He Walked Around the Horses
by H. Beam Piper
  

Paratime series #1

Astounding Science Fiction
April 1948

collected in —
Paratime
The Complete Paratime
Crossroads of Destiny
The H. Beam Piper Megapack

"He Walked Around the Horses" opens H. Beam Piper's excellent Paratime series, and should be read first.

The Paratime series is a thoughtfully-developed alternate-worlds universe, in which there are effectively an infinite number of time-lines running side by side, branching and re-branching as key events happen one way — and another way, and another.

"He Walked Around the Horses" is a short story set in 1809, based on the actual disappearance of English diplomat Benjamin Bathurst in Perleburg, Prussia, during the era of the Napoleonic Wars; apparently he walked around the horses of his chaise in the courtyard of a roadside inn and never was seen again. Somehow he disappeared, or was displaced.

Piper develops and details the event in letters and official documents, and unlike most documentary tales, he breathes such life into this official paperwork as to make it all feel contemporary, well-characterized, clear, and vivid. "He Walked Around the Horses" does not mention Paratime explicitly, but the Fortean concept clearly was percolating in Piper's mind. The paratemporal process behind the Bathurst disappearance is discussed in the subsequent main-sequence Paratime stories, one of which specifically mentions Bathurst's odd situation.

This is a perfect short classic.

© 2024 Robert Wilfred Franson

The history of Perleberg ("pearl" + "mountain" / "hill") goes back many centuries in the German lands, passing through the eras of the Hanseatic League and the Thirty Years' War as well as the Napoleonic Wars in which Piper's story is set.

Of minor interest is that Piper employs the spelling Perleburg ("pearl" + "castle") throughout the original printing in Astounding, April 1948; and this has been used thereafter. Of course, Piper simply might have misremembered the spelling. Considering the context, though, we must presume that the Perleburg version is accurate in that zone of Paratime temporal lines defining the general background of "He Walked Around the Horses", among them the specific timeline into which Benjamin Bathurst mysteriously intruded.