CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cicadas buzzed in the branches of the old plane trees that shaded the dining terrace. The scent of mignonette distilled from the gardens in the noontime heat and mingled with the perfume of the roses. Elizabeth Orme toyed with her fruit salad and drank minted iced tea while she marveled over the list that slowly glided over the surface of the plaque-book before her.
“Will you listen to these vocations, Aiken? Architect, Daub-and-Wattle. Architect, Log. Architect, Unmortared Stone. Bamboo Artificer. (I didn’t know bamboo grew in Europe during the Pliocene!) Baker. Balloonist. Basketmaker. Beekeeper. Brewer. Candle and Rushlight Maker. Ceramicist. Charcoal-burner. Cheesemaker. Dompteur (-euse)… What in the world is that, do you suppose?”
Aiken Drum’s black eyes flashed. He leapt to his feet, reddish golliwog hair abristle, and cracked an imaginary whip. “Hah, sabertooth kittycat! Down, sirrah! So you defy the commands of your master? Roll over! Fetch!… Not the ringmaster, you fewkin’ fool!”
Several of the nearby lunchers gawked. Elizabeth laughed. “Or course. Wild-animal tamers would be very useful in the Pliocene. Some of those large antelopes and things would be valuable if they could be domesticated. Still, I wouldn’t want to tackle a mastodon or rhino on the strength of a quickie sleep-course in the art.”
“Oh, the people here will do better than that for you, candy-doll. What happens is, you sleep-soak a very basic education in neolithic technology and general survival. Then you’ll at least have the wits to dig a latrine that won’t swallow you whole, and you’ll know what Pliocene fruits aren’t going to send you pushing up the daisies. After you sop up the basics, you pick one or more of the japes on that little list to specialize in. They give you a detailed sleeper on it, and lab work, and reference plaques for the tricky bits.”
“H’mm,” she mused.
“I imagine they try to steer you into a field that isn’t already overcrowded. I mean, the folks on the other side of the gate would be apt to get testy if you sent ’em eighty-three lutanists and a taffy puller, when what they really wanted was somebody who knew how to make soap.”
“You know, that’s not really so funny, Aiken. If there is any kind of organized society on the other side, they’d be entirely dependent on the gate operators to send suitably trained people. Because the women timefarers are sterile, there’d be no young apprentices to replace workers who died or just wandered away. If your settlement lost its cheesemaker, you’d just have to eat crud and whey until another one popped through the gate.”
Drum finished his iced tea and began to chew the cubes. “Things can’t be too shabby in Exile. People have been going through since 2041. The vocational guidance thing hasn’t been perking for anything like that long, just the last four years or so, but the older inmates of the nut-loft must have got something going.” He thought for a minute. “Figure that most of the ones who went through were macroimmune and maybe even rejuvenated, since that was perfected in the early Forties. Barring the expected attrition from accidents, getting eaten by monsters, emigration to the Pliocene Antipodes, or just plain human bloody-mindedness, there ought to be quite a crowd still knocking around. Eighty, ninety thou easy. And like as not with a barter-style economy operating. Most of the time-travelers were damn intelligent.”
“And crackers,” said Elizabeth Orme, “even as thee and me.”
She made an unobtrusive gesture toward an adjoining table, where a great blond man in a Viking outfit drank beer with a saturnine, well-used wayfarer in floppy seaboots and a ruffled black shirt.
Aiken rolled his eyeballs, looking more gnomish than ever. “Do you think that’s weird? Wait till you see my rig-out, lovie!”
“Don’t tell me. A Highland lad with bagpipe and tartan and a sporran full of exploding joints.”
“Pissy patoot, woman. You certainly were telling the truth when you said your mind-reading powers were washed up. Ah-ah-ah! Don’t plead with me! It’s going to be a big surprise. What I will tell you now is my chosen vocation for the Land of No Return. I am going to be a Jack-of-all-trades. Scottish-style Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court!… And how about you, my beautiful burned-out brain-bender?”
Elizabeth’s smile was dreamy. “I don’t think I’ll take a new persona. I’ll just stay me, maybe in red denim, and wear my farspeaker’s ring with one of Blessed Illusio’s diamonds in remembrance of times past. As for the vocation…” She speeded up the book so that the list of occupations raced past, then turned back to the beginning. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “I’ll need more than one trade. Basketmaker, Charcoalburner, Tanner. Put them all together, add one more that begins with B… and guess my new profession, Aiken Drum.”
“Balls o’brass, woman,” he howled, slapped a hand on the table delightedly. The Viking and the pirate stared in mild surprise. “A balloonist! Oh, you lovely lady. You’ll soar again in one way or another, won’t you, Elizabeth?”
There was a soft chime. A disembodied woman’s voice said, “Candidates in Group Green, we would be most pleased if you would join Counselor Mishima in the Petit Salon, where a most interesting orientation program has been arranged for you… Candidates in Group Yellow…”
“Green. That’s us,” said Aiken. The pair of them drifted into the main building of the inn, all whitewashed stone, dark heavy beams, and priceless objects of art. The Petit Salon was a cozy air-conditioned chamber furnished with brocaded armchairs, fantastically carved armoires, and a faded tapestry of a virgin and her unicorn. This was the first time that the group, which was destined to pass through the time-portal in a body after five days’ training, had come together. Elizabeth studied her fellow misfits and tried to guess what exigencies had driven them to choose Exile.
Waiting for them in the otherwise empty room was a lovely pak-haired child in a simple black cheongsam. Her chair was separated from the others by a couple of meters. One of her slender wrists was fastened to the heavy chair arm by a delicate silver chain.
The pirate and the Viking glanced in, looking bashful and truculent because nobody else was yet in costume. They clomped forward and sat down precisely in the center of the row of seats. Another pair that seemed acquainted entered without speaking, a milkmaid-hale woman with curly brown hair, wearing a white coverall, and a stocky man who appeared to be middle-aged, having a snub nose, Slavic cheekbones, and corded hairy forearms that looked able to throttle an ox. A quasi-academic personage in an antique Harris jacket arrived last of all, carrying a briefcase. He looked so self-possessed that Elizabeth found it impossible to imagine what his problem might be.
Counselor Mishima, tall and sleek, came in beaming and nodding. He expressed his delight at their presence and hoped they would enjoy the introduction to Pliocene geography and ecology that he was pleased to present at this time.
“We have among us a distinguished person far more knowledgeable in paleoecology than I,” the counselor said, bowing low to the Slavic type. “I would appreciate his interrupting me should my little lecture require correction or embellishment.”
Well, that explains him, Elizabeth thought. A retired paleontologist bent on touring the fossil zoo. And the dolly on the leash is a recidivist whacko, a few stripes blacker than poor Aiken, no doubt. The boys in fancy dress are your obvious anachronistic losers. But who is the White Lady? And the Thinking Man who wears tweeds in August?
The room light faded and the tapestry rose to reveal a large holograph screen. There was music. (Lord Jesus, thought Elizabeth. Not Stravinsky!) The screen went from black to living Tri-D color in an orbiter’s view of Pliocene Earth, six million years, give or take a few, backward in time.