THE TIDES OF TIME

by John Brunner

  “Oh, all right. I’m not ashamed of what we’ve done.”

  Ashamed? Well, maybe not. Terrified, though, half the time at least… Gene put his arm around her and felt her trembling. But there was no help for that.

  The taverna was not hard to locate, for apart from the little church it was the largest soundest building; most of the others were tumble-down or ramshackle. Before they reached it, however, it was beset by the yacht’s passengers, shouting orders—none of them in Greek—and complaining about the slowness of the service.

  But Gene was sufficiently out of the ordinary for Milo to pay them special attention when they sat down. Passing with a grimace, he muttered, “The season’s started early—maybe with you! I should have known! Wine and mezedes? On the way!” And to someone else: “Oriste—coming!”

  Stacy touched her companion’s arm. “Gene, I think we ought to get away from here!” she whispered.

  “Nonsense!” he answered bluffly. “Who’d expect to find the famous Anastasia and the notorious Eugene—?”

  “Everybody’s looking at us!” she countered.

  “Okay, why not? I mean, I’m black and you’re beautiful! And you are, damn it! You’re gorgeous!”

  His attempt to distract her with compliments failed.

  “Gene! That man over there has a newspaper!”

  “Are we headline news in it? Stacy, it’s been weeks! You know a story like ours doesn’t last that long!” He leaned toward her, hoping to keep their dispute quiet enough not to attract attention. At once her face hardened and her voice acquired a shrill edge.

  “You don’t understand! All you’re concerned about is that you’ve made off with an heiress!”

  “I didn’t think that was the way of it!” he snapped.

  “It wasn’t meant to be! At first I believed… The hell with it. Let’s go.” She jumped to her feet.

  “Well, if you’re determined to create a scene—”

  “Determined? Hell, no, I was hoping for something absolutely different! But it’s up to you, after all. Come along, and don’t leave the bag behind!”

  Providentially, at that instant Milo dumped a carafe of retsina on their table, along with glasses and a saucerful of goat’s cheese and olives. Making a logical assumption, he addressed Stacy.

  “If you’re looking for what I think you are, it’s back that way—there’s a sign. Unisex, I’m afraid, but it was empty a moment ago.”

  She hesitated. Then, with vast effort, she controlled herself and nodded. As she departed Gene heaved a giant sigh of relief. For in a sense she was right. How could a mixed-race couple hope to remain inconspicuous in a village like this? But before he could calm her enough to lure her back to the sort of place where he felt safe, the middle of a good solid continent, he was going to have to allay her sense of paranoia. And the problem there was that it had a basis in reality: her grandfather—her adoptive grandfather—probably was ruthless enough to hire thugs to beat him up and drag her home.

  On the other hand, she had begged to be taken away from the only world she had ever known; she had pleaded for a chance to live another existence than that of the jet set; she had decided that he was the right person to try it with; she had arranged all those misleading clues which ought to indicate that she had fled to South America… and, judging from the few newspapers they had risked buying, the bait had been swallowed by the press, at least. No, the odds were still in their favor—though it was a damned nuisance about this yachtload of sightseers.

  Stacy was calmer when she returned, and they drank their wine more or less at leisure amid the clamorous and never-ceasing shouts of the other foreign customers. But when they reached the last glassful she began to fidget again, and he too was glad to pay up and leave, conscious of how many eyes were on them and worried as to what Stacy was apt to do or say next: insist on packing up and moving on?

  To his amazement, however, even before they had regained the trail over the headland, she suddenly linked fingers with him and gave a squeeze.

  “Gene, weren’t they awful—those people?”

  “Well, this morning Milo said…” And he paraphrased as best he could, adding a couple of caustic extra comments.

  “I used to be like them.” She was staring straight ahead up the steep path. “I don’t want to be like them anymore. Though I couldn’t help it. It was the way I was brought up. You do know that, don’t you?” She turned to him with a beseeching expression.

  “Yes, I do,” he answered gruffly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

  “That’s all right then. So long as we’re together, everything is all right, isn’t it?”

  And, leaving him to follow more slowly with the bag of provisions, she almost danced to the top of the hill.

  When they arrived back at “their” beach, however, they found it occupied by strangers: a boy and girl both about twenty, she stretched out nude on a towel while he—equally unclad—anointed her back with suntan oil. They looked up curiously, and the boy addressed them in rudimentary Greek. At their baffled response he switched first to sketchy German, then to English, and got through.

  “That’s your stuff there in the—uh—war memorial?”

  “Yes!” Gene advanced the last few paces, while Stacy hung back.

  “Your boat, too?”

  “Not exactly. Rented.”

  “Ah-hah. Staying long?”

  “Haven’t decided yet.”

  “That’s the way,” the boy said admiringly. “Cut loose from your roots, explore the world before it’s blown to bits. Wish we could do the same, but you need bread to keep going, and… I’m Hank. This is Linda.”

  The girl rose on her elbows and smiled. She was fair and pretty, but rather fat.

  “Say—uh—you don’t mind us?…” Hank made a vague gesture.

  “The world belongs to all of us,” Gene said, consciously quoting Stacy.

  “That’s good,” the boy approved. “We just mean to stick around awhile and soak up some sun, that’s all.”

  “So do we,” said Stacy, having made up her mind, and stepped to Gene’s side. “I’m Stacy and he’s Gene, by the way. And I’m just about to fix lunch. Are you hungry?”

  “Well, we got some bread and cheese and fruit—”

  “So’ve we. Let’s pool it, then.” Stacy debated with herself a second, then caught up the hem of her dress and tugged it over her head. Another moment, and she discarded her bikini panties too.

  “Provided,” she went on, “you lend me some of that suntan oil.”

  It proved to be a strange day. Gene would not have thought it possible to talk so much without actually saying anything. Miraculously, however, Hank and Linda were not in the least interested in their companions’ background, and spoke very little about their own. Mainly they concentrated on their view of life, which was frankly mystical. They were planning to bum their way via Turkey into India and thence to Nepal, in hopes of meeting a guru who would offer them enlightenment. Gene felt a stir of envy at their optimism. He couldn’t help wondering whether this anonymous island was on their best route, but held his peace. At one stage Linda inquired diffidently whether there was any pot around, “like maybe on the boat,” but accepted Gene’s headshake and changed the subject.

  Toward sundown the young couple resumed their clothes and headed back toward Oragalia, where they were to meet someone who might have room in a boat making for the next island in the chain. They embraced Gene and Stacy effusively but offered no thanks for the food they had shared.

  When they had gone, Stacy reentered the cave by way of its concrete arch—still surprisingly true and square despite the passage of time—and set about preparing red mullet for supper. She was not a good cook, even a camp cook, but she insisted on undertaking the menial chores to prove she was capable of them.

  Musingly she said, “I think if everyone were more like those two than the tourists we saw this morning the world would be a far better place. Don’t you agree?
”

  Gene suppressed his private reservations. He said, “At least they seem very relaxed. And sort of gentle.”

  “Yes, gentle’s a good term. Isn’t there another bottle?”

  Somewhat guiltily, they had concealed the last of their wine, because the sun had lain hot on the beach despite it being only May, and both Hank and Linda had displayed a colossal thirst. While Gene was drawing the cork she went on, “I can’t help thinking how much Ingrid would have disliked them, and how much more like she must have been to those appalling tourists.”

  “Really? How do you mean?” He filled their glasses.

  “Oh—” She gestured with the knife she had used to clean the fish. “It’s the ‘boss for a day’ bit, if you see what I mean. Probably most of those people will go home to dreadful jobs where they have to kowtow all the time to the managing director or the owner or whatever, but while they’re here they give orders and dish out lavish tips and everybody runs to obey them. Ingrid must have enjoyed that sort of thing. You never met her, did you?”

  “No. Though I heard about her, naturally.”

  “Well, nor did I, but I got this very clear picture of her.” Laying by the knife, she took her glass and sat down on her side of the sleeping bag, not looking at him—not looking at anything in the here and now, but blankly at the wall of the cave.

  “And I’ve been wondering about the fate that would have been appropriate for her. Like to hear what I think?”

  “Yes, of course.” He too sat down, linking his fingers around his knees.

  “Well, I suspect she’d have wanted to find her way to a place full of little people she could lord it over, heirs perhaps to a decadent civilization. Maybe little brown people—Gene, I’m sorry!”

  “Nothing to do with me. Go on.”

  She was frowning. “Well, I think she’d have liked to be made welcome by their king, you know. Set on a throne and draped with garlands, brought offerings of meat and butter and rice. But eventually life in Lamagu would have begun to bore her… Funny! It’s almost as though the place I’m talking about could really exist. I didn’t mean to call it Lamagu, but that’s its name. I mean, it feels like its name.”

  “Go on,” he urged, reaching for the wine again.

  “Well, like I say, she grew bored, not even needing to issue orders, but having everything done for her without asking. It wasn’t enough to rise every morning and see the dawn break over distant snowcapped mountains, watch the lilies on the ornamental ponds open to greet the day, enjoy countless dishes full of unfamiliar tidbits, put on the richest silks and jewels and set forth across the city to view wild animals or listen to the music of a temple ceremony. It wasn’t enough. She needed to tell someone what to do and watch it done.

  “So one morning she started countermanding everything that was done for her, as a matter of routine. She found fault with no matter what—demanded that the cook bring her impossible delights for breakfast, ordered the tailor to remake her gowns, called for minstrels and decided to instruct them in her favorite hymn tune. Also she mocked them for not knowing it already, and for being ignorant of the religion her family had brought her up in, to which she only paid attention when it suited her.

  “Then, later, on the streets of Lamagu, along the broad avenues where the merchants haggled with their customers and in the alleys where the tinsmiths and the cordwainers plied their trade in tiny open-fronted shops above which people slept—in rooms when it was cool, on rattan beds, or on the roofs when it was hot and there was no hope of rain for months to come—everywhere she picked on passersby at random and upbraided them for being as they were. She ordered them to change their style of dress, their diet, their homes and even their ancientest traditions.

  “All this the folk of Lamagu accepted. Nor did they just accept; they welcomed it. They had been bored so long, they’d grown resigned to permanent monotony. They thought her mad, of course, but it was a fascinating kind of madness. Without her having to demand it of him, their king removed the necklace which was his mark of office, like a crown, and begged her on his bended knee to don it.

  “Which she did, already half-aware that this itself had undermined her plan.

  “What could she change now in the city, radically? Well, there was a problem concerning water. There was either not enough, in summer, or too much, when the rainy season came. Accordingly she decreed the building of vast reservoirs, linked by canals, with here and there a gentle waterfall and steps alongside where a family might come to fill their pots and jars. This, now, the people understood; not only was it practical, but it would provide by night the soothing music of cascading water, to replace the churr of crickets kept in cages, which had been customary but which she had now forbidden. They set to with a will, and very shortly the system was complete.

  “And other droning insects came to make music in the night, well to the people’s taste, for they’d had droning instruments in the temples she converted to museums.

  “After the rainy season, when the reservoirs operated perfectly and stored, high in the hills, enough to meet the city’s needs for the longest and hottest summer—so she was pleased—the people suddenly began to act as she had long desired. They came to her begging to be told what they should do. Delighted at this reversal of the situation she had rebelled against, she issued orders and more orders, and more and more orders, and they went away and she sat happily on the throne which had been the king’s and waited for reports on the impact she had made.

  “None came, but one of the new droning insects bit her ankle, and she swatted it.

  “Then, at last, after sundown, she went out to see why she was being left alone, without food or drink or attendants, and found that Lamagu was full of corpses. And not long after, she was one of them.”

  Stacy shook herself, seeming to return from far away, and glanced around. Gene had lighted their little butane stove, and also their lamp, and was holding out a plate on which lay a fried fish appetizingly scented with wild thyme, a wedge of bread, and sliced tomatoes dressed with lemon, oil and salt.

  “I was going to fix that—” she began, then meekly took it, and began to eat.

  After a little she said, “Were you listening?”

  “I promise you, I didn’t miss a word. Eat up. It’s late, and growing cold.”

  Soon after, twining against him in the darkness, she remembered one more thing she’d meant to say.

  “You don’t think Hank and Linda recognized us, do you?”

  “I doubt it very much. Did they sound as though they pay attention to the news?”

  “No, I guess not. But may they not be talking of us to their friends?”

  “Very likely. If their friends are like them, though, we have nothing to worry about.”

  “Yes, you’re right… Gene, I think I’m a little happy here. Let’s stay awhile.”

  Dismissing all his reservations, he replied, “Okay!”

  Wondering meantime when he’d regret it.

  PART THREE

  THE EXHIBIT

  is a handful of shell cases from an automatic rifle.

  They speak of a bad habit long forgotten: war

  THE MONTH

  is June

  THE NAME

  is Cedric

  The thirty-meter length of Räumboot R34—gray as the gray of the sea in the predawn light of this fine June morning—plowed northward at her steady cruising speed of 18 k.p.h. Nervous beside her twin antiaircraft guns, her duty deck-crew yawned and cursed their inability to dominate fatigue by an act of will. But she was far from any battle zone now, although a few planes had droned by during the hours of darkness.

  Sore-eyed, at the limit of the endurance bestowed on him by coffee and Benzedrine, Leutnant Kreutzer surveyed the island they were approaching and identified it by the chart spread out before him on the map table of the cramped bridge. Its name, apparently, was Oragalia. He checked his watch and made a note in the log.

  Then a familiar but unwelco
me voice spoke behind him, and Graumann appropriated his binoculars without permission—Graumann, who was so proud of his entitlement to one of the countless uniforms invented not by the Navy but by the Party, with its incomprehensible badges of rank, who made so great a point of dragging his right leg and such a habit of referring to his “wound from the Great War.” In his invariable self-important manner, he said, “That looks interesting. Where are we on the chart?… Ah, you’ve marked it”—in the tone of one disappointed at not being able to complain that the chore had been neglected. “Kindly heave to for a while and let me look it over.”

  Kreutzer bit back the words that sprang to his tonguetip and wearily signed to his Bootsmann, who had the wheel. The rumble of their twin diesels receded to a faint thump-thumping as the sun peered over the skyline and color flooded back into the world.

  “Hmm!” Graumann pronounced after half a minute or so. “That southern bay has possibilities. Take the glasses, Herr Leutnant, and see if you can fault me on this. Suppose we were to post a lookout station on that overhang, preferably including a radar unit?” He paused to let his grasp of current technical jargon make an impression. “Then we could fortify the entrance to that cave, which could be used as a magazine—if it’s big enough, and if not we’ll enlarge it—site a couple of gun posts on those headlands and draft some of the local people to build a rampart of boulders blocking access from the beach: would that not strike you as a highly defensible vantage point?”

  Kreutzer cursed the man silently. He could in fact not fault the argument; the chart confirmed that an outpost on Oragalia would indeed control the approaches to this corner of what had just become the latest acquisition of the Third Reich.

  Such land-centered thinking, though, was foreign to him. He liked open water better, searching and chasing across a quarter of the globe if necessary. He had hoped to be posted to a U-boat pack. But each man within the Reich must do his duty, and according to its complex system of interlinked authority Graumann was his superior. He contained himself, and said only, “If the enemy does manage to regroup, which is unlikely, then he might well organize a counterattack in this area. I must say, however…”