The Flying Warlord

Interlude Three

Tom HIT the STOP button.

"What the hell goes on here!" he shouted.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"I'll show you!" He pushed the intercom button. "I want the asshole who edited this tape front and center, here and now!"

A man dressed in a conservative brown T-shirt and shorts stepped in immediately. Another advantage of time travel is that you always have time to get to meetings promptly.

"Sir?" the man said.

"Just what are you trying to pull?"

"Sir? What are you talking about?"

"This tape! It has Conrad getting ready to marry Lady Francine! When I viewed it last week, she talked him into marrying Lambert's daughter. If this is some kind of joke, mister, I don't like your sense of humor!"

"But sir! I edited that tape, and he didn't do either one of those things! He went on toward France until an emissary of the duke caught up with him in Worms and talked him into returning to Poland!"

"What?" Tom thought a minute. "If this is a joke, the prankster will spend the next century doing anthropological work on Eskimos! But fight now, I want you to get your staff together and find out who the joker is. I want to see how this version comes out, but I'll see you and your people in two hours. Now get out!"

The man bolted out the door.

"Tom, I don't think he fudged it," I said. "I mean, he would have to have found actors who were exact doubles for Francine and Conrad. He would have to build perfect sets and backgrounds. It's not the sort of thing that would be done as a joke!"

"I know. But the alternative is frightening. It means that we are seeing a temporal split right here. Two temporal splits!"

"But how could something that happened in the thirteenth century effect us? We're seventy thousand years in their past!"

"I don't know, but it scares the shit out of me!"

He hit the START button.