Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (45 page)

Gribardsun blinked, shook his head, coming out of his fugue.

He almost had it. Not quite, but it was almost there.

Khokarsa. Africa. thirteen thousand years ago. And the tickling, niggling scent that accompanied each slaying.

He put it aside, not forcing it, and came back to the Eridaneans and Capelleans. Were they secret societies? What other explanation was there? Teleportation technology was extremely advanced. Too advanced, in fact, to reasonably have been developed in this time and place, even by progressive intellectuals operating surreptitiously. The scientific and technological infrastructure just wouldn’t support it.

Extraterrestrials?

Could celestial races be interfering in human affairs? It certainly would not surprise him, given his prior experiences in Africa of exotic plants and the massive crystalline root system—both clearly of alien origin—which had infested large swaths of the continent, leading to the great calamity and the end of the Khokarsan civilization.

But were they extraterrestrials? Blakeney, Fogg, and Blake—the Eridaneans, as they called themselves—seemed fully human and appeared to be on the side of right. And Blakeney was his great-great-grandfather.

Gribardsun decided he’d reserve complete judgment for the future, but would still investigate the ungodly clangings which signaled teleportation—“transmission”—if he came through this tomorrow, and if he heard them again in the future. And he’d put a stop to the strange rivalry between the Capelleans and Eridaneans if he could.

Gribardsun thought about tomorrow, the momentous day. Blakeney had proposed a carriage ride; certainly no one bent on sabotage would propose that.

But if sabotage was the murderer’s object, sabotage of
what,
precisely?

Sabotage of Sir Percy’s conclave, of his attempt to quell the raging fires in France and prevent them from spreading to the rest of Europe?

Or sabotage of... tomorrow itself?

True to his word, Sir Percy Blakeney had rousted the inhabitants and guests for a day away from the grim pall that overhung Blakeney Hall.

Two huge carriages leisurely passed through the village of Thwing and turned onto Rainsburgh Lane.

The first was occupied by Greystoke, Tennington, Honoré Delagardie, Fitzwilliam Darcy, and their wives. It was driven by Delagardie’s two coachmen, Lecoq and Lupin.

The second held Sir Percy, Lady Blakeney, and Alice Clarke Raffles, as well as Alice’s sister Violet and Violet’s husband, Dr. Holmes. Rounding out the passengers were Sir Hugh Drummond and his wife, Lady Georgia Dewhurst Drummond. Driving the coach were Albert Blake and Etienne Austin.

Gribardsun—Sir John Gribson, to the carriage party—rode alongside on horseback, as did a physician friend of Holmes, Sebastian Noel. Noel had arrived in the area yesterday and was staying at an inn in the nearby village of Wold Newton, toward which they were now circling back. At the party’s restful pace, the village was perhaps half an hour or slightly more away.

Colonel Bozzo-Corona, Kramm, and Gerolstein had not elected to join the party. The wizened old Colonel had seen Sir Percy and the others off, and before they departed, Gribardsun had overheard them speaking frankly about the situation they faced. The upshot had been that if there was no progress on the negotiations and plans within the next two days, the Colonel and his party would take their leave of Blakeney Hall.

Shortly thereafter, Gribardsun observed Sir Percy speaking quietly to Fogg and de Winter; as the latter two had not joined the carriage party, Gribardsun assumed they had agreed to keep an eye on the Colonel and his associates and ensure no mischief ensued back at Blakeney Hall while the others were absent.

Countess Carody also begged off, to the chagrin of Marguerite and Alice and Lizzie Darcy, claiming too much sun would be unfavorable to her complexion—this despite the enclosed carriages.

At 2:25
P.M.
, a light cloud cover hovered in the distance. There was a crisp and refreshing chill in the air as the party traversed the gently rolling farmland. Gribardsun rode alongside Sir Percy’s carriage and listened as the baronet pointed out Major Edward Topham’s Wold Cottage in the distance on the left, and regaled his fellow passengers with slightly risqué accounts of the unmarried Topham, the actress Mrs. Mary Wells, and their three surviving daughters, to the accompaniment of many chuckles and some outright laughter. Sir Percy was quick to note the loveliness of Major Topham’s three children, Juliet, Harriet, and Maria.

Blakeney’s tale-telling was affectionate. It was clear he held his friend Topham, as well as his amorous exploits, in high regard. This came as no surprise to the other carriage passengers, who well knew that his lady loves, Lady Blakeney and Alice, were both among the foremost actresses of their day.

At 2:30, nine ominous clangings rang out across the countryside.

The two carriages stopped amidst the uneasy chatter of the occupants, as they attempted to hone in on the source.

After a brief pause, the nine bells tolled again, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere.

While the party, nerves on edge, debated the meaning of the ear-splitting clangor and the wisdom of further investigation, particularly given the presence of the many gravid ladies, John Gribardsun galloped away, leaving the others far behind.

The bells pealed again, and the cycle of nine clangings repeated on a regular cadence as he rode hard down Rainsburgh Lane and turned into the short drive leading to Wold Cottage.

How could anyone, other than himself, know about today? And were they—whoever they were—here to sabotage?

Gribardsun urged his horse on past Topham’s abode. He had come to observe the momentous event of December 13, and now it seemed that someone—whoever was associated with, or causing, the clangings and the murders—might succeed in stopping what history said had happened. Gribardsun had been stalking his prey, getting closer and closer, trying to ensure that each incident, each death, did not result in an alteration in the streams of Time—and now it seemed that catastrophe loomed over him.

What would happen if he failed? Would he just... wink out of existence?

The scientists who had worked on Project Chronos said no, that whatever he or other time travelers did in the past would be a natural part of the fabric of history. Dr. Jacob Moishe, the scientist leading the project team that had invented the time machine later utilized by Gribardsun’s expedition, had demonstrated that if time travel were going to change history, it had already done so.

Moishe, however, had not taken an immortal, now some fourteen thousand years old, into account in his calculations. With that in mind, Gribardsun had tried to keep a low profile throughout history, but on the other hand had been unable to resist selectively intervening—a push here, a tug there—in some key events. Particularly key events that pertained to his own history.

The regular clanging became louder and louder as he closed in on it, heading in the direction of a field past Major Topham’s cottage. He calculated that it was 2:40. Sir Percy’s party—the carriages and the horses—were not close to the impact site. Not close enough, anyway.

If they were not there at three o’clock, all was lost.

Gribardsun came over a low rise, making for the field which was empty save for some scattered farmhands. In four years, the field would not be quite so empty; the site would be marked by an obelisk erected by Topham commemorating the event. Gribardsun had visited the site several times, the last in the 2060s.

Then Gribardsun saw
Him.
Smelled
Him.
The scent clicked, and he remembered.
He
looked now the same age as
He
had then, so long ago.

Thirteen thousand years ago.

John Gribardsun couldn’t believe his nose.

The way other men relied primarily on their sense of sight, and yet often couldn’t believe their eyes, despite the evidence in front of them, he could not believe his nose.

Gribardsun picked up the man’s spoor before he saw him. No two men, or women, had the exact same scent. Each was unique, among billions, and Gribardsun could recognize the distinctive scent signature of a specific human as easily as a normal man would recognize someone he knew and had seen before.

But this scent defied belief. It was impossible. From his personal perspective, it had been over one thousand years since he had encountered the human being with that scent signature. Perhaps his memory was faulty.

And yet he must trust the evidence before his nose.

Gribardsun had come to this area, a jungle thick with vegetation thousands of miles south of Khokarsa, on the unexplored shores of the inland sea, to investigate the uncanny root system which seemed to be infesting much of this part of Africa. He suspected it might now be extending from Khokarsa to these lands, and he had set a tribe of Gokako—a squat and hairy slant-browed group of Neanderthals, very rare in these far southern lands—to excavating key areas in his search for the root system.

Gribardsun knew of the devastation which could and would be caused in Khokarsa by the alien organism—for alien it was—and hoped to prevent the destruction from reaching these lands. He had had direct experience with similar patterns of annihilation caused by the crystalline roots, having lived through a series of shattering earthquakes in central Africa in 1918. The city which would arise here, which would be founded by Lupoeth, a priestess of Kho, was, and would be, very important to him. He hoped to prevent the spread of ruin, the great cataclysm which was inevitable elsewhere, to these lush lands.

A push here, a nudge there.

The wind shifted, and Gribardsun picked up the scent again, the scent which he could not believe. He whirled.

“You cannot be here,” he said in Khokarsan. He was too surprised to consider any alternative languages, but in any event Khokarsan was a probable choice for this time and place—even if the man he spoke to could not be of this time and place.

“Why not?” the other replied, in the same language. Then: “Do you know me?”

Gribardsun did know the man. How come the knowledge was not reciprocal?

The last time Gribardsun had seen the man, in Africa, in 1912, the man had looked like a native witch doctor. Gribardsun, a young man of twenty-three, had saved the witch doctor from a lion. In gratitude, the witch doctor had offered him everlasting life. Gribardsun had laughed, but said why not. He didn’t believe the man, but if there were any truth to the claims, he’d have been a fool to decline the offer.

After a procedure which lasted a month, and greatly sickened him, he’d wondered if he had been a fool to accept. The process involved multiple blood transfusions from the witch doctor and continuous imbibing of a concoction brewed from rare herbs.

But, as he had learned over decades, centuries, and finally millennia, it had worked.

Gribardsun thought about the man’s question, “Do you know me?” The man smelled exactly like the witch doctor, but looked nothing like him, which he didn’t understand. When Gribardsun had met the man in 1912, the man must have been very, very old. This made sense, if he thought about it. The man was an immortal, and had passed the secret of immortality on to Gribardsun.

The man before him was the younger version, although he could not explain the difference in appearance. This man was Caucasoid, a large man, with hazel eyes, heavy brows, and a Roman nose. His hair was dark, his skin bronzed, and he looked to be in his late thirties or perhaps early forties. Like Gribardsun, he wore clothing appropriate for the jungle, which is to say, very little: a loincloth of antelope hide, a leather pouch, and tough moccasins.

Gribardsun responded to the man’s question: “Perhaps.”

“I don’t know you,” the man replied. “Or rather, I should say, I have never met you. But I know who you are. I’ve been looking for you, Sahhindar.”

Gribardsun shrugged. “Some call me that.”

“Sahhindar, the Gray-Eyed Archer God,” the man continued, and he smiled broadly. “Also the god of plants, of bronze, and of Time. As I’ve listened to the legends and stories about you over the centuries, it’s become clear to me that you are a fellow immortal. I confess that I did not connect the dots, however, until this very minute, that you are also a time traveler. I had never assumed that ‘the god of Time’ was a literal appellation. That was my mistake.”

“What do you want?”

“Perfect.” The man grinned at him again. “Straight to the point. I sought you out to discover your source of youth.”

Gribardsun’s mind raced. “Why?”

“Because it may be more effective than my own.”

“Meaning?”

The man smiled his infernal smile.

Gribardsun put his hand on the hilt of the big steel hunting knife which hung in a sheath on his belt and said, “Tell me, or I will remove that smile and replace it with a red one.”

“Now
that
would be a grievous mistake, and I think you know it,” the man said. “But, I will tell you. There is no point in not being forthright, for once, because this
must
happen.

“If I am correct,” the man continued, “you do not age at all. I do age, albeit extraordinarily slowly, and barring accident or murder, someday my body will be very, very old, and it will die. This day may come after millennia, or tens of millennia, but it will come. I would prefer that it didn’t.”

“And why would I help you with anything, assuming I’m in a position to do so?” Gribardsun asked, his gray eyes piercing the other man’s.

“I think,” the man replied, “you are beginning to suspect that you have no choice.
If,
that is, you would like me to reciprocate in the future. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it?”

“If you are correct,” Gribardsun said, “how were you—will you—be able to appear to me in the guise of a native African witch doctor?”

“I have no idea,” the man said, grinning, “but now that you’ve told me that’s what I need to do, it appears I’ll have plenty of time to figure it out.”