Quest Beyond Time (9 page)

When the kite was ready, Mike strapped Katrin into her side of it, and tied himself into his with the ropes he had borrowed from Woodcat the night they did the modifications.

He looked at Woodcat, and felt worse than he had ever felt in his life.

‘Go on,’ said the little man.

‘Do you want my bow?’ Katrin asked.

Woodcat smiled. ‘I couldn’t hit a barn with one of those newfangled things.’ He tapped his sword hilt. ‘I have this. And the cliff, should I fail.’

Mike could not stand it any more. Woodcat’s smile made it worse.

The wind was lifting the wing above their heads.

‘Come on!’ he said, and they started moving into the wind, down the slope toward the cliff’s edge. For the first time in his life he felt no fear at this moment. His feeling of remorse at leaving Woodcat overwhelmed everything else.

The Patchies saw them moving for the cliff’s edge. The realization came to them that two of their prey were escaping.

As they reached the cliff’s edge and the wind was bearing the glider up, Mike heard a yelping noise, and the sound of approaching hoofbeats. From the corner of his eye Mike caught a glimpse of Woodcat spitting on his hands, drawing his sword and taking a firm two-footed grip on the earth.

Then he was too busy to look back.

They were airborne. The wind from the sea was a blustering, buffeting one, and normally Mike might have been unwilling to glide in it.

But they were off, and over the water, gaining height, turning.

He was trying to keep them safe, trying to reach the Island, and at the same time trying to see what had become of Woodcat.

‘What’s happening?’ he yelled to Katrin over the roar of the wind in the nylon wing.

‘I can’t see!’ she yelled in return, straining her head back to get some view of the cliffs.

And all the while they were gliding toward the cliffs of the Island. The cliffs were of different heights, some higher than those of the mainland, some lower.

Mike was trying to reach a line of lower cliffs. Beyond them was a grassed area, and beyond that again an old stone building.

He could see figures in brown. Two stood in what seemed to be a vegetable garden, hoes in their hands, looking up at the glider. A third was running from the garden toward the stone building.

But Mike did not have time to concentrate on the figures. His time and strength were both fully involved in keeping them airborne. Katrin was going limp. Her hands were still on the strut, but her body was hanging in the straps. She was battling to stay conscious.

Mike remembered the way the giant warrior Fergus had suddenly collapsed at the edge of the field of bones, and he knew they were in trouble.

‘Mike . . . Sickness . . . can’t see . . . properly,’ Katrin gasped out.

‘Hang on!’ Mike yelled. ‘We’re nearly there!’

The brown-clad figure who had been running for the house was not in sight now. Then a door opened, and two people came out. One had a brass rod, and put it to one eye and directed the other end at them. The rod must be a telescope. Then the telescope was lowered and the figure turned to the other one, and shouted something.

Katrin was hanging in the straps, her hands slipping from the bar.

Mike was desperate. He needed her conscious to give whatever effort she could to maintaining their line of flight.

‘You going to give up?’ he found himself shouting, ‘you going to quit? They’re right! The Murrays are cowards! The “quitting Murrays” they call them and they’re right!’

There was a spark of anger in Katrin’s eyes. It brought her closer to consciousness. She reached for her shortsword to avenge the insult.

‘Go on! Die if you want! Easier to die, isn’t it! Cowards can always die! It’s what they’re good at!’

‘I’ll kill you if you call me that again!’

‘Sure! Sure you will! Got the guts to live, have you? Got the guts to hang on?’

Her mouth set, and she hung on, furious with him.

‘Right! Like that! I didn’t come five hundred years to lose you!’

She was with him again, her anger having dragged her back from the deadly sleep which would have killed them both.

As the Island rushed toward them, he saw brown-clad figures running from the house. Two were carrying a stretcher, and the third had the telescope he had seen earlier.

Suddenly, in the shelter of the Island they lost the wind, and the glider dropped below the level of the clifftops. They were heading straight into them.

‘Help me!’ Mike yelled, and who or what he prayed to he could not have said. Just, ‘Help me!’ he shouted, and the wind was there, lifting them, and they were no longer sailing over seas smashing on rocks at the cliff base but over green grass and solid earth.

The ground rushed up at them. Mike’s feet took the impact as he tried to slow them.

And then the wing was falling down over them and they themselves were falling. They were down, safe.

He untied the ropes on himself and unsnapped Katrin’s harness. He lifted the wing off them and found himself facing four women.

They were all brown-clad like Brother John had been. They were smiling.

‘She’s got the Sickness!’ he gasped. ‘Help her. For God’s sake!’

The eldest one, the one holding the brass telescope, smiled at him, strong white teeth showing in her brown face. ‘For God’s sake? Yes. That’s what it’s all about.’

The walls of the room were of rough plaster, painted white. It was very quiet. The room had a wooden bed, a chair and a plain wooden cross on the wall. There was no figure on the cross.

Katrin sat up in the bed, half conscious, and the older woman who had introduced herself to Mike as Mother Teresa slowly eased her back onto the pillow. Almost immediately, Katrin slept again.

‘I’m supposed to take medicine back to the others,’ Mike was saying. ‘Can I leave Katrin here and come back for her later?’

Mother Teresa looked at him. Her face was very serious. ‘We have to talk,’ she said.

Teresa’s office was as spare and bare as the room in which Katrin now lay sleeping. The walls of the office were the same rough, white-painted plaster. There were two chairs, a table, a small bookcase with leatherbound books in it, and another unadorned cross on the wall.

Teresa went to the chair by the desk and indicated to Mike that he should use the other. They sat, and she looked at him in silence for a moment.

Then she spoke. ‘Do you understand how you got to this century?’

The question was so abrupt as to make Mike wary. He had become used to the way the Clans thought, and the Mother’s question showed that her knowledge was different from theirs. He felt she knew too much about him, and he was already well-schooled in the dangers of this time.

‘What?’

She seemed to hear the wariness in him, and she smiled. ‘You’re not from this century. You’re from Before.’

‘Before what?’

‘Do the Clanspeople no longer use the word? I can scarcely believe that.’ She paused to give him time to answer but he stayed silent. She shrugged as if to say that she was willing to play the game his way.’ “Before” is what we call the time before the Fire War.’

Again, she paused. Again, he did not speak.

She sighed, stood, and walked to the window and looked out. Then turned to him. ‘I’ve examined that kite of yours. Its wing is made of some sort of artificial fabric. Probably what you used to call ‘nylon’ but since I’ve never seen any, I can’t tell. We cannot make an artificial fibre in this century. The art’s been lost. We cannot weave as finely as that. If you could supply that cloth to the court ladies of Vickharn, you could buy yourself a Dukedom!’

Still, he waited.

She went on. ‘The frame is made of a metal called aluminium. We can’t make aluminium in this century, because we can’t generate the enormous amounts of electricity required.’

She paused. ‘And if I had never seen your kite, I could tell you were not from this century just by looking at your shoes.’

He looked down at his joggers.

‘They’re made of artificial cloth and plastic. We cannot make plastic in this century. Your glider doesn’t come from this century, your shoes don’t come from this century. And neither, Mike, do you.’

Mike looked up at her and grinned. ‘Over the past week, I’ve learned to be pretty careful.’

She smiled her understanding. ‘Life on the mainland can be brutal. And for those who aren’t careful, it’s often very short, as well.’

‘I come from 1985,’ he said. ‘We do hang-gliding as a sport. I was hang-gliding off the cliffs, the air went funny . . . suddenly I was here. Now.’

‘You came through what we call a Discontinuity.’

Mike did not know what she was talking about. His face showed it.

‘The war that ended your era . . . that ended your civilization . . . unleashed forces which have affected the fabric of space and time in some places. Things from your time slip through to ours. Sometimes people do.’

‘Other people have done this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I meet them?’

‘I know of four cases. Two were killed here.’

‘Can I meet the other two?’

She shook her head. ‘One was twenty years ago. A young man your own age. On another occasion, a young woman. The story about both is that they disappeared. Went back to wherever they came from.’

There was silence for a moment.

Mike broke it. ‘The Murrays say I came for a reason. They needed someone who could fly, so that one of them could get here to the Island. They sacrificed to their gods, and I turned up. Flying. And, as it happens, I’ve ended up getting one of them to the Island.’

‘Does this make you believe that their sacrifice worked? That their gods are true?’

Mike paused, then shook his head. ‘No. I don’t think I can believe that.’

She smiled. She had the lines round her eyes of someone who smiled a lot. ‘No. I don’t think I can believe that either. But if you said to me that the God who controls all things permitted this to happen, then I’d agree. Can you believe that?’

‘I’m not sure.’

She moved back to her chair, and sat. ‘If you survive, you’ll almost certainly go back. To your own time.’

‘Go back?’ He was shocked, and was shocked to find that he was shocked. A week ago, he would have welcomed the thought. Now, he found, he did not want to leave.

‘Don’t you want to go home?’

‘Yes, I… no. No, I don’t.’

‘You must have relatives? Friends?’

Now it was Mike who stood, and walked to the window and looked out at the garden. He could see two of the sisters hoeing the vegetable garden. ‘They must already think I’m dead.’ He paused. ‘I feel useful here. I’m doing real things. I’m a grown-up here, doing grown-up’s work.’

She reached over and picked up a stone paperweight from her desk. ‘Energy isn’t lost, Mike.’ She tossed the stone in the air and caught it again. ‘The stone goes up . . . and comes down. You came here . . . you’ll go back.’

‘What happened to the bodies? Of the two from my time who got killed here?’ He had to know.

‘Vanished. So the stories said. Drawn back to their own time perhaps?’

‘But I belong here! With Katrin! And . . . and the others.’ He belonged here with Katrin. With Kinship. With adult responsibilities, with adult work.

‘I understand.’

‘You don’t. You couldn’t. You live in a group here. You belong. I come from a time when everyone’s solo. All single units. Sure, it gets rough here, but everyone’s got a place! And I’ve found mine, and I’m staying!’

‘We didn’t invent Kinship, Mike.’ Her voice was gentle, but firm. ‘It’s there in your own time if you can find it. It’s simply easier to see here. We need it more, just to survive.’

‘You don’t understand! You don’t know! And I’m staying!’ He shouted it, and moved to the door and went out before she could answer him in that quiet strong certain voice of hers.

Teresa had sadness for him in her eyes. She tossed the stone in the air again.

And watched it return.

Mike walked in the garden. It spread out around the stone house, and included vegetable gardens, an orchard, flower beds, and, tucked into one comer, a fowl-run with hens.

Beyond the garden wall there were more plantings, some of which appeared to be grape-vines. Some more of the sisters were working among them.

He walked for perhaps an hour, trying to sort out the experiences he had been through in the days since he had come into this time.

Everything seemed to have been moving too fast for Mike to think of what it all might mean. Now he had time, as he waited for Katrin to regain consciousness, and he still could not work out what he should do. He knew one thing. He did not want to go back. There was a colour, and a richness in the life he was living now which made up for its dangers.

He returned to the stone house and sat down on a bench in the sun. He must have dozed off. When he woke, Mother Teresa was sitting alongside him. He looked at her in surprise.

She smiled. ‘There are beds inside if you want to sleep.’

‘I’m all right!’ His answer sounded harsh in his own ears, and he was ashamed of his rudeness to this woman who had shown them nothing but kindness. To make amends, he asked, more politely, ‘Why do you all live on this island?’

‘For safety. You may have noticed that it’s a rough life on the mainland. A community of women . . . living by themselves . . . the sea protects us.’

‘But people come here?’

‘Yes. The fisher people from the bay to the south bring people here. We trade for some things. . .’

‘What do you trade?’

‘Wine and medicines for wheat and books.’

‘You make wine and medicines . . .’

‘And we trade them for wheat and books. Yes. Some of the wheat we eat. Some we experiment with. Developing new strains. We’ve had some success in breeding wheat which can grow in the Bad Lands where the worst scars of the Fire War remain.’

‘And the books?’

‘Old books. The Little People turn them up sometimes when they’re mining the metal out of buried buildings. We collect the old wisdom here, and preserve it.’

‘I see.’

‘I wish you could stay. And help us.’

‘I don’t know much. I’m still at school.’

‘You know your own time. You could help us so much . . .’

Her eyes showed a deep sadness, and he wanted to help her. ‘How?’

‘Just telling us what some words meant, what some tools were used for, identifying people in pictures. If we could only keep you here for a year!’

‘I have to go back. The Clan Murray is dying. I have to go back to them.’

‘Yes, you do. Back to the Murrays, and back to your own time.’

‘No! I’m not needed there!’

She turned on him, and her face and voice were sharp. ‘Who are you to say that? What about the work you might do? The children you might have? And what about their children? And theirs! If you stay here, you change the future.’

‘So?’

‘The different future you cause might be one in which Katrin was never born.’

‘But I’m here already. And she was born.’

‘I can only tell you, Mike, that no one has ever come through a Discontinuity and stayed here.’

There was silence between them. Finally he spoke the thought which had pursued him since being told he would go back. ‘So I go back, knowing there’ll be a nuclear war in my own lifetime.’

‘Probably.’

‘When? What year?’

She looked at him then with a bleak compassion. ‘Do you really want to know?’

‘You could at least tell me where I’d be safe.’

She paused, and then shrugged. ‘A lot of the history of that period has been lost. I don’t think anywhere was safe. It wasn’t just the bombs and lasers. There was the Great Darkness, the Plague Years, the Folk Wanderings . . .’ her voice trailed off. She was seeing a past more terrible than the dark age in which she lived.

Mike managed a half smile. ‘Sounds grim.’

‘All history sounds grim, Mike. Things like peace and joy and love . . . the historians find them boring.’

He stood. There was no use agonizing about that past which was his future. Some people had survived. Perhaps he would be one of them. ‘I need to get back to the Clan with the medicine.’

‘Katrin can go with you. She’ll be able to travel tomorrow.’

He looked at her in amazement. ‘So soon? Can I see her?’

She shook her head. ‘She needs rest.’ She paused. ‘I’d be grateful for an hour of your time in the museum, though.’

The museum was like any museum. There were glass cases, objects lying about and shelves of leatherbound books.

Mother Teresa showed Mike things for what seemed like hours. He identified, or failed to identify, photographs in fragments of newspapers and books. There were politicians, tennis players, pop stars. Sister Clair took notes all the time. Mike was exhausted. Some of the things Teresa wanted to know, he knew. Some he did not.

Now he was looking at a box full of metal objects.

‘Could you tell us what they are?’

He took out a blade from a lawn mower. He explained what it was. Then he had to explain what a lawn mower was. Then he had to explain what a lawn was. Then he tried to explain why anyone would want one.

Next came part of an egg beater. That was simpler. Everyone knew about eggs.

The next piece of metal he did not recognize. It was roughly triangular and drilled for bolts, but he had never seen anything like it.

Next there was the rusted magazine from a rifle, then half a plastic slide fastener. Blushing, he had to demonstrate how the one on his trousers worked. It went on and on. Their curiosity was as inexhaustable as their supply of junk.

They pulled out one last crate. Inwardly, he groaned, but outwardly he strove to conceal his boredom. He owed these women Katrin’s life. If he had to stay up all night, he would try and help them.