The Shadow Dragons - James A. Owen [68]
. . . at Jack.
“What?” said Jack, looking around at his feet as if he’d inadvertently stepped on someone’s tail. “Did I do something wrong?”
Uncas hemmed and hawed and stuttered and stammered until Fred sighed and stepped forward to answer. “It’s not so much what you done, Scowler Jack,” he began, “as it is what you’re going t’ do.”
Charles frowned. For Fred to both address Jack formally and to lapse into the slipped vowels of the less-formal badger-speak meant it was a grave matter indeed.
“This isn’t about the giants again, is it?” said Jack. “I told Bert—”
“No, no, nuthin’ like that,” said Fred. “It’s just that . . . that . . . well, y’r an Oxford man, Scowler Jack!”
“As I always plan to be,” Jack said with a trace of defensiveness.
“Well then,” said Uncas morosely, “in th’ Summer Country, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-four, y’r in for a big surprise.”
“All this because I supposedly—in the future, mind you—take a post at Cambridge?” Jack whispered as he gestured around at the armband-wearing badgers. “Is it possible to feel guilt over something I don’t plan to do, and won’t do anyway for years?”
“That’s an interesting question,” replied Charles. “I wonder how the intention or non-intention plays into the concept of repentance.”
“Repentance?” Jack sputtered. “But I haven’t done anything! Or at least, not yet! And even then, at worst it’s because I go teach at another university?”
“Not just another university,” Charles said. ”Cambridge. Not only have we been joking about it for all these years, but according to Bert, the only Caretakers who have ever really botched the job came from Cambridge, not Oxford. It’s basically a cursed place, as far as these little fellows are concerned.”
As if to punctuate Charles’s point, a smallish badger intern carrying a bundle of ribbon markers stopped and looked at them, whiskers quivering.
Jack gave it a little wave, and in response the tiny mammal burst into tears and went running from the room.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Jack.
“I’d better do all the talking while we’re here,” Charles said, laying a comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Apparently I don’t do anything controversial at all in the fifties.”
The great palace at Paralon was still recognizable, as it was a massive edifice that would resist change or alteration—but the regal air that had permeated the entire island capital of the Archipelago had been replaced with something . . . different.
“Mmm,” said Charles, inhaling deeply. “Smells like bureaucracy.”
“I’m sure you meant to say ‘democracy,’” said Jack.
“What’s the difference?” Charles replied. “Either way, I suspect that Artus got in over his head.”
“He’s probably been reading too many American Histories, I’m afraid,” said Jack. “There’s a lot to advocate for, and I believe his ambitions are nobly based—but I think he may have been better off with his parliamentary-oriented monarchy.”
Instead of the Great Hall, where visitors would normally have been received, the Valkyries led the companions to a large storeroom which had been converted into an office. Artus, the former king of Paralon, rose and greeted them warmly.
“My dear friends,” he said happily. “It’s wonderful to see you. I’m so glad you’re not dead!”
“As are we,” said Jack, “but we’ve apparently missed out on a lot of new developments, including, ah, fashion trends.”
“Oh, yes, the armbands,” Artus said with a sheepish expression on his face. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Apparently the controversy that’s fired up the badgers involves my future,” Jack said, “or one of them, at any rate. We’ve accidentally leaped some seven years ahead of where—uh, when we were meant to be, so I realize that there will be articles of common knowledge to you that will be incomprehensible to us. But how is it that the badgers know things that won’t happen for another decade?”
“It’s the Time Storms,” Artus explained. “They ebb and flow, and occasionally deposit something here