The Corridors of Time (24 page)

‘No, just take them down a peg or two.’

‘Malcolm, my dear,’ Storm said more gently, ‘we haven’t come to build a utopia. That’s an impossible task anyway. What we
are concerned with is the creation of strength. And that means favoring those who have the potential of being strong. Before
you get too self-righteous, ask if the dwellers on Eniwetok will really want to be moved, to make room for your country’s
nuclear tests. We can try to minimize the pain we inflict, but someone who refuses to inflict any has no business in this
world.’

Lockridge drew back his shoulders and said, ‘Okay, you can outargue me whenever—’

Storm rose. Her look was shameless and enchanting. ‘Especially in one way,’ she said.

‘No, wait, damn it!’ Lockridge protested. ‘Maybe we do have to be bastards, we humans. But not without any qualification.
A man’s got to stand by his friends, at least. Auri’s a friend of mine.’

Storm halted. A while she stood motionless, then ran fingers down a night-black lock and said softly, ‘Yes, her. I thought
you’d raise the question. Go on.’

‘Well, uh, well, she doesn’t want to be in Withucar’s harem.’

‘Is he a bad man?’

‘No. But—’

‘Do you want her to remain single: knowing how unnatural that makes her here?’

‘No, no, no —’

‘Is anyone else available to her?’

‘Well—’

‘Unless, perhaps, yourself.’ Storm growled.

‘Oh, good God!’ Lockridge said. ‘You know I – you and me—’

‘Don’t set yourself too high, my man. But as for this wench. If the races are to become one, there have to be unions. Marriage
is too strong an institution for the Battle Ax people to give up; therefore the Sea People will have to accept it. Auri is
the heiress of this community’s leadership, Withucar is as influential as any in his tribe. Both in practice and as an example,
nothing better could happen than their marriage. Of course she threw a fit. Are you so ignorant you think she will never console
herself? Nor love her children by him? Nor forget
you?’

‘Well, though – I mean, she deserves a free choice.’

‘Who is there for her to choose, except you who don’t want her? Nor would it help the purpose if you did. You came in complaining
of unhappiness among the villagers. The English are going to be still unhappier after the Norman Conquest. But a few centuries
later, there are no Normans. Everyone is an Englishman. For us, here and now, that same process begins with Auri and Withucar.
Don’t talk to me about free choice … unless you think every war should only be fought by volunteers.’

Lockridge stood helpless. Storm came to him and put her arms about his neck. ‘I believe Auri, in her childish way, calls you
Lynx,’ she murmured. ‘I would like to do that.’

‘Aw – look—’

She rubbed her head on his breast. ‘Let me be childish now and then, with you.’

A Yutho voice called from behind the curtain: ‘Goddess, the lord Hu asks to come in.’

‘Damn!’ Storm whispered. ‘I’ll get rid of him as fast as I can.’ Aloud: ‘Let him enter.’

Spare and lithe in his green uniform, Hu trod in to bow. ‘I beg your forgiveness, brilliance,’ he said. ‘But I was out on
an aerial sweep.’

Storm tautened. ‘Well?’

‘Most likely this means nothing. Still, I saw a considerable fleet beating across the North Sea. The lead ship is Iberian,
the rest are skin boats. I never heard of such a combination. They’re plainly bound from England to Denmark.’

‘At this season?’ Awareness of Lockridge drained from Storm. She let him go and stood alone in the frigid light.

‘Yes, that’s another paradox, brilliance,’ Hu said. ‘I couldn’t detect advanced equipment. If they have any, it must be negligible.
But they will be here in a day or two.’

‘Some Ranger operation? Or a mere local adventure? These are times when the natives themselves look to new things.’ Storm
frowned. ‘Best I go glance at them myself.’

She fetched her gravity belt and fastened it about her waist, an energy pistol at the hip. ‘You may as well stay and rest,
Malcolm. I won’t be gone long,’ she said and left beside Hu.

For some time Lockridge prowled the hall. The night was noisy with wind, but he heard a thrusting inner silence. And the gods
so clumsily and tenderly hacked out of the pillars –did they look at him? Lord, Lord, he thought, what does a guy do when
he can’t help somebody who cares for him?

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.’

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.’