At the Narrow Passage (18 page)

"Okay," I said. "If what you're saying is true, then I guess you'd have
to act that way." For some reason I had the sudden feeling that Mica
and Scoti honestly and truly did believe what they were saying. But then
you never can tell about feelings, can you?
"We cannot tell you why the Kriths are lying, only that they are.
And if you will let us, we will prove it to you," Mica said.
"Okay, prove it."
"That will take some time," Mica said, "but now I think you are going
to let us have that time." He glanced at the watch on his wrist. "I have
other responsibilities to attend to, but I'll see that additional books
and tapes are sent to you. You can study them at your leisure. Is there
anything else you would like?"
"Yes, some cigarettes, if you can get them."
"Of course," Mica said. "I will see to it at once." He rose.
"Scoti, will you come with me?"
The other man nodded.
"I will see you later, Sally?" Mica asked.
"Yes," Sally said, glancing up at the tall, thin man, an expression on
her face that I could not identify but that puzzled me. What was her
relationship to him?
In a few moments the door closed behind the two men, and Sally and I
were left alone in the room. It was a rather tense and awkward situation
at first.
"I don't hold it against you," she said. "What you did. You were only
doing your job as you saw it."
"I'm glad you look at it that way," I told her. "What about your husband?"
"Albert?" She smiled an odd smile. "He'll recover."
"You're glad of that?"
"I don't suppose it matters now. He won't be of much use to us anymore,
it appears."
"Oh?"
"He was just a tool, as far as I'm concerned, and since it appears that
the Kriths will find a way to destroy the Imperial nuclear project,
we will just have to start another, without Albert."
I didn't go into it any further, either about Von Heinen or about the
Kriths' destroying their Baltic plant. I was curious, but the answers
could wait.
We were silent for a long while before I asked the next question.
"How long have they been here?"
"The Paratimers? Oh . . ." She thought for a moment. "About fifteen years.
They contacted my father when they first arrived. They've been working
with us ever since."
"Who's this we?"
"The Mad Anthony Wayne Society."
"Uh-huh," I grunted. "What's their relationship to the Holy Roman Empire?"
Sally chewed on her lower lip for a moment. "Minor," she said after a while.
"Only two years ago did they actually let them know who they were."
"Then the Holy Romans know about the Paratimers
and
the Kriths?"
"A little," she answered. "They haven't told them everything."
"Why?"
"They're on
our
side."
"Oh," I said, nodding. "And you also believe everything the Paratimers say?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Sally smiled. "Now you sound like Mica interrogating one of our prisoners."
"I'm sorry, but I'm trying to learn what I can."
"I know. Yes, I believe them because, well, it makes sense to me, what I
can see of it. They're human beings and the
things
you're working
for aren't. That in itself seems reason enough."
"I suppose you've got a point there."
"Let me make another one, Eric."
"Go on."
"Our world is divided today between three, oh, call it four, if you want
to count Spain -- our world is divided between these empires and not a one
of them is worth a damn. I suppose, if I could really be objective about
it, maybe the British are no worse than the Imperials, maybe even a little
better since there are a lot of British people, some in the aristocracy,
who don't approve of the way the king has treated the colonies. But, all
in all, ninety percent of the human race is in a state not much better
than slavery and the rest rule them, except for a few of us, like the
ARA and the Mad Anthony Wayne Society, who still believe that people
have the ability and, yes, the God-given right to rule themselves.
"Okay," she went on, "now look at what is happening. Who are your Kriths
supporting? The British Empire. The greatest slaveowner in the history of
the world -- my world, at least. And who are the Paratimers helping?
Us, the rebels who want to see an end to
all
slavery -- the fact that
we're working with the Imperials right now is only incidental to the
whole thing. We'll take care of them once we've beaten the British. The
Paratimers will see to that. But honestly answer me: Whose cause is more
moral? The Kriths'? Or Mica's and Scoti's and the other Paratimers'?"
"On the face of it I suppose it looks right to you," I said. "But you can't
see the whole picture."
"Can you?"
"Better than you can, I think."
"Then you tell me how it's moral to support tyrants. Or is your world
ruled by a monarchy?"
I smiled. "No. My people are the ones who invented the republic in the
first place, remember?"
"The Greeks?" Sally asked.
I nodded and then went on, "Well, if the Imperials are beaten by the
British, your world stands a better chance of becoming free in the long
run. If the Holy Romans win, you're in for a long period of tyranny and
warfare that makes the present day look mild by comparison."
"How do you know?" she asked.
I paused for a moment. How could I answer her without falling back on
the word of the Kriths? And, then, they hadn't figured on the Americans
having an advanced technology behind them. Maybe my head was beginning
to spin a little by then.
"You don't need to say it," she said. "You just have to accept the word
of the Kriths, on faith, that that's the way it's going to turn out."
"Yes, I suppose so," I said defensively. "But I can show you the histories
of other Lines where it has worked out exactly the way they said it would."
"That's still accepting their word. They wrote the books, didn't they, or
at least supervised their writing?" She paused. "One of our great patriots
was also something of a philosopher and once he said, 'A bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush.' And at best your
bush
is only
hypothetical."
"I don't suppose there's any point in trying to argue with you."
Sally smiled. "I don't want to argue with you, Eric. I want to be your
friend."
"That's what everybody tells me."
She rose, smiled again. "I really must go. I'll come back to see you later."
"I'll be looking for you."
And then she was gone, and I was alone in the room again, and I wondered
and wondered and wondered. . . .
A short time after Sally left, a panel in the wall below the intercom
slid back revealing a receptacle in which sat two cartons of cigarettes,
a stack of books and video tapes, and a small tape player and monitor.
Lighting a cigarette, I placed the tapes and books and player on one
of the tables and scanned the titles on the tape boxes. Apparently Mica
was giving me the whole propaganda story in one lump.
Well, I decided, I might as well get into it. If I were going to fool them
into believing that I had swallowed their story, I had better learn my
lines well. I spent the rest of the day reading books and viewing tapes.
15
Of Mica, Sally, and G'lendal
The days that followed dragged by interminably, although the nights were
all too brief, for at night G'lendal would call on me, ostensibly to ask
more questions, to continue her "interrogation," although on her second
visit things began to get more interesting. Before that night was out,
I found myself in bed with lovely, delightful G'lendal, and
those
details are none of your business.
During the day Mica, Scoti, and two or three others would visit me at
intervals, mostly to answer questions, make suggestions and point out
avenues of thought I hadn't yet followed.
During my captivity in Staunton, I gradually pieced together the whole
story of the Paratimers or at least that part of it made available for
my consumption. In another nutshell, it was something like this:
In the Romano-Albigensian Lines from which Mica, Scoti, and about a third
of the Paratimers in Staunton had come, the European Renaissance that
followed the fall of the original-Roman Empire and the so-called Dark Ages
had reached a full and early flower in early-thirteenth-century France
under the religious heretics called the Albigensians, Arian Christians
who denied the oneness of Jesus the Christ -- the Messiah -- and God the
Father. After successfully resisting the persecutions of the Roman Church
and finally raising an army of their own, the Albigensians established
their independence from both the emerging French nation and the orthodox
church -- and set about revolutionizing the world.
Despite the decades of religious war that finally led to the philosophical
sundering of the Christian world, the Albigensians embarked on a serious
program of learning. Their newly discovered and rediscovered knowledge
spread like wildfire across Europe centuries earlier than it had in the
world in which I now dwelt. The American continents were discovered in
a steam-driven ship and fully colonized by Europeans within a century;
a technological civilization evolved while Sally's people were still
wondering what electricity was; world wars were fought; and finally,
as the atomic age exploded across half the world and the first tentative
steps to the stars were begun, the cultural descendants of the heretic
Albigensians established a world at peace with itself.
Nearly a century ago, already with colonies on the Moon and on Mars,
with a starship abuilding in orbit around Earth, they discovered the
parallel universes and set out on a cautious voyage of exploration.
Then, less than thirty years ago, Martin Latham found them.
Under Latham's direction the Romano-Albigensian Paratimers explored
eastward into Paratime, found that what he had said was true and set
about undoing the work that the Kriths were doing.
By the time I was captured by them, the Paratimers consisted of quite
a large number of individuals from various Lines to the Temporal West,
and all were devoted to the total and final destruction of the Kriths
and all those who worked with them.
There must have been a great deal of truth in these things, I told myself,
as there is much truth in every great lie, no matter how well hidden and
distorted it might be. I didn't doubt that in essence what I was told
was true, for the most part, at least as far as it concerned the humans
from the West, though I could not be so sure of their altruistic motives,
as they denied the same motives on the part of the alien Kriths. And,
of course, I was not ready to accept any of the things they said about
the Kriths -- though there were enough doubts in my mind by now so that
I had some questions I was certainly going to ask Kar-hinter about when
I saw him again --
if
I ever saw him again.
As far as Kar-hinter and the rest of the world outside Staunton were
concerned, I was kept in total ignorance. What was happening in the
war in Europe was unknown to me, though I could not force myself to
feel very concerned. That had been a job when I was involved in it,
but now I was no longer directly involved, and it didn't seem to matter
too much. There were bigger things on my mind and, anyway, things would
probably turn out pretty much as Kar-hinter had planned, though now he
would have to do it without Count von Heinen and his American wife.
I wondered what kind of conclusions Kar-hinter had reached about my
disappearance. He had known that I was waiting for him with the two
captives, and he knew that we -- Tracy, Kearns, and myself -- had fought
two short battles with men in an alien skudder. So, with very simple
arithmetic, he would arrive at the conclusion that the men in the strange
skudder had rescued the captives and had either killed me or taken me
prisoner. I suspected that at that moment Kar-hinter was doing his
damnedest to find out for sure. If I could only get a message to him.
Okay, then, I had decided early in my stay in the plush cell under the
American earth, that was my sole objective: to get my hands on a radio
and broadcast a message to Kar-hinter. But just how was I going to
do that? Simple, convince the Paratimers that they had converted me,
worm my way into their confidence, learn where there was a radio --
and then do everything in my power to get a message out.
Simple. In a pig's eye!
When two weeks had passed -- I assumed that it was about two weeks;
I counted days in terms of G'lendal's violent, sensual lovemaking --
I decided that I was ready to play the part of a convert.
Mica came in for his brief daily visit.
"How are you this morning, Captain Mathers?" he asked, seating himself
on the sofa, glancing through one of the books I had deliberately left
there, several key passages underlined on the open pages.
"Well enough, I guess," I said.
"What's this?" he asked, noticing a passage I had underscored.
"What?" I asked in all innocence.
"This that you have marked," he said. Then he read aloud: " 'Despite their
alien form, the Kriths have done surprisingly well in their efforts to win
the confidence of humans. Their shrewd understanding of human psychology
has enabled them to do this, playing on human vanity, while at the same
time projecting a powerful father/hero image that even the strongest
and most self-reliant men seem to find attractive. However, most humans
cannot help feeling a basic animal revulsion to these creatures who,
at best, can only be described as parodies of men.' "
Beside the passage I had put two or three exclamation points.
Mica smiled. "Is there a special significance to this, Mathers?"
"There is to me."
"And what is that?"
"I'm not really sure," I said. "It's just something that, well, puts into
words what I've felt about the Kriths, I suppose."
"Few men
like
Kriths."
"I never said I liked them as individuals."
"But you admired them. Am I correct in using the past tense?"
"Hell, I don't know," I said. "You people have me so damned confused."
"Observe what you just said, Mathers, and keep it in mind. 'You people . . .
We are people, human beings like you."
"That's hardly proof that you're telling the truth."
"We have been through all of this before."
"Yes, I know."' I paused, wondered if I were going to be able to convince
him. Maybe. I was about halfway ready to believe it myself. "Look, Mica,
let me put it to you straight."