Merritt gave a short laugh. Some things never changed.
They picked their way through the room, brushing away cobwebs. At the far end of the cellar was a wooden door, its threshold dull with dust. Edith put the key in the lock. It fitted but resisted her attempts to turn it.
“Damn,” she said. “Here, hold this.” She handed him the key while she rummaged through the junk piled up by the stairs, her flashlight shining wildly. She held up a can. “I knew I saw some down here. WD-40. This and duct tape – keeps the universe together.” While Merritt kept the light steady, she sprayed the lock and tried again. Sluggishly it turned. They both pulled on the door and it shrieked on stiff hinges as it came open.
With a scream of fury, Sam Grenady burst out of the open doorway.
For a second Merritt was back on theGodolphin, watching the wormhole close in, the figure of the man rushing towards him. It washim, he thought dazedly. The cycling of theGodolphinhad brought him here, through time and space, to this moment, and sent him the key to save himself.
He realized all this even as Sam threw himself at Edith. Merritt jumped on Sam’s back and pulled him off, then grabbed him under the arms and held on. The flashlights rolled away, illuminating useless corners of the cellar, so the only light came from the stairs. Sam screamed and fought, and Merritt wished he had brought his gun.
Light began to grow from behind them, and Merritt heard a familiar noise, the gathering sound and energy of a ship’s mechanics. He could see the dawning wonder on Edith’s face and he knew what was happening behind him. The airlock had returned, and behind it was theGodolphincorridor. He probably even had time to get to his ship and cast off from the freighter, bolting before theGodolphin’s final destruction. He could pull Sam through too, and the man would remain in the stasis, forever on the edge of the wormhole exactly as Merritt found him.
Merritt dragged Sam towards the airlock. The whining noise rose and the soft chime of the warning system told him he was running out of time. He backed into the open door, the white light of theGodolphinairlock all around him. Sam struggled and fought, screaming and cursing, and Merritt tightened his hold even as the man threw himself backwards, trying to break Merritt’s nose with the back of his head. Over Sam’s head Merritt could see Edith struggle to her feet.
The airlock whooshed shut. As he waited for the atmosphere to balance, he could see Edith through the tiny airlock window, impossibly far away.
Edith worked steadily at the forge on her land, coaxing the iron into shape with fire and hammer. It was a facsimile of the airlock that had appeared in her cellar weeks before, made out of iron, to match the key and the lock. Crazy, she thought to herself, more than once, but the concentric rings were beautiful. Looking through, you had the impression you could see an infinite distance.
Edith took off her goggles and wiped back her hair with gloved hands that smelled of metal. As far as the police knew, Sam had left town. They found his truck off the side of the mountain, but he had disappeared. They promised Edith they would make sure they caught him if he tried to sneak back into town. They never asked about Merritt. It was as if he had never been there. She had tried the key a couple of times, but the broken door always opened on the dark tunnel leading up the mountain, and never into the airlock. So she decided to build a new one, forged of iron and hope.
It took her all day to haul the pieces of the new door down into her cellar, and almost all night to set it up, under a rig of lights that illuminated the dirt cellar and the remains of an old life. The lightsshed plenty of heat and Edith was drenched with sweat. The close cellar smelled of it, along with metal and warm dirt.
Finished, she stepped back and looked at her handiwork. The iron door with its concentric rings fitted in the opening, almost filling the cellar. Merritt said he spent his lifetime looking for Earth. It didn’t seem fair that he should find her, just to lose her again less than a day later. The key brought him here once before. It would just have to do it again. Plus, if she were going to found the clan that built the arks, she couldn’t do it alone.
She took a breath and fitted the key in the new lock. It turned without resistance. There was a pause, and then she heard a rising whine of power gathering behind the door. A chime signalled that the atmosphere stabilized, and the door swung inwards.
Saint James’ Way
Jean Johnson
The merchant was grumbling again. Phinneas grunted and hoisted his bulky girth on to the low stone wall lining one side of the rutted road. Anne nibbled on her lips to hide her smile, watching him check the leather of his left sandal and mutter about wanting a horse to finish the trip home. The monk, Thomas, tutted and reminded his fellow pilgrim that the point of making the journey on foot was to show their Creator how pious and penitent each of them were.
The two nuns, Muriel and Lisette, were plodding along in their brown and cream robes at the same slow but steady pace as always. They passed the merchant and the monk with courteous nods, but otherwise said nothing. Their pilgrimage wasn’t for penance, merely for piety, but they had taken a vow of silence for the trip, allowing themselves to speak only five times each day, save for prayers.
Three of the others were up ahead, two farmers and one of their wives, and two more followed the monk and the merchant, being a miller and a shoemaker. At the head of their little parade of piety strode Sir James Fitz William, hired guard and guide. At the rear strolled Anne, quiet, soft spoken and watchful of everything.
“Can’t you do something about this?” Phinneas demanded as the shoemaker drew close, peeling back the separating layers of his sandal. That wasn’t what he actually said, but the transceiver behind Anne’s ear translated it as such. “I cannae, m’laird, ’til be nightfall. Ye knoun it since mornin,” the shoemaker shot back.
Do not forget to remind Simon to load Middle Scottish next time, she repeated silently. Even with the transceiver’s help, his accent was thick.Low Middle Scottish, she added as the shoemaker saidsomething else – something not so easily translatable, but which she thought might possibly be crude in nature, mainly because one of the farmers overheard it, understood it, and laughed. Guffawed was more like it.
“Hurry up, everyone!” the horseless knight called out from his position at the forefront. “The well of San Vicente Marantes is just up ahead, and we’re late in reaching it. We need to be over the river before nightfall.”
“If my shoes weren’t falling apart, I would hasten in a more seemly manner,” Phinneas countered out loud.
“We were only in Compostela for a week. They will not have fixed the flooded bridge by then, and the raftsman does not ply his trade at night. The choice is either camping out in the woods on this side of the river, or in comfort at the hostel on the other side,” James explained patiently. “I suggest you make what haste you can.”
The merchant hauled himself off the wall and muttered under his breath, “Whatever you say,SaintJames . . .”
Sir James just waved him off and kept walking. The younger man was as straight-backed and strong as he had been this morning, despite the weight of his chainmail hauberk, his plate shoulder and knee guards, and the sword and dagger slung around his waist. That didn’t include the roll of his cloak and provision bag slung over his back, similar to everyone else. He was the only one armed with anything longer than a dagger, save for the two farmers, who carried the yew bows and capped quivers stuffed with arrows that marked them as Englishmen. Everyone else had a walking stick, some worn with years of use and some new, selected just for this trip.
The flapping of Phinneas’ loose sandal kept distracting Anne, as did the older pilgrim’s constant muttering about his discomforts. Anne reminded herself firmly of her mantra as a temporal anthropologist.I am here to make accurate observations about pilgrims in the early fourteenth century. Not to perpetuate stereotypes.
Even if I am looking at a fat, greedy, lazy merchant. Thank goodness tonight is my last night among these people.
The one she would actually miss was James. The knight wasn’t particularly wealthy; as the third son of some English nobleman up in the Middle Countries, he hadn’t many prospects, particularlyin the lull between French and English territory wars when there was no chance of grabbing a plot of land or bringing home loot or a foreign noble for ransoming. She didn’t even know if he had a horse, but then he wouldn’t be using one while escorting pilgrims down to the Iberian peninsula and back; that wouldn’t be suitably pious.
What he did have was a keen mind, a good wit, and a distinct flair for observing people. A natural social scientist at heart, though he called himself a philosopher-knight. When evening fell and they gathered around the fire, whether it was in a hostel or in a camp, he would regale them with stories of other pilgrimages he had led. The cost of hiring a boat to sail from the southern coast of England to the northern shores of Castile and the Compostela region, depending upon the journey, was considered a reasonable price to pay, given the continuing squabbling between England and France as to who owned what chunk of land.
