The Crosstime Engineer

by Leo Frankowski

  The probes were eagerly put to use by the Historical Corps, whose occupation was the writing of a truly definitive history of the human race. It was one of their teams that had screwed up.

  “Not one team but two. There were ridiculous breaches of security at both the twentieth-century and thirteenthcentury portals,” Tom said. Tom had been a drinking buddy of mine in the U.S. Air Force long before we got involved with time travel. Much later, we were both surprised to discover that he was my father. There were also certain… problems concerning my mother, which I prefer not to discuss. Time travel is not entirely beneficial.

  “Well, can’t we send him back?” I asked. Anachronisms can be extremely disruptive, and we have no intention of adding to the sum of human misery.

  “Impossible. He wasn’t discovered, subjectively, until almost ten years later, when I was observing the Mongol invasion of Poland.”

  “Oh.” If Conrad Schwartz had been observed in 1241, then that was an established fact, like the dead body I mentioned earlier. “So there’s nothing we can do for the poor bastard.”

  “We can’t bring him back until he has spent at least ten years there, but there are some things that could be done, and in fact, I have already done them.”

  “Decontamination, for example. The diseases of the thirteenth century are not the same as those of the twentieth century. Thirteenth-century Poland had neither syphilis nor gonorrhea nor acne, and I was not about to see them introduced by our drunken Conrad Schwartz.”

  “Then again, in the twentieth century smallpox has been eradicated, leprosy is very mild compared to the earlier strains, and the Black Death has become one of the varieties of the common cold.”

  “The ’fluorescent lights' he slept under in the Red Gate Inn did a lot more than light his way out of the transport capsule. They wiped out every foreign microorganism in him and gave him a complete immunization treatment as well.”

  One of the nice things about time travel is that it gives you the time to do things that are worth doing. I’d spent much of my life helping to build a technical civilization in the sixty-third millennium B.C. That civilization provides us with most of our personnel and some very high technology. It's also a fine place to live.

  “Speaking of diseases, Tom, what was wrong with the priest?”

  “Father Ignacy? Nothing. A fine man.”

  “But those huge, calloused feet!”

  “That wasn’t a disease. That's what normal human feet look like when they've spent a lifetime walking barefoot over broken rock and snow.”

  A smiling, nude serving wench announced lunch, and we took a break.

  By one, we were back at the screen.

  Chapter Three

  “Up now, Conrad. Get up!” Father Ignacy was shaking my arm. I was in a dark, smelly, smoky hut. It had log walls, a dirt floor, and a straw roof. Memory came back. The barefoot saint. The snow. The thirteenth century.

  “Yes. Yes, Father. I’m up. What's wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong. God has seen fit to grant us another day. As good Christians, we must not waste His gift. Come, we must be off.”

  “Oh. Yes. Certainly.” I started putting my gear together. “The coals are still warm. Let’s make breakfast and have some coffee before we go.”

  “What? Eating on waking? What a slothful habit! Come now. I have already bid our good host good-bye, and there is need of haste.”

  I find it hard to be assertive before breakfast, and soon we were walking north in the gray dawn. The snow grew thinner as we approached a river, the Dunajec. There we found a small wooden dock but no boat.

  “What was the great hurry, Father? Has the boat left without us?”

  “It has. Yesterday morning, in truth, and it was the last boat of the season. You should not have lost consciousness so early, Conrad.”

  “I fell asleep.”

  “To me, it appeared that you had fainted. Afterward, I heard the confessions of good Ivan and Marie and said a mass for the family. They told me of the boat.”

  “But what good does an absent boat do us?”

  “Absent, yes. But with a crew of only two. The boatman and a wandering poet, a goliard-worthless sorts. Despite the recent snow and rain, the river level is still low, and six men would make a better crew than two. It might be God’s will that we shall find them snagged on a sandbar and in need of our aid.” We walked along the river path.

  “If you say so. The truth is that I no longer have a pressing need to go to Cracow. It is no longer on my way home. I no longer have a home. Or a mother. Or a job.” The reality of being stranded was hitting me again, and I was holding back sobs with difficulty.

  “We shall pray for your mother, my son. But remember that she is not dead, she is merely elsewhere. As to your home, why, it is only a material encumbrance and can be replaced at need. As to your job that too can be replaced. You are an educated, healthy young man-if overly large-and it should not prove difficult to find gainful employment. In fact, already an idea occurs to me.”

  “I have told you that I have an appointment in Cracow. That appointment is to take over the copying department at the Franciscan monastery. I am ordered to expand the number of copyists and to found a proper library.”

  “Now, you can read and write, and you have told me that you know something of the new Arabic system of numbers and of the arithmetic that is used to manipulate them. You have knowledge of Euclid and of the algebra, as well.”

  Not to mention analytic geometry, calculus, and computer programming, I thought. “You are suggesting that I work for you as a copyist?”

  “And why not? You have told me that much of your previous work was at a drawing board, which you describe as similar to a proper copying table.”

  “Hmm. ” The idea of a steady job did have merit. I had grown up in the arms of a reasonably benevolent government that was founded on sensible socialist principles.

  While such a system discouraged the acquisition of fabulous wealth, it did ensure that all people were fairly well taken care of. But from what I remembered of my history courses, in the thirteenth century they actually allowed people-their own countrymen-to starve to death! “Your suggestion has merit, but I see some problems. For one thing, I do not think that I am ready to take Holy Orders.”

  “I agree with you, my son. You are not ready for so momentous a decision, nor need you be. You could be engaged as a lay brother, without any vows at all.”

  “The next problem is that I do not know if I would be competent as a copyist. It is different from what I have done.”

  “I don’t know that either, my son, so my offer is tentative and temporary-for the winter at least.”

  “Then there is the question of remuneration, Father. What does the position pay?”

  “I have no idea of what the rates are in Cracow. When demand is high and copyists are few, the pay can be excellent. But in any event, you are guaranteed a roof over your head and food in your belly.”

  “Very well, then, Father. It is agreed that I shall work for you for an indefinite time on nebulous terms.” The snow was gone by then. The sky was a rich blue, and evergreens gave the landscape some color.

  “Excellent! I’m glad that this is settled, for I was worried about you. Now then! I have several thousand questions to ask. Yesterday, as your confessor, I was obligated to concentrate on your sins. Today, as your fellow traveler and future employer, I have the right to ask questions to my own liking. Now, tell me if I am correct. You were born in the year of Our Lord, nineteen fifty-seven?”

  “True, Father.”

  “The twentieth century! Tell me of the church, my son. Does the Pope still rule from Rome? Do the Germans dominate him?”

  “The Pope is supreme in the Vatican; he is dominated by no secular power. The Germans have been pushed north of the Alps and west of the Odra.”

  “And the Pope himself-what of him?” The man was trembling with excitement.

  “He is John Paul II, and-thi
s you will love-he is as Polish as you are, and born Karol Wojtyla. A fine man and a great Pope.”

  “Oh, glory! My son, you make my heart rejoice!” That incredibly tough man, who could walk barefoot across the Alps and pray kneeling in chest-high snow, that man had stopped on the river path, and tears were streaking his windburned cheeks.

  Some time passed before we started, once more, down the river road to Cracow. We were silent for a while. Then:

  “And my own order, my son. Tell me of the followers of Francis of Assisi.”

  “Gladly, for this too is a happy thing. I know of him only as Saint Francis of Assisi. The Franciscans are alive and well in the twentieth century. I knew one personally and counted him a friend.” He. had been on my college fencing team and was a fine hand with a saber, though I could generally beat him with an epee.

  Ignacy stopped, hugged me solidly, yanked my head down to his level, and kissed both my cheeks. I felt awkward about it. In the time of my birth, men were abandoning the ancient Slavic custom of kissing each other; perhaps it was because homosexuality was tolerated, if not socially acceptable, and healthy men did not want to he associated with anything that they did.

  “I see that I have offended you, my son.”

  “Well, it’s okay. But, you know, customs change.”

  “Forgive me. What else do you remember?”

  “About the Franciscans? Wait. Yes, I remember reading an ancient copper plaque that told of a great church, a cathedral almost, that had been built by Henryk the Pious for the Franciscans in 1237. That church still stood in Cracow.”

  His arms went out again, but he did not touch me. Then he said quietly, “And of me? Do you know anything of me?”

  “I’m sorry, Father, but no. Please, understand that I know as much about this age as you know of the fifth century. If you -chance-met a man of that age, what could you tell him about himself?”

  “You are quite right, my son. Please forgive my asking…”

  “It might be that you are well known to the historians and theologians of my time.”

  “And it might not. Again, forgive me.- Tell me instead of the wondrous mechanisms that your age has wrought. You spoke of machines that can fly in the air, of ships that navigate without sails or oars, and of the varieties of mechanical land beasts, buses and trains.”

  So I answered his questions, and we talked out the morning. I answered all his questions truthfully but did not really tell him the whole truth. He never brought up the subject of the Protestant Reformation, so neither did I. And why should I want to mention the Inquisition to a living saint? Because Father Ignacy was a saint. He was also a powerful man, an intelligent man, and by the standards of his own age, a very well educated man.

  By the standards of the twentieth century he was quite thoroughly out of his mind! He was concerned-actively worried-about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin! To him, that was a major theological dispute. He was worried about the exact anatomy of incubi and succubi, and he worried if it was proper to take communion on Friday since, by the unquestionable doctrine of transubstantiation, the baked wheat flour of the Host and the wine, after being taken, were transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. And was this not meat? And was not meat forbidden on Friday?

  All I knew was that I was attracted to the man, although not at all in the same way as I had been attracted to the magnificent redheaded bitch of Zakopane.

  It might have been ten o’clock when we started thinking about dinner.

  “Conrad, how much food are you carrying?”

  “Three, maybe four days’ worth at normal rations, which is a lot more than I've had recently.”

  “And it is all of that cold-dried variety that keeps indefinitely?”

  “Freeze-dried. Yes, most of it. Some candy, but it’ll keep too.”

  “Ali, yes. I meant to ask you. What was that incredible confection you distributed last night?”

  “It’s called chocolate.”

  “Marvelous stuff. If you can make more, your fortune is made without recourse to being a copyist.”

  What an incredible thought! Conrad Schwartz, the capitalist confectioner! Maltreating the women and children slaving away in my chocolate factory! But still, one must eat. Chocolate is what? Mostly milk, sugar, and cocoa beans, isn’t it? But cocoa beans came from South America. Or was it Indonesia? I would have to look it up.

  No, I would not look it up, because I could not look it up, because I was in the thirteenth century, and a good library here consisted of a Bible, two prayer books, and a copy of Aristotle.

  “No, Father. It’s impossible. It needs a kind of bean that does not grow around here.”

  “A pity. Well, keep the rest of it; you may someday have to impress a princely patron. For today’s dinner I suggest that we finish off my supplies of cheese and sausage and keep yours for an emergency.” With that, he pulled out the remains of his sausage, which might have weighed a kilo. He was about to cut it in half but reconsidered and divided it in proportion to our heights, giving me the larger piece. Half an hour later he did the same with his cheese. He refused to stop for lunch, and we ate on the march.

  Again I felt queasy about the unsanitary food, but I was living in the thirteenth century and would have to get used to it. He slapped his now-empty pouch. “The last of my Hungarian food.”

  “Then what do you keep in the other pack, Father? Spare underwear?”

  That was the first time I heard his laugh, a good sound. “Ali, Conrad, I know that you have an exalted opinion of my abilities as a traveler, and I confess that I take an improper pride in them myself. But no, I would not carry anything superfluous over the High Tatras, let alone the Alps!”

  “No, this is my gift to my new abbot. I have in here a copy of Euclid, a complete Aristotle, and Ptolemy in Latin, my own translation into Polish of de Bivar’s Poem of the Cid, and letters. There are fully three dozen letters, one of them from His Holiness, Pope Gregory IX himself!”

  “So, you see that there can be no faltering along the way.”

  “You mean you have nothing at all but your cassock? It might take us weeks to walk to Cracow!”

  “You worry overmuch about material things. We shall ride to Cracow and be there in five days, and we shall be well fed along the way. I can smell it.”

  I could smell nothing at all but more snow coming. I kept silent.

  At perhaps two in the afternoon we heard the boat. A high-pitched voice was singing through the bushes:

  Despite the recent rain and snow, The river is still far too low! This tub to Cracow will not go. Let’s plant the grain and watch it grow!

  “How’s that, brother boatman? It scans well, don't you think?”

  “I think that if we don’t get this boat off these rocks, we'll be iced in by morning and spend the winter here! My only pleasure will be in seeing you starve to death right next to me. Now pull on that rope, you foppish twit!”

  “What? Starve while sitting on a hundred sacks of grain? That would take more ingenuity than a poet could muster. Let’s see…”

  “While starving on a mound of rye,

  I saw a maiden floating by.

  She said…”

  “Shut your goddamn trap and pull!”

  “’Hello, friends,” Father Ignacy shouted.

  “Who goes there?”

  “A good Christian priest and a good Christian knight, come to assist you!”

  As we forced our way through the brush toward the river, I whispered, “What do you mean calling me a knight? We don’t even have knighthood!”

  “And you are doubtless better off without it. But you are an officer in your military, aren’t you? And a king's man besides? Knighthood would seem to be the equivalent.”

  “We don’t have kings! There's an elected body that-”

  “An excellent system. Oh, yes, don’t mention the future to these men. It might frighten them. If they ask, tell them that you're Spanish.”

 
“With blond hair?”

  “Why not? Many Spaniards have blond hair. Or better yet, tell them you are English. You could easily pass for an Englishman.”

  Before I could reply, we broke through the brush and were on a rocky beach. In the middle of the river, a boat was securely wedged between two large rocks. The boat was about eight meters long and three meters wide and was pointed at both ends. A brightly garbed slender youth, wet to the waist, was clambering on board. Another man, in a wet gray tunic, was standing at the stern and looking at us. He held a longbow in his left hand and had an arrow fitted. There was something odd about the way he held it.

  “Put away your weapon, boatman! We mean you help, not harm!” Father Ignacy held his book pouch above his head and waded into the water.

  I unslung my pack and belt, held them high, and followed. That water was cold! I would have been prepared to swear in a court of law that it was below - 10’C, if there had been any courts. My legs were numb before we got to the -boat, Father Ignacy put his pouches aboard and clambered on after them. I did the same.

  “Good afternoon, good boatman. I am Father Ignacy Sierpinski, and this knight is Sir Conrad Stargard.”

  “Good afternoon, good father and good sir knight. I am Tadaos Kolpinski, and I am at your service.”

  “A pleasure, Tadaos Kolpinski. We are bound for Cracow. What is your destination?”

  “The same as yours, Father. Down the Dunajec and up the Vistula. Always ready to take on paying passengers, that’s my motto, sirs.” He ignored the poet.

  “Well, you must understand our means are limited.” Father Ignacy sat on a sack of grain. “Sir Conrad, I believe we were talking about Saint Augustine. Now, in The City of God-”