“Oh, Jesus ...” Lucas said, and then there was no time for anything, not even thought, as the elephants came charging.
Another Roman soldier shouldered him aside, not even registering his strange garb in his panic to escape the charging monsters and then Lucas found himself born along by the tide as the Roman phalanx broke and ran before the terrifying onslaught.
He had been here once before. In fact, he was probably here right now. It had been one of his first missions and one of his worst ones, as well. He had been clocked out to fight with Scipio’s legions against Hannibal of Carthage in one of the bloodiest struggles in history. Chances were that if he looked around, he might even see himself, dressed as a Roman legionary, running along with the others. However, there wasn’t any time to look. The elephants were upon them and Lucas was plunged right back into one of his worst nightmares. And he knew exactly why.
He had no one to blame but himself. Ever since this awful mission, whenever things had gotten tough, he always referred back to this debacle, the rout of the Roman soldiers before Scipio managed, miraculously, to turn it all around. “You think this is tough?” he used to say at such times. “Try going up against a charging elephant with nothing but a Roman short sword and a spear.” Often, he would refer back to his stint with Scipio Africanus whenever he became exasperated. “Christ, it almost makes me wish I was ‘back facing Hannibal and his fucking elephants!”
Well, his telempathic chronocircuitry had granted him his wish. He had become exasperated with Dr. Darkness and the old thought had occurred to him—I really need this, he had thought. Hell, I’d rather be back with Scipio facing Hannibal and his damn—
Elephants!
He leaped to one side and rolled as the massive, trumpeting creature came charging past him, stomping Romans into jelly, and then he rolled again as another elephant missed him by scant inches. And they came on, one after the other, and Lucas found himself scrambling panic-stricken, choking on the dust and leaping around like a grasshopper on speed, trying to avoid the tremendous feet that came down like gigantic grey pistons, threatening to crush him. The dust was so thick that he could barely see. He kept diving to one side, then the other, rolling, jumping, desperately trying to avoid being trampled and then, miraculously, they were past him and he was crouching on the ground, coughing from the dusty fog that enveloped him, his eyes red, his throat raw, every muscle fiber screaming in protest from the strain…
… and here came the Carthaginian infantry.
A disembodied hand suddenly came out of the dust and grabbed him by the back of his collar, jerking him back hard. The next thing Lucas knew, he was lying on the floor of the apartment on Threadneedle Street, gasping for air and coughing his lungs out.
“That was the silliest display I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Darkness, standing over him. “Those pachyderms almost pounded you into a pudding. Why the devil didn’t you translocate?”
“I …” Lucas was seized by another fit of coughing. “I couldn’t... no time…”
“No time?” said Darkness, with disbelief. “How much time does it take to think one coherent thought? Well, granted, for you it might take a while, but you could just as easily have thought your way out of that mess instead of wasting all that energy leaping about like a trout thrown up on a riverbank. I’ve never seen such a ridiculous spectacle. “
“I ... I couldn’t think straight,” Lucas said, slowly getting his, wind back. “It was… it all happened so damn fast…
“How the devil did you wind up in the middle of the Punic Wars in the first place? What on earth made you think of that? No, on second thought, don’t answer that,” Darkness added, hastily. “You’re liable to pop back there once again and I have a distinct aversion to large and noisy animals.”
“I’m sorry, Doc. Thanks for—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t thank me,” Darkness said, with a grimace of distaste. “Now that I’ve saved your life twice in a row, I feel doubly responsible for it. I never should have taken that survey course in philosophy when I was back in college. It’s been getting in my way ever since.”
“Just the same, I’m grateful,” Lucas said, getting to his feet and brushing off his clothes.
“Don’t be grateful, be careful,” Darkness said. “Be wary of stray thoughts until you learn proper control. You have just had a graphic demonstration of how much trouble they can get you into. I can’t be hovering over you all the time like some sort of deux ex machina. In order for the field trials to have any validity whatsoever, you must rely on your telempathic chronocircuitry to get you out of trouble, not me.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” said Lucas. He looked around. “Where are the others’!”
“How the devil should I know? They were here when I left. At least, Miss Cross and that other fellow were. Everyone seems to be popping off somewhere.”
“Andre? Gulliver?” said Lucas. He looked in the other rooms, but the apartment was empty. “Andre wouldn’t simply leave like that. And Steiger and Delaney were due back. Now there’s no one here but us. That isn’t like them. Something’s happened…
Then he noticed the remains of the shattered wine bottle. He glanced at Dr. Darkness with alarm.
“How much time has elapsed here since you left?”
“Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes perhaps?” said Darkness. “I’m really not quite sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not quite sure?”
“I can’t be bothered with trifles, Priest,” said Darkness, irritably. “When one routinely deals in light years, one doesn’t sweat the occasional ten minutes .”
“Well, something happened here in those ten minutes,” Lucas said, tensely, “That bottle didn’t break, it burst apart, as if …” his voice trailed off as he started looking around the apartment, trying to estimate trajectories, and finally, he found it—a bullet hole in the wall next to the armoire.
“Look at this!” he said. “Doc, they’re in trouble! You’ve got to help me!”
“Look, Priest, I thought I already explained that—”
“Dammit, Doc, I haven’t got time for this! I don’t care about the validity of your field tests; I’ve got to find out what happened here. I can’t fade out the way you can. If I went back to see what happened. I’d be visible and there’s no telling what I might be clocking into; but you could find out what happened without anybody seeing you.”