At the Narrow Passage Read Free Page B

asked, which loosely translated means:

"With your permission, I shall speak in Shangalis." It was actually an

abbreviated form of the complete sentence " Retam ca kasser a rir nir

paredispo Shangalis? "

" Swen ro ," I replied.

The man who had called himself Kearns smiled, sat down on one of the

vacant bunks and dug into his pocket for a cigarette.

"You don't mind if I smoke, do you?" he asked, still speaking Shangalis.

"No, not at all," I replied in the same language, the language that some

believe to be the native tongue of the Kriths; I doubt it, though. There

are too many Indo-European roots in the language, too many human words.

It's probably something the Kriths picked up far to the Temporal East and

carried with them as they moved West. At least it looks that way to me,

but I'm certainly no language expert. I'm just a hired gun, but men who

know more about such things than I do have come up with that theory,

and since the Kriths have never denied it, I assume that it might well

be true.

"Care for a smoke?" Kearns asked, offering the pack to me.

"Might as well," I answered, accepting the offered pack and knocking one

of the brown-paper cylinders out into my hand.

Then I looked up abruptly, peering into Kearns' eyes. It wasn't a local brand, and by local I mean from this universe. It was a Toltec-Line weed,

from a long way East.

"I assure you that it's okay, Mathers," Kearns said suddenly, when he

realized that I was staring at him. "I just got in this morning, and I'm

supposed to be leaving as soon as I take you to the meeting place. Only

you two will see them."

I suppose that it was none of my business, Kearns' having brought in

Outtime cigarettes. That wasn't my responsibility. The Kriths were

running the show, and if they wanted to let Kearns do it, then it was

their business. I told myself to forget it.

While I passed the pack on to Tracy and then lit my own cigarette, I took

the time to study unobtrusively this man who had come to take us to our

meeting with the Kriths. He was tall and slender, what they called wiry

in build, though quite strong-looking. He was rather dark, but there

seemed to be enough north European blood in his veins to prevent anyone

from wondering whether he really belonged in the British Army. And then

there were some far more exotic types fighting in the trenches of France

under the Union Jack: Amerinds from the Indian Nations of middle North

America; dark-skinned Punjabis from East India; South Sea Islanders

from the Polynesian Colonies and the Aussie Commonwealth; and a host

of others. No, Kearns, whatever he was other than European, would go

unnoticed among the motley crew that fought for the British Empire.

His face was made of sharp angles, craggy planes like a half-finished

piece of sculpture, and bore what appeared to be the scars of battles

fought a long, long When from Here and Now. Still, there was something

more to that face than just its simple ugliness, something strange and

remote, something that seemed even more remote than just the cultural

differences between him and me, though I could not guess from what Line

he had originally come. I can't say that I instantly disliked the man,

but there was something about him that put me on edge, and it was not

until a very long time afterward that I even began to have an inkling

of what it was.

"What's this all about, Kearns?" I asked, still speaking Shangalis.

"Damned if I know," he answered. "They just told me to come in and get

you two."

"Where are we going?" I asked. "I mean, where are you supposed to take us?"

"The village a ways back," he said. "If you're both ready, we can go now."

"I suppose I am. Tracy?"

"Righto."

"Sorry," Kearns said as he rose to his feet, "but you'll have to carry

your own gear. I wasn't allowed to bring anyone else to help."

"Okay," I said, hefting the haversack that carried all my worldly

possessions, fifty pounds of nothing very much. A Timeliner