Among other things they forbade was time travel. But it had never been popular with anyone since the Time War, when a defeated Directorate army had leaped from the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth century and wrought havoc before their attempt at conquest was smashed. Time travelers were few anyway, the future was too precarious—they were apt to be killed or enslaved in one of the more turbulent periods.
In the late twenty-seventh century, the Planetary League and the African Dissenters had finally ended Fanatic rule. Out of the postwar confusion rose the Pax Africana, and for two hundred years man had enjoyed an era of comparative peace and progress which was wistfully looked back on as a golden age; indeed, modern chronology dated from the ascension of John Mteza I. Breakdown came through internal decay and the onslaughts of barbarians from the outer planets, the Solar System split into a multitude of small states and even independent cities. It was a hard, brawling period, not without a brilliance of its own, but it was drawing to a close now.
«Dis is one of de city-states,» said Belgotai. «Liung-Wei, it’s named—founded by Sinese invaders about tree centuries ago. It’s under de dictatorship of Krausmann now, a stubborn old buzzard who’ll no surrender dough de armies of de Atlantic Master’re at ouah very gates now. Yuh see de red glow? Dat’s deir projectors working on our energy screen. When dey break it down, day’ll take de city and punish it for holding out so long. Nobody looks happily to dat day.»
He added a few remarks about himself. Belgotai was of a dying age, the past era of small states who employed mercenaries to fight their battles. Born on Mars, Belgotai had hired out over the whole Solar System. But the little mercenary companies were helpless before the organized levies of the rising nations, and after the annihilation of his band Belgotai had fled to Earth where he dragged out a weary existence as thief and assassin. He had little to look forward to.
«Nobody wants a free comrade now,» he said ruefully. «If de Watch don’t catch me first, Ih’ll hang when de Atlantics take de city.»
Saunders nodded with a certain sympathy.
Belgotai leaned close with a gleam in his slant eyes. «But yuh can help me, Mahtin Saundahs,» he hissed. «And help yuhself too.»
«Eh?» Saunders blinked wearily at him.
«Sure, sure. Take me wid yuh, out of dis damned time. Dey can’t help yuh here, dey know no more about time travel dan yuh do—most likely dey’ll trow yuh in de calabozo and smash yuh machine. Yuh have to go on. Take me!»
Saunders hesitated, warily. What did he really know? How much truth was in Belgotai’s story? How far could he trust—
«Set me off in some time when a free comrade can fight again. Meanwhile Ih’ll help. Ih’m a good man wid gun or vibrodagger. Yuh can’t go batting alone into de future.»
Saunders wondered. But what the hell—it was plain enough that this period was of no use to him. And Belgotai had saved him, even if the Watch wasn’t as bad as he claimed. And—well—he needed someone to talk to, if nothing else. Someone to help him forget Sam Hull and the gulf of centuries separating him from Eve.
Decision came. «Okay.»
«Wonnaful! Yuh’ll no be sorry, Mahtin.» Belgotai stood up. «Come, le’s be blasting off.»
«Now?»
«De sooner de better. Someone may find yuh machine. Den it’s too late.»
«But—you’ll want to make ready—say goodbye—»
Belgotai slapped his pouch. «All Ih own is heah.» Bitterness underlay his reckless laugh. «Ih’ve none to say good-bye to, except mih creditors. Come!»
Half dazed, Saunders followed him out of the tavern. This time-hopping was going too fast for him, he didn’t have a chance to adjust.
For instance, if he ever got back to his own time he’d have descendants in this age. At the rate at which lines of descent spread, there would be men in each army who had his own and Eve’s blood, warring on each other without thought of the tenderness which had wrought their very beings. But then, he remembered wearily, he had never considered the common ancestors he must have with men he’d shot out of the sky in the war he once had fought.
Men lived in their own times, a brief flash of light ringed with an enormous dark, and it was not in their nature to think beyond that little span of years. He began to realize why time travel had never been common.
«Hist!» Belgotai drew him into the tunnel of an alley. They crouched there while four black-caped men of the Watch strode past. In the wan red light, Saunders had a glimpse of high cheekbones, half-Oriental features, the metallic gleam of guns slung over their shoulders.
They made their way to the machine where it lay between lowering houses crouched in a night of fear and waiting. Belgotai laughed again, a soft, joyous ring in the dark. «Freedom!» he whispered.
They crawled into it and Saunders set the controls for a hundred years ahead. Belgotai scowled. «Most like de world’ll be very tame and quiet den,» he said.
«If I get a way to return,» said Saunders, «I’ll carry you on whenever you want to go.»
«Or yuh could carry me back a hundred years from now,» said the warrior. «Blast away, den!»
3100 A.D. A waste of blackened, fused rock. Saunders switched on the Geiger counter and it clattered crazily. Radioactive! Some hellish atomic bomb had wiped Liung-Wei from existence. He leaped another century, shaking.
3200 A.D. The radioactivity was gone, but the desolation remained, a vast vitrified crater under a hot, still sky, dead and lifeless. There was little prospect of walking across it in search of man, nor did Saunders want to get far from the machine. If he should be cut off from it…
By 3500, soil had drifted back over the ruined land and a forest was growing. They stood in a drizzling rain and looked around them.
«Big trees,» said Saunders. «This forest has stood for a long time without human interference.»
«Maybe man went back to de caves?» suggested Belgotai.
«I doubt it. Civilization was just too widespread for a lapse into total savagery. But it may be a long ways to a settlement.»
«Le’s go ahead, den!» Belgotai’s eyes gleamed with interest.
The forest still stood for centuries thereafter. Saunders scowled in worry. He didn’t like this business of going farther and farther from his time, he was already too far ahead ever to get back without help. Surely, in all ages of human history—
4100 A.D. They flashed into materialization on a broad grassy sward where low, rounded buildings of something that looked like tinted plastic stood between fountains, statues, and bowers. A small aircraft whispered noiselessly overhead, no sign of motive power on its exterior.
There were humans around, young men and women who wore long colorful capes over light tunics. They crowded forward with a shout. Saunders and Belgotai stepped out, raising hands in a gesture of friendship. But the warrior kept his hands close to his gun.
The language was a flowing, musical tongue with only a baffling hint of familiarity. Had times changed that much?
They were taken to one of the buildings. Within its cool, spacious interior, a grave, bearded man in ornate red robes stood up to greet them. Someone else brought in a small machine reminiscent of an oscilloscope with microphone attachments. The man set it on the table and adjusted its dials.
He spoke again, his own unknown language rippling from his lips. But words came out of the machine—English!
«Welcome, travelers, to this branch of the American College. Please be seated.»
Saunders and Belgotai gaped. The man smiled. «I see the psychophone is new to you. It is a receiver of encephalic emissions from the speech centers. When one speaks, the corresponding thoughts are taken by the machine, greatly amplified, and beamed to the brain of the listener, who interprets them in terms of his own language.