lt_safe_house | (no subject)

"No," Atlan said. "I'm an exception." He wasn't going to mention the cell activator or IT.

"I've also been trapped on this miserable piece of dirt for the past few millennia. About since your Stone Age. It's getting tedious. Every time you get some culture anywhere close to the point of building space ships - " he gestured - "BOOM! And they manage to blow themselves up or otherwise lose all their knowledge and someone else has to start all anew."

If this was true they had a lot in common, but Jan didn't dare say so yet. But ...

"If you've been here this long, then you must have seen how much things change in a thousand years, even in a century. Won't things have changed on your planet as well? Are you even sure it's still there after all this time?"

He remembered returning to his former home town about a century after his first death. It had been quite a shock to see how everything had changed.

"My people rule a vast, interstellar empire," Atlan said firmly. "Of course they're still there!"

Keep telling yourself that, his extra-sense chimed in. Maybe you'll start believing it some day, old fool

"And even if things changed, being back in proper civilisation will be better than living among savages."

"How much history have you seen?" Atlan asked.

The man didn't look that old, but no one knew better than him how outer appearance could be deceiving. After all, that Methos was almost his own age, too.

"Nothing near what you have, but enough to wish I hadn't." He didn't dare tell a stranger, even an ancient alien one, the truth, but some things he could say. "My parents, my entire family are dead, the house I grew up in has been torn down and there's nothing left in the town that I recognise. Even the language has changed."

"There's enough left that I still feel drawn to the country, but well ... it hasn't been thousands of years. Imagine a man from Ur returning to Mesopotamia today. Or someone from the days of the Pharaohs seeing modern Egypt."

"Seems to me, the most pressing thing on the mind of the one other person here who's seen Egypt at the time of the pharaohs is wringing my neck," Atlan muttered.

Louder, he said: "That's because yours is still a young people. Things change fast and hard. My people is a lot older. More set in its ways. Things are settled in a way that works. They are stable. Changes will not be nearly that bad."

"So how long had it been since he last change in your society when you left?" A culture that stable sounded tempting. Jan wondered whether he'd be able to blend in on that planet ... if the whole story was even true and the man wasn't just deluding himself.

"The last major changes on the homeworld? Several centuries before I left. I was rather young at the time, and it was political rather than cultural, too. There's war and all kinds of things along the perimeter of the Empire, but the homeworld isn't affected by that."

He stood and walked over to the window to take a look outside.

"A strange place, this," he noted.

War along the perimeter? Well, they could be wars of expansion ... though even those could turn bad and at the moment Europe seemed rather peaceful. Jan preferred to stay as far as possible away from any wars.

"Strange? How so? I thought it was a rather nice and quiet little town."

"It's too stable," Atlan said. "Same weather patterns, year after year, even if the surrounding countryside has extraordinary weather for the season. It's too nice and quiet, if you want. Everything just as it "should" be, without the uncertainties the environment or human nature might throw at you."

"Says the man whose home world has been stable for centuries plus most likely the entirety of human history?"

"My POINT precisely," Atlan said. "My people are stable because they're a very old culture, well-developed and set in its ways. Mankind is more like... barely out of diapers. My homeworld is stable because we control every last bit of it with technology. Mankind doesn't have that kind of technology. The safety and stability of my homeworld simply is not naturally possible here and should not be technically possible either. If it appears nevertheless, then something out of the ordinary must be causing it."

This sounded worrying.

"so, how long has this stability lasted?" The town looked perfectly modern to him, but perhaps he wasn't quite up to the current time himself. They had electricity and even TVs, though.

"About two decades," Atlan said. "When three years in sequence would be strange with this kind of weather pattern."

He shook his head.

"Other things, too. Except for this hotel, the town doesn't seem to have a very great resident fluctuation. People don't move away from here, and new people hardly ever move here. It's almost as if it's stagnating."

"They're country folk," Jan said. "And if they've been so lucky with the weather, they're probably happy here. Farmers don't move away from their land unless their crops keep failing."

"Point being," Atlan said, "They're not farmers. I haven't seen a single farm here. It's a town, they're townsfolk. They defy all demographic statistics. Now, a coincidence may be just that, but... chances are it isn't. Not on this scale. Not with this degree of predictability."

"For current standards it's pretty rural," Jan pointed out. Thing had been very different in his youth, though, so he could follow Atlan's argument. "I mean, have you seen London?"

"Of course," Atlan said, though truth be told, that had been through the screen of his underwater sphere.

"But it's not as rural as could be. No farms. No fields. Not rural enough for the people here to be country-folk stuck so much in their ways that nothing ever changes until forced. And there's still the matter of the weather..."

"So, they've been very lucky with the weather for some years, which makes it very pleasant to live here, so they don't feel like moving away?"

Or maybe the place attracted so many immortals that their reluctance to change was influencing the town? If so, he needed a new place for his holiday.

If only he could take his shooting instructor with him!

"For decades? No one gets lucky with weather for decades!"

Atlan leaned back on the sofa to get a glance out the window past the other man. "And I don't think people generally chose their place of residence for the weather."

"No, but they might choose not to leave it because of it." Even though he'd grown up in a town Jan had learned very early on that most people were farmers and that they were dependent on good earth and weather for their livelihood. He'd probably never completely get it out of his head no matter how much the situation had changed.

"If the place really is that unnatural, though, perhaps it would be safer to leave?"

"It seems safe enough, in spite or or maybe because of the unnaturalness," Atlan pointed out. "And I hope that whoever caused this will be able to help me find a way back home."

"It does seem peaceful," Jan agreed. "But I never encountered anything unnatural that was safe."

Though, if he was completely honest the only unnatural things he had encountered were other immortals and changing the weather or influencing people's minds weren't abilities he'd ever seen any hint of in either them or himself.

Atlan gave a nonchalant shrug. "Usually there's something that makes things unnatural wherever you can find unnaturalness," he pointed out. "Knowing where it comes from and how to counter it if need be makes it one hell of a lot more safe."

"Sounds reasonable," Jan allowed. "But I'm not exactly in top fighting condition." He held up his right hand to show Atlan his missing thumb.

Atlan raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't hinder you too much in unarmed combat. I imagine some weapons would be easier to handle if you switched hands, though."

"If the other guy is unarmed, too," Jan said. "And I'd count unnatural powers weapons, I guess. As for switching hands, I've never been any good with my left. I could try, I suppose, but it'd take me a long time to get just barely passable results. Nothing to equal ... anyone healthy and skilled with his weapon of choice."

"You'd have an advantage because the other guy wouldn't be used to fighting someone who's left-handed either," Atlan pointed out. "Most people don't bother to train that way these days." Or had for a long time, so it seemed safe enough to say.

"And I feel reasonably confident that I can best most people with close-range weapons unarmed."

"Lucky for you, but there's little hope for me at it." Besides his most dangerous enemies were old enough to have been trained for it. "I'd rather stay safe."

"Maybe you could learn a few moves," Atlan suggested, not quite sure why he did it. He did not usually teach Dagor moves to rendom barbarians, nor offer it.

You're going soft, that voice in his brain accused him.

He choose to ignore the unbidden comment.

"I'm learning to shoot," Jan admitted. "But I'm not sure I'm ready to face supernatural enemies, yet."

"What about hand-to-hand?" Atlan asked. "It's well enough to shoot at someone at a distance, but once they get close...?"

"I prefer not to let them that close in the first place," Jan said glancing down at his right hand again. That last opponent had definitely gotten much too close.

Atlan followed his eyes. "Someone got too close?" he asked, indicating the man's lack of a thumb.

"Sort of," Jan tried to shrug it off. "I made a stupid mistake." By not getting out of that one's way as fast as he could. He'd been lucky not to lose more than his thumb.

"Ah yes," Atlan said "Stupid mistakes can be really annoying and painful. I once nearly lost a hand from that, when I was younger."

Fartuloon had been appropriately angry at him, too.

"I guess it could have been the whole hand in my case as well," Jan admitted regarding the stump with a feeling of relief for the first time. "And I got away without any further injuries." Such as a cut off head for example.

"I hear they have pretty decent artificial hands these days," Atlan said lightly, though he inwardly shuddered at the thought of the clumsy things these barbarians used to replace lost limbs.

"They've made a lot of progress," Jan agreed. "But they'd never serve to properly handle a sword ... or gun with. As it is, at least I can still manage the gun."

"You like swordplay?" Atlan asked. "Or are you like the little Egyptian? He seems to like swordplay, too."

A note of sarcasm crept into his voice at the last sentence.

"Little Egyptian?" Jan asked. Another hotel guest that he hadn't met, yet? "It used to be a hobby," he explained. "I only switched to shooting when I lost my thumb and couldn't hold a sword properl anymore."

Atlan held up one hand. "About this tall, nose like ine, black hair cut short these days, goes by Methos, used to be one of my slaves when I was practically ruling Egypt?"

The latter may have been an exaggeration, but it made no difference here for all intents and purposes.

Jan looked Mr. von Arkon up and down.

"How did you manage to blend in there?"

"Practice," Atlan said. "Just act as if you belong and no one will question you. You, on the other hand..."

He looked Jan over critically and seemed torn between shaking his head and smiling at him.

"You, on the other hand, look like you're all too aware you don't belong. Your posture, your manner of looking at people, everything. They know you're a stranger here because you as good as tell them."

Jan looked down at himself, but couldn't see anything wrong. Of course, there was no was he could see his mannr of looking ...

"But this isn't Ancient Egypt," he pointed out. "They're used to foreigners here now."