A Blink of the Screen

gold:
    W HOSO P ULLETH O UTE THIS S WERD
    O F THIS S TONE AND A NVYLD
    IS R IGHTWYS K YNGE
    B ORNE OF ALL B RYTAYGNE .
    from
Le Morte d’Arthur
by Sir Thomas Malory
    The copper wire. It was the copper wire that gave me the trouble.
    It’s all down to copper wire. The old alchemists used to search for gold. If only they’d known what a man and a girl can do with copper wire …
    And a tide mill. And a couple of hefty bars of soft iron.
    And here I am now, with this ridiculous staff in one hand and the switch under my foot, waiting.
    I wish they wouldn’t call me Merlin. It’s Mervin. There was a Merlin, I’ve found out. A mad old guy who lived in Wales and died years ago. But there were legends about him, and they’re being welded on to me now. I reckon that happens all the time. Half the famous heroes of history are really lots of local guys all rolled into one by the ballad singers. Remember Robin Hood? Technically I suppose I can’t, because none of the rascals who went under that name will be born for several centuries yet, if he even is due to exist in this universe, so using the word remember is probably the wrong, you know, grammar. Can you remember something that hasn’t happened yet? I can. Nearly everything I can remember hasn’t happened yet, but that’s how it goes in the time-travel business. Gone today and here tomorrow …
    Oh, here comes another one of them. A strapping lad. Legs like four beer kegs stacked in pairs, shoulders like an ox. Brain like an ox, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Hand like a bunch of bananas, gripping the sword …
    Oh, no, my lad. You’re not the one. Grit your teeth all you like. You’re not the one.
    There he goes. His arm’ll be aching for days.
    You know, I suppose I’d better tell you about this place.
    About this time.
    Whenever it is …
    I had special training for time-travelling. The big problem, the big problem, is finding out when you are. Basically, when you step out of a time-machine you can’t rely on seeing a little sign that says, ‘Welcome to AD 500, Gateway to the Dark Ages, pop. 10 million and falling’. Sometimes you can’t even rely on finding anyone in a day’s march who knows what year it is, or what king is on the throne, or what a king is. So you learn to look at things like church architecture, the way the fields are farmed, the shape of the ploughshares, that sort of thing.
    Yeah, I know, you’ve seen films where there’s this dinky little alpha-numeric display that tells you exactly where you are …
    Forget it. It’s all dead reckoning in this game. Real primitive stuff. You start out by checking the constellations with a little gadget, because they tell me all the stars are moving around all the time and you can get a very rough idea of when you are just by looking through the thing and reading off along the calibrations. If you can’t even recognize the constellations, the best thing to do is run and hide, because something forty feet tall and covered with scales is probably hunting you already.
    Plus they give you a guide to various burned-out supernovas and Stofler’s
Craters of the Moon by Estimated Creation Date
. With any luck you can pinpoint yourself fifty years either way. Then it’s just a matter of checking planetary positions for the fine tuning. Try to imagine sea navigation around the time of, oh, Columbus. A bit hit-or-miss, yeah? Well, time navigation is just about at the same level.
    Everyone said I must be one great wizard to spend so much time studying the sky.
    That’s because I was trying to find out when I was.
    Because the sky tells me I’m around AD 500. So why is the architecture Norman and the armour fifteenth-century?
    Hold on … here comes another one …
    Well, not your actual Einstein, but it could be … oh, no, look at that grip, look at that rage … no. He’s not the one. Not him.
    Sorry about that.
    So … right … where was I? Memory like a sieve these days.
    Yeah, the architecture. And everyone speaking a sort of Middle English, which was okay as it turned out because I can get by in that, having accidentally grounded in 1479 once. That was where I met John Gutenberg, father of modern printing. Tall man, bushy whiskers. Still owes me tuppence.
    Anyway. Back to this trip. It was obvious from the start that things weren’t quite right. This time they were supposed to be sending me to observe the crowning of Charlemagne in AD 800, and here I was in the wrong country and, according to the