Dancer in Time
Dancer scratched at his matted hair, seeking to dislodge some of the lice, then stepped out of the bunker, shouldering his Kalashnikov automatically as he did so. His combat fatigues had been rendered unrecognisable by ingrained mud.
Mansen was sat behind the parapet of the trench, his uniform pristine despite being knee deep in stagnant water. The insignia on his cuffs suggested the rank of General. He grimaced at the cloudy sky, and then looked back at Dancer. “Is it always like this?” he asked, pulling a silver cigarette case from his tunic pocket. “Doobie?” He flipped the case open and offered a joint.
“I don’t suppose you have the remotest idea just how screwed up things are around here? I lost my whole unit.” Dancer took a joint, and pulled out a Zippo. “You left me here for four months, man, four whole months!, can you believe.” He retrieved a small grey box from his pocket and held it out for Mansen’s inspection. The casing was cracked and the LED’s were out. Dead. “And today’s the first day it hasn’t rained in about a month.”
Mansen shrugged. “Couldn’t be helped, Dee. You know how it is... and anyway, it’s usually the other way around, I’m the one who gets stranded. It’s no wonder you were so hard to find: you should look after the equipment, you know how hard it is to get a replacement. Anyway, what are the natives like? Friendly?”
“There’s a sniper over there somewhere, so don’t stand up. Otherwise, I couldn’t say. Artillery barrage every day at dawn, but that’s usually aimed about a mile south of here, at Prince Rupert’s position, and my bunker’s pretty secure. And, luckily, well provisioned.
“Anyway, where have you been? And can we get out of here now? I think I’ve got trench foot. “
“Where have I been? Looking for you, for the most part. I kept getting false leads, I heard you were in 1916.”
“And instead I’m...” Dancer cocked his head to one side, then threw himself on top of Mansen, immersing them both in the filthy water at the bottom of the trench. They didn’t hear the explosion until it was over, but felt the shock wave and fought their way back up through the mud as the wall of the trench collapsed. Dancer dragged a coughing and spluttering Mansen out of harm and into the doorway of the bunker.
Mansen shook his head, shedding water and trying to stop the ringing. “Do you know how much this uniform cost? The tailor just finished it this morning! Damn!” He pulled a service revolver from its holster and held it above the edge of the trench, firing randomly until it was empty.
Dancer hauled him into the bunker as a hail of machine gun fire peppered their position. Moments later the muffled ‘whump...whump’ of mortar shells detonating in soft earth.
“Well that was clever.” Dust fell from the ceiling as a shell landed almost overhead. “Anyway, you were saying...”
Mansen looked up from wiping down his uniform. “Oh, yeah... I was looking for you in 1916. Verdun, or... somewhere. Western front, that kinda thing. That’s what I was hearing, anyway. Wasted weeks...”
“And?”
“And so I widened the search.”
“To?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. 1645. Naseby. October, 17th I think.”
Dancer crossed the bunker and pulled the lid of a trunk open. “I knew it wasn’t 1916, although the trenches confused me a bit. Temporal dislocation, it gets worse the longer you stay... I’m sure it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
He reached in and pulled out another AK47. Tossing it to Mansen, he reached in again and retrieved extra magazines and some grenades. “The natives will be coming over when the mortars stop, so best to be prepared. Is that like as in Naseby, England?”
Mansen nodded, casting an eye towards the exit. “That’s the one. The natives are our ancestors. This is the English civil war. The battle should have been over in a day, back in June. But here we are... stuck in the middle of one of your grand schemes that always go tits-up...”
They stepped out into daylight, to the sound of a large number of men splashing across no man’s land, howling like banshees to disguise an absence of courage.
“Isn’t it time we got out of here?”
* * *
Mansen sat in the dingy cafe on the Rue Parnasse, looking out at the rain driving against the fly-blown windows. The place was filthy, and the single naked bulb in the middle of the room struggled against the evening’s dusky gloom.
The other three inhabitants looked equally grubby: a blowsy whore sipping at her red wine, and a prospective john, a middle aged man in a damp raincoat. Neither seemed to have the energy to complete the transaction, and his interest in them waned. The Patron was polishing a glass, the same one he had been working on for the last thirty minutes. Collectively they looked like one of Renoir’s lesser works.
Mansen gestured to the Patron, pointing at his cup. One more espresso, that’s how much longer he’d wait, then if the he hadn’t turned up, he’d take his business elsewhere.
The Patron appeared at his elbow, swept one diminutive cup away and replaced it with a fresh, steaming clone. Left again without a word, back to his polishing. The man in the raincoat slipped a furtive hand up the woman’s skirt, she affected not to notice.
An outline appeared at the window, an ephemeral silhouette obscured by water droplets on glass. It paused for a moment, peering in, and Mansen’s heart put itself on hold for a brief moment while hope factored itself in. The shape moved again and the door opened, admitting the sodden man and a gust of icy wind in before it clunked back on its faulty spring mechanism. He was wearing a fedora and his face was in shadow.
The Patron’s face showed a mixture of annoyance and hunger, undecided as to whether a new customer was worth any additional effort on his part. The whore seemed to recognise him and turned to face him, smiling, interrupting the old man’s manipulations. He ignored them all and took another step into the room, under the light, and Mansen looked at last into Dancer’s tired eyes. Another tableau, frozen in time.
A moment, a monumental moment, then he sat down opposite, water running from his leather greatcoat into pools on the floor and table. He rummaged deep in his pockets, his eyes never breaking contact with Mansen’s, pulled out a fresh pack of Camels and a battered Zippo.
With exaggerated care he placed the Zippo on the table just so, then peeled the cellophane from the cigarettes, every movement filled with pregnant nuances, each finger genuflecting as it flexed around the pack. He drew out a cigarette and allowed the phallic paper tube to penetrate his mouth before biting down on the filter, teeth gleaming, lips drawn back into a smile. He’s toying with me, messing up my head with his symbolism, Mansen thought.
Without looking, Dancer knew that all eyes were on him. The whore was tidying her hair and adjusting her skirt to display a little more of her putty-coloured thigh. The other two just stared, although the Patron’s hands appeared to be shaking.
Dancer threw the pack onto the table, then took up the Zippo and lit his cigarette. Mansen studied his face, as he always did when he hadn’t seen him for a while, while he helped himself to a smoke and accepted a light. Lines were starting to show on Dancer’s face now, showing that he had left his twenties well behind him. He was, in fact, nearly 40; they both were, but Mansen knew he looked ten years older.
The Patron appeared, unbidden, and placed an opened bottle of Pernod and a jug of water at Dancer’s elbow, then returned with a glass and an ashtray. He backed away, as if afraid to turn his back on them.
Dancer continued to look at Mansen without speaking. It had to be him that broke the spell, if he didn’t say something, anything, soon, somebody would have to scream just to rupture the tension in the room.
“So how’ve you been, Mansen?” he asked finally. He felt rather than heard all three at the bar exhale, like they had been holding their breath since he had walked in.
Mansen shrugged. “Same old same old, as ever.” He tried to mimic Dancer’s nonchalance, didn’t do so well.
Dancer was dredging his pockets again, bringing out handfuls of junk with each pass. Mansen logged each item as he placed it on the table, as if Dancer was going to cover them with a scarf in a moment and test his memory. Loose change and a couple of notes, one French, one unrecognisable. A syringe, used; no needle. Four packets of cigarette papers, one large lump of hash. Lebanese, by the look of it. Two boxes of matches, Swan brand. A paper clip. A pair of tweezers. Next pocket, another, smaller lump of hash, oilier than the last and probably Moroccan, plastic wrapped. A handful of foil wraps, contents unknown. Hopefully coke, but in view of the syringe, probably something stronger. Three small electrical devices, one with a meter of some sort, one with a small LCD display, one with a sequence of flashing lights, red and green. One ready-rolled joint. One of the devices, the smallest one with the flashing lights on the front, he slipped into Mansen’s breast pocket.
“Don’t lose that,” he said. “It’ll stop me getting lost.”
Absently he laid the rest of the detritus out in front of him, arranging and rearranging them into abstract patterns, rows, columns. He smoked the Camel down to the filter, then extracted the joint from the design and lit it, dragging the sweet smoke deep into his lungs before passing it over the table.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he breathed, allowing the smoke to escape slowly with his words. “Where you been these last, ah, three years? You’re hard to track down.”
Occupied with the joint, Mansen shrugged again, then coughed. “I’ve been here. Or around here. Or somewhere, it gets hard to tell sometimes. Spent some time in Algeria, Morocco, a couple of months in Cuba, but that was a couple of years ago. Mostly here, though. Been waiting for you.”
As Mansen was speaking, Dancer was fussing with one of the devices, the grey box with the LCD display.
“Well, it took long enough to find you.” Dancer spoke without looking up from the display. “Anyway, Cuba and North Africa are a little too hot for me at the moment. So’s most of Europe, for that matter. I haven’t had so much fun for years. Fidel called me a dilettante, an enemy of the people. Did you know he wanted to have me shot?”
It doesn’t surprise me, Dancer,” Mansen said wearily. “You never change, do you? What was it this time?”
“I just told him he was an anti-revolutionary, that he’d got too old. He didn’t like that. I told him I wanted to start a sort of war in Guatemala, but he wasn’t interested in sponsoring it.”
Mansen passed the joint back. “Castro’s too old, and doesn’t have as many friends any more. Not that many Marxist regimes still going, more’s the pity. He couldn’t get the sponsorship for another war. It was...”
He froze, staring out over Dancer’s shoulder at the window. It was late, but the sun was shining outside, and the window was clean. A column of German troops filed past outside, uniforms circa WW2. He grasped Dancer’s wrist. Dancer raised his eyebrows, then looked back over his shoulder.
“Oh, that. It’s been happening a lot lately. That’s why I’m here. I thought you’d get a kick out of it.” He waved the grey box in Mansen’s direction. “It’s a time machine. And it’s crap. What do you expect, made in China, what sort of history do they have in electronics? Look.”
He held it out so Mansen could read the digital display. It said DEC 22 1862.
“See? It can’t even get the date right. It must be 1942, at least. Maybe even ‘44.”
“First, put things back as they were,” Mansen said, his anger rising a degree or two. “Then would you mind telling me just what the hell you’ve got me into this time? Isn’t it enough for you to get me blown up, shot, involved in at least three small wars and tried for terrorism? And I already know all about your stupid bloody time machine, that’s what caused all that shit before. I threw mine away.”
He grinned. “I forgot to ask, how did the trial go? I wanted to hang around, but you know how it is... anyway, I still had a stash of plastique to get rid of, and an interesting situation brewing in Estonia...”
“So nice of you to ask,” Mansen said acidly. “They found me guilty, sentenced me to 30 years. Luckily one of your rival factions broke me out again, thought I was someone else. Then when they found out I wasn’t, they wanted to kill me, and...”
“Well it’s good to hear you’re okay, anyway,” Dancer was brusque, as always when he’d lost interest, “But I think we ought to save the story until later. Let’s talk about now.”
Mansen froze as two German officers paused at the window and peered in. English was his only language, and he was feeling a little out of place. They shook their heads and moved on. Hopefully it was the menu they were scrutinising. Dancer followed his gaze and uh-huh’ed.
“Time to be moving on. When do you want to go to?”
“When do you suggest?” Mansen asked. “Can’t we just go back to where we came from?”
“That could be difficult. Time ain’t what it used to be. Or is that going to be? It’s a temporal minefield out there, see?” He flashed the LCD across the table as if to reinforce the point. “Where we were isn’t an available option at this time. Please try again later.”
The small, scrolling graphics and blinking figures meant nothing to Mansen. Dancer tapped the screen with a grimed, broken nail. “Look at that. Paris, 2004, it doesn’t exist. There’s a Cro-Magnon settlement I think around where the Bastille was. Uh, will be, maybe. London, it’s reeking of plague, don’t want to go there. New York, there’s a hot new band in town — the Velvet Underground. Hey, we ought to get there before things change again, huh?” He accepted the joint back. “Basically, time seems to be in a state of flux, timelines are a bit scrambled. Normal service will be resumed... eventually.”
Mansen leaned back in his chair. “I suppose you’re going to find some way of blaming me for all this? You usually do.”
He exhaled a cloud of sweet blue smoke which seemed to twist into every corner of the bar. “You... “ The front door swung open and the two German officers strutted in. They stopped at Mansen’s table and shouted something he couldn’t understand.
“Bumsen weg, sind wir jüdisch”, snapped Dancer. A horrified look spread across their faces, then they disappeared. As did the cafe, and the Rue Parnasse.
* * *
The forest itself was quite picturesque, but Mansen didn’t enjoy sitting in the snow. He’d never liked snow, one of the reasons he’d spent so many years in Central America. He stood up.
“I take it this is your doing?”
Dancer was standing about thirty feet away, patting his pockets.
“You got a cigarette?” He asked. “Oh...ahhh...” He retrieved another fresh pack of Camels from within his coat, extracted one and flipped the Zippo.
“Does this look like Jerusalem to you? It doesn’t look like it to me.” He pulled the little box from his pocket and peered at the display. “Damn thing needs recalibrating. Maybe I should...”
“Before you mess with that... Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” Dancer looked mystified for a moment. “Oh, this! You know yourself that the 21st century’s getting a bit hot for the likes of us. I mean, flying planes into buildings... that’s no way to run a war. Where’s the profit in it? Anyway, I have this wild idea, and I need a bit of help. I got the contracts sorted out, I got it all financed, just need a hand with logistics. We’re going to have an almighty screwed-up war like you wouldn’t believe. All with my little time machine, if I can get things to work. I want the Royalists to win the English Civil War. What do you think?
Mansen sat back in the snow again. “What I think is that you are totally out of your gourd. It was three years ago — in my time — that I had to go back to that hole Naseby and pull your sorry arse out of a bunker in the middle of a sea of mud.”
“Wow, this temporal stuff gets so damn scrambled... so who was winning?”
“Nobody was winning, Dee, it was trench warfare, for chrissake. Deadlocked! You armed both sides!”
“I did? Err... will? That’s so cool... did both sides pay?”
* * *
Mansen kicked the door open and stepped into the motel room, eyes blazing. Dancer rolled off the woman on the bed, reaching for the gun under, before he realized who was at the door.
“Shut up!” he shouted at the woman, who had started screaming hysterically. Mansen crossed the room in two strides, dragged the woman from the bed and pushed her outside, where he left her. He slammed the door.
“Oh, man... couldn’t you have waited? She’s the only hooker for miles that’s not ugly...” Dancer gathered up her clothes from around the room, opened the door and threw them outside. “You come on back in about an hour baby... we ain’t finished...” The stream of invective that followed suggested we might not see her again. Dancer shut the door. “Okay man, good to see you, I guess... how long’s it been? Two, three days?”
Mansen shook his head. “All this time travel, Dee, it has to stop. We have to stop diddling around with things. I saw you in Dallas.”
Dancer shrugged. “Don’t you get self-righteous with me, Man. I saw you there too, and me and Oswald weren’t the only guys there with rifles... I wonder which of us actually hit him? Who was paying you, by the way? I’m guessing the CIA?” Mansen nodded. “Yeah, I thought so. I heard they were interested, but the Mafia already signed me up. And Oswald did it for the KGB... and didn’t even get paid. What a mug! If only those whacko conspiracy theorists knew the truth...”
“Yeah, Dee, whatever. But it’s time to retire, switch off the machine, stick to our own time. Things are getting too confused. I keep crossing my own tracks, crossing yours, meeting myself... give it up, Dee, you’ve had your fun, and plenty of it. We still have the 21st century to play with. There’s plenty of work for people like us...”
* * *
The rain was coming down diagonally, the sky iron grey. Everything was grey, even the snow had picked up the dirt of the city as it turned to slush. The two guards escorted Mansen across the courtyard and attempted to tie his wrists to the post by the far wall. Mansen shook them off and stood at attention. At a bark from the officer across the courtyard, the jailers left.
Mansen looked across the yard. The contingent detailed for firing squad duties were stamping their feet and blowing on their hands, hoping to get it over and done with. Mansen had been listening to the ragged fusillades all morning, every ten minutes or so. They were keeping busy.
The officer swaggered across the courtyard, his black uniform immaculate despite the weather, boots gleaming. Brushing an imaginary fleck of dust from the silver death’s head insignia on his collar, he stood inches away from Mansen, staring into his eyes.
“Beenden Sie so alle Feinde des Zustandes. Bekennen Sie, kommunistische Scheiße?”
Mansen spat into the officer’s face, then watched as his saliva ran down that unmoving face, and dripped onto the tunic below. The face cracked into a smile. “Do you know how much this uniform cost?”
Dancer poked a joint into Mansen’s mouth, flipped open his Zippo.
“You cut that one a bit fine, Dee.”
“Well,” sighed Dancer, “That’s the thing, Man, you have to stop chasing me around, you’re really cramping my style. I tried asking... this has to be the way. Sorry Man... this is goodbye. I won’t insult you by offering you the blindfold.”
Dancer span on his heels, started to march back to the firing squad.
“Wait, Dee!” Shouted Mansen. “I’m due a last request!”
Dancer strode angrily back. “Don’t mess with me, Mansen, this isn’t easy for me you know. We were supposed to be friends, remember? Let’s just get it over.” He stepped away again, but stopped when Mansen spoke.
“ I have a last request, Dee... I want to see what would happen at Trafalgar, if we gave Nelson and the Frenchies motorised gunboats, huh? What do you think?”
Dancer grinned, reached into his pocket, and pressed the button on the grey box.
Copyright © 2006 by Bewildering Stories
on behalf of the author
