Marof had cautioned the sentries to remain alert.
Sentries at the ruins were always alert, but those who heard the message were too disturbed by it to take offense. The news that Roszt and Kaynor—and possibly Arne—were in the hands of the prince’s guard staggered everyone.
Inskel heard the message incredulously, his face tense with sudden apprehension. He had to decide whether Egarn should be told. The old man was asleep in the room next door, which served as their living quarters, and he needed every moment of rest he could get. Since no lashers had approached the ruins, Inskel decided to tell him after he awoke.
But Egarn was not asleep. He was lying on his bed comfortably swathed in a mound of blankets—the cold, damp, underground air made his bones ache—and petting a large black dog that lay at this side.
The dog’s career in the ruins had begun with an unfortunate mistake. It was a child’s pet, and Egarn sucked it up accidentally when he was trying to steal clothing from a backyard clothesline. He wanted to outfit Roszt and Kaynor completely before they left. Unfortunately, the attempt hadn’t worked, and the dog jumped into the time vortex. Egarn was grateful it hadn’t been a child—a moment later a little boy was running about looking for his dog—and he resolved not to try that again.
Of course they couldn’t send the dog back. He seemed to be an intelligent creature, and he quickly made himself at home in the underground rooms. He answered to the name of Val. Actually, he answered to almost anything, but Roszt and Kaynor made a special pet of him, and they called him Val. When he heard that name, he wagged his tail with pleasure.
None of the members of Egarn’s team had ever had a pet before. Egarn had often wondered where all the domestic animals vanished to. The vicious hunting dogs of Lant were the only survivors he had seen. In the hard times following the wars, when there wasn’t enough food for people, he supposed no one could afford the luxury of feeding an animal. Probably all the dogs were eaten—and cats, too, and Guinea pigs and canaries and anything else that could serve as nourishment.
He heard the faint flurry of excitement in the next room, but he ignored it—they would tell him at once if it concerned him—and continued his reverie.
He was thinking about the Honsun Len. A lifetime of trying to understand it had convinced him he lacked a scientific mentality. He was an empiricist of some resourcefulness, an opportunist whose luck ran in streaks, but he certainly was no scientist. He tried things, building on what the Old Med had taught him and concentrating his efforts wherever a glimmer of promise appeared. Even so, the work of an abnormally long life—as lives were measured in this cursed future—had carried his knowledge a pathetically short distance beyond the legacy the Old Med had bestowed on him.
The len was made of a special glass produced by a select group of one-namers trained to that task only. They kept their guild’s secrets to themselves, rightfully feeling that their privileged position depended on this. In an earlier economic system, this would have been called job security. The little they were willing to impart to Egarn told him almost nothing. From other sources he heard vague references to the various treatments the glass was subjected to, and he suspected that important trace elements were added. Even if he’d had proper equipment for a chemical analysis, both his chemistry and his knowledge of glass were so rudimentary the results probably would have told him nothing. From the scant records that survived, he thought the len’s original inventor probably had stumbled upon some unlikely combination of ingredients by accident. That combination was now the glassmakers’ trade secret.
The glass they sent to the len grinders was black and opaque with a shiny surface. The grinders, working with unbelieveable precision for that primitive technology, formed the ripples that various types of Honsun Len called for. Egarn deeply regretted not being able to run simple laboratory tests involving standard forms of radiation on one of the lens. He had tried numerous experiments while the Old Med was still alive to advise him, but none of them were successful because he lacked basic laboratory equipment.
It had taken him years to conclude that the len emitted energy and more years to decide where it came from. It was temporal energy, the basic force of the universe. The Honsun Len absorbed and focused energy from time. No other explanation accounted for its peculiar effects. Again and again Egarn had drawn upon all of the scientific rudiments he could remember from his distant youth in an attempt to understand this, but each time they failed him.
The len emitted temporal energy. The genius of the Old Med had found a way to store that energy and release it in bursts—though he certainly hadn’t understood what he was doing. The strange, massive apparatus that looked like a photographic enlarger had a device faced with a thick, unpolished slab of Honsun Len glass that functioned like a camera shutter. Egarn reasoned that temporal energy backed up on one side of it or the other, depending on the arrangement of the lens, and rushed through when it was opened. That burst of force could push an object through time. Or, if the lens were reversed, it could suck an object from time.
It was impossible to test such a complicated device without proper laboratory equipment. He could only try different things and observe what happened. He had spent nightmarish months—monts, in this frustrating future—just trying to position his lens with the precision he knew was essential if he were to repeat experiments accurately. He searched tirelessly for ways to calibrate differences so he could make measurable adjustments. Nothing had worked satisfactorily until Arne asked the most expert wood carver in Midlow to make a system of gears for him. With these, he finally was able to move his lens accurately through small gradations.
Now he had refined the settings sufficiently to give him two identified places and two identified times in the past. He needed dozens, but from this point the experiments should proceed quickly. His present worry now was that Roszt and Kaynor would not be ready when he was. He had learned very early that he had neither the time nor the patience to teach them properly. They seemed to learn so slowly, perhaps because much they had to learn was incomprehensible to them. Wiltzon, the old schooler, had a passionate interest in history, and he suggested that Egarn teach him and let him drill the scouts. The schooler was able to assimilate information much more quickly than Roszt and Kaynor did, and he relieved Egarn of the tedium of repeating lessons over and over. But now this system had become cumbersome, and the scouts simply were not progressing rapidly enough. Egarn feared he would soon have to resume their training himself.
Wiltzon had asked him for examples of money from the past. Roszt and Kaynor were having difficulty in understanding twentieth century economics. The notion of exchanging pieces of paper or bits of metal for the goods and services they needed seemed outlandish to them. Wiltzon wanted real money for them to practice with so they could recognize different denominations of bills and coins easily and handle them without looking like befuddled aliens from another time and place.
Although the len sometimes accidently picked up objects, it was undependable in capturing items Egarn wanted for Roszt and Kaynor’s training, and he had failed utterly in his attempts to scoop out the contents of an open cash register drawer. It had been difficult enough merely to find an open drawer to practice on because he didn’t dare make the attempt when a cashier was nearby and risk abducting another human into the future. He was wondering whether he could focus on a bedroom and suck up someone’s wallet or purse. That might also provide examples of important documents for Roszt and Kaynor to familiarize themselves with—driver’s license, checkbook, credit cards, various ID cards. They had to know about all those things even though their own transactions would be on a strictly cash basis.