Late on the day of his arrival, in the spacious room that the old archbishop used for what he called in public his alchemical studies, the two men—one, of the twentieth century, one of the twenty-first century—spoke in a language that only one other person in the palace could have understood, the basic English of the United States of America of the last quarter of the twentieth century, for there were spies about and Archbishop Harold well knew it for fact.
One more time, he had carefully explained and demonstrated to Bass the workings and care of two examples of twenty-first-century technology—heat-stunners, weapons that, while they could incapacitate humans in the blinking of an eye, would never kill them if utilized properly.
Bass handled the two devices—the smaller looking a bit like one of the ball-point pens of his world and time, though about twice as thick, and the larger being about a third again thicker than the other, with a slight curvature of the butt end.
Old Harold had used the larger to quickly bring a bit of iron in a stone mortar to red heat, several times interposing his withered old hand between the instrument and the iron. “You see, Bass, when set on ‘Heat,’ these devices will only harm flesh if it is within close proximity to or actually in contact with metal, so you must direct the heat beam at some metal object.
“The ‘Stun’ setting I cannot easily demonstrate, unless you want me to show you what it feels like . . . and I somehow don’t think that you would like it. Victims come out of it with a headache of inhuman proportions. Metal will not stop the stun beam, but there is no need to aim for metal, either. Directing the beam to the head will put your man down in a bare eyeblink of time, but should you not be able to direct it at the head, any available part of the body will do; it will just take a few seconds longer to do the job.
“The one real drawback to these smaller examples of the heat-stunner is that they possess only a very narrow beam and a short range of effective use, perhaps ten feet in the case of the smaller, twice that or a little more for the larger.
“The power charges, now.” He thumbed back a sliding cover on the side of the larger device, exposing a cavity wherein nestled, end to end, two little cylinders of a brownish hue with shiny surfaces, each of them slightly less than an inch in length from one rounded tip to the other. “They are blue-black and shiny when fully charged, but as they slowly lose their charge, they become lighter in color and less shiny of surface. The forward one will, when weakened, draw from the rear one until it is emptied of charge, so if you note that the forward one is of a darker color than the rear one, don’t be alarmed—it’s only when the forward one begins to lighten that you should be ready to replace them with freshly charged ones.
“Never, ever throw these cylinders away or lose them, for only a few hours’ exposure to bright sunlight will fully recharge them. You can’t break them, either deliberately or by mischance, and the only way to discharge them is to use them in the devices. The small unit holds one. and. as you can see, the larger unit holds two.
“How you carry these weapons is up to you. whatever proves easiest and most comfortable for your quick use. but I have always kept my small one, the one that I brought into this world and time nearly two hundred years ago, strapped to my left forearm.” He drew up the voluminous sleeve -of his fur-trimmed robe to show the arrangement.
Bass nodded. “That looks as good as any other way to me, so long as I’m not in armor, of course. As for the bigger one, I’ll have Nugai whip together a holster to go inside one of my bootlegs, I think. This little pouch of charges is flat enough—I can just have him stitch it inside a boot or in some other safe cranny. What are these other things you have over there? Do you intend them for me, Hal?”
The old man shoved the largest of the indicated items into the center of the tabletop. “This, Bass, is the unbreakable water bottle you took from the body of Colonel Dr. Jane Stone.* I boiled horsehide in wax and shaped it around the bottle so that now it bears a close enough resemblance to not matter to a contemporary canteen that no one should question you about it. It holds exactly a liter of liquid.
*Read Robert Adams. The Seven Magical Jewels of Ireland.
“This lantern belt box, made of more of my cour boulli, contains the impermeable tubes of the emergency tablets she brought to this world and time on her ill-fated projection. They taste much better than they smell, incidentally, and each contains intensely concentrated food, vitamins, minerals, a powerful stimulant, and a mild general-purpose antibiotic. Never ingest more than three in any twenty-four-hour period, and always drink at least a pint of fluid whenever you do ingest one. The smaller reddish tube contains a much more powerful generaJ-purpose antibiotic, twelve of them; actually, they are the longevity boosters, such as I used to save the life of the King’s grandfather several times over, so long ago. The other small tube, the one that looks the color of old ivory, like the larger tubes, now holds a dozen pain capsules from my time and world. They will be effective against unbelievably intense pain for twelve, twenty, as much as thirty hours at a stretch, yet without so clouding the senses, such as does opium and its various derivatives, that a man cannot function normally.
“If you will open that flat chest there at your side, you will see yet another of my handicrafts.”
Within the indicated leathern chest were what seemed to Bass to be patterns for a breast-and-back cuirass, plate spauldrons, and a velvet skullcap fashioned over something thin and rigid. On lifting out the two largest pieces, Bass recognized the dull, silvery-grey metal as that of which the projection device that had for so very long squatted in the ground level of Whyffler Hall’s tower keep had been surfaced. Both the breastplate and the backplate showed bright, shiny splashes that his soldier’s eye immediately recognized for lead.
Holding the thin, light pieces in his hands, he raised his eyebrows questioningly at the archbishop and asked. “Who shot the balls and why. Hal?”
“One of my guardsmen, Bass, with an eight-bore caliver and at a range of under forty feet, and before you ask, yes, the weapon was fully charged. The balls struck the plates squarely and knocked each of them spinning for the full length of my inner garden and clanged them against the stone wall, but as you can clearly see, they were neither holed nor damaged in any way. I made two sets—I’m now wearing one, have been all day, and in relative comfort, as compared to a shirt of mail, such as I wore from the first attempt to assassinate me until I fashioned these.
“The sets are easy to put on or take off. alone, with no assistance. They are quite light in weight, as you can tell yourself, yet tough enough to stop anything short of a ball from a small cannon. That cap contains another piece of the same metal. I sized them from some of your clothing out of chests in (Crystal’s effects at my country palace, so they should fit, but try them on before you sail back to Norfolk. I can easily make any necessary adjustments. That done, you will be as well prepared for this new campaign the King has ordered as I can make you.
“Now. those matters aside, my old friend. I think that you should ride out tomorrow and pay your respects to your lady-wife. Wait, wait!” He raised a hand. “I know, she’s become almost impossible, and I, like you. am not any longer certain that her mind is still properly balanced. She is not the Krystal I first met, years ago, she is not the (Crystal to whom I married you, she has changed drastically from even the Krystal of last year.
“The Krystal who was projected here was friendly to almost everyone, great or small, egalitarian to an extreme, kind, generous, and of a forgiving nature. On the other hand. Dame Krystal, Duchess of Norfolk, is seldom seen to smile, now she either snarls or sneers; she has not a good word for anyone and is become extremely conscious of her rank in the social hierarchy. She throws insults at anyone and everyone and has driven all of her old friends from her, not wishing to have by her anyone who does not always and immediately agree with her in everything. She is both cruel and vindictive toward all those less powerful than she is become as your lady-wife.