The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

to sleep supperless. The
     bundles included metal-sealed materials that he didn’t recognize; but warmed up, the stuff was delicious. There were only
     a few meals’ worth, and Storm told him impatiently to abandon the remnants. ‘We will live off hospitality,’ she said. ‘Thatone frying pan is so magnificent a gift as to warrant a year’s keep, even at Pharaoh’s court.’
    Lockridge discovered he was grinning. ‘Yeah, and what if some archeologist digs it up out of a kitchen midden, four thousand
     years from now?’
    ‘It will be assumed a hoax, and ignored. Though in practice, sheet iron will scarcely last that long in this damp climate.
     Time is unchangeable. Now be still.’ Storm prowled the meadow, lost in her own thoughts, while he cooked. The long grass whispered
     about her ankles, dandelion blossoms lay at her feet like coins scattered before a conqueror.
    Either there was some stimulant in the food, or motion worked the stiffness out of Lockridge. When he raked the fire wide
     and covered the ashes with dirt, and Storm said smiling, ‘Good, you know how to care for the land,’ he felt ready to fight
     bears.
    She showed him how to operate the gate control tube and hid it in a hollow tree along with their twentieth-century clothes
     – though not the guns. Then they assembled their packs, put them on, and started.
    ‘We are going to Avildaro,’ Storm said. ‘I have never been there myself, but it is a port of call, and if a ship does not
     happen by it this year, we will hear where else.’
    Lockridge knew, from the thing in his ear, that ‘Avildaro’ was an elided form of a still older name which meant Sea Mother
     House; that She to Whom the village was dedicated was, in some way, an avatar of the Huntress Who stalked the forest at its
     back; that its people had dwelt there for uncounted centuries, descendants of the reindeer hunters who wandered in as the
     glaciers receded from Denmark and turned to the waters for their life when the herds followed the ice on into Sweden and Norway;
     that in this particular region they had begun to farm as well, a few generations ago, though not so much as the immigrants
     further inland from whom they had learned the art – for they still followed Her of the Wet Locks, Who had eaten the land across
     which their boats now ventured and Who likewise ate men, yet gave the shining fish, theoyster, the seal, and the porpoise to those who served Her; that of late the charioteers of Yuthoaz, who knew Her not but
     sacrificed to male gods, had troubled a long peace — He stopped summoning those ghostly memories that were not his. They blinded
     him to the day and the woman beside him.
    The sun was well up now, the mists burned off and the sky clear overhead, with striding white clouds. At the edge of the primeval
     forest, Storm cast about. Beneath the oaks, underbrush made a nearly impenetrable wall. She took a while to find the trail
     north: dim, narrow, twisting in light flecks and green shadows among the great boles, beaten more by deer than by men.
    ‘Have a care not to injure anything,’ she cautioned. ‘Woods are sacred. One must not hunt without sacrificing to Her, nor
     cut down a tree unless it is first propitiated.’
    But they entered no cathedral stillness. Life swarmed about, briar and bramble, fern and fungus, moss and mistletoe crowding
     under the oaks and burying every log. Anthills stood to a man’s waist, butterflies splashed the air with saffron and dragonflies
     darted cobalt blue, squirrels ran among the branches like streaks of fire, a hundred kinds of birds were nesting. Song and
     chatter and wingbeat reverberated down the leafy arches; more distantly, grouse drummed, a wild pig grunted, the aurochs challenged
     all earth. Lockridge felt his spirit expand until it was one with the wilderness, drunk on sun and wind and the breath of
     flowers. Oh, yes, he thought, I’ve been out often enough to know this sort of existence can get