I stopped the elevator then went down again to the Mannschenn Drive compartment. The door into it was both shut and locked. I could hear the whine of the machinery inside and, very faintly, the sound of voices. I rapped on the door. And again, more loudly. They must be deaf in there, I thought.
In my pocket was my keyring and on it, among others, was my key, the master key that would give me access to any compartment in the ship. I took it out, fitted its flat surface into the recess designed for its reception.
The door slid open, making a sharp clicking sound as it did so. One of the two men intently watching the display in the screen that had been set up alongside the complication of slowly rotating, ever-precessing flywheels—had the Drive been working at full capacity it would have been suicidal to have looked directly at it—turned his head and grumbled, “Come in, come in, whoever you are. This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.” Then he saw who it was and muttered, “Sorry, sir. We weren’t expecting you back just yet.”
It was the third officer and with him was the electronic communications officer. I glared at the two young men and they looked back at me. They were more than a little scared. And I’d give the puppies something to be scared about.
“Where is Ms. Namakura?” I demanded. “What are the pair of you doing in the Mannschenn Drive room, running a machine that only qualified personnel are supposed to touch? The Odd Gods of the Galaxy alone know what damage you’ll do with your tinkerings!”
“She . . . she was here, sir,” stammered the third.
“Is she in her quarters? Get her back down here. At once.”
“She . . . she’s not there . . .” stammered the third.
“She’s not now . . .” said Sparks.
“Are you mad?” I almost yelled, glaring at them. Somehow in the light that was coming from the screen the skin of their faces had an odd yellowish tinge and their eyes a peculiar slant to them. I remembered then that, like Yoshi Namakura, they both had Japanese blood, although, unlike hers, theirs was much diluted and their names were European. But the three of them, spaceman officer, communications officer, and Mannschenn Drive engineer, had always been as thick as thieves. There were those who suggested that they had a ménage a trois going. Perhaps they had, but what of it? A ship is not a Sunday School outing.
“Look at the screen, sir,” said Sparks.
I looked. The picture was that of the poop of some sort of ancient sailing vessel, a galleon, a small one, at sea. In the background were five other ships of the same type, on parallel courses.
“So you got some new spools for the play master,” I said. “But what’s a playmaster doing here? Its proper place is in the wardroom.”
“This is not a playmaster, sir, although it’s adapted from one. Running in conjunction with the Drive it gives a picture of the Past.”
I remembered that conversation with my father. “And now I suppose you’ll try to tell me that you’re picking up coverage of Will Adams’ voyage to Japan.” I laughed. “As I was told the story, only one of those Dutch ships got here.”
“Those are not Dutch ships, sir,” said Sparks. “Look!”
He did something to the controls under the screen, zoomed into that poop deck in the foreground. There was an almost modern-looking binnacle and there was a large wheel with one man at it, clad only in baggy trousers, steering the ship. He was obviously an Asiatic. Japanese? Chinese? But that wheel . . . It looked wrong. Just when had the wheel replaced the tiller? I was pretty sure that it had been well after Will Adams’ time.
A man and a woman came into view—he a bearded European, tall, in a white shirt with ballooning sleeves, white trousers that flapped about his legs. Instead of a belt he wore a wide sash; thrust into it on one side was a sheathed sword, on the other a big, flintlock pistol. The woman was in what I thought of as traditional Japanese finery, with elaborately upswept hair. I recognized her, although I was more used to seeing her in uniform.
They were talking, this man and woman. What a pity it was that there was no sound—and lip reading is not one of my accomplishments. They paced slowly back and forth. Then the man sat on one of the two bronze cannons mounted on the poop and Yoshi subsided gracefully onto the wooden deck, leaning back against his legs.
“So far,” Sparks told me, “this is the furthest into the Future that we can get a clear picture. But the ones of the finish of the voyage are getting clearer all the time . . .”
“The furthest into the Future?” I asked, bewildered.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, sir. What I meant was the future as reckoned from the start of the voyage . . .”
“What voyage?”
Sparks fiddled with the controls. He got a clear picture of a seaport, a Japanese seaport, with the six galleons looking out of place among the smaller craft, with the wharf crowded with people, with armoured Samurai wielding long staffs to clear the way for those embarking aboard the ships, the tall European, attired now as a Japanese nobleman, his lady (my chief Mannschenn Drive engineer), the armoured Samurai of his personal guard . . .
And the ships cast off and their unfurled sails filled and the gaily coloured streamers of bunting (or of silk?) fluttered from their mastheads and orange flame and white smoke gushed from their gunports as a salute was fired to the emperor or the shogun or whoever it was who had come to see them off.
I thought again what a pity it was that there was no sound.
“And now,” said Sparks, “the finish of the voyage . . .”
The picture was dim, distorted, the perspective all wrong, the colours sagging down the spectrum. But I recognized that coastline, that entrance to one of the world’s—Earth’s, I mean—finest harbours, with the sheer cliffs of the North Head and the less regular rock formations on the south side. The ships, the galleons, were standing in with a fair wind, guided by one of the small pinnaces that had carried out a preliminary survey.
“It’s clearer than it was the last time we tried,” said the Third Officer. “Do you realize what that means?” He sounded frightened.
So he was frightened and I was both puzzled and angry.
“Just what the hell is going on here?” I demanded.
There were swivel chairs in the Mannschenn Drive room and we sat in them, turning them so that we did not have to look at those ever-recessing rotors or the screen with its disturbing pictures. It was heavy work at first trying to drag the story out of them but, at last, the dam broke. Then it was hard for me to get a word in edgewise, to ask the occasional question, to try to get clarification of various points.
It was Yoshi, of course, who had made the modifications to the Mannschenn Drive unit. I suspect that she had been toying with such an idea for quite some time but, until her visit to the home of her ancestors, had lacked a strong motivation. Shortly after Sister Sue’s arrival at Yokohama spaceport, she had made the pilgrimage to Will Adams’ burial place, had made Shinto obeisance at the shrine. The story of Adams fascinated her. The man was among those who, with only the slightest nudge, could have changed history. And why should not she, Yoshi Namakura, supply that nudge?
She had Sparks and the Third Officer eating out of her hand. They would help her. Although they did not share her knowledge of the workings of the Mannschenn Drive they could be trusted to follow her instructions and to monitor her progress. They were to snatch her back to her own Time should things go wrong. (But, as they were beginning to realize, right for her could be wrong for very many people, including themselves. People face death—they’re doing it all the time—but how do they face the utter extinction of never having been at all?)
History is full of Ifs. If Napoleon had accepted the American inventor Fulton’s offer to build him steam-driven warships . . . (imagine a squadron of steam frigates, wearing the French flag, at Trafalgar!). If Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg had been successful, and the Confederacy had won the War Between the States . . . If that special train had been derailed, as i
ntended, by Ned Kelly’s freedom fighters at Glenrowan . . .
And if Will Adams, the Anjin-sama, had been allowed to build European-style ships—with improvements, the Japanese excel at improving things—armed with cannons, officered by Samurai . . . If an expedition under the command of the Anjin-sama, the master navigator, himself had pushed south on a voyage of exploration . . .
And if, I thought, on the some yet-to-become established Time Track he had pushed south, reaching Australia, founding a colony . . . history might be, would be changed on a grand scale. With the resulting population shifts, with the wars that didn’t happen in our history books, with inventions made before their time or not made at all, many of us might never have been born. I’m an Australian, as you know. Would I, could I have happened in an Australia that had been a Japanese colony founded in the seventeenth century?
I demanded, “Why don’t you bring her back? Why don’t you snatch her back to our here and now from a time before she’s had a chance to influence Will Adams and his sponsors?”
Sparks said, “We’ve tried, sir. But she told us to pull her back only if things went wrong. She must be carrying some device that will keep her where and when she is, no matter what we do, as long as things are going to her satisfaction.”
“Then somebody,” I said, “will have to go back to a Time before the fleet sets sail to throw a spanner in the works . . .”
“I’ll go, sir,” said the third bravely. “Sparks has to stay here to operate the controls.”
“I’ll go,” I said, not feeling at all brave. Oh, I did not doubt the third officer’s courage but, after all, he had been under Yoshi’s influence and, too, had Japanese blood himself. (Was it my imagination or had he been looking more and more Japanese as we had been talking? Was it proof that our time line was fading out?)
“But . . .” objected both young men, yet I thought that I could detect a note of relief in their voices.
“Wait here,” I told them. “Don’t touch anything till I get back.”
In my quarters I disguised myself as well as I could—by putting on a rather elaborately embroidered dressing gown over my shirt and trousers. From the ship’s arms locker I took a stungun and a laser pistol, checking each to see that it was fully charged. I stuck both weapons in my dressing gown sash. I glanced in the mirror. I didn’t look Japanese. I looked like a middle-aged shipmaster of European origin clad in a dressing gown hung around with incongruous weaponry. But I hoped that Sparks would be able to make me arrive at night—and the lighting in and around seaports wasn’t all that good in those days. With any luck at all I should be able to do what I knew, with increasing certainty, I had to do, undetected.
I returned to the Mannschenn Drive room.
Sparks and the third stared at me in some amazement. I ignored this. I told Sparks what I wanted and he fiddled with the controls of the monitor screen, at last got what I wanted. Despite the midnight darkness it was quite a clear picture, the galleons, with their lofty masts, the furled sails glimmering palely on their spars, were alongside in the Japanese seaport. There were a few, a very few, lights aboard them. Ashore watchfires, around which moved dark figures. What little light there was threw glimmering reflections from polished spearheads.
“That will do,” I said. “The night before sailing day. All stores—including powder—aboard. All hands ashore enjoying a last night in the arms of their lady loves . . .”
“What are you going to do, sir?” almost wailed Sparks.
“Never mind. I’m just going to do it. Or try to do it. Just get me back there, not too close to any of the sentries.”
“I think I can manage that, sir. I put Yoshi down by the side of the road where the Anjin-sama was taking his morning ride, unaccompanied. Do you see that circle painted on the deck? Just stand in it. Look at the rotors.”
I did as he directed, gave him last instructions. “As soon as I’ve shunted history back onto its right track, use the recovery procedure. For Ms. Yamakura as well as for myself. It should work on her this time. Things will have gone very badly wrong—from her viewpoint.”
I looked at those blasted, precessing rotors. They seemed to be dragging me into some dark chasm that had opened in the Space-Time continuum. And their motion was subtly . . . wrong. Their precession was not confined to the fourth dimension, somehow involved more dimensions than merely four.
And then the night air was cold on my face. A light drizzle was falling. I was standing in a puddle that chilled my feet in their light shoes. I could smell the smoke of the watchfires and something spicy cooking over one of them. I was sorry that in these circumstances I could not sample whatever it was. Somewhere a stringed musical instrument was plaintively plinking away. The nearest group of sentries were talking in quite loud voices and laughing. I wondered what the joke was.
I pulled the stungun out of my dressing gown sash, walked as quietly as possible towards the ships. Towards the one that was third in line from the head of the wharf; she had fewer lights aboard her than did the others and that at her gangway was almost out. The gangway, a slatted, wooden ramp, rattled slightly as I set foot on it. I froze. But the other gangways were rattling too as the ships stirred in the slight swell that was coming in from seaward.
At the head of the gangway was a sentry. He was standing there, leaning on the bulwark, more than half-asleep. After a brief buzz from my stungun, he was wholly asleep but did not fall, propped up as he was.
I wished that I’d been able to study constructional details of the ships of this period. The powder magazine would be, I thought, amidships, well below decks. But aft there should be a storeroom, the lazarette, with flammables of various kinds—canvas and cordage and barrels of tar and oil. So I made my way towards the stern. I let myself into the officers’ quarters in the sterncastle, hoping that none of them would be spending this last night aboard.
I used my laser pistol, at a very low setting, as a torch. At last I found what I was looking for two decks down: a small hatch. I lifted it, looked down into what seemed to be the bo’s’n’s store. There were coils of rope, bolts of canvas. There were barrels and there was the smell of tar. I aimed the pistol at one of the tar barrels, adjusted the beam. A viscous black fluid spilled out, igniting as it did so. The fire that I’d started needed no further help from me. I hoped that I’d be able to get out and clear before it reached the magazine.
I scampered up the ladders, pursued by the acrid stench of burning. At the head of the gangway the sentry was still unconscious. I slung him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry—he was only a small man, luckily—and got him away from immediate danger. After all, I bore no grudge against him. I bore no grudge against anybody. I was just trying to save my—our—universe. And my own skin.
That fire was spreading fast. The big windows of the stern gallery were glowing ruddily and the flames were roaring, louder and louder. There was bawling and shouting among the sentries on the wharf, a great deal of running around. I did my best to impersonate a chicken with its head cut off, reasoning that if I joined the general panic I might escape notice. Then I found cover in a narrow alley between two warehouses, stood and watched. The galleon was well ablaze by now, with lines of fire running up her rigging, spreading to the furled canvas on her spars. Somebody had organized a bucket party but by this time it was utterly ineffectual. There was only one thing to do—to get the remaining ships away and out from the wharf before the first vessel’s magazine went up. But there was nobody there to do it; those sentries must all have been soldiers, not seamen.
The fire reached the magazine.
Oh, I’ve seen, more than once, the sort of Big Bang that can be produced by modern weaponry—but that particular Big Bang still, after all these years, persists in my memory . . . The strangely slow flare of orange flame and a somehow leisurely boom of man-made thunder . . . The blazing fragments scattered in all directions and other fragments, not yet burning, black in silhouette against dreadful, ruddy light . . . An
d the fires exploding in the rigging and on the decks of the other five ships—and on the roof of the warehouse beside which I was standing.
Somebody was addressing me urgently in Japanese. It was a tall, kimono-clad man, with pistols as well as a sheathed Samurai sword thrust into his sash. He was tall, as I have said, and bearded, and the language that he was using did not sound right from his lips. There was a kimono-clad woman with him. She stared at me wide-eyed.
“Captain!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?” What have you done?”
“What have you been doing, Yoshi-san?” I demanded.
Adams—it could have been none other—had one of his pistols out, was pointing it at me.
“Who is this,” he asked, “that you know him? Some Spanish dog sent to frustrate me? Who are you, man, and who employs you? Should you make truthful answer I might spare your life.”
And then, at the other end of the timeline, Sparks did what he should have done minutes before and I was standing in Sister Sue’s Mannschenn Drive room, with holes burned by flying sparks in my dressing gown, my face smoke-blackened. I moved out of the circle to look at the screen. Nothing could save those ships now. As I watched two of the others exploded.
I heard the third say to Sparks, “What about Yoshi?” and Sparks reply, “I’m trying.”
And he got her.
She sprawled lifeless on the deck, in a pool of her own blood. A dagger was in her right hand. And one of those scraps of useless knowledge that one accumulates floated into my mind. Japanese ladies, wiping out some real or fancied disgrace, were not expected to carry out ritual self-disembowelment.
A mere throat-cutting would suffice.
Gateway to Never (John Grimes) Page 59
