The Ship That Sailed The Time Stream Part 14

Things will turn out better than you expect."

V.

HOWIE CAME to in cramped darkness and immediately wished he could faint again. The engine was digging cruelly into his back but it bothered him not so much as the softer protuberances which rubbed against his

front. He was facing the she-devil-that much he could tell even in darkness. And she also faced him. But why, oh merciful G.o.d, did they have to be jammed in here end to end?

He felt cautiously about, trying to move a fraction of an inch away and cringed when his hand touched for- bidden fruit. But if the she-devil intended to seduce him her tactics were highly unorthodox. A knee came in violent contact with his nose. Minutes pa.s.sed while he breathed through his mouth, waiting for the fountain to clot. He wanted to snuffle or blow but Satan's emis- saries were talking right over his head.

All dead now, Howie thought, remembering his s.h.i.+p- mates. They weren't true Christians but they were friends. Then abruptly he recognized Joe's voice speak- ing in an unknown tongue. He was alive! The young skipper was not a true Christian either but his quiet competence always made Howie think wistfully of the father he had never known. He felt better already. Mr.

Rate had coped with everything so far-he would cope with this. But how soon?

The she-devil squirmed and Howie was reminded of their desperate position. He discovered that her dress had crawled higher than it had any business crawling.

He tried to move away and again his hand contacted forbidden fruit, round and firm like half a melon. Again her knees jabbed at his clotted nose.

Howie fought his arms down past the she-devil's body until he could encircle her flailing legs. There was no room to retreat, so he advanced, squeezing with all his strength. Still she struggled. Knees pummeled his cheeks like calking mallets. The she-devil would not stop knee- ing him! It was almost as if she didn't want him to touch her. There was only one move left: Howie bit.

His incisors met in a particularly tender place just above the kneecap and the flailing immediately stopped. She lay stiff, trembling slightly like a newly

saddled filly. Howie moved a cautious hand. Maybe he could find that confounded skirt and pull it down.

But the farther his hand moved the more softly in- teresting things became. I won't pull it down just yet.

Howie decided. If he was to fight the Devil it would be well to familiarize himself with the Devil's weapons.

The she-devil squirmed again, s.h.i.+fting position with a thoroughly delightful wriggle. Tingling fire pa.s.sed through Howie's virgin loins. I'll move my hand just a little farther, he decided. At that instant sheet lightning flashed through his closed eyes. Sparks and pinwheels banked billiard-like round the inner corners of his skull and he gave a yelp of outraged surprise. It wasn't only his nose she'd smashed; it felt like the treacherous she- devil had bitten off the tip of his big toe! He froze, waiting for someone to tear up the floorboard and dis- cover them, but after several minutes it appeared that no one had heard. There was a long, thoughtful, silence while Howie dwelt on many things.

Even as Joe Rate, he came to the belated conclusion that this she-devil was less freewheeling than would appear at first glance. She had not, Howie suddenly realized, the slightest intention of seducing him. The knowledge left him shaken to the very core of his being, for if she were defending her virtue then Howie's wan- dering hand had sinned him into a very tight corner.

How could he ever make amends to G.o.d and Mother for attempting to lead this fair flower astray?

Why, she could probably be led down paths of right- eousness and become a true Christian! But that was beside the point. He had wrong this girl. There was but one way to make amends. He would marry her.

The thought shocked him but there was no avoiding it. Come to think of it, hadn't St. Paul suggested it was better to marry than to burn? Howie could no longer hide even from himself the ardor with which he burned.

It would not be pure sacrifice on his part, he decided.

But if he were to marry this fair flower he must first save her from the Infidel. A wave of shame swept through Howie as he realized that his betrothed was witness to this shameful, rodentlike cowering in dark- ness. He felt the strength of G.o.d flowing into him. It was time to act. But what was he to do? Why was Mr.

Rate taking so long?

Joe and the imam still faced each other across the minuscule cabin. "What kind of a weapon is it?" the imam asked.

Joe took the pistol reluctantly from his belt. "Fire burns in a closed place," he explained. "The smoke pushes a piece of lead out of this tube."

"Ingenious," the old man said. "How far will it throw?"

Joe thought a moment, trying to remember if the Arabs used yards. Probably not. He spread his arms wide and said, "Fifty times this distance." He tossed the pistol into the drawer below his bunk with a care- less gesture.

The old man was impressed. "I should like to visit your country."

"So would I," Joe added with a sad smile.

The imam grinned wolfishly. "You can bamboozle Sidi Ferroush with yarns about a far continent, but I have talked with a man who went there. It is a worth- less land, filled with howling savages and strange sick- nesses. I do not think you were blown off course. Nor do I think you are lost. You have charts and you have bits of crystal ground Archimedes fas.h.i.+on. No." The imam laughed his short hard cackle. "I believe in G.o.d but I do not expect to see Paradise through a burning gla.s.s."

Joe realized dimly that he was not at his best with an open mouth but he couldn't get around to closing it.

"You do not come from the Worthless Continent," the old man continued. "Your s.h.i.+p and tools are too fine

for savages. Besides, you look like Roumi-Europeans.

"If I were still young and believed in the fabulous kingdom of Prester John- But alas, I am old and a cynic. Yet, I would give the remaining years of my life to know from whence you come."

"You'd never believe me," Joe said.

"Probably not," the old man conceded, "but that will not make me stop listening."

Joe took a deep breath and began. It was a garbled account, punctuated with skippings back and forth as he remembered details, interrupted often with fum- blings for words Joe didn't know and ideas which had never existed in Tenth Century Spain.

In the last few days Joe had become more proficient in the language-really more of an uniflected Latin than Spanish. As he told his tale one corner of his mind reflected on how he was slipping into a new p.r.o.nuncia- tion with vowel sounds all different from what he'd learned in school. Abruptly, he broke off and began chanting:

"Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris

Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit. .."

The imam looked at him with a slight, quizzical smile.

"So that's how it sounded!" Joe marveled, his face lighting with the first and only love of his life. "Latin's a dead language in our time, you know. We could only guess at how it sounded.

"Litora multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem lunonis ob iram; multa quoque et-"

He continued, rolling over Virgil's meter with rising confidence. "No wonder the empress fainted the first time she heard it!"

"I begin," the old man said, "to believe your fantastic tale."

Joe looked at him.

The old man began chanting in a regular, even meter and Joe listened, tormented by a feeling that he could almost understand. The old man stopped abruptly. "It's changed from his day to mine," he explained. "But that's how I think he might have sung it."

"Again!" Joe said with mounting excitement.

The imam repeated, and abruptly the harsh syllables fell into meaning for Joe. Tears started in his eyes as he remembered Dr. Battlement. How many years would Old Prof have given to hear the Iliad in Homer's ac- cents?

"I see you recognize it."

Joe nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

The imam was silent for a moment. "You have the advantage," he finally said.

"How?"

"We are history-to be read in any book. You are the future which is read in no book."

"I'm afraid I can tell you little," Joe said. "And I wonder if I should tell you anything. I might change the course of history and erase my own present."

The imam shrugged. "I will change no history. I am an old man with no hunger to gratify but curiosity. He laughed his single cackle again. "I doubt if I am impor- tant enough to be inscribed in the histories, so I won't ask the date of my death. But you could tell me, I think, what were or will be the fates of Islam and Christendom."

"That brings me to a problem which has plagued me since this whole thing began. What year is this?"

"376.".