As time passed, we could faintly see low mountains in the distance to the east as the sky lightened. The low peaks darker masses against the glow of the purple sky. There was something very familiar about them, as if we had seen them before. But not a light or a ship was to be seen, not even a fishing boat. Nor an airplane buzzing along there in the sky above. The lack of these things something that puzzled us both as we clung to our life preservers, the memory of the giant silvery disc that had recovered my drowned airplane still very much in our thoughts. I had wondered if I had actually seen what I thought I had seen. Had not Sharon seen the same thing I would have suspected that I was losing my mind. That the shock of everything that I had been through in the last few hours had caused me to have hallucinations of things that I knew couldn't possibly exist! FLYING SAUCERS PILOTED BY GIGANTIC ANTS? OH COME NOW! It couldn't be!
"You know, Lorraine, those mountains look just like the ones behind Los Angeles, but where's the city or anything else for that matter!" The rising tone of Sharon's voice telling much of how she felt seeing nothing of what we should have been seeing! WHERE IN THE HELL WERE WE? There seemed to be something there in the distance, something like very old barely visible ruins, but it was hard to make out anything there in the dim light of the approaching dawn. Actually we were seeing the remains of LA some five centuries after its total destruction by anti-matter bombs!
"I just don't understand any of this either," I remarked, glancing about, slipping an arm around the cold shivering girl to comfort her, as puzzled as she was by the strangeness of it all! There being no reasonable explanation I could think of that would explain why there was no sign of the city or of Man for that matter! Sharon like me was unable to get the memory of the giant flying saucer and its terrifying looking occupants out of her thoughts. HAD WE ACTUALLY SEEN WHAT WE THOUGHT WE HAD SEEN?
I had reviewed in my own thoughts again and again the mysterious "blob" of greenish flickering light and the terrible electric shock that had caused me to lose consciousness and burned out the ignition system of my plane. But even so, how could that have effected everything? Why I had passed out and not Sharon was a question for which I had no answer. I could only guess that our ages, Sharon being sixteen to my thirty nine, might have had something to do with it. It is as good an answer as any I can think of. Few of those who passed through such things ever lived to tell about it. We were, I understand now, very "lucky"!
Little by little it grew lighter as the waves carried us further in towards shore. The wind dying down to a fresh breeze as dawn broke, the mountains now towering up into the iron gray sky. Both of us were now feeling the effects of cold and exhaustion from what we had been forced to endure, it being more and more an effort to cling to our life preservers as we constantly shivered from the coldness of the water around us. Sharon holding up surprisingly well, better, I mused, than I was! There seeming to be a sense of "disorientation" that I noted with pro- fessional interest, being well aware of what it portended for the future should we be forced to remain in the water very much longer! I knew the symptoms of hypothermia, feared the outcome!
"There are ruins there," Sharon said to me, indicating the very faint straight lines of what once must have been streets. I had no answer for her. Nothing made any sense. Nothing at all!
"Illusions," I mumbled, clinging to the life preserver, my strength failing due to the chill of the water. Trying to remain "rational", not give in to my own fears. Sharon was obviously seeing what wasn't there. Most of the area was covered by woods. "Perhaps we're not where we think we are and you're seeing logging trails or something," I suggested, trying to think of something that made sense. "Maybe some old farm land grown over."
"Lorraine!" Sharon gasped, shaking me, "Look at that!" Pointing to a ship, a strange ship, a ship like something out of a history book from the time perhaps of the Greeks or Romans or more likely, I thought to myself, a craft built by some Hollywood movie studio from the very looks of it! The vessel at the moment paralleling the shoreline to our left. The design was Roman or Greek, the twin snub masts rigged with brightly striped lateen sails. The oar ports along each side making it an exotic sight. Its design told it to be a cargo vessel. One quite obviously built for a considerable speed by its swift lines. A vessel, I thought to myself, built to carry cargoes where speed was more important than gross tonnage. It was our first glimpse at an Imperial slaver. The first hint that we were no longer in the 20th Century! The flag flying from its sterncastle one that I had never seen before, a brilliant golden eagle-like bird on a sky blue field! The flag of the Empire of California, I was soon to learn! The bird the fearsome TARL, a gigantic monster capable of actually carrying a woman or lightweight man on its back!*
* I was once informed by a very learned scientist back in the 20th Century that no bird could ever exist that could carry even a child aloft, that such was "scientifically impossible". Tarls can actually carry up to a hundred and thirty pounds or so, although they cannot "take off" with such a heavy weight and must launch themselves from an elevation. They do have a rather "odd" metabolic system, and they probably represent the extreme limits for a flying creature, but they do fly and I have seen the birds!
"Just Where In The Hell Are We Now?" Sharon spoke in a soft voice. It being quite obvious to the girl too that there was something seriously wrong! That this was not the same "world" we had left the night before. What was this place? First a flying saucer flown by what appeared to be gigantic ants and then this lateen rigged vessel from the third or fourth Century of the Classical Era? NOTHING MADE ANY SENSE ANYMORE! Where were we?
"I don't think we're going to have to wait very long for an answer," I replied with a grim smile. Waving at the strange approaching vessel as I spoke. Keeping to myself for the moment the fantastic theory I had formed that might just possibly explain just how we had gotten to where we were! It now was my theory that we had passed through some sort of a "space-time" warp and had ended up in another parallel universe similar in some respects to ours, but different in other ways from our own. I could think of no other answer at the time to what had happened to us. I would have laughed at the thought of "time travel"!
On its deck we could now see men moving about. Men dressed in bright colorful garb that well matched the ship that they sailed. The sailors pulling at the yards while another stood in the "crows nest" set on top of the main mast. Pointing out to us in the water, his long brass telescope gleaming there in his hand as he gave instructions to those below. The telescope proof that this was not a Roman or Greek ship, for no such a device had existed back then so far as I knew. His words coming over the water to us in a tongue that was like nothing I had heard before!
The sound of their voices reminded me somewhat of the Mexican fishermen I had seen many times when visiting my sister in La Paz. Since I am nearly as fluent in Spanish as in my own native French, it did not worry me too much that the men might not speak or understand good old American English. Yet, I felt a sense of foreboding as I looked at the vessel. A sense that we would not find "friends" there upon its decks, only enemies in this place.
"What kind of ship is it?" Sharon asked me, the tone of her young voice now showing the same concern that I felt. There being something about the ship that bothered her too. I suspected that we had traveled into another universe, one parallel to our own. That might explain much, I thought to myself. A different history, a different rate of technological development, I mused. That might also explain why there was no Los Angeles visible there on the horizon. Why men sailed on a ship like that! The "reality" however was even stranger than my own wild theories. I had no "answer" of course for the "flying saucer" we'd seen, or the obviously "alien" crew that had "manned" the flying saucer!
"I sure wish I knew, Sharon," I answered nervously, taking her hand in mine. The colorful red and white striped sails exotic to the eye. The flag flying from the sterncastle as I have mentioned a beautiful blue and gold banner that I had never seen before. The name "RONDA" painted in a strange script on the vessel's bow above the exotic painted eyes. The craft still yet reminding me very much of those built during the Classical Era.
With the long sloping yards braced tight around, the vessel headed straight for us, the dark eyes painted on either side of the bow seeming to look directly at us. The waves splashing up against the painted wooden hull, some spray flying over the bulwarks, the ship a blue green in color that closely matched the color of the waters on which it sailed. Had it furled its sails and taken down its masts, it would have been hard to see against the background of the sea and sky. Such is sometimes done by those who make their living by preying upon honest men! Pirates!
Slowing its approach as it drew near, the Ronda took a position upwind from us, the sails flapping in the breeze as it drifted down towards us slowly rolling from side to side in the heavy swells. One of the sailors then tossing us a life-ring with a line attached so that we might be drawn in. The man wearing a brightly colored bandanna around his head just like some pirate from the Eighteenth Century! I was soon to learn to my dismay that the Ronda was much like a "pirate" ship in many ways!
Seizing the ring, Sharon and I clung to it with all our ebbing strength as a burly bare chested sailor pulled us in hand over hand. His brown leather kilt and accouterments reminded me of another era now history. The sword there at his hip left no doubt that men were what they seemed to be, and not some movie actors out sailing around in some movie "prop" out on a holiday!
As we were dragged alongside, the rail was lined with faces silhouetted up against the now cloud sprinkled morning sky. Brutal faces, some bearded. Among them was one that I took for being the captain of the ship. His attire was different and considerably richer than that of the others. But his face, I noted with a mental shudder, was just as cold and "cruel" as any of his men!
"Who are you?" the captain yelled down to us. His speech a mixture of Spanish and English that Jack would have called "wetback English", but with a clipped accent that made it almost another tongue. The men making low remarks to each other that I suspected were not very respectful of women! The term "prime collar meat" being one of them I did not understand just then as one of them pointed to Sharon beside me and "nudged" another!
I cautioned Sharon in a low voice not to reply to anything they said, knowing that any word we uttered would immediately brand us as aliens and strangers. I feared what their reaction might be to those not of their own kind. I suspected that we might be in even more danger aboard their ship than we had been floating helplessly in the ocean! I sensed their evil intentions towards us! That we might have jumped "from the frying pan into the fire" by coming aboard this ship! There was a smell too, one I found strangely "familiar", but for the moment could not place.
Strong arms dragged us up over the side of their ship. A number of comments being made in their strange tongue about Sharon's beauty and including another puzzling reference to "collar meat" that made me shudder at its implications! I recalled the writings of John Norman. This culture was an awful lot like his descriptions of "GOR", the supposed "counter-Earth" that circled the other side of the Sun. There they enslaved women not of their own countries. Did they do the same here too, I wondered?
With strong horny palms clasping our arms, a quick search having disarmed me of my dagger, which implied something I didn't like to think about, we were brought before the captain of the Ronda. His own clothing speaking of his high status as compared to the others surrounding us. The swarthy stocky man being attired in a fine maroon woolen tunic and a blue silken cloak, high laced sandals much like boots there on his feet. I thought him a hard man. One that would not know the meaning of mercy towards those less fortunate. The ornate slim blade there at his hip did little for my peace of mind. I very much doubted that these men could be considered "civilized" in any sense of the term. All were armed with an motley assortment of swords and daggers, making them look even more like a bunch of pirates, which I now rather suspected that they might very well be!*
* Slavers are supposed observe certain "rules" about obtaining women, but these are often ignored, it not being unknown even now for a slaver to kidnap women in Trelandar and sell them in Sarn. In a society operating at a Twelfth Century level of technology it is all too "easy" for a beautiful woman to end up a slave! She may protest that she was wrongfully enslaved, but who will believe her? Especially if her master has "papers" claiming she of a nation outside of the Empire of California! It is probably for this reason that most women of the 26th Century do bear arms.
"You have names, wenches?" the captain snapped at us. Regarding Sharon in a way that I didn't like at all. His dark eyes roaming over her wet form like spiders, a leer going over his swarthy face as he studied the girlish curves thus revealed. The men gathered around whispering low comments to themselves. Comments, I gathered from what I could understand, that did not bode well for either of us! The chains I saw there on the deck spoke of things that I did not much like to think about. "I am Doctor Lorraine Marie Duval and this is my stepdaughter Sharon," I snapped in reply to the captain's rude question. Putting just as much power and authority into my voice as I could. There was no longer any doubt left in my mind that we had somehow traveled into another "world" not our own. And no doubt at all that we were in serious trouble right now! We might end up being slaves!
"You're not of the Empire," the captain commented. It was a statement, not a question. He had made up his mind about something. It left very little doubt in my mind that not being of this "Empire" had left us both open to a fate neither of us would enjoy! And the chains there on deck left little doubt now as to the sort of ship that this was! A SLAVER! That was what the stink was that I smelled. The smell of SLAVES! Confined slaves!
The cruel leer in the captain's dark eyes as he looked again at Sharon made me shudder. I wished I had my .380 or Jack's .38. Both had gone down with my purse on the airplane. Either would have been a comfort to me just then. I had little doubt now what could happen to us both! The captain's next words only served to confirm my own worst fears of what our fate was to "be" here.
Stepping back a pace, regarding us both, the swarthy captain of the Ronda then said to me with a cold cruel smile, "I think I can get forty gold crowns for the two of you in Sarn. Thirty for your girl as a pleasure slave and ten for you as a fighting slut for the arena." My worst fears had just been confirmed as I realized just what he had just said. WE WERE TO BE SOLD AS SLAVES, SHARON AS A SEXUAL PLAYTHING, AND ME AS A GLADIATOR TO FIGHT IN THEIR ARENA FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT OF HIS PEOPLE!
(.txt)