The Stolen Future Box Set by Brian K Lowe

Author:Brian K Lowe [Lowe, Brian K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Wilderness Warfare

For a man to appreciate the immensity of the world, he must be able to see great distances. Place a man on a seashore and let him gaze out over the Pacific Ocean. Pluck him down on a hilltop where he may set his eye on every acre in a fifty-mile radius. Or raise him up on an airship eight thousand feet above the Earth where he might imagine he can see the curvature of the planet itself.

Sanja had never been airborne until she met me, and until now, not for any extended length of time. Timash and I had traveled in The Dark Lady before, of course, but we still found the endless passing vista a source of continuing awe and delight. I had thought that Maire would treat the terrestrial panorama with more sanguinity, but she seemed to find every opportunity to appreciate even now. Perhaps she saw it through my eyes, and perhaps that was how I wanted it.

Yet the even the passing tapestry of the world was inadequate to consume all of our time, nor would it have been a constructive use thereof. We had been through a great deal in a short period, much of it dangerous, and should our voyage unfurl as I hoped, our trove of excitement was not exhausted. With this in mind, we were practicing.

When I had met the Librarian, almost two decades ago, he had instilled in my brain a catalog of knowledge and skills that he anticipated would be useful in my quest to find what we believed to be the last working time machine. Facts about the world and its customs and peoples had lain uppermost in my brain, and necessary usage had confirmed and cemented them to the point where I could comport myself as a native of the modern age with sufficient facility that no one had guessed my true origin.

Those, however, were but mental adjustments. My body was also gifted with valuable new motor skills, but it had needed time to assimilate them. Some of these skills had involved matters of self-defense. The law against Thorans possessing complicated machines was so obdurate that the Nuum had developed a paranoia against allowing any such eventuality by any means. Over the years, they had grown to fear wearing personal weapons lest the Thorans rise up and seize them. Instead they had taken to carrying what amounted to a short stave, which could be expanded at need to a length of several feet, and in some instances even transformed into a sword similar to a foil. Given that I had fenced a bit in college, it was this that the Library had taught me to use, although when such skills were called into action, it was my superior strength and reach that saved me as much as my swordplay.

Nevertheless, I had returned to fencing after I was transported back to the 20th century, albeit my discipline was spotty and for long periods I did not practice at all.

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