(eng) Michael Kurland - Paraverse by Perchance

Author:Perchance [Perchance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was a full day before his rescuers showed any interest in Delbit. In the meantime they had untied him and given him soap and water and some clothes—a clean light red fatigue uniform that had been so well starched that he had to break the two sides of each leg apart to get into the pants—and a few decent meals. But nobody had tried to talk to him, except for making soothing and comforting noises in yet another language he couldn’t understand. Then, in late afternoon of the next day, a slender trooper of indeterminate age in a sharply pressed uniform, a very wide-brimmed hat, and highly polished boots opened the flap of his tent. “Framish dopar,” he said, beckoning.

“What’s that?” Delbit said, without thinking.

“I said ‘come along,’” the trooper said in a clipped, nasal voice. “Hey—you speak English!”

“Well, I’ll be,” Delbit said. “So do you!”

“I never heard such an accent before, but it is, by the lords, English,” the trooper said, slapping his hands together in either surprise or approval. “What in the king’s name are you doing here?” he asked. “Aren’t supposed to be anyone speaking English on this strand. Not that we’ve been told about, leastwise.”

“What king?” Delbit asked.

“What king indeed,” the trooper agreed. “Last I heard it was Benjamin the Third, but it might well be George the Seventh by this time. We haven’t been back to our own strand for it must be six years now, and it mayhap we never shall. But that’s why only those of us with no familial baggage—wives and children, or such—signed up for the Eleventh. After the War of Reunification it was, or the War of the Spanish Alliance, whichever you like to call it, when so many of us were at loose beginnings with naught else to look forward to. Although the time has been when I did miss my mother more than I would have thought.”

“What’s a strand?” Delbit asked, deciding to retire the royalty question until later.

“Why, what we’re on. This unique hunk of the Paraverse that binds you and me and these Mongols and everybody together. It’s where you live if you can’t travel between the lines. I wouldn’t talk so free to you, only seeing as you speak English, albeit oddly, you don’t belong on this one any more than we do. How’d you get here, if you don’t know where you are?”

“I kind of blipped,” Delbit said. “One second I was somewhere else, and the next I was here. I don’t know how it happened.”

“It does seem like that, doesn’t it?” the trooper asked. “Those transporters are scary machines for the unwary. Were you not wary?”

“What machines?” Delbit asked.

“Say,” the trooper said, “mayhap I talk too much. I think the major is going to want to speak to you even more than the major thought she wanted to speak to you. Which is fortunate, as I came here to bring you to the major. Come along with me.”

Delbit trotted after the trooper, thinking that perhaps he, also, had talked too much.

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