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  Watching the way that the bowmen moved, Arsen suddenly thought, "Indians. Those are Indians, American Indians. I don't know who the hell the guys in the tin shirts are, but those others can't be any fucking thing else but Indians. Where in hell've we wound up now? This sure as hell isn't England . . . I don't think. Shit, I don't hardly know what fucking end is up anymore."

  "One fucking minute, we're all playing a gig for a bunch of fucking rich-ass Iranians at a river place in northern Virginia and the next minute, wham, we're in the middle of a high mass in a church with no roof or floor somewhere in Yorkshire, England, in the fucking sixteen hundreds, and then, bang, we're wherever this place is. Shit, maybe the carrier can tell me what's going on, but I got to take care of this mess first, I guess. I can't just sail off and let that shit that was going on when I got here start up again. I'd like to stop it without killing any more of those soldiers, but can I? Those fuckers are loaded for bear and look like the kind who'd shoot first and ask questions later. Let's us see what the carrier thinks about it."

  Don Felipe al-Asraf de Guego misliked the looks of it, all of it. True, he had seen men's heads torn off like that by cannonballs, but the only cannon shot any of them had heard since they had taken the village had been the signal fired on the sensible order of young Enrico de Jaen, the senior of his two squires. Could some of those white-robed witchmen have drifted into this part of the country? Others might scoff, but he had personally seen some queer things that those pagans had done, over the years he had spent in New Spain.

  Hmm, his indios said that the trail of those men and women who had fled had headed almost due west. Some few might have circled back here, but none of them had so much as a matchlock arquebus, much less the drake or robinet that it would've taken to literally blow off heads this way.

  He made his decision quickly. Capitàn Abdullah de Baza might very well be displeased with only some bare score of slaves, a handful of freshwater pearls, and less than a bale of furs and cured hides, but Don Felipe had his command to think about.

  Raising his voice, he ordered, "Master Haseem, load the slaves. Gunners, man your swivels. We're going back to the island tonight. We'll strike another village tomorrow."

  All of them more than content to quickly quit this place of mysterious, messy death wrought by unseen enemies, men stowed their weapons in the boats, then made ready to push them off. But suddenly, the gunners gasped cries of horrified awe.

  Don Felipe spun about, hand on hilt, then just stood gaping as widely as his men, his nape hairs all aprickle. Half-forgotten prayers, litanies to ward off satanic evil, flooded his mind, even as he strove to his utmost to maintain an outward appearance of calm, to not show his own fear before those who followed him.

  Out of a clear blue sky, the thing descended, but slowly, the rays of the nooning sun so reflecting from its surface as to make staring upon it for too long a painful experience. Nonetheless, Don Felipe exercised his iron self-discipline long enough to get a good idea what the thing most resembled, though having no faintest germ of an idea just what it truly was.

  The length of the thing looked to him to be about five royal cubits and appeared to be fabricated of slightly oxidized silver. It had the form of a partially flattened cylinder, bulging roundly at both ends, and that was all that he had been able to determine in the few seconds before he had had to close his eyes and try to regain his vision.

  Ever so slowly, the thing continued to descend, not halting until its lowest side almost, but not quite, touched the rocky ground. It was then that one of the prow gunners, unbidden, plunged the end of his slowmatch into the primed touchhole of his paterero and sent a two-inch iron ball whizzing from out the long barrel of the piece at point-blank range, only to see the missile's flight cant sharply upward some half-cubit from the unmissable target and perceptibly slow. The sole effect apparent to those watching was that the thing rocked a little, as if it had been fanned by a gentle breeze.

  "Alto al fuego, bastardos!" snapped Don Felipe, adding, to still the mutter of prayers and curses, "Sifelicio!"

  Although the thing looked to be of one solid piece, suddenly a seam was seen to open all along the nearest side, then the topmost section began to gradually gape, as if hinged on the farther side.

  When, at sight of this, renewed prayers came from the trembling, sweating, clearly terrified men, Don Felipe swallowed his own fears and caustically snarled at them, "Enough, you scum! Are you brave Spaniards, Catalans and Moors, or just a gaggle of frightened old women? Forget the states of your souls and look to your primings and matches, but I'll have the ears and nose of the next man who fires without orders."

  Even so, the men behind Don Felipe whimpered a little and numbers of them hurriedly signed themselves when a figure wearing a silvery helmet atop his head sat up, swung his legs over the side of the long thing, and dropped lightly to the ground beside it, facing them.

  The knight thought to himself that, if a demon, yonder was a most undemonic-appearing demon. Its clothing was singular, to say the least—high-topped brogans of black leather, baggy pantaloons and baggier shirt of what looked to be a good-quality cloth in the hue of a dark-green olive, what might have been a broad sword belt cinching the waist, but no visible weapons and no armor except the close-fitting helmet. The face and hands were clearly those of no indio, for the backs of the hands were as hirsute as those of an ape, and the face, in addition to bluish cheeks and chin, was graced with a thick, dense dark-brown mustache.

  Although the demon or whatever did not move its lips, it began to speak, to speak in pure Spanish, to Don Felipe. "You will free those Indians immediately and return to them that which is theirs. I have already slain three of you. I will regret slaying more, but I will do that which I must to see you follow my orders. When you have freed them, you will immediately go back to the land whence you came and nevermore trespass upon these lands, for they and these people are under my protection."

  "Caballero," answered Don Felipe bluntly, "this land, all of it, is the property of the King of Spain, whom it is my honor to serve. You have no rights to any of it. These few indios were taken in war, and I will take them back to my base camp, thence to be shipped elsewhere for slaves. Surrender yourself to me immediately and you will be treated with honor until your ransom arrives, for all that you admit to having slain three of my men. Otherwise, we will kill you."

  "He's a cool enough bugger," thought Arsen admiringly. "He's scared as shitless as the rest of them, but I could never've known it without this helmet and the carrier's innards. . . . Uh-oh, here it comes."

  The Spanish knight had half turned to conceal from the demon his drawing from beneath his belt the wheel-lock pistolet. Whirling back to face it, he roared, "Artilleros, fuego!" and leveled his small weapon at the same time, aiming directly for the demon's heart.

  It then became Arsen's turn to play-act, for although he knew from the carrier's information that he was fully protected where he stood by the carrier shielding, it was all that he could do to not at the very least flinch when he saw long tongues of fire spurt out from the swivel guns and the pistolet, all of them pointed directly at him.

  Arsen had a big .45 automatic in a military holster at his hip and an M-14 that could be fired full-auto just inside the carrier, but he still did not want to kill any more of these men, his earlier murderous rage having been sated in the blood of the three now-headless men. But he also knew that he had to do something, if not something deadly then something impressive as hell, to maintain his edge in this encounter.

  In the river-end of one of the longboats, he saw a hefty keg with copper hoops, and, what with all he had learned in the arms business, he knew what such a keg was almost certain to contain. Uncrossing his arms, he reached into the carrier and drew out a silvery metal tube some fifteen inches long and a bit less than an inch in diameter. Extending his arm out beyond the protective aura of the carrier, he aimed the rod at the keg and activated it.

  With a roar and a flas
h of flame, the gunpowder keg exploded, flinging wooden splinters, copper nails, shreds of hooping, and glowing bits of fire in every direction, blowing out the end and part of the bottom of the boat, and completely unmanning most of Don Felipe's force. All save the knight himself and two or three others dropped their weapons and fell onto their knees in the sand—the Europeans and Afriqans either praying or staring, dumb with shock, awaiting death, the Indians kneeling or prostrate, all offering Arsen the homage that the Great Spirit should rightly receive.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  "Wait a fucking minute!" yelped Greek John. "New Spain? That's what the spic . . . the Spanish called Mexico, and buddy, this sure as hell doesn't look like fucking Mexico to me around here."

  Arsen shrugged. "That was back in our world, our time, our own history, John. No, this isn't Mexico . . . I don't think. I think, all things considered, we're in either northern Kentucky or southern Ohio, but shitfire, man, I don't really know and the carrier can't seem to tell me anything except longitude and latitude, and that's all Greek to me, I never was worth a fuck at that crap."

  "But what I was trying to tell y'all is that some miles through the woods are some people that need help, need it bad, too. I've done all the carrier and I could do for them on the spot, but more needs to be done, and we're the only folks around to do it."

  "These folks' village was attacked and taken and partly burned by the Spaniards and Moors, see. They killed or tried to kill all the old folks and kids and then tried to catch all the others for slaves. With the carrier and its weapons, I managed to scare the shit out of the Spanish, made them leave all their weapons except for a few swords behind and take off in their rowboats. But the Indians who were fighting alongside of them say the main base isn't far from that village, and you can bet your ass they'll be back, soon's they get more guns and more men. And bad off as those folks back there are, we damn well better be there when the slavers get back."

  "Now wait just one frigging second," said Haigh Panoshian. "I don't see where we got to do nothing. See, it ain't our fight unless we make it our fight. Where is it any skin off our ass if these spicks you been carrying on about kill a bunch of redskins or make slaves outa them? Better them than us, buddy, a whole fucking lot better!"

  Arsen just stared at his cousin for a minute, then said softly and bitterly, "Yeah, Haighie, I remember what Grandpapa used to say, too; what you just said is what the rest of the world said while the goddam Turks was doing it to our people. When I saw those fucking bastard Spaniards chopping up helpless three- and four-year-old kids, back there today, all I could think of was how Grandpapa used to say the Turks had done the same thing—throwing little Armenian babies up in the air and catching them on their bayonets."

  "It's folks back there that need help, all the help they can get. If the rest of y'all feel like Haighie, then I'll load up what I can get in the carrier with me and the most the projector can carry and go back to those poor folks alone and the rest of you can just go fuck yourselves!"

  "Your pardon, please, Milord Captain Arsen," said Simon Delahaye respectfully. "Did I misunderstand, or did milord say that accursed Spanishers and Moors have so ill-used some poor folk that they now lie sore in need of succor?"

  Arsen replied. "Well, in essence, that's what I just said, Delahaye. I made the Spanish leave all their small cannons and other guns and pikes and all behind, but somebody has got to teach those folks how to use the fuckers right before the Spanish come back to finish what they started there."

  "Then," said the sometime captain of Monteleone's Horse, "it were an act of Christian charity and the bounden duty of a gentleman to render such assistance as he might to these unfortunates. Which way lieth their village, milord?"

  "Man, you sure as hell do have shit for brains, don't you?" demanded Haigh of Simon then. "Or do you just make a hobby of picking losers to fight for, huh?"

  Lisa shook her blond head in disgust. "The man's got guts, is all, Haigh, you ball-less wonder. He knows what's right and what's wrong and he's not afraid to stand up for what he thinks is right." Then, addressing Arsen, she asked, "You said some of these people were wounded? Okay, then count me in. How about you, John? I've seen DDS's do some damned fine emergency surgery in a pinch—think you could hack it?"

  It was quickly settled. All would go back with Arsen, unless Mike Vranian still could not walk easily, in which case Haigh would stay with him until he could. Leaving Lisa, Greek John, and Simon to prepare for the party to move out at dawn, Arsen gave orders to the carrier and went on a trip of his own.

  Kogh Ademian sat in comfort in his paneled family room, sipping iced tea and nibbling popcorn while he watched a rerun of Gunsmoke on television. His wife sat on the other side of the popcorn bowl, crocheting, waiting patiently through the rerun western for the advertised late movie, one of her all-time favorites, Waterloo Bridge.

  He had just arisen to refill his glass, not in the least interested in whether or not pet dogs—his or anyone else's—got more cheese, when the telephone buzzed behind the bar. When it buzzed a second, then a third time, he reflected that the servants might all be abed this late of a Saturday night, so he reached over and picked up the receiver.

  "Ademian," he half-growled, thinking that this was a hell of a time to call anybody and whoever it turned out to be had better have a damned good reason for disturbing his quiet weekend evening this way.

  "Papa?" said his long-missing, only recently reappeared son, Arsen. "Papa, if Mama's around, don't let on it's me. I just can't come over there and see her this time, see, too much is pressing on me, timewise. Look, Papa, I need to use the lab at the complex again. Can you meet me there in a half an hour? This is urgent, Papa, a matter of real life and death."

  Immediately he had cleared the line, Kogh punched one of the house lines and said, "Rico, sorry to bother you this late, but I've got to be down at the plant, pronto. I'll be waiting for you in the side foyer."

  The president of Ademian Enterprises International felt and showed no surprise when he entered the largest laboratory room to find the glowing carrier hovering in the air and his son standing beside it.

  "What's that thing?" He gestured at the big silvery egg shape cradled in one of Arsen's arms.

  "It's a Class Seven projector, Papa," the younger Ademian said.

  "And you're going to try to make another one?" asked Kogh. "Here?"

  "No, Papa." Arsen shook his silver-helmeted head. "Your labs are far too primitive to make one of these from scratch. This time and world don't yet have even the knowledge to blend metals into the proper alloy for the casing of it. But the carrier thinks that it might be repaired with what it knows and what is available here and now, see."

  Kogh thrust out his square jaw pugnaciously, "Primitive, huh? Boy, I'll have you know that millions went into setting up my labs. Top people don't come cheap, and neither does state-of-the-art equipment."

  Arsen sighed. "Papa, it wasn't an insult. Look, there's no place on the planet, just now, could build a Class Seven. Science just has not got that far here yet. Please cool down and lend me a hand, huh? I've got hardly any time and one whole hell of a lot to do tonight."

  Kogh had not been in his office a half hour when he received the call he had expected from his brother Bagrat, in Richmond, Virginia.

  "Good morning, Bagrat. What's shaking, baby?" He grinned to himself, knowing ahead of time what was coming. This business his son had gotten him in was turning out to be real fun at times.

  The voice on the other end was agitated, staccato. "You know how some your warehouses was robbed last week? Well, them same fuckers, or some others, they hit us sometime over this weekend, Kogh. Best I can tell, they got ninety-six flint plains rifles, with the molds and flasks, two cases of flints, a big bale of patches, ball-starters, and God knows what else little stuff we ain't counted up yet. They stole my pair of four-pounder cannons and ever'thing that went with them, a hunnerd and fifty one-pound cans of triple-F powder I'd got a good p
rice on some time back, and twenty-four cans of four-F primer powder, too."

  "Kogh, the fucking IRA is going at it over in Belfast now, and it's a whole hell of a lot of Irish drunks here in Richmond, too. D'you reckon . . . ?"

  "Aw, Jesus Christ, Bagrat, pull the chain and flush your brain," replied Kogh scathingly. "Them IRA fuckers may be flat dumb, but they ain't noway stupid enough to try to fight today with a bunch of flintlock rifles."

  "Then, who . . ." began Bagrat.

  "Who really gives a good shit, little brother?" said Kogh. "I'll tell you just what was told me last week. Ever'thing that Ademian Enterprises is got is insured to the fucking hilt, so you just let the insurance comp'nies and the cops worry about where your stock went to, hear? If they tell you to put in more security, do it, keep the fuckers happy, but just let them do all the worrying about stolen goods, you keep your eyes on the profits earned on goods that wasn't stole. After all, we ain't the first was ever robbed and we fucking well ain't gonna be the last ones, neither."

  "That's for damn sure," stated Bagrat. "The fucking cops is bouncing all over the place this morning down here. Somebody broke into a big surgical-supply place and stole a whole bunch of shit, instruments and all. Then another bunch broke into a drug wholesaler, too; those ones stole some dope, they say—Demerol, morphine, stuff like that—but a lot of what's missing, thishere cop told me in confidence, won't real dope at all, lots of it was antibiotics and real medicines, too. Don't that beat all for a bunch of crazy dope fiends, Kogh?"

  Kogh Ademian laughed himself red-faced and teary-eyed after he had terminated the long-distance conversation. There had been some more disappearances from his own cavernous dockside warehouses, too, that weekend just past, of items much more sophisticated than flintlock rifles and two small field guns and, although his brother obviously had not yet realized the fact, above two hundred flint pistols and their accessories.