Conrad Starguard - The Crosstime Enginee Part 2

"'This neck of the woods!' Another good turn of phrase Well, the answer is simplicity itself. I was in Rome, and I received an appointment in Cracow. To get from A to B, one is obliged to traverse the points between." "Well, if you are a true Euclidean, it would seem that the route would be far to the west, through France and Germany, or at least north by the Moravian Gate," I said.

"The way through Germany might be softer, but it is much longer. Do you know nothing of maps? Further, you should know that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire-which is not Roman, nor an Empire, nor particularly Holy-Nay! He is not even an emperor! At best he is somewhat acknowledged as the spokesman for a ragtag collection of German city-states pus.h.i.+ng their unwanted existence into all parts of Christendom! He has inherited the Sicilies, gained dominance over Milan and Florence, and threatened his Holy Majesty Louis IX of France! Through the unbelievable stupidity of Duke Conrad of Mazovia, his German knights have been invited, mind you-into the north of Poland itself! And these so-called Knights of the Cross are now murdering whole villages of poor, heathen Prussians!"

I had had the misfortune to hit his "hot b.u.t.ton," and he went on like that for the better part of an hour. It seems that the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II--who was also King of the Sicilies, King of the Romans, and quite a few other things-owned most of Italy, and the Pope owned the rest.

They had begun fighting, and the filthy German mercenaries in the pay of Frederick II had had the incredible effrontery to defeat the Pope's Just and Christian Warriors, who were also mercenaries, which is why there was an empty treasury and no funds to pay the way of a traveling priest.

Furthermore, these Germans were insidiously, sometimes even openly, pus.h.i.+ng their way into Poland, taking over its cities and founding monasteries that Poles were not even allowed to join!

I had an uncle who had survived being a. partisan in the 1944 Warsaw insurrection. He hated Germans, but his hatred was like a dislike for cabbages compared with the hatred of the supremely mild man who walked beside me. When we finally stopped to catch his breath, I said, "You are absolutely right. I completely agree with you. But tell me, please, why did you not go through the Moravian Gate?"

"Why, it had been my intention to come through the gate and avoid climbing the Beskids altogether. I walked across Italy and begged pa.s.sage-working my way-on a s.h.i.+p that sailed the Adriatic Sea to Fiume, in Dalmatia. I then crossed the Dinaric Alps into Croatia, a mere twenty miles on the map but four days' walk. Then it was a matter of working on a riverboat down the Sava to the Danube finding another boat, and then up the Danube. My intent had been to go upstream to the Morava, through the gate, then down the Odra, across to the Vistula, and so to Cracow. That is to say, the sensible way. However, the boat I was on was going up the Vah, not the Morava. It was late in the season, and I was not likely to find another boat. But by the maps I remember, it was but thirty miles from the headwaters of the Vah, across the Tatras, to the River Dunajec, which would also get me to Cracow before winter. This I did, although the crossing took six days ' The Tatras are really not so bad as the Alps, but they are much farther north, and I crossed them two months later in the season." It was now quite dark. The snow had stopped, and the cloud cover was breaking up. Any camper knows that a clear night is a cold night. Already the snow was crunching beneath my boots and his bare feet.

"You mean you crossed the Tatras alone? Barefoot? In this weather?" The full moon broke through the clouds, and I could see on his face the expression I reserve for fat, motorized tourists.

But what he said was, "You see, G.o.d provides us with light and therefore with hope. We will continue on." I had rolled up and packed my sleeping bag when I left the fire at noon, and since then the exertion of keeping up with this short man had kept me warm enough. But now it was getting cold.

"Father, I'm going to break out my sleeping bag, that 'cloak' you saw earlier.

Let me rip it in two and give you half."

"Do not destroy your property, my son, and do not even break your stride to undo your equipage. We shall soon find shelter. I can smell it." I could smell nothing but snow and pine trees.

"Father, how do you do it? How do you walk barefoot on crunching snow?"

"Well, I will tell you a secret that should not be a secret. When your heart is truly pure, you really do have the strength of ten. And further, while it is best to have your heart pure with G.o.d's love, pure anything will do. Pure honor or pure greed. Pure hate or even pure evil. It is only the contradictions and inner conflicts that weaken a man."

"But enough of this. We have forgotten something, and soon I will have to introduce you. My name is Father Ignacy Sierpinski." "I am most pleased to meet you, Father Ignacy. My name is Conrad." And here I faced a problem. You must understand that I am Polish. All my grandparents were Polish. And all their parents, all the way back to Noah. But in some unexplained manner, my last name is Schwartz. After Father Ignacy's hour-long tirade about Germans, I did not want to tell him that.

"Just Conrad? Well, nothing to be ashamed of. Many people still use only one name. Tell me, where were you born?"

"In Stargard." Stargard is a small town in northwest Poland. The name came about when there was a warehouse on a trade route. A castle was built to protect the warehouse, and a town grew up around the castle. The castle was originally called Store Gard, and the name drifted with time.

"Then Conrad Stargard you are. And here we are. h.e.l.lo, in there! May two Christian travelers ask for shelter?"

I did not realize that we were at a dwelling until I had almost stepped on it. Barely a meter high, it looked like a peaked mat of straw. We heard some fumbling sounds from within.

"They build their winter huts mostly below ground hereabouts; it is good protection from the cold."

A section of the straw opened up. "Aye, Father, be welcome, and your friend, too. But all I can offer is a place on the floor near the fire. No food, you understand."

"My good son, we understand. You would not be a good Christian if you did not see first to the feeding of your own family. Fear not for us; we are well provisioned. As you give us entrance, you give us life itself, for otherwise we would perish in the cold."

"I am Father Ignacy Sierpinski, and my friend is Conrad Stargard." We felt our way down a crude ladder into a rectangular s.p.a.ce that was lit by a small central campfire.

"I am Ivan Targ. My wife, Marie. My boys, Stashu and Wladyclaw. My baby, little Marie.

Shoo! Shoo, you boys! Make a place for our guests." The boys cleared a s.p.a.ce maybe two meters square on one side of the fire. I spread my poncho out as a ground cover and rolled out my sleeping bag over it. The ceiling was high enough for the rest of them to stand upright, but I was nearly bent over double.

When we were seated, I whispered to the priest, "I know that we have not been offered supper.

Do you think that we should offer something to them?" "Oh, yes. That would be most polite. In fact, I was about to do so." He turned to our host. "Ivan, we thank you again for-your courtesy and aid in our need. We would be honored if you would accept a very small token of our grat.i.tude. "

His words seemed to be a fixed ritual. He slowly opened one of his leather pouches, the one with the floppy cover, and drew from it a large, greasy sausage and a chunk of rather ripe cheese.

Neither had been wrapped in aluminum foil or waxed paper. He drew his belt knife and cut each in two, returning half to his bag. The remainder of each he divided into seven equal pieces, giving one piece of sausage and one piece of cheese to each person present, himself included. Everyone ate with relish and nods of thanks. Despite my misgivings at the lack of sanitary wrapping, I ate too.

Ritual is ritual, and you do not offend the man who puts a roof over your head in the cold.

It was obviously my turn. I rummaged through my dwindling food supplies for something that could be divided, that wasn't freeze-dried. I came up with a big two-hundred gram bar of chocolate.

I opened the package and found that the bar was conveniently divided into -fourteen squares.

Following the priest's ritual, I broke the bar in half, then a half into seven parts, which I pa.s.sed around. I gave a piece to the five-year-old boy, and he just looked up at me.

He didn't know what chocolate was.

In my world, there are madmen and there are saints. There are murderers and there are people who live in holes in the ground.

But there are no boys who don't know what chocolate is. Not in the twentieth century, anyway.

The truth that I had been fighting off all day was forced in on me, and I could no longer defend myself against it.

"Father, you have told me that this is November twenty-fifth. Will you now, please, tell me what year it is?"

It seemed that he had been waiting for that question. "It is, in the year of Our Lord, twelve thirty-one."

I drew my legs close to my chest and hugged them with my arms. I put my forehead on my knees. There were no policemen, no courts of law. There were no ambulances, no hospitals, and no doctors. There were no stores, no Hiking Society, and no Air Rescue teams. There was no rescue at all. There were only brutal knights, crazy saints, and Mongols.

In ten years the Mongols were coming, and they would kill everybody.

I fell asleep.

Interlude One "Good lord! You mean that one of the Historical Corps teams screwed up that badly?" We were watching a doc.u.mentary on the extremely unauthorized transportation of Conrad Schwartz. This had been pieced together, in part from his diary (which he wrote in English to keep it private) and from the readouts of a large number of insect sized probes initially developed for police work.

When a crime has been reported, our police transport a cl.u.s.ter of probes to the time and scene of the crime. These record everything, which doesn't do the victims much good. Time is a single linear continuum, and you can't "make it didn't happen." If a dead body was found, a human being was dead, and there was nothing that could change that fact. But our methods did a.s.sure that criminals committed only one crime and were always caught. As a result, we had an extremely low crime rate and no professional criminals at all. The probes were eagerly put to use by the Historical Corps, whose occupation was the writing of a truly definitive history of the human race. It was one of their teams that had screwed up.

"Not one team but two. There were ridiculous breaches of security at both the twentieth-century and thirteenth century portals," Tom said. Tom had been a drinking buddy of mine in the U.S. Air Force long before we got involved with time travel. Much later, we were both surprised to discover that he was my father. There were also certain ... problems concerning my mother, which I prefer not to discuss. Time travel is not entirely beneficial. "Well, can't we send him back?" I asked.

Anachronisms can be extremely disruptive, and we have no intention of adding to the sum of human misery. "Impossible. He wasn't discovered, subjectively, until almost ten years later, when I was observing the Mongol invasion of Poland." "Oh." If Conrad Schwartz had been observed in 1241, then that was an established fact, like the dead body I mentioned earlier. "So there's nothing we can do for the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"We can't bring him back until he has spent at least ten years there, but there are some things that could be done, and in fact, I have already done them." "Decontamination, for example. The diseases of the thirteenth century are not the same as those of the twentieth century. Thirteenth- century Poland had neither syphilis nor gonorrhea nor acne, and I was not about to see them introduced by our drunken Conrad Schwartz."

"Then again, in the twentieth century smallpox has been eradicated, leprosy is very mild compared to the earlier strains, and the Black Death has become one of the varieties of the common cold."

"The 'fluorescent lights' he slept under in the Red Gate Inn did a lot more than light his way out of the transport capsule. They wiped out every foreign microorganism in him and gave him a complete immunization treatment as well." One of the nice things about time travel is that it gives you the time to do things that are worth doing. I'd spent much of my life helping to build a technical civilization in the sixty-third millennium B.C. That civilization provides us with most of our personnel and some very high technology. It's also a fine place to live.

"Speaking of diseases, Tom, what was wrong with the priest?"

"Father Ignacy? Nothing. A fine man."

"But those huge, calloused feet!"

"That wasn't a disease. That's what normal human feet look like when they've spent a lifetime walking barefoot over broken rock and snow." A smiling, nude serving wench announced lunch, and we took a break.

By one, we were back at the screen.

Chapter Three

"Up now, Conrad. Get up!" Father Ignacy was shaking my arm. I was in a dark, smelly, smoky hut. It had log walls, a dirt floor, and a straw roof. Memory came back. The barefoot saint. The snow. The thirteenth century. "Yes. Yes, Father. I'm up. What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong. G.o.d has seen fit to grant us another day. As good Christians, we must not waste His gift. Come, we must be off." "Oh. Yes. Certainly." I started putting my gear together.

"The coals are still warm. Let's make breakfast and have some coffee before we go." "What?

Eating on waking? What a slothful habit! Come now. I have already bid our good host good-bye, and there is need of haste."

I find it hard to be a.s.sertive before breakfast, and soon we were walking north in the gray dawn.

The snow grew thinner as we approached a river, the Dunajec. There we found a small wooden dock but no boat.

"What was the great hurry, Father? Has the boat left without us?"

"It has. Yesterday morning, in truth, and it was the last boat of the season.

You should not have lost consciousness so early, Conrad."

"I fell asleep."

"To me, it appeared that you had fainted. Afterward, I heard the confessions of good Ivan and Marie and said a ma.s.s for the family. They told me of the boat." "But what good does an absent boat do us?"

"Absent, yes. But with a crew of only two. The boatman and a wandering poet, a goliard- worthless sorts. Despite the recent snow and rain, the river level is still low, and six men would make a better crew than two. It might be G.o.d's will that we shall find them snagged on a sandbar and in need of our aid." We walked along the river path.

"If you say so. The truth is that I no longer have a pressing need to go to Cracow. It is no longer on my way home. I no longer have a home. Or a mother. Or a job." The reality of being stranded was. .h.i.tting me again, and I was holding back sobs with difficulty.

"We shall pray for your mother, my son. But remember that she is not dead, she is merely elsewhere. As to your home, why, it is only a material enc.u.mbrance and can be replaced at need.

As to your job that too can be replaced. You are an educated, healthy young man-if overly large- and it should not prove difficult to find gainful employment. In fact, already an idea occurs to me."

"I have told you that I have an appointment in Cracow. That appointment is to take over the copying department at the Franciscan monastery. I am ordered to expand the number of copyists and to found a proper library." "Now, you can read and write, and you have told me that you know something of the new Arabic system of numbers and of the arithmetic that is used to manipulate them. You have knowledge of Euclid and of the algebra, as well." Not to mention a.n.a.lytic geometry, calculus, and computer programming, I thought.

"You are suggesting that I work for you as a copyist?" "And why not? You have told me that much of your previous work was at a drawing board, which you describe as similar to a proper copying table." "Hmm. " The idea of a steady job did have merit. I had grown up in the arms of a reasonably benevolent government that was founded on sensible socialist principles.

While such a system discouraged the acquisition of fabulous wealth, it did ensure that all people were fairly well taken care of. But from what I remembered of my history courses, in the thirteenth century they actually allowed people-their own countrymen-to starve to death! "Your suggestion has merit, but I see some problems. For one thing, I do not think that I am ready to take Holy Orders."

"I agree with you, my son. You are not ready for so momentous a decision, nor need you be.

You could be engaged as a lay brother, without any vows at all." "The next problem is that I do not know if I would be competent as a copyist. It is different from what I have done."

"I don't know that either, my son, so my offer is tentative and temporary-for the winter at least."

"Then there is the question of remuneration, Father. What does the position pay?"

"I have no idea of what the rates are in Cracow. When demand is high and copyists are few, the pay can be excellent. But in any event, you are guaranteed a roof over your head and food in your belly."

"Very well, then, Father. It is agreed that I shall work for you for an indefinite time on nebulous terms." The snow was gone by then. The sky was a rich blue, and evergreens gave the landscape some color. "Excellent! I'm glad that this is settled, for I was worried about you. Now then! I have several thousand questions to ask. Yesterday, as your confessor, I was obligated to concentrate on your sins. Today, as your fellow traveler and future employer, I have the right to ask questions to my own liking. Now, tell me if I am correct. You were born in the year of Our Lord, nineteen fifty- seven?"

"True, Father."

"The twentieth century! Tell me of the church, my son. Does the Pope still rule from Rome? Do the Germans dominate him?"

"The Pope is supreme in the Vatican; he is dominated by no secular power. The Germans have been pushed north of the Alps and west of the Odra." "And the Pope himself-what of him?" The man was trembling with excitement. "He is John Paul II, and-this you will love-he is as Polish as you are, and born Karol Wojtyla. A fine man and a great Pope."

"Oh, glory! My son, you make my heart rejoice!" That incredibly tough man, who could walk barefoot across the Alps and pray kneeling in chest-high snow, that man had stopped on the river path, and tears were streaking his wind burned cheeks.

Some time pa.s.sed before we started, once more, down the river road to Cracow. We were silent for a while. Then: "And my own order, my son. Tell me of the followers of Francis of a.s.sisi." "Gladly, for this too is a happy thing. I know of him only as Saint Francis of a.s.sisi. The Franciscans are alive and well in the twentieth century. I knew one personally and counted him a friend." He. had been on my college fencing team and was a fine hand with a saber, though I could generally beat him with an epee.

Ignacy stopped, hugged me solidly, yanked my head down to his level, and kissed both my cheeks. I felt awkward about it. In the time of my birth, men were abandoning the ancient Slavic custom of kissing each other; perhaps it was because h.o.m.os.e.xuality was tolerated, if not socially acceptable, and healthy men did not want to he a.s.sociated with anything that they did. "I see that I have offended you, my son."

"Well, it's okay. But, you know, customs change."

"Forgive me. What else do you remember?"

"About the Franciscans? Wait. Yes, I remember reading an ancient copper plaque that told of a great church, a cathedral almost, that had been built by Henryk the Pious for the Franciscans in 1237. That church still stood in Cracow."

His arms went out again, but he did not touch me Then he said quietly, "And of me? Do you know anything of me?" "I'm sorry, Father, but no.

Please, understand that I know as much about this age as you know of the fifth century. If you - chance-met a man of that age, what could you tell him about himself?"

"You are quite right, my son. Please forgive my asking..." "It might be that you are well known to the historians and theologians of my time."

"And it might not. Again, forgive me.- Tell me instead of the wondrous mechanisms that your age has wrought. You spoke of machines that can fly in the air, of s.h.i.+ps that navigate without sails or oars, and of the varieties of mechanical land beasts, buses and trains."

So I answered his questions, and we talked out the morning. I answered all his questions truthfully but did not really tell him the whole truth. He never brought up the subject of the Protestant Reformation, so neither did I. And why should I want to mention the Inquisition to a living saint? Because Father Ignacy was a saint. He was also a powerful man, an intelligent man, and by the standards of his own age, a very well educated man. By the standards of the twentieth century he was quite thoroughly out of his mind! He was concerned-actively worried-about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin! To him, that was a major theological dispute. He was worried about the exact anatomy of incubi and succubi, and he worried if it was proper to take communion on Friday since, by the unquestionable doctrine of transubstantiation, the baked wheat flour of the Host and the wine, after being taken, were trans.m.u.ted into the body and blood of Christ. And was this not meat? And was not meat forbidden on Friday?

All I knew was that I was attracted to the man, although not at all in the same way as I had been attracted to the magnificent redheaded b.i.t.c.h of Zakopane. It might have been ten o'clock when we started thinking about dinner.

"Conrad, how much food are you carrying?"

"Three, maybe four days' worth at normal rations, which is a lot more than I've had recently."

"And it is all of that cold-dried variety that keeps indefinitely?"