The High-Tech Knight
Book 2 of the Adventures of Conrad Starguard
Prologue
He unloaded the temporal canister, glanced quickly at his new subordinate, reloaded it with his previous superior, and hit the retrieve button. That had to be done quickly. Holding the canister in 2,548,950 B.C. was expensive.
He examined her frozen, nude body. It was just over four feet tall and skinny. The skin was dark brown, the hair black and tightly curled, the breasts small yet pendulous. An excellent imitation of a type twenty-seven protohuman. The biosculptors had done a good job.
He switched off her stasis field.
Her eyes opened, she stared shocked at the stalactites on the ceiling of the cave. She noticed the naked brown man bending over her, noticed her own nakedness and yelped, covering her breasts and groin.
"Yeah, the uniform here is a bit skimpy." He chuckled. "The protos haven't invented clothes yet, so what can we do? Hey. Don't look so shocked. I'm not going to rape you. You're not my adolescent fantasy any more than I'm yours."
"Damn it! I have five doctorates!"
"I'm sure your mother is very proud of you. Are any of them in finding carrion or grubbing for grubs? Anything else isn't very useful around here."
She glanced furtively at the cave's rock walls, at the torch that was its sole illumination.
"What is this place? When is it? And who are you?" She was still clutching her groin.
"You weren't briefed? This is anthropological research station fifty-seven. The time is half past two.million B.C., and I am your charming host, Robert McDougall. I'd tip my hat, but you see the problem. The tribe here calls me 'Gack,' so you might as well, too. No point in being formal when you're naked. I'll be your boss for the next fifty years."
"Fifty years…"
"Right. Then I go home, a new chum arrives, and you get to be boss for fifty more."
The cave was cold and wet. She shivered. "This is all some horrible mistake!"
"How can there be a mistake? You replaced the asshole I used to work for. Not that I really had anything personal against her, but you'll understand that after fifty years with only one person to talk to, you just naturally start to hate each other's guts."
"Anyway, the computers don't make mistakes, so you're supposed to be here because you've arrived at the proper time and in a body properly tailored for our research."
"This body!" She bawled, "I used to be beautiful!"
"All part of the high price of science," he said. But she had pulled herself into a fetal position and was sobbing louder. "Hey, you're serious, aren't you? You actually didn't volunteer for this post?"
"No! I mean, yes I didn't volunteer. I was in twentieth-century Poland. I spent one day on my new assignment and the monitors came and I woke up here! I'm in the Historical Corps. I don't know anything about anthropology!"
" Why, those filthy bastards. ."
"Yeah," she said, grateful for any sympathy.
"…sending me a totally untrained recruit! My God! That means…" He stooped down and found a sliver of bone on the cave floor. He grabbed her right hand.
"This doesn't hurt. You won't feel it at all." He slipped the bone under her index fingernail and moved it sideways. She stared openmouthed as he repeated the operation on her left hand.
"What…"
"They were both turned off, thank God. Look. You have some fairly powerful equipment built into that little body. Your right index finger contains a temporal sword. With it, you can cut a tree in half at six paces. Your left contains a fire-starter. They can save your life, but if you don't know how to use them, they can kill you. Or me!"
"There's more?"
"Some recorders, communicators, beacons, and so on. But that can wait. I want to find out what you're doing here." He squatted in front of a large flat rock by the cave wall. He pressed four nondescript spots on the rock. Glowing white letters appeared in the air before him.
READY
He started tapping the blank rock as though it was a typewriter keyboard.
INFO REQUEST PERSONNEL RECORD. HISTORICAL CORPS WORKER NO….
"Hey. What's your number?" She told him, he loaded it and started reading. "Hmmm… born in North America, 62,218 B.C…. approved for child rearing; eleven children… at forty-five, attended Museum University 62,219 B.C. to 62,192 B.C…. doctorates in medicine, Slavic languages, psychology, and Greek literature… accepted into the Historical Corps… assigned to Periclean Athens, forty-one-year tour of duty. Performance unsatisfactory. ."
"That wasn't fair!" she said.
"Fair? What's fair? If you want to talk about 'fair,' go talk to one of our protos after her kid's been eaten by a leopard!" he snapped.". . Returned to university and obtained a doctorate in ancient Egyptian languages… turned down on four assignment requests, ninth through thirteenth dynasties… assigned twentieth-century Poland… caused a situation which resulted in unauthorized transport of local citizen to the thirteenth century. Involuntarily assigned to anthropological section as disciplinary action. ."
"The bastards! Turning my station into a penal colony!"
"But all I did was leave a door open!"
"We'll see what you did." He backspaced a few lines and requested an information expansion. "Good Lord! You're her! They used to tell stories about you in school. You're the worst screw-up in our history! You're the one who sent the owner's own cousin back to the Polish Middle Ages, ten years before the Mongol invasions, when the guy didn't even know that time travel existed. They couldn't bring him back because he wasn't discovered there until the invasion was actually on. The owner himself found his own cousin on the battle lines, so they had to leave the guy there for the ten years or violate causality. When you make a mess, lady, you don't kid around!"
"But all I did was to forget to close a door!"
"You screw up here and I'll feed you to the leopards." He pulled up four more files and scanned them. "Well, if it's any consolation, your last boss was punished for failing to brief you properly. He'll be here in fifty years as my replacement and you get to break him in."
"I think I'll just quit and go back to North America."
"Fine. You'll get your chance to do that in a hundred years, subjective."
"But-"
"Lady, this far back we get one canister every fifty years. The last one just left and the next one is taking me out of this flea-bitten pest hole."
"So cheer up, kid, and make the best of it. Hungry? Come on, I'll show you where there's a good rotten log. Lots of grubs."
Chapter One
My name is Sir Vladimir Charnetski. I am a good Polish knight and a true son of the Holy Catholic Church. I was born in 1212, the third son of Baron Jan of Charnet.
I write because my instructress felt that I could improve my literacy by recording the events of my life, but on reflection I find that there is very little to say. I had an ordinary upbringing. At sports I was better than most, but not the best. I am good at arms, but there are some who can knock me out of the saddle. My chess is solid but uninspired.
Who would want to read the tale of so ordinary a knight? None but my mother and she already knows it.
But in my twentieth year, I met a most extraordinary nobleman and I think it fitting to write about him.
His name is Sir Conrad Stargard and I met him in the following manner. In the fall of 1231, word came from my father's liege lord, Count Lambert, that we should send a knight to Lambert's castle town to attend there on Easter and for the three months thereafter.
This was a duty that I eagerly sought for myself, for rumor had it that Okoitz was an excellent place for many reasons. Lambert's table was reputed to be one of the best in Silesia and his wine cellar the best stocked in Poland. Also, Lambert took his droit du seigneur in a most unusual and, it seemed to me, a most delightful way. The lord of a manor naturally has the right to enjoy his peasant girls on the night before their wedding. My father is a vigorous man in most respects; but encouraged by my mother, he had long since declared himself too old for this duty and delegated the task to his sons.