LITMIR.BIZ

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or his senses, nor did he indulge in dirty language like “incredible” or “impossible”. Extraordinary—now there was a good word. He was quite sure that something extraordinary had happened to him. It seemed to break into two parts: one, blundering into that dome of pearly light what had happened inside of it, and rolling out of it; and two, this same-but-different place in which he now found himself.

      What was wrong with both was anachronism, and the anachronisms were mutually contradictory. None of the first part belonged in 1964 or, he suspected, for many centuries to come; portable energy-weapons, for instance. None of the second part belonged in 1964, either, or for at least a century in the past.

      His pipe had gone out. For awhile he forgot to relight it, while he tossed those two facts back and forth in his mind. He still didn’t use those dirty words. He used one small boys like to scribble on privy walls.

      In spite—no, because—of his clergyman father’s insistance that he study for and enter the Presbyterian ministry, he was an agnostic. Agnosticism, for him, was refusal to accept or to deny without proof. A good philosophy for a cop, by the way. Well, he wasn’t going to reject the possibility of time-machines; not after having been shanghaied aboard one and having to shoot his way out of it. That thing had been a time-machine, and whenever he was now, it wasn’t the Twentieth Century, and he was never going to get back to it. He settled that point in his mind and accepted it once and for all.

      His pipe was out; he started to knock out the heel, then stirred it with a twig and relit it. He couldn’t afford to waste anything now. Sixteen rounds of ammunition; he couldn’t do a hell of a lot of Indian-fighting on that. The blackjack might be some good at close quarters. The value of the handcuffs and the whistle was problematical. When he had smoked the contents of his pipe down to ash, he emptied and pocketed it and climbed down from the little cliff, going to the brook and following it down to where it joined a larger stream.

      A bluejay made a fuss at his approach. Two deer ran in front of him. A small black bear regarded him suspiciously and hastened away. Now, if he could only find some Indians who wouldn’t throw tomahawks first and ask questions afterward. . . .

      A road dipped in front of him to cross the stream. For an instant he accepted that calmly, then caught his breath. A real, wheel-rutted road. And brown horse-droppings in it—they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. They meant he hadn’t beaten Columbus here, after all. Maybe he might have trouble giving a plausible account of himself, but at least he could do it in English. He waded through the little ford and started down the road, toward where he thought Bellefonte ought to be. May he was in time to get into the Civil War. That would be more fun than Korea had been.

      The sun went down in front of him. By now he was out of the big hemlocks; they’d been lumbered off on both sides of the road, and there was a respectable second growth, mostly hardwoods. Finally, in the dusk, he smelled freshly turned earth. It was full dark when he saw a light ahead.

      The house was only a dim shape; the light came from one window on the end and two in front, horizontal slits under the roof overhang. Behind, he thought, were stables. And a pigpen—his nose told him that. Two dogs, outside, began whauff-whauffing in the road in front of him.

      “Hello, in there!” he called.

      Through the open windows, too high to see into, he heard voices: a man’s, a woman’s, another man’s. He called again, and came closer. A bar scraped, and the door swung open. For a moment a heavy-bodied woman in a sleeveless dark dress stood in it. Then she spoke to him and stepped aside. He entered.

      It was a big room, lighted by two candles, one on a table spread with a meal and the other on the mantel, and by the fire on the hearth. Double-deck bunks along one wall, fireplace with things stacked against it. There were three men and another, younger, woman, beside the one who had admitted him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see children peering around a door that seemed to open into a shed-annex. One of the men, big and blond-bearded, stood with his back to the fireplace, holding what looked like a short gun.

      No, it wasn’t, either. It was a crossbow, bent, with a quarrel in the groove.

      The other two men were younger—probably his sons. Both were bearded, though one’s beard was only a blond fuzz. He held an axe; his older brother had a halberd. All three wore sleeveless leather jerkins, short-sleeved shirts, and cross-gartered hose. The older woman spoke in a whisper to the younger woman, who went through the door at the side, hustling the children ahead of her.

      He had raised his hands pacifically as he entered. “I’m a friend,” he said. “I’m going to Bellefonte; how far is it?”

      The man with the crossbow said something. The woman replied. The youth with the axe said something, and they all laughed.

      “My name’s Morrison. Corporal, Pennsylvania State Police.” Hell, they wouldn’t know the State Police from the Swiss Marines. “Am I on the road to Bellefonte?” They ought to know where that was, it’d been settled in 1770, and this couldn’t be any earlier than that.

      More back-and-forth. They weren’t talking Pennsylvania Dutch—he knew a little of it Maybe Polish . . . no, he’d heard enough of that in the hard-coal country to recognize it, at least. He looked around while they argued, and noticed, on a shelf in the far corner, three images. He meant to get a closer look at them. Roman Catholics used images, so did Greek Catholics, and he knew the difference.

      The man with the crossbow laid the weapon down, but kept it bent with the quarrel in place, and spoke slowly and distinctly. It was no language he had ever heard before. He replied, just as distinctly, in English. They looked at one another, and passed their hands back and forth across their faces. On a thousand-to-one chance, he tried Japanese. It didn’t pay off. By signs, they invited him to sit and eat with them, and the children, six of them, trooped in.

      The meal was ham, potatoes and succotash. The eating tools were knives and a few horn spoons; the plates were slabs of corn-bread. The men used their belt-knives. He took out his jackknife, a big switchblade he’d taken off a j.d. arrest, and caused a sensation with it. He had to demonstrate several times. There was also elderberry wine, strong but not particularly good. When they left the table for the women to clear, the men filled pipes from a tobacco-jar on the mantel, offering it to him. He filled his own, lighting it, as they had, with a twig from the hearth. Stepping back, he got a look at the images.

      The central figure was an elderly man in a white robe with a blue eight-pointed star on his breast. Flanking him, on the left, was a seated female figure, nude and exaggeratedly pregnant, crowned with wheat and holding a cornstalk; and on the right a masculine figure in a mail shirt, holding a spiked mace. The only really odd thing about him was that he had the head of a wolf. Father-god, fertility-goddess, wargod. No, this crowd weren’t Catholics—Greek, Roman or any other kind.

      He bowed to the central figure, touching his forehead, and repeated the gesture to the other two. There was a gratified murmur behind him; anybody could see he wasn’t any heathen. Then he sat down on a chest with his back to the wall.

      They hadn’t re-barred the door. The children had been herded back into the annex by the younger woman. Now that he recalled, there’d been a vacant place, which he had taken, at the table. Somebody had gone off somewhere with a message. As soon as he finished his pipe, he pocketed it, managing, unobtrusively, to unsnap the strap of his holster.

      Some half an hour later, he caught the galloping thud of hooves down the road—at least six horses. He pretended not to hear it; so did the others. The father moved to where he had put down the crossbow; the older son got hold of the halberd, and the fuzz-chinned youth moved to the door. The horses stopped outside; the dogs began barking frantically. There was a clatter of accounterments as men dismounted. He slipped the .38 out and cocked it.

      The youth went to the door, but before he could open it, it flew back in his face, knocking him backward, and a man—bearded face under a high-combed helmet, steel long sword in front of him. There was another helmeted head behind, and the muzzle of a musket. Everybody in the room shouted in alarm; this wasn’t what they’d been expecting,

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