Conrad Starguard - The High-Tech Knight Part 17

The innkeeper set up a wooden tub in the courtyard, checking the wind with a wet thumb to be sure that Tadaos stayed downwind of the dining room. It was filled with hot water and Tadaos was tossed a bar of brown soap from beyond flea-jumping range.

He was ordered to strip and get in. A servant picked up his old clothes with a long stick and carried them off, the stick pointing carefully downwind, to be burnt.

They changed the water three times before poor Tadaos pa.s.sed muster and was permitted to rejoin humanity. Even then, he was probably aided by the fact that it was getting dark.

I also got a bill for was.h.i.+ng down the mule Tadaos rode in on.

One of my outfits fitted Tadaos fairly well, with the cuffs and sleeves rolled up, but I wouldn't let him cut it down permanently, not one of my nifty embroidered outfits!

"It's just as well that Cousin Przemysl didn't invite us in for supper," Sir Vladimir said, "His table is terrible."

I inquired of the innkeeper about the Red Gate Inn and was told that I shouldn't go there. It had been struck by lightning and was inhabited by devils.

Slighting the compet.i.tion a little was one thing, but that was ridiculous. When I pressed him further, he a.s.sured me that I could get there by staying on the trail we had arrived on. I couldn't possibly miss the place, if I was fool enough to go there.

I couldn't tell my friends why the trip was necessary, and Sir Vladimir was not happy with this extension to our vacation. He wanted to go back and play hero some more at Wawel Castle. Krystyana and Annastas.h.i.+a were solidly on his team.

It got to be a nagging contest, three against one.

"Okay. Then don't go to the Red Gate Inn. I'm not sure I wanted you along anyway. Stay right here tomorrow with the girls. I'll take Anna and run up to the Red Gate Inn in the morning. She's fast enough to make it there and back in a single day, where the whole party would take two days easy. Anyway, Anna has been acting like she wants a good run, and we can't do that with you guys along."

Sir Vladimir and the girls gave their grudging approval to the plan, and we called it a night.

The next morning I was saddling Anna when Sir Vladimir came over. "Sir Conrad, I spoke rashly last night. Let me accompany you today."

"Thank you. Apology accepted. But if you go, the girls will insist on going and then with those stupid palfreys, we'd have to move at a crawl. Anyway, we can hardly leave them here unprotected. Anna and I won't have any problems."

"Still, I'd feel better if I went along. And let's bring the ladies. There's no need for undue haste."

"Maybe I need a little time to myself. Anyway, I'm going alone. Don't bother following, you know you can't keep up."

I'd left the horse barding and fancy clothes behind. This was a factfinding mission and the less attention I attracted, the better.

Anna went like the wind. She could travel as fast with a big armored man on her back as a thoroughbred racehorse can with a little jockey aboard. And she could keep up that speed all day, not for just a single mile.

It was an exhilarating joy to ride her across flat land and on mountainous trails it was stunt-flying and motorcycling and a carnival ride all in one. More than those, because we were closer to the ground than any stunt plane ever flew for long and no motorcycle could have maintained our speed over these trails. And on a carnival fide, deep down inside you really know that you are safe. This was reality!

We went for about an hour without pa.s.sing anyone on the trail. Then we came to a pleasant brook with a nice bit of pasture and we stopped for a while. The cook at the inn had packed me a lunch. In the Middle Ages, it was customary to get up at dawn but eat your first meal at ten in the morning. Dawn, I could take, since without decent lights there wasn't much sense to staying up late. But I've always eaten a big breakfast, and a year in this barbarous time still hadn't changed my desire for that.

We ate. Anna was cropping the lush gra.s.s and keeping a sharp lookout.

"Anna, would you come over here, please?"

She trotted over.

"Anna, what's two plus two? Tap it out with your foot."

She tapped her foot four times.

There was once a famous German showhorse called Clever Hans that had everyone, including his trainer, convinced that he could do simple arithmetic. It wasn't until many years later that a psychologist proved that Hans was reading the body language of the person asking him the question. He would start tapping his foot and as he started approaching the fight answer, his questioner would involuntarily stiffen up a bit. When he got to the fight answer, the trainer would relax a little and Hans would stop tapping his foot.

I had to know if Anna's nodding and shaking her head in response to questions was the Clever Hans sort of thing, or if she really was an intelligent being in the guise of a horse.

"Okay. Now give me three minus one."

She tapped twice.

"Now the square root of nine."

She looked at me inquisitively, sort of tilting her head sideways, the way a dog does. "Do you know what a square root is?"

She shook her head no.

That tore it. I knew what a square root was and if this was the Clever Hans thing, she would have tapped out three. Down deep, I'd been expecting it all along.

Anna was an outstanding creature. She was physically, mentally, and morally superior to anything a horse had a fight to be.

"Anna, are you really a horse?"

She stared at me for a second, then shook her head no.

"Are you a human being?"

She shook her head.

"Some kind of machine, then?"

No.

"Some sort of alien? From some other planet?"

No and no.

"Are you naturally born? Some sort of mutant?"

Yes and no.

"You were born naturally and are not a mutant?"

Yes.

"Anna, I came to this country in some kind of a time machine, I think. At least it was a strange vault in the subbas.e.m.e.nt of an old inn. Do you know about time machines?"

Yes and no.

"Let me try again. Are you in any way connected with any individual or group that has anything to do with a time machine?"

Yes' '

"Do you know how such a device works?"

No.

"Well, at least that tells me that you're somehow connected with some pretty high technology. Are you the result of some high technology? Bioengineering?"

Yes and yes.

"But you were born naturally ...oh, of course. Your ancestors were bioengineered."

Yes.

"You're from the future then?"

No.

"The past?"

Yes.

"There was some kind of lost civilization in the distant past?"

Yes and no.

That stumped me for a bit. How could it be there and not there? Technology requires a civilization. Doesn't it?

"You were the product of a civilization?"

Yes.

"Was that civilization in the distant past?"

Yes.

"Then why-okay, it was there but it was not lost."

Yes.

"I guess that figures. If you've got a time machine, there's no way for anything to get lost. Back to you. You're an intelligent bioengineered creation."

Yes and no.

"You're doing that to me again. You, or at least your ancestors, were bioengineered."

Yes.

"And you're intelligent."

Yes and no.

"You're intelligent but not as smart as me."

Yes.

"If that's true, you're not far behind me. I haven't seen you do anything dumb yet and G.o.d knows that I've pulled some b.o.n.e.rs lately. Anna, you obviously understand Polish. Can you read it?"

Yes.

"Can you write?"

No.

"Anna, if I made up a big sign with all the letters and numbers on it, could you point to them one after the other and spell things out?"

Yes and no.

"You could try but your spelling isn't very good."

Yes.

"Good enough. We're going to have that sign made up as soon as we get back to Three Walls."

"Anna, you're too intelligent to be treated as an animal. As far as I'm concerned, you are people. I don't own you, but I'd like to stay your friend. Is that okay with you?"

Yes.

"Would you like to work for me., doing just what you have been doing all along?"

Yes.

"I pay most of the men back at Three Walls a penny a day. Is that all right with you?"

"Yes."

"Fine. We'll make it retroactive to the time I met you in Cracow. That means that you have about three hundred pence in back pay coming. I might as well hold your money for you, but if there's anything you want to buy, let me know. Okay?"

Yes.

"Would you like to swear to me, just like all the other people have?"

Yes, vigorously.

"Then we'll do it. But to do it right, we ought to have witnesses, so I suppose we should wait until we get back to Three Walls. Okay?"

Yes.

That was one of the best moves I ever made.

Getting ready to go again, I said, "Anna, we need more words than just yes and no. How about if shaking your tail means you don't care one way or the other and that yes-no thing you've been doing means that I haven't asked the right question?"