The Dancer from Atlantis (5 page)

After what Reid’s watch said was about five minutes, the humming faded out. The depressed studs popped up. The giddiness passed
away. Presumably the helmets had finished their job. The pilot lay half conscious. When Reid took off his headpiece, Erissa
removed that of her patient and laid him flat. She stayed beside him, listened to the struggling breath and watched the uncertain
pulse in his throat.

Finally he opened his eyes. He whispered. Erissa brought her ear close, frowned, and waved at Reid. He didn’t know what he
could do, but joined her anyway. The pilot’s dim glance fell upon him and remained there.

‘Who … are you?’ rattled from the parched mouth. ‘Where, when… are you from?’

American English!

‘Quick,’ pleaded the voice. ‘Haven’t… got long. For your sake too. You know…
mentatór?
This device?’

‘No,’ Reid answered in awe. ‘Language teacher?’

‘Right. Scan speech center. In the brain. Brain’s a data bank. The scanner … retrieves language information … feeds it into
the receiver brain. Harmless, except it’s … kind of stressful … being the receiver… seeing as how then the data patterns aren’t
just scanned, they’re imposed.’

‘You should have let me learn yours, then.’

‘No. Too confusing. You wouldn’t know how to use … too
many of the concepts. Teach that scar-faced savage over there words like … like “steam engine” … and you still couldn’t talk
to him for days, weeks, till he’d digested the idea. About steam engines, I mean. But you two could … get together at once
… on horses.’ The pilot paused for breath. ‘I haven’t got that kind of time to spare.’

In the background Oleg was crossing himself, right to left, and muttering Russian prayers. Uldin had scrambled to a distance,
where he made gestures that must be against black magic. Erissa held firm by Reid, though she touched her amulet to her lips.
He saw, surprised at noticing, that it had the form of a double-bitted ax.

‘You’re from the future, aren’t you?’ Reid asked.

A wraith of a smile passed over the pilot’s mouth. ‘We all are. I’m Sahir. Of the … I don’t remember what the base date of
your calendar was. Is. Will be. I started from … yes, Hawaii … in the …
anakro
– call it a space-time vehicle. Pass over Earth’s surface, or waters, while traveling through time. We were bound for … prehistoric
Africa. Protoman. We’re … we were … anthropologists, I guess, comes closest. Could I have some more to drink?’

‘Sure.’ Reid and Erissa helped him.

‘Ahh!’ Sahir lay back. ‘I feel a little stronger. It won’t last. I’d better talk while I can. Figured you’re postindustrial,
you. Makes a difference. Identify yourself?’

‘Duncan Reid, American, from 1970 – latter twentieth century – well, we’d lately made the first lunar landings, and we’d had
atomic energy for, uh, twenty-five years—’

‘So. I see. Shortly before the Age of – no, I shouldn’t say. You might get back. Will, if I can help it. You’d not like to
know what’s coming. I’m terribly sorry about this mess. Who’re your friends?’

‘The blond man’s early Russian, I think. The short man says he’s a Hun – I think. The woman here … I can’t figure her out.’

‘Hm. Yes. We can get – you can get – closer information after using the
mentatór.
The helmets are set for scan and imprint. Make sure which is which.

‘Listen, pick whoever’s from the most ancient period – looks like that’ll be her – make her supply your common language. Most
useful one, you see? We’re only a short ways back in time and south in space from … the point … where the
machine sucked in the last person. I’d nearly gotten it braked … by then.

‘Early model. S’posed to be insulated … against energy effects. Takes immense energy concentration to warp the continuum.
For returning home … would’ve assembled the nuclear generator we carry … outside the vessel, of course, because the energy
release’s in the megaton range. …’

Sahir plucked at his robe. His head rolled, as did his eyes within their sockets. His voice was nearly inaudible, the momentary
strength running out of him like wine from a broken cup; but he whispered in pathetic haste:

‘Warp fields … s’posed to be contained, controlled, not interact with matter en route … but defect here. Defect. Soon after
we started, instruments mentated to us that we’d drawn a body along. I ordered a halt right away … but inertia – We c’lected
higher animals only, men, horse,’ cause control, instrumentation, everything mentated…. And then we passed too close in spacetime
to – to some monstrous energy release, I don’t know what, terrible catastrophe in this far past. Course was pre-set, y’ get
me? We were s’posed to pass by – for a boost – but we were leaving the whole job to the computer. … Now, when we’d nearly
stopped … faulty insulation, did I tell you? Interaction with our warp fields. Blew out our interior power cybernets. Radiation
blast – s’prised I’m still alive – partner’s dead – knocked me out for a while – I came to, figured I’d go meet you, but—’

Sahir tried to lift his hands. Reid took them. It was like holding smoldering parchment. ‘Listen,’ Sahir susurrated desperately.
‘That… blowup, crash, whatever it is … in this part of the world. Near future. Year or less. Listen. There aren’t … won’t
be… many time expeditions. Ever. Energy cost too great … and … environment couldn’t stand much of that…. But anything this
big, bound t’ be observers. Understand? You find ’em, identify yourself, get help – maybe for me too—’

‘How?’ Reid choked.

‘First… get me to vehicle. It’s wrecked, but… medical supplies. … They’ll come through time, to this day, bring help, surely—’
Sahir jerked as if a lightning bolt coursed through him. ‘
Nia!
’ he screamed.
‘Fabór, Teo,
nia,
nia!’

He crumpled. His eyeballs rolled back, his jaw dropped. Reid attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest massage. They
were of no use.

Night brought cold air and brilliant stars. The sea glimmered vaguely. It was without surf or tides, but wavelets chuckled
against the stones of the beach. The land reared and rolled southward, a blackness where hills stood humpbacked athwart the
constellations and yelps resounded which Reid guessed were from jackals.

He had considered gathering brush for a fire, after Sahir was laid in a gully and covered with clods and rocks for lack of
grave-digging tools. His pipe lighter would kindle it. Uldin, assuming they must go through the laborious use of the flint
and steel he carried, spoke against the idea. ‘No need. You and I have coats, Oleg has his padding, I can lend Erissa my saddle
blanket. And the … shaman wagon … it shines, no? Why wear ourselves out scratching around for sticks?’

‘Water nearby will keep the air from growing too chill,’ Oleg pointed out from the experience of a sailor.

Reid decided to save his lighter fluid for emergencies, or for what tobacco was in his pouch, though he dared not smoke until
he had an abundance to drink.

The sea – definitely a sea, salt as it was – would help a trifle. He’d read Alain Bombard’s report; you can keep alive awhile
by taking continual sips. And they might try for fish with whatever tackle they could rig. In the long run, however, and not
a terribly long run either, nothing would save them but rescue from outside.

The glow enclosing the time vessel swirled in soft white and pastels, a hateful loveliness that barred off the water, food,
shelter, medicine, tools, weapons within. It lit the desert wanly for some yards around. Sahir had known how to unlock it;
but Sahir lay stiff awaiting the jackals. Reid felt sorry for him, who had been a well-intentioned man and wanted to live
as badly as anyone, and sorry likewise for the partner whose ray-raddled flesh sprawled in the machine that had betrayed them
all. But his pity was abstract. He’d never known them as people. He himself, and these three with him, remained to be saved
or to die a harder death.

Oleg yawned cavernously. ‘Woof, what a day! Are we lost in
time as you believe, Duncan, or borne off by evil Lyeshy as
I
think? Either way, I’m for sleep. Maybe I’ll have such pious dreams the angels will carry me back to my little wife.’

‘Do you want the second or third watch, then?’ Uldin asked.

‘None. I sleep in my mail, helmet and ax to hand. What use, seeing an enemy from afar?’

‘To make ready for him, you lump, or find a hiding place if he’s too strong,’ Uldin snapped. Dirt, grease, stink, scars, and
everything, the Hun nonetheless reminded Reid of a martinet captain he’d had. The Russian growled but yielded.

‘Let me take first watch,’ Reid offered. ‘I can’t sleep yet anyway.’

‘You think too much,’ Uldin grunted. ‘It weakens a man. As you will, though. You, next me, last Oleg.’

‘What of me?’ Erissa inquired.

Uldin’s look told his opinion of putting a woman on sentry-go. He walked from the illumination and studied the heavens. ‘Not
my sky,’ he said. ‘I can name you the northerly stars, but something’s queer about them. Well, Duncan, do you see that bright
one low in the east? Call me when it’s this high.’ He doubtless had no idea of geometry, but his arm lifted to an accurate
sixty-degree angle. With his awkward gait, he sought the spot where his horse was tethered, lay down, and slumbered immediately.

Oleg knelt, removed his coif, and crossed himself before saying a prayer in his Old Russian. He had no trouble finding rest
either.

I envy them that, Reid thought. Intelligence – no, don’t be snobbish – the habit of verbalizing has its drawbacks.

Weariness filled his body with stones and his head with sand. Most of Uldin’s kumiss had gone to wash down the jerky they
had had for supper; what was left must be hoarded; Reid’s mouth felt drier than deadwood. His skin was flushed from the day’s
exposure, yet the cold gnawed into him. A brisk walk, several times around the camp, might help.

‘I leave, Duncan, soon to return,’ Erissa said.

‘Don’t go far,’ he warned.

‘No. Never from you.’

He waited till she had vanished in the night before he started on his round, so he could watch her. Not that he felt enamored
– under these circumstances? – but what a woman she was, and what a mystery.

The castaways had had slim chance to talk. The shock of arrival and of Sahir’s appearance and death, the stress of heat, thirst,
and language transfer, had overtaxed them. They were lucky to complete what they did before sunset.

Reid had followed the pilot’s advice. Because her bronze knife and her frank wonder at iron equipment fairly well proved she
was from the earliest date and therefore from this general period, he made Erissa the linguistic source. She went along with
the process as readily as with anything he wanted. He found that assimilating a language through the
mentatór
was in truth rough: a churning of his mind, bringing on a condition similar to the unpleasant terminal stage of extreme drunkenness,
plus exhausting, involuntary muscle contractions. No doubt it went far more slowly and gently in Sahir’s home milieu: and
obviously this brutal cramming had hastened the pilot’s end. But there was no choice and Reid recovered after a drowsy rest.

Oleg and Uldin refused, wouldn’t come near the apparatus, until the Russian saw Erissa and the American talking freely. Then
he put a helmet on his own pate. Uldin followed suit, maybe just to show that he had equal manhood.

The swift desert dark upon them and their vitality drained, they had no time thereafter for aught but the briefest, most general
exchanges of information.

Reid started pacing. The crunch of his footfalls and the remote bestial yelps were Iiis sole hearing, the stars and the cold
his sole attendants. He doubted there would be any danger before morning. Still, Uldin was right about posting a guard. Heavy
though Reid’s brain was, it lurched into motion.

Where are we?
When
are we?

Sahir’s expedition left Hawaii in … sometime in the future, Reid thought. Say a thousand years in my future. Their machine
skimmed the land and water surface of the planet while moving backward in time.

Why skim? Well, let’s assume you need the surface for a reference frame. Earth moves through space, and space has no absolute
coordinates. Let’s assume you dare not rise lest you lose your contact (gravitation?) and come out in the emptiness between
yonder stars.

My term paper –
x
millennia hence, a couple of decades ago along my now doubled-back world line, a million years ago in my
interior time of this night of despair – proved that travel
into the past is impossible for a number of reasons, including the fact that more than infinite energy would be required.
Evidently I was wrong. Evidently sufficient energy – a huge concentration of it in a small volume and short timespan – nevertheless,
a finite amount – evidently that will, somehow, affect the parameters of the continuum, and this vehicle here can be thrown
… across the world and backward or forward through the ages.

Traveling, the vehicle must be charged with monstrous forces. Sahir spoke of ‘insulation.’ I think he might better have said
‘control’ or ‘restraint.’ Probably the forces themselves are the only ones strong enough to generate their own containment.

This trip, there was an imperfection. A leakage. The vehicle flew through space-time surrounded by a … field … that snatched
along whatever animal was encountered.

Why just animals – higher animals – plus whatever was intimately attached to them such as clothes? Why not trees, rocks, water,
air, soil? M-m, yes. Sahir did speak of the reason. It wasn’t important for me to know, he was half out of his mind and babbling,
but as long as he did mention it – yes. The technology of his age, or at least of its space-time vehicles, relies on mental
control. Telepathy, including telepathic robots, if you believe in that kind of fable. Myself, I’m inclined to speculate about
amplified neural currents. Whatever the explanation may be, the fact is that the drive field only interacts with matter which
is, itself, permeated by brain waves.