Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

“Duncan!” The woman leaped up and sprang to him. He leaned on her till things steadied. “Duncan,” she crooned, half laughing, half crying, “ka ankhash Duncan.”

A shadow fell across them. Oleg bounced into battle posture. The horseman had joined their group. His bow was taut and his expression mean.

Somehow that rallied Reid. “Take it easy, friend,” he said, uselessly except for the tone, the smile, the palms lifted in peace. “We’re not conspiring against you.” He tapped his chest, gave his name, did likewise for Oleg. Before he could ask of the woman, whom he finally noticed was more than handsome, she said, “Erissa,” like a challenge.

The mounted man considered them.

Neither he nor his steed was prepossessing. The pony was a mustang type—no, not with that blocky head; rather, it resembled the tarpan of central Asia—dun-colored, shaggy, mane and tail braided, blue tassels woven in: an entire male, doubtless fast and tough but no show animal. It was unshod, its bridle of primitive design, saddle high-peaked fore and aft and short in the stirrups. From that saddle hung a full quiver, a lariat, a greasy felt bag, and a leather bottle.

The rider wore clumsy felt-soled shoes; full trousers of rough gray cloth, tied at the ankles, unbelievably dirty; a felt shirt which could be smelled ten feet off; a long leather coat, belted at the waist; and a round fur cap. For cutlery he had a knife and a kind of saber.

He was powerfully built but dwarfish, five feet three or so, bandy-legged, hairy except for the head. That was shaven, Reid learned afterward, leaving a single black tuft on top and behind either golden-ringed ear. The face was so hideously scarred that, scant beard grew. Those cicatrices must have been made deliberately, since they formed looping patterns. Beneath them, the features were heavy, big hook nose and flaring nostrils, thick lips, high cheek-bones, sloping forehead, slitted eyes. The skin was a weatherbeaten olive, the whole effect more Armenian or Turkish than Mongol.

Oleg had been rumbling in his whiskers. “Nye Pecheneg,” he decided, and snapped: “Polavtsi? Bolgarni?”

The rider took aim. Reid saw his bow was compound, of laminated horn, and remembered reading that a fifty-pound draw would send an arrow through most armor. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “Easy!” When the horseman glowered at him, he repeated the introduction; then, pointing to the shimmering cylinder, he acted out his bewilderment and motioned to include Oleg and Erissa.

The rider made up his mind to cooperate. “Uldin, chki ata Giinchan,” he said. “Uldin. Uldin.” Stabbing a begrimed fingernail from one to the next, he worked on their names till he had those straight. Finally he indicated himself again—all the while keeping his bow handy—and uttered a row of, gutturals.

Oleg caught the idea first. He made the same gesture. “Oleg Vladimirovitch,” he said. “Novgorodski.” He pointed and questioned: “Duncan?”

Who are you? Not you personally; what people do you belong to? That must be it. “Duncan Reid. American.” They were as bemused as everyone else was by Erissa’s “Keftiu.”

For her part, she seemed astonished and hurt that Reid was not more responsive to her. She slipped off to recover her knife. He recognized the metal as bronze. And the iron of yonder arrowhead was precisely that, wrought iron; and Oleg’s equipment was either plain iron too or low-carbon steel, and when you looked closely you saw that each ring, each rivet had been individually forged.

And at the end of a sentence, Uldin was saying of himself, “—Hun.”

He did not pronounce the word in Anglo-Saxon wise, but it rammed into Reid. “Hun?” he gulped. Uldin nodded, with a wintry grin. “At—Attila?” That drew blank; and, while Oleg tugged his beard and appeared to be searching his memory, the name clearly had no deep significance for him, and none for Erissa.

A Russian who felt his nationality was less important than the fact he hailed from Novgorod; a Hun to whom Attila meant nothing; a Keftiu, whatever that was, whose gaze lay with troubled adoration on ... on an American, snatched from the North Pacific Ocean to a desert shore where nobody else had ever heard of America.... The answer began to break on Reid.

It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be.

Because Erissa was nearest, he reached toward her. She took both his hands. He felt how she shivered.

She stood a bare three inches under him, which made her towering if she belonged to the Mediterranean race that her looks otherwise bespoke. She was lean, though full enough in hips and firm breasts to please any man, and long-limbed, swan-necked, head proudly held. That head was dolichocephalic but wide across brow and cheeks, tapering toward the chin, with, a classically straight nose and a full and mobile mouth which was a touch too big for conventional beauty. Arching brows and sooty lashes framed large bright eyes whose hazel shifted momentarily from leaf-green to storm-gray. Her black hair, thick and wavy, fell past her shoulders; a white streak ran back from the forehead. Except for suntan, a dusting of freckles, a few fine wrinkles and crow’s-feet, a beginning dryness, her skin was clear and fair. He guessed her age as about equal to his.

But she walked like a girl, no, like a danseuse, like a Danilova, a Fonteyn, a Tallchief, a leopard.

His smile wavered forth anew. She put aside both her trouble and her worship and smiled shyly in return.

“Ah-humph!” Oleg said. Reid released Erissa, clasped hands with the Russian, and offered a shake to the Hun, who, after a second, accepted. He urged them by gestures to do the same among each other.

“Fellowship,” he declaimed, because any human sound was good in this wasteland. “We’re caught in some unbelievable accident, we want home again, okay, we stick together. Right?”

He looked at the cylinder. A minute passed while he mustered courage. The wind blew, his heart knocked. “That thing brought us,” he said, and started toward it.

They hesitated. He waved them to come along. Erissa soared in his direction. He made her follow behind. Oleg muttered what was probably a curse and joined her. He seemed about ready to collapse in a pool of sweat. Uldin advanced too, but further back. Reid guessed the Hun was a pro, more interested in being able to cover a wide field with his archery than in heroics. Not that Oleg was equipped for anything but close-in fighting.

Beneath Reid’s shoes, dirt and gravel scrunched. His topcoat was smothering him. He took it, off and, thinking about possible sunstroke, draped it on his head for a crude burnoose. The hollow-voiced wind tried to blow it away. Behind the cylindroid, barrenness reached on, and on, and on, till horizon met sky in a vague blur of mirages and dust devils. The cylindroid was almost as hard to make out, within the shifting mother-of-pearl light-mist that enveloped it.

That’s a machine, though, he compelled himself to understand. And I, the only child here of a machine age, I am the only one who has a chance to deal with it.

How big a chance?

Bitsy. Pam. Mark. Tom. Dad. Mother. Sisters, brothers. Phil Meyer and our partnership. Seattle, the Sound, the Straits, the wooded islands, the mountains behind; Vancouver; funny old Victoria; the Golden Gate Bridge, upward leap of walls from the Rotterdam waterfront, Salisbury Cathedral, half-timbered steep-gabled delight of Riquewihr, a thatch-roofed but in a Hokusai print and those homes you were going to build; why does a man never know how much there was in his world before he stands at the doors of death?

Pam, Pamela, Pamlet as I called you for a while, will you remember that underneath everything I loved you? Is that true, or am I just posturing for myself? No matter. I’m almost at the machine.