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Authors: Steve White
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foresee everything that’s going to come up, and you never know what talents and abilities are going to come in handy.”
“Thank you for the reassurance.”
“Not at all. Let’s have another round. By the way, have you ever tried any authentic Greek wine in the present day?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, you’d better drink as much of that Chablis as you can while you’ve got the chance.”
The day came, and they entered the vast dome that held the thirty-foot-diameter displacer stage, surrounded by concentric circles of control consoles and instrument panels. Rutherford gave each of them the handshake he always bestowed before withdrawing to the glassed-in mezzanine that held the control center. As he turned to go and the others climbed onto the stage, Jason spoke. “Uh, Kyle, I’d like you to keep something for me.”
“I rather thought you might.” Rutherford took the plastic case that would have been very hard to explain in the fifth century b.c.
Jason took his place on the stage and waited.
CHAPTER SIX
No one had ever succeeded in putting the sensation of temporal displacement into words. Words are artifacts of human language, and this was something outside the realm of natural human experience.
There was nothing spectacular about it—except, of course, from the standpoint of the people in the dome, to whose eyes the four of them instantaneously vanished with a very faint pop as the air rushed in to fill the volume they had occupied. As far as they themselves were concerned, there were no such striking visual effects. There was only a dreamlike wavering of reality, as though the dome and the universe itself were receding from their ken in some indescribable fashion. And, as though awakening from that dream, they were left with no clear recollection of having departed from the dome and no sensation of time having passed. Instead, crowding out the dream-memories, as the waking world will, was the dirt road they stood on, with the rising sun just clearing a ridge of hills and spreading its bronze illumination across the body of water that lay close to their right and the island of Salamis that could be glimpsed across that gulf. There was no one else in sight.
As predicted, Jason recovered from the disorientation first. Mondrago wasn’t too far behind him. The other two both pronounced themselves ready to travel not too long thereafter.
“All right,” said Jason, “let’s cover as much ground as possible as early as possible. It’s going to get hot later, at this time of year.” As they hitched up the sacks holding their belongings and set their faces eastward toward the sun, Landry cast a wistful look over his shoulder at the barely visible hump of the acropolis of Eleusis to the west.
“Maybe we can find time for a side trip later, Bryan,” Jason consoled him.
They proceeded along the Sacred Way with the aid of their four-and-a-half-foot walking sticks, skirting the Bay of Eleusis, as the sun rose higher into the Attic sky whose extraordinary brilliance and clarity had been remarked on by thousands of years of visitors, even during the Hydrocarbon Age when Greece had been afflicted by smog. Looking about him, Jason could see that the deforestation of Greece was well advanced since he had seen it in the seventeenth century b.c. Presently the road curved leftward, turning inland and leading over the scrub-covered ridge of Mount Aigaleos, which they ascended in the growing heat. They reached the crest, turned a corner, and to the southeast Attica lay spread out before them, bathed in the morning sun. In the distance—a little over five miles as the crow flew, with the sun almost directly behind it—was the city itself. Like every Greek polis , itclustered around the craggy prominence of its acropolis, or high fortified city . . . except that this one would forever be known simply as the Acropolis. It wasn’t crowned by the Parthenon yet, but Jason knew what he was looking at, and
“Thank you for the reassurance.”
“Not at all. Let’s have another round. By the way, have you ever tried any authentic Greek wine in the present day?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, you’d better drink as much of that Chablis as you can while you’ve got the chance.”
The day came, and they entered the vast dome that held the thirty-foot-diameter displacer stage, surrounded by concentric circles of control consoles and instrument panels. Rutherford gave each of them the handshake he always bestowed before withdrawing to the glassed-in mezzanine that held the control center. As he turned to go and the others climbed onto the stage, Jason spoke. “Uh, Kyle, I’d like you to keep something for me.”
“I rather thought you might.” Rutherford took the plastic case that would have been very hard to explain in the fifth century b.c.
Jason took his place on the stage and waited.
CHAPTER SIX
No one had ever succeeded in putting the sensation of temporal displacement into words. Words are artifacts of human language, and this was something outside the realm of natural human experience.
There was nothing spectacular about it—except, of course, from the standpoint of the people in the dome, to whose eyes the four of them instantaneously vanished with a very faint pop as the air rushed in to fill the volume they had occupied. As far as they themselves were concerned, there were no such striking visual effects. There was only a dreamlike wavering of reality, as though the dome and the universe itself were receding from their ken in some indescribable fashion. And, as though awakening from that dream, they were left with no clear recollection of having departed from the dome and no sensation of time having passed. Instead, crowding out the dream-memories, as the waking world will, was the dirt road they stood on, with the rising sun just clearing a ridge of hills and spreading its bronze illumination across the body of water that lay close to their right and the island of Salamis that could be glimpsed across that gulf. There was no one else in sight.
As predicted, Jason recovered from the disorientation first. Mondrago wasn’t too far behind him. The other two both pronounced themselves ready to travel not too long thereafter.
“All right,” said Jason, “let’s cover as much ground as possible as early as possible. It’s going to get hot later, at this time of year.” As they hitched up the sacks holding their belongings and set their faces eastward toward the sun, Landry cast a wistful look over his shoulder at the barely visible hump of the acropolis of Eleusis to the west.
“Maybe we can find time for a side trip later, Bryan,” Jason consoled him.
They proceeded along the Sacred Way with the aid of their four-and-a-half-foot walking sticks, skirting the Bay of Eleusis, as the sun rose higher into the Attic sky whose extraordinary brilliance and clarity had been remarked on by thousands of years of visitors, even during the Hydrocarbon Age when Greece had been afflicted by smog. Looking about him, Jason could see that the deforestation of Greece was well advanced since he had seen it in the seventeenth century b.c. Presently the road curved leftward, turning inland and leading over the scrub-covered ridge of Mount Aigaleos, which they ascended in the growing heat. They reached the crest, turned a corner, and to the southeast Attica lay spread out before them, bathed in the morning sun. In the distance—a little over five miles as the crow flew, with the sun almost directly behind it—was the city itself. Like every Greek polis , itclustered around the craggy prominence of its acropolis, or high fortified city . . . except that this one would forever be known simply as the Acropolis. It wasn’t crowned by the Parthenon yet, but Jason knew what he was looking at, and
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