“Listen, amulet,” he muttered finally, “where can we get a beer?”
“A public house will admit you if you go in by the couples’ entrance,” replied the soundless voice.
So, no unescorted women allowed. Well, Christian thought vaguely, hadn’t that been the case in his Edwardian years, at any rate in respectable taverns? A signboard jutting from a Tudor façade read GEORGE AND DRAGON. The wainscoted room inside felt equally English.
Custom was plentiful and noisy, tobacco smoke thick, but he and Laurinda found a table in a corner where they could talk without anybody else paying attention. The brew that a barmaid fetched was of Continental character. He didn’t give it the heed it deserved.
“I don’t think we’ve found our peaceful world after all,” he said.
Laurinda looked beyond him, into distances where he could not follow. “Will we ever?” she wondered. “Can any be, if it’s human?”
He grimaced. “Well, let’s find out what the hell’s going on here.”
“You can have a detailed explanation if you wish,” said the voice in their heads. “You would be better advised to accept a bare outline, as you did before.”
“Instead of loading ourselves down with the background of a world that never was,” he mumbled.
“That never was ours,” Laurinda corrected him.
“Carry on.”
“This sequence was generated as of its fifteenth century C.E.,” said the voice. “The conciliar movement was made to succeed, rather than failing as it did in your history.”
“Uh, conciliar movement?”
“The ecclesiastical councils of Constance and later of Basel attempted to heal the Great Schism and reform the government of the Church. Here they accomplished it, giving back to the bishops some of the power that over the centuries had accrued to the popes, working out a reconciliation with the Hussites, and making other important changes. As a result, no Protestant breakaway occurred, nor wars of religion, and the Church remained a counterbalance to the state, preventing the rise of absolute monarchies.”
“Why, that’s wonderful,” Laurinda whispered.
“Not too wonderful by now,” Christian said grimly. “What happened?”
“In brief, Germany was spared the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and a long-lasting division into quarrelsome principalities. It was unified in the seventeenth century and soon became the dominant European power, colonizing and conquering eastward. Religious and cultural differences from the Slavs proved irreconcilable. As the harsh imperium provoked increasing restlessness, it perforce grew more severe, causing more rebellion. Meanwhile it decayed within, until today it has broken apart and the Russians are advancing on Berlin.”
“I see. What about science and technology?”
“They have developed more slowly than in your history, although you have noted the existence of a fossilfueled industry and inferred an approximately Lagrangian level of theory.”
“The really brilliant eras were when all hell broke loose, weren’t they?” Christian mused. “This Europe went through less agony, and invented and discovered less. Coincidence?”
“What about government?” Laurinda asked.
“For a time, parliaments flourished, more powerful than kings, emperors, or popes,” said the voice. “In most Western countries they still wield considerable influence.”
“As the creatures of special interests, I’ll bet,” Christian rasped. “All right, what comes next?”
Gaia knew. He sat in a reactivation of something she probably played to a finish thousands of years ago.
“Scientific and technological advance proceeds, accelerating, through a long period of general turbulence. At the termination point—”
“Never mind!” Oblivion might be better than a nuclear war.
Silence fell at the table. The life that filled the pub with its noise felt remote, unreal.
“We dare not weep,” Laurinda finally said. “Not yet.”
Christian shook himself. “Europe was never the whole of Earth,” he growled. “How many worlds has Gaia made?”
“Many,” the voice told him.
“Show us one that’s really foreign. If you agree, Laurinda.”
She squared her shoulders. “Yes, do.” After a moment: “Not here. If we disappeared it would shock them. It might change the whole future.”
“Hardly enough to notice,” Christian said. “And would it matter in the long run? But, yeh, let’s be off.”
They wandered out, among marvels gone meaningless, until they found steps leading up onto the medieval wall. Thence they looked across roofs and river and Yorkshire beyond, finding they were alone.
“Now take us away,” Christian ordered.
“You have not specified any type of world,” said the voice.
“Surprise us.”
8
Transfer.
The sky stood enormous, bleached blue, breezes warm underneath. A bluff overlooked a wide brown river. Trees grew close to its edge, tall, pale of bark, leaves silver-green and shivery. Christian recognized them, cottonwoods. He was somewhere in west central North America, then. Uneasy shadows lent camouflage if he and Laurinda kept still. Across the river the land reached broad, roads twisting their way through cultivation—mainly wheat and Indian corn—that seemed to be parceled out among small farms, each with its buildings, house, barn, occasional stable or workshop. The sweeping lines of the ruddy-tiled roofs looked Asian. He spied oxcarts and a few horseback riders on the roads, workers in the fields, but at their distance he couldn’t identify race or garb. Above yonder horizon thrust clustered towers that also suggested the Orient. If they belonged to a city, it must be compact, not sprawling over the countryside but neatly drawn into itself.
One road ran along the farther riverbank. A procession went upon it. An elephant led, as richly caparisoned as the man under the silk awning of a howdah. Shaven-headed men in yellow robes walked after, flanked by
