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your friends return. Or if you prefer, you will be allowed to leave in one
month s time, once the
Grömsketter is well out to sea and beyond reach. The man smiled.
His expression was, the herdsman decided, at least half genuine.
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They were nearing the end of the dock.  What makes you so certain that if I
was permitted to continue on my journey Time would react adversely?
This time it was the woman on his right who replied.  The Logicians have
declared it to be so. And the
Logicians are never wrong.
 Time may be a river, Ehomba responded,  but logic is not. At least, not the
logic that is discussed by the wise men and women of my village.
 His  village.  Two of the Gate Masters strolling in front of him exchanged a
snickering laugh.
 This is not a village, foreigner, declared the man on the herdsman s left
meaningfully.  This is
Hamacassar, whose Board of Logicians is comprised of the finest minds the city
and its surrounding provinces can provide.
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Into the Thinking Kingdoms: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 2
Ehomba was not intimidated.  Even the finest minds are not infallible. Even
the most reasonable and logical people can make mistakes.
 Well, according to them, detaining you is not a mistake. Whereas letting you
continue on most surely would be.
The tall southerner glanced back down the dock. In the distance, the sturdy
hull of the
Grömsketter was passing through the Narrows, traveling swiftly westward as the
current continued to increase its speed.
Turning his attention to the red-brick administration buildings up ahead, he
saw several antelope-drawn coaches lined up outside. More soldiers waited
there, a mounted escort to convoy him and the Gate
Masters back to the city.
 You know, he murmured conversationally,  logic is a funny thing. It can be
used to solve many problems, even to predict things that may happen in the
future. But it is not so very good at explaining people: who they are, what
they are about, why they do the things they do. Sometimes even masters of
logic and reason can think too long and too hard about something, until the
truth of it becomes lost in a labyrinth of conflicting possibilities.
While the woman on his right pondered his words, the man on his left frowned.
 What are you trying to say, foreigner?
 That anyone, however clever they believe themselves to be, can think too
much. Whereupon he lurched heavily to his right, slamming his shoulder into
the startled female official and sending her stumbling and crashing into the
two soldiers marching close alongside her. In a confusion of weapons and
words, all three went toppling together off the end of the dock to land in the
shallow water below.
 Stop him! Don t kill him, but stop him! the senior Gate Master shouted.
With dozens of soldiers in pursuit, Ehomba ran inland. A lifetime of chasing
down errant calves and stray lambs allowed him to outdistance all but the most
active of his pursuers, not to mention the Gate
Masters who trailed huffing and puffing in their wake. Neither group was in
any especial hurry. There was nowhere for the herdsman to go. If he entered
the water they would quickly chase him down in boats. The headland toward
which he was running ended in a low bluff overlooking the river. All other
directions were sealed off by the still active time gates, through which the
flow of Time continued to ripple and shimmer.
 Stop! yelled a voice from behind him.
 You can t get away! shouted another.  There s nowhere to go!
But there was somewhere to go. Or rather, somewhen.
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Into the Thinking Kingdoms: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 2
Taking a deep breath and making an arrow of his clasped hands, Ehomba leaped
forward and dove headfirst into the time stream.
Somewhere far around the curve of the world, the most powerful sorcerer alive
woke up screaming.
From the hole Ehomba s body made in the channel, Time spewed forth in a gush
of unrestrained chronology. Amid shrieks and howls, Gate Masters and soldiers
alike were swept up and washed away in the flood of Time, to disappear forever
into some otherwhen. The detained deranged foreigner was forgotten in the
survivors haste to close all the time gates and so shut off the flow to the
devastating leak.
Once this had finally been accomplished, reluctant soldiers were sent to scour
the area where the tall stranger had disappeared. Though not hopeful, the Gate
Masters knew they had to try. The Logicians would demand it. As expected,
there was no sign or suspicion that the foreigner had ever existed. He was
gone forever: vanished, swept away, taken up by the river of Time. With
wondering sighs and expressions of regret for those colleagues who had been
lost in the short-lived disaster, they set about composing themselves for the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]