Poul Anderson - A Midsummer Tempest

“Comin’ right along, duck,” the barmaid answered. She pattered to fetch Holger’s tankard and fill it afresh.

“Would you care for a drink yourselves?” the Dane asked them both.

“Aow thanks, sir, but I got me place to tend,” said the barmaid. “Might draw meself a mild-and bitter, though.”

“And I’ve me own’ostly duties,” the landlord added. “The poor lady over there ain’t got anybody else’ere tonight what can talk with her. Besides, I think you’re busy. You come join us when you can, what?”

He sought the woman by the hearth, resumed his chair, lifted his goblet to hers, and proceeded in their conversation.

“Hey!” Valeria warbled. “Yippee! Here we are—Sokolnikoff, Introduction to Paratemporal Mathematics.” She took a closer look. “And, yeah, right beside it, the Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics, so I don’t even have to go upstairs for my copy.” She grabbed the two volumes, plus paper and pencils off the desk.

Back by Holger, she drew her chair close to his and sat down. “Now, look,” she told him, “I can’t teach you everything they’ve learned in my world. Anyhow, I don’t claim to understand more than the elements myself. And even our experts still have some pretty large areas of ignorance. But the theorems I do know let me cross from continuum to continuum, with a fair probability of landing in whichever one I want, or a reasonable facsimile of it. I even deduced there had to be an interuniversal nexus. That’s how I found the Old Phoenix. You did it by accident, didn’t you?”

“Well,” he said defensively, “at least I have been traveling too.”

“Yah!” she gibed. “Using the spells from that superstition-riddled medieval grimoire you located—an unguided missal if ever I saw one. You could hunt through the time-lines till you died of old age, in its random style. Or no, not that long: till you met something too tough and smart and mean. Had several narrow squeaks already, haven’t you?” She tapped a book. “Okay. You did once take an engineering degree. You should appreciate a systematic treatment. You may get a glimmering of how to cast a transportation spell that has a better-than-chance likelihood of taking you where you would want to go.” She sighed. “I hope, for openers, you’ve got the wit to grasp the fundamental ideas of the transcendental calculus, because that’s how we prove the theorems you’ll need, and without understanding, you can’t get any good out of them.” Holger reached for the volume. “Please explain,” he said meekly. “You shouldn’t take all this trouble for a stranger.”

“Aw, hell, I like you, man.” Valeria started to talk and draw diagrams. The other woman chatted with Taverner-Boniface-Kromand, though her attention kept straying. The barmaid waited in amiable patience.

Rupert and Will came into the taproom, cleansed, remarkably refreshed, the former regal, the latter gawky in robes of timeless cut but many colors. They paused at the entrance. Rupert’s glance was caught by a picture unlike most of the portraits, landscapes, and action scenes around: a colored print of a glossy kind new to him, eerily beautiful in its vista of a starry night wherein floated a banded silvery globe encompassed by shimmering rings.

The landlord beckoned. “Ah, welcome, guests,” he hailed. “Come take your ease and drink. What is your pleasure?”

“Beer!” said the two like a single mouth.

The landlord chuckled. “I thought’twould be.”

Rupert led the way to the hearth. “You’re far too kind, good Master Taverner,” he said.

“Nay, Highness, I’m a fat and cunning spider, albeit male, which weaves a subtle web bedewed with ale and wine and stronger waters, and thus ensnares a singing swarm of lives, to batten on the fables that they bear.” The landlord waved at armchairs. “Do join us. Oh, but first I must present you.” He spoke to the woman, with an appropriate gesture: “ Rupertus, filius comitis palatini Rheni, et Guillermus, miles et famulus suus,” To the men: “And this is Clodia Pulcher, come from Rome.”

Will leered at her. Rupert was dumfounded. “That Clodia—Catullus’ Lesbia?” he faltered. (His host nodded.) “But she is dead these sixteen hundred years!”

“Not in the world that is her own, my lord. And here may come, from every time and clime, aye, every cranny of reality, whoever finds a way to find the door and brings uncommon tales wherewith to pay.”

Taverner winked. “She is an often guest, our Clodia: tonight in disappointment growing sulky till your arrival. Sit ye, sirs, I pray.”

Rupert curbed himself, bowed over the woman’s hand, kissed it, and greeted her: “ Salve, domina; ad servitiwn tuum.”

She beamed and purred in reply, “ Oh! Loqueris latine?”

Rupert shrugged. “ Aliquantulum, domina.” Too bemused to struggle further with the language, especially when his pronunciation and, no doubt, grammar were so unlike hers, he settled his great frame beside the landlord’s.

The barmaid arrived with two brimful tankards. She curtsied as she handed one to Rupert, saying, “Here’s for your Highness.” Giving Will the other, she added more casually, “And the same for thee. I hope’twill smack you well.”

“I thank thee, goodwife,” said Rupert absently. Will picked a chair next to Clodia’s, though her attention remained on his master. Goggle-eyed, he little marked what a noble brew he drank.

Valeria nudged Holger. “Let’s join the party for a while,” she suggested.

“I could use a break,” he agreed. “You know, I damn near flunked differential equations in college, and now you spring this stuff on me.”

She threw him a sharp glance. “Look, friend,” she said, “given your background, you ought to know already that God never felt obliged to make the universes easy for us to understand.”

“Or easy in any way,” he sighed. “ Naa, da, let’s go.” He put pipe in mouth, tankard in fist, and sauntered along.

Clodia, who had been getting no response from Rupert, ignored Valeria but turned the full battery on Holger. He gulped. “Twenty lashes with a wet eyeball,” Valeria muttered. To Rupert and Will: “Good evening, gentlemen.”

The prince rose and bowed; his follower was too rapt. “If you’ll allow self-introduction… lady—” His voice trailed off.

She smiled. “Not used to women in slacks, are you? Sorry. I’m Valeria Matuchek, from the United States of America, if that means anything to you.”

She extended her hand. He hung fire a moment, decided there could be no harm in showing her a courtesy to which she might be entitled, and kissed it as he had Clodia’s. “Hey!” she said. “You know, you’re the first man I’ve ever met who could do that with real authority?”

Rupert straightened, to tower above her and reply, “I do not comprehend, fair damosel.”

“Our accents are sort of thick, mutually, aren’t they? You sound a bit like Holger—here, Holger Carlsen, from Denmark, though he’s spent a lot of time in my own country, on a different hyperplane.” The two big men clasped hands. “I’m Rupert, of the Rhine Palatinate,” the Cavalier said, seeking to establish good relations. “My mother’s mother was a Danish princess—Anne, queen to James of Scotland and of England, two countries which have been close friends with Denmark since days of Hamlet, if not further yet.”

Holger raised brows. “Hamlet?” Valeria shushed him, urged him into a seat, and took one herself opposite Rupert. “Suppose we swap information,” she advised. “We haven’t got such an awfully long time for that; better head-long than hesitant. You’re from the Rhineland, did you say, Rupert?”