The Corridors of Time

by Poul Anderson

  ‘But where are we headed, anyway? What for?’

  ‘I cannot tell you much. But, briefly, we are to recover and transport a treasure.’

  Lockridge shaped a whistle and fumbled for a cigarette.

  ‘You find that unbelievable? Melodramatic? Something from a bad novel?’ Storm Darroway chuckled. ‘Why do people in this age think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe? Consider. The atoms that built you are clouds of sheer energy. The sun that shines on you could consume this planet, and there are other suns that could swallow it. Your ancestors hunted the mammoth, crossed oceans in row-boats, died on a thousand red fields. Your civilization stands at the edge of oblivion. Within your own body, at this instant, a war is fought without quarter against invaders that could devour you, against entropy and time itself. There is a norm for you!’

  She gestured at the street, where folk were about their daily business. ‘A thousand years ago they were wiser,’ she said. ‘They knew the world and the gods would go under and nothing could be done but meet that day bravely.’

  ‘Well—’ Lockridge hesitated. ‘Okay. Maybe I’m just not the Ragnarok type.’

  She laughed. The car hummed onward. They were out of the old city, into a district of high apartment buildings, before she continued :

  ‘I will be brief. Do you remember that the Ukraine rebelled against the Soviet government, a number of years ago? The revolt was savagely put down, but the fight lasted long. And the headquarters of the freedom movement was here, in Copenhagen.’

  Lockridge scowled. ‘Yes, I’ve studied foreign politics.’

  ‘There was a – a war chest,’ she said, ‘that was hidden away when the cause began to look hopeless. Now, lately, we have found someone who knows the place.’

  His muscles tautened. ‘We?’

  ‘The liberation movement. Not for the Ukraine alone any more, but for everyone enslaved. We need those funds.’

  ‘Wait a minute! What the dickens?’

  ‘Oh, we do not hope to set free a third of the planet over-night. But propaganda, subversion, escape routes to the West – such things cost money. And nothing may be looked for from governments that blither of a détente.’

  He needed time to collect his wits. So he said, ‘That’s right. I used to claim, in bull sessions and so forth, there seems to be a will to suicide in America these days. The way we sit up and beg for any kind word from anybody, whether or not he’s sworn to wreck us. The way we turn over whole continents to idiots, demagogues, and cannibals. The way, even at home, we twist the plain words of the Constitution to buy off any bunch of – never mind. My arguments didn’t make me any too well liked.’

  An odd exultation flitted across her face, but she said flatly :

  ‘The gold is at the end of a tunnel in western Jutland, dug by the Germans during their occupation of Denmark for an ultra-secret research project. The anti-Nazi underground raided that base near the end of the war. Apparently everyone there who knew of the tunnel was killed, because its existence was never revealed in public. The Ukrainians learned of it from a man on his deathbed, and took it over as a hiding place. After their revolt was crushed and they disbanded, their treasury was left. You see, those few who had been told about it would not betray their trust by appropriating the gold for their private use, yet they had no more cause. Most of them are dead now, of age or accident or murder by Soviet agents. The last survivors finally decided to let our organization have the fund. I have been assigned to fetch it. You are my helper.’

  ‘But – but – why me? You’ve got men of your own.’

  ‘Have you never heard of using an outside courier? An East European might too likely be watched, or searched. But American tourists go everywhere. Their luggage is seldom opened at the frontiers, especially if they are traveling cheaply.

  ‘Beaten into leaf, the gold can be sewn into our garments, the linings of our sleeping bags, and so on. We will go by motorcycle to Geneva and there turn it over to the proper person.’ Her eyes challenged him. ‘Are you game?’

  Lockridge bit his lip. The thing was too weird to swallow in a piece. ‘You don’t think they’ll wave us on with this arsenal I bought, do you?’

  ‘The guns are mere precaution while we prepare the gold to go. We will leave them behind.’ Storm Darroway fell silent a while. ‘I will not insult your intelligence,’ she said gently. ‘This involves certain violations of law. They might become very great violations, if there is a fight. I need a man who will take the risks and is capable of meeting trouble, and tough if he must be, yet not a criminal tempted by the chance of personal gain. You seemed right. If I have been mistaken, I beg you to tell me now.’

  ‘Well – that is —’ Lockridge recovered some humor. ‘If you wanted James Bond, you sure were mistaken.’

  She gave him a blank glance. ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, largely to cover his own astonishment. ‘Uh — All right, I’ll speak plain. How do I know you are what you say? This could be an ordinary smugglin’ ring, or a con game, or … or anything. Even a Russian stunt. How do I know?’

  The city was falling behind, the road so clear that she could give him a long regard. ‘I cannot tell you more than I have done,’ she said. ‘Another part of your task is to trust me.’

  He looked into those eyes and surrendered with joy. ‘Okay!’ he exclaimed. ‘You got yourself a smuggler.’

  Her right hand fell on his left and squeezed. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and that was ample.

  They drove on in silence, through green countryside and little red-roofed villages. He ached to talk with her, but you wait for the queen to open conversation. They were entering Roskilde when he finally ventured: ‘You’d better give me some details. The layout and so on.’

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘This day is too fair.’

  He could not read her expression, but a softness lay on the mouth. Yes, he thought, in your kind of life you must grab after everything beautiful you can, while you can. They passed near the great three-spired cathedral and he wished he could find better words than, ‘Quite a church yonder.’

  ‘A hundred kings lie buried there,’ she said. ‘But under the market square are the still more ancient ruins of St Lawrence’s; and before that rose, there was a heathen temple with the gable ends carved into dragon heads. For this was the royal seat of Viking Denmark.’ Somehow it ran a shiver down his nerves. But her mood passed like a blown cloud and she smiled. ‘Did you know that the modern Danes call the Perseid meteors the tears of St Lawrence? They are a people of charming fancies.’

  ‘You seem right interested in them,’ he remarked. ‘Is that why you wanted me to study up on their past?’

  Her tone stiffened. ‘We need a cover story in case we are observed. Archeological curiosity is a good excuse for poking about, in a land this old. But I said I do not wish to think about these matters now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Again she bewildered him with change. ‘Poor Malcolm,’ she teased. ‘Is it that hard for you to be idle? Come, we are to be a pair of tourists, camping out at night, eating and drinking at poor men’s inns, winding down back roads and through forgotten hamlets, from here to Switzerland. Let us begin to practice the part.’

  ‘Oh, I’m good at bein’ a bum,’ he said, eager to please.

  ‘Have you traveled much, besides your field trips?’

  ‘Sort of. Hitchhiked around some, and used to go into the hinterlands on Okinawa when I had a pass, and took a leave in Japan—’

  He was sophisticated enough to admire the skill with which she encouraged him to talk about himself. But that didn’t make the process less enjoyable. Not that he was given to bragging; however, when a gorgeous woman listened with so much interest, he naturally obliged her.

  The Dauphine purred down the island, Rinsted, Sorø Slag-else, and so to Korsør on the Belt. There they must take the ferry. Storm – she had awarded him permission to be on first-name terms; it felt lik
e an accolade – led him to the restaurant aboard. ‘This is a good time to have lunch,’ she said, ‘especially since drinks are tax free in international waters.’

  ‘You mean this channel is?’

  ‘Yes, around 1900 or so, Britain, France, and Germany held a conference and grew touchingly unanimous in their opinion that the straits through the middle of Denmark are part of the high seas.’

  They sat down to akvavit and tall beer chasers. ‘You know an awful lot about this country,’ he said. ‘Are you Danish yourself?’

  ‘No. I have an American passport.’

  ‘By ancestry, then? You don’t look it.’

  ‘Well, what do I look like?’ she invited.

  ‘I’m blessed if I know. A sort of mixture of everything, that came out better’n any of the separate parts.’

  ‘What? A Southerner with a good word for miscegenation?’

  ‘Now come off it, Storm. I don’t go for that crap about would you want your sister to marry one. Mine has the sense to pick the right man for herself regardless of race.’

  Her neck lifted. ‘Still, race does exist,’ she said. ‘Not in the distorted twentieth-century version, no. But in genetic lines. There is good stock and there are scrubs.’

  ‘M-m-m – theoretically. Only how do you tell ’em apart, except by performance?’

  ‘One can. A beginning is being made in your current work on the genetic code. Someday it will be possible to know what a man is fit for before he is born.’

  Lockridge shook his head. ‘I don’t like that notion. I’ll stick with everybody bein’ born free.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she scoffed. ‘Free to do what? Ninety per cent of this species are domestic animals by nature. The only meaningful liberation is of the remaining ten in a hundred. And yet, today, you want to domesticate them too.’ She looked out the window, to sunbright waters and skimming gulls. ‘There is the civilization suicide you spoke of. A herd of mares can only be guarded by a stallion – not a gelding.’

  ‘Could be. But a hereditary aristocracy has been tried, and look at its record.’

  ‘Do you think your soi-disant democracy has a better one?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I’d like to be a decadent aristocrat. I just can’t afford to.’

  Her haughtiness dissolved in laughter. ‘Thank you. We were in danger of becoming serious, were we not? And here come the oysters.’

  She chatted so brightly through the meal, and afterward up on the throbbing deck, that he hardly noticed how adroitly she had turned the talk away from herself.

  They drove off at Nyborg, on across Fyen, through Hans Christian Andersen’s home town of Odense – ‘But the name means Odin’s Lake,’ Storm told Lockridge, ‘and once men were hanged here, in sacrifice to him.’ And at last they crossed the bridge to the Jutish peninsula. He offered to take the car, but she refused.

  The land grew bigger when they swung northward, less thickly populated, there were vistas of long hills covered with forest or with blooming heather, under a dizzyingly high sky. Sometimes Lockridge glimpsed Kaempehoje, dolmens surmounted by rough capstones, stark in the lengthening light. He made some remark about them.

  ‘They go back to the Stone Age, and I hope you remember,’ Storm said. ‘Four thousand years and more ago. Their like may be found all down the Atlantic coast and on through the Mediterranean. That was a strong faith.’ Her hands tightened on the wheel; she stared straight before her, down the flying ribbon of road. ‘They adored the Triune Goddess, they who brought those burial rites here, Her of Whom the Norns were only a pallid memory, Maiden, Mother, and Hellqueen. It was an evil bargain that traded Her for the Father of Thunders.’

  Tires hissed on concrete, the split air roared by open windows. Shadows lay deep in the folded uplands. A flight of crows winged from a pinewood. ‘She will come again,’ Storm said.

  Lockridge had begun to expect such passages of darkness through her. He made no reply. When they turned toward Holstebro, he checked the map and realized with a clutch at his throat that they didn’t have far to go – not unless she meant to skate across the North Sea.

  ‘Maybe you’d better brief me now,’ he suggested.

  Her face and voice were alike uninterpretable. ‘There is little to tell you. I have already reconnoitered. We need expect no trouble at the tunnel entrance. Further along, perhaps —’ Intensity flashed forth. She gripped his arm so hard that her fingernails pained him. ‘Be prepared for surprises. I have not told you every detail, because the attempt to understand would engage too much of your mind. If we meet an emergency, you must not stop to wonder, you must simply react. Do you see?’

  ‘I – I reckon so.’ It was good karate psychology, he knew. But— No, damnation, I’m committed. Crazy, stupid, quixotic, whatever you want to call me, I’m on her side – with no more advance warnin’ than this – whatever happens!

  The blood raced in him. His hands felt cold.

  Not far beyond Holstebro, Storm turned off the pavement. A dirt road snaked west among fields that presently gave way on the right side to a timber plantation. She pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the engine. Silence flowed across the world.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lockridge stirred. ‘Shall we —’

  ‘Hush!’ Storm’s hand chopped at his words. From the glove compartment she took a small thick disc. Colors played oddly over one face. She shifted it about, her head bent between sable wings of hair to study the hues. He saw her relax. ‘Very well,’ she muttered. ‘We can proceed.’

  ‘What is that thing?’ Lockridge reached for it.

  She didn’t hand it over. ‘An indicator,’ she said curtly. ‘Move! The area is safe now.’

  He reminded himself of his resolution to go along with anything she wanted. That seemed to include not asking silly questions. He got out and opened the trunk. Storm unlocked a suitcase of her own. ‘I assume you have full camp gear in those packsacks,’ she said. He nodded. ‘Take yours, then. I will carry my own. Load both guns.’

  Lockridge obeyed with a sharp, not unpleasant prickling in his skin. When the frame was on him, the Webley holstered at his side and the Mauser in his hand, he turned about and saw Storm closing her suitcase again. She had donned a sort of cartridge belt like none he had ever seen before, a thing of darkly shimmering flexible metal whose pouches appeared to seal themselves shut. Hanging on the right, as if by magnetism, was a slim, intricate-barreled thing. Lockridge did a double take. ‘Hey, what kind of pistol is that?’

  ‘No matter.’ She hefted the disc of colors. ‘Expect odder sights than this. Lock the car and let us be gone.’

  They entered the plantation and began walking back, parallel to the road, hidden from it by the ordered ranks of pines. Afternoon light slanted through a sweet pungency and cast sunspeckles on the ground, which was soft with needles underfoot. ‘I get you,’ Lockridge said. ‘We don’t want the car to draw attention to where we’re headed, if somebody happens by.’

  ‘Silence,’ Storm ordered.

  A mile or so beyond, she led the way to the road and across. There a harvested grain field lay yellow and stubbly, lifting toward a ridge that cut off view of any farmhouse. In the middle stood a hillock topped by a dolmen. Storm slipped agilely through the wire fence before Lockridge could help and broke into a trot. Though her pack was not much lighter than his, she was still breathing easily when they reached the knoll, and he was a little winded.

  She stopped and opened her belt. A tube came out, vaguely resembling a large flashlight with a faceted lens. She took her bearings from the sun and started around the hillock. It was overgrown with grass and brambles; a marker showed that this relic was protected by the government. Feeling naked under the wide empty sky, his pulse thuttering, Lockridge looked at the dolmen as if for some assurance of eternity. Gray and lichen-spotted, the upright stones brooded beneath their heavy roof as they had done since a vanished people raised them to be a tomb for their dead. But the
chamber within, he recalled, had once been buried under heaped earth, of which only this mound was left….

  Storm halted. ‘Yes, here.’ She began to climb the slope.

  ‘Huh? Wait,’ Lockridge protested. ‘We’ve come three quarters around. Why didn’t you go in the other direction?’

  For the first time, he saw confusion on her face. ‘I go widdershins.’ She uttered a hard laugh. ‘Habit. Now, stand back.’

  They were halfway up when she stopped. ‘This place was excavated in 1927,’ she said. ‘Only the dolmen was cleared, and there is no further reason for the scientists to come. So we can use it for a gate.’ She did something to a set of controls on the tube. ‘We have a rather special way of concealing entrances,’ she warned. ‘Do not be too astonished.’

  A dull light glowed from the lens. The tube hummed and quivered in her grip. A shiver went through the brambles, though there was no wind. Abruptly a circle of earth lifted.

  Lifted – straight into the air – ten feet in diameter, twenty feet thick, a plug of turf and soil hung unsupported before Lockridge’s eyes. He sprang aside with a yell.

  ‘Quiet!’ Storm rapped. ‘Get inside. Quick!’

  Numbly, he advanced to the hole in the mound. A ramp led down out of sight. He swallowed. The fact that she watched him was what mostly drove him ahead. He went into the hill. She followed. Turning, she adjusted the tube in her hand. The cylinder of earth sank back. He heard a sigh of compression as it fitted itself into place with machined snugness. Simultaneously, a light came on – from no particular source, he saw in his bewilderment.

  The ramp was simply the floor of a barrel-vaulted tunnel, a little wider than the door, which sloped before him around a curve. That bore was surfaced overall with a hard, smooth material from which the light poured, a chill white radiance whose shadowlessness made distances hard to judge. The air was fresh, moving, though he saw no ventilators.

  He faced Storm and stammered. She put away the tube. Harshness left her. She glided to him, laid a hand on his arm, and smiled. ‘Poor Malcolm,’ she murmured. ‘You will have greater surprises.’