Poul Anderson: The Corridors of Time

He could not read her expression, but a softness lay on the mouth. Yes, he thought, in your kind of life you must grab after everything beautiful you can, while you can. They passed near the great three-spired cathedral and he wished he could find better words than, “Quite a church yonder.”

“A hundred kings lie buried there,” she said. “But under the market square are the still more ancient ruins of St. Lawrence’s; and before that rose, there was a heathen temple with the gable ends carved into dragon heads. For this was the royal seat of Viking Denmark.” Somehow it ran a shiver down his nerves. But her mood passed like a blown cloud and she smiled. “Did you know that the modern Danes call the Perseid meteors the tears of St. Lawrence? They are a people of charming fancies.”

“You seem right interested in them,” he remarked. “Is that why you wanted me to study up on their past?”

Her tone stiffened. “We need a cover story in case we are observed. Archaeological curiosity is a good excuse for poking about, in a land this old. But I said I do not wish to think about these matters now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Again she bewildered him with change. “Poor Malcolm,” she teased. “Is it that hard for you to be idle? Come, we are to be a pair of tourists, camping out at night, eating and drinking at poor men’s inns, winding down back roads and through forgotten hamlets, from here to Switzerland. Let us begin to practice the part.”

“Oh, I’m good at bein’ a bum,” he said, eager to please.

“Have you travelled much, besides your field trips?”

“Sort of. Hitchhiked around some, and used to go into the hinterlands on Okinawa when I had a pass, and took a leave in Japan—”

He was sophisticated enough to admire the skill with which she encouraged him to talk about himself. But that didn’t make the process less enjoyable. Not that he was given to bragging; however, when a gorgeous woman listened with so much interest, he naturally obliged her.

The Dauphine purred down the island, Ringsted, Sorø, Slagelse, and so to Korsør on the Belt. There they must take the ferry. Storm—she had awarded him permission to be on first-name terms; it felt like an accolade—led him to the restaurant aboard. “This is a good time to have lunch,” she said, “especially since drinks are tax free in international waters.”

“You mean this channel is?”

“Yes, around 1900 or so, Britain, France, and Germany held a conference and grew touchingly unanimous in their opinion that the straits through the middle of Denmark are part of the high seas.”

They sat down to akvavit and tall beer chasers. “You know an awful lot about this country,” he said. “Are you Danish yourself?”

“No. I have an American passport.”

“By ancestry, then? You don’t look it.”

“Well, what do I look like?” she invited.

“I’m blessed if I know. A sort of mixture of everything, that came out better’n any of the separate parts.”

“What? A Southerner with a good word for miscegenation?”

“Now come off it, Storm. I don’t go for that crap about would you want your sister to marry one. Mine has the sense to pick the right man for herself regardless of race.”

Her neck lifted. “Still, race does exist,” she said. “Not in the distorted twentieth-century version, no. But in genetic lines. There is good stock and there are scrubs.”

“M-m-m—theoretically. Only how do you tell ’em apart, except by performance?”

“One can. A beginning is being made in your current work on the genetic code. Someday it will be possible to know what a man is fit for before he is born.”

Lockridge shook his head. “I don’t like that notion. I’ll stick with everybody bein’ born free.”

“What does that mean?” she scoffed. “Free to do what? Ninety per cent of this species are domestic animals by nature. The only meaningful liberation is of the remaining ten in a hundred. And yet, today, you want to domesticate them too.” She looked out the window, to sunbright waters and skimming gulls. “There is the civilization suicide you spoke of. A herd of mares can only be guarded by a stallion—not a gelding.”

“Could be. But a hereditary aristocracy has been tried, and look at its record.”

“Do you think your soi-disant democracy has a better one?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’d like to be a decadent aristocrat. I just can’t afford to.”

Her haughtiness dissolved in laughter. “Thank you. We were in danger of becoming serious, were we not? And here come the oysters.”

She chattered so brightly through the meal, and afterward up on the throbbing deck, that he hardly noticed how adroitly she had turned the talk away from herself.

They drove off at Nyborg, on across Fyen, through Hans Christian Andersen’s home town of Odense—“But the name means Odin’s Lake,” Storm told Lockridge, “and once men were hanged here, in sacrifice to him.” And at last they crossed the bridge to the Jutish peninsula. He offered to take the car, but she refused.

The land grew bigger when they swung northward, less thickly populated, there were vistas of long hills covered with forest or with blooming heather, under a dizzyingly high sky. Sometimes Lockridge glimpsed kæmpehøje, dolmens surmounted by rough capstones, stark in the lengthening light. He made some remark about them.

“They go back to the Stone Age, as I hope you remember,” Storm said. “Four thousand years and more ago. Their like may be found all down the Atlantic coast and on through the Mediterranean. That was a strong faith.” Her hands tightened on the wheel; she stared straight before her, down the flying ribbon of road. “They adored the Triune Goddess, they who brought those burial rites here, Her of Whom the Norns were only a pallid memory, Maiden, Mother, and Hellqueen. It was an evil bargain that traded Her for the Father of Thunders.”

Tires hissed on concrete, the split air roared by open windows. Shadows lay deep in the folded uplands. A flight of crows winged from a pinewood. “She will come again,” Storm said.

Lockridge had begun to expect such passages of darkness through her. He made no reply. When they turned toward Holstebro, he checked the map and realised with a clutch at his throat that they didn’t have far to go—not unless she meant to skate across the North Sea.

“Maybe you’d better brief me now,” he suggested.

Her face and voice were alike uninterpretable. “There is little to tell you. I have already reconnoitred. We need expect no trouble at the tunnel entrance. Further along, perhaps—” Intensity flashed forth. She gripped his arm so hard that her fingernails pained him. “Be prepared for surprises. I have not told you every detail, because the attempt to understand would engage too much of your mind. If we meet an emergency, you must not stop to wonder, you must simply react. Do you see?”

“I-I reckon so.” It was good karate psychology, he knew. But—No, damnation, I’m committed. Crazy, stupid, quixotic, whatever you want to call me, I’m on her side—with no more advance warnin’ than this—whatever happens!

The blood raced in him. His hands felt cold.

Not far beyond Holstebro, Storm turned off the pavement. A dirt road snaked west among fields that presently gave way on the right side to a timber plantation. She pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the engine. Silence flowed across the world.

Lockridge stirred. “Shall we—”

“Hush!” Storm’s hand chopped at his words. From the glove compartment she took a small thick disc. Colours played oddly over one face. She shifted it about, her head bent between sable wings of hair to study the hues. He saw her relax. “Very well,” she muttered. “We can proceed.”