The Corridors of Time

by Poul Anderson

  What is truth?

  A woman six thousand years hence told him her son had been burnt alive. But she knew the cause was good. Didn’t she?

  Lockridge checked himself. He had almost gone through the veil of lightlessness. Brann had suffered and died behind it. His guts knotted. Why did they continue to maintain the thing?

  Why hadn’t he asked?

  I reckon I never wanted to, he understood, and stepped through.

  This end of the house had not been refurnished. The floor was dirt, the seats covered with skins gone dusty. One globe illuminated the section; shadows lay in every corner. The black barricade cut off sound, too. The wind was gone. Lockridge stood in total quiet.

  That which was on the table, wired into the machine, stirred and whimpered.

  ‘No!’ Lockridge screamed, and fled.

  Long afterward, he got the courage to stop sobbing and return. He could do no else. Brann, who had fought as best he could for his own people, was not dead.

  Little was left except skin drawn dry across the big arching bones. Tubes fed into him and kept the organism together. Electrodes pierced the skull, jolted the brain and recorded what was brought forth. For some reason of stimulus, the eyelids had been cut away and the balls of the eyes must stare into the light overhead.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Lockridge wept.

  Tongue and lips struggled in the wreck of a face. Lockridge wasn’t wearing his diaglossa for Brann’s age, but he could guess that a fragment of self pleaded, ‘Kill me.’

  While just beyond the curtain – her and me —

  Lockridge reached for the machine.

  ‘Stop! What are you doing?’

  He turned, very slowly, and saw Storm and Hu. The man’s energy gun was out, aimed at his belly. The woman said urgently: ‘I wanted to spare you this. It does take time, to extract the last traces of memory. There isn’t much cerebrum by now, he’s really no more than a worm, so you needn’t feel pity. Remember, he had begun to do the same thing to me.’

  ‘Does that excuse you?’ Lockridge shouted.

  ‘Will Pearl Harbor excuse Hiroshima?’ she gibed.

  For the first time in his existence, Lockridge said an obscenity to a woman. ‘Never mind your fancy reasons,’ he gasped. ‘I know how you kept yourself in my country … by murderin’ my countrymen. I know John and Mary gave me an honest look at the way you run your own territory. How old are you? I got enough hints about that too. You can’t have done every crime you have done, except in hundreds o’ years, your own time. That’s why they’ve got the knife in you, back at the palace – why everybody wants to be the Koriach –she’s made immortal. While Ola’s mother is old at forty.’

  ‘Stop that!’ Storm cried.

  Lockridge spat. ‘I’ve got no business wonderin’ how many lovers you’ve had, or how I’m just a thing you used,’ he said. ‘But you aren’t goin’ to use Auri, understand? Nor her people. Nor anyone. To hell with you: the hell you came from!’

  Hu leveled the gun and said. ‘That will suffice.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rain started before dawn. Lockridge awoke to the sound of it, muffled on the peat roof of the cabin where he lay, loud on the muddy ground. Through a lattice across the doorway, he looked over pastures where Yutho cattle huddled as drenched as their herdsmen. Sere leaves dropped one by one off an oak, under the steady beat of water. He couldn’t see the rest of the village from this outlier hut, nor the bay. That added to an isolation he had believed was already infinite.

  He didn’t want to put his Warden uniform back on, but once out from the skins, he found the air too chill and damp. I’ll ask for an Orugaray rig, or even a Yutho one, he thought. She’ll give me that much, I hope, before she —

  Does what?

  He shook himself, angrily. Having managed a few hours’ sleep, after he was put here, he should now be able to hold his courage.

  Hard to do, though, when everything had broken in his grasp during a single night. To learn what Storm and her cause really were – well, he’d had clues enough, had simply ducked his duty to think about them, until the sight of Brann snapped the leash she had put on him. And to know what she would make of these people whom he had become so fond of – that was too deep a wound.

  Poor Auri, he thought in his hollowness. Poor Withucar.

  The remembrance of the girl was curiously healing. He might yet be able to do something for her, if no one else. Maybe she could stow away on that fleet bound hither. It was evidently a joint Iberian-British venture, to judge from some remarks that passed between Storm and Hu while they oversaw the preparation of a jail for Lockridge. The size as well as composition was unique; but then, some rather large events appeared to be going on in England these days, of which the founding of Stonehenge might be one consequence. Storm was too preoccupied to care much. It satisfied her that everyone aboard, seen through infra-red magnifiers, was of archaic racial type, no agents from the future. Of course, in this weather the fleet would doubtless heave to, and not arrive for an extra day or so. He might not be around then. But he could, perhaps, find ways to suggest the idea of escape to Auri.

  Purpose restored him a little. He went to the entrance and stuck his face out between the lashed poles, into the rain. Four Yuthoaz stood guard, wrapped in leather cloaks. They edged from him, lifting their weapons and made signs against evil.

  ‘Greetings, you fellows,’ Lockridge said. Storm had let him keep his diaglossas. ‘I want to ask a favor.’

  The squad leader nerved himself to reply, sullenly, ‘What can we do for one who’s fallen under Her wrath, save watch him as we were told?’

  ‘You can send a message for me. I only want to see a friend.’

  ‘None are allowed here. She ordered that Herself. We’ve already had to chase away one girl.’

  Lockridge clenched his teeth. Naturally Auri would have heard the news. Many a frightened eye had seen him marched off last night, by torchlight, under Yutho spears. You she-devil, Storm, he thought. In the jail you hauled me out of, they let me have visitors.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘then I want to see the Goddess.’

  ‘Hoy-ah!’ The warrior laughed. ‘You’d have us tell Her to come at your bidding?’

  ‘You can tell her with respect that I beg audience, can’t you? When you’re relieved, if not before.’

  ‘Why should we? She knows what She wants to do.’

  Lockridge donned a sneer and said, ‘Look, you swine, I may be in trouble but I’ve not lost every power. You’ll do as I say or I’ll rot the flesh off your bones. Then you’ll have to pray for the Goddess’ help anyway.’

  They cringed. Lockridge saw foreshadowed the kind of realm that Storm would build. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘And get me some breakfast on the way.’

  ‘I, I dare not. None of us dare leave before we are allowed. But wait.’ The leader drew a horn from beneath his cloak and winded it, a dull sad noise through the rain. Presently a gang of youths arrived, axes in hand, to learn what the trouble was. The leader sent them on Lockridge’s errands.

  It was a puny triumph, but nonetheless drove some more hopelessness off him. He attacked the coarse bread and roast pork with unexpected appetite. Storm can break me, he thought, but she’ll need a mind machine for the job.

  He was not even surprised when she came, a couple of hours later. What did astonish him was the way his heart still turned over at sight of her. In full robe she walked over the land, big and supple and altogether beautiful. The Wise Woman’s staff was in her hand, a dozen Yuthoaz at her back. Lockridge saw Withucar among them. From her belt of power sprang an unseen shield off which the rain cascaded, so that she stood in a silvery torrent, water nymph and sea queen.

  She halted before the cabin and regarded him with eyes more sorrowful than anything else, ‘Well, Malcolm,’ she said in English. ‘I find I must come when you ask.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll never come to your whistle again, darlin’,’ he told her. ‘Too bad. I was
right proud to belong to you.’

  ‘No more?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wish I could, but I can’t.’

  ‘I know. You are that kind of man. If you weren’t, this would hurt me less.’

  ‘What’re you goin’ to do? Shoot me?’

  ‘I am trying to find a different way. You don’t know how hard I am trying.’

  ‘Look,’ he said with a hope wild, sweet, and doomed, ‘you can drop this project. Quit the time war. Can’t you?’

  ‘No.’ Her pride was somber. ‘I am the Koriach.’

  He had no answer. The rain hammered down around them.

  ‘Hu wanted to kill you out of hand,’ Storm said. ‘You are the instrument of destiny, and if you have become our enemy, dare we let you live? But I replied that your death might be the very event that is necessary to cause – what?’ Her resolution flickered low and she stood isolated in the blurring waterfall. ‘We don’t know. I thought, how gladly I thought, when you came back to me, that you were the sword of my victory. Now I don’t know what you are. Anything I do could bring ruin. Or bring success, who can tell? I know only that you are fate, and that I want so much to save you. Will you let me?’

  Lockridge looked into the haunted green eyes and said with huge pity, ‘They were right in the far future. Destiny makes us slaves. You’re too good for that, Storm. Or no, not good – not evil either, maybe, not anything human – but it’s wrong for this to happen to you.’

  Did he see tears through the rain? He wasn’t sure. Her voice, at least, was steady: ‘If I decide you must die, it shall be quickly and cleanly, by my own hand; and you will be laid in the dolmen of the gate with warrior’s honors. But I beg that that need not be.’

  He fought against a witchcraft older and stronger than any powers her distorted world had given her, and said: ‘While I wait, can I say good-bye, or somethin’, to a few friends?’

  Then anger leaped forth. She stamped the staff into mud and cried, ‘Auri? No! You’ll see Auri wedded tomorrow, in yonder camp. I’ll talk to you again afterward and learn if you’re really such a contemptible idiot as you act!’

  She turned in a whirl of cloak and gown, and left him.

  Her escort followed. Withucar dropped behind. A sentry tried to stop him. Withucar shoved the man aside, came to the door, and held out his hand.

  ‘You’re still my brother, Malcolm,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll speak for you to Her.’

  Lockridge took the clasp. ‘Thanks,’ he mumbled. His eyes stung. ‘One thing you can do for me. Be kind to Auri, will you? Let her stay a free woman.’

  ‘As far as I’m able. We’ll name a son for you, and sacrifice at your grave, if things come to that. But I hope not. Luck ride with you, friend.’ The Yutho departed.

  Lockridge sat down on the dais and stared into the rain. His thoughts were long, and nobody else’s business.

  Toward noon the downpour ended. But no sun broke through. Instead, mists began to rise, until the world beyond the door was one dripping gray formlessness. Now and then he heard a voice call, a horse neigh, a cow low, but the sound came muffled and remote, as if life had drawn away from him. So cold and damp was the air that eventually he got back under his blanket. Weariness claimed him; he slept.

  His dreams were strange. When he rose out of them, inch by inch, he didn’t know for a while that he was doing so. Real and unreal twisted together, he was wrecked in a Storm-dark ocean, Auri blew past, crying his mother’s name, a horn summoned hounds, he went down into green depths and heard the clangor of iron being forged, fought his way back to where the lightnings burned, thunder smote him and – and the hut was filled with blackness, twilight seeped through the fog, men shouted and weapons clattered —

  No dream!

  He stumbled from his bed to the door, shook the bars and yelled into the slow wet roil, ‘What’s happenin’? Where is everybody? Let me out, God damn you! Storm!’

  Drums thuttered in the gray. A Yutho voice roared, hoofs hammered past, wheels banged and axles squealed. Elsewhere, wildly, men rallied each other. From afar, a woman shrieked, under a mounting rattle of stone. And metal, bronze had been unscabbarded, he heard the sinister whistle of an arrow flight.

  Figures moved, vague in the smoky dusk, his guards. ‘Some attack from the shore,’ the leader told him harshly.

  ‘Why do we wait, Hrano?’ shrilled another. ‘Our place is in the fight!’

  ‘Stay where you are! Our place is here, till She tells us otherwise.’ Feet pattered by. ‘Hoy, you, who’s fallen on us? How goes the battle?’

  ‘Men from the water,’ the unseen one panted. ‘They’re bound straight for our camps. Follow your standards! I go to my chief.’

  A sentry mouthed a curse and took off. The leader bawled after him in vain. Louder grew the clamor, as the strangers met hastily formed Yutho squadrons.

  Pirates, Lockridge thought. Must be that fleet the Wardens saw. Could only be. They didn’t lie to after all. Instead, they rowed day and night, and this fog gave ’em cover for a landin’ up the beach a way. Yes, sure. Some sea rover from the Mediterranean’s gotten himself together a bunch o’ tribesmen. England’s too tough, from what I hear, but across the North Sea is loot to be had.

  No. What can they do, as soon as Storm and Hu start shoot-in’ them down?

  And, well, that was probably best. Avildaro had suffered enough without being sacked, without Auri’s being taken for a slave. Lockridge strained at his bars and waited for the eruption of panic when that gang found they’d tangled with the Goddess.

  A shape sprang from the fog, a tall blond man with furious eyes. The Yutho leader waved him away. ‘By the Maruts, you Orugaray chicken,’ he ordered, ‘get back where you belong!’

  The big man rammed home his harpoon. The leader clutched a pierced stomach, uttered a strangled moan, and folded to his knees.

  Another guard snarled. His tomahawk swung high. A second villager came behind him, cast a fishline around his neck, and tightened it with two great sailor hands. The third sentry went also down, head beaten in by tree-felling axes.

  ‘We’ve got them, girl,’ the tall man called. He went to the door. Sufficient light lingered for Lockridge to see the water drops that jewelled his beard, and recognize a son of Echegon. He knew a few others by name of the half score who waited uneasily beyond, and the rest by sight. Two of them had been accomplices in yesterday’s attempt at human sacrifice. They stood now like men.

  Echegon’s son drew a flint knife and sawed at the thongs binding the lattice together. ‘We’ll have you out soon,’ he said, ‘if none chance by to see us.’

  ‘What —’ Lockridge was too stunned to do more than listen.

  ‘We’re bound off, I think. Auri fared around the whole day, pleading with everyone she thought she could trust to help you. We didn’t dare at first, we sat in her house and muttered our fears. And then these strangers came, like a sign from the gods, and she reminded us of what powers she got in the underworld. So let the fight last only a little while more, and we’ll be on our way. This is no good place to live any longer.’ The man peered anxiously at Lockridge. ‘We do this because Auri swore you have the might to shield us from the Goddess’ wrath. And she ought to know. But is she right?’

  Before Lockridge could reply, Auri was there, to hail him in a shivering whisper. She herself trembled under the wet cloak of her hair; but she carried a light spear and he saw that she was in truth a woman. ‘Lynx, you can lead us away safe. I know you can. Say you will be our head.’

  The nearing battle was no more loud or violent than Lock-ridge’s pulse. ‘I don’t deserve this,’ he said. ‘I don’t deserve you.’ But he had spoken unthinkingly in English. She straightened herself and said like a queen:

  ‘He casts a spell for us. He will take us where he knows is best.’

  The thongs parted. Lockridge squeezed between two poles. Fog curled around him. He tried to guess where in the twilight the combat was going on. It seemed to be spr
ead over a wide front, moving inland. So the bayshore ought to be deserted for now.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  They moved close to his protection. A number of women were with them, children clustered near or held as babes in arms. Anyone who’ll take such a risk to be free, he thought, has a call on everything I’ve got to offer.

  No. One item more. ‘I’ve a duty at the Long House,’ he said.

  ‘Lynx!’ Auri gripped his arm in anguish. ‘You can’t!’

  ‘Go on down to the boats,’ he said. ‘Make sure you have water skins and gear for hunting and fishing aboard. By the time you are ready to go, I will have joined you. If not, leave without me.’

  ‘Her place?’ The son of Echegon shuddered. ‘What must you do there?’

  ‘Something that – well, we’ll have no good luck unless I do.’

  ‘I will come too,’ Auri said.

  ‘No.’ He stooped and kissed her, a brief touch across lips that tasted of salt. Even then he caught a scent of her hair and warmth. ‘Everywhere else, if you wish, but not here. Go make me a place in the boat.’

  He ran off before she could say more.

  Huts gloomed around him, where folk lay in twilit terror. A pig grunted by, black and swift. He remembered that She kept swine in Her aspect of the death goddess. The battle sounded close – savage yells, footfalls, clashings, arrow buzz and thud of ax striking home – but Lockridge went enclosed on his own silence.

  The Long House stood unguarded, as he had hoped. Though if Storm or Hu were still within…. He had no choice except to cross that threshold.

  The hall was empty.

  He ran among machines and gods. At the curtain of lightlessness, he almost stopped. No, he told himself, you mustn’t. He passed through.

  The agony of Brann seared upward at him. He put the diaglossa of a terrible tomorrow into his ear, stooped, and said, ‘I am going to let you die if you want.’

  ‘Oh, I beg,’ the mummy voice gasped. Lockridge recoiled. Storm had said no reasoning mind was left.