Emperor

13

Jane waited in the forest with Wayne and Ishihara. Neither of them insisted on holding her every moment. All three of them knew that she could not outrun Ishihara, so she did not bother trying.

A short time earlier, at Wayne’s suggestion, Ishihara had lifted Wayne and Jane from their mounts to sturdy branches of trees near the road. Then he had followed them. Once they had all jumped to the ground on the far side of the trees, in the darkness away from the road, they waited for Wayne to decide what to do next.

Meanwhile, Xiao Li had ridden on down the road with their mounts. Ishihara had allowed this because he knew that Hunter would not harm the boy. Since Xiao Li had followed them up here on his own, Ishihara felt he would be safe on this road a little longer.

“We can’t fool Hunter for long,” Wayne said. His voice was strained and anxious.

“What do you suggest?” Ishihara asked.

“Well…I don’t know. But our mounts were about to fall over from fatigue. We had to do something. And if Hunter grabs me, my hopes are finished.”

“You really don’t have that much to worry about,” said Jane. “I still think the Oversight Committee will handle their review of your robots responsibly.”

“Don’t bother; I’ve heard it before.” Wayne looked at Ishihara. “You have any ideas?”

“I have one.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“We can use the time travel unit to move all the way forward to Khanbaliq, arriving tomorrow morning. Since we know Hunter is behind us, and has no lead on MC 5, Hunter cannot gain on us during the period we are skipping.”

“Say…that’s right.” Wayne nodded. “Before, I was always worried that Hunter would take the component robot during the interval we were jumping. This time we know where he is. And we’ll have the advantage.”

“What about Xiao Li?” Jane asked suddenly.

“What about him?” Wayne shrugged. “He’ll be all right. This is his time.”

“Ishihara, he’s just a child. And he’s only riding around the mountains in the middle of the night because of you two. How can you just abandon him?”

“I expect Hunter to catch him and protect him. With that likelihood established, my first duty is to you two, as humans from our time.”

“But you don’tknow he’s safe,” said Jane, wishing she had thought of this argument earlier.

“Hunter is tracking him,” said Ishihara.

“We’ll go back to the outskirts of Khanbaliq,” Wayne said firmly. “We’ll arrive tomorrow morning, back out by the village. Since they’ve already seen us appear like magic, we can do it again.”

“They’ll ask about Xiao Li,” said Jane. “What are you going to tell them?”

“That he’ll be fine,” said Wayne. “Besides, we didn’t bring him with us; he came on his own. He can find his way home if he has to.”

“That’s very callous,” said Jane.

“Let’s go now,” said Wayne, ignoring her.

“All right,” said Ishihara.

Steve slept late the next morning. Even when he woke up, he lay in bed listening to the sounds elsewhere in the inn. He heard doors opening and closing on his corridor; downstairs, footsteps clunked and a chair scraped on the floor, accompanied by muffled conversation.

None of the voices sounded excited. He had not heard Marcia’s door open. Quietly, in no hurry, he got up and dressed.

As the morning passed, Steve finally heard the other guests go outside one by one. Soon the clopping of horses’ hooves reached him as the other patrons rode away. Then a lone set of footsteps walked up the stairs and down the hall.

“Sir?” The innkeeper rapped quietly. “The other guests have taken their leave now.”

Steve opened the door. “Thank you. I’ll get my wife. We will have two breakfasts.”

“Of course.” With a quick bow, he hurried away.

Marcia opened her door, already dressed. “I’ve been listening. Everything’s okay, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “You okay?”

“Basically. I’m sore from all that riding yesterday.” She winced as she walked out into the hall.

“I’m afraid we have more of the same today. But before we go downstairs, I want to call Hunter.”

“All right.”

“Hunter, Steve and Marcia here. How are you?”

“I am well but have had no success. How are you two? And where are you?” Hunter’s voice was faint and almost drowned out by a great deal of static.

“We just got up at the inn. The other guests have left, so we’re okay. Where are you?”

“I am down the road but on my way back toward you,” said Hunter. “I waited for dawn to rest my horse and to have more light.”

“You’re coming back?” Marcia asked. “That’s great, but what happened to Jane?”

“Ishihara fooled me in the darkness. I followed the tracks of Xiao Li and the animals long after the others had left the road for the forest.”

“What did they do?”

“They moved to the trees directly from their mounts. It is a move familiar to me from our missions to the Late Cretaceous and to Roman Germany, but in the darkness I failed to spot the location.”

“Where’s Xiao Li now?” Marcia asked. “Did you catch up to him?”

“No. I backtracked at sunrise.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Steve asked.

“I believe so,” said Hunter. “My first duty is to Jane, in any case; it must take precedence over my First Law concern over a local human.”

“Are you sure?” Marcia asked.

“Yes.”

“So what happened?” Steve asked.

“Not much,” said Hunter. “I had to examine the tracks closely in order to see where they suddenly became shallower, indicating less weight. Eventually, I was able to find the area where the others had moved into the trees.”

“Why aren’t you still following them?” Steve was puzzled. “You wouldn’t just give up.”

“A short distance from the road, all the tracks and marks in the trees and brush vanish.”

“That’s impossible,” said Marcia. Then her tone changed. “Uh, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Hunter. “After carefully reviewing my observations, I can only conclude that Wayne took Jane and Ishihara to another time.”

“Oh, no,” Steve muttered.

“Theyleft?” Marcia stared at Steve in horror. “Now what do we do?”

“Ishihara still has to protect Jane,” Steve reminded her calmly, “no matter where they went.”

“But where are they?”

“Theoretically, they could be anywhere in history and geography,” said Hunter.

“What do you think they would do?” Steve asked. He was more worried than he wanted to reveal to Marcia.

“Wayne still wants to capture MC 5,” said Hunter. “They have probably gone right back to Khanbaliq.”

“You said you’re coming back toward us,” said Steve. “Why don’t you go back to Khanbaliq after them? We’ll go on to the Great Wall to find the Polos. After we learn if they can help us with MC 5, we’ll rejoin you in a day or two.”

“I dare not. Because of losing Jane, I am again suffering from a feeling of failure. I must reunite with you two as soon as I can.”

“Well, we’re still going to have breakfast, but…how far are you?” Steve asked. “If we sit here and wait, we’ll lose a lot of time.”

“I estimate that I am roughly half a day’s ride behind you at this moment.”

“You’ll catch up some while we’re eating. Then I think we should go on north. We’re safe enough. You’ll catch up to us tonight.”

“Probably,” said Hunter. “Now that the sun is replenishing my energy, I can jog alongside the horses I have with me. That will relieve them of the burden of my weight. However, they are still very tired.”

“We’ll be okay,” said Steve.

“I can accept this if you can assure me you will call at the first sign of danger so we can discuss it,” said Hunter. “And avoid all risks you can see.”

“Of course,” said Steve.

“Hunter out.”

Steve and Marcia went downstairs. The innkeeper hurried out with their breakfast of rice gruel with meat and vegetables in it, and a pot of hot tea. He retired as Steve and Marcia started eating hungrily.

When Steve had finally satisfied himself, he leaned back with a grin and sipped a little more tea. “That sure is familiar. It’s the same breakfast I’ve had in Chinese restaurants in our own time.”

“That’s true,” said Marcia. “I recognize it, too. In fact, much of the Chinese cooking in our own time is, at least in style, many centuries old. Even new ingredients, such as corn from the New World, have been available since the Age of Exploration. An excavation on the Old Silk Road in the late twentieth century revealed mummified dumplings virtually identical to what we eat now…”

Steve grinned as she prattled on with another of her lectures. After seeing her genuinely scared and vulnerable last night, this lecture did not annoy him the way the earlier ones had. Now it just struck him as funny. While she talked, Steve ordered some meat-filled buns they could take with them on the road.

When Marcia finished her lecture, even the tea was gone. Steve got the duffel bag out of his room and paid the innkeeper. Then he and Marcia walked out to the stable and had the hostler saddle their horses, which had already been fed. Steve paid him, too, and mounted up.

Marcia grimaced as she swung into the saddle. “I don’t think I’ve ever used these muscles before. Not in this combination. It’s not like riding a bike or a motorcycle at all.”

“No.” Steve grinned. “That’s true.” He kicked his mount and turned up the road.

Marcia steered her horse after him. “Well, it’s a nice, clear, cool morning, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. And we have a leisurely ride ahead. We don’t dare catch up to the travelers ahead of us, and we want Hunter to catch up to us if he can.”

“Good,” said Marcia, with a wry grin. “Slow and easy sounds just fine to me.”

Jane, Wayne, and Ishihara landed in early morning right outside a small peasant village. Several chickens and a couple of children darted away in surprise. Beyond the buildings of the village, Jane could see adults walking from the village into the fields with their farm tools.

As they got to their feet, Jane looked around in all directions. They were out of the mountains. Then she recognized the walls and towers of Khanbaliq a short distance away. In fact, she could see that they were fairly near the spot where Hunter had first brought his team from their own time.

She yawned and wondered if she would be able to sleep soon. Wayne also needed rest. She waited to see what her captors would do next.

An elderly man walked out of the house in the front of the village with an expression of concern on his face. He spoke sharply to the children, then stopped abruptly when he saw Wayne and Ishihara. The man bowed deeply to both of them.

Wayne and Ishihara responded in kind. Then Wayne leaned close to Ishihara and whispered something too low for Jane to hear. In turn, Ishihara spoke quietly to the elderly man, who nodded as he listened.

“Come on in,” Wayne said to her in a casual tone. “We’ll get some rest.”

Their host took them inside to a small room. It had two sleeping pallets of straw, covered with some sort of rough cloth. The single window was shuttered.

“Thank you, Lao Li,” Ishihara said to the villager, who bowed and left them alone.

“You and I both need a good night’s sleep.” Wayne looked pointedly at Jane. “Ishihara will remain with us both for safety and to make sure you stay with us.”

“I’m too tired to run off,” said Jane. She sat down on one of the pallets. “I guess this will do.” Then she looked up at Ishihara. “Just make sure you stay here. I don’t want to be left alone with him or in this village without you.”

“No harm will come to either of you,” said Ishihara.

Steve and Marcia rode slowly along the winding mountain road. Each time they crested a rise, he looked ahead for the travelers who had kidnapped Hunter and Jane the night before. Usually, they were too far ahead to see, but twice, when the terrain allowed him a particularly long view of the road ahead, he glimpsed the knot of riders moving north in the distance.

Several times during the day, Steve called Hunter just to make contact with him as he followed them. Frequently, Steve stopped to allow Marcia some time to dismount and walk around; that was all they could do about her stiff muscles. They ate the food he had brought from the inn and kept on riding.

Late in the day, they rode in the shadow of a mountain as they came around a curve. Below them, in a narrow pass between two steep mountainsides, sunlight angled across a huge gate in a massive gray wall. The wall had a rock base and high brick sides with crenellations across the top. A small town had grown up just inside the gate. Startled, Steve reined in to take a look.

Steve had seen pictures of the Great Wall of china, always long shots in which the wall snaked over the top of a ridge. Those distant shots had no reference by which a viewer could judge the’size of the construction. Now, seeing the wall in front of him at a distance he could judge for himself, Steve simply stared at it.

“Chuyungguan,”said Marcia. “That’s the name of this gate. I was able to visit it once in our time. The version standing now was restored in the twentieth century, but it looked the same as this one to me.”

Steve could see that this gate was in an important place. The arched gate ran under a watchtower, and high on each mountain to the east and west, another tower stood guard over the land. The narrow pass would be easy to defend, blocked by the Great Wall.

“How bigis this thing?” Steve asked quietly. “How high are those towers?”

“The towers are about twelve meters high. They’re about twelve meters square at the base and angle inward as they go up to about nine meters square at the top.”

“ ‘About’?”

“They didn’t use the metric system back then. They had a measurement system of their own. I’m rounding off the fractions.”

Steve nodded, still gazing at it. “How high is the wall itself between the towers?”

“It varies. No shorter than about six meters and no higher than just over seven meters.”

“That thing is thick, too, isn’t it?”

“ Just over seven and a half meters.”

“Is it solid rock? Or brick?”

“Neither. They raised the inner and outer faces of stone and brick first, then filled the space between them with earth or clay. They pounded it down and then paved a brick road over the top of the wall.”

“So they can march troops along the top.”

“Yes. Or ride four horses side by side.” She pointed to the three towers in turn. “They were placed within two bow shots of each other and they extend forward from the outer surface of the wall. The idea was that archers in the towers could reach attackers all along the front of the wall.”

“I’m impressed.”

“So were the Mongols.” Marcia smiled. “Genghis Khan failed in a couple of assaults on this gate. He finally took it when another Mongol army under a subordinate broke through another gate that was less well defended and came up behind the Chinese defenders here.”

“I guess no one needs it now, right? Kublai Khan rules on both sides of the wall.”

“That’s right. This gate has a small garrison, but in this time, it’s more of a checkpoint for travelers than anything.”

“Shall we ride on down? I guess the Polos will be down there somewhere.”

“Sure.”