“Damned funny about the rest of that bunch of twentieth-century types that were jerked into this world after the rest of us. Every one of them, male and female, just disappeared with the sole exceptions of Rupen and one woman; and nobody since has seen or found or come across, despite thorough, full-scaJe searches, airy a thread or trace of any of them. One minute it would seem they were all in a guarded suite of rooms in the palace there on the archepiscopal estate, and the next minute, poof, they were gone. I get gooseflesh just thinking of the matter. My house, which was brought here with me. disappeared from here in almost the same way, but it couldn’t’ve been that projector that brought us here and sent the house back and then brought the second bunch here, because by the time they disappeared, that projector was in pieces in Hal’s lab in York … at least, I don’t think it could”ve.” He shuddered. “There’s just still so damned much that I—none of us, really—know about this business of projections.”
Little did His Grace Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland. Markgraf von Velegrad. Baron of Strathtyne, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Order of the Roten Adler. and Lord Commander of the Horse know just how right he was—just how little any of them, even Harold, Archbishop of York. knew.
Some weeks previously and many leagues to the north of that Norwich drill field, a wrinkled, white-haired and -bearded old man wearing the garb of a high-ranking churchman sat in converse with an olive-skinned man of middle years in a candle-lit chamber of the archepiscopal palace, Yorkminster.
“Well, we did all we could do, I guess.” opined Rupen Ademian. “I just hope it works, because after all you’ve told me about those people of your time in the world you come from, I sure as hell don’t want to run into any living ones in this world and time.”
“Oh, it will work, Rupen,” Harold, Archbishop of York, assured him confidently. “I cannot but wish I’d thought of something like this many years ago. Had I, then you and your unfortunate friends and relatives would never have been projected into this world, but would’ve remained safe where you all belonged.”
“What do you think really happened to the others, Hal—to Kogh and John and the rest? Could agents of the Roman Church have gotten into the country palace and gotten them all out without anybody seeing them go? If so, then how?”
The old man sighed and shook his head. “No, Rupen, as I have told you before, I think that the Church had nothing to do with it, and all the rumors that float around and about my palace be damned. No. I think that they were snapped back to where they and you came from by way of some quirk in the new, replacement device that— all unbeknownst to us, then—was at that time squatting in the tower cellar beside the two dead men from my world and time.”
“But. Hal.” queried Rupen, “in that case, why wasn’t I jerked back too, me and Jenny Bostwick, huh?”
The archbishop could only sigh once more and again shake his old head. “Were Emmett O’Malley still extant, Rupen, perhaps he could answer your questions. I cannot. My knowledge of the workings of the projection devices— along with a plethora of others—was always most limited; in the time and place from which I came, knowledge had become very specialized, nor were specialists in one field encouraged to dabble in other fields very often. That poor Emmett was given a measure of training and experience outside his field was a fluke of sorts. An even bigger fluke was that, with his limited knowledge and training and under a great deal of stress, he was able to project us into this world at all and not put us inside the stone foundation of that old tower keep.”
“What wouJd’ve happened if he had done so, Hal?” asked Rupen.
The old man shivered. “Immediate death for both of us and the most hellacious explosion this world has ever seen short of a volcanic eruption, perhaps. There would have been but precious little left of that tower, Rupen. Understand, these devices are not perfected, by any means. Most of the work is still in the experimental stage, and precise control of projections is still a virtual impossibility, in the majority of cases, which is why I seriously doubt that the ones back in that world and time will make any efforts to change the settings of the projector to escape our diabolical trap. No, they’ll lose every human or animal they project until they decide that the hideous expense they will be incurring is just making further attempts unfeasible. The costs had already brought about virtual suspension of the project at the time Emmett and I trespassed into the facility and projected ourselves to here. I think that it was only the unremittingly vindictive nature of the very powerful security establishment that got the project started again even on a limited basis; they must have been determined to get us back for the mind-destroying torture that they label ‘reeducation,’ and if any group of the twenty-first-century United States of America possesses the power to reactivate suspended projects, it is assuredly them.”
“Pardon me, it is not really my affair, Hal, but I must ask, nonetheless. These security people—your voice conveys such hatred for them. They are the reason you left your world and time, then?” Rupen’s voice was gentle and he added, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, of course.”
The archbishop grimaced. “I . . . I’ll tell you all about it … someday, soon, but not tonight. All right? Tonight I want you to tell me the remainder of your own story. What happened with you after you came back to your country and began to run the new business in the new location? What was the name of that city?”
“Richmond, Hal, Richmond, Virginia,” replied Rupen. “Confederate States Armaments Associates of Richmond finally set up operations in a building only blocks from the capitol of the Commonwealth of Virginia and only a few blocks farther than that from the once White House of the Confederacy.
“My brother-in-law. Dr. Boghos Panoshian. and some of his real-estate friends had helped me find the place. During the American Civil War, a hundred years before, the area had been a fashionable residential area, but a century is a long time, and by then the area was mostly commercial, light industrial and a few warehouses, with almost all of the old homes having been long since torn down for new construction.
“What I, or rather, we, lucked into was an original forty-odd-room mansion—the main house and one wing, that is. the other wing and all of the outbuildings having been destroyed after the land they sat on was sold many decades before us. Although it was way too much space for us then, in the beginning, the rent was dirt-cheap and I could see where it could save us money to start with. We could use the big, high-ceilinged rooms of the empty, dusty old mansion proper for a warehouse. The front doors were wide and opened right onto the street, and the place was a very short distance from the deepwater port on the James River, too. The agent for the owners readily agreed to do any reasonable amount of strenghtening of the floors and supports so they would safely hold cases of rifles and pistols for us if we’d sign a five-year lease for the property, which sounded good to me and my brother. Bagrat.
“Somebody, within fairly recent times, had more or less modernized the remaining wing and bricked up the doorways leading from it into the main mansion. They had put in electrical wiring, modem plumbing, two baths, and a complete kitchen in the back. I figured we could use this wing for our offices and retail outlet and maybe even put in a small shop for customizing the guns, eventually.
“The agent was a pretty nice fellow, and he leveled with me … up to a point. He said that one reason we could get the building so cheap was that there was no parking lot. no loading dock, nor any way to put one in without making more structural changes to the mansion than the owners would countenance. I couldn’t see how this would adversely affect our operations, though, because we wouldn’t be in need of delivery vehicles on any large scale, we could park our cars at curbside. and as long as that front door was wide enough to pass cases of rifles, the trucks that brought them up from the deepwater terminal could just pull up on the street in front of the mansion. So we signed the lease, paid six months’ rent in advance, and leased office furniture and equipment while a contractor did what was necessary to make the first floor of the old house strong enough to take the weight of the guns and all, and by the time the first load of rifles and revolvers and equipment came from Italy, we were about ready for them.”