"It turned out to be easier to regrow a whole new right eye rather than trying to repair the severed optic nerve. And from there it was only a matter of hitting another button to regrow them both," Tom said. "Your arthritis is gone, along with your hemorrhoids, and so is a small cancer that you didn't know about.. Your immunizations have been updated, and I've done a general rejuvenation treatment on you. You look the same, but your ladies will be able to tell the difference."
"Wow. I feel great! You did all that in a few seconds?"
"No, it took me three hours to set it up, and inside the machine's time field you spent four months on the program, or your body did. There wasn't any point in boring your mind with the procedure, so I shut that down for the duration. "
"Huh. Well, thanks, Tom."
"No charge. All part of the service. You've been a pain in the ass, but the trouble you've caused has been the first decent challenge we've seen in centuries. What's more, what you have done is very important. Think about it. A whole new world! A whole doubling of the human experience! As time goes on, this branch will develop its own arts, its own sciences, and its own technologies. What new music will they play, what new insights will they have, what new things will they build? I tell you that there are glorious possibilities here, and we intend to explore them! Maybe we'll even try to split one off for ourselves."
"Well, don't rush it, Tom."
"We never have to hurry. Well, now, do you. feel ready to go back to the world you've created?"
Maude left the room, and I said, "In a minute. Just a few more questions. What is it with this servant of yours? She's one of the strangest women I've ever met."
"Well, that's why! She's not a woman. She's a bioengineered creation, just like that neohorse I gave you. They were designed in the same studio and have much in common chemically. She's not a modified human if that's what you're worried about. I'd never allow anything like that. Her equivalent of DNA was built up entirely out of simple chemicals, and she was designed to be attractive, industrious, and completely contented with her lot. Human servants are naturally resentful, doing a demeaning job. Wenches work out much better."
"She has a lot of Anna's traits? Racial memory and all that?"
"Oh yes, along with multiple births and a similar sensory apparatus. She doesn't need a neohorse's remarkable digestive system, though, being designed for a civilized environment, and she can talk, of course, whereas if a horse talked to one of our field researchers, it could get him into trouble. But basically, the two designs are similar except for outward appearance. "
"Interesting. I suspected something like that. Another thing. Once my life was saved by some golden arrows coming down out of the sky. Was that your doing?"
"Who else?"
"Who? God, of course."
"Don't be absurd. There's no such thing."
"You're so sure of that? Maybe that's why you can't change the time stream. Have you ever thought of praying?"
"I'm not even going to answer that one, Conrad."
"Huh. One last question. The afternoon before I rode your time machine, I met a girl at a seed store, a redhead. She was supposed to meet me that night, but she didn't. What happened to her?"
"Somehow I knew you'd ask that. She wanted to come, but her installation director got word of a surprise inspection the next day by the assistant secretary for agricultural research. Her whole outfit spent the night cleaning the place and waxing the floors."
"Huh. I'd forgotten what bureaucracies were like."
"If you say so. Don't you know that they do the same thing at your factories before you show up?"
"Perish the thought! I'll put an end to that! Oh, yes. You've been telling me what a wonderful person I am. Could this wonderful person have a present or two to take back with him?"
"Like what? You want the wench?"
"No, I've got plenty of those, and mine are real. Anyway, I doubt if you have one who can speak Polish."
"True. "
Maude came back and was waiting attentively.
"Then I imagine that she'd be pretty lonely in Poland. But how about some of that coffee?"
"Fine, I'll have her get all you can carry."
"Thank you. And how about some reference texts, an encyclopedia, for example? And I'd give a lot for a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics."
"Are you sure that it would be wise, Conrad? You've made remarkable progress here, mostly because your people have had to think out and solve their own problems. This has put practical working people in charge of things. But when one culture tries to learn from another one, the sort of people who succeed and take control are the academic, unworldly sort, and history has repeatedly proved that it is easier and quicker to invent it all for yourself. I mean it! The United States developed a world class technology in the fifty years between the Civil War and World War 1. It took Japan, Russia, and a dozen other places seventy-five years to do the same thing by copying them, and they had a much harder time doing it. You are progressing just fine on your own."
"If you say so. How about some modern farm animals? Or even just some prize sperm?"
"Same thing. You'll do it better on your own!"
It was a polite no but a no just the same. Well, I tried. Maude came in casually, lightly carrying two huge leather suitcases, almost trunks. I peeked inside one of them, and it was full of freeze-dried instant in vacuum cans. Yet when I picked up the suitcases, it was a strain. That little girl-like thing was incredibly strong!
"Well, good-bye, Tom, and thank you again. Keep in better touch from now on."
"Good-bye for a while. I'll be keeping an eye on you, don't worry."
And so I stepped back through the looking glass, or at least my closet. My last view was of the wench smiling at me with that special twinkle in her eye. I closed the door, and when I opened it again, there was nothing there but my clothes.
I called my servants in and went to bed. And yes, the girls could tell the difference in my rejuvenated self! All of them. Several times.
In the morning the weather was still dead calm. I had Sonya bring me a cup of boiling water to show her how to make instant coffee. But packed between two big cans inside the second suitcase was a copy of The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Maude certainly had a lot in common with Anna and was not the automaton that Tom thought she was. Nice kid!
After enjoying my coffee, I crossed the river. We waited until the sun was fully up, and then I had the siege guns blow down both of the main gates. It took only one round from each of the guns. It wouldn't have taken even that, but the other gunners weren't about to go through the battle without firing a single shot.
The delegates watched all this through the telescopes that Boris Novacek had provided them with-at strictly retail prices, at my insistence and over his earnest objections. Boris figured that we could get away with charging double.
A greenish-yellow gas flowed stickily through the shattered gates, and the gunners ran for high ground as they had been taught. It flowed down the road, through a gutter, and was eventually absorbed into the cool waters of the Vistula.
We waited until the middle of the afternoon, and then Baron Vladimir sent in a few volunteers. They came out saying that the place stank but that the Crossmen were all dead.
They weren't quite right.
After we entered, a group of Teutonic Knights in chain mail and black and white surcoats started shooting crossbows at us from one of the towers. They wounded two men, though not seriously. As he was being carried away, one of them mugged, "What? True belted knights shooting crossbows? How unchivalrous!"