After a while he walked onward. He had no regret now that the shunt had brought him here, instead of to some busy capital of the medieval world. This moment out of time, this quiet interlude in the strange fantastic journey that the swinging pendulum had launched him on, was worth a thousand Constantinoples.
He smiled. And then he dropped to his knees after all, and bowed his head, and gave thanks and praise, not knowing to whom, to what. For this beauty, for this moment of peace: thanks and praise. Thanks and praise.
18. Sean + 5×108minutes
Alt! No podo pasari! Todos tempuus vorbudt aqui!”
“Are you speaking to me?” Sean asked the huge mechanical creature that loomed before him.
“Anglic!” the great gleaming robot cried. “Du spikke Anglic! Yis u no?”
“Yis,” Sean said, bluffing for all he was worth. “Ik spikke Anglic. Yis.”
The thing was at least nine feet high, and it was all eyes and mouth. Half a dozen huge sparkling eyes ran around its upper end, some kind of band of sensors that flickered restlessly up and down the whole spectrum and probably beyond it into the infrared and the ultraviolet. And an ugly gaping slot of a mouth, big as the top of a garbage can, in its belly. The better to swallow you with, my little timetraveler. Du spikke Anglic? Answer yis u no, or I’ll gobble you up!
Sean looked around uneasily. He was standing on some rubbery catwalk suspended about twenty feet above what might have been a street. The street looked rubbery too,with purple pumpkin-shaped growths sprouting from it at intervals of eight or ten feet. To his right was what looked like a wall of ice, a smooth glacial face rising to an enormous height. He could see people moving around freely within the ice. So it wasn’t ice and not a glacier, but a building of some sort. On the other side of him the street was lined with giant metallic needles the size of telephone poles. They were glowing pale purple and giving off soft twanging sounds.
So this is the yearA.D.2967, Sean thought. Well, it sure looks like the year A.D.2967.
“Anglic,” the huge robot said. “Du spikke Anglic.” Something was rumbling in its interior, making a cement-mixer sound. The eye-band turned a blazing yellow, then slowly subsided into orange and red. Small portholes on the robot’s sides opened and swiveled. Projections like the feet of insects came poking out of them, waving and wriggling about.
It means to swallow me, Sean thought. As soon as it can figure out what I am. I’m going to be a tin can’s afternoon snack.
He wondered what would happen to him if he turned and tried to make a run for it. Probably a bad idea. He imagined jets of gluey liquid squirting from those portholes and lassoing him at fifty paces.
“Anglic,” said the robot again. “You are a speaker of Anglic. Yes. Yes. Mode adjustment made. Comprendus? You are a tempuu and Anglic is your sprak. Comprendus? Comprendus? Rispondim! Do you comprendan?”
“You don’t quite have it right yet,” Sean said. “But keep trying.”
“No comprendus?”
“No comprendus, right.”
“Correction mode. Correction mode.” The robot began sputtering and mumbling to itself. Cautiously Sean started to back away, moving very slowly. Maybe it won’t notice that I’m leaving. The sounds from the metallic poles to his left grew higher in pitch. People were pointing at him through the glassy walls of the artificial glacier. “You will cease departing,” the robot said. “Correction has been made. We use your mode now. You are Anglic-speaking time-traveler, unauthorized. You will us show your documentuus.”
“Documents,” Sean said. “That’s better Anglic. English, we call it. But I don’t have any documents. I’m too early for that. I come from the year—”
“No documentuus! No documentuus!” The robot’s eyeband flashed vivid scarlet. “Illicitimu! Tempuu vorbudtu! No podo pasari!” It was getting really excited. The enormous froglike mouth was opening and closing. Sean saw lights flashing inside, and gears moving about. It began to move toward him in a slow, ponderous way.
It is going to gobble me up, he thought. Because I’m an unregistered time-traveler and I don’t have the right passport. Or something.
He turned and started to run.
“No!” a voice cried behind him. “Alt! No flikken! Is safe! Is okay! I to do, you will safe!”
A girl, a woman—he couldn’t tell which, he couldn’t begin to guess her age—emerged out of nowhere. She was very slender and she was taller than he was. She had glistening silver hair and silver eyes too, and her skin was bright red, the color of a ripe apple. She looked strange, but she looked beautiful, too.
She might have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Darting swiftly around him, she ran right up to the giant robot and slapped the palm of her hand against itsmidsection. A panel opened at once. She reached in and pressed a key. Instantly the robot’s eye-band color shifted toward blue. “Podo pasari,” the robot muttered. “Tempuu licitimu. Validimu. Propriu.” And it moved off, still muttering to itself.
The woman smiled. Her silver eyes dazzled him.
“You will forgive,” she said. “My Anglic. Is not big good. But you will safe now.” Her voice was deep and rich and warm, with an odd little crack in it. It was like no voice he had ever heard, but very beautiful. Her hand reached toward his. “They do not like tempuus, this year. Time-travelers. Too many come, too much confuse. But I will protect. My people will. How is your name?”
“Sean,” he said. “Sean Gabrielson. From the year 2016.”
“I bin Hepta-Noni-Acanta-Leela-Quintu-Quintu,” she said.
“Is all that your name?”
“I am to you Quintu-Leela,” she said, and laughed. Her laughter was magical. From the humming telephone poles came an answering sound, delicate, eerie. Her hand tightened on his. “Come with me. You will safe with me. I will show the world.” Again the laugh. “Everything. You and me, we bin amicuus. Friends, you say? Friends. We bin very warm friends. Comprendus?”
Sean nodded. He felt as though an electric current were passing from her hand into his. Perhaps it was. Quintu-Leela, he thought. The sound of her voice was marvelously strange and strangely marvelous. And those silver eyes. He imagined her name and his entwined within a heart, blazing in purple fire in the sky.
Love at first sight, that was what it was.
He had heard about such things but he had never really believed they happened. Especially to him. Love at first sight! Was that too crazy? Quintu-Leela and Sean. Sean and Quintu-Leela. God, she was beautiful! And fascinating! That voice! Those eyes!
Yes, I do believe I’m falling in love, he thought.
With a woman who lives in the time of my own great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. Who for all I know could be my own great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter. The woman of my dreams, an incredible woman, a phenomenal woman, and any hour now, maybe any minute now, the displacement force is going to sweep me away from her forever.
19. Eric + 5×109minutes
The tunnels went on and on, an endless maze, one smooth shining onyx-walled corridor after another. Eric had no idea where he was or where he had been or where he was heading. All he knew was that he was somewhere below the surface of the Earth, plodding through corridor after corridor after corridor, never once getting a glimpse of the sun, the sky, the stars. And never once seeing another human being.