Time Travel Omnibus, page 488
“Gees,” said Manston. “Did it do any damage?”
The shot’s fall was temporarily off screen, and Old answered, lazily: “Each ball, weighing around 1,456pounds, made a nasty mess of the walls, especially when they began to fire in salvos and undercut the structure. Mind you, an atomic warhead in a guided missile, well, they’re not quite the same. But for cross-bow men, the effect was startling enough. See?”
The scene had shifted as Bill Slazenger panned across the doomed city. Tiny scurrying figures of men were frantically attempting to rebuild the sections of wall knocked down by the guns. They worked with a will, that was plain. They had no lassitude which might be expected of certain defeat—they’d known they would all be killed just as much as did Old. He found the figure he was seeking.
“Look at the big fellow in armour.” Old watched fascinated. This had actually happened. This was true. “He’s a Genoese, John Giustiniani. The Emperor, Constantine XI, asked for help from the Christian world and got practically none. This chap Giustiniani was worth a whole army corps—he rallied the defence and used his brains, a terrific fighter.”
Sitting in comfortable chairs in the heart of a gigantic sky-scraper, with communication with the other planets commonplace and with all the luxuries of civilisation around them, they could peer, as it were, through a spy-hole into the past and see what had happened thousands of years ago. It caught at the imagination, tugged at the heartstrings—this was a supreme example of the wonders of science. It brought those men struggling there on the stage out of dusty volumes and threw them, more than life-size, onto the living world of the present. They were a challenge and an inspiration.
“Switching to the Bosphorus, where the Golden Horn connects,” came Slazenger’s heavy voice. “That sharp tilted spit of land is Seraglio Point. Some ships—ah, there they are.”
Four wide-beamed Genoese ships plunged through the seas and from the shore over a hundred raking Turkish galleys sped. The water flicked from their oars like contemptuous spittle into the beards of the infidels. The Christian ships ploughed on, collided, smashed the galleys, splintered their oars, rode them down, barrelled their way through. The men in the theatre were silent, spell-bound, until a crew-man at the back yelled, suddenly, breaking the tension.
“Attaboy, there! Smash through, you—”
“Quiet!” Old was angry. Two red spots danced in his cheeks. “This is a scientific operation upon which we are engaged. We cannot take sides. It’s quite probable that there is Turkish blood in many of us, especially after the intermingling, and, anyway, this is dead stuff, history.”
Nobody believed that history was dead stuff, of course.
The wind had died. The four ships lay becalmed, attacked on every side by swarms of long galleys. Pots of boilingpitch, stones, arrows, dead bodies, everything was flung at the wolves of the sea. The four Christian ships were the centre of a snarling whirlpool; inevitably they must sink.
Some of that ghostly miming must have affected Bill Slazenger, complacently puffing his pipe. For a brief second he cut in the sound. When it died away every man was shaken by the sheer bestiality of it.
“You’d better keep the sound dead, Bill,” Old said. “Those four ships have about had it, I’d say.”
“Wait,” grunted Slazenger. The wind came again, the ships’ sails filled. They leaned clumsily to the wind and smashed their way through the galleys. A chain across the Golden Horn was lowered and the ships sailed through. Against his will, Old felt elated, and a faint cheer, quickly silenced, welled from the back.
“Look at him, will you?” Mahomet had ridden his horse into the sea, was urging his men on, frothing at the mouth. His hundred or so galleys had been vanquished by four infidel ships!
Bill Slazenger said: “I won’t show you what happened to the Turkish admiral. Mahomet laid him out and beat him with a gold stick. Name of Baltoglu. I’ve cut chunks out of the time sequence—lots of attacks were beaten off. We’ll switch to the library.”
Old sat through the sequences which would affect him most. He had to have a general picture of what had happened throughout the city; but it was vital to know, exactly, what took place by the library. Slazenger, from his time scanner over the city, had been unable to shoot sequences inside the library. Old watched as Turks, their mail armour and filthy turbans marking them out from the fleeing Christians, entered the building, watched as books were brought out, torn up, burnt, carried away. Parchment scattered everywhere and black smoke and grey wreathed down the cobbled streets. The whole situation was a mess. He felt no nearer a definite plan when the sequences were finished and Slazenger had turned up the lights.
Science could transport him through time, put him down spot on the date he selected. But after that, it was all up to him. And he was only a man, just like those men fighting in the streets of Constantinople. He stood up and yawned.
“Right, troops,” he said, wearily. “Bed. We’ll formulate detail plans tomorrow and set departure for the day after. No questions until tomorrow. ’Night.”
Slazenger had cut the noise from his photo sequences, so that Old had been prepared for the infernal racket that hullabalooed outside. But he had been caught out by the stink. The crew had been subjected to many and various inoculations; they needed them. Old swung his field glasses across the gleaming domes of the city and watched the grey walls. Just in the angle where two walls abutted was a small postern gate called the Kerkoporta, the Porta Xylokerkou. The date was the 29th May, 1453. This was the place and date where history had taken a decisive turn.
“Not so much noise, there,” Old. said peevishly over his voices within the bloated bulk of the ship died away. Even though the noise outside compounded of a cacophonous mixture of trumpets, drums, cannon and shrieks, groans and yells hammered in like a physical blow, nothing could be left to chance. Hardcastle, the Ministry of Chronoscansion official standing beside Old’s left shoulder, would see to that quick enough.
The ship hung invisible over the library. Away towards the west where the main attack was taking place hordes of Turkish and vassal bashi-bazouks, poorly armed rabble, had been attacking in waves all morning. They screamed to the ditch and walls, flogged on by Chaoushes armed with chain-whips and iron maces. Between the choice of these ferocious sergeants and the infidels on the walls, the Turks infinitely preferred to risk the latter. They came on in human waves, yelling Yagma! Yagma! Their bodies filled the ditch and made a path for the better troops following.
“What’s all that ‘Yagma’ stuff, Simon?” queried Manston. Like them all, he was fascinated and repelled by the horrific scenes being enacted at this moment all around.
“Yagma means ‘To the sack,’ Pete. Mahomet used those bashi-bazouks to break down the first line of resistance from the walls, expend the Christian ammunition. Then he’ll send across the janissaries. They’re plenty tough babies, the best soldiers in the world.”
Hardcastle, his thin face composed as though dictating a minute in the Ministry building, said: “The Janissaries were Christian boys, levied by the Turks and brought up in strict monkish and soldierly habits. They were excellent fighters.”
“And some,” agreed Old. “Still, Giustiniani beat ’em back, time and again. If it wasn’t for that damned Kerkoporta he might have held the place.”
“The Circus Gate? Yes, if that had been garrisoned the Janissaries might not have got inside and taken the defenders in flank. However, that was an isolated incident—”
“Maybe. But they’ll be through in a minute or two and up sacking the palaces. As soon as that happens I’m going down and have a look inside the library.”
“You’re wearing Turkish clothes?”
Old grinned and shook his head. “Nope. I’m acting the part of a frightened citizen. I’ll keep out of the way and I shan’t disturb a thing.” Peter Manston said: “It won’t matter to the time continuum if you’re killed, Simon.” He shot a look at Hardcastle.
“Take it easy.” Old looked warningly at Manston. He could easily understand the feelings behind that remark. When you saw friends killed back in the past and knew you mustn’t help because—well, it sort of made you go sour inside.
The walls of the ship around him shimmered as though seen through a heat-haze. “Hold that damned input steady!” he growled into the mike and the walls steadied and became substantial again. If the pile failed and the ship appeared solid and real over Constantinople—his imagination boggled at the conception. He was quite calm, accepting what might come to him with a clear mind. Presently the Janissaries found the unguarded gate and burst through. Fifty of them smashed into the exposed flank of the defenders. More Turks raced in to sack palaces. The Bocchiardi brothers took the inner enclosure between the two walls back from the Turks and the fight raged on again over the bodies in the outer enclosure. Old watched the library keenly.
He hitched up the unfamiliar garments and nodded to Manston. The ship dropped to the ground, squeezing between the library wall and the outer masonry. Old could see nothing of the fight now. He left the ship on the run, darted round an angle of masonry and fled for the library. Strangely, it was deserted, which made the whole operation infinitely more easy. He did not have a great deal of time to spare, and immediately set up his instruments and took geodesic bearings that were true with respect to the Earth’s centre. He just had time to squeeze into a black recess before the first of the Turks burst in. What followed he watched with revulsion.
War had never been pretty, and this was sheer vandalism. He wondered whether these barbarians, burning and destroying, knew what it was they were breaking down this day. He had to adjust his respirator as the smoke grew thicker. After a while he judged it safe to venture out and make his way back to the ship.
Right outside the front door he saw a crowd of Turks shriek past, some carrying severed heads, and shrank back against the doorpost. He began the movement that would carry him on again when two mail-coated, turbaned Albanians broke from the main body and raced towards him. His mind froze. This is it, he had time to think; then they had halted just beside a bush growing some ten yards to his front. A sword rose in the air.
Standing stock-still, unable to do a single thing, Old saw the girl’s terror-distorted face rise from the bush, her slender body jerk as she tried to run. Then the sword swept down. The two men ran after their comrades.
He did not remember clambering back into the ship.
“All right, Simon?” Manston asked, and then he saw his commander’s face.
“All-right, Pete,” Old said. He found it difficult to move his lips. “The library is empty—at least, it will be when we move in. We should have plenty of time before that mob arrive.”
Manston did not ask what had happened inside. He said: “I suppose you saw those last two soldiers kill that girl?”
“Yes.” Old roused himself. “I gather you saw it from here? Well, it has no bearing on what we are here to do. Prepare to time-shift, please, Peter.”
“Yes, Simon.” Manston was subdued. Behind him Old could see Conrad. The lad’s face was green.
Somewhere in the vitals of the ship he heard a voice. “The swine impaled hundreds of people over on the other shore. Sat ’em on stakes and let ’em kill themselves—”
“Silence!” Old swung back to the control board and stood very still as Manston set the verniers, manipulated the dials and brought the ship into condition ready to time-shift.
“Make it right, Pete,” he said in a low voice. “We can’t afford to make a mistake. It costs the Earth to move the ship as it is, and the Chief will have my bones for soup if we waste an ounce more of fuel than necessary.”
“Righto, Simon. I’ve got my eye on our expense sheet.”
Breaking the currents that had been swirling in the heated emotional atmosphere, Hardcastle’s nervy voice brought things back to the normal plane of everyday life.
“A great pity that it costs so much to travel in time,” the Ministry man said. “However, I believe that very shortly a new process may be completed which will allow excursion trips for those people who might wish to witness the events of the past. It may satisfy them more than the films so far shown.”
“They can have this little lot, for me,” growled Manston, and Old agreed fervently. He watched as the ship slid into that speckled, dun-coloured unknown region of no-time, where they were moving through the days in a matter of minutes. When they had gone back again into the past for a time sufficient to give them plenty of clearance room, he ordered the ship to be moved into the library. Still invisible, it nosed its way across an open space where half-naked workmen toiled among brick and marble. They were building the library. The ship rested on the exact co-ordinates registered by Old on his instruments and they began the flight into the future again.
“Steady as she goes, Peter.” Old was watching the big red hand that had been zeroed down to the time of arrival in the library just prior to the sack of the city. They could not have simply busted in without his preliminary reconnaissance—there might easily have been someone there, in the exact spot in which they intended to materialise. But as that was a direct negation of one of the basic laws of matter, the result would have smeared portions of them, and the library, over the city. That was just a minor hazard of a Time Scanner’s job.
As soon as they had materialised in the gloomy vaulting stuffiness of the library, with the thunder and rumble of the cannonade growling at them from outside, the crew jumped into the work of transference. Working from the films Old had shot when he had made his reconnaissance they ripped out volumes, replaced them with the prepared dummies, scrolls and books with heavy plastic bindings, aged to simulate the priceless leather and gold of the books destined for the hungry eyes of Wallenstein. “Make sure you take only the right ones,” Old ordered Manston. “It wouldn’t be clever for the Turks to try to read a blank book with plastic covers. And the litho printing of gibberish would create so many legends—hurry it up there!” he shouted as the men wavered at the crashing din that had smashed in in a crescendo of noise. That must be the general assault breaking over the west wall, after the flank attack. At this very minute, out there in the dust and confusion, Giustiniani was being struck down, carried away helpless in agony, to his ship. History was on the turn. He shouted again to the lookout, posted to check and double-check Chat nothing occurred to upset their plan. Not that it could—hadn’t he already seen what had happened? But Hardcastle was there, long face peering everywhere to see that the precise Ministry rules were not violated.
They could not have attempted to exchange the books before this—the library had been occupied until the moment of the first break in—and they were forced to use the tiny space left between that event and the sack and looting of the place. Old was sweating. He didn’t want to have to return into the past and start the operation again, on the second run transferring those books he hadn’t been able to reach on the first. The Chief would flay him for wasting fuel and money. He checked his film copy.
“Over there—” pointing.
“Make it fast; you’ve got thirty seconds before the Turks break in.”
In that half minute the last of the books were bundled into the vast holds of the ship, mechanical handlers taking them as soon as they were passed inboard. The Ministry positively forbade mechanical handlers outside a ship; all work had to be performed by men attired in the dress of the age. Just in case some of them didn’t get back, or were cut off—imagine a Medieval Turk confronted with an atomic-powered handler! The wooden trucks, genuine Medieval carts manufactured four thousand years in the future, were swung aboard. Two hundred men had moved something over 100,000 volumes, some very large and bulky, in a time that should give the Chief a moment’s pleasure. Old could spare not a second on thinking about what would happen; he had to concentrate on finalising this expedition, bringing it successfully back to the far distant future.
And then he saw the lithe form of Conrad, his Turk’s chainmail gleaming in reflected fireglow, dart out the main door, disappear out onto the crowded bedlam of Constantinople.
“Conrad!” he yelled. That was a futile gesture. It annoyed him with its betrayal of his weakness. He did not even think that this was a typical result of Time Travelling, too great an empathy with the events and people of the past combining to break down the barriers of normal thought; he was busily computing the best method of patching up this catastrophe.
Hardcastle said: “If things are much the same when we get back, I’ll have you broken for this, Old.”
Old didn’t bother to query whether he wanted things the same or not. He shouted at Manston and as his second began to shift the ship in time, said: “Not future, past!”
Manston looked startled. Hardcastle began to protest. Old cut them both short with a furious oath.
“We can get the fool back!” he said shortly.
As the walls of the library blurred and vanished. Old saw the onrush of Turkish vandals come howling into the building. The dun expanse of no-time caught them. Manston looked a query.
“Take her back, Peter, shift out of the library, and bring her in to hang just outside, invisible. And handle her neat!”
“Aye, aye, sir.” He lapsed momentarily into his Space Navy habit, so peremptory had been Old’s order.
“It’s a good job Conrad is the son of the money-bags.”
Old said with ferocious humour. “The Chief can charge him with the cost of this extra time-jump.”
The fool had obviously decided to do something about the girl hiding in the bush. There was no other explanation of his conduct. He certainly wouldn’t want to stay back here, stuck to life in this century, with its madness and bloodshed. And he’d know that Old would come back for him—that was the devil of it—he was the son of the big man. Old cursed.
