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graves. The muzzle-loaders were abandoned for the more modern six-shooters.
Two Hawks wondered why Dzikohses had not chosen a more hidden place for their rest. He
listened to Dzikohses talk to some of his men -- he was understanding at least half of the speech by now
-- and decided that this was a trysting place. Scouts came back to report that there were no hostiles in
the neighborhood. However, cannon made thunder some miles away.
Two Hawks examined a big room which must have been the study of the master of the mansion.
There were books on the shelves and on the floor, some destroyed by a bomb. A huge globe of Earth
lay on the floor by the table from which it had been hurled by the explosion. He replaced it upright on the
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table. His heart beating hard, he verified his suspicions and cleared up some of the mysteries.
There were Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, their outlines not quite those he had known. He spun
the globe so it rotated eastward. The Pacific Ocean turned slowly by.
He sucked in his breath, aware that O'Brien, his jaw hanging down, was standing by him.
"What the hell?" O'Brien said, and then, "Mary, Mother of Christ!"
There was Hawaii. Beyond it, a chain of islands starting where Alaska should be, running
southeastward gently and ending in a large island where the plateau of Mexico should be. The Rockies
and the Sierras. Rather, their islanded peaks. A few dots in the east were the tops of the Alleghenies.
Every-where else, water.
Central America was all blue. South America was another chain of islands, larger than those in
the northern hemisphere, the Andes.
Two Hawks, sweating more than the heat was responsible for, studied the western hemisphere
for a few minutes. Then he spun the globe around to the eastern hemisphere. He bent over to read, or to
try to read, the names printed thereon. The alpha-bet, like that on Ilmika's calendar, was undoubtedly
based on Greek. There was a familiar enough alpha and beta, but the gamma faced to the left. And the
digamma and koppa were still being used. Moreover, there were no capitals. Rather, all the letters were
capitals.
O'Brien groaned and said, "I'm going to throw up. I knew there was something wrong, but I
couldn't put my finger on it. Where in hell are we?"
"Throwing up might make you feel better," Two Hawks said, "Afterwards, you'll have to face the
truth just the same."
"Which is?"
"You ever read much science-fiction?"
"Naw. That goofy stuff."
"Better for you if you had. You might have a more flexible mind. This situation might not be so
hard for you to grasp. Or to accept. Because, like it or not, you have to accept. Or go crazy."
"I'm going crazy. Oh, my God, where's America? Where's Chicago?"
His voice was shrill. The others in the room stopped talking to look curiously at him.
"Ever heard of parallel universes?" Two Hawks said. "I know you have because I've seen you
read comic books that had just such a concept."
O'Brien looked relieved. "Yeah, I did. Only. . . hell, you tell-ing me we're in a parallel universe?
A universe that's at right angles to ours?"
Two Hawks nodded and smiled at O'Brien's "right angles". This term was no explanation, only a
method of description to make the reader better comprehend. Rather, make him think he was
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comprehending the incomprehensible. But if the term helped O'Brien get an anchor on reality, allayed his
panic, he could keep it. Any anchor was better than none.
O'Brien said, "Then that funny feeling we got back in theHiawatha . . .? That was because we
were going through a. . . kind of a. . . gate?"
"You can call it a gate. The point is, the science-fiction fan-tasy has become for us a reality.
There are parallel universes. I'd like to deny it just as much as you. But there's no denying this.
Somehow, we've passed into another universe. We're on Earth, but not the one we knew."
O'Brien turned the globe to the western hemisphere. "And this Earth is one where North and
South America are under water?"
He shivered and then crossed himself.
Two Hawks said, "I've known for some time that things that couldn't be nevertheless were.
Those people" -- he indicated the others in the room -- "speak a language that is definitely Iroquoian."
He pointed at the blonde, Ilmika. "And her speech, believe it or not, is English. A species of
English, anyway. She calls itIngwinetalu orBlodland spraech."
"You must be kidding? I thought she was a Swede or maybe a Dutchman. English?"
Two Hawks spun the globe back to the eastern hemisphere.
"On our Earth, the ancestors of the Amerind, the so-called American Indian, migrated in
prehistoric times from Siberia to North America and on to South America. Group after group came over
and may have taken over ten thousand years to do it. The Eskimo, the most Mongolian of what was
essentially a Caucasian-Mongolian mixture, was the last to arrive.
"But on this Earth, the Amerind had no Americas to migrate to. So he turned inwards and
became a force to reckon with in the Old World. That is, Asia and Europe."
He ran his finger over the map of Europe and stopped at the peninsula of Italy. The mauve color
which overlay it ex-tended through part of northern Yugoslavia and also covered Sicily. He read aloud
the large title which evidently applied to the whole area.
"Akhaivia! Achaea? If Achaea, then the ancient Greeks may have come down, for some reason,
into the peninsula of what we call Italy in our world, instead of into the Hellenic penin-sula!"
He looked at Greece. It was titledHatti.
"Hittites?" he said aloud. "On our Earth, they conquered a part of Asia Minor, nourished for a
while, contemporary with the Mycenaean Greeks, and then disappeared. What happened here? They
invaded a country which the Greeks had bypassed, being shunted for some reason to the west. And the
Hittites conquered the Pelasgians and gave their name to our Hellas?"
He continued talking aloud, partly to help O'Brien under-stand what had happened.
"I don't know the details and will have to guess at part of the outline. But I'll bet that the
Iroquoians, and maybe other Amerind tribes, invaded eastern Europe and settled down. If they did so at
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an early date, they may have altered the course of the Indo-European migrations from the Motherland
some-where in Germany or Poland. The invasions resulted in bump-ing the various people -- the Hittites,
Hellenes, Italics, Ger-manics, and so forth -- one country westward. Or something like that.
"Hmm! Wonder what happened to the Italics: the Sabines, Voluscans, Samnites, and the Latins?
Were they bumped west-wards? Or had they settled Italy before the Achaeans, only to be conquered
and eventually absorbed by them?"
He placed his finger on a light green area covering approximately the area of Rumania and
southern Russia. Hotinohsonih? House builders? Iroquoia? Sure! And that big cross there, 'Estokwa,
would be our Earth's Odessa. Probably the capital of Hotinohsonih. 'Estokwa? Paddle? It could be,
though I don't know why a place would be named after a spatula or ladle. But then I don't know its
history.
"Ithink we're headed for 'Estokwa, probably because the blonde, Ilmika Thorrsstein, is an
important person. I've gathered from their conversation that her father was the Blodland ambassador to
the nation of Dakota, our Hungary. Dakota? Could it be that Dakota is Siouian-speaking?"
He grinned and laughed and said to O'Brien, "Doesn't that make you feel a little more at home to
know there's a state of Dakota here?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]