Two Hawks heard the bullet scream by. He was not surprised that he had not been hit, since he had seen Ilmika’s feet kick out and slam into the man’s ribs. The man froze for a second, unable to make up his mind to shoot at Two Hawks again or kill Ilmika. Two Hawks stopped and shot twice, both bullets hitting the man. One entered his right temple; the other struck him somewhere in the body. He collapsed, seeming to shrink like a balloon with a pinprick in it.
Ilmika wept and talked hysterically while Two Hawks untied her hands. They returned to the group, which had disposed of the others. Some of the enemy had gotten away; two were dead; one was taken alive with a bullet in his left thigh and another in his right shoulder. He squatted on the ground, his eyes dull with pain.
Dzikohses asked him some questions; the man spat at him. Dzikohses put the muzzle of his rifle against the man’s temple and repeated the question. Again, the man spat. The rifle cracked. His head half-blown off, the man crashed into the ground.
Another wounded prisoner was brought in by Skehnaske’. Dzikohses was about to shoot him, too, then changed his mind. The prisoner was stripped of his clothes, his hands tied behind him, and his ankles bound together. He was hoisted upside down by a rope over a branch until his head was several feet off the ground. Dzikohses took the prisoner’s own long thin dagger and cut off both ears. The man fainted. The party left him hanging there. Some time later, they heard him screaming, then silence came again. He must have passed out once more. A second time, they heard him screaming just as they passed over a shoulder of the mountain. After that, they heard him no more.
O’Brien and Two Hawks were both pale, but not from exertion. O’Brien said. “Mary preserve us! These gooks play rough!”
Two Hawks was watching the Lady Ilmika Thorrsstein. She seemed to have fully recovered. In fact, the incident of the tortured man had restored her color, and she seemed to have derived enjoyment from his punishment. He shuddered. Certainly, the gypsies, or whatever they were, would have done the same or worse to them if they had won. Yet he could never take vengeance in such a fashion. He would have had no compunction about shooting one in cold blood. But this! No, he might be an Iroquois Indian, but he was too civilized.
After that, he found that the blonde was not as aloof as she had been. She was grateful for his having rescued her, although the credit was only partly his. She talked with him whenever they had a chance and began to teach him her language. Now, though he wanted to learn her speech, he was the one who was constrained. It was a long time before he could forget the look on her face as she saw Dzikohses skewer the captive’s ears.
5
Two weeks later, they came down out of the mountains. They were in very flat country and among farms. They were also near the enemy, the Perkunishans, as Ilmika called them. They resumed travel by night. Forty-eight hours later, they took refuge for the day in a huge house which had been the scene of a skirmish. Six bodies lay at various positions and distances from the house, and there were even more inside. The guerrillas had taken the house, but all had died in hand-to- hand fighting along with the Perkunishan soldiers holding it. No one was left to bury the dead, now overdue to be put into the earth. The party dragged the corpses out into a nearby copse of elms and laid them in two shallow graves. The muzzle-loaders were abandoned for the more modern six- shooters.
Two Hawks wondered why Dzikohses had not chosen a more hidden place for their rest. He listened to Dzikohses talk to some of his men—he was understanding at least half of the speech by now—and decided that this was a trysting place. Scouts came back to report that there were no hostiles in the neighborhood. However, cannon made thunder some miles away.
Two Hawks examined a big room which must have been the study of the master of the mansion. There were books on the shelves and on the floor, some destroyed by a bomb. A huge globe of Earth lay on the floor by the table from which it had been hurled by the explosion. He replaced it upright on the table. His heart beating hard, he verified his suspicions and cleared up some of the mysteries.
There were Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, their outlines not quite those he had known. He spun the globe so it rotated eastward. The Pacific Ocean turned slowly by.
He sucked in his breath, aware that O’Brien, his jaw hanging down, was standing by him.
“What the hell?” O’Brien said, and then, “Mary, Mother of Christ!”
There was Hawaii. Beyond it, a chain of islands starting where Alaska should be, running southeastward gently and ending in a large island where the plateau of Mexico should be. The Rockies and the Sierras. Rather, their islanded peaks. A few dots in the east were the tops of the Alleghenies. Everywhere else, water.
Central America was all blue. South America was another chain of islands, larger than those in the northern hemisphere, the Andes.
Two Hawks, sweating more than the heat was responsible for, studied the western hemisphere for a few minutes. Then he spun the globe around to the eastern hemisphere. He bent over to read, or to try to read, the names printed thereon. The alphabet, like that on Ilmika’s calendar, was undoubtedly based on Greek. There was a familiar enough alpha and beta, but the gamma faced to the left. And the digamma and koppa were still being used. Moreover, there were no capitals. Rather, all the letters were capitals.
O’Brien groaned and said, “I’m going to throw up. I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Where in hell are we?”
“Throwing up might make you feel better,” Two Hawks said, “Afterwards, you’ll have to face the truth just the same.”
“Which is?”
“You ever read much science-fiction?”
“Naw. That goofy stuff.”
“Better for you if you had. You might have a more flexible mind. This situation might not be so hard for you to grasp. Or to accept. Because, like it or not, you have to accept. Or go crazy.”
“I’m going crazy. Oh, my God, where’s America? Where’s Chicago?”
His voice was shrill. The others in the room stopped talking to look curiously at him.
“Ever heard of parallel universes?” Two Hawks said. “I know you have because I’ve seen you read comic books that had just such a concept.”
O’Brien looked relieved. “Yeah, I did. Only... hell, you telling me we’re in a parallel universe? A universe that’s at right angles to ours?”
Two Hawks nodded and smiled at O’Brien’s “right angles”. This term was no explanation, only a method of description to make the reader better comprehend. Rather, make him think he was comprehending the incomprehensible. But if the term helped O’Brien get an anchor on reality, allayed his panic, he could keep it. Any anchor was better than none.
O’Brien said, “Then that funny feeling we got back in the Hiawatha...? That was because we were going through a... kind of a... gate?”
“You can call it a gate. The point is, the science-fiction fantasy has become for us a reality. There are parallel universes. I’d like to deny it just as much as you. But there’s no denying this. Somehow, we’ve passed into another universe. We’re on Earth, but not the one we knew.”
O’Brien turned the globe to the western hemisphere. “And this Earth is one where North and South America are under water?”
He shivered and then crossed himself.
Two Hawks said, “I’ve known for some time that things that couldn’t be nevertheless were. Those people”—he indicated the others in the room—“speak a language that is definitely Iroquoian.”