What do you think?

Sooner or later, time research will give us the answer. We can be pretty certain of that. We’ll pinpoint the exact date of the destruction of Athilan and send observers into Europe to see what happened after that. But for the moment, I think my idea’s as good as anything that’s been suggested.

I have a lot of time to sit here thinking up these theories, right now. And I have to confess, despite what I said a little earlier, that I really am getting tired of this place. I want to get moving. I want to see Atlantis.

How tremendously frustrating it is to know that the royal ships are waiting in the harbor, ready to carry us off to that warm and beautiful and fabulous land out in the ocean, and instead I’m stuck in this chilly miserable place somewhere on the coast of France while the endless rituals and sacrifices are performed and rivers of bulls’ blood run along the rocky ground. Prince Ram stands on top of a wickerwork tower, smiling and waving and scattering handfuls of grain to the groveling mainlanders. Imagine it, grain, in Paleolithic Europe, where farming isn’t supposed to have been invented for another ten or fifteen thousand years! As the prince tosses the grain, long lines of the local folks keep coming on and on to snatch it up, more people than I ever would have guessed there were in the whole world at this time.

I really don’t want to be here in this two-bit provincial trading post any longer. Yes, it’s fascinating in its way, I suppose. But it’s also cold and raw and primitive, and it isn’t Atlantis. I want to see Atlantis. Lord, do I want to see Atlantis! It’ll be just my luck if the whole place sinks into the sea before I get there. We aren’t sure, after all, precisely when the final cataclysm is due to happen. It could even be next week, though I like to think there’s more time than that. Nevertheless here I sit. Here I wait.

Miss you so very much.

Until next time—

—Roy

Written at sea. I’m embarrassed to report that I’ve already lost count of the days, but I’m sure that we are just past the turning of the year—going by the Home Era calendar, that is. By the Athilantan calendar too, for that matter, because I’ve learned that the Athilantans begin their year on the day of the winter solstice, our December 21. That makes sense: the day the sun begins its return, the day when the days begin to grow longer.

(If you’ve done a better job of keeping track of time than I have, Lora, can you help me out? When and if you answer this, give me a clue, in terms of the phases of the moon or something, to the exact date in Home Era time. Not knowing the exact calendar time right now doesn’t matter all that much, but I can see that it could cause big problems for me as the time draws near to return to our own time. I shouldn’t have messed up like this. Dumb of me, dumb, dumb, dumb!)

Anyway, I’ll assume that by our own calendar today is January 3, 18, 861 B.C. I can’t be more than a day or two off.So: Happy New Year, Lora! (Give or take a day or two. . . . ) Happy New Year! But it’s really difficult to keep converting Athilantan days into our days, and really dumb to use a calendar that has no relevance whatever back here. I suspect that you’re using the Athilantan calendar now, although you’ve most likely been keeping track of the Home Era time as well. Since I can’t really be sure of the right Home Era date any more, I might as well switch over to the local system. And—well—by Athilantan reckoning, I see by Prince Ram’s mind, this is Day 13 of the Month of New Light in the year of the Great River. So be it.

Starting over, then—

Day 13, New Light, Great River. Aboard the imperial Athilantan vessel Lord of Day, bound from Brittany toward the isle of Athilan!

You ought to see these ships, Lora! You wouldn’t believe them for a moment.

What I expected, considering the general cultural level of these Athilantans as I’ve come to know it in the short while I’ve been here, was something along the lines of the Greek or Roman galley, with two or three banks of oars and maybe a sail. Or, maybe, a vessel more like a merchantman—you know, a pure sailing ship, square-rigged or possibly with a lateen sail.

Lora, this is some kind of steamship. I’m not kidding. A steamship. In the Paleolithic!

Unbelievable. Incomprehensible.

I said last time that the Athilantans were an Iron Age people living in Stone Age times. That was an understatement, by plenty. I hadn’t had a chance yet to study my surroundings carefully enough. These people aren’t simply on a cultural par with the Greeks or the Romans, as I used to think—no, they’ve got at least a nineteenth-century technology, and maybe something even more advanced than that. I wasn’t able to see that on the mainland, and you probably can’t see it out where you are. But this ship is an eye-opener.

I’m not sure that there are actual steam engines down below. For all I really know, the engine room is staffed by a team of sorcerers who keep giant turbines going round and round by uttering spells. Truth is, I don’t know what’s down there, and neither does Prince Ram. Princes don’t need to bother with such technological details, apparently. I’d like to sleepwalk him down belowdecks so that I could have a look around, but I don’t dare. Not until I’m completely sure that my control over his mind is good enough to keep him asleep as long as I want. I don’t want him suddenly waking up and finding himself down in the engine room, where somebody of his high rank ordinarily has no reason to go. And then starting to wonder if there’s something funny going on inside his brain.

This much I can tell you, though. The ship is big, as large as a good-sized yacht, long and tapering, with a flat stern and a very high keel. The hull is of metaclass="underline" iron, probably, but for all I know these people may be capable of fabricating steel. You may balk at that idea, but just keep on reading.

There’s a mast, a big one, but no sign of any rigging or lines. Either the mast has some sacred purpose or it’s some kind of antenna, but it isn’t used to support sails. There are also two funnels, or smokestacks. I never see any smoke coming out of them. I can feel a very light but steady vibration, as though engines of some sort are at work. That’s all I know.

Oh, one other thing. These people use electricity.

I know, I know, I know. It sounds nutty. The first time I saw the lights coming on, I thought the Prince was hallucinating. Or else that I must be misreading the data, coming up with false sensory equivalents for what was passing through his mind. Or maybe I was the one who was hallucinating. I tell you, Lora, it hit me like an earthquake. I was rocked by it. Flustered, bewildered, disoriented. For a moment I wondered whether I could believe anything that I was perceiving. Maybe it was all equally cockeyed. Paleolithic electricity?

But I checked and doublechecked, and the signal was coming through clear and true from him to me. What I was perceiving was what Prince Ram was seeing, to the last decimal place. So it wasn’t any fever dream. It was electric lighting, Lora. However incredible that sounds.

Where I was on the mainland, everything was lit by properly prehistoric-looking oil lamps, smelly and smoky, and no doubt it’s the same out your way. But every corridor of this ship that I’ve seen so far, and every stateroom too, I suspect, has electric lights. I suppose they simply haven’t bothered to set up generators in the mainland outposts, or maybe there’s no ready supply of fuel for them there. But they must have some kind of generator aboard ship, cranking out the kilowatts just like at home.