The Cossacks stopped laughing, and looked at him.
Holding the pistol outstretched with both hands, Robbins stood just far enough away so he could cover all four of them. The music within him started to fade as the reality of the situation sank in.
“Let go of them, you bastards!” The gun swiveled from one to the other. For the first time Robbins got a good look at the weapon. It looked like the kind he’d seen in that violent, century-old “Western” Billingsley had shown him once. Remembering what the hero of that “movie,” Shane, had done with his six-shooter, Robbins cocked the hammer of the gun with his thumb.
The Cossack directly in front of him slowly bent over, pulled his pants back up, and turned around.
“Peace be with you, my friend,” he said through broken yellow teeth. “The Czar has sent us to free you from your oppressors. Certainly not to harm you!” He gestured toward the woman on the ground. “There is enough here for us to share. Let us all pleasure ourselves, and be brothers.”
Even from five meters away Robbins could smell how foul his breath was.
The Cossack bent down again and seemed to brush some mud off his boot, curling his hand. Straightening up, he began to walk slowly towards Robbins. “Let me shake your hand in friendship—.”
“Stay back!”
The other man’s face looked wounded. “Surely you would not shoot down an unarmed man, one who only wishes to be your friend, like a dog! Surely you, a man of the German people, who are known even in our land for their courtesy and gentleness, would not do such a thing!”
Something glinted in the hand the Cossack had used to clean his boot. As the Russian raised his arm back to throw the knife he’d taken from the scabbard hidden in his boot, Robbins’s finger squeezed the trigger of the gun. The recoil staggered him. He recovered in time to see the other man and his knife begin a slow fall to the ground, the top of his head blown away in a scarlet shower of blood, bone, and brain.
The Cossack still on his horse tried to spur it at him. Two shots, and he too lay sprawled and bloody on the ground. The one pinning the woman down leapt up and pulled out his saber. It clattered to the street after a bullet tore through the center of his face.
The last one was still holding the woman’s husband, using him as a shield. As the Cossack tried to pull out his saber the man twisted away from his captor. Robbins put a bullet into the Russian’s belly.
The sound of the Cossacks’ horses whinnying and striking their hooves hysterically against the cobblestones snapped Robbins back to reality. The young man was at his wife’s side, brushing off the blood and gore that had splattered on her bare flesh. Gently pulling her skirt back down, he hugged and comforted the sobbing woman in his arms.
In a daze Robbins walked slowly toward each of the bodies in turn, careful not to step in the spreading red puddles on the street. He didn’t need Harrison here to tell him they all looked very dead. The gun at his side dangled from his finger, then dropped to the ground.
“Will you be all right now?” he asked the man, who’d raised his wife to an unsteady standing position.
“Yes, if you help me,” the man said, glancing toward the nearest horse.
Robbins helped him lift the woman onto its back, sidesaddle. Then the man led the horse down the street, avoiding the crater Robbins had just vacated. He watched the couple turn the comer at the other end of the street, and heard the woman shout over the distant rumble of artillery, “God bless you, and thank you!”
Then, trying not to look anymore at what was on the ground, Robbins walked slowly toward the entrance to the alley—and the portal home. So much for the “First Law of Contact,” he thought darkly as he reached for the bracelet on his left wrist—.
Suddenly there was a sharp bang! and a tearing pain ripped through his back under his right shoulder. Knocked down by the impact, he looked back toward the front of the alley and saw one of the Cossacks—it was the one he’d shot in the belly-lying on his side, pointing the smoking barrel of the gun at him. The Cossack grimaced, dropped the gun, and then lay still.
His back burning like acid, Robbins stared in disbelief at the red stain slowly spreading on the front of his shirt. Somehow he managed to stand up and stagger farther into the alley, fighting the urge to faint. When he tried to raise his right arm more pain lanced through him, and it was getting hard to breathe. Swinging his left wrist over toward his right hand, his numb fingers fumbled with the retrieval bracelet.
Suddenly the air in front of him shimmered, and the welcoming darkness of the portal appeared. Gasping for breath, legs feeling like lead, he stumbled into it. Blackness surrounded him, a peaceful oblivion without beginning or end...
Recapitulation
When he woke up the pain was gone, and he could breathe again. The room was bright and decorated in white. He was in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar place—.
“Don’t try to get up, Howard.”
He sank back into the sheets, and smiled thankfully.
Antonia sat by the edge of the hospital bed. “Dr. Harrison says the surgery went fine, and soon you’ll be as good as new.” Robbins saw the relief in her eyes as she kneaded his hand. Life is so short and uncertain, he thought. It was time to get his priorities right. Cut back on his work, convince Antonia to do the same—and find time to build a life together.
Suddenly he felt very tired. As much as his heart wanted to gaze into Antonia’s eyes, the rest of him just wanted to sleep.
“You won’t leave me, will you, Antonia?” he croaked.
“Never, Howard. I’ll never leave you.”
He drifted back to sleep, Schumann’s Träumerei wafting through his mind.
But when he woke up, Antonia was gone.
The nurse who came in a few minutes later told him that he’d been in the institute’s hospital over four days. Then Velikovsky walked in. The latter asked him to describe what had happened on that street in Vienna in late 1852. Though eager to listen to every detail of the incident, he brushed aside Robbins’s queries about what it all meant with “It’s still too early to tell.”
After Velikovsky left, Robbins tried to think it through himself, but couldn’t. As many times as he’d traveled to TCE, his knowledge of the non-musical history of the places he visited was too sketchy.
Harrison saw him the next morning. “Everything seems to be healing well.” He paused. “Velikovsky asked me to tell you that there’s going to be a special meeting of the humanities committee at 1600 hours. Medically speaking, it should be safe for you to attend.”
“What’s the meeting about? That—incident on TCE?”
Harrison hesitated. “Yes. Velikovsky and his people started investigating it right after you returned, and he’s presenting their preliminary findings and suggestions to the executive committee this morning. He’ll meet with the science committee at 1400 hours, and your committee after that.” He looked at Robbins with an expression that resembled pity. “There are many rumors circulating as to what he will say.”