At the Narrow Passage (9 page)

"You hurt?" he asked.
"Side grazed. I'm okay, just got careless. Land's dead, but Kearns
doesn't have a scratch on him."
"He wouldn't."
We entered the bedroom where Kearns was pulling the German officer's
boots on the count's feet.
"Is he -- " asked the man named Starne who wore a British private's uniform.
"Stomach wound," I said. "He'll live, long enough at least."
Then Tracy noticed the naked girl tied and sitting in the corner.
"Who's she?" he asked, a wicked grin on his face.
"The Graf's playmate," I said. "They must have been at it when we came
busting in. At least they were both naked and . . ."
"Let's get the hell out of here," Kearns said suddenly, reminding us
all of why we were there.
We did exactly that, though Tracy looked almost wistfully at the
dark-haired girl one last time as we started down the stairs.
8
Ambush
It was darker than ever when we carried the unconscious count out of the
house. His wife, bleeding at the mouth, was walking with Tracy's pistol
pressed into the small of her back. Sir Gerald, limping, assisted by
Starne, brought up the rear.
The earlier drizzle had increased to a steady, soaking downpour, but we
hardly noticed it.
"You're a lucky bastard," Tracy said to Kearns, who was carrying the
German across his shoulder fireman fashion.
"No luck to it," Kearns said. "Just cautious."
"You didn't sound cautious," I said, "when you hit those two in the
staff car."
Kearns laughed that odd laugh of his. We all laughed, even Sir Gerald.
It was over, thank God, and the sudden release of tension brought us all
easily to the point of laughter.
Von Heinen's wife did not speak; she only moved silently, mechanically
as we forced her on. I would have expected a woman to yell, scream,
go into hysterics as the dark-haired girl had, but Sally von Heinen
did just as she was told, but nothing more. Then I reminded myself that
she was the daughter of an American rebel leader and had probably been
exposed to violence most of her life. In a way I was grateful to her.
I think I would have knocked her teeth out had she behaved any differently.
We were a little more than halfway to the river when we saw the airship.
It came down slowly, its propellers softly cutting the air, its engines
muffled, its running lights out. We could see it only as a black cigar
against the slightly lighter sky. Had it been day, though, we could have
seen the Imperial German insignia along her gas bag, the flag of Franz VI
that she flew. But that's the way it had been planned. Kar-hinter's plan.
The airship touched ground a few yards from the river, and men leaped
out, driving pegs into the wet earth, hooking cables to them. Other men
moved to the rear of the gondola, opened huge cargo doors, slid ramps
to the earth, began rolling out a huge squashed sphere.
All of us, except for Countess Sally von Heinen and her unconscious
husband, were familiar with the shape of a skudder, though it must have
appeared very alien to her: a huge glasslike bubble mounted on a small,
dark base, a craft never designed to move in space, only across the
Lines of time.
"Mathers?" a voice called from the group of men who now stood around
the skudder.
"
Natl
," I answered in Shangalis.
"The skudder's ready. Want me to warm her up?" the man asked in the
same language.
I glanced at Kearns in the rain and darkness. He nodded.
"Yes," I called.
"You're not Englishmen!" Sally von Heinen said, sudden horror in her
voice. Maybe she was used to violence, I thought, but not to being
kidnapped by men who spoke a language that was not of her world.
"We're not," I said. "Go on. Get in." I pointed her toward the skudder.
In a few moments we were all inside the craft and I pulled the hatch
closed behind me. The man outside yelled, "Good luck," and I yelled back
my thanks.
"Have you ever skudded before, Sir Gerald?" Tracy asked in English.
"No," the injured British general said breathlessly.
"Then brace yourself," Tracy said, laughing. "You're in for an experience."
"Everybody ready?" Kearns asked harshly.
"We're ready," I said, glancing over at the still-unconscious count.
By this time it dawned on me that his wife had shown absolutely no concern
over his condition, but then he had been in bed with another woman when
we burst into the villa. And I remembered Kar-hinter's having said that
theirs was a marriage of politics. It made a little more sense to me now.
Virgin wife? I wondered. And thought that if she were, it was a terrible
waste.
Kearns' hands moved across the controls, making final adjustments,
bringing the generators up to full potential, setting the destination
indicators for about a dozen Lines to the East, one where gas and
bacteriological warfare had nearly extinguished human life in Europe
before the Kriths and Timeliners could enter to alter the course of that
world's history.
"Okay," Kearns said. "Here we go."
An invisible hand came up and grabbed my genitals, jerking down, then
snatching at my guts, moving up to stir my stomach with a lumpy club.
Flicker!
For an instant I saw lights in the direction of the villa and perhaps
men moving there in this next-door world, but I wasn't sure.
Flicker!
Total darkness.
Flicker!
"It's far more interesting in the daytime," Tracy told Sir Gerald,
who was too busy being sick to listen.
Flicker!
A dozen times that hand inside my abdomen jerked and pulled and twisted.
Sir Gerald once muttered something I couldn't understand and Von Heinen
groaned in his unconsciousness.
Flicker!
Then it all stopped, and I sat still for a minute trying not to be sick
myself. Skudding sometimes got me that way too.
The night was still as dark as ever, the same clouds lay over this world
as lay over the one we had left behind us; the same rain fell; the same
trees grew on the same riverbank a few yards away; the same villa stood
on the rise above us -- or almost the same villa. The one in this world
was not as well cared for as the other, inhabited only by rats and the
bones of the very last Earl of Kent and his family who had died of a
bitter, flesh-rotting disease as biological war swept across Europe.
But it wasn't the villa I was looking for. It was rather a prefabricated
hut that stood no more than a dozen yards beyond the villa, and beside
it a craft that was a larger version of our own craft, but one designed
to carry cargo as well as passengers.
"Everybody out," Kearns said. The skudding didn't seem to bother his stomach.
I rose to my feet, trying to pull Von Heinen erect. Kearns came back to
help me.
I don't know what it was that bothered me. I can't even now put my
finger on it, but I had the strange, uneasy feeling that something was
very wrong. Maybe it was the fact that no one had come out of the hut
to greet us, but that shouldn't have bothered me. Maybe it was the fact
that everything was too quiet, even for Here. I'm not sure, but I know
I
felt
something.
Tracy opened the hatch, jumped to the ground. Starne followed him,
and they waited while Kearns and I maneuvered the unconscious Imperial
count into position and then took his weight between them as we passed
him down. Then we followed.
"Tracy," I said, "you and Starne help Sir Gerald and go on. Kearns and
I will bring these two."
Kearns hefted the count onto his shoulder, while the others, supporting
the British general between them, started toward the hut.
They didn't get halfway.
Suddenly the whole area was illuminated.
"Son of a . . ."
A voice said very loudly in English, "Hold it where you are!'~
I shoved Countess von Heinen back toward the skudder with a savage gesture,
grabbed for the pistol on my hip, switched into combat augmentation.
Kearns unceremoniously dumped the count, unslung his tommy gun. Starne
broke into an augmented run toward the hut, and Tracy lowered Sir Gerald
to the ground before going into augmentation.
Rifles chattered from behind the lights. Starne fell in mid-stride,
clawing at his chest. Tracy staggered, cursed in Shangalis, jerked up
his own pistol, fired, staggered toward the hut, and then fell in his
own blood.
Whoever was firing at us had reactions just as fast as ours and that
was a little frightening.
The whole night was ablaze with gunfire.
We
aimed for their spotlights.
They
, whoever they were, aimed for us.
Sir Gerald, perhaps unnoticed by our attackers, rolled over in slow
motion, languidly pulled his pistol free, and fired off two shots as
quickly as a nonaugmented man could -- one put out one of the lights and
the other brought an agonized yell -- and then took a bullet between his
eyes. He'd died in the old tradition. I wonder if he went to school at
Eton -- "The battles of Britain . . ." or however that goes.
Then a barrage of automatic-weapons fire splattered against the dome of
the skudder behind me, some ricocheting away, some penetrating. Though
the bullets seemed slow to my accelerated senses, they weren't, but I
didn't stop to think about the damage done. There was no time.
I grabbed Sally von Heinen, momentarily cut out my augmentation.
"Get him in the skudder!" I pointed toward her husband.
She looked at me defiantly.
"Get him in the skudder, or I'll kill you both."
Most of the gunfire from the ring of lights was now aimed at Tracy and
Kearns, who had crawled toward the meager cover of a bush a few feet
away. Tracy was trying to pull himself up against the hut, very weakly,
and he seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness. But none of
the bullets was coming in my direction now. They seemed afraid of hitting
Von Heinen or Sally, or both -- whoever the hell
they
were.
I was back into combat augmentation and yelling, "Hold your fire or
I'll shoot Count von Heinen," and wondering if they could understand my
accelerated voice. I put my Harling to his head so they'd know I meant
business. It may have been a poor maneuver, but it was the only thing
I could think of at the time. And it worked.
They stopped firing.
"Kearns, get Tracy."
Kearns got up warily, looked around, then walked out into the lighted area,
his tommy gun held at the ready.
He stopped for a moment where Sir Gerald lay, then rose, shook his head.
He repeated the same action above the unmoving form of Starne and then
went on to Tracy. In a few moments he had Tracy on his feet, half carrying
him, and together they staggered back to the skudder.
"Get him in," I said, then, with exaggerated slowness, gestured
for Countess von Heinen to follow. A moment later I jerked the
still-unconscious count up and somehow threw him into the craft.
"Don't any of you try anything," I yelled, "or they'll pay for it."
I slammed the hatch shut and told Kearns: "Get our asses out of herel"
"Where?"
"Back to where we came from, I guess," I said, suddenly at a loss.
"Maybe the airship's still there."
"Okay," Kearns said, dropping into the pilot's seat, snapping switches.
Then we flickered out of that universe, the inside of the skudder smelling
of ozone and burning insulation.
I cut out my augmentation and fell back, gasping for breath. I was
totally drained of energy.
9
Pursuit
The airship was gone.
Up in the villa and the outbuildings the same lights still burned, and
all was silent. There was no movement. In the short time that we had
been gone there had been no change, save that the airship was gone. But
it would be dawn soon, and someone would come. Imperials, of course. And
we couldn't be there when they arrived.
I turned back to Kearns who still sat in the pilot's seat, cursing savagely.
"What is it?" I asked.
"This goddamned thing," he said, gesturing toward the skudder's controls.
"It's just about had it."
"We've got to get out of here."
"Not in this skudder we won't."
I'd been afraid of that, afraid that each time we flickered from one
Timeline to the next we might not make it, that the skudder's drive
would break down. I suppose we'd been lucky to get as far as we had.
"It won't move?" I asked without hope.
"Not one more jump," Kearns said.
"Up in the stables," Tracy said weakly. "There're supposed to be motorcars."
"Kearns, go see," I said quickly.
"What's wrong with the one sitting in the front of the villa?"
"Nothing, unless you put a bullet through the block."
"I didn't," Kearns said coldly. "I was shooting at men, not motorcar
engines."
"Then get it."
Kearns nodded agreement, climbed out of the seat, opened the hatch and
jumped to the ground.
I glanced at Von Heinen, his wife and then at Tracy, who lay back on
the seat, blood flowing down his left leg from a wound above the knee.
"How bad is it, old man?" I asked in English.
"Bloody painful, old top," Tracy said, trying to force a smile onto
his face.
I knelt in front of him, felt the leg. The bone was broken and jagged.
"I could have told you that," Tracy said.
I pulled a knife from my pocket, snapped open the blade, cut a slit up
Tracy's trouser leg, and then cut away the cloth above the wound.
"I'm going to put a tourniquet on it," I said. "Think you can manage
with that?"
"I'd bloody well better."
"We'll bandage it and put a splint on it as soon as we can."
When I was finished, I turned back to Von Heinen, who was making the
sounds of a man returning to painful consciousness. Opening his shirt,
I checked the compress that Kearns had applied to the stomach wound.
It was soaked with blood, but the blood was beginning to dry. Externally,
at least, the count had stopped bleeding.
"He's not going to do us much good dead, old boy," Tracy said.
"He's not going to do us any mucking good at all unless we get him back
behind British lines."
"How do you suggest we do that?"
"I don't know," I answered slowly. "We'll take the motorcar and see if
maybe we can get back down into Beaugency. It may be that the attack
has broken up the German lines enough for us to get through."
I stopped for a moment and listened. The staff car that sat in front of
the villa coughed to life, sputtered, then began to run smoothly. From
a great distance, to the south, I could bear the infrequent boom of a
howitzer, occasional small-arms fire, but from the sounds the real battle
was over. Exactly what the British had accomplished, I couldn't even
begin to guess, other than get us through the Imperial lines. But unless
we could get back through, even that wasn't going to do us much good.