G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

“He paid her good money,” Howie said. “What’s he doing here?”

Brother Willibald smiled sadly. “Alas, poor Wight,” he said. “That Flower of Evil sold not herself. ‘Tis thou who art sold!”

It was impossible; Lillith would not do such a thing!

Then he remembered: it had been her idea that he pretend to be slave, her idea that he walk behind. Come to think of it, just about everything since she had broken him out of that cage aboard the Alice had been her idea. There was but one thing to do with people like Lillith. Through his chosen instrument, Howie, the Lord of Hosts would strike her dead.

He reached for the revolver and remembered he no longer had it. He had nothing—no sandals, no chlamys, not even his dungarees!

The old man still faced him, looking for all the world like Howie’s Old Testament-tinted concept of the father he’d never had.

“Strooth, thou’rt sold,” Brother Willibald said. “Wilt thou accept the Penance with true Christian Fortitude or wilt thou rail against the Path which thy God hath set thee?”

Brother Willibald’s question took Howie unawares and abruptly shattered several of his more cherished illusions. Now, he finally remembered that his God had existed even before Christ. He was naked before his enemies, but not beyond jurisdiction. He was being punished by the merciful, compassionate, all powerful and eternal God—the Secret Named God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of Israel, God of Christ, God of Howie, God of Mercy, God of Vengeance.

He had been only too ready to sell, or at least rent, Lillith. Abruptly he burst into ragged cackling laughter.

He was still giggling and whooping hysterically when the hot-eyed little man nudged him into the cold pool.

The chill sobered Howie. He climbed out considerably chastened to face his owner. “I’ve sinned and I’ll pay,” Howie said. “I’ll do whatever he says except one thing.

Even God would never make me do that.”

Brother Willibald interpreted. The crowd marveled at Howie’s amusing display of foreign obstinacy with varying degrees of amusement and cynicism. The hot-eyed little man’s lips began trembling again. He asked another question and when Brother Willibald answered at some length his shoulders drooped.

“He had no other Work for thee,” Brother Willibald interpreted.

Howie found it in his heart to be vaguely sorry for his owner. After all, Lillith had cheated both of them!

Brightening, Howie turned to Brother Willibald. “Maybe you could buy me?”

“God’s Wounds!” the old man groaned. “Had I such Gold I’d buy myself.”

Howie stared. “Are you—?” he began.

Brother Willibald sighed. “I’d not been a day in this Cradle of Democracy before I was seized as a foreign Pauper and auctioned. Alack!” he sighed again, “and nevermore to taste the brown October Ale.” He mumbled incoherently for some moments, then noticed Howie again. “Mayhap I’ll resolve thy Plight,” he said. He spoke rapidly to Howie’s owner. The hot-eyed little man nodded and shambled sadly back toward the hot room.

Brother Willibald found Howie’s chlamys but misunderstood the young god shouter’s demand for his pants. It did not occur to Howie to say trousers, hosen, or bracae. Resigned to the loss, he strapped on his sandals. Brother Willibald led him out of the baths and around the block, up a flight of stairs. There Brother Willibald knocked and the door was unbarred by the loveliest creature Howie had surveyed in all his eighteen years.

She was short, more petite than Lillith, and her diaphanous stola displayed a tiny waist beneath firm breasts.

Her long black hair was in a single braid, piled voluptuously into a crown. The face beneath that crown looked on Howie with every indication of delight. She led Howie into the atrium and signaled him to wait.

“Who is she?” Howie asked.

“Doth Chloe please thee?”

Howie was too stricken to answer.

Brother Willibald smiled a small secret smile and said nothing.

Another woman entered the room. Though there wasn’t the slightest resemblance, her stern, forbidding attitude reminded Howie of his mother. She surveyed the young god shouter from all angles, looked at his teeth, and questioned Brother Willibald.

By the time the old man turned and said, “My Lady will buy thee,” Howie felt six inches shorter.

Remembering Chloe, Howie brightened. Brother Willibald showed him around and Howie tried to shake the girl from his mind long enough to remember which room was which. He was shown a pile of straw in the kitchen for the servants.

“How many are there?”

“Thou, I, the cook, and Chloe.”

Howie worried until the cook turned out to be a walleyed old crone with a slightly crooked back.

“Our Nightwatchman died,” Brother Willibald explained. ” ‘Tis best that thou sleepest now.”

Considering the day’s adventures, it was commendable for Howie’s conscience that he lay awake all of thirty seconds. He had no way of knowing the hour when somebody shook him gently awake.

After mumbling incoherently and rubbing his eyes he saw Chloe, more desirable than ever, carrying a lamp which looked like a shallow teapot with a wick coming out the spout. It silhouetted her lithe young body beneath the transparent stola.

She led him from the kitchen’s discordant snores.

They tiptoed across the atrium to another room and Chloe blew out the lamp. Howie groped blindly before his questing hands found her again. She had removed her stola and rubbed against him in pristine nakedness.

Howie shucked his chlamys and they performed mutual explorations. Preliminaries ended abruptly and matters became more serious.

Two hours sleep were not enough to make up for forty-eight hours without. Some minutes later those exploring hands shook Howie rather abruptly. He yawned and sighed in the darkness, remembering the daylight glimpse of Chloe. Again the night-game began. The farther it progressed the more puzzled Howie became.

Chloe was small, with smooth firm flesh. Could these tremendous buttocks be hers? Would her belly wrinkle and droop? Could those firm breasts yield like masses of unbaked bread beneath his fingers?

He retreated to his side of the bed and sat, trying not to vomit. Was it the walleyed cook? No; she was shorter than Chloe. With a sinking feeling, Howie realized he had traded a master for a mistress, He was feeling sorry for himself when he remembered Brother Willibald’s remark about penance.

“I got myself into this,” Howie gritted. “I’ll get myself out!” He threw himself back into bed and cleaved unto the unknown quantity.

Then something like a wet sandbag hit him in the small of the back and he knew no more.

On the Alice, all hands were gazing anxiously at the two Liburnians. “Go below!” Joe shouted. “We’re going to jump and I don’t want anybody washed overboard.”

“Who steers?” Gorson asked.

“I do. Freedy, you ready?” he yelled down the scuttle.

“All ready, sir.”

The sail was all in, piled on deck in untidy mounds.

Time enough to furl it if the jump was successful. The Liburnians quickstroked and Joe knew they could, for a short time anyhow, make better time than the Alice under power. The jump had damned well better work!

“All right,” he yelled, “throw the switch!”

The twisting, wrenching sensation was over in one subliminal flicker, like a misplaced frame in a movie.

The Liburnians had disappeared; the Alice was now in broad daylight and a calm sea.

Then he noticed Howard McGrath. The little god shouter was tangled in a heap of sail, and as he regained consciousness he began again his befogged and halfhearted attempts at lovemaking. Only when his head had cleared completely did he realize that the unesthetic heap of sail was not his recently-acquired mistress.