David Weber - The Excalibur Alternative

Edward gazed silently up at him for a long, still moment. Then he nodded firmly, and Sir George smiled proudly and ruffled the boy's hair.

"Very well," he said, turning back to his wife. "At least we know how much vacation we'll enjoy, and Sir Bryan and his lady have bidden us to a picnic this afternoon. Would you wish to join them, My Lady?"

"I would, indeed, My Lord," she replied, and his arm tightened about her for just an instant before he nodded in satisfaction.

"Good," he said. "In that case, my love, let us go."

The starship's lander was less than a tenth the size of its mothership, little more than eight hundred feet in length, and made out of the same bronze-tinted alloy. Despite its smaller size, its main cargo hold was a vast and empty cavern, for it was configured to lift heavy loads of cargo out to the starship... and to deliver loads of English soldiers to the surface of the worlds they were sent to conquer. Those same soldiers had seen far too much of the hold's interior over the years, but at least this deck didn't pitch and dance like the decks of those never to be sufficiently damned cogs.

The thought wended through a well-worn groove in Sir George's mind as he leaned forward to pat Satan's shoulder. The destrier shook his head, rattling the mail crinnet protecting his arched neck, then stamped his rear off hoof. The shoe rang like thunder on the deck's alloy, and Sir George smiled thinly. He and the stallion had been through this all too many times. By now both of them should be accustomed to it, and he supposed they were. But neither of them was resigned to it.

The warning gong sounded, and Sir George rose in the stirrups and turned to regard the men behind him. A score of orange-skinned, wart-faced Hathori stood beyond them, clad once again in their heavy plate armor and armed with their massive axes, lining the holder's inner bulkhead, but their function wasn't to support the Englishmen. As always, it was to drive them forward if they hesitated, and to strike down any who attempted to flee.

Not that any of Sir George's men were likely to flee... or to require driving.

The baron and his company were completely adrift in time. Father Timothy had been forced to concede that it was impossible for him to truly know what the day or date was back on long-banished Earth, despite how long and hard he had attempted to maintain some sort of accurate reckoning. Sir George had attempted to ask Computer to keep track of that for them when the priest had finally been driven to admit defeat. Surely such a task would not have been impossible for the mysterious, all-knowing creature invisible at the other end of the voice that whispered in his ear. Not compared to all of the other impossible things Sir George had seen Computer do, at any rate.

But Computer had refused. More than refused, for Computer had informed the baron that he was expressly forbidden to tell the humans how long they had been unwillingly in the service of the demon-jester's guild.

That in itself told Sir George a great deal. The demon-jester had been almost careless in regard to many of the things Computer was allowed to share—or, at least, not specifically prohibited from sharing—with the English. Much of the information which Computer had let slip had been useful to Sir George in the subtle bargaining he'd done with the demon-jester on planet after planet. It was always helpful to know as much as he could about the local terrain and the opposition which might be expected in the field, and Computer had often provided him with odds and ends of the history of a given world. More than once, Sir George suspected, he had in fact learned more about a particular planet and the relative value of its produce (if not why its products had value) than the demon-jester would have preferred. Armed with that knowledge, he'd been able to delicately wrangle specific privileges or extra time upon a given planet out of his "Commander" as a quid pro quo for bending his own skills and insights upon the demon-jester's current problem.

But perhaps even more importantly, the baron had learned other things along the way, things which would have been pronounced rank heresy on the Earth he had left behind. He'd shared most of that knowledge with Father Timothy and the other members of his council, although he'd kept one or two of Computer's more disturbing facts (or theories, at least) to himself. He rather doubted that the demon-jester realized just how much Sir George now understood, however imperfectly, about the larger universe in which the demon-jester's starship moved. Computer routinely used a host of terms which continued to mean but little to the baron—words like "quasar," "nova," "neutrino," "spectral class," and any number of other words whose meaning he was barely beginning to puzzle out. But the demon-jester appeared unaware that Sir George had learned about what Computer called the "speed of light" (although the very notion that light could have a limiting "speed" had flown in the face not only of all he'd ever been taught, but all he'd ever seen) and about what Computer called "relativistic time dilation." The precise meanings and consequences of the terms continued to elude him, since Computer had never specifically explained them to him, but he grasped them well enough to know that if a vessel spent time at or near the speed of light then time aboard it passed far more slowly than it did for the rest of the Creator's universe.

Given the fact that the demon-jester's starship seemed to spend all of its time ferrying the English from one blood-soaked field of battle to another, the "time dilation" effect had to have been considerable. It was impossible to know just how considerable, but Sir George suspected that Computer had been forbidden to tell them the date on Earth so that none of the English would know how many years had elapsed since their departure. It was quite possible, he thought, that everyone they'd ever known was dead by now, even though no more than eleven years had passed by Timothy's reckoning. Of course, that was eleven continuous years of wakefulness; none of them had the least idea how many years they'd passed in the unknowing slumber of phase drive stasis.

Well, they did know one thing for certain: far more than eleven years had passed while they slept.

Not that any of them could have told that by looking at one another, or at any of the other adults of the company, at least. Solely on the basis of the time that he personally had spent awake and aware, Sir George was at least forty-six by now. In fact, he was certain, he was considerably older than that, yet not a single one of his hairs had turned to frost. There was no stiffness in his joints, his teeth were still sound (indeed, three he had lost long ago had regrown), his vision was actually keener than it had ever been on Earth, and in every way that he could judge, he was not a single day older than he'd been on the storm-sick evening when the demon-jester plucked them from the sea.

Computer and Physician had spoken to him of "nanotech," "retroviruses," and "self-replicating regenerative techniques." For all of the explanation they'd ever given him of what those words meant, they might as well have spoken of wizard's spells or black magic, but he couldn't question the effectiveness of whatever those things were. The demon-jester had promised them extended life as one of the "rewards" for serving his guild, and it seemed he'd meant it. Just how long their lives might have been extended for was something Sir George had often speculated upon, but none of his people were so credulous as to believe the demon-jester had truly provided it to reward them. It only made sense for him to insure that his tools lasted as long as they could.

And he had insured that they would. Oh, yes, that he had! By now, almost all of Sir George's men had "died" at least once. Some of them, less skilled or perhaps just more unlucky than their fellows, had been "killed" two or three times. Indeed, Stephen Meadows had the hapless distinction of holding the record; Physician had brought him back from the dead no fewer than five times. Sir George himself had been seriously wounded only once, and hadn't required resurrection even that time, but that was atypical.