The Dancer from Atlantis by Poul Anderson Page B

hammer and the adze he was forging.
     An open winehouse door and a drunken sailor telling lengthy lies about the perils he had survived. Two little boys, naked,
     playing what looked remarkably like hopscotch. A portly burgher, apprentices around him to protect him from jostling. A squat,
     dark, bearded man in robe and high-crowned brimless hat who must be from Asia Minor … no, here they simply called it Asia….
    The chariot rattled by that plateau, where several wooden temples stood, which would later be known as the Areopagus. It passed
     through a gateway in the city wall, whose roughly dressed stonework was inferior to the Mycenaen ruins Reid had once visited.
     (Now he wondered how long after Pamela’s day it would be before Seattle or Chicago lay tumbled, in silence broken only by
     crickets.) Beyond the ‘suburbs’ the horses came onto a rutted road and Theseus let them trot.
    Reid dung to the rail. He hoped his knees wouldn’t be jolted backward or the teeth shaken out of his jaws.
    Theseus noticed. He drew his beasts to a walk. They shimmied impatiently but obeyed. The prince looked around. ‘You’re not
     used to this, are you?’ he asked.
    ‘No, my lord. We … travel otherwise in my country.’
    ‘Riding?’
    ‘Well, yes. And, uh, in wagons that have springs to absorb the shock.’ Reid was faintly surprised to learn, out of his knowledge,
     that the Achaeans had a word for springs. Checking more closely, he found he had said ‘metal bowstaves.’
    ‘Hm,’ Theseus grunted. ‘Such must be costly. And don’t they soon wear out?’
    ‘We use iron, my lord. Iron’s both cheaper and stronger than bronze when you know how to obtain and work it. The ores are
     far more plentiful than those of copper or tin.’
    ‘Yes, so Oleg told me yesterday when I examined his gear. Do you know the secret?’
    ‘I fear not, my lord. It’s no secret in my country, but it doesn’t happen to be my work. I, well, plan buildings.’
    ‘Might your companions know?’
    ‘Perhaps.’ Reid thought that, given a chance to experiment, he could probably reconstruct the process himself. The basic idea
     was to apply a mechanical blast to your furnace, thus making the fire sufficiently hot to reduce the element, and afterward
     to alloy and temper the product until it became steel. Oleg might well have dropped in on such an operation in his era and
     observed equipment he could easily imitate.
    They drove unspeaking for a while. At this pace it wasn’t hard to keep balanced, though impacts still ran up the shinbones.
     The clatter of wheels was nearly lost in the noise of the wind, where it soughed among poplars lining the road. It cuffed
     with chilly hands and sent cloaks flapping. A flight of crows beat against it. The sun made their blackness look polished,
     until a cloud swept past and for a moment brilliance went out of the landscape. Smoke streamed flat from the roof of a peasant’s
     clay house. Women stooped in his wheatfield, reaping it with sickles. The wind pressed their coarse brown gowns against their
     flanks. Two men followed them, shocking; as they moved along, they would pick up their spears and shift those too.
    Theseus half turned, reins negligently in his right hand, sothat his yellow eyes could rest on Reid. ‘Your tale is more eldritch than any I ever thought to hear,’ he said.
    The American smiled wryly. ‘It is to me also.’
    ‘Borne on a whirlwind across the world, from lands so distant we’ve gotten no whisper about them, by the car of a magician
     – do you truly believe that was sheer happenstance? That there’s no destiny in you?’
    ‘I … don’t … think there is, my lord.’
    ‘Diores tells me you four spoke oddly about having come out of time as well as space.’ The deep voice was level but unrelenting;
     the free hand rested on a sword pommel. ‘What does that mean?’
    Here it comes, Reid told himself. Though his tongue was somewhat dry, he got his rehearsed answer out