“What happened?” whispered the Venusian. “Where are we?”
Everard sat rigid. His mind clicked over, whirling through all the eras he had known or read about. Industrial culture—those looked like steam cars, but why the sharp prows and figurehead?—coal-burning—postnuclear Reconstruction? No, they hadn’t worn kilts then, and they had spoken English…
It didn’t fit. There was no such milieu recorded.
“We’re getting out of here!”
His hands were on the controls when the large man jumped him. They went over on the pavement in a rage of fists and feet. Van Sarawak fired and sent someone else down unconscious; then he was seized from behind. The mob piled on top of them both, and things became hazy.
Everard had a confused impression of men in shining coppery breastplates and helmets, who shoved a billy-swinging way through the riot. He was fished out and supported in his grogginess while handcuffs were snapped on his wrists. Then he and Van Sarawak were searched and hustled off to a big enclosed vehicle. The Black Maria is much the same in all times.
He didn’t come back to full consciousness until they were in a damp and chilly cell with an iron-barred door.
“Name of a flame!” The Venusian slumped on a wooden cot and put his face in his hands.
Everard stood at the door, looking out. All he could see was a narrow concrete hall and the cell across it. The map of Ireland stared cheerfully through those bars and called something unintelligible.
“What’s going on?” Van Sarawak’s slim body shuddered.
“I don’t know,” said Everard very slowly. “I just don’t know. That machine was supposed to be foolproof, but maybe we’re bigger fools than they allowed for.”
“There’s no such place as this,” said Van Sarawak desperately. “A dream?” He pinched himself and managed a rueful smile. His lip was cut and swelling, and he had the start of a gorgeous shiner. “Logically, my friend, a pinch is no test of reality, but it has a certain reassuring effect.”
“I wish it didn’t,” said Everard.
He grabbed the bars so hard they rattled. “Could the controls have been askew, in spite of everything? Is there any city, any when on Earth—because I’m damned sure this is Earth, at least—any city, however obscure, which was ever like this?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Everard hung onto his sanity and rallied all the mental training the Patrol had ever given him. That included total recall; and he had studied history, even the history of ages he had never seen, with a thoroughness that should have earned him several Ph.D.’s.
“No,” he said at last. “Kilted brachycephalic whites, mixed up with Indians and using steam-driven automobiles, haven’t happened.”
“Coordinator Stantel V,” said Van Sarawak faintly. “In the thirty-eighth century. The Great Experimenter—colonies reproducing past societies—”
“Not any like this,” said Everard.
The truth was growing in him, and he would have traded his soul for things to be otherwise. It took all the strength he had to keep from screaming and bashing his brains out against the wall.
“We’ll have to see,” he said in a flat tone.
A policeman (Everard assumed they were in the hands of the law) brought them a meal and tried to talk to them. Van Sarawak said the language sounded Celtic, but he couldn’t make out more than a few words. The meal wasn’t bad.
Toward evening, they were led off to a washroom and got cleaned up under official guns. Everard studied the weapons: eight-shot revolvers and long-barreled rifles. There were gas lights, whose brackets repeated the motif of wreathing vines and snakes. The facilities and firearms, as well as the smell, suggested a technology roughly equivalent to the earlier nineteenth century.
On the way back he spied a couple of signs on the walls. The script was obviously Semitic, but though Van Sarawak had some knowledge of Hebrew through dealing with the Israeli colonies on Venus, he couldn’t read it.
Locked in again, they saw the other prisoners led off to do their own washing: a surprisingly merry crowd of bums, toughs, and drunks. “Seems we get special treatment,” remarked Van Sarawak.
“Hardly astonishing,” said Everard. “What would you do with total strangers who appeared out of nowhere and used unheard-of-weapons ?”
Van Sarawak’s face turned to him with an unwonted grimness. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
“Probably.”
The Venusian’s mouth twisted, and horror rode his voice: “Another time line. Somebody has managed to change history.”
Everard nodded.
They spent an unhappy night. It would have been a boon to sleep, but the other cells were too noisy. Discipline seemed to be lax here. Also, there were bedbugs.
After a bleary breakfast, Everard and Van Sarawak were allowed to wash again and shave with safety razors not unlike the familiar type. Then a ten-man guard marched them into an office and planted itself around the walls.
They sat down before a desk and waited. The furniture was as disquietingly half-homelike, half-alien, as everything else. It was some time before the big wheels showed up. There were two: a white-haired, ruddy-cheeked man in cuirass and green tunic, presumably the chief of police, and a lean, hard-faced half-breed, gray-haired but black-mustached, wearing a blue tunic, a tam o’shanter, and on his left breast a golden bull’s head which seemed an insigne of rank. He would have had a certain aquiline dignity had it not been for the thin hairy legs beneath his kilt. He was followed by two younger men, armed and uniformed much like himself, who took up their places behind him as he sat down.
Everard leaned over and whispered: “The military, I’ll bet. We seem to be of interest.”
Van Sarawak nodded sickly.
The police chief cleared his throat with conscious importance and said something to the—general? The latter answered impatiently, and addressed himself to the prisoners. He barked his words out with a clarity that helped Everard get the phonemes, but with a manner that was not exactly reassuring.
Somewhere along the line, communication would have to be established. Everard pointed to himself. “Manse Everard,” he said. Van Sarawak followed the lead and introduced himself similarly.
The general started and went into a huddle with the chief. Turning back, he snapped, “Yrn Cimberland?”
“Gothland? Svea? Nairoin Teutonach?”
“Those names—if they are names—they sound Germanic, don’t they?” muttered Van Sarawak.
“So do our names, come to think of it,” answered Everard tautly. “Maybe they think we’re Germans.” To the generaclass="underline" “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” Blankness rewarded him. “Taler ni svensk? Nederlands? Dönsk tunga? Parlez-vous français? Goddamit, habla usted español?”
The police chief cleared his throat again and pointed to himself. “Cadwallader Mac Barca,” he said. The general hight Cynyth ap Ceorn. Or so, at least, Everard’s Anglo-Saxon mind interpreted the noises picked up by his ears.
“Celtic, all right,” he said. Sweat prickled under his arms. “But just to make sure…” He pointed inquiringly at a few other men, being rewarded with monickers like Hamilcar ap Angus, Asshur yr Cathlan, and Finn O’Carthia. “No… there’s a distinct Semitic element here too. That fits in with their alphabet.”