Once More With Footnotes

...
     
     
     
     
     
                  ... when matins we re done the congregation filed out to the yard. They were confronted by a marble block into which had been thrust a beautiful sword. The block was four feet square, and the sword passed through a steel anvil which had been struck in the stone, and which p r ojected a foot from it. The anvil had been inscribed with letters of 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
     
     
     
     
     
O nce and F uture
     
                  The coppe r 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 sof t 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 ther e were legends about him, and they're being welded onto 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 happ ened 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, sh oulders 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.
     
                  Yo u 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 500 AD, 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 does know 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 alphanumeric display that tells you exa ctly 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 roug h idea of when you are just by looking through the thing and reading off along the calibrations. If you can't even recognise the constellations, the best thing to do is run and hide, because something forty feet tall and covered with scales is probably hun ting 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 posi tions 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.