The horses did not arrive until after dark, and we agreed that it would be best to leave at dawn. I managed to get some bug spray out of my chest to kill off my attackers, so I enjoyed a relatively peaceful night before the ride in the morning.
The ride! We were three days en route, and before we reached London, even my saddle sores had saddle sores. My primitive companion actually seemed to enjoy the trip, treating it as an outing of sorts, chatting about the country we passed through and getting falling down drunk each evening at the inns where we stopped. We had crossed the Thames above Henley and made a long loop to the south, staying away from all sizable centers of population. When we reached the Thames again at Southwark, there was London Bridge before us and the roofs and spires of London beyond. A little hard to see because of the high wall that stretched along the opposite riverbank. The wall had a crisp, clean look to it, far different from the smoke-stained gray of the rest of the city—and a sudden thought struck me.
“That wall, it’s new, isn’t it?” I said.
“Aye, finished two years back. Many died there, women and children, everyone driven like slaves by Bony to put it up. Right around the city it goes. No reason for it, just that he’s mad.”
There was a reason for it, and ego flattering as it was, I still didn’t like it. That wall was built for me, to keep me out. “We must find a quiet inn,” I said.
“The George, right down here.” He smacked his mouth loudly. “Good ale, too, the best.”
“You enjoy it. I want something right on the river, within sight of that bridge there.”
“Knows just the place, the Boar and Bustard on Pickle Herring Street, right at the foot of Vine Lane. Fine ale there.” The foulest brew was fine by Luke as long as it contained alcohol. But the Boar and Bustard suited my needs perfectly. A disreputable establishment with a cracked signboard above the door depicting an improbable-looking swine and an even more impossible-looking bird squaring off at each other. There was a rickety dock to the rear where thirsty boatmen could tie up—and a room I could have that looked out on the river. As soon as I had arranged for the stabling of my horse and argued over the price of the room, I bolted the door and unpacked the electronic telescope. This produced a clear, large, detailed, depressing picture of the city across the river.
It was surrounded by that wall, ten meters high of solid brick and stone—undoubtedly bristling with detection apparatus of all kinds. If I tried to go under or over it, I would be spotted. Forget the wall. The only entrance I could see from this vantage point was at the other end of London Bridge, and I studied this carefully. Traffic moved slowly across the bridge because everything and everyone was carefully searched before they were allowed to enter. French soldiers probed and investigated everything. And one by one the people were led through a doorway into a building inside the wall. As far as I could tell, they all emerged—but would I? What happened inside that building? I had to find out, and the ale room below was just the place.
Everyone loves a free spender, and I was all of that. The one-eyed landlord muttered and snaffled to himself and managed to find a drinkable bottle of claret in his cellar which I kept for myself. The locals were more than happy to consume blackjack after blackjack of ale. These containers were made of leather covered with tar which added a certain novelty to the flavor, but the customers did not seem to mind. My best informant was a bristle-bearded drover named Quinch. He was one of the men who moved the cattle from the pens to the knackers’ yard where he also assisted the butchers in their bloody tasks. His sensibilities, as one might suspect, were not of the highest, but his capacity for drink was, and when he drank, he talked, and I hung on every word. He entered and left London every day, and bit by bit, through the spate of profanity and abuse, I put together what I hoped was an accurate picture of the entrance procedures.
There was a search; that much I could see from my window. At times a close search, at other times superficial. But there was one part of the routine that never varied.
Every person entering the city had to put his hand into a hole in the wall of the guardhouse. That was all, just put it in. Not touch anything at all, just in up to the elbow and out.
Over this I brooded, sipping my wine and ignoring the roars of masculine cheer around me. What could they detect from this? Fingerprints perhaps, but I always wore false fingerprint covers as a matter of routine and had changed these three times since the last operation. Temperature? Skin alkalinity? Pulse or blood pressure? Could these residents of, what to me was, the dim past differ in some bodily composition? It was not unreasonable to expect some changes over a period of more than 30,000 years. I had to find out the present norms.
This was done easily enough. I constructed a detector that could record all these factors and hung it inside my clothing. The pickup was disguised as a ring that I wore on my right hand. The next evening I shook hands with everyone I could, finished my wine, and retired to my chamber. The recordings were precise, accurate to 0. 006 percent and very revealing. Of the fact that my personal readings fell well inside all the normal variations.
“You are not thinking, Jim,” I accused myself in the warped mirror. “There has to be a reason for that hole in the wall. And the reason is a detection instrument of some kind. Now what does it detect?” I turned away from the accusing stare. “Come, come, don’t evade the question. If you cannot answer it that way, turn it on its head. What is it possible to detect?”
This was more like it. I pulled out a piece of paper and began to list all the things that can be observed and measured, going right down the frequencies. Light, heat, radio waves, etc., then off into vibration and noise, radar reflections, anything and everything, not attempting to apply the things detected to the human body. Not yet. I did this after I had made the list as complete as possible. When I had covered the paper, I shook hands with my self triumphantly and reread it for human applications.
Nothing. I was depressed again. I threw it away—then grabbed it back. Something, what was it, something relating to something I had heard about Earth. What? Where. There! Destroyed by atomic bombs Coypu had said.
Radioactivity. The atomic age was still in the future, the only radioactivity in this world was natural background radiation. This did not take long to check.
Me, creature of the future, denison of a galaxy full of harnessed radiation. My body was twice as radioactive as the background count in the room, twice as radioactive as the hot bodies of my friends in the bar when I slipped down to check them out.
Now that I knew what to guard against I could find a way to circumvent it. The old brain turned over, and soon I had a plan, and well before dawn I was ready to attack. All the devices secreted about my person were of plastic, undetectable by a metal detector if they had one working. The items that were made of metal were all in a plastic tube less than a meter long and no thicker than my finger, which I coiled up in one pocket. In the darkest hour before the dawn I slipped out and stalked the damp streets looking for my prey.
And found him soon enough, a French sentry guarding one of the entrances to the nearby docks. A quick scuffle, a bit of gas, a limp figure, a dark passageway. Within two minutes I emerged at the opposite end wearing his uniform with his gun on my shoulder carried in the correct French manner. With my tube of devices down its barrel. Let them find that metal with a detector. My timing was precise, and when, at the first light, the straggling members of the night guard returned to London, I was marching in the last row. I would enter, undetected, in the ranks of the enemy. A foolproof scheme. They wouldn’t examine their own soldiers.