History Shattered

Heretic -- 1. Someone who holds unorthodox religious beliefs; a holder or an adherent of an opinion or belief that contradicts established religious teaching 2. Somebody with unconventional beliefs: someone whose opinions, beliefs or theories in any field are considered by others in that field to be extremely unconventional or unorthodox. (definition, Bing Dictionary)

Blasphemy -- 1. Disrespect for religion: disrespect for God or sacred things 2. Something showing disrespect for religion: something done or said that shows disrespect for God or sacred things. (definition, Bing Dictionary)

Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for a God, to religious or holy persons or things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable (Wikipedia)

Synonyms: profanity, sacrilege, wickedness, irreverence, violation, desecration

Tyler and Monica talked well into the night. They were sharing one of the two actual guest rooms at the inn, and there was a guard posted outside the door. Allowing Tyler to take control of the prisoner was a concession the town’s elders felt was important to make as a way of thanking the doctor who had done so much already to ease suffering and improve conditions in a disease riddled and siege weary Caffa. But they were not about to jeopardize their eternal souls by allowing the heretic woman to escape. In an apparent act of kindness, Tyler had arranged for a chair to be provided for the guard and for him to be supplied with all the food and mead he could eat and drink. About one in the morning, his kindness paid off as the guard finally fell asleep; his head slumped back, resting against the room’s outer wall. It wasn’t the most dramatic of escape scenarios, but the pair were more interested in a successful departure than one filled with unnecessary excitement.

Much of their conversation had continued to center around the ethical dilemma posed by Monica’s return to finish the historical repair job Tyler had started. Eventually Tyler began to acknowledge that there was no good, clean answer to the problems they faced. Somewhere, at some time, there would be human suffering. Ultimately, it seemed proper to confine the suffering to those for which it appeared God had originally intended it. Part of Tyler hated himself for arriving at such a conclusion, even as he knew it was impossible to come up with a truly satisfactory solution. It was a position he would’ve bet every cent he had that he would’ve never taken. It seemed convenient and at least a little self-serving, and it was both of those things. He couldn’t help but question if his feelings for Monica and his desire to return to his life in the future were somehow coloring his decision-making process. He tried to convince himself they weren’t factors, but they must be for him to be turning on what he considered to be fundamental tenets of his belief system. Monica knew he was struggling with the impossible moral dilemma the situation presented. There was no way to arrive at a proper, just and equitable solution. It was a matter of picking one’s poison; in this case both figuratively and literally.

~~~~o~~~~

As is the nature of most failures, this one occurred without warning. The engineering team, while punching a hole in Station 28’s reinforced lead outer hull to make room for the insertion of the new high voltage power cables, had weakened the fresh weld for one of the replacement lead plates just installed. It was, unfortunately, a weld which had already been checked and OK’d. The constant buzz of energy from the anomaly gradually cooked and weakened the weld until it gave way explosively, tearing the entire two-ton lead panel loose from the rest of the hull. The instrumentation picked up on the energy bleed immediately. In terms of the ability of Pat’s team to extend the life of the wormhole, this was a fatal wound.

The team had hoped they could keep the wormhole open as long as a couple of days. That would’ve translated to over two weeks of time for Monica to carry out her mission on the Caffa end of the anomaly. That dream vanished in an instant. Now they would slide immediately into a damage control posture where they’d be trying to keep the wormhole open for additional minutes or perhaps an hour or two. The entire team of scientists and not just the members of Pat’s team felt as if they had taken a punch to the gut with this development.

Pat already knew there was no way to send a team in to attempt repairs. While the interior of the massive energy field appeared to support human life, the massive outpouring of energy through the breach in 28’s hull was definitely a threat to the lives of anyone coming in contact with it. There could be no attempt to repair it until after the wormhole had closed. Pat was amazed that the conduit routing additional power into the remote station had somehow survived the explosive removal of the lead plate. He gave orders for the high voltage lines to begin pumping power into 28 at one hundred percent of capacity. It was a dangerous move, especially considering the energy bleed currently occurring, but it was the only play available to try to add precious time to the anomaly’s lifespan. He prayed it would make a difference. He looked heavenward and whispered.

“Hurry back, Monica. Please hurry!”

~~~~o~~~~

Tyler tried to open the room’s door as quietly as he could. It creaked, of course, and the guard began to stir in his chair. Tyler felt he had no choice. He swung at the man’s chin with all his might. The guard was still asleep. He would eventually wake up on the floor, with a broken jaw. Tyler hoped the soldier, who he had performed minor surgery on a few weeks earlier, would believe he had simply fallen off the chair and landed face first on the floor. At best the man would be reporting that the doctor and prisoner had fled, and at worst, he would report that Tyler had punched him and was now aiding the heretic in an escape attempt. No matter how this scenario played itself out from here, Tyler’s days as a valued and celebrated addition to the local culture were coming to an abrupt and unceremonious end.

Escaping from the inn was the easy part. Getting out through the city gate would be far more challenging. Even in the middle of the night, there would be a minimum of three guards manning the gate. There was no way Tyler was going to be able to overpower three armed soldiers, even if those arms were swords, arrows and spears. They would need to rely on a combination of surprise and trickery; just enough to get past the gate. With it being the middle of the night, the small contingent of gate guards would not risk abandoning the gate in pursuit of them. At least that was what Tyler and Monica were counting on.

The darkness would be almost total. There was just a sliver of a moon, and it was blanketed by a thick curtain of clouds. There would be torches at the gate, but the throw of light they offered was modest. Monica and Tyler should be able to advance to within thirty yards of the actual gate structure before they would begin to be illuminated by the torch light.

They moved as close as they dared to the gate. Monica stripped down to her panties, leaving the rest of her clothing in a pile hidden by the shadow of the city walls. She moved away from the wall, out near the bottom of the ladder leading to the bird’s nest perch for the soldiers standing lookout atop the gate. At this time of night, the soldiers were arranged in a formation with two of them up in the bird’s nest lookout position and one situated on the ground outside the gate. Monica began singing in English, which sounded like so much gibberish to the soldiers. One of the men shown his torch down in her direction and was shocked to see tonight’s female prisoner dancing and singing in a state of almost complete undress. He took in the sight for a few moments, and then called to his partner atop the gate. They conversed in hushed tones for a few moments, and then the first guard began climbing down the ladder.

The guard formation was designed to protect Caffa from external attack. The soldiers spent almost all of their time peering out into the darkness of the surrounding countryside from on top of the wall, looking for signs of any potential attempt by some enemy to breach the wall or gate and gain entry into the settlement. The guard who remained atop the wall assumed his partner could handle a naked singing woman, so he kept looking outward with only an occasional glance in his partner’s direction. The woman was now dancing in a circular pattern as she sang. The sight of her naked breasts fully occupied the attention of the guard climbing down the ladder. When he was fully on the ladder and holding the torch precariously in one hand, Tyler, unseen below, simply pushed over the ladder, causing the soldier to fall, and the ladder to land on top of him.

Tyler moved quickly under the shadowy protection of the wall, while Monica continued to dance and sing some thirty feet away. He knew he might have only a few moments to make sure the first guard was incapacitated. A small rock to the man’s temple guaranteed that the man would remain unconscious for at least several minutes, and Tyler quickly extinguished the torch by dumping dirt on the flame. He pulled the ladder back into a standing position leaning against the wall and backed once again into its shadowy protection. He couldn’t have been visible for more than ten seconds, and fortunately, if the soldier in the bird’s nest had glanced in his direction at all, it must’ve been to get another glimpse of Monica’s gyrating body. The ground below the gate was once again bathed in darkness. The second soldier had now returned to check on his partner, who was lying on the ground in a prone position. He was not moving. The woman remained several yards away. Her singing had never stopped. There was no way she had overpowered his fellow guard. The man must’ve slipped and fallen off the ladder with his torch being extinguished in the collision with the ground. He issued a Latin command for Monica to remain where she was. She couldn’t have heard him over the noise of her singing, so it didn’t matter that she didn’t understand his request. She had no intention of going near the ladder anyway.

The second man straightened the ladder and began his own descent. His eyes never left Monica as he began his way down. She kept singing and dancing, and he kept staring. Once he realized he was no longer in control of the ladder and that it was no longer in contact with the wall, it was too late for him to do more than try to brace for the inevitable impact with the ground. Tyler knocked him out in similar fashion to the first guard. Tyler would’ve preferred to tie them up, but he lacked any bindings which might allow him to do so. He also needed them as elements in a diversion to lure the third gate guard inside the city walls. Monica had stopped her singing and rushed back over to the pile of discarded clothing, which she hurriedly began putting back on. She was shivering from the cold as she did so.

Tyler began opening the gate. He would only need to open one side and that only a few feet, but he was amazed by the weight of the thing. He struggled, but finally managed to move it a couple of feet…, just enough. He slipped through and headed toward the guard, who did not immediately recognize him in the darkness. He approached the guard, who shone his torch in Tyler’s direction and relaxed somewhat when he realized it was Tyler. Tyler had become popular amongst Caffa’s small contingent of soldiers. He had already firmly established himself as offering them the best medical care any of them had ever hoped to receive. He knew Tyler lived in an encampment up on the bluff near the water, but surely the man wouldn’t be attempting to return to his strange home at this hour. The guard was also surprised that one of his fellow soldiers had not announced that Tyler would be exiting through the gate. That was the standard protocol. Tyler approached him, speaking softly in a conspiratorial voice. Tyler’s Latin was formal, but it imparted a real sense of urgency to the soldier.

“There’s been an accident. Your fellow gate guards have both fallen off the wall. I need your help for a few moments looking after them. Then I must go to my camp where I have some medical supplies I need to properly treat them. You will need to keep an eye on them and keep an eye on the gate until I return. Understand?”

The guard nodded his head.

“Good, come help me move them. We will need to be very careful when moving them in case there are broken bones.”

The guard once again nodded. It was a simple bit of misdirection from that point on. While Tyler was escorting the third guard to the bodies of his two fallen comrades, Monica slipped out through the gate behind them and moved down the road in the darkness a sufficient distance so that she would no longer be illuminated by torchlight. Tyler took great care in moving the bodies of the unconscious guards. He really hoped neither of them was seriously hurt. Once they had been moved into comfortable positions, he instructed the third guard to close the gate behind him, to climb into a lookout position atop the gate and to watch for his return with medical supplies. Once again, the soldier nodded his agreement. Tyler slipped through the gate and pulled it closed behind him as the guard pushed from the inside. He headed off quickly, wanting to be out of sight before the guard even reached the bird’s nest post at the top of the gate.

They were out. Ostensibly, anyone who might be aware that they were no longer in the room at the inn was either unconscious or guarding the gate. They might’ve just gotten away with it. Tyler still had his flashlight with him, but he was unwilling to use it. The guard was operating under the assumption that Tyler was headed to his encampment, which was in a more southwesterly direction than the path they needed to follow to return to the wormhole. They would need to carefully pick their way through the darkness at least until they had a couple of hills and valleys between themselves and the gate.

Tyler could barely see a foot in front of him. He knew Monica was out here somewhere, but he could risk neither calling to her nor turning on his flashlight. Either action could give away their current location and possibly their intentions. He stumbled a few more yards and walked right into something. He went sprawling into the dust of the road. Monica let out a momentary groan. It was only that sound that allowed him to know it was her that he had just collided with. He reached forward and felt her hair. He quickly moved his hand down to put a finger over her lips. It was all he could think to do to communicate to her the need for complete silence. He felt her hand, first on his shoulder and then moving until she placed a finger to his lips to acknowledge her understanding of his muted request.

They helped each other up, and just stood in the darkness of the dusty road, sharing an embrace that only they, of all the people in the world, past, present and future, could truly appreciate. Slowly, they released one another, but they continued to hold each other’s hand tightly. Turning away from the light of the torch they could once again see atop Caffa’s gate, they began taking small, shuffling steps toward the wormhole and the future…, toward their own rebirth. It was probably almost five miles to the wormhole, assuming it was still there, and they would need to cover at least the first two of those miles in near total darkness.

~~~~o~~~~

The guard at the inn was the first of the incapacitated soldiers to regain consciousness. It took him a few minutes to determine where he was and a few more to realize that both the doctor and his prisoner were not where they were supposed to be. A quick search of the inn, which included awakening the proprietor, confirmed his fears. They were gone. It would be another twenty minutes before anyone would learn that the doctor had left Caffa. Even then, the guard at the settlement’s western gate was certain the doctor had been alone. It was only after his two fellow soldiers had been revived that the good and pious folk of Caffa were able to understand that the blasphemous female heretic had likely fled the outpost. They had little choice but to also assume that their cherished new doctor was accompanying her.

The officer in charge of the garrison stationed in Caffa arrived at the gate. After being briefed by his guards, he made the only decision he could. The primary military objective had to be protection of the township from the ongoing siege threat of the Golden Horde. The siege by the invading Mongols had been unrelenting for months now. He was, however, also sensitive to the religious beliefs of the townspeople. He couldn’t ignore the escape of the heretic. Such an escape might have repercussions to his career that the ambitious officer could ill-afford. He opted to send four soldiers on horseback, including his best archer, after the presumed to be fleeing pair at first light. The horses were readied, and just as a hint of light began spilling over the top of the mountains to the east, the soldiers slipped out Caffa’s western gate, riding in pursuit of the heretic and the doctor.

Monica and Tyler had made incredibly slow and painful progress in the almost total darkness. They had each tripped over exposed roots which were invisible in the blackness. It was a major challenge just to be sure they remained on the road. To cover the distance to a point where they dipped below the brow of the second hill moving away from Caffa had taken over two hours. They held onto each other tightly, as if the connection between their hands was a connection to life and hope. Tyler finally deemed it safe to turn on the flashlight, and with the badly needed addition of light the pace of their stroll to freedom and the future immediately picked up. They were still at least three miles from the anomaly site, but as they recognized the first hints of dawn breaking over the tops of the mountains behind them, the light was bringing with it renewed hope.

The horses were not being ridden at a gallop at first. The soldiers had to make sure they were on the right trail, and it was still quite dark. Fortunately, the footprints in the dust were fresh, and they soon recognized that the doctor and the woman were not headed toward his encampment by the sea, but were instead headed west along the main road. The riders increased their pace. They paused at the top of the first hill, but it was still too dark to spot the escapees. The footprints, however, were becoming clearer. They quickened their pace and repeated the process atop the second hill, but again the fugitives were still out of sight.

As soon as it had become light, Monica and Tyler began jogging on the downhill sections of road, attempting to buy as much distance as possible from any would-be pursuers. They had paused atop the third hill, squinting back into the rising sun to the east, but there was no one visible. Perhaps their escape had not yet been detected. Maybe they could actually return to the friendly confines of Station 28 before fourteenth century Caffa realized they were gone. The best way to insure that outcome would be to keep moving. There was just a single hill left to climb before they entered the valley containing the anomaly. They had less than two miles to go. They would reach the wormhole in a half-hour or less. The pair of escapees began to believe their plan might actually succeed.

Timing is everything. As Monica and Tyler crested the top of the fourth and final ridge, they turned once again to the east to check for potential pursuers. At almost exactly that moment, the four mounted soldiers reached the top of the third hill. Both groups spotted each other simultaneously. Monica and Tyler turned and began a faster-paced jog down the final hill. The posse of soldiers spurred their steeds into a gallop. The escape attempt had now turned into a race; one against time, away from the pursuing soldiers and back toward an unknown future.