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whirlwind.' That used to be one of my dad's favorites, whenever a spanking was
coming on."
"Okay. I already know you don't like it. Some of them I don't like either. But
we don't get refusal rights. We have to go by the rules. You have to go after
this one just the same as one you did like. I mean, you came up with some good
angles already. We get a few more, we might start getting a picture, something
that'll give us a handle on it."
"Yeah. We could get lucky." Harald responded with all the enthusiasm of a man
asked to fly off a cliff by flapping his arms. "But what you want to bet we
don't?"
XVI. On the X Axis;
1866-1914
The Austrian treasure lay exactly where Fial had predicted it to be. He took a
small silver coin from the hoard.
"Fian, I'll flip you for who goes back to that last town."
"What for?" Fiala asked.
"We need pens, ink, and paper. To list the coins. Dates, values, mint marks,
wear, like that. It'll be years before we can replace any of them. Memory
won't do. And it'll have to be right, else it might change something."
"What about economic changes? Won't putting that money in circulation make
changes? You didn't think about that, did you?"
Neither man had. Fian responded, "We have to take the chance. We need the
capital. I can't see how a few thousand florins would effect history much
anyway."
Fiala pursed her lips. They were compromising their resolve already. They
would be able to rationalize their deviations any time convenience demanded
it.
It was pretty much what she had expected. Anyone who at-tained any standing in
the State machinery learned the trick early.
Fian lost the toss.
"Well, take a fistful," Fiala said. "I'm starved. And I could use some decent
clothes. This thing must've been made out of a potato sack."
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"She has a point, Fial. We'll end up in prison if we go flashing a fortune
looking like this." He took a handful of small silver, studied the coins.
"Don't spend it all in one place. The more you scatter it, the less attention
it'll draw."
"I know. Can you remember these till I get back? To check me?"
"I'll have to, won't I?"
"What's your size, Fiala?"
"Think about that, Fian," said Fial. "This is eighteen sixty-six. You don't
buy things off the rack here. You make your own. Unless you can afford a
tailor. Just say yea by so. That'll be good enough till we get out of the
country and find a tailor."
"I suppose you're right again. I'm beginning to think you burying your nose in
books all the time wasn't such a waste of time after all."
Thus, by degrees, they upgraded their apparel and story as they stole westward
across Europe.
Neither Fian nor Fiala could get over how little real control governments
maintained over their citizens. Contemporary social organization, from their
viewpoint, was only slightly more structured than anarchy.
And the amazing thing was that the political movements of the time, even those
antecedent to their own, all seemed to espouse more democracy and anarchy.
"That Bakunin is a madman," Fian said of one of the State's minor saints. "He
wants to destroy everything. Some-thing must have been lost in the
translation."
Fial just chuckled. "Maybe it is a good thing we decided not to look any of
them up. But hang on, brother. It'll get worse."
" " "
It was in Paris that they encountered and charmed the Americans. The people
were even more naive and generous than their fool descendants.
The Atlantic storms were terrible during a December cross-ing. Their ship was
a day late making New York.
"Damn, I wish they'd hurry," Fian growled from his place at the promenade
rail. "I'm supposed to meet Handy today."
"Use the English, father," Fiala admonished remotely. She was captivated by
the huge, rude new land rearing behind the piers, so different from the New
York she had seen in her own time.
"Too slow, the strange tongue," said Fial. He still fought mal de mere. A
nineteenth century steamer was a far cry from a twenty-first century SST.
Fiala regressed to German herself. "Look at them. Swarm-ing like rats."
Hundreds of men crowded the piers. Less than half appeared to be stevedores,
or otherwise employed.
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"Unemployment problem," Fial observed. "The country hasn't successfully
changed over to a peacetime economy yet. Plus immigrants. Looks like we'll be
able to go ashore in a few minutes."
Fiala rushed to be first.
Minutes later, "Top o' the morning to you, young miss."
Fiala turned.
The redhead, about twenty-five, cut her out of the mob with consummate skill,
and established some proprietary right im-mediately acknowledged by his
competitors.
"And won't you be needing someone to manage the plunder?"
She frowned in perplexity.
"Ah, me manners. O'Driscol. Patrick Michael himself.... Ah, it's not me
manners. Ya sweet thing, ya don't speak the language."
"I do. But do you?"
"Ah, she's got the tongue, don't she, Patrick Michael? Aye, it's the Queen's
Own Anglish I'm talking. Her Majesty just hain't the proper use of it yet."
And thus O'Driscol drifted into their lives, initially as a porter helping
with their baggage, and later as a guide. And later still, as a bodyguard
when, quite unaware of what he had saved, he drove off three would-be robbers
while Fian was car-rying twenty thousand dollars.
One morning, a year later, they went to see Fial off to his new home in
Rochester.
As the train pulled out, Fian asked, "Patrick, what's haunt-ing you?"
The Irishman was forever looking over his shoulder and starting at the passage
of unknown people. Hitherto, though, he had been completely uninformative
about his past, except to proclaim that he came of the Kerry O'Driscols and
not the Kilkenny, which made all the difference.
Patrick glared. Then grinned. "I'm an Irishman, ain't I?"
"That might be explanation enough to another Irishman. Maybe even to an
Englishman. But we lesser races..."
"Ah, the Anglish. They'd know, yes, but they'd never understand. A stubborn,
thick-headed race."
"So. Maybe you left home after some ill-starred attempt to educate them?"
"You know the Fenians, then?"
"No. But I understand the cantankerous nature of the human beast. You really
think the Queen's men would chase you this far?"
"No. But there's them here what would be pleased to lay hands on the genuine
Kerry O'Driscol. Them as put down the draft laws during the recent brouhaha
with the South. And there's them from Washington City worried about what the
Fenians might be planning for Canada, and them on the other side o' the law
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what feels O'Driscol owes them."
With those points as arguments, and Patrick's growing in-terest in Fiala to
tilt the balance, Fian did not have a great deal of difficulty convincing
O'Driscol that he should join their move west. The Irishman had lost virtually
all taste for the life of a political activist.
It was a romantic era. With no State to demand her total devotion, Fiala
enjoyed a postponed adolescence. Her life became a masquerade, she a tourist
enjoying a foreign time. Even Fian succumbed, somewhat, to the Mardi Gras
spirit.
Without duties or obligations, the soul was at liberty to chase butterflies of
personal happiness.
Diversion was a necessity. Two centuries could make a long, boring walk home. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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