“Kruj, sir. Or an thou wouldst be formal and courtly, Kruj Krujil Krujilar. But let Kruj suffice thee.”
“And what most concerneth these gentlemen here is the matter of thine intentions. What are thy projects in this our earlier world?”
“My projects?” Kruj coughed. “Sir, in thee I behold a man of feeling, of sensibility, a man to whom one may speak one’s mind. Many projects have I in good sooth, most carefully projected for me by the Zhurmandril. Much must I study in these realms of the great Elizabeth—though ’sblood! I know not how they seem so different from my conceits! But one thing above all else do I covet. I would to the Mermaid Tavern.” Brent grinned. “I fear me, sir, that we must talk at greater length. Much hast thou mistaken and much must I make clear. But first I must talk with these others.” Kruj retired, frowning and plucking at his shred of beard. Brent beckoned to the woman. She strode forth so vigorously that both Stappers bared their rods.
“Madam,” Brent ventured tentatively, “what part of time do you come from?”
“Evybuy taws so fuy,” she growled. “Bu I unnasta. Wy cachoo unnasta me?” Brent laughed. “Is that all that’s the trouble? You don’t mind if I go on talking like this, do you?”
“Naw. You taw howeh you wanna, slonsoo donna like I dih taw stray.” Fascinating, Brent thought. All final consonants lost, and many others. Vowels corrupted along lines indicated in twentieth-century colloquial speech. Consonants sometimes restored in liaison as in French.
“What time do you come from, then?”
“Twenny-ni twenny-fie. N were am I now?”
“Twenty-four seventy-three. And your name, madam?”
“Mimi.”
Brent had an incongruous vision of this giantess dying operatically in a Paris garret. “So. And your intentions here?”
“Ai gonno intenchuns. Juh wanna see wha go.”
“You will, madam, I assure you. And now—” He beckoned to the green-skinned biped, who advanced with a curious lurching motion like a deep-sea diver.
“And you, sir. When do you come from?”
“Ya studier langue earthly. Vyerit todo langue isos. Ou comprendo wie govorit people.”
Brent was on the ropes and groggy. The familiarity of some of the words made the entire speech even more incomprehensible. “Says which?” he gasped.
The green man exploded. “Ou existier nada but dolts, cochons, duraki v this terre? Nikovo parla langue earthly? Potztausend Sapperment en la leche de tu madre and I do mean you!”
Brent reeled. But even reeling he saw the disapproving frown of the State linguist and the itching fingers of the Stappers. He faced the green man calmly and said with utmost courtesy, “’Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble over the rivering waters of the hither-and-thithering waters of pigeons on the grass alas.” He turned to the linguist. “He says he won’t talk.”
Brent wrote in the never-to-be-read journal: It was Martha again who solved my green man for me. She pointed out that he was patently extraterrestrial. (Apparently Nakamura’s Law of Spatial Acceleration is as false as Charnwood’s Law of Temporal Metabolism.) The vestigial scales and gills might well indicate Venus as his origin. He must come from some far distant future when the earth is overrun by inhabitants of other planets and terrestrial culture is all but lost. He had prepared himself for time travel by studying the speech of earth—langue earthly—reconstructed from some larger equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, but made the mistake of thinking that there was only one earthly speech, just as we tend imaginatively to think of Martian or Venusian as a single language. As a result, he’s talking all earthly tongues at once. Martha sees a marked advantage in this, even more than in Mimi’s corrupt dialect—
“Thou, sir,” said Brent to Kruj on his next visit, “art a linguist. Thou knowest speech and his nature. To wit, I would wager that thou couldst with little labor understand this woman here. One who hath so mastered our language in his greatest glory—” The little man smirked. “I thank thee, sir. In sooth since thou didst speak with her yestereven I have already made some attempts at converse with her.”
Mimi joined in. “He taws fuy, bu skina cue.”
“Very well then. I want you both, and thee in particular, Kruj, to hearken to this green-skinned varlet here. Study his speech, sir, and learn what thou may’st.”
“Wy?” Mimi demanded belligerently.
“The wench speaks sooth. Wherefore should we so?”
“You’ll find out. Now let me at him.”
It was slow, hard work, especially with the linguist and the Stappers ever on guard. It meant rapid analysis of the possible origin of every word used by the Venusian, and a laborious attempt to find at random words that he would understand. But in the course of a week both Brent and the astonishingly adaptable Kruj had learned enough of this polyglot langue earthly to hold an intelligible conversation. Mimi was hopelessly lost, but Kruj occasionally explained matters to her in her own corrupt speech, which he had mastered by now as completely as Elizabethan.
It had been Stephen’s idea that any project for the liberation of the time travelers must wait until more was learned of their nature. “You be man of good will, John. We trust you. You and mans like you can save us. But imagine that some travelers come from worlds far badder even than ours. Suppose that they come seeking only power for themselves? Suppose that they come from civilization of cruelty and be more evil than Stappers?”
It was a wise point, and it was Martha who saw the solution in the Venusian’s amazing tongue. In that melange of languages, Brent could talk in front of the linguist and the Stappers with complete safety. Kruj and the Venusian, who must have astonishing linguistic ability to master the speech of another planet even so perversely, could discuss matters with the other travelers, and could tell him anything he needed to know before all the listening guards of the State.
All this conversation was, of course, theoretically guided by the linguist. He gave questions to Brent and received plausible answers, never dreaming that his questions had not been asked.
As far as his own three went, Brent was satisfied as to the value of their liberation. Mimi was not bright, but she seemed to mean well and claimed to have been a notable warrior in her own matriarchal society. It was her feats in battle and exploration that had caused her to be chosen for time travel. She should be a useful ally.
Kruj was indifferent to the sorry state of the world until Brent mentioned the tasteless and servile condition of the arts. Then he was all afire to overthrow the Stasis and bring about a new renaissance. (Kruj, Brent learned, had been heading for the past to collect material for a historical epic on Elizabethan England, a fragment of prehistoric civilization that had always fascinated him.)
Of the three, Nikobat, the Venusian, seemed the soundest and most promising. To him, terrestrial civilization was a closed book, but a beautiful one. In the life and struggles of man he found something deep and moving. The aim of Nikobat in his own world had been to raise his transplanted Venusian civilization to the levels, spiritual and scientific, that had once been attained by earthly man, and it was to find the seed of inspiration to accomplish this that he had traveled back. Man degenerate, man self-complacent, man smug, shocked him bitterly, and he swore to exert his best efforts in the rousing.
Brent was feeling not unpleased with himself as he left his group after a highly successful session. Kruj was accomplishing much among the other travelers and would have a nearly full report for him tomorrow. And once that report had been made, they could attempt Martha’s extraordinary scheme of rescue. He would not have believed it ordinarily possible, but both he and Stephen were coming to put more and more trust in the suggestions of the once scatter-brained Martha. Stephen’s own reports were more than favorable. The Underground was boring beautifully from within. The people of the State were becoming more and more restless and doubting. Slowly these cattle were resuming the forms of men.
Brent was whistling happily as he entered
the apartment and called out a cheery “Hi!” to his friends. But they were not there. There was no one in the room but a white-clad Stapper, who smiled wolfishly as he rose from a chair and asked, “You be time traveler, be you not?”
This was the most impressive Stapper that Brent had yet seen—impressive even aside from the startling nature of his introductory remark. The others, even the one he had kicked in the face, or the one who killed Alex, Brent had thought of simply as so many Stappers. This one was clearly an individual. His skin was exceptionally dark and smooth and hairless, and two eyes so black that they seemed all pupil glowed out of his face.
Brent tried to seem casual. “Nonsense. I be Slanduch envoy from Germany, staying here with friends and doing service for State. Here bees my identification.”
The Stapper hardly glanced at it. “I know all about your ‘linguistic services,’ John Brent. And I know about machine fintied in deserted warehouse. It beed only machine not breaked by Barrier. Therefore it corned not from Future, but from Past.”
“So? We have travelers from both directions? Poor devil will never be able to get back to own time then.” He wondered if this Stapper were corruptible; he could do with a drink of bond.
“Yes, he bees losed here in this time like others. And he foolishly works with them to overthrow Stasis.”
“Sad story. But how does it concern me? My papers be in order. Surely you can see that I be what I claim?”
The Stappers eyes fixed him sharply. “You be clever, John Brent. You doubtless traveled naked and clothed yourself as citizen of now to escape suspicion. That bees smartest way. How you getted papers I do not know. But communication with German Slanduch will disprove your story. You be losed, Brent, unless you be sensible.”
“Sensible? What the hell do you mean by that?”
The Stapper smiled slowly. “Article,” he drawled.
“I be sorry. But that proves nothing. You know how difficult it bees for us Slanduch to keep our speech entirely regular.”
“I know.” Suddenly a broad grin spread across the Stappers face and humanized it. “I have finded this Farthing speech hellishly difficult myself.”
“You mean you, too, be Slanduch?”
The Stapper shook his head. “I, too, Brent, be traveler.”
Brent was not falling for any such trap. “Ridiculous! How can traveler be Stapper?
“How can traveler be Slanduch envoy? I, too, traveled naked, and man whose clothes and identification I stealed beed Stapper. I have finded his identity most useful.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You be stubborn, Brent. How to prove—” He gestured at his face. “Look at my skin. In my century facial hair haves disappeared; we have breeded away from it. Where in this time could you find skin like that?”
“A sport. Freak of chromosomes.”
The black eyes grew even larger and more glowing. “Brent, you must believe me. This bees no trap for you. I need you. You and I, we can do great things. But how to convince you—” he snapped his fingers. “I know!” He was still for a moment. The vast eyes remained opened but somehow veiled, as though secret calculations were going on behind them. His body shivered. For a moment of strange delusion Brent thought he could see the chair through the Stapper’s body. Then it was solid again.
“My name,” said the Stapper, with the patience of a professor addressing a retarded class, “bees Bokor. I come from tenth century after consummation of terrestrial unity, which bees, I believe, forty-third reckoning from date of birth of Christian god. I have traveled, not with machine, but solely by use of Vunmurd formula, and, therefore, I alone of all travelers stranded here can still move. Hysteresis of Barrier arrests me, but cannot destroy my formula as it shatters machines.”
“Pretty story.”
“Therefore I alone of travelers can still travel. I can go back by undestroyed formula and hit Barrier again. If I hit Barrier twice, I exist twice in that one point of time. Therefore each of two of me continues into present.”
“So now you be two?” Brent observed skeptically. “Obviously I be too sober. I seem to be seeing single.”
Bokor grinned again. Somehow this time it didn’t seem so humanizing. “Come in!” he called.
The Stapper in the doorway fixed Brent with his glowing black eyes and said, “Now do you believe that I be traveler?”
Brent gawped from one identical man to the other. The one in the doorway went on, “I need you.”
“It isn’t possible. It’s a gag. You’re twin Stappers, and you’re trying to—”
Bokor in the chair said, “Do I have to do it again?”
Brent said, “You may both be Stappers. You may turn out to be a whole damned regiment of identical multiple births. I don’t give a damn; I want some bond. How about you boys?”
The two Bokors downed their drinks and frowned. “Weak,” they said.
Brent shook his head feebly. “All right. We’ll skip that. Now what the sweet hell do you need me for?”
Bokor closed his eyes and seemed to doze. Bokor Sub-One said, “You have plans to liberate travelers and overthrow Stasis. As Stapper I have learned much. I worked on changing mind of one of your Underground friends.”
“And you want to throw your weight in with us? Good, we can use a Stapper. Or two. But won’t the Chief of Stappers be bothered when he finds he has two copies of one man?”
“He will never need to see more than one. Yes, I want to help you—up to a point. We will free travelers. But you be innocent, Brent. We will not overthrow Stasis. We will maintain it—as ours.”
Brent frowned. “I’m not sure I get you. And I don’t think I like it if I do.”
“Do not be fool, Brent. We have opportunity never before gived to man, we travelers. We come into world where already exists complete and absolute State control, but used stupidly and to no end. Among us all we have great knowledge and power. We be seed sowed upon fallow ground. We can spring up and ungulf all about us.” The eyes glowed with black intensity. “We take this Stasis and mold it to our own wishes. These dolts who now be slaves of Cosmos will be slaves of us. Stapper, whose identity I have, bees third in succession to Chief of Stappers. Chief and other two will be killed accidentally in revolt of travelers. With power of all Stappers behind me, I make you Head of State. Between us we control this State absolutely.”
“Nuts,” Brent snorted. “The State’s got too damned much control already. What this world needs is a return to human freedom and striving.”
“Innocent,” Bokor Sub-One repeated scornfully. “Who gives damn what world needs? Only needs which concern man be his own, and his strongest need bees always for power. Here it bees gived us. Other States be stupid and self-complacent like this. We know secrets of many weapons, we travelers. We turn our useless scholastic laboratories over to their production. Then we attack other States and subject them to us as vassals. And then the world itself bees ours, and all its riches. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Gospodinov, Tirazhul—never haves world knowed conquerors like us.”
“You can go to hell,” said Brent lightly but firmly. “All two of you.”
“Do not be too clever, my frienci. Remember that I be Stapper and can—”
“You be two Stappers, which may turn out to be a little awkward. But you could be a regiment of Stappers, and I still wouldn’t play ball. Your plan stinks, Bokor, and you know what you can do with it.”
Bokor Sub-One took the idiom literally. “Indeed I do know, Brent. It willed have beed easier with your aid, but even without you it will succeed.” He drew out his rod and contemplated it reflectively. “No,” he murmured, “there bees no point to taking you in and changing your mind. You be harmless to me, and your liberation of travelers will be useful.”
The original Bokor opened his eyes. “We will meet again, Brent. And you will see what one man with daring mind can accomplish in this world.” Bokor and Bokor Sub-One walked to the door and turned. “And for bond,” they s
poke in unison, in parody of the conventional Stappers phrase, “State thanks you.”
Brent stood alone in the room, but the black-eyed domination of the two Bokors lingered about him. The plan was so damned plausible, so likely to succeed if put into operation. Man has always dreamed of power. But damn it, man has always dreamed of love, too, and of the rights of his fellow man. The only power worthy of man is the power of all mankind struggling together toward a goal of unobtainable perfection.
And what could Bokor do against Kruj and Mimi and Nikobat and the others that Kruj reported sympathetic?
Nevertheless there had been a certainty in those vast eyes that the double Bokor knew what he could do.
The release of the travelers was a fabulous episode. Stephen had frowned and Brent had laughed when Martha said simply, “Only person who haves power to release them bees Head of State by will of Cosmos. Very well. We will persuade him to do so.” But she insisted, and she had been so uncannily right ever since the explosion of the second Barrier that at last, when Kruj had made his final report, Brent accompanied her on what he was certain was the damnedest fool errand he’d got himself into yet.
Kruj’s report was encouraging. There were two, perhaps three, among the travelers who had Bokorian ideas of taking over the State for their own purposes. But these were far outweighed by the dozens who saw the tremendous possibilities of a reawakening of mankind. The liberation was proved a desirable thing, but why should the Head of State so readily loose disrupters of his Stasis?
Getting to see the Head of State took the best part of a day. There were countless minor officials to be interviewed, all of them guarded by Stappers who looked upon the supposed Slanduch envoy with highly suspicious eyes. But one by one, with miraculous consistency, these officials beamed upon Brent’s errand and sent him on with the blessing of Cosmos.
“You wouldn’t like to pinch me?” he murmured to Martha after the fifth such success. “This works too easy. It can’t be true.”
The Compleat Boucher Page 30
