that's clear. But I have."
"You've been here?"
"No. But I've seen pictures. If I'm right this is the confluence of the Onon and Balj rivers. And that monument was set up in the 1960s, I think."
"So this is a little teeny time slice. No wonder these guys are staring."
"The script is supposed to be old Mongolian. But nobody knows for sure if they got it right."
"You think our escorts can read it?"
"Probably not. Most of the Mongols were illiterate."
"So this is a memorial? A memorial to what?"
"To an eight-hundredth birthday..."
They rode on and climbed over a last ridge. There, set out before them on a lush green plain, was another yurt village—no, not a village, Kolya realized, a city.
* * *
There must have been thousands of tents, set out in a regular grid pattern, spanning hectares of ground. Some of the yurts seemed no more impressive than those in Scacatai's village out on the steppe, but at the center was a much grander structure, a vast complex of interconnected pavilions. All this was enclosed by a wall, but there were outer "suburbs," a kind of shantytown of cruder-looking yurts that huddled outside the wall. Dirt roads cut across the plain from all directions, leading to the gates in the wall. A lot of traffic moved on the roads, and inside the city itself smoke rose from the yurts, merging into a pale brown smog that hung over the city.
"Christ," said Sable. "It's a tent Manhattan."
Perhaps. But on the green land beyond the city Kolya saw vast herds of sheep, goats and horses, grazing contentedly. "Just as the legends described," he murmured. "They were never anything more than nomads. They ruled a world, yet cared only about having somewhere to graze their flocks. And when the time comes to move to the winter pastures, this whole city will be uprooted and moved south..."
Once more the horses jolted into motion, and the party rode down the shallow ridge toward the yurt city.
At the gate, a guard in a blue, star-spangled tunic and felt cap held them up.
Sable said, "You think our guys are trying to sell us?"
"Negotiating a bribe, perhaps. But in this empire everything is owned by the ruling aristocracy—the Golden Family. Scacatai's people can't sell us—the Emperor already owns us."
At last the party was allowed to go ahead. The guard commander attached a detail of soldiers, and Sable, Kolya, and just one of their Mongol companions, along with the cart laden with their gear, were escorted into the city.
They made their way down a broad lane, heading directly for the big tent complex at the center. The ground was just churned-up mud. The yurts were grand, and some were decorated in rich fabrics. But the stench was Kolya's overwhelming first impression—like Scacatai's village, but multiplied a thousandfold; it was all he could do to keep from gagging.
Smell or not, the streets were crowded, and not just by Asian peoples. There were Chinese and perhaps even Japanese, Middle Eastern types, maybe Persians or Armenians, Arabs—even round-eyed west Europeans. The people wore finely made tunics, boots and hats, and many had heavy jewelry around their necks, wrists and fingers. The cosmonauts' gaudy jumpsuits attracted some eyes, as did the spacesuits and other gear piled on their cart, but nobody seemed much interested.
"They are used to strangers," Kolya said. "If we're right about our location in time, this is the capital of a continental empire. We must be sure not to underestimate these people."
"Oh, I won't," said Sable grimly.
As they neared the central complex of pavilions, the presence of soldiers became more obvious. Kolya saw archers and swordsmen, armed and ready. Even those off-duty glared at the party as it passed, breaking off from their eating, and gambling over dice. There must have been a thousand troops guarding this one big tent.
They reached an entrance pavilion, big enough to have swallowed Scacatai's yurt whole. A standard of white yak tails hung over the entrance. There were more negotiations, and a messenger was sent deeper into the complex.
He returned with a taller man, obviously Asiatic but with startling blue eyes, and expensively dressed in an elaborately embroidered waistcoat and pantaloons. This figure brought a team of advisors with him. He studied the cosmonauts and their equipment, running his hands briefly over the fabric of Sable's jumpsuit, and his eyes narrowed with curiosity. He conversed briefly and unintelligibly with his advisors. Then he snapped his fingers, turned, and made to leave. Servants began to take the cosmonauts' goods away.
"No," Sable said loudly. Kolya cringed inwardly, but she was standing her ground. The tall man turned slowly and stared at her, wide-eyed with surprise.
She walked up to the cart, took a handful of parachute fabric, and spread it out before the tall man. "All this is our property. Darughachi Tengri. Comprende? It stays with us. And this material is our gift for the Emperor, a gift from the sky."
Kolya said nervously, "Sable—"
"We really don't have a lot to lose, Kolya. Anyhow you started this charade."
The tall man hesitated. Then his face split briefly into a grin. He snapped orders, and one of his advisors ran off deeper into the complex.
"He knows we're bluffing," Sable said. "But he doesn't know what to make of us. He's a smart guy."
"If he's that smart we should be careful."
The advisor returned with a European. He was a small, runty man who might have been about thirty, but, under the customary layer of grime, and with his hair and beard raggedly uncut, it was hard to tell. He studied the two of them with fast, calculating eyes. Then he spoke rapidly to Kolya.
"That sounds like French," Sable said.
And so it turned out to be. His name was Basil, and he had been born in Paris.
* * *
In a kind of anteroom they were served with food and drink—bits of spiced meat, and a kind of lemonade—by a serving girl. She was plump, no older than fourteen or fifteen, and wore little but a few veils. She looked vaguely European too to Kolya, and her eyes were empty; he wondered how far she had been brought from home.
The tall grandee's purpose soon became clear. Basil was proficient in the Mongol tongue, and was to serve as an interpreter. "They assume all Europeans speak the same language," Basil said, "from the Urals to the Atlantic. But this far from Paris it's an understandable error..."
Kolya's French was quite good—better than his English, in fact. Like many Russian schoolchildren he had been taught it as his second language. But Basil's version of French, dating only a few centuries after the birth of that nation itself, was difficult to grasp. "It's like meeting Chaucer," Kolya explained to Sable. "Think how much English has changed since then... save that Basil must have been born a century or more before Chaucer." Sable had never heard of Chaucer.
Basil was bright, his mind flexible—Kolya supposed he wouldn't have made it so far if not—and it took them only a couple of hours to build up a reasonable understanding.
Basil said he was a trader, come to the capital of the world to make his fortune. "The traders love the Mongols," he said. "They've opened up the east! China, Korea—" It took
a while to identify the place names he used. "Of course most of the traders here are Muslims and Arabs—most people in France don't know the Mongols even exist...!" Basil had his eye on the main chance, and he began to ask questions—where the cosmonauts had come from, what they wanted, what they had brought with them.
Sable intervened. "Listen, pal, we don't need an agent. Your job is to speak our words to—uh, the tall man."
"Yeh-lü," said Basil. "His name is Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai. He is a Khitan..."
"Take us to him," Sable said simply.
Though Basil argued, her tone of command was unmistakable, even without translation. Basil clapped his hands, and a chamberlain arrived, to escort them into the presence of Yeh-lü himself.
They walked through corridors of felt, ducking their heads; the roofs were not built for people their height.
In a small chamber in a corner of this palace of tents, Yeh-lü was reclining on a low couch. Servants hovered at his elbow. Before him on the floor he had spread out faded diagrams that looked like maps, a kind of compass, blocks carved into figures that looked vaguely Buddhist, and a pile of small artifacts—bits of jewelry, small coins. It was the stock in trade of an astrologer, Kolya guessed. With an elegant gesture Yeh-lü bade them sit down, on more low couches.
Yeh-lü was patient; forced to speak to them through an uncertain chain of translation via Basil and Kolya, he asked them their names, and where they had come from. At the answer that had become their stock reply—from Tengri, from Heaven—he rolled his eyes. Astrologer he might be, but he was no fool.
Time's Eye Page 15
