The Corridors of Time (17 page)

Lockridge looked about. Craggy and gloomy, the wilderness pressed in on him. ‘Well, everyone to his own taste.’

Hu’s chiseled features reflected annoyance. ‘This is the Koriach’s land: an estate of hers in the future, and therefore hers
throughout the whole of time. No fewer than seven corridors were established hereabouts. One has a gate on this quarter century.’

‘But not on my own period, eh? So she couldn’t have gone
to Germany from America. I wonder, though, why she didn’t figure to head back from Neolithic Denmark by this route, instead
of via Crete.’

‘Use your brain!’ Hu snapped. ‘After meeting those Rangers in that corridor – you were there, you should know – she estimated
too great a probability of doing so again. Only now, when we have Brann, is this a reasonably safe course to follow.’ He walked
off. Lockridge and Auri came after, the girl shivering. Her bare feet made the frozen ground creak.

‘Hey, that’s not good,’ Lockridge said. ‘Here.’ He picked her up. She snuggled happily against him.

They hadn’t far to go. Within a shallow cave, Hu opened the ground. Light from a ramp mingled with the dull day-glow.

They rode to tomorrow in silence that made the throb of energies seem the louder. Once they transferred, passing through a
gate into a tunnel which, physically, existed in the twenty-third century, and so through another gate into the corridor Hu
wanted. Lockridge’s pulse accelerated and his palate went dry.

At the end, beyond the threshold, he found an anteroom more spacious than any other he had seen. The floor was richly carpeted;
red drapes hung between multitudinous lockers. Four guards in green brought guns to brows, a salute, when Hu appeared. They
were unlike him but curiously similar to each other: short, squat, flat-nosed and heavy-jawed.

Hu ignored them, searched in a cabinet, and extended two diaglossas. Lockridge removed his from the Reformation period, to
make room in that ear. ‘I will take it,’ Hu said.

‘No, I’ll hang on to it,’ Lockridge replied. ‘I’ll want to talk with my buddy Jesper again.’

‘Do you understand me?’ Hu said. ‘I gave you an order.’ The guards moved near.

Lockridge lost his temper. ‘You know what you can do with your orders,’ he said. ‘If you understand
me.
I’m her man – nobody else’s.’

Almost, the Warden came to attention. His face blanked.
‘As you wish.’

Lockridge pursued his little victory. ‘You can also furnish me a pair of pants. This Neolithic rig hasn’t got pockets.’

‘You will receive a pouchbelt. Come along… please.’

The guards had not followed the exchange, which was in Cretan. But it was disturbing how they sensed what had happened and
shrank back. Lockridge inserted the new diaglossa and activated his mind in the way he had somewhat mastered to bring forth
specific information.

Languages: two major ones, Eastern and Western, Warden and Ranger; others survived among the lower classes of either hegemony.
Religion: here a mystical, ritualistic pantheism, with Her the symbol and embodiment of all that was divine; among the enemy,
only a harsh materialistic theory of history. Government: he was sickened by the rush of data on Ranger lands, underlings
made into flesh-and-blood machines for the use of a few overlords. Not much came to him concerning the Wardens. This was clearly
not a democracy, but he got the impression of a benevolent hierarchical structure, its law derived rather from tradition than
from formal innovation, power divided among aristocrats who were at one with their people, more like priests or parents than
masters. Priestesses, mothers, mistresses? Women dominated. At the apex were the Koriachs, who were – well – something in
between a Pope and a Dalai Lama? No, not that either. Odd, how sketchy the account was. Maybe because visitors got the local
scene explained to them
viva voce.

The palace opened before Lockridge and he forgot his doubts.

They hadn’t taken the ramp, but floated up a shaft to emerge high in the great building. A floor bluish green, where inlaid
patterns of bird, fish, serpent, and flower seemed nearly alive, shone acre-wide. It was warm and soft underfoot. Columns
built from jade and coral soared to a height he could scarcely believe. Their capitals exploded in a riot of jeweled foliage.
But no less lovely were the plants that grew between them and around a central fountain. He recognized little in those crimson,
purple, golden, sweet-scented banks; a science two thousand years beyond his had created new joy. The vaulted roof was colored
transparency, the whole rainbow melted into a
mandala
that caught the eye and bespoke infinitude, no cathedral window had been so grave and gorgeous. The walls were clear. He
saw through them to a landscape of gardens, terraces, orchards, parks, the hills were aglow with summer. And … what was that
enormous curve-tusked majesty, walking out from among the trees, dwarfing the deer herd … a mammoth, brought across twenty
millennia for a sign of Her awesomeness?

Seven youths and seven maidens, alike as twins, slim and beautiful in their nudity, bent the knee to Hu. ‘Welcome,’ they chorused.
‘Welcome, you who serve the Mystery.’

Only one evening dared the Wardens grant Lockridge before he went on his mission. Too many spies were about, they explained.

Luxuriously robed, he sat with Auri in a thing neither chair nor couch, that fitted itself to every changeable contour of
their bodies, and feasted on foods unknown to him, untellably delicious. The wine was as rare, and turned the world into dreamlike
happiness. ‘Is this drugged?’ he asked, and Hu said, ‘Dismiss your prejudices. Why should one not use a harmless euphoriac?’
The Warden went on to speak of potions and incenses that opened the door to a sense of Her veritable presence in everything
which existed. ‘But those are kept for the most solemn rites. Man is too weak to endure long the godhead in him.’

‘Woman may do so oftener,’ said the Lady Yuria.

She was high in. Storm’s councils, fair-haired, violet-eyed, but with her cousinship plain to see in the Diana face and figure.
More women than men were at the board, and took clear precedence. A family resemblance marked them all, both sexes handsome,
vital, ageless. Their conversation was a glittering interplay in which Lockridge was soon lost; he gave up trying to participate,
leaned back and enjoyed it as he would
music. Afterward he had no firm idea of what had actually been said.

They retired to another hall where colors shifted in hypnotic rhythm through floors and walls. Servants cat-footed about with
trays of refreshment, but there was no visible source for the melodies to which they danced. His diaglossa taught Lock-ridge
the intricate measures, and the Warden ladies were supple in his arms, blending their movements with his until two bodies
became one. Though the scale was strange to him, he was more deeply moved by this music than by most else he had known in
his life.

‘I think you must have subsonics along with the notes,’ he ventured.

Yuria nodded. ‘Naturally. But why must you have a name and an explanation? Is not the reality enough?’

‘Sorry. I’m just a barbarian.’

She smiled and drew closer in the figure they were treading. ‘Not “just.” I begin to see why you found favor with the Koriach.
Few of us here – certainly not myself – could be such adventurers as she and you.’

‘Uh… thanks.’

‘I am supposed to care for your young friend – look, she has fallen asleep – she won’t need me this night. Would you care
to spend it with me?’

Lockridge had thought he wanted only Storm, but Yuria was so much like her that every desire in him shouted Yes! He needed
his whole will to explain that he must get rested for tomorrow. ‘When you get back, then?’ Yuria invited.

‘I shall be honoured.’ Between the wine, the music, and the woman, he had no doubt of his return.

The Lady Tareth danced by with Hu and called gaily, ‘Keep some time for me, warrior.’ Her partner grinned without resentment.
Marriage was a forgotten institution. Storm had remarked once, with some anger, that free people had no property rights in
each other.

Lockridge went to bed early and happy. He slept as he had not done since he was newborn.

Morning was less cheerful. Hu insisted he take another euphoriac. ‘You need a mind unclouded by fear,’ the Warden said. ‘This
will be difficult and dangerous at best.’

They went out for some practice with the devices the American would be using, to make real for him the knowledge imparted
by the diaglossa. High they flew over endless parkland. Near the limit of their trip, Lockridge spied a dove-gray tower. At
the fifteen hundred foot summit, two wings reached out beneath a golden wheel, to make the ankh which signifies life. ‘Is
that on the edge of a city?’ he asked.

Hu spat. ‘Don’t speak to me of cities. The Rangers build such vile warrens. We let men live next to the earth their mother.
That’s an industrial plant. None but technicians are quartered there. Automatic machinery can do without sunlight.’

They returned to the palace. From outside, its roofs and spires made one immense subtly colored waterfall. Hu conducted Lockridge
to a small room where several others waited. They were men; war, like engineering, was still largely a male provenance, short
of that ultimate level on which Storm operated.

The briefing was long. ‘We can get you within several miles of Niyorek.’ Hu pointed to a spot on the map before him, the east
coast of a strangely altered North America. ‘After that, you must make your own way. With your beard shaven off, a Ranger
uniform, your diaglossa and what additional information we can supply, you should be able to reach Brann’s headquarters. We
have ascertained he is there at this moment, and of course we know that you will see him.’

The drug did not keep Lockridge’s belly muscles from tightening. ‘What else do you know?’ he asked slowly.

‘That you got away again. It was reported to him – it will be reported – that you escaped to a time corridor.’ Hu’s gaze came
back hooded. ‘Best I say no more. You would be too handicapped by a sense of being a puppet in an unchangeable drama.’

‘Or by knowing they killed me?’ Lockridge barked.

‘They did not,’ Hu said. ‘You must simply take my word. I could be lying. I would lie, if necessary. But I tell you as plain
truth, you will not be captured or killed by the Rangers. Unless possibly at some later date … because Brann himself never
found out what became of you. With luck, however, you should emerge from the corridor through another, pastward gate, slip
out of the city, and cross the ocean to this place. There you will know how to get back to the present. I hope to greet you
within this month.’

The bitterness faded in Lockridge. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to details.’

There was no full-dress fighting in this era, or there would have been no Earth. Somewhere, sometime, when one side or the
other believed it had grown strong enough, the great onslaught would be launched; but its nature was unguessable by the combatants
themselves. Meanwhile the hemispheres were fortresses and skirmishes were incessant.

The Warden spaceship screamed on a long curve, westward and downward across an ocean where a storm had been generated for
this night. At the end of that trajectory, a voice said, ‘Now,’ and Lockridge’s capsule was ejected. Meteor-like, it streaked
through wind and rain, aflame with the violence of its transit. The ship came about and raked for altitude.

Lockridge lay amidst incandescence. Heat buffeted him; his skull rang with vibration. Then the weakened pod burst open and
he cast himself free on his gravity belt.

So fast was he still going that the force field was barely able
to shield him from a stream that would have torn him asunder. The hurricane raved about his screen, blackness, lightning,
and a wall of rain. Waves grabbed upward at him, spindrift smoking off their crests. As his speed dropped below the sonic,
he heard the wind skirl, thunder crash, waters roar. A blue-white flare cut through the weather and left him dazzled for minutes.
The explosion that followed struck his ears like a hammer. So they detected us, he thought stunned, and shot a firebolt at
the ship. I wonder if she got away.

I wonder if I will.

But so small an object as a man was engulfed by the tempest. Nor were the Rangers likely to be on the alert for him. They
would only expect their enemies to take this much trouble for a major operation and could not know that the sending of a single
agent was indeed one.

History said he was going to reach Brann’s castle.

Climate control fields pushed the storm away from the coast. Lockridge broke into clear air and saw Niyorek.

Monstrous it gloomed on the shore, and inland further than his vision went. Maps and diaglossa had told of an America webbed
from end to end with megalopolis. Little broke that mass of concrete, steel, energy, ten billion slaves jammed together, save
here and there a desert which had once been green countryside. The gutting of his land seemed so vast a crime that he needed
no drug to cast out fear. Oh, Indian summers along the Smokies, he thought, I’m comin’ to get revenge for you.

North, south, and ahead, the city raised ramparts where nothing but a few wan lamps, and the spout from a hundred furnaces,
relieved the lower murk. A sound came over the sea, humming, throbbing, sometimes shrilling so high it was pain to hear: the
voice of the machines. On the upper levels, individual towers lifted a mile or more, the first dawn-glow pallid on their windowless
sides. Cables, tubes, elevated ways meshed them together. The spectacle had a certain grandeur. They were not small-minded,
the men who dreamed those vertical caverns into the sky. But the outlines were brutal,
bespeaking a spirit whose highest wish was the unrestrained exercise of unlimited power, forever.

Lockridge’s helmet vibrated with a call. ‘Who comes yonder?’ Black-uniformed like himself, two sentries stooped on him. Below,
rafted weapons raised their snouts.