Shadows Out of Time

The others moved themselves back, gliding like great snails. They did not seem to be surprised like him. He was even more surprised at his perception of their lack of surprise. It was as if he now possessed some new sense enabling him to perceive the thoughts of others, others with no facial features, or even words, to convey them. Instinctively he went for his sword, only to feel a shock of soul-draining disappointment. Not only had he no sword, no weapon of any kind; he had no muscled arm, no hip to be wearing a scabbard. He might have fainted, except that the base of his conical body had too wide a base to allow him to tip over.

He heard clicking sounds, saw that they came from pincers at the end of one of the snaking limbs of his captors. Again, one startlement opened onto another: he was sure he could understand them.

In the weeks that followed, his captors, or, as he soon came to regard them, his hosts, did everything they could to put Crom-Ya at his ease, to explain what had happened to him, and why. When he had become more or less acclimated, he began to think of them as gods, though they bore no resemblance to the Cimmerian deities represented by the rude wooden effigies carved by the Cimmerian shamans. But perhaps these beings were more like shamans. For these outlandish-looking entities, in pursuit of all knowledge, did what shamans did: they sent their spirits abroad, soaring into far-flung realms to consult with the inhabitants thereof. Then they would return with rare knowledge gained there.

But with this difference: these inhuman shamans not only visited far-off beings; they traded places, or rather bodies, with them. While they secretly moved among the peoples to whom their borrowed physical forms belonged, they dedicated themselves to a systematic inquiry into whatever fields of knowledge in which the culture excelled. Medicine interested them little, given the vast difference between their own physiology and that of those whom they visited. Astronomy was redundant given all that the Great Race, to translate what they called themselves, already knew from their wide cosmic voyaging. In truth, there was no longer much they did not know. But political economy was a subject of great curiosity to them, as, every few centuries, they were accustomed to undertake a mass migration of their mentalities into past or future ages where they should be safe, at least for a while, from various mysterious pursuers. Of these, little was openly spoken, at least not for Crom-Ya’s “ears.” At any rate, it was in the interest of the time and space-faring Great Race to hold in reserve the knowledge of alternative models of social organization potentially appropriate to the new environments in which they might find themselves, as they had many times in the past.

Crom-Ya’s visiting mind listened to abstract debates among the Great Race and the minds, like him, that had been abducted as they explored the ramifications of their voyages into the past and the future, both individually and en masse. The Great Race believed they had obviated the problem of individual minds returning to their accustomed worlds, polluting the flow of history henceforth by sharing knowledge gained from the Great Race and their captives while dwelling among them. To this end they had learned a kind of hypnosis to eradicate, or at least to suppress, all memories of their experiences in the ancient fortresses of the Great Race.

But what might result from the mass migrations? The time-voyagers already had clairvoyant “histories” of the world in future ages, but mustn’t their collective invasions of this or that future of this or that world negate the previous “precord” of those eras? Some argued that their visions of the future must have already taken their own migrations into account. Others countered that such a notion implied an ineluctable determinism. Of this, Crom-Ya understood nothing. He was not a stupid man, but, like the Great Race themselves, he had his priorities. He was interested only in what he might put to use in battle and in ruling once his mind was reunited with his steelythewed body. He understood enough of what he heard to realize that any knowledge or memory of what he had learned during his time here would be taken from him. The purpose of the Great Race’s abductions was to exploit their hostages to add to their vast archives, not to educate them; much less to share their knowledge with more primitive ages. But Crom-Ya felt quite sure he could frustrate their plans for him.