[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
He expected a sardonic comment. Oddly none was forthcoming.
Coventry would he his best bet, even though it involved passing through the whole of Arthur's
Kingdom. Fortunately he found a lane that roughly paralled the Amerindian Forest and skirted the higher
ground where most of the grim-looking castles stood. But the lane didn't go all the way and the last leg of
the journey was a nightmare of hills and dales that provided not even so much as cow-path. At length,
however, he glimpsed buildings in the distance and knew they were going to make it.
He approached the town slowly. Its streets afforded the kidnapers an excellent chance to waylay
them. But he needn't have worried the streets proved to be so narrow that the raft couldn't pass
through them, couldn't, in fact, even enter them.
Next, he tried Yasnaya Polyana. Getting there turned out to be another nightmare. Arriving, he
found that wherever a route to the sea existed, trees had been felled to block it.
The kidnapers handiwork, of course. They, too, had worked all night and the field-fence had shut out
the sound of their labors.
Somehow Robin managed to get back to the used-car lot. He knew he could never make the sea
through Minos, so after fueling up again he drove the raft through the northwestern section of the
place-time to Grendel Land. He found more nightmares awaiting him roads barely wide enough to
accommodate an oxcart, sodden fields, sullen hills, foreboding forests. In exploring the ISLE during his
first two days as a castaway he had touched upon all the place-times, but he had seen them from the
perspective of a man on foot and a man on foot sees the world far differently from a man on wheels.
After straddling a pair of deep ruts through a brooding woods, Robin came abreast of a large hall
with antlerlike ornaments projecting from its gables. He had come across it on his previous visit and had
identified it as Heorot, the mice en scene of Beowulfs legendary battle with the troll Grendel. It was
mid-afternoon by this time, and if Manijeh had glanced once into the rear compartment where their lunch
lay, she had done so a dozen times. At last he braked the raft in the shadow of the hall and, after a
careful look around, got out.
"Would you like to have something to eat, Manijeh?"
She needed no second invitation. They ate standing up, utilizing the raft's hood as a picnic table.
What little sunlight managed to penetrate the perpetual overcast that characterized Grendel Land's sky
glittered harshly on her jewelry, all of which she had on, of course, and all of which she had polished to
high heaven. As. always, this annoyed him. Not that he begrudged her the wealth the jewels
represented he just didn't want it so frequently and flamboyantly thrown in his face.
HE was standing with her back toward one of the hall's apertures a window, presumably.
S
Abruptly a huge hand attached to a brawny arm shot out from the window and made a grab for her.
Robin dove across the hood and pulled her out of reach just in time. He had a very bad moment during
which he almost believed the hand and arm belonged to none other than Grendel himself then, as the
owner emerged from the window, he saw they were part and property of his old friend, the Good
Samaritan.
Two more of the kidnapers emerged from two more windows and approached the raft.
Robin threw the rest of their coffee into the Good Samaritan's eyes, shoved Manijeh into the raft and
locked her door. Then he shot around the raft, slid behind the wheel and closed and locked his door.
Meanwhile the Good Samaritan was rubbing his eyes and dancing a jig in the middle of the rutted road.
Robin was about to send the raft either over or around him and continue in the same direction he had
been traveling when he saw that several trees had been felled ahead and deduced the presence of a
roadblock.
Wearily he turned the raft around and headed back the way he had come.
The road might have taken him and Manijeh all the way to the shore and had constituted their last
remaining hope. The strip of Grendel Land conterminous to Futureville and Minos was much too heavily
forested for passage and he wouldn't have tried to go through Futureville in any case. Even on an ISLE,
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]