“Any last words for posterity?” I asked the Karg. “Before I effect that cure I mentioned?”
“You will fail,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said. “By the way, push your self-destruct button.”
He obeyed; smoke started rising from his interior. I referred to the homing signaler I had tuned to Mellia Gayl, read out the correct co-ordinates. I unlocked the transfer booth and punched in my destination, stepped inside the booth and activated the sender field. Reality shattered into a million splinters and reassembled itself in another shape, another time, another place.
I was just in time.
27
It was a windy hillside, under a low gray sky. Green grass, black moss, bare rock, weathered smooth. A herd of dirty yellow-gray sheep in the middle distance against a backdrop of rounded hills. And in the foreground a crowd all set to lynch a witch.
There were about three dozen people, of the rude but hearty villager variety, dressed in motley costumes of coarse cloth that suggested a raid on a ragpicker’s wagon. Most of them had sticks or wooden farm implements; a few had handcarved shillelaghs, well polished by use; and all of them had expressions of innocent ferocity. The expressions were aimed at Mellia, who occupied a central position with her hands tied behind her, wrapped halfway to the elbow in heavy brown rope.
She was dressed in gray homespun, and the wind flapped her long skirts, blew her red-brown hair around her shoulders like a flag of no surrender. A tossed stone hit her a glancing blow on the face, and she stumbled, caught herself, stared back at them with her chin high and a bright trickle of blood on her cheek. Then she caught sight of me. If I was expecting a gladsome smile of welcome, I was disappointed. She looked straight into my eyes; then she turned her back.
A wide-shouldered man reached out a big square hand and clamped it on her shoulder to spin her around. I pushed a couple of committee members aside and kicked him hard in the left calf. He yelled and came around fast, hopping on one foot, and gave me a nice shot at a bulgy red nose. It splattered satisfactorily under a straight right, followed by a left hook that put him down on the turf. Somebody started a yell, and I pivoted right and got him square in the mouth with the edge of my forearm. He backed off two steps and sat down hard, spitting blood and maybe a tooth or two.
“You fool! You blind fool!” Mellia said, and over my shoulder I snapped, “Shut up!”
They were recovering from their surprise now. A few of the sharper ones began to suspect the party was about over. They didn’t like that. There was a surge toward me, a tide of ugly, angry faces, all chapped lips and bad teeth and broken veins and glaring eyes. I’d had enough of them. I snapped a hold on them, which I should have done in the first place, and they froze hard in midyelp.
Mellia was caught in the hold field too, of course. I picked her up carefully; it’s easy to break bones under those circumstances. Walking downhill was like walking under water. On a packed-dirt road at the bottom I put her on her feet and killed the field. She staggered, gave me a wild look which lacked any element of gratitude.
“How . . . did you do that?” she gasped.
“I have hidden talents. What were they on to you for? Putting spells on cows?” I dabbed at the streak of blood on her face. She leaned away from my touch.
“I . . . violated their customs. They were merely carrying out the traditional punishment. It wouldn’t have been fatal. And now you’ve ruined it all—destroyed everything I’d accomplished!”
“How do you like the idea you’re working for a Karg named Dr. Javeh?”
She looked startled, then indignant.
“That’s right,” I said. “He fished you out of the void and sicked you onto this job.”
“You’re out of your mind! I broke out of stasis on my own; this is my program—”
“Un-unh, lady. He planted the idea on you. You’ve been working for a Karg—and a rogue Karg at that. He’d rewired himself and added a few talents his designers wouldn’t have appreciated. Very cute. Or maybe somebody did it for him. It doesn’t matter much—”
“You’re talking nonsense!” She glared at me, looking for an opening to bring up what was really on her mind. “I suppose she didn’t matter, either,” she blurted, with charming feminine illogic.
“The elderly Agent Gayl? No, you’re right. She didn’t. She knew that—”
“You killed her! You saved yourself instead! You coward! You miserable coward!”
“Sure—anything you say, kid. But I only saved one of my skins; you seem to be dead set on keeping the whole collection intact.”
“What—”
“You know what. When you get all choked up about the old lady it’s yourself you’re grieving for. She’s you—fifty years on. You know it and I know it. Maybe she knew it too, and was too kind to let on. She was quite a girl, old Mellia was. And smart enough to know when it was time to take a fall.”
“And you let her.”
“I couldn’t have stopped her—and I wouldn’t have. Funny: you’re jealous of yourself as Lisa, but you go all wivery over another aspect of your infinite versatility who spent a long and wasted life waiting for a chance to do something effective—and finally did it. I guess the shrinks could read something into that.”
She nearly got her claws into my face; I held her off and nodded toward the crowd stringing down the hill.
“The audience want their money back,” I said, “or another crack at the action. You say which. If you want to ride a rail buck naked in this wind, I’ll say ‘Excuse me,’ and be on my way.”
“You’re horrible! You’re hard, cynical—merciless! I misjudged you; I thought—”
“Save the thoughts till later. Are you with them—or with me?”
She looked up the hill and shuddered.
“I’ll go with you,” she said in a dull, defeated voice.
I switched on my interference screen, which gave us effective invisibility.
“Stay close to me,” I said. “Which way is the next town?”
She pointed. We set off at a brisk walk while the mob behind us yowled their wonder and their frustration.
28
It was a nasty little village, poverty-stricken, ugly, hostile, much like little towns in all times and climes.
“You forgot to mention where we are,” I said.
“Wales; near Llandudno. 1723.”
“You can sure pick ’em, ma’am—if you like ’em dreary, that is.”
I found a tavern under a sign with a crude pictorial representation of a pregnant woman in tears, and letters which spelled, more or less, Ye Weepinge Bride.
“Suits the mood exactly,” I said, and switched off the I-field. A drizzling rain spattered us as we ducked under the low lintel. It was a dark little room, lit by a small coal fire on the hearth and a lantern hanging at one end of the plank bar. The floor was stone, damp, and uneven.
There were no other customers. A gnarly old man no more than four and a half feet tall watched us take chairs at a long oak table by one wall, under the lone window, all of a foot square and almost opaque with dirt, set just under the rafters. He came shuffling across, looking us over with an expression in which any approval he may have felt was well concealed. He muttered something. I gave him a glare and barked, “What’s that? Speak up, gaffer!”
“Y’be English, I doubt not,” he growled.
“Then ye be a bigger fool than ye need be. Bring ale, stout ale, mind, and bread and meat. Hot meat—and fresh bread and white!”
He mumbled again. I scowled and reached for an imaginary dirk.
“More of ye’r insolence and I’ll cut out ye’r heart and buy off the bailiff after,” I snarled.
“Have you lost your mind?” Miss Gayl started to say, in the twentieth-century English we used together, but I cut her off short:
“Shut ye’r jaw, Miss.”
She started to complain but I trampled that under too. She tried tears then; they worked. But I didn’t let her know.
The old man came back with stone mugs of the watery brown swill that passed for ale in those parts. My feet were cold. Voices snarled and crockery clattered in the back room; I smelled meat burning. Mellia sniffled and I resisted the urge to put an arm around her. A lean old woman as ugly as a stunted swamp tree came out of her hole and slammed big pewter plates in front of us: gristly slabs of rank mutton, floating in congealed grease. I put the back of my fingers against mine; stone cold in the middle, corpse warm at the edge. As Mellia picked up her knife—the only utensil provided with the feast—I scooped up both platters and threw them across the room. The old woman screeched and threw her apron over her head and the old man appeared just in time to get the full force of my roar.