Poul Anderson: The Corridors of Time

Her voice dropped. She looked into the forest walling this meadow. “I often think,” she said slowly, “that the downward turn started in this very millennium, when the earth gods and their Mother were swept aside by those who worshipped skyward.”

She shook herself, as if to be rid of something, and continued in a level tone, “Well, Malcolm, accept for now that the Wardens are keepers of life—life in its wholeness, boundedness, splendour, and tragedy—while the Rangers would make the world over in the machine’s image. It is an oversimplification. I can perhaps explain better to you later on. But do you find my cause unworthy?”

Lockridge regarded her, where she rested like a young wildcat, and said with a surge that drove out all terror, remorse, and aloneness: “No. I’ll go along. I already have.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “If you knew what the token meant, not only in words but in your blood, I would leap over the fire to you for that.”

What does it mean? he wanted to ask. Dizzyingly: A man might hope. But before he could speak, Storm grinned and said: “The next few months should be interesting for you.”

“Good Lord, yes!” he realised. “Why, any anthropologist would give his right—uh—eye to be here. I still can’t believe I am.”

“There are dangers,” she warned.

“So what is the situation, anyway? What do we have to do?”

“Let me begin at the first,” Storm said. “As I told you, the struggle between Rangers and Wardens cannot be fought in our own time on any major scale. Instead, it has moved largely into the past. Bases are established at strategic points and—no matter now. I know the Rangers have a stronghold in Harald Bluetooth’s reign. Though the Asia religion was already one of Sky Father, still, the introduction of Christianity was another advance for them, laying the foundation for centralised monarchy and the eventual rationalistic state. Thence came the men we met.”

“Huh? Wait! You mean you people change the past?”

“Oh, no. Never. That is inherently impossible. If one tried, he would find events always frustrated him. What has been, is. We time travellers are ourselves part of the fabric. But let us say that we discover aspects of it which are useful to our respective causes, we get recruits, build up strength for the final contest.

“Well. In my time, the Rangers hold the western hemisphere, the Wardens the eastern. I led a party into the twentieth century and overseas to America. We could not build anything important by ourselves without being observed by enemy agents, who are much more numerous in your age than ours are. But our plan was to organise a company whose ostensible purpose was something unremarkable, to pose as ordinary citizens of the era. We picked yours because that was the first century in which such items as we needed—transistors, for instance—could be obtained locally and hence inconspicuously. In the guise of a mining enterprise in Colorado, we produced our underground installations, manufactured an activator, and drove a new passage.

“The plan was to strike through it, emerging in our own time, in the Rangers’ heartland. But the moment the corridor was finished, Brann came down it with an overwhelmingly superior force. I do not know how he got word. Only I escaped. For more than a year, then, I wandered about in the United States, seeking a way of return. Every futureward corridor would be guarded, I knew, the Rangers being so strong in the Early Industrial civilization. Nowhere could I find a Warden.”

“How’d you live?” Lockridge inquired.

“You would call it robbery,” Storm said.

He started. She laughed. “This energy gun, which I had with me, can be set to do no more than stun. There was no problem in gathering some thousands of dollars, a few at a time. I was desperate. Can you blame me so very much?”

“I ought to.” He looked at her in the firelight. “But I don’t.”

“I didn’t think you would,” she said softly. “You are such a one as I hardly dared hope I could find.

“You see, I needed a helper, a bodyguard, someone to make me appear otherwise than a woman travelling alone. That is too conspicuous in all past ages. And I had to go pastward.

“I ascertained there was no guard on this Danish corridor. It was the only one I dared attempt with a gate open on those decades. Even so, you saw how near we came to destruction.

“But now, here we are. There is a Warden base in Crete, where the old faith is still strong. Unfortunately, I cannot simply call them to come fetch us. The Rangers are also active in this milieu—it is, as I said, a crucial one—and they might too likely intercept the message and find us before our friends can. But once we have reached Knossos, we can get an armed escort, from corridor to corridor until I have reached home. You will be dismissed in your own era.” She shrugged. “I left a good many dollars hidden in the United States. You may as well have them for your trouble.”

“Skip that,” Lockridge said roughly. “How do we get to Crete?”

“By sea. There has long been trade between these parts and the Mediterranean. The Limfjord is not far away, and a ship from Iberia, which is under the religion of the megalith builders, should call sometime this summer. From Iberia we can transship. It should take no longer, and is less hazardous, than following the amber route overland.”

“M-m-m . . . okay, sounds reasonable. And I suppose we have enough metal on us to buy passage. Or do we?”

Storm tossed her head. “If not,” she said haughtily, “they will not refuse to carry Her Whom they worship.”

“What?” Lockridge’s mouth fell open. “You mean you can pose as—”

“No,” she said. “I am the Goddess.”

White sunrise mists rolled low across a drenched earth. Water dripped from a thousand leaves, glittered in the air and was lost in brush and bracken. The woods were clamorous with birdsong. High overhead wheeled an eagle, the young light like gold on its wings.

Lockridge woke to a hand shaking him and blinked sandy lids. “Huh? Whuh—No—” Yesterday had drained him, he was stiff and dull in the head, aching in his muscles. He looked into Storm’s face and fumbled to recognize her, to know and accept what had happened.

“Rise,” she said. “I have started the fire again. You will prepare breakfast.”

Only then did he see that she was nude. He sat up in his sleeping bag with a choked-off oath of amazement, delight, and—awe was perhaps the word. He had not known the human body could be so beautiful.

Yet his instinctive reaction died at once. It was not only that she paid him no more attention than if he had been another woman, or a dog. One does not, cannot make passes at Nike of Samothrace.

And a remote bass bellow, thundering down the forest till a flock of capercailzie took flight with enough wings to blot out the sun, distracted him. “What’s that?” he cried. “A bull?”

“An aurochs,” Storm said. The fact that he was really here, now, personally, stabbed into him.

He scrambled from the bag, shivering in his pyjamas. Storm paid the chill no heed, though dew lay heavy in her hair and gleamed down her flanks. Is she human? he wondered. After everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve got ahead of us, not a trace of strain—Superhuman. She made some mention of genetic control. They’ve created the man beyond man, off in the future. She wouldn’t need much trickery to start the cult of the Labrys down in Crete, centuries ago. Only herself.

Storm squatted and opened one of the bundles from the cabinet. Lockridge took the opportunity to start changing behind her back. She glanced around. “We will need contemporary clothes,” she said. “Our gear will excite sufficient gossip. Take the other costume.”