The door opened. Mother Goodwill, looking neat in a white shirt and peasant skirt, favored me with a sad smile, motioning me in.
“No Halloween costume today,” I commented.
“You’re feeling better, Mr. Bayard,” she said drily. “Will you have a mug of coffee? Or is’t not customary in your native land?”
I shot her a sharp look. “Skeptical already?”
Her shoulders lifted and dropped. “I believe what my senses tell me. Sometimes they seem to contradict each the other.” I took a chair at the table, glanced around the small room. It was scrupulously clean and tidy, furnished with the kind of rustic authenticity that would have had the ladies of the DAR back home oohing and aahing and overworking the word “quaint.” Mother Goodwill brought the pot over, poured two cups, put cream and sugar on the table, then sat.
“Well, Mr. Bayard, is your mind clear this morning, your remembrance well restored?”
I nodded, tried the coffee. It was good.
“Don’t you have some other name I could call you?” I asked. “Mother Goodwill goes with the fright wig and the warts.”
“You may call me Olivia.” She had slim, white hands, and on one finger a fine green stone twinkled. She sipped her coffee and looked at me, as though making up her mind to tell me something.
“You were going to ask me questions,” I prompted her. “After I’ve answered them, maybe you’ll clear up a few matters for me.”
“Many were the wonders you babbled of in your delirium,” she said. I heard a tiny clatter, glanced at her cup; a fine tremor was rattling it against the saucer. She put it down quickly, ducked her hands out of sight.
“Oft have I sensed that there was more to existence than this…” she waved a hand to take in everything. “In dreams I’ve glimpsed enchanted hills and my heart yearned out to them, and I’d wake with the pain of something beautiful and lost that haunted me long after. I think in your wild talk, there was that which made a certain hope spring up again—a hope long forgotten, with the other hopes of youth. Now tell me, stranger, that talk of other worlds, like each to other as new-struck silver pieces, yet each with a tiny difference—and of a strange coach, with the power to fly from one to the next—all this was fancy, eh? The raving of a mind sore vexed with meddling—”
“It’s true—Olivia,” I cut in. “I know it’s hard to grasp at first. I seem to recall I was a bit difficult to convince once. We’re accustomed to thinking we know everything. There’s a powerful tendency to disbelieve anything that doesn’t fit the preconception.”
“You spoke of trouble, Brion…” she spoke my name easily, familiarly. I suppose sharing someone’s innermost thoughts tends to relax formalities. I didn’t mind. Olivia without her disguise was a charming woman, in spite of her severe hairdo and prison pallor. With a little sunshine and just a touch of makeup—
I pulled myself back to the subject at hand.
She listened attentively as I told her the whole story, from Richthofen’s strange interrogation to my sentencing by the Xonijeelians.
“So I’m stuck,” I finished. “Without a shuttle, I’m trapped here for the rest of my days.”
She shook her head. “These are strange things, Brion, things I should not believe, so wild and fantastic are they. And yet—I do believe…”
“From what little I’ve learned of this world line, it’s backward technologically—”
“Why, we’re a very modern people,” Olivia said. “We have steam power—the ships on the Atlantic run make the crossing in nine days—and there are the balloons, the telegraph, and telephone, our modern coal-burning road cars which are beginning to replace the horse in many parts of the colonies, even—”
“Sure, I know Olivia—no offense intended. Let’s just say that in some areas we’re ahead of you. The Imperium has the M-C drive. My own native world has nuclear power, jet aircraft, radar, and a primitive space program. Here you’ve gone in other directions. The point is, I’m stranded here. They’ve exiled me to a continuum I can never escape from.”
“Is it so ill then, Brion? You have a whole world here before you—and now that the artificial barriers have been cleansed from your mind, you’ll freely recall these wonders you left behind!” She was speaking eagerly now, excited at the prospect. “You spoke of aircraft. Build one! How marvelous to fly in the sky like a bird! Your coming here could mean the dawn of a new Age of Glory for the Empire!”
“Uh-huh,” I said ungraciously. “That’s great. But what about my world? By now the Hagroon have probably launched their attack—and maybe succeeded with it! My wife may be wearing chains now instead of pearls!” I got up, stamped over to the window and stared out. “While I rot here, in this backwater world,” I snarled.
“Brion,” she said softly behind me. “You find yourself troubled—not so much by the threat of your beloved friends as by the quality of remoteness these matters have taken on…”
I turned. “What do you mean, remote? Barbro, my friends, in the hands of these ape-men—”
“Those who tampered with your mind, Brion, sought to erase these things from your memory. True, my skill availed to lift the curse—but ’tis no wonder that they seem to you now as old memories, a tale told long ago. And I myself gave a command to you while yet you slept, that the pain of loss be eased—”
“The pain of loss be damned! If I hadn’t been fool enough to trust Dzok—”
“Poor Brion. Know you not yet it was he who gulled you while you slept, planted the desire to go with him to Xonijeel? Yet he did his best for you—or so your memory tells.”
“I could have taken the shuttle back,” I said flatly. “At least I’d have been there, to help fight the bastards off.”
“And yet, the wise ones, the monkey-men of Xonijeel, told you that this Zero-zero world did not exist—”
“They’re crazy!” I took a turn up and down the room. “There’s too much here I don’t understand, Olivia! I’m like a man wandering in the dark, banging into things that he can’t quite get his hands on. And now—” I raised my hands and let them fall, suddenly inexpressibly weary.
“You have your life still ahead, Brion. You will make a new place for yourself here. Accept that which cannot be changed.”
I came back and sat down.
“Olivia, I haven’t asked Gunvor and the others many questions. I didn’t want to arouse curiosity by my ignorance. The indoctrination Dzok and his boys gave me didn’t cover much—just enough to get me started. I suppose they figured I’d get to a library and brief myself. Tell me something about this world. Fill me in on your history, to start with.”
She laughed—an unexpectedly merry sound.
“How charming, Brion—to be called upon to describe this humdrum old world as though it were a dreamer’s fancy—a might-have-been, instead of dull reality.”
I managed a sour smile. “Reality’s always a little dull to whoever’s involved in it.”
“Where shall I begin? With Ancient Rome? The Middle Ages?”
“The first thing to do is establish a Common History date—the point at which your world diverged from mine. You mentioned ‘The Empire.’ What empire? When was it founded?”
“Why, the Empire of France, of course…” Olivia blinked, then shook her head. “But then, nothing is ‘of course’,” she said. “I speak of the Empire established by Bonaparte, in 1799.”