Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

"Are you all right?" Rennie asked quietly.

"Yes." I got up. My feet were steady. "Just, well, overwhelmed."

"To be expected. Come on downstairs and relax awhile, start sorting your experiences out, then we'll call either your wife or a taxi." He had advised me not to drive here.

Already my scientist thoughts were busy. Yet sorrow was rising and rising. When he poured me a glass of wine, I drained it indecently fast. Doubtless I wasn't unique, for he had left the bottle on the table and gave me a refill without commenting. Instead, he let me brood while I sipped more slowly and the alcohol began to ease me a little.

"Was your experience helpful?" he asked at last.

"I learned a lot," I mumbled.

"I'd be fascinated to know. You're not obliged, of course, and in fact you'll probably take weeks to assimilate and organize your memories enough to write them up in even a preliminary fashion. But if you're willing to send me a copy, I assure you it'll have one mighty interested reader."

His commonplace words were exactly the sort I had want of. I realized that he knew it. "Sure, be happy to." He must also know that need as well as courtesy would make me tell him a bit here and now. "I did enter the Northern Bronze Age. Not its glory days, the way I hoped. Its decline. The beginning of the end, in fact."

"I'm sorry. You know the system is poorly calibrated."

"Yeah. A matter of luck. And I know you won't let me try again." I managed a smile of sorts. To absolve him was a comfort to me, a slight easing of my sadness. "Not that I'd apply. You're right about the risks."

"History isn't melodrama. It's tragedy," Rennie said low. I had the impression that that was a quote. "And prehistory. Was your experience terrible?"

I shook my head and slid more wine over my tongue, down my throat. "No, actually not. That is, while I was there I, uh, remembered some pretty grim events. But—" The knowledge surprised me; I hadn't thought of it before "—to the ancestor I shared the mind of, they'd happened long ago, and to him, in his culture, they weren't, well, they weren't shocking. Regrettable, but not, uh, traumatic. Kind of like a veteran nowadays recalling combat. The actual hours I spent were quite peaceful." His look sharpened, though his tone remained gentle. "Just the same, it's touched you rather deeply, hasn't it?" I sighed. "Yes. More and more, the more I hark back. I saw the end of a thousand wonderful years."

He sipped from his own glass while he arranged his words. "Not to push you, Mr. Larsen, especially right now. Explain at your leisure, if you like. In spite of studying your application, I'm afraid I'm basically ignorant in this area."

How good it was for me to go prosaic. "Oh, infinitely complicated, like every other subject. Still, I can give you a rough outline, what you'll find in popular books."

I drew breath. "Copper and tin aren't too easy to come by. Anyhow, they weren't in the far past. So bronze was expensive. Not very many families could afford a full panoply of up-to-date arms and armor for a fighting man. They became the aristocrats. That didn't necessarily mean tyranny. Sometimes they maintained a reasonably just rule of law. Minoan Crete seems to have been pretty happy, for instance. Like, later on, when the technology had gotten there, Bronze Age Scandinavia.

"Iron, though, iron's everywhere. It's harder to extract and work on, but once you know how, anybody can. Barbarians learned, and swarmed forth. They brought Mycenean Greece, for instance, down into a long dark age.

"When the Celts learned, they came out of their Danubian homeland and overran central and southern Europe, as far as Galatia in Turkey, Cisalpine Gaul in Italy, France, Spain, and the British Isles. Meanwhile they developed quite a remarkable culture. At last the Germans stopped them, later the Romans conquered most of them.

"But I—I was back sometime in, I guess, the late sixth or early fifth century B.C. The Celts were cutting off the trade routes and the climate was going bad. Then the arts of ironworking reached Scandinavia. Danish bog iron isn't awfully good, but it was a start, and Sweden has first-class ores. Eventually a peasant could have weapons almost as good as a noble's. Between them, these changes spelled the death of the old order. For better or worse. I'm not saying which. The Celtic influence became so strong in the North that archaeologists define a Celtic Iron Age, before the Roman and the Germanic ones. Certainly some magnificent artwork got created. For a while, society was at least a bit more democratic, the Thing meetings and such. But—it was an age of upheaval, violence, even human sacrifice. And the violence went on and on and on, for two thousand years and more."

I stopped, exhausted, drained my glass again, and slumped, staring into it. "I see," Rennie murmured. "Or half see. Let's call for your ride home."

I nodded. Yes, best to get back and begin coming to terms with my grief. It was not Havakh's, it was mine. He never really knew what was coming. But I had been him, and I did.