Emperor

4

Steve let out a breath of relief and grinned at the others. “I’m glad my bargaining worked out. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“You got my signal,” said Marcia. “Very good. When we know the proper price of goods and services, bargaining is easy enough.”

“We aren’t cheating him, are we?” Jane asked. “We’re only paying a small fraction of what he wanted.”

“No,” said Marcia. “He wouldn’t have accepted if he could get a better price from someone else. It’s late now and this bungalow would probably go empty tonight without us. Besides, the economy isn’t strong here right now.”

“Huh?” Steve was surprised. “I thought Kublai Khan was some kind of great benevolent dictator.”

“For his time, he was very enlightened,” said Marcia. “But the Mongol emperors were not good rulers economically. The first issue of paper money from Kublai Khan, made in 1260, was recalled three years ago in 1287, on a one-to-five basis-your money was only worth twenty percent of its face value. Another depreciation of the same magnitude will happen again in less than twenty years-”

“So money is tight for ordinary people,” Steve interrupted quickly. “Okay, I get it.”

“I’m tired after that walk,” said Jane, just as fast. “I’m ready for bed, I think.” She glanced at Marcia warily. “How about you?”

“Well, yes, I am, too. It’s rather late by our schedule, isn’t it?”

I suggest you two take the larger bedroom,” said Hunter. “Steve can have the smaller one. I shall spend the night here in the front room.”

“Always on the lookout for the unforeseen danger.” Steve grinned. He took his change of clothes for the morning out of the bag, then handed the bag to Jane. “Well, I’m ready for a good night’s sleep, too. Good night.”

Dr. Wayne Nystrom landed flat on his back at dusk on the edge of some plowed field. The ground and air temperature were warm; this felt like a summer evening, which was what he expected. Next to him, he could see R. Ishihara sitting up. They both wore the tunics, leggings, and boots that Ishihara had originally designed for their trip to Roman Germany in A.D. 9. Wayne also still wore a long fur cloak that he had acquired, though Ishihara had traded his cloak away on their most recent trip to the area around Moscow in December 1941.

Wayne pushed himself up into a sitting position and saw a group of ten or twelve people standing about ten meters away, staring at them in shock. They wore thin shirts and trousers, and carried hoes, rakes, and scythes over their shoulders. Their faces were shadowed by basketlike hats made of woven grass.

With a sudden chorus of frightened shouts, the entire group turned and ran.

Wayne glanced around in other directions. Only a few meters away, an unpaved road led to a city that was visible in the distance. Many people were on it, going both to and from the city. “What do we do now? They saw us appear like magic.”

“I do not know,” said Ishihara, as he stood up. “Have we arrived in the right location? If not, we can simply move in time again and hope that seeing us arrive will have no serious effect on them.”

“This looks like the right place,” said Wayne, getting to his feet. “At least, I’d say that group is a bunch of Chinese peasants. And the weather feels right.”

“I agree.”

“The measurements I took from the console on the time travel sphere indicated that I should set the controls for the outskirts of Beijing in 1290,” said Wayne. “If that city’s Beijing, then this is where we want to be.”

“The system has always worked correctly before,” said Ishihara. “Apparently it is still reliable.”

Wayne looked down the road. The peasants had stopped running. Now they were talking excitedly among themselves, while still watching Wayne and Ishihara suspiciously. “I don’t know what kind of explanation we can give them. Maybe we better start walking.”

“Set the belt unit for another time,” said Ishihara. “If we have to use it in hurry, it will be ready.”

“Yeah.” Wayne paused and set the unit for the same location three hours later, after dark. Most likely, no one would be out here then. He glanced back at the group of peasants and froze.

They were coming closer, slowly. The men who held long-handled farm implements advanced in the front, holding their tools forward as weapons. Other men and women, holding smaller tools, followed them. Some were shouting angrily.

“Be prepared to trigger the belt unit,” said Ishihara. “It is too late to run from them.”

“All right. But maybe we can communicate somehow. I don’t suppose you know any medieval Chinese, though, huh?”

“No, I do not.”

Wayne forced a smile and held up a hand in greeting. “Hello,” he called out. More softly, he added, “I’m hoping they can understand a friendly tone of voice.”

The peasants stopped, still speaking excitedly among themselves. They kept their tools high, however. None of them looked away.

“I strongly recommend you trigger the belt unit,” said Ishihara.

“They keep saying something like‘guei’ or‘kuai’- something like that,” said Wayne. “Any idea what it means?”

“No,” said Ishihara. “And I must remind you that the First Law will force me to take the belt unit away from you and trigger it myself if they come much closer to us.”

“Well, they stopped when I smiled at them just now and said hello. Maybe we can get through to them. Show them that both your hands are empty. And smile.” Wayne felt more frightened than he sounded.

Ishihara held both his hands out, open, and smiled. “I think this word they keep saying means something negative, from their tone of voice. They fear we are a couple ofgueis.”

“Whatever they are.”

“Yes.”

“The word must mean some kind of supernatural creature-you know, a demon or a fairy or something else that can appear magically.”

“It must mean an evil creature of some type,” said Ishihara. “They would not be as afraid or as hostile toward a good spirit. I surmise that our European appearance has also increased their fear to some degree. Certainly these ancient German tunics and cloak make us look barbaric.”

“Hey! Maybe we can use this. We’re good spirits. We have to tell them we’re good spirits.”

“This will be a difficult distinction to make without a language in common,” said Ishihara.

The peasants had begun approaching them slowly once again.

“Noguei, noguei.” Wayne forced himself to smile even more broadly than before, though he was too scared to feel very friendly. He held his hands up, palms forward.

The peasants stopped again, still talking among themselves. The word“guei, ” was repeated even more than before.

“They understandguei, at least,” said Wayne quietly, slipping one hand back to the belt unit, just in case. “I’m going to try something else.”

“Be extremely careful,” said Ishihara.

Wayne renewed his phony smile and stepped forward, holding one arm high above his head. He knew they would not understand his speech, but he hoped that they would respond to a friendly tone of voice and gestures of greeting. “Hello, whoever you are. Good evening. We are glad to see you.”

The peasants gazed at him. Their eyes were wide with surprise and puzzlement. One of the men in the front, who held a large hoe, shouted to Wayne suspiciously.

“Do what I did,” said Wayne. “I think it’s working.”

“Hello,” Ishihara called out. He also raised one arm in greeting. “Good evening.”

The peasants watched them without speaking. The man in front lowered his hoe slightly.

“We have to convince them we’re good spirits,” Wayne said quietly. “Then they’ll actually help us.”

“If we can prevent them from trying to kill us. I will be satisfied,” said Ishihara.

The peasants began talking to each other again.

“It’s working,” said Wayne. “At least, they aren’t as sure as they were a minute ago that we’re enemies.”

“We have made no aggressive moves,” said Ishihara. “That may have helped. However, I recommend again that we jump forward in time and start over,”

“Not yet,” said Wayne. “This is a populated area, so we might be seen again.”

“After dark, that is very unlikely.”

“We can use their help,” Wayne said eagerly, “We’ll need them. We won’t be able to speak to anyone else here, either. But we could really use some allies. If we can become friends with them, can you start learning their language?”

“Yes, if we have prolonged interaction with them,” said Ishihara. “But I cannot predict how quickly I will make progress.”

“I think I remember something from my elementary school days,” said Wayne. “Didn’t the Chinese used to bow to each other as a greeting?”

“I do not know.”

“Well, try it. Do what I do.” Wayne caught the eye of the man with the hoe and slowly bowed forward from the waist.

Next to him, Ishihara did the same.

The man carrying the hoe bowed in return. Belatedly, so did several of his companions. All of them fell silent again.

“It’s like offering a handshake in our own time,” said Wayne. “We finally did something they understood.”

An elderly man stepped forward from the group. The man with the hoe joined him, lowering the hoe to the ground. The older man spoke to Wayne, calmly this time.

“Any idea what he said?” Wayne asked.

“No.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. But he’s asking a question, don’t you think?”

“From his tone and facial expression, yes.”

“I’m going to guess he’s asked who we are or where we came from,” said Wayne. He smiled again and pointed to the sky. “Ihope that’s what he asked.”

The peasants began chattering excitedly among themselves again. The two men in the front bowed once more. Everyone in the group looked at Wayne and Ishihara in amazement.

“I have to keep this going somehow,” said Wayne. “Just follow me.” He walked forward, still smiling, and patted his stomach. “Can you help us, friends?” The only tools of communication he could think of were gestures, facial expressions, and tones of voice.

For the first time, some of the peasants smiled in surprise. Certainly, they recognized his gesture of hunger. The two men in the front conferred briefly. Then the older man spoke, waving for Wayne and Ishihara to come with them.

Wayne glanced at Ishihara, relieved. “Well, I got through to them a little. Let’s go.”

“I would expect the villagers to believe that good spirits who come to visit humans would speak the local human language,” said Ishihara. “The villagers may question this.”

“Well…if they do, we can’t understand them. And if we did, we still couldn’t explain.” With a helpless shrug, Wayne smiled again at their plight. “Since they don’t seem to want to hurt us, maybe we can get along.”

“I recommend that you keep your hand on your belt unit,” said Ishihara, as he joined Wayne in walking forward.

The peasants kept a slight distance from them as they took the road, walking away from the city. They still muttered among themselves and glanced at their new guests with a mixture of awe and fascination. Wayne smiled and nodded at anyone he caught looking at him.

“So how do you feel about this so far?” Wayne asked Ishihara. “Joining them, I mean. They still seem to like us.”

“I am most concerned about your safety under the First Law. The danger has only decreased slightly. Our inability to communicate effectively means that a misunderstanding could occur very easily.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Wayne. “I have every intention of being careful. But I reiterate my ongoing instructions to you: you must help me under the First Law to complete my mission of apprehending at least one component robot. My career and my life in general will be harmed if I can’t conduct my own investigation into how MC Governor malfunctioned.”

“ Acknowledged.”

Wayne grinned. “I bet they think we’re speaking some sort of fairy language.”

“I assume so.”

Before long, the peasants left the main road for a narrow dirt path. Ahead, Wayne saw a cluster of tightly bunched, single-story buildings barely outlined by hanging lanterns over the doors. Small children were playing nearby.

The grounds around the village were raked clean, but the surrounding crops had been planted almost right up against the small wooden houses clustered in the center. Only the width of a footpath separated the village from the crops, and the buildings from each other.

The man carrying the hoe called out. The children looked up, and elderly women came out of the houses. All of them stared in wonder at the strangers.

Hunter spent an uneventful night in the front room of the bungalow, motionless but not shut down. At the earliest light of dawn, he heard sounds of activity in the city around the bungalow-people talking, carts and wagons creaking, horses and donkeys clopping, and babies crying. A few moments later, Steve came out of his room.

“I guess nobody sleeps late around here,” Steve muttered. “What a racket.”

“Marcia and Jane have not stirred yet,” said Hunter. “I expect they will soon.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ll go look for the latrine.” Stretching, Steve left the bungalow.

A moment later, Hunter heard Jane and Marcia talking to each other. He waited patiently while all three humans rose, dressed, used the latrine, and washed at the water pump out in the courtyard. Then he joined them. The early morning sunlight angled across the courtyard. The sky was clear and bright, though the air was still cool at this hour.

“Good morning,” said Hunter. “You are all ready for breakfast?”

“I’m starved,” said Steve, tugging his robe here and there. “I just hope I can get used to wearing this thing.”

“I need a shower,” said Marcia. “But I don’t think they’ve been invented yet. We can arrange baths later in the day, though.”

“I’m ready to get breakfast,” said Jane. “And if this is the neighborhood where foreign visitors are common, then we can start looking for MC 5 at the same time.”

“Let’s go back to the same place where I asked for directions,” said Steve. “I kind of promised we’d come back there to eat.”

“All right.” Hunter turned and led his team out of the courtyard through a gate to one side of the main building. “This is a logical beginning.”