relaxed muscles until each functioned smoothly again; pain ceased to feed on itself and died away; despair gave place to calm and calculation. He trod forth.
Plowlands rolled southward before him, their young grain vivid in the light that slanted gold from the west. Not far off stood a cluster of farm buildings, long, low, and peak-roofed. Chimney smoke stained heaven. But his eyes went first to the man closer by. The fellow was cultivating with a tractor. Though the dielectric motor had been invented in this world, its use had not yet spread this far north, and gasoline fumes caught at Jason’s nostrils. He had thought that stench one of the worst abominations in America—that hogpen they called Los Angeles!—but now it came to him clean and strong, for it was his hope.
The driver saw him, halted, and unshipped a rifle. Jason approached with palms held forward in token of peace. The driver relaxed. He was a typical Magyar: burly, high in the cheekbones, his beard braided, his tunic colorfully embroidered.
Before they sent him here, the anthropologists of the Parachronic Research Institute had of course given him an electrochemical inculcation in the principal languages of Westfall. (Pity they hadn’t been more thorough about teaching him the mores. But then, he had been hastily recruited for the Norland post after Megasthenes’ accidental death; and it was assumed that his experience in America gave him special qualifications for this history, which was also non-Alexandrine; and, to be sure, the whole object of missions like his was to learn just how societies on the different Earths did vary.) He formed the Ural-Altaic words with ease:
“Greeting to you. I come as a supplicant.”
The farmer sat quiet, tense, looking down on him and listening to the dogs far off in the forest. His rifle stayed ready. “Are you an outlaw?” he asked.
“Not in this realm, freeman.” (Still another name and concept for “citizen”!) “I was a peaceful trader from Homeland, visiting Lawman Ottar Thorkelsson in Ernvik. His anger fell upon me, so great that he broke sacred hospitality and sought the life of me, his guest. Now his hunters are on my trail. You hear them yonder.”
“Norlanders? But this is Dakoty.”
Jason nodded. He let his teeth show, in the grime and stubble of his face. “Right. They’ve entered your country without so much as a by-your-leave. If you stand idle, they’ll ride onto your freehold and slay me, who asks your help.”
The farmer hefted his gun. “How do I know you speak truth?”
“Take me to the Voivode,” Jason said. “Thus you keep both the law and your honor.” Very carefully, he unholstered his pistol and offered it butt foremost. “I am forever your debtor.”
Doubt, fear and anger pursued each other across the face of the man on the tractor. He did not take the weapon. Jason waited.
“The hounds have winded you. They’ll be here before we can escape,” said the Magyar uneasily.
Relief made Jason dizzy. He fought down the reaction and said:
“We can take care of them for a time. Let me have some gasoline.”
“Ah… thus!” The other man chuckled and jumped to earth. “Good thinking, stranger. And thanks, by the way. Life has been dull hereabouts for too many years.”
He had a spare can of fuel on his machine. They lugged it back along Jason’s trail for a considerable distance, dousing soil and trees. If that didn’t throw the pack off, nothing would.
“Now, hurry!” The Magyar led the way at a trot.
His farmstead was built around an open courtyard. Sweet scents of hay and livestock came from the barns. Several children ran forth to gape. The wife shooed them back inside, took her husband’s rifle, and mounted guard at the door with small change of expression.
Their house was solid, roomy, aesthetically pleasing if you could accept the unrestrained tapestries and painted pillars. Above the fireplace was a niche for a family altar. Though most people in Westfall had left myth long behind them, these peasants still seemed to adore the Triple God Odin-Attila-Maniton. But the man went to a sophisticated radiophone. “I don’t have an aircraft myself,” he said, “but I can get one.”
Jason sat down to wait. A girl neared him shyly with a beaker of beer and a slab of cheese on coarse dark bread. “Be you guest-holy,” she said.
“May my blood be yours,” Jason answered by rote. He managed to take the refreshment not quite like a wolf.
The farmer came back. “A few more minutes,” he said. “I am Arpad, son of Kalman.”
“Jason Philippou.” It seemed wrong to give a false name. The hand he clasped was hard and warm.
“What made you fall afoul of old Ottar?” Arpad inquired.
“I was lured,” Jason said bitterly. “Seeing how free the unwed women were-”
“Ah, indeed. They’re a lickerish lot, those Danskar. Nigh as shameless as Tyrkers.” Arpad got pipe and tobacco pouch off a shelf. “Smoke?”
“No, thank you.”
The hounds drew close. Their chant broke into confused yelps. Horns shrilled. Arpad stuffed his pipe as coolly as if this were a show. “How they must be swearing!” he grinned. “I’ll give the Danskar credit for being poets, also in their oaths. And brave men, to be sure. I was up that way ten years back, when Voivode Bela sent people to help them after the floods they’d suffered. I saw them laugh as they fought the wild water. And then, their sort gave us a hard time in the old wars.”
“Do you think there will ever be wars again?” Jason asked. Mostly he wanted to avoid speaking further of his troubles. He wasn’t sure how his host might react.
“Not in Westfall. Too much work to do. If young blood isn’t cooled enough by a duel now and then, why, there’re wars to hire out for, among the barbarians overseas. Or else the planets. My oldest boy champs to go there.”
Jason recalled that several realms further south were pooling their resources for astronautical work. Being approximately at the technological level of the American history, and not required to maintain huge military or social programs, they had put a base on the moon and sent expeditions to Ares. In time, he supposed, they would do what the Hellenes had done a thousand years ago, and make Aphrodite into a new Earth. But would they have a true civilization—be rational men in a rationally planned society—by then? Wearily, he doubted it.
A roar outside brought Arpad to his feet. “There’s your wagon,” he said. “Best you go. Red Horse will fly you to Varady.”
“The Danskar will surely come here soon,” Jason worried.
“Let them,” Arpad shrugged. “I’ll alert the neighborhood, and they’re not so stupid that they won’t know I have. We’ll hold a slanging match, and then I’ll order them off my land. Farewell, guest.”
“I… I wish I could repay your kindness.”
“Bah! Was fun. Also, a chance to be a man before my sons.”
Jason went out. The aircraft was a helicopter—they hadn’t discovered gravitics here-piloted by a taciturn young autochthon. He explained that he was a stockbreeder, and that he was conveying the stranger less as a favor to Arpad than as an answer to the Norlander impudence of entering Dakoty unbidden. Jason was just as happy to be free of conversation.
The machine whirred aloft. As it drove south he saw clustered hamlets, the occasional hall of some magnate, otherwise only rich undulant plains. They kept the population within bounds in Westfall as in Eutopia. But not because they knew that men need space and clean air, Jason thought. No, they acted from greed on behalf of the reified family. A father did not wish to divide his possessions among many children.
The sun went down and a nearly full moon climbed huge and pumpkin-colored over the eastern rim of the world. Jason sat back, feeling the engine’s throb in his bones, almost savoring his fatigue, and watched. No sign of the lunar base was visible. He must return home before he could see the moon glitter with cities.
And home was more than infinitely remote. He could travel to the farthest of those stars which had begun twinkling forth against purple dusk—were it possible to exceed the speed of light—and not find Eutopia. It lay sundered from him by dimensions and destiny. Nothing but the warpfields of a parachronion might take him across
