Being Sent is no picnic in the best of circumstances, and being in a working ODEC is always disorienting. I forcefully tamped down the part of me that wanted to celebrate my return to the modern world, trying to focus on the fact that my friends were losing a fight to a man-mountain . . . and trying to remember how the ATTO was laid out. I’d never had much to do with the ATTOs, as they were for psy-ops and I had always remained focused on diachronic work.
Still keeping Tristan’s neck in the crook of his arm, the Viking (I assumed he was a Viking) came toward me at a ponderous gait, kicking empty water bottles out of the way as he planted his feet. Tristan was flailing out, trying to grab anything that would serve as an anchor. Felix fell to his knees, staggered by an elbow to the face. The Viking’s gaze was fixed on something behind me. I turned and saw the control panel at the forward end of the ATTO.
I scrambled on hands and knees in that direction, hurled myself toward the panel, and mashed the big red button that served as the emergency “off” switch.
My own momentum then sent me sprawling back to the icy-cold floor, my head clearing now that the system was shut down. I drew myself up into a fetal position, spun around, and watched the progress of the fight.
Felix’s face was gushing blood, probably from a broken nose. He was getting unsteadily back to his feet, and seemed to have his eye on a fire extinguisher bracketed to the wall at the other end of the ATTO.
Tristan had managed to reach up and get one hand on the Viking’s face, and was now groping around trying to insert a finger in an eye or mouth, but the Viking kept jerking his head away. Tristan finally got purchase on a handful of Viking hair, but it was a feeble grip compared to what the other had on him.
I was struck by the Viking’s calm patience. This was not a berserker—indeed, he seemed more like a parent controlling a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum.
The door of the ATTO was flung open from without, and slanting sunlight flooded in. Backlit and framed in the entrance was a female form; the ATTO light showed her to be a middle-aged woman, wearing a simple housedress with a heavy cardigan over it. She was brandishing a long, double-barreled shotgun. Her breath came out like clouds. I smelled apples baking.
There was a long moment while we all considered matters. The woman with the shotgun was clearly as surprised by the situation inside the trailer as we were by her sudden appearance. Certainly she had a lot to take in.
Felix stopped moving for the fire extinguisher and held up his bloody hands. Tristan couldn’t see what was happening. I watched the woman between the tree-trunk legs of the Viking, whose manhood hung down, somewhat obscuring my view. I do believe this organ contracted a smidge when the woman trained the shotgun at him. (In fairness, the cold winter air coming in the open door may have accounted for some of that.) Certainly the gun got his attention: this wasn’t the first time he’d seen a modern firearm. This confused me, for I knew all the DODO Anachrons by sight, and he was not one of them.
The sunlight glanced off his shoulder, highlighting a red scar—fresh and angry-looking—cutting horizontally across one of his cannonball deltoids.
The woman demanded, “Relachez-le immédiatement!” Then getting no reaction, she tried in English, “Leave him go!”
Tristan, hearing her voice (he couldn’t see the door), said in a strangulated voice, in Norman, “She has a bang-stick!”
This was the moment I realized the man probably was a Viking, so I tried Old Norse (a recent, somewhat half-baked addition to my linguistic arsenal). “Whoever you are, that thing will kill you.”
The Viking released Tristan so abruptly that Tristan fell to the floor. The Viking turned around to face me, then reached up and patted the scar on his shoulder. “I know it,” he returned in Norse. “A coward hit me with one of those accursed weapons in the Walmart.”
“Walmart?” I repeated, flummoxed. “What were you doing in a Walmart?”
Tristan made a brief sound that might have been coughing or might have been laughter. “Welcome back, Stokes,” he said. “You have a lot to get caught up on.”
THE ATTO HAD been plonked down in the yard next to the same Normandy farmhouse whence I’d been Homed in 1851. Very little about the property had changed: there were now telephone wires connected from the road; a satellite dish; a sign reading CHEZ ENVOUTEUR, a bed-and-breakfast.
The woman had run inside to fetch ice for Felix’s nose, and white terry bathrobes for me and the Viking, who called himself Thord (the woman, Tristan said, was Anne-Marie).
I waited for my bathrobe to arrive while burying my face against Tristan’s chest. I never wanted to let go of him, and his arms gripped me tight. Having just been steeped in Victoriana for the past several weeks, I noted that his delight in seeing me once again (important detail: seeing me entirely unclothed for the first time ever) was reflected in every inch of his healthy and vigorous frame, not excluding the matrimonial organs bestowed upon him by the Creator for the propagation of the race. I put my arms around the small of his back and pulled him into me, just to give him a hint that I had noticed.
Pressing my head into his shoulder, he muttered, “Damn, I’m glad to see you.”
“Yes,” I said, then pulled away and looked right at him, eye to eye, nose to nose. “I can tell.”
He reddened a little, then a lot, then he started laughing and pulled me back against him.
We had been avoiding this for five years. Time to sort it out.
BUT NOT IMMEDIATELY. This was France, so first we all had to go inside for coffee, Felix trying to avoid water from leaking onto his jeans as he iced his swelling face. Anne-Marie offered me a woolen dress, which I accepted gratefully. She was nervous about Thord until Tristan took her aside and explained to her that “our Viking friend” would be docile now.
Most of the farmhouse’s ground floor was one great room, kitchen at one end, dining space at the other, the whole of it spanned with a huge plank table that looked like it was a thousand years old. We sat at one end of this as Anne-Marie prepped food and drink just beyond the other end.