Keith Laumer: The Other Side of Time

Bayard stirred the dust with his finger, lifted a piece of pitted steel about three inches by six, beveled along both edges, with a groove along the central ridge.

“Just a piece of scrap iron,” I said. “What made it move?”

“Unless I’m mistaken, Mr. Curlon,” Bayard said, “it’s a piece of your broken sword.”

“I don’t believe in magic, Colonel,” I said.

“Not magic,” Bayard said. “There are subtle relationships between objects, Mr. Curlon; affinities between people and the inanimates that play a role in their lives.”

“It’s just old iron. Bayard. Nothing else.”

“Objects are a part of their environment,” Bayard said flatly. “Every quantum of matter-energy in this Universe has been here since its inception. The atoms that make up this blade were formed before the sun was formed; they were there, in the rock, when the first life stirred in the seas. Then the metal was mined, smelted, forged. But always, the matter itself has been a part of ; the immutable sum total of this material plane of reality. Complex inter-relationships exist among the particles of a given world-line—relationships which are affected by the uses to which the matter they comprise are put. Such a relationship exists between you and this ancient weapon.”

Bayard was grinning now—the grin of an old gray wolf who smells blood. “I’m beginning to put two and two together: you—with that red mane, that physique—and now this. Yes, I think I’m beginning to understand who you are, Mr. Curlon— what you are.”

“And what am I?”

Bayard made a motion that took in the room, and the massive pile above it. “This chateau was built in the j year 1196 by an English king,” he said. “His name was J Richard—known as the Lion-Hearted.”

“That’s what he was. What am I?”

“You’re his descendant, Mr. Curlon. The last of the Plantagenets.”

I laughed aloud at the letdown. “I suppose the next move is to offer me a genuine hand-painted reconstruction of the family coat of arms, suitable for framing. This must be your idea of humor, Colonel. And even if it were true, after thirty generations, any connection between him and a modern descendant would be statistically negligible.”

“Careful, Mr. Curlon; your education is showing,” Bayard’s smile was grim. “Your information is correct—as far as it goes. But a human being is more than a statistical complex. There are linkages, Mr. Curlon—relationships that go beyond Mendel and Darwin. The hand of the past still reaches out to mold the present—and the future—”

“I see. The lad with the nerve-gun is running me down to collect a bill that Richard the First owed his tailor—”

“Bear with me a moment, Mr. Curlon. Accept the fact that reality is more complex than the approximations that science calls the axioms of physics. Every human action has repercussions that spread out across a vast continuum. Those repercussions can have profound effects—effects beyond your present conception of the exocosm. You’re not finished with all this yet. You’re involved—inevitably, like it or not. You have enemies, Mr. Curlon; enemies capable of aborting every undertaking you attempt. And I’m beginning to get a glimmering of an idea why that might be.”

“I’ll admit somebody sank my boat,” I said. “But that’s all. I don’t believe in vast plots, aimed at me.”

“Don’t be too sure, Mr. Curlon. When I discovered that missions were being carried out in B-I Three—the official designation of this area—I looked into the matter. Some of those missions were recent—within the last few weeks. But others dated back over a period of almost thirty years.”

“Which means someone has been after me since I was a year old? I ask you, Colonel: Is that reasonable?”

“Nothing about this affair is reasonable, Mr. Curlon. Among other curiosa is that fact that the existence of B-I Three wasn’t officially known to Intelligence HQ until ton years ago—” He broke off, shook his head as though irritated. “I realize that everything I say only compounds your confusion—”

“Am I the one who’s confused, Colonel?”

“Everything that’s happened has a meaning—is a part of a pattern. We must discover what that pattern is, Mr. Curlon.”

“All this, on the basis of a fishknife and a piece of rusty metal?”

I put out my hand and he put the piece of iron in it. The upper end was broken in a shallow V. There was a gentle tugging, as if the two pieces of metal were trying to orient themselves in relation to each other.

“If it’s all my imagination, Mr. Curlon,” Bayard said softly, “why are you fighting to hold the two pieces apart?”

I let the smaller shard turn, brought it slowly across toward the point of the knife. When it was six inches away, a long pink spark jumped across the gap. The pull increased. I tried to. hold them apart, but it was no use. They moved together and touched… and a million volts of lightning smashed down and lit the room with a blinding glare.

The rays of the late sun shone fitfully from a cloud-serried sky, and shadows fled across the sward, across the faces of those who stood before me, swelled up in arrogance, petty men who would summon a king to an accounting. One stood forth among them, a-glitter in rich stuff, and made much of flourishing the scrolls from which he spelled out those demands by which they thought to bind my royal power.

To the end I let him speak his treason, for all to hear. Then I gave my answer.

From the dark forest roundabout my picked archers stepped forth, and in a dread silence bent their bows. And my heart sang as their shafts sang, finding their marks in traitors’ breasts. And under my eyes were the false barons slain, every one, and when the deed was done I walked forth from my pavilion and looked on their dead faces and spurned with my foot that scrap of parchment they called their Charter.

The voices and the faces faded. The shadowed walls of the old storeroom closed in around me. But it was as though years had passed, and the room was a forgotten memory from some distant life, lived long ago.

“What happened?” Bayard’s voice rasped in the silence.

“I… know not,” I heard myself say, and my own voice sounded strange in my ears. “ ’Twas some fit took hold on me.” I made an effort and shook the last of the fog out of my brain. Bayard was pointing at me—at what I held in my hand.

“My God, the sword!”

I looked—and felt time stop while my pulse boomed in my ears. The broken blade, which had been a foot long, was half again that length now. The two pieces of metal had welded themselves together into a single unit.

“The seam of the joining is invisible,” Bayard said. “It’s as though the two parts had never been separated.”

I ran my fingers over the dark metal. The color, the pattern of oxidation was unbroken.

“What did you experience while it was happening?” Bayard asked.

“Dreams. Visions.”

“What kind of visions?”

“Not pleasant ones.”

Bayard’s eyes went past me to the wall beyond.

“The sword wasn’t the only thing that was affected,” he said in a tight voice. “Look!”

I looked. Against the stones, where only tatters had been, a faded tapestry hung. It showed a dim, crudely worked design of huntsmen and hounds. There was nothing remarkable about it—except that it hadn’t been there five minutes ago.

“Notice the pattern,” Bayard said. “The big figure in the center is wearing a cloak trimmed in ermine tails—a symbol of royalty. My guess is that’s Richard himself.” He looked around the room, bent and picked up the genouillère. The metal was dark with age, but there was no rust on it now.