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.
"That was our basic text at the Academy," Gail said.
"Text for what?"
"Why, American history, what else?"
"Well, you see, that was then and this is now. My job isn't
American history so much as it is to teach you how to serve safely
and intelligently in time. How long that'll take I have no idea, but
nobody will leave this cabin until the task is done."
"I'm ready right now," Gail said.
"What makes you so sure?"
"There isn't a word in any of those books I don't already know.
If you don't believe me, ask me."
Horatio grinned. "There's no need for that. I'd rather show you."
Wheeling suddenly, he took the book he held and hurled it straight into the
fire. Horrified, Arthur sprang up as if to rescue the volume, but
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Horatio waved him sharply down. "Let it burn," he ordered.
And so it did.
Then, while the ashes floated up the chimney, Horatio took the next
book in the stack and threw that into the flames. Then another and another and
another until all twelve were burning.
Finally, he spoke. "There's no need to worry. That was just a little lesson
and I've got a bunch more copies of the set upstairs.
The point I was trying to make is simple: books don't teach, they educate.
All three of you are, I'm sure, rightly and properly educated. But
you haven't been taught and that's what I've got to
do now."
"What sort of learning do you have in mind?" Arthur asked.
There was more than a hint of hostility in his tone and Jan
recalled that Arthur had been a teacher and historian.
"Oh, this type," Horatio said, and with lightning speed he reached
out, caught Arthur by the arm, lifted him off the floor, and tossed him neatly
and firmly across the room.
Arthur lay on his back, groaning, but he did not seem hurt.
Horatio leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. "What
I'm going to teach you," he said, "is how much more there is to the past
besides simple history."
Jan couldn't help smiling. He leaned across to Gail and whispered,
"See? That's what I told you all along."
"Shut up," she told him. But her heart no longer seemed in it.
She was watching poor Arthur struggling to regain his feet.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It took two full months for them to learn, heart and head, and during the
interim they ate well, slaved vigorously, worked furiously, studied
violently, and slept soundly.
When this second and more arduous training period was at last over,
Horatio informed them by simply stating, after a typically long day of
wrestling, tree-falling, scouting, and cabin building, "Why, you're not
half-bad. I'm really amazed. I think you may just do. Tomorrow, we'll
wander up to the cave and find out."
Jan gaped. The cave was the mysterious place where Horatio kept the time
traveling equipment concealed. A dozen times in the past two months,
he had deserted his squad for periods ranging up to four days in order
to accomplish assigned missions and each time he had returned to find chaos
awaiting him. But the most recent time, the chaos had been much less severe
than
before and Horatio had been visibly pleased. "Why, if that grizzly hadn't
chased poor Arthur through my vegetable garden, this place might almost
be livable."
But now that the actual announcement of their success had been made,
none of them seemed willing to believe that it would really all be over.
Gail said, "But you can't mean that "
"I mean you graduated," Horatio said. "Completed your course of
training. I'm afraid I haven't any diplomas to hand out, so you'll just have
to accept my word."
"Then we'll actually be voyaging upstream?" Arthur said.
"This morning I went down to the cave. There was a message frpm the Captain
laying out an assignment. I read it and I
figured, why should I be doing all this dirty junk alone? I've got three good
corpsmen right here with me and I'm wasting them.
So we'll all be going in the morning."
"But where?" Gail said. "When?"
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Horatio grinned and shook his head. "Oh, somewhere," he said.
"Sometime. Just make sure you catch a good night's sleep tonight. Tomorrow
you're all going to be very busy."
If the others slept well that night, they did far better than Jan.
If his eyes dropped shut for longer than a brief few seconds in time,
it was news to him. The fact was that, come tomorrow morning, he
would be voyaging into time, leaving this historical but uninhabited
wilderness and venturing forth into the real past, where real
flesh-and-blood people lived and breathed and worked.
He was excited by the prospect. But he was not afraid. "While he still often
missed the comforting past of the Jarman [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]