Tintagel (24 page)

Lanier gave the merchant the reins. "Here, hold these a minute." And he yanked out his Malachi.

He aimed upward along the port side of the boat-craft. There, several painted faces screamed and howled. The Malachi—set this time on rapid-fire—let out a piercing scream of its own and chewed up the wood railing of the ship. All the heads reared backward with dozens of anesthetic needles stitched across their faces. The boat-craft tilted with the sudden dispersal of weight falling across it.

"Let's go!" he commanded.

The merchant stared at his gun, then at him.

"Move!"

The merchant slapped the reins.

The nearest boat to them was a hundred meters away. But the wind on which it drifted put it between them and the base of the tower. Darts were being freely lobbed from the craft. Arrows hissed downward as well.

Lanier jerked out the empty clip from the Malachi and snapped in a fresh one from his belt. The ship he had just shot at began drifting over the houses behind them. Other Shawnee, outlined in the bright afternoon light, were back again at the railing, leaning over more racks of darts. It took two men to hold a single rack.

The merchant skillfully guided the carriage through the throng of settlers and around the darts that stuck in the street. The other boat-craft between them and the tower had drifted away, out of reach, over a side avenue of small stores.

They came immediately to the base of the wooded tower. The base appeared to be an entire building of itself, low-slung with slanted sides. It looked almost like a blockhouse to Lanier.

And only a woman from the future would know what a blockhouse was for
, he realized.

Through the large, out-swung doors, buggies, wagons, and scores of desperate people passed.
An air raid shelter
, he thought.

The carriage wheeled about, and once inside, Lanier could see small balls of fire falling about the rooftops of the village. The boats themselves hadn't touched ground yet, and many of them were still floating high up in the sky. But the settlers could now hear the screams of the Indians quite distinctly. People rushed about.

Lanier looked out through the wide doors. It was almost as if the English and the French and the Dutch had never settled the east coast of America. It was as if these colonists, now in the twenty-first century, had just left a Europe that was for some reason still in the clutches of some leftover, or long-drawn-out medieval era—and the original inhabitants of America, the Indians, had evolved. Their hunting and fighting crafts had progressed a thousandfold. Five centuries is a long time to climb the ladder of technology. Anything was possible, even airborne Shawnee.

Overhead, deep inside the tower, the bell resounded hauntingly, shaking the entire structure. Lanier climbed down from the seat of the carriage. The base of the tower was about the size of an airplane hanger. There was room for hundreds of people, including their horses and wagons. And those hundreds of people were here, now. And everyone was very frightened. They were clearly no match for the Shawnee outside.

Lanier scanned the faces of the women in the crowd, looking for Katie Babcock. The vibrations from the music, which still ran through his mind, told him that she was quite close. But, in the dust and confusion, he couldn't find her in this assembly.

In the very center of the tower base was a spiral staircase. The column of the immense tower began here. Huge beams dug into the earth, and supports ringed the base of the column all the way around it.

Lanier made his way through the men and women to the base of the tower's column. Perhaps he would find the community leaders, and Katie, near the top of the tower. He reasoned that Katie would be one of the leaders here, if not the Mayor herself. It seemed likely.

No one prevented him from mounting the steps and climbing up the inside of the tower. Many men bearing rifles and pouches of gunpowder on slings rushed around him, thundering up the stair. They were too preoccupied to stop him.

Upon reaching the fourth level of the tower, which he reasoned was probably about halfway to the top, Lanier came to a wide platform where men had gathered around the slits in the tower wall. They were firing their rifles off into the distance. Behind them, their sons were reloading the flintlocks.

Lanier gazed out of one of the window slits. One of the boat-craft had moored to the spire of a distant steeple. Another had drifted down to a large building that appeared to be some sort of community house. Yelling and whooping, the Shawnee descended upon the town. Fires blossomed here and there like wild roses.

Just then, a dark cloud passed above the window, and one of the boat-craft sank slowly within a few meters of the opening. The bottom of the hull was either iron or copper—Lanier wasn't too sure which—and bullets ricocheted off it when the colonists fired at the craft. As soon as the boat lowered further, they could see the Indians.

Screams and yells went up, and grappling hooks went out.

The Shawnee were athletic and tawny. Curiously, their hair was trimmed in Mohawk fashion, and on their faces and bare skulls they wore the ugly streaks of red and purple warpaint. Standing at the rear of the platform, Lanier could see just how determined they were. Tomahawks pinwheeled through the windows. Knives flashed.

He almost wanted the Indians to win this one. But
these
Indians weren't the real American Indians who deserved his compassion.

What a world
, he thought, raising his Malachi. The Puritans were poor fighters, poorly organized, and they fired their muzzle-loading rifles all at once in their frenzy. They had to be reloaded by the boys at their backs, and in that brief time the Shawnee were on them.

The Indians leaped from the boat that was now tethered to the tower and scrambled through the windows.

Suddenly they jumped with surprise at the Malachi's staccato growling. Inside the chamber, the Malachi was thunderous—and the Indians either fell from the edge of the boat or they simply fell back out of the windows. The ones who weren't killed in the fall would wake up hours later in the boat with colossal headaches. If they woke up at all.

"Cut those cables!" Lanier yelled, assuming some badly needed authority.
These are weak people, not used to being governed
, he suddenly realized.
Is this how Katie sees herself? Or is this how she sees her people
?

The men stared at him through the dust and smoke that was lanced by shafts of yellow sunlight.

"Do it!" he yelled.

Several dreamlings turned and brought out axes and the cables were severed, the hooks tossed off into space. The Indians slept in the boat-craft, each one with needles sticking in his painted skin.

Lanier spun around and ran back up the staircase.

Within minutes, he reached the command post at the top of the tower. In the center of the room, just above him as he ascended the stairway, was a huge iron bell. He had never seen a bell of this size and wondered briefly how the tower could hold such a thing. It must have weighed tons.

There were also five cannons facing away from the bell. Dust and ash and smoke and utter chaos filled the tower. Dozens of men armed the cannons, dipping long, wadded plungers into their fuming mouths. Each machine took turns firing out the windows, and in the midst of it all was Katie Babcock, shouting down orders, bathed in sweat and smeared with dirt. Tears lined her cheeks.

"Shoot them! Stop them!" she screamed in a broken voice, almost hysterically.

This didn't seem like the President of the United States that Lanier knew. This appeared to be more of the temperment of an ordinary woman caught up in the spell of a crisis that demanded a substantial amount of personal fortitude. Fortitude which she didn't have, at least here.

"
Katie!
" Lanier shouted as soon as he saw her. He stepped up into the room. "Katie! It's me, Fran Lanier!"

Shots from two of the cannons burst around them, deafening everyone. The men suddenly cheered, and through the window before them they could see one of the boat-craft plummeting, split asunder by a well-placed cannonball. The thing dropped like a stone. Whatever was keeping it aloft no longer functioned. The Shawnee fell outward like dolls made of straw.

"Katie!" He grabbed her, shaking her as fiercely as he could.

Wildly, frantically, she looked at him. She seemed about to swoon. Another cannon roared. More men ran up the stairs. They were replacements; some of them were waterboys.

Katie tore herself from Lanier's hold suddenly and staggered, balling her fists into her eyes.

A gentleman came over, very authoritative in a Puritan way, and put his hand to Lanier's shoulder.

"I think you should leave her be," he said firmly, though in a very friendly fashion. "She's been under a great strain lately, and it's enough for us to face the trials that God has seen fit to put upon us." The man's silk shirt was blackened with gunpowder, his wig filthy.

She finally sagged. Lanier reached for her quickly.

"I'm a friend of hers," he told the man. "I'll take care of her."

The gentleman nodded, concerned but conciliatory. He turned back toward the ranks of defenders at the window.

Suddenly, from behind Lanier, he heard a familiar voice.

"Katherine—oh Katherine?"

Lanier turned around and before him stood the tall, impressive figure of Albertson Randell, dressed like a fighting Puritan, his hair all askew and powder stains on his face and ruffled blouse.

"Randell!" Lanier exclaimed.

The man considered Lanier strangely. "Sir?" he asked, rifle in his hand.

"What are you doing here?"

Another cannon exploded, shaking the entire tower.

"I don't know what you mean, sir." A very contrite smile was on Randell's lips. "I am the Governor's husband. Sir Jeffrey Rennel."

Lanier looked at him closely. A dreamling. That's what this was. A dreamling. He should have guessed. He had been so swept up in the turmoil of the scenario that the vision simply startled him for an instant. Randell wasn't anything like a Stalker, and couldn't come to inhabit Katie's world the way he himself could.

But the coincidence!

Lanier couldn't believe his eyes. Albertson Randell. The chaos and heady confusion of the fighting had thrown him. This wasn't Randell. The look on the large man's face told him as much.

They both held Katie in their arms, lowering her to the straw-littered floor of the command post.

Another cannon exploded. The pressure on his ears was enormous. Lanier went deaf for a brief second, still retaining the music and his mantra. He coughed in the smoke. Sound returned slowly. Lanier reached into his vest and pulled out some smelling salts from his medicine pouch.

"These will bring her around," he said to Randell, snapping the vial apart and waving them beneath Katie's nose.

She struggled, thrusting her arms about, trying subconsiously to fend off the noxious odor. She aroused quickly though, recognizing her "husband" and barely recognizing Lanier.

"Katie, are you all right?" Lanier asked. "It's me, Francis Lanier."

She blinked through the smoke. "Francis… Francis …" It sounded like a question.

Almost as if his part called for it, Rennel/Randell got up and went back to the line of men in order for the two of them to be alone; as if the logic of the scenario required it. It was as if Katie were bringing the fantasy back under her willful control.

"Who…?" she started, still clouded from the noise and fighting.

"We're under siege," Lanier began. "That was your husband. You are the Governor here, not the President. Do you remember being President?"

She sat up. One of her sleeves was torn off at the shoulder.

"Yes, I …" She drifted off, her hand to her brow. "Oh, Francis!" Her eyes widened suddenly with recognition. She leaned back, using one arm for support.

"It was too much! Just too much! I couldn't take it … back there."

Lanier nodded, understanding.
It's all too much. Wherever you go, wherever you are
.…

She grabbed his arm. "It was beyond my control, everything!"

Lanier watched her as her mind slowly became clearer, her thinking more resolute. Katie Babcock was, by degrees, becoming Katie Babcock, the President of the United States, again. She climbed up to her feet.

She continued, "The diseases, the corporate wars, the chicano guerrilla taking over southern California. I can't stand it anymore!"

Not quite Katie Babcock, yet
, he thought, watching her. But almost.
The human being inside of her is back, but the warlord is still missing
. Here, in this twenty-first-century colonial world, the passive, feminine characteristics of Katie Babcock had taken over. Katie Babcock was one of the strongest, most aggressive corporate lawyers that had ever stalked Wall Street, and she had been a very tough senator. It wasn't in her basic constitution to become so weak.

But, in this fabrication—this ostensibly serene and rural setting—she had allowed herself to become more yielding, gentle. Perhaps it was a manifestation of something; some previous state that she had lost or sacrificed when she began moving up through the political circles of New York and Washington: something she desperately wanted back.

Here, in this world, she got it. And she got the flying Shawnee. That was the balance. The weak with the strong. The gentle with the terrifying.

And Randell—or Rennel, he wondered. What was that all about? Did she dream him up too? Or is Randell more of a natural element to her psyche than anyone knows
?

But it all balanced out, in this world,
and
in the one she had abandoned.

Another cannon exploded. More of this and Lanier would lose his hearing. And he would have to retain the music as best he could if he were to get them both out of there alive.

He approached her gently. "Katie … we have to get you back. Something terrible is happening and we need your help." He looked at her sincerely.