Keith Laumer - The Other Side of Time

He sat astride the great war-horse, in the early morning, looking across the field toward the mist-obscured heights where the enemy waited. The chain-mail coif and hauberk weighed heavy on him; and there was another weight within him: a sense of a thing undone, a duty forgotten, of something valuable betrayed.

“The mist clears, my lord,” Trumpington spoke at his side. “Will you attack?”

He looked up at the sun, burning through the mist. He thought of the green vales of home, and the sense grew in him that death waited here on this obscure field.

“No. I’ll not unsheathe Balingore this day,” he said at last.

“My lord—is all well with you?” There was concern in the young squire’s voice.

He nodded curtly. Then he turned and rode back through the silent, staring ranks of his panoplied host.

At Molly’s place, the jukebox was breaking its heart over a faithless woman, but there was nobody listening but a few conchs sitting out on the rickety porch under the yellow bug lights, nursing beers and catching the breeze moving in off the gulf. It was after nine P.M. and the heat of the day was gone from the beach, and the surf coming up on the sand sounded lonesome and far away, like an old man’s memories.

I took a stool at the bar and Molly put a bottle of wine in front of me, with the seal still intact.

“Johnny, it happened again today,” she said. “I found a platter I swear I broke last month, right there in the sink, not a chip out of it. And the whiskey stock is different—stuff I never ordered there, and not a sign of the Red Label—and you know I know my stock. And three heads of cabbage, fresh yesterday—rotten in the cooler!”

“So—your last order was mixed up—and the vegetables weren’t as fresh as they looked,” I said.

“And toadstools growing in the corners?” she said. “I guess that’s natural too? You know better’n that, John Curlon! And how about this?” She brought a heavy cut-glass cup up from behind the bar. It was about one-quart capacity, rounded on the bottom, with a short stem.

“This was here when I came in this evening. It’s worth money. How’d it get here?”

“Impulse shopping,” I suggested.

“Don’t kid me, Johnny. There’s something happening—something that scares me! It’s like the world was shifting right under my feet! And its not just here! I see things all around—little things—like trees are in different places than they used to be—and a magazine I started reading; when I came back to it—there wasn’t any such story in the book!”

I patted her hand and she caught my fingers. “Johnny—tell me what’s happening—what to do! I’m not losing my mind, am I?”

“You’re fine, Molly. The glass was probably the gift of some secret admirer. And everybody loses things sometimes, or remembers things a little differently than they really were. You’ll probably find your story in another magazine. You just got mixed up.” I tried to make it sound convincing, but it’s hard to do when you’re not sure yourself.

“And Johnny—what about you?” Molly was still holding my hand. “Have you talked to them yet?”

“Who?” I asked.

She gave me a hot look from a pair of eyes that had probably been heartbreakers back before the Key West sun had bleached the fire out of them. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean! There was another one in today asking for you—a new guy, one I never saw before.”

“Oh—them. No, I haven’t had time—”

“Johnny! Smarten up! You can’t buck that crowd. They’ll smash you so flat you could slide under the linoleum without making a bump.”

“Don’t worry about me, Molly—”

“Sure, grin! Johnny Curlon, six foot three of bone and muscle, the fellow with the bullet-proof hide! Listen, Johnny! That Jakesy’s a mean one—especially since they put the wire in his jaw. He’ll chop you into cutbait—” she broke off. “But I guess you know all that. I guess nothing I can say is going to change you.” She turned and picked a Remy Martin bottle from the back bar.

“Like you said, it’s just a glass. Might as well use it.” She poured brandy into the chalice and I picked it up and looked into the glint of amber light inside it. The glass was cool and smooth and heavy against my palms…

Seated in my great chair, I looked down at the narrow, treacherous face of him I had loved so well, saw hope leap up in those crafty eyes.

“My lord kind,” he started, and shuffled toward me on his knees, dragging the chains that he bore. “I know not why I was cajoled to embark on such rude folly. ’Twas but a fit of madness, meaning naught—”

“Three times ere now have you sought my throne and crown,” I cried, not for his ears alone, but for all those who might murmur against that which I knew must be. “Three times have I pardoned thee, lavished anew my favor on thee, raised thee up before loyal men.”

“Heaven’s grace descend on thy Majesty for thy great mercy,” the glib voice babbled, and even in that moment I saw the hunger in his eyes. “This time, I swear—”

“Swear not, thou who are forsworn!” I commanded him. “Rather think on thy soul, to tarnish it no more in these thy final hours!”

And I saw fear dawn at last, driving out the hunger and all else save lust for life itself. And I knew that lust to be foredoomed.

“Mercy, brother,” he gasped, and raised his manacled hands to me as to a god. “Mercy, out of memory of past joys shared! Mercy, for love of our mother, the sainted Lady Eleanor—”

“Foul not the name of her who loved thee!” I shouted, hardening my heart against the vision of her face, pale under the hand of approaching death, swearing me to the eternal protection of him who knelt before me.

He wept as they bore him away, wept and swore his true allegiance and love for me. And later in my chambers, drugged with wine, I wept, hearing again and ever again the jail of the headsman’s ax.

They told me that at the end, he found his manhood, and walked to the block with his head held high, as befits the son of kings. And with his last words, he forgave me.

Oh, he forgave me…

A voice was calling my name. I blinked and saw Molly’s face as through a haze of distance.

“Johnny—what is it?”

I shook my head and the hallucination faded. “I don’t know,” I said. “Not getting enough sleep, maybe.”

“Your face,” she said. “When you took the glass in your hands and held it up like that, you looked—like a stranger…”

“Maybe it reminded me of something.”

“It’s getting to you too, isn’t it, Johnny?”

“Maybe.” I drank the brandy off in a gulp.

“The best thing for you would be to go away,” she said softly. “You know that.”

“And if they don’t?”

“You can’t have everything,” I said.

She looked at me and sighed.

“I guess I knew all along you’d go your own way, Johnny,” she said.

I felt her eyes following me as I pushed through the screen door and out into the cool evening air.

A heavy fog had rolled in from the gulf, and down at the pier the big mere lamps were shining through the mist like a bridge out into nowhere. At the end of it, my boat floated in fog. She was a sweet forty-footer, almost paid for, riding low in the water with full loads in her four hundred-gallon tanks. The pair of 480 Supermarine Chryslers under her hatches were old, but in top condition; I’d rebuilt them myself. They’d always gotten me where I was going, and back again.