G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

Even as Joe Rate, he came to the belated conclusion that this she-devil was less freewheeling than would appear at first glance. She had not, Howie suddenly realized, the slightest intention of seducing him. The knowledge left him shaken to the very core of his being, for if she were defending her virtue then Howie’s wandering hand had sinned him into a very tight corner.

How could he ever make amends to God and Mother for attempting to lead this fair flower astray?

Why, she could probably be led down paths of righteousness and become a true Christian! But that was beside the point. He had wrong this girl. There was but one way to make amends. He would marry her.

The thought shocked him but there was no avoiding it. Come to think of it, hadn’t St. Paul suggested it was better to marry than to burn? Howie could no longer hide even from himself the ardor with which he burned.

It would not be pure sacrifice on his part, he decided.

But if he were to marry this fair flower he must first save her from the Infidel. A wave of shame swept through Howie as he realized that his betrothed was witness to this shameful, rodentlike cowering in darkness. He felt the strength of God flowing into him. It was time to act. But what was he to do? Why was Mr.

Rate taking so long?

Joe and the imam still faced each other across the minuscule cabin. “What kind of a weapon is it?” the imam asked.

Joe took the pistol reluctantly from his belt. “Fire burns in a closed place,” he explained. “The smoke pushes a piece of lead out of this tube.”

“Ingenious,” the old man said. “How far will it throw?”

Joe thought a moment, trying to remember if the Arabs used yards. Probably not. He spread his arms wide and said, “Fifty times this distance.” He tossed the pistol into the drawer below his bunk with a careless gesture.

The old man was impressed. “I should like to visit your country.”

“So would I,” Joe added with a sad smile.

The imam grinned wolfishly. “You can bamboozle Sidi Ferroush with yarns about a far continent, but I have talked with a man who went there. It is a worthless land, filled with howling savages and strange sicknesses. I do not think you were blown off course. Nor do I think you are lost. You have charts and you have bits of crystal ground Archimedes fashion. No.” The imam laughed his short hard cackle. “I believe in God but I do not expect to see Paradise through a burning glass.”

Joe realized dimly that he was not at his best with an open mouth but he couldn’t get around to closing it.

“You do not come from the Worthless Continent,” the old man continued. “Your ship and tools are too fine for savages. Besides, you look like Roumi—Europeans.

“If I were still young and believed in the fabulous kingdom of Prester John— But alas, I am old and a cynic. Yet, I would give the remaining years of my life to know from whence you come.”

“You’d never believe me,” Joe said.

“Probably not,” the old man conceded, “but that will not make me stop listening.”

Joe took a deep breath and began. It was a garbled account, punctuated with skippings back and forth as he remembered details, interrupted often with fumblings for words Joe didn’t know and ideas which had never existed in Tenth Century Spain.

In the last few days Joe had become more proficient in the language—really more of an uniflected Latin than Spanish. As he told his tale one corner of his mind reflected on how he was slipping into a new pronunciation with vowel sounds all different from what he’d learned in school. Abruptly, he broke off and began chanting:

“Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit…”

The imam looked at him with a slight, quizzical smile.

“So that’s how it sounded!” Joe marveled, his face lighting with the first and only love of his life. “Latin’s a dead language in our time, you know. We could only guess at how it sounded.

“Litora multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem lunonis ob iram; multa quoque et—”

He continued, rolling over Virgil’s meter with rising confidence. “No wonder the empress fainted the first time she heard it!”

“I begin,” the old man said, “to believe your fantastic tale.”

Joe looked at him.

The old man began chanting in a regular, even meter and Joe listened, tormented by a feeling that he could almost understand. The old man stopped abruptly. “It’s changed from his day to mine,” he explained. “But that’s how I think he might have sung it.”

“Again!” Joe said with mounting excitement.

The imam repeated, and abruptly the harsh syllables fell into meaning for Joe. Tears started in his eyes as he remembered Dr. Battlement. How many years would Old Prof have given to hear the Iliad in Homer’s accents?

“I see you recognize it.”

Joe nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

The imam was silent for a moment. “You have the advantage,” he finally said.

“How?”

“We are history—to be read in any book. You are the future which is read in no book.”

“I’m afraid I can tell you little,” Joe said. “And I wonder if I should tell you anything. I might change the course of history and erase my own present.”

The imam shrugged. “I will change no history. I am an old man with no hunger to gratify but curiosity. He laughed his single cackle again. “I doubt if I am important enough to be inscribed in the histories, so I won’t ask the date of my death. But you could tell me, I think, what were or will be the fates of Islam and Christendom.”

“That brings me to a problem which has plagued me since this whole thing began. What year is this?”

“376.”

The 376th year of the Hijra, Joe calculated, would bring it to about 998 A.D. “What month?” he asked.

“The Arab month is lunar and wanders all over the seasons. At the moment I can’t remember what it would be by the Greek Calendar.”

“Has the summer solstice passed yet?”

“Oh yes, 70 days ago.”

So it was late summer after all. Where, Joe wondered, had he slipped up in his navigation? He reached absently for a cigarette and belatedly realized he was violating his own order about hands out of pockets. Oh well, he philosophized, the old buzzard had seen through everything else he’d tried to pull. He lit it with a sidelong glance to see how the old imam would react to matches. The old man merely watched interestedly without comment. Joe offered him a cigarette but the old man waved it away with a typically Greek gesture.

When the smoke drifted his way he coughed.

“A disgusting habit,” Joe conceded. “Let’s go on deck where the air’s fresher.”

Dr. Krom and Lapham were sleeping on the settees in the darkened galley. The oceanographer stirred and muttered an angry phrase in Hungarian. He’ll sleep better tomorrow, Joe thought. We’ll all sleep better when I pass the word. With a little luck the imam can swing an appropriation and some back comer of the Alhambra for us to carry out a few experiments. All they would have to do was keep Mr. Big happy with an invention once in a while—an improved hour glass or something fancy in the way of weapons. He wondered if he could manufacture a parachute flare out of pitch and sulfur and whatever else would be available.

“How many of your people understand this language?”

Joe asked.

“Most of them were born in Spain,” the old man said.

They made their way up into the Alice’s bows, picking their way past sleeping Moors. The helmsman and two huge Negroes who leaned on scimitars in the yawl’s waist all greeted the old man respectfully. Joe sat on the anchor winch and the imam squatted on deck beside him. All sails were drawing in the starlit night and Joe’s admiration for the Moorish helmsman increased. He took a final puff on his cigarette and began telling the old man what had happened in the world since 998.