Synopsis and the first two chapters.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE is a historical fantasy of 73,000 words written as the journal of an Air Force mission in which two time travelers are stranded in the ancient world. To make the most of the rest of their lives they turn to fighting Egyptian oppression.

Egypt was oppressive. The pharaohs bragged of the wars they waged to extend their domain and enslave the people; but their records didn't report their losses and they did lose. There's an inscription on an island near Aswan in which Djehutmosse IV bragged of parading up the Nile and driving rebellious Nubians into the inaccessible valleys; but, if he had actually driven the Nubians back, wouldn't he have had that inscribed in Nubia to discourage more rebellions? That rebellion is part of my story.

Djehutmosse IV reigned toward the end of the fifteenth century BC. That was a time of dawning enlightenment. People traveled more and wrote more. Religion became more humanistic. Queen Ty of Egypt opened the temples to the people; her sons introduced monotheism, one almighty and benevolent god instead of a passel of petty gods. Commerce was fast growing in importance. Copper and tin were mined in various places around the Mediterranean world, transported to where they were needed, and used in making bronze. Amber from around the Baltic was much desired by Mediterranean people. Some scholars have suggested the myth of Jason and the Argonauts is the mythical account of a takeover of the amber trade. That, too, is part of my story.

Finally, my story includes the conflict between the pharaoh and his priests. The pharaoh might be a god and the spokesman for the gods but the priests had their own ideas of what the gods wanted and, since they were closer to the people, the king had to accept a lot of what they said and did.

Time travel is not a big part of my story—I simply use it to get two twentieth-century protagonists back in time to observe, react to, and influence prehistoric peoples and events—but time travel is not impossible. It does not violate any of the known laws of physics. The story I tell could have happened.

I have degrees in physics and math, have taught relativity to engineers, and have worked for over 37 years as an aerospace engineer on Air Force and NASA projects. I've been interested in archaeology and mythology all my life and was motivated to write this novel by evidence many of the myths told a fanciful version of what almost certainly did happen.

Sincerely,

Paul McKowen

SYNOPSIS

Mark Allen, a middle-aged white preacher, and Alicia Tyler, a young black free-thinker, two time travelers from the twentieth century, have splashed down near ancient Crete. They can't return to their own time and have lost the data they were sent to get. Their mission is a failure; but they have rescued two princesses from a savage village and have found a home in Knossos on Crete.

They've been there about a month when Ahneen, an Egyptian envoy, comes to Knossos to lay down the law as to what and where the Knossans can trade. They are to keep out of the amber trade. Mark and Ty, having failed in their mission and needing something to live for, decide to fight Egyptian tyranny. They send Ahneen packing then Ty goes to Nubia to lead the Nubians in driving out the Egyptians there while Mark goes to the Black Sea to get the amber. Ty knows of an Egyptian inscription on an island near Aswan that tells of the pharaoh's driving back a Nubian rebel-lion; but, if the pharaoh had actually driven the Nubians back, he would have had it inscribed in Nubia to keep the Nubians from rebelling again. And some scholars believe the story of Jason and the Argonauts could be the mythical account of someone's taking over the amber trade. Mark and Ty have reason to believe they might succeed in their highly iffy venture.

Mark, in going to the Black Sea, has adventures similar to those Jason experienced in going to Colchis to get the golden fleece. He and his crew are propositioned by the women of Lemnos and are warmly received by the Doliones. Ahneen chases Mark with an eighty-oared galley, attacks the Doliones, and kills their king. Mark gets to Colchis before Ahneen, pulls the Princess Midya from a stormy sea and they rescue her brother, Gialus, who has been leading a small army fighting the Egyptians. In rescuing Gialus, Mark finds it expedient to accept Midya as his wife then realizes he actually loves the pagan princess.

When Ahneen reaches Colchis, the Egyptians there, thinking Ahneen's ship is the Knossan ship, attack and slaughter his crew while the crew, thinking the attackers are Mark's Knossans, fight back and slaughter the attackers. Gialus drives the survivors out of Colchis; but Ahneen has already left, taking Midya with him.

Mark chases after them, is captured and put in a chain gang carrying supplies to the army fighting Ty and her Nubians; but his trekking with the chain gang gives him the opportunity to get information about Egyptian deployment to Ty. She wins her war and becomes queen of Egypt. Meanwhile Midya is raped, has her baby, and dies, leaving Mark with a month-old baby girl.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE
by Paul McKowen
2560 S. Independence Street
Lakewood, CO 80227
(303) 989-5147

1

News of Ahneen's coming reached us while Ty and I were walking in the palace park. It was a lovely morning with a glorious sun shining bright in an azure sky. Life was good--we had found friends and a home and our troubles were over, we thought--then the minosha's messenger came running to tell me some visitor was coming and the minosha would like me to join him on the west porch. I squeezed Ty's hand--Alicia Tyler was my partner, very young, very pretty, and very capable--and hurried to the west porch.

Radmantep, the minosha of Konossa, was pacing and barking instructions to Eginos, a noble Ty and I had gotten to know quite well. Both were short and slender, in their late thirties, and dressed in white skirts. Radmantep saw me coming and ran to meet me, calling that some kind of visitor was coming. Ty and I had been in Konossa less than a month and I still didn't know the language well enough to know what kind of visitor; but the tension in Radmantep's voice meant this visitor wasn't welcome. Would I go with him to meet the fellow? Yes, of course.

A string of chariots with horses and drivers waited in the drive along the porch. Radmantep led me, running, to the first of them, waved me in, jumped in with me, and we raced away to the harbor, the other chariots coming fast after us. He sure didn't want his unwelcome visitor to have to wait.

"Who comes?" I yelled over the pounding of the horses' hooves and the crunch of the bronze-rimmed wheels on the stone-paved road.

"Ahneen," he yelled back then went on to say something about his being some sort of envoy for a Menke-somebody and any trouble coming to him bringing down the great king's most awful wrath. I'd have to wait till I could understand him better to ask what kind of trouble and what the wrathful king might do.

When we came out of the woods that grew thick in the valleys and on the low hills around the harbor, we saw Ahneen's galleys, a flotilla, anchored a mile offshore. A few were moored at the docks and two or three crawled from the flotilla to the docks and back, their oars waving like wings.

"Why so many ships?" I yelled. An envoy with a few aides shouldn't need more than a ship or two.

"He comes with twenty ships to bring a thousand soldiers," he yelled back; then, after a pause, "to make it be the jawinuk gives him what he comes to take." Oh, that kind of envoy. Yeah, a thousand soldiers might make it hard to say no to the guy.

Konossa was a small city on a hard-to-get-to island. We had no army and only three thousand sailors, most of whom were at sea. The only armies we would ever have to face would come by ship and our sailors could take care of those; but twenty galleys bringing a thousand soldiers could be trouble. I hoped Radmantep didn't expect me to do anything about them.

Men in some kind of uniform with axes in their belts were stepping from the moored galleys to the docks and forming up in companies of five lines of ten men with one man standing at their side. Yeah, fifty-one soldiers were getting off of each galley. No wonder Radmantep was worried. So was I.

We drove past where the companies were forming up to where the most sumptuous galley rocked and tugged at a pier. Ahneen's galley was eighty-oared and had a long, low, narrow cabin. Men in white tunics--nobles?--and in gray tunics--guards?--stood around on the dock. Our driver pulled to a stop and Radmantep hurried to two fellows standing by themselves. One of them looked to be in his early twenties; the other was more my age, fifty-two. They wore silver breastplates and white skirts.

They greeted each other with formal speeches, didn't pretend to be overly glad to see each other; then Radmantep told the two men something in which I caught the words Fella and Shardani. Pedri, Pasipi's and Radmantep's eleven-year-old daughter, one of two princesses I'd rescued from a savage village, had heard Ty call me Fella and, when we brought her home, had told everyone that was my name with a tone of voice that implied she had found me and I was hers; and Radmantep's telling them of the Shardani, the savages who'd attacked Ty and me when we splashed down, might be to get them to think twice about what they demanded.

Ty and I had come to this ancient world on a data-gathering mission for the Air Force time-travel project. When we splashed down, over three hundred savages in ten or more galleys had attacked us. We drove them off, killing far too many of them. To me, life is sacred; but our lives were as sacred as theirs and I wasn't about to let them kill Ty or me.

We took one of their galleys to get to land but a storm threw us onto some rocks, wrecked our galley, and dumped us and our supplies into the heaving sea. Some natives found some of the supplies and we got those back but they didn't include the journal nor the pictures we'd taken of the planets against their star backgrounds. The project needed those pictures to determine the time of our arrival so they could come up with accurate jump parameters. Getting those pictures was the sole purpose of our mission; without them, the mission was a failure.

Then, when we got ashore, we found that Crete wasn't the few half-civilized cities we'd expected; it was village after village of bloodthirsty savages. We must have landed hundreds, if not thousands, of years too early. We fought them off, using up a lot of our precious ammunition and killing way too many of them.

A band of savages grabbed Ty and staked her out to die in their village. When I tracked her down, I found two girls and a fellow staked out with her and still alive. When we brought them home, the girls' parents, Pasipi and Radmantep, the jawinuk of Konossa and her minosha, gave us a home and accepted us as friends. We owed them a lot and I wished we could help; but we couldn't stand up to a thousand soldiers!

Radmantep brought the two fellows to where I waited. They were Ahneen and Kharu, he told me. Kharu would ride with me back to the palace. He and Ahneen got in the first chariot, Kharu, the older fellow, and I in the second, and we headed back. We were followed by the nobles, two in each of the next five chariots, then by the guards and soldiers on foot.

We reached the palace without incident. Pasipi, the jawinuk or queen, a petite thirty-some-year-old brunette, was waiting with Eginos and Ty. She told Ahneen and his nobles midday eating would be shortly in the arbor. Eginos went to meet the soldiers and get them settled in a field north of the palace while Radmantep and I took his guests to their rooms to freshen up. Ty came along and we fell back to where we could talk.

"His nibs comes with a thousand soldiers," I told her. "Our host thinks the great king sent him to get something the queen might be reluctant to give him. He's worried."

"Yeah, so's the queen. I told her she doesn't have to give him a damned thing. Just kick 'em out. We'll back her up."

"What? We can't stand up to a thousand soldiers!"

"We can stand up to the two pricks that brought them. Once we get rid of them the soldiers won't give us any trouble."

"The heck they won't! Every company has a captain and those captains are as gung ho to wipe us out as the two ringleaders."

"Twenty captains, twenty rounds. Getting rid of them will take all of ten seconds."

"They won't line up for us to shoot them; and, anyway, any harm that comes to Ahneen or his soldiers will bring down the most awful wrath of Monkey-whosis."

"Yeah, Pharaoh Menkepruria Djehutmosse. I'm gonna show that son of a bitch what awful wrath is."

"Pharaoh? They come from Egypt?"

"Yeah, Egypt--Keemta--and the Egyptians are Romi."

"We can't take on the Egyptian army! Egypt is the strongest nation in the world today!"

"We're not taking on the army; but we're not gonna let 'em get away with that shit. Shuma says"--Shuma was the Nubian guard I'd taken from the savage village where I'd found Ty and the princesses--"the Romi army is scattered too thin to fight effectively and, when they took over Wawai--Nubia--the Nahassi --Nubians--damned near held them off but weren't experienced fighters. The Romi robbed, beat, and killed them. I'm going to whip their sorry asses."

Yeah, she was good at whipping sorry asses but lousy at assessing consequences, like her shooting at the cops that got us in this mess. I'd needed help getting her brother's two daughters out of Colorado to where the town bigot couldn't use them to make trouble for their father.

When I picked up the girls, a couple of cops came after us--the bigot owned everything in town including the police department. I ditched them--beat them and a train to a crossing-- but they'd have cops watching for us at the state line so I called Ty. The girls and I could walk to Raton along the tracks, I told her, if she'd bring them some warm clothes--it was Christmas week and cold--then pick them up in Raton to take to her mother in Amarillo.

But two cops found me and the girls in the field where we waited. They'd beaten me up and had the girls screaming by the time Ty got there. One of the cops stumbled while chasing Faye and lost his gun; Ty found it and started shooting. She was just a gruff voice in the dark but her shooting got the cops to let go of the girls and me to handcuff their hands behind their backs, tie their legs with barbed wire--I pounded down the barbs with rocks--and leave them in their cruiser.

The girls and I walked to Raton along the tracks; then, when Ty picked us up, we heard on her radio we'd left the two cops between the tracks. One of them managed to roll over a track and crawl to the cruiser; the other was crushed by the next train.

We had murdered a cop, had tried to murder both of them. Any jury would believe him--Ty had shot and we had gotten away. Ty took the girls to a friend's house and we fled, scared, hopeless, and snappish. Ty didn't like white preachers and I wasn't too fond of punks. She screamed at me to keep my eyes, hands, and superiority to myself and I screamed back, just as blisteringly, that I couldn't help feeling superior to someone stupid enough to shoot at the police; but neither of us was up to being alone and we stayed together.

We plodded all that night and the next, ran from posses and bloodhounds, slept in barns and haystacks, and hid from one posse stretched out in the straw and manure on the floor of a truck with a load of cows. We washed in a cold, muddy creek.

We were sure we couldn't stand each other but, when we got the chance to get away by volunteering for the time jump, we didn't let a little incompatibility stand in our way. It was our only chance to have any kind of life, the only way I could provide for my family, and we'd get along better with each other than with the characters we'd find in prison.

2

Lunch in the arbor was at least in a pleasant setting. Leafy trees and vines shaded the arbor, flowers bloomed in planters and beds, and a cool breeze brought in the clean, fresh smells of the park and whispered softly in the trees behind us. Ty and I sat at the large table with Pasipi, Radmantep, and Ahneen with Eginos to translate for Pasipi, Ty, and me and Kharu to translate for Ahneen. Romi and Konossan nobles sat at the other tables and Ahneen's ten guards stood just outside the arbor.

Radmantep started to say something in a hospitable tone of voice but Ahneen interrupted him with something that stunned him and Eginos. When Pasipi prompted him rather sharply, Eginos told us Ahneen had said he had come to put someone in charge of our shipping and trading. Something to that effect. Radmantep stared at Ahneen for a while then, according to Eginos, asked if the Konossans hadn't brought the trade goods the Romi wanted.

The Konossans would do better when told what to bring by a Romi shippingmaster; and, no, we hadn't brought any northern goods for the last two years. While Radmantep tried to think how to respond, Eginos explained to Ty and me the northern goods were furs and amber that had been brought overland from the far north to some port on the Great Sea where the Konossans had picked them up to trade with the peoples around the sea.

Aiii, the northern goods had not been at the port where we'd always picked them up, Radmantep finally said, but ... something about hearing they were being brought to Ukrit and our getting them there and bringing them to Keemta.

Our Romi shippingmaster would tell us what to bring, Ahneen told him coldly and it would not be the northern goods; they were being taken to Ukrit and brought on by caravan. That was pretty final and Radmantep looked helplessly at Pasipi.

Aiii, maybe Ty and I could do something about that. If the northern goods were brought from Ukrit by caravan, Ukrit had to be at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the northern goods must be brought there across the Turkish mountains from the Black Sea. Amber came from around the Baltic and could be taken to the Black Sea as easily as to the Mediterranean. The Romi must have gotten the northerners to bring the northern goods to some port there; then Ty and I could go trade for the goods at that port.

Would Ahneen and Kharu stop us with their thousand soldiers? Oh, I doubted they'd bring all twenty galleys and the crews for going up the straits would all be rowers; they wouldn't take any passengers. The sailors might stop us from trading but we could take the goods from the ships taking them across the sea. At least we should go to the Black Sea and find out what we could do.

"Uh ... taking the northern goods to Ukrit is a long taking and full of dangers," I said to Radmantep. "Ty and I can take a ship, get the goods at a closer port, and take them to the Romi."

Kharu jumped to his feet without telling Ahneen what I'd said and roared at me, in Konossan, "You will not get the northern goods!" Who was he? I thought he was Ahneen's aide but he acted more like the boss. He barked some order and his guards came running, raising their axes. Was he trying to scare us or did he actually mean for them to clobber us? The two in the lead were just a step away when Ty and I jerked out our guns--we were still wearing the T-shirts and shorts we'd come with because the shorts had pockets for our guns--and shot them. We shot to kill and kept on shooting. In five seconds the ten guards were dead.

"You killed our guards," Kharu said in shocked surprise.

"Yes," I said. "You do not come to Konossa to tell our jawinuk what she will or will not do, you do not mess with our shipping and trading, you do not have your guards attack us!"

"You have no reason to come here," Pasipi told him. "You should go now and take the message to your king the Romi are no longer welcome on our island." Good Lord! She was more a hawk than Ty.

"That is war," Kharu roared. "We will be back with ten thousand men to stomp you in the dirt!"

That was an empty threat--he wasn't the pharaoh and kings don't go to war over a few pieces of amber. As far as I was concerned, lunch and the palaver were over. I told Radmantep I would see Ahneen and his men off. They'd be a lot less likely to try anything with me than with him or Eginos. The thousand soldiers wouldn't turn on me without Ahneen or Kharu ordering them to and they both knew that would be the last order either of them would ever give. Ty decided to go with me, obviously had something on her mind.

Radmantep and I took Ahneen and his nobles to their rooms to pick up anything they might have left while Eginos went with Ty to our rooms--we still needed a little help in finding our way around the palace--to get our cartridge belts. Radmantep took me and the Romi to the field north of the palace where the soldiers were taking it easy after a lunch provided by the jawinuk. Eginos and Ty joined us there then he and Radmantep left.

Getting the soldiers in formation to march back to the harbor took time but the officers knew what they were doing and Ty and I didn't hurry them. Then, at the harbor, Ahneen, with Kharu and the nobles, boarded Ahneen's fancy rowboat and went out to the flotilla to send the ships in, four at a time, to pick up the men.

And, while Ty and I waited, we talked. "Does knowing the pharaoh is Monkey-whosis help fix the time?" I started. "At least the world isn't as primitive as we thought."

"Yeah, Egyptologists have some idea of when the pharaohs reigned. Of course there were more than one Djehutmosse--I know of a Djehutmosse the Fourth--but they probably all reigned in the fourteen hundreds so we at least know the century." But that still put us something like four hundred years before our target date of ten-thirty B.C.

"You really gonna go get the amber?" she asked.

"Yeah, I don't see that we have much choice. Radmantep and Pasipi have been good to us and it's time we did something for them. Not only that, it's one way we can sort of make up for flubbing the mission."

"If it makes you feel any better; but the failure wasn't our fault. I'm gonna fight those bastards for one reason: I hate their guts. And I'm gonna win."

"You're going to win? You're going to fight a separate war?"

"Yeah. You don't need me in the Black Sea; I'm going to Wawai to lead the Nahassi in chasing out the Romi there. Shuma says there are plenty of Nahassi left, ready, willing, and able to fight. All they need is a leader."

"A leader? To lead the few hundred primitive tribesmen you might round up against the thousands of battle-ready Romi? The Romi will have bows, arrows, spears, and axes and will know how to use them."

"How to use them against catapults, crossbows, and a semiautomatic? I doubt it. Then Pasipi said I can take the palace guards. They're Nahassi and will help me get started."

"Lady, if the Nubians actually rebelled and drove out the Egyptians, there'd be some record of it."

"There is. It's inscribed on a rock on an island not far from Aswan. It tells of the Nubians rebelling and the king parading up the Nile and driving them into the inaccessible valleys ... but, if he'd really won the war, wouldn't he have had it inscribed on a rock in Wawai? To keep the Nahassi docile?"

"Maybe. But there's no inscription of my going to the Black Sea."

"Some scholars believe the story of Jason and the Argonauts could be the mythical account of someone's taking over the amber trade. Well, you're gonna take over the amber trade and you're going to the Black Sea where Jason went. Jason's getting the golden fleece means you'll get the amber; and the myth has Jason going to Colchis because the amber goes to Colchis ...."

"Colchis?"

"The city where Jason went to get the golden fleece, where he met Medea and she fell in love with him, where she helped him get away by cutting up her baby brother so the king wouldn't chase him, where he got those scads of soldiers to kill each other. Colchis must be the port where the northern goods are brought to send them over the mountains to Ukrit."

"You don't think we'd do better going together to the Black Sea, driving out the Romi, then going to Wawai?"

"No, Mark. Those are two separate fights and fighting them at the same time will split the Egyptians so they lose both fights. Anyway the fight in the Black Sea is a Konossan fight, to maintain Konossa's right to trade there. That's your fight. And there being no record of the Egyptians being there means you kick 'em out. The fight in Wawai is a black fight, to kick out the assholes who've trampled us for so long and that's mine. I want to fight it with my own kind."

Her own kind? Who in this alien world was more her kind? I was the one person who talked her language, who'd learned the same history, read the same newspapers, gone to the same movies and plays. Why wasn't I her kind?

But my being against intolerance and oppression was more a matter of principle while, with her, being black and putting up with white stupidity had been her life all her life. She shared that with the Nahassi, not with me. Anyway, arguing with Ty has always been a waste of time. She was going to Wawai to fight her war with her own people and I had no choice but to go to the Black Sea to fight mine.