Times Without Number (12 page)

"Ah, you were lucky, were you, Father?" he whispered. "And . . . You too,
Miguel? Heavens. I thought you were . . . No matter, though. That's not
the important thing. God's wounds, what can have taken possession of
them all?"
"Speak!" commanded Father Ramón sternly. "Without fear or favour I charge
you to speak unvarnished truth in the name of the Society!"
Don Felipe closed his eyes again. Lips writhing, in halting whispers he
outlined the dreadful tale.
Partly, it seemed the trouble had been the fault of the Ambassador from
the Confederacy, notoriously a sneering fellow and a dogmatic chauvinist.
As Don Miguel had sardonically prophesied, he had scathingly dismissed
the quality of New Year festivity in Londres as grossly inferior to what
he could enjoy at home.
Partly it had been the Prince. Imperial's fault. It was no secret that
now, in his forty-first year, he was growing tired of waiting to succeed
his long-lived father, and inclined to dispel his boredom in unprincely
pastimes.
And partly, said Don Felipe, it was the fault of Red Bear, whose weakness
for firewater was equally well known.
At some time in the evening there had been an exchange of sharp words. A
royal temper flared; there was a reference to deporting the Ambassador
tied face-to-tail on a donkey. Hovering around the fringes of the royal
party, as ever eager for a smidgin of reflected glory, were two dangerous
would-be conciliators: Don Arturo Cortés, and the Marquesa di Jorque.
"Someone in authority should have smoothed things over," Don Felipe
moaned. "Red Bear, or even the Commander! But that damned woman from
Jorque hasn't any notion of tact! She brought up the subject of women's
emancipation, and I think someone must have said men and women could
never be equal, because there are some things like warfare which are
entirely male -- and the Ambassador jumped on this as another chance to
disagree on principle, and said the bloodiest and fiercest fighters in
history were the Scythian Amazons, so the King said the Amazons were a
myth, and appealed to Don Arturo, and . . ."
Breaking off, he coughed violently, and pain from the arrow-wounds in
his back convulsed him in agony. Waiting for him to recover, Father
Ramón knelt at his side more rigid than a statue.
"And then, my son . . . ?" he prompted finally.
"I don't know," whispered Don Felipe. "All I remember after that is the
terrible women with their bows and spears, swarming down the stairway
leading from the central tower. I stood and fought with those who could
fight, but they came on like devils, and in the end they shattered us
to bits."
His voice tailed away.
"My father!" Kristina said in a high thin tone. "My sister! What became
of them?"
But there was no answer. The medical orderly dropped to feel Don Felipe's
pulse. After a moment he turned to Father Ramón. "We must take him away
and let him rest," he said. "Talking has greatly weakened him."
Stiffly Father Ramón rose to his feet. Don Miguel drew him aside and
whispered to him urgently.
"I'm still in the dark about all this.
Do
you know who these 'terrible
women' are?"
"Almost beyond doubt," the Jesuit said in a dead voice. "Amazons . . .
Yes, it hangs together. This is the way it must have happened. They
wanted -- the fools! The
fools
! God forgive me for condemning them
so, but what other name can one use? Listen: they wanted to decide
this question about women being valiant fighters, and they sought the
answer where they should not have trespassed, beyond the bounds of our
reality. Women such as the one you described to me are female gladiators
from the court of King Mahendra the White Elephant, in a world where a
decadent Indian usurper sits the throne of a Mongel empire governing
all Asia and all Europe -- a world further distant from our own than
any other which our researchers have explored."
Thanks to having been made privy to the best-kept secret of the Society,
the explanation made sense to Don Miguel. But he wished it could have
been as meaningless to him as it was to Kristina, who had no inkling of
the perilous tampering with reality which the Society had embarked on
forty years before. She merely repeated as she looked from one to the
other of her companions, "My father and sister -- what became of them?"
He could only give her a meant-to-be comforting squeeze with the arm he
had kept around her shoulders.
"Yes -- yes, of come, I ought to have realised that . . . But I shouldn't
be talking about abstracts; the thing's been done. By whom? Who could
have breached this secret to the company -- surely not the Commander,
even on his father's orders?"
"No, not the Commander. For all that he possesses a degree of royal
arrogance, he would not imagine he could flout natural law."
"Then -- who?"
"The leader of the expedition to that distant stream of history," said
Father Ramón, "was Don Arturo Cortés." On the last word his mouth shut
like a steel trap. There was silence between them, but the noise of
the fugitives continued, and now, as bells pealed out to announce the
imminence of midnight, they heard also the dry crackle of gunfire.
The orderly and two soldiers were raising Don Felipe from the ground
to set him on a wheeled invalid trolley. The movement disturbed him,
and he gave a sudden cry.
"Father Ramón! Where are you?"
"Here, my son!" The Jesuit darted towards him.
"Father, I did not tell you the worst!" Don Felipe babbled. "I saw them
kill the King! I saw them shoot the Prince Imperial full of arrows,
and they speared men and women alike as they tried to flee! I saw a girl
flung from the head of the stairway to break her head open on the marble
floor! I saw -- God's pity, Father, I saw such monstrous things!"
"What?" said one of the soldiers helping to lift him. And, before Father
Ramón could stop him, he had spun round to shout to his officer. "Sir! He
says the King is dead!"
A hush fell for an instant over all those within earshot of the cry,
and was followed by a sound like a rising gale: "The King is dead! The
King! The King!" The words spread swiftly, dying away across the sea of
people like an echo.
"Father Ramón, is there anything we can do?" demanded Don Miguel.
For a long moment, his bird-like head bowed, Father Ramón did not
answer. At last, however, he stirred and seemed to brisken. He said,
"Well, there are some immediate steps, are there not? For example, you
might find a civil guard and have criers sent to call in members of the
Society who were not attending the palace reception, bidding them come at
once to the Headquarters Office. This should be simple -- they'll mostly
be passing this way to attend our Mass. Then . . . Have you a carriage?"
"I had." Don Miguel stared in the direction of the spot where it had been
left. "No, it's gone -- probably commandeered by the refugees. Anyway,
it would be hard to force a carriage through this fear-crazed crowd."
"So we'll take the horses from mine." Father Ramón shrugged. "It's many
years since my aged bones spanned a horse's back, but needs must. To it,
and quickly!"
VI
Never before had Don Miguel tried to ride at speed bareback, controlling
his horse with carriage-reins and at the same time trying to comfort a
weeping girl seated behind him with her head buried on his shoulder.
It was half nightmare, half farce, and about the only thing which could
have made it worse would have been if Kristina had followed the Empire
custom of riding side-saddle instead of astride like a man. She would
certainly have fallen off if she had.
In spite of his lack of practice on horseback, Father Ramón made good
speed, and Don Miguel had difficulty in making his own mount keep up,
carrying double as it was. However, by digging his heels in vigorously,
he forced the poor beast to follow close behind, and they galloped up the
driveway to the Headquarters Office neck and neck. By now two or three
more of the windows were lighted, and the front door stood ajar. At the
sound of hoofs on gravel someone came running to the entrance. It was
Jones, and in the light of the porch flambeaux it could be seen that
one of his eyes was newly blacked.
"She got loose?" Don Miguel cried in alarm, sliding to the ground and
reaching to help Kristina dismount.
"Yes, sir," Jones agreed unhappily. "And we had a terrible job tying her
up again."
"But you managed it?"
"With the help of the man you left here, yes, sir. I'd never have coped
with her on my own."
And the poor fellow has lost his carriage for his pains, Don Miguel
reflected briefly. Still, there were people in Londres tonight who had
lost not only their livelihood but their lives. Time enough to consider
such problems later. For the present, there was a grand catastrophe to
attend to.
"Did you say the girl got loose?" called Father Ramón, awkwardly
scrambling from his own horse's back.
"Yes, but was recaptured," Don Miguel answered. "Jones, take us to her
quickly!"
Kristina nearly stumbled as she ascended the steps to the entrance. He
settled her comfortably in an armchair in the hallway, and saw as he was
doing so that instead of turning through the open door of the anteroom in
which the driver was grimly standing guard with a club over the feathered
girl -- tied now with good strong rope, he noticed -- Father Ramón was
heading into the interior of the building.
"Father! The girl's down here!" he called.
"I know -- but come with me, and be quick!"
"Look after the lady," Don Miguel instructed Jones, and dashed in Father
Ramón's wake.
The Jesuit led him up the broad main stairway, along the adjacent gallery,
past the entrance to the main reference library with its thousands and
thousands of books on conventional recorded history as amplified by the
researches of the Society's visitors to the past, and halted before the
door of a smaller room which Don Miguel had never entered. It was kept
firmly locked, and one did not have to ask to realise why. Here were
the files, documents and records which the Society's General Officers
in their collective wisdom deemed the world not yet ready to understand.
"Have you ever been into the restricted room?" asked Father Ramón,
fumbling under his habit for a ring of keys.
"No, never."
"But you know what it contains?"
"Well -- well, one presumes data on the most sensitive periods of the past.
Perhaps concerning the ministry of Our Lord . . ." Don Miguel made a
vague gesture.
"If that were all, we should not need to take such precautions to protect
what's kept here," Father Ramón sighed, thrusting home the key and turning
it with a click. "In spite of the strictures of so-called 'progressives'
and 'rationalists,' Christ was in every aspect so remarkable as to command
our eternal admiration. If he had not been, the Church would have crumbled
at the first contact we made with the era he inhabited. But one knows that,
from the fact that the Church has survived."
As he spoke, he was leading Don Miguel forward among a maze of high dark
metal book-stacks, with enormously thick glass doors securely locked
to enclose bound volumes, loose files, stacks of periodicals marked
down the spine with warning red letters indicating the degree of the
contents' secrecy.
"No," the Jesuit continued, "there are things here which comprise a far
heavier burden of knowledge than simply proof that Christ was man, and ate
and slept and had to relieve himself! But for the inflexible rule that
no single person -- not even the Commander -- may consult these files
without a witness beside him, I'd never have compelled you to accompany
me. You've been burdened enough already for so young a man. But" --
and he halted before one of the padlocked stacks, producing another
smaller key -- "here is where I must confirm my guess."
Drawing back the glass doors, he reached into the case and selected a fat,
bright red volume of manuscript notes. Interleaved with the close-written
pages were accurate water-colour drawings. As rapidly as though he were
merely looking for something he had already seen -- and presumably he was
-- he turned to one such picture and held it for Don Miguel to examine.
"Does not the woman downstairs resemble that?" he demanded.
Don Miguel nodded slowly. The feathers pasted on the body of the girl
here depicted were green, not blue, and the painted designs on her face
and torso were white instead of yellow, but the style of the hair was the
same, the complexion, the shoes, the beaded ornaments around her wrists.
"Then my worst fears are fulfilled," Father Ramón muttered. He shut
the book and thrust it back on the shelf. "And I must confess to you,
my son, that I am totally at a loss. This disaster is so completely
without precedent that it has scarcely even been speculated upon by
our theorists."
To hear Father Ramón, himself the expert of experts in this field, say
such a thing shook Don Miguel to the core. Mind numb, he could find no
answer worth the uttering.
"Still, there are certain texts here which may suggest a clue, and there
are calculations we shall have to perform . . ." The Jesuit turned to
another of the locked cases, and began to run his eye along its contents.
"Yes, we may at least expect some guidance from a few of the articles
in here. Hold out your arms, Don Miguel; I'm about to impose a physical
burden on you as well."
A few minutes later, he cautiously followed Father Ramón down the stairs
again, both arms full of heavy books and bound manuscripts. There was
confusion in the entrance hall; Jones, who had as yet no clear conception
of what was going on, was trying to calm a number of angry Licentiates
who had answered the criers' call and returned from their New Year
celebrations to the Headquarters Office.
On seeing Father Ramón's grave expression, they fell silent and turned to
face him. He paused five or six steps from the bottom of the staircase,
where he could overlook them; Don Miguel gratefully seized the chance
to rest his load on the banister.
"Father, why were we told to come here?" one of the bolder of the
Licentiates called out. "There's a riot or something in the city --
wouldn't we be better employed helping to put it down?"