The Sword Bearer (34 page)

"You said he was ... I mean
you were .
. .Scotch,.. ."John said breathlessly.

"Not Scotch, son,
Scottish . . ."

"Yes, Scottish." John stopped. Then he laughed with nervous delight. "Are you really my dad?"

Ian McNab drew him closer to him again. "I'm your father and you are my son, the son I never knew I had until today," he said, his deep voice trembling with emotion. John leaned against him, taking satisfying breaths of Harris tweed.

Then he pulled away. "What's the door?" he asked.

Mab turned to look at the gray door again. "How old were you when you came to Anthropos?" he asked.

"Thirteen."

"Well, son, I'm not sure what happened. But ten years before then in your time I booked a berth on a ship bound for Mont-real. I never took ship, for the Changer brought me here first. It's all coming back to me now. My cabin number was 345. Perhaps—who can say—there may be berths for both of us beyond that door. But what year will it be in our world?"

The thunder rumbled again, and this time it had a curious effect on them. It took away their excitement and made them solemn and quiet. From the rumbling came the voice of the Changer "Go forward through the door. The year beyond it is 1929. Far. well."

Seizing John's hand Ian McNab turned the handle with his other. As he opened the door they heard a babble of men's voices beyond it.

They were still leaning on the rail around the stern of the boat long after midnight Nearly all the passengers had gone below. The only sounds were the muted strains of the small orchestra in the first-class lounge, the soft wash of the sea along the liner's sides and the underlying throb of the ship's engines. Behind them the churning of the screws formed a broad pathway of luminescent green that mocked the faint stars above.

Ian McNab and John had filled the hours since their arrival on board with the endless business of exchanging stories. "I didn't want to know anything about your world," Ian McNab confessed. "Perhaps I knew, deep inside, that you came from here, even though I had no idea who you were. I'm not sure. But I pictured it six centuries into the future, and I dreaded to know what it was like. I knew it wouldn't be
my
world anymore."

He had said relatively little about his years in Anthropos but had questioned John endlessly about Grandma Wilson, Pimblett's Place and Salford Grammar School. "The old lady had changed a lot in thirteen years. I didn't even recognize her image at the wharf," he said thoughtfully.

"Why did they call you Mab?" John asked him.

"Because they couldn't say
McNab.
Mab was easier."

"And will you still be a seer? Will you do magic here?"

"Miracles,
not magic. Who knows?" Ian McNab grinned. "I don't have my staff, you know, any more than you have your sword."

"Gosh. I never thought about them till now. I wonder what happened to them? And our clothes!"

"Think what a sensation it will create when someone comes across them," Ian McNab replied. "Can you picture them lying on the wharf—your sandals and tunic and my robe, your sword and my staff—
but no bodies!
What a legend it will make!"

The thought kept them speculating for several minutes.

"Yes, and if time goes by more rapidly there than here," his father continued, "we may have become a legend already. Just think of it. Minstrels may already be singing about us!"

"Will we ever go back?"

"You might, but not me."

"Oh, Mab, I wouldn't want to go back without you."

"You wouldn't want me to die, would you?"

"Die? Oh,
no!
But why should you die?"

"I was pretty close to it when we left, Sword Bearer. I imagine we would go back in the same condition we left. Maybe not Anyway I'm not about to risk it if I can help it. I'd better stay here."

John remembered that gray face of the dying seer and shuddered. "I never thought of that, Mab."

"We must look before we leap, Sword Bearer."

There was a pause. "Why do you keep calling me Sword Bearer?"

"Why do you keep calling me Mab?" "Did I?"

"You most certainly did."

There was another pause. John felt embarrassed. "I can't get used to saying it," he muttered shyly.

"Saying
dad?"

John nodded, and once again Ian McNab's arm pulled him against himself. "You will. Or perhaps I should say, you'd
better.
If you go on calling me Mab, I shall have to stick with John-of-the-Swift-Sword—and that's far too lengthy."

They had hardly known how to behave when they first had entered cabin 345. Ian had been surprised that though ten earth years had passed since he had left, he had the same cabin number as for his first trip. Fortunately their fellow passengers seemed either to know them already or else to be expecting them. There was an elderly fat man from Montreal and three younger men who were French immigrants to Canada, all of whom greeted them cheerfully. There suitcases were on their bunks so that they knew at once which ones belonged to them. To John's surprise, his clothes from Pimblett's Place were all neatly packed inside his suitcase. He never found out how they got there.

They had first entered the cabin just at the time when Cherbourg was disappearing over the horizon, and the other members of the cabin evidently concluded they had been on deck. John smiled when he thought about it. "I didn't know what to say when we went through the door. It was so funny to feel the ship going up and down with the waves and to meet strangers who knew our names."

Ian McNab was looking down at an old gold ring which he wore on the middle finger of his right hand. He had returned the locket to John. "The Earl of Orkney gave the ring to my grandfather for some service or other," he said, "but we never learned anything about its history." He paused. "I wonder whether we brought anything else away with us. Have you checked your pockets?"

John searched. From his blazer pocket he pulled two stones, the smaller one the pearl-like pross stone, and the larger one the Mashal Stone. They stared at the latter in amazement. Even in the starlight it gleamed a radiant blue. John slipped the chain over his head. But to his disappointment he remained plainly visible.

Ian drew in a long breath. "I have a feeling that you, at any rate, will be going back some day. The stones are a link between the two worlds. We'll have to wait and see what happens."

The remainder of the voyage passed without incident, and eleven days later they arrived in Montreal. From there Ian McNab and his son John traveled overland to Winnipeg.

I suppose I ought to say that they lived happily ever after. For that would be true. But it would only be part of the truth.

They lived
eventfully
—or at least John did. As Ian McNab had suspected, John did go back to Anthropos, and the stones did have something to do with it. But that is another story. Is it not recorded in the Archives of Anthropos? If you ever get hold of them you may read it for yourself.