The Shield of Time (34 page)

“Would I ever, sir!” Tears stood forth in the brown young eyes. Mikelian wrung his hand, leaped aboard a hopper, waved, and vanished.

Denison selected one for himself from among those that waited in the whitely lit garage. “God be with you, Agent,” said the attendant. He was a twenty-first-century Iraqi. The Patrol tried to match somatotypes to eras, and race changes far more slowly than language or faith.

“Thank you, Hassan. Likewise.”

Having mounted, for a moment Denison sat half adream. He’d arrive in a cavern little different from this, register, obtain garments and money and passport and whatever else he needed, then walk from the office building that fronted for the Patrol yonder, forth onto the Boulevard Voltaire, Saturday morning, the tenth of May, most beautiful of all Parisian months…. Traffic would be frantic, but in 1980 the city hadn’t yet suffered its full monstrous overgrowth…. The hotel where Cynthia was to make a reservation and meet him stood on the Left Bank, a charming, slightly dilapidated anachronism where croissants for breakfast were fresh-baked on the premises and the staff liked guests who were lovers….

He set for his destination and touched the main switch.

Daylight flooded him.

Daylight?

Shock froze his hands on the control bars. As if by a lightning flash at night, he saw a narrow street, high-peaked walls, a crowd that howled and recoiled in pandemonium from him, the women all wore dark ankle-length gowns and kept their heads covered, the men had some color to long coats and baggy pants, the air was full of smoke and barnyard smells—As instantaneously he knew that no vault existed and his machine, built not to arrive within solid matter, had brought him to the surface of some place that was not his Paris—

Get out of here!

Untrained for combat missions, he reacted half a second too slowly. A man in blue leaped, tackled him around the waist, dragged him from the saddle. Denison had barely time and drilled-in reflex to hit the emergency go-button. A vehicle must never, under no circumstances whatsoever, fall into outsider possession. His disappeared. He and his assailant tumbled to the pavement.

“God damn it, stop that!” Denison did know martial arts, they were part of his Patrol education. The blue-clad man got fingers on his throat. Denison struck the edge of his palm into the neck, under the angle of the jaw. His attacker gasped and sagged, a dead weight upon him. Denison could breathe anew. The rags of darkness cleared from his eyes. He scrambled free and onto his feet.

Again too late. The civilians stumbled over each other to get clear—through the general yelling he made out
“sorcier!”
and
“juif vengeur!”
—but another man in blue rode a well-trained horse through the midst of them. Denison saw boots, short cape, flat helmet, yes, some kind of trooper or policeman. Mostly he saw a sidearm drawn and pointed at him. He saw, in the clean-shaven face behind, the fear that can kill.

He raised his hands.

The trooper put whistle to mouth and shrilled thrice. Thereafter he shouted for order and silence. Denison followed his words with difficulty and gaps. They weren’t any French he knew, different accent and a lot of what seemed to be English, though this wasn’t
franglais
either, he thought dazedly: “Calm! Control yourselves! I have him arrested…. The saints…. Almighty God…. His Majesty—”

I’m trapped,
hammered in Denison.
Worse than I was in Persia. That was at least rightful history. This
—

Surprisingly fast, the near panic died down. People stood where they were and stared. They crossed themselves repeatedly and muttered prayers. The man whom Denison had hit groaned back into consciousness. More mounties showed up. Two bore some kind of carbines, though no firearm was familiar to the prisoner. They surrounded him.
“Declarezz vos nomm,”
barked one with a silver eagle on his breast.
“Quhat e vo? Faite quick!”

Sickness closed Denison’s gullet.
I
am lost, Cynthia is, the world is.
He could only mumble. A trooper unhooked a billy from his belt and stuck him with cruel
precision across the spine. He reeled. The officer reached a decision and barked an order.

Turned stiffly silent, they marched him off. It was a walk of about a mile. Shambling at first, he regained a blurred alertness on the way and began to look around him. Hemmed in by the riders, he couldn’t get more than glimpses, but they told him something. The streets he went on were constricted and twisting, though smoothly enough paved. No buildings stood higher than six or seven stories and most seemed centuries old, many of them half-timbered and with leaded windowpanes. Pedestrians were numerous, brisk, men often animated as he remembered from his France but women subdued, decorous. Children were few; were they generally in school? Once away from the scene of action, the party drew little more than glances, now and then a sign of the cross; were captives an everyday sight? Horses pulled wagons and an occasional ornate carriage, leaving their droppings behind them. When he reached the bank of the Seine, he saw barges tugged by twenty-oared rowboats.

From there, too, he spied Notre Dame. But it wasn’t the cathedral he remembered. It seemed to cover nearly half the island, a mountain of soot-gray stone soaring up and up and up, tier upon tier, tower above tower, like a Christian ziggurat, till the topmost spires raked heaven a thousand feet aloft. What ambition had replaced the lovely Gothic with this?

He forgot it when the squad brought him to another building, massive and fortress-like above the river. A life-size crucifix was carved over the main door. Within were gloom, chill, more guards, and men in hooded black robes, bearing rosaries and pectoral crosses, whom he took for monks or lay clergy of some kind. His awareness continued vague, as stunned and heartsick as he felt. Not until he was alone in a cell did he come fully conscious.

The room was tiny, dark, its concrete walls bedewed. Light straggled in from the corridor, through the locked
and iron-barred door. The furniture was a pallet, with a thin blanket, on the floor, and a chamber pot that he found, dimly surprised, was rubber. Well, he could have used a hard one for a weapon. A cross was chiseled into the ceiling.

Christ, I’m thirsty. Can’t I even have a cup of water?
He clutched the bars, strained against them, called his hoarse appeal. For answer, somebody gibed from another cell somewhere down the passage. “Stop hoping, will ye? Leave me be!” English, by God, though strangely accented. When Denison replied in that language, he got an inarticulate snarl.

He slumped down on the mattress. What he’d just heard boded ill. Well, he did have time to think, try to prepare himself for interrogation. He’d better start. The decision strengthened him. Presently he was upright again, pacing.

Perhaps two hours had passed when a turnkey opened the door to admit a pair of guards, hands on pistol butts, and a cleric. The blackrobe was an old man, wrinkled, blinking, but sharp.
“Loquerisne latine?”
he demanded.

Do I speak Latin?
Denison realized.
Sure, that’d still be a universal second language in this world. How I wish I did. Never thought I’d need it, in my line of work, and nothing is left from high school but “amo, amas, amat.”
The image of little old Miss Walsh rose before him. “I told you so,” she said. He choked back a hysterical laugh and shook his head. “
Non, monsieur, je le regrette,”
he attempted in French.

“Ah, vo parlezz alorss fransay?”

Denison formed his words slowly, with care: “I seem to speak another French than yours, reverend father. I come from far away.” He must repeat himself twice, trying what synonyms occurred to him, before he got his meaning across.

Withered lips quirked humorlessly. “That is clear, if you do not so much as recognize a friar. Know, I am Brother Matiou of the Dominican order and the Holy Inquisition.”

When Denison had understood, fear grabbed his guts. He kept it leashed and slogged ahead. “There has been an unfortunate accident. I assure you, I am on a mission peaceful although of the utmost importance. I arrived untimely and in the wrong place. It is understandable if this aroused fears and caused precautions to be taken. But if you will bring me to your highest authority”—king, Pope, what the hell?—“I will explain the situation to him.”

Again unraveling was necessary before Matiou snapped, “You will explain here and now. Think not that demonic art can avail you in Christ’s own stronghold. Declare your name!”

The Patrolman got the drift. “Keith Denison, your Rev—uh, Brother.” Why not? What did it matter? What did anything matter anymore?

Matiou was also catching on, quickly interpreting otherwise unintelligible bits from context. “Ah, of England?” He used that word, not
“Angleterre,”
and went on: “We can fetch one who speaks the patois, if that will make you answer more readily.”

“No, my home is—Brother, I cannot give the secrets I bear to anyone less than the supremacy.”

Matiou glared. “You will speak to me, and speak truth. Must we put you to the full question? Then, believe me, when you go to the stake you will bless him who lights the fire.”

He needed three attempts before he conveyed his threat.
The full question? I suppose less extreme torture is routine. This is only a preliminary quiz.
Fear keened in Denison’s brain. He was faintly astonished at his firmness: “With respect, Brother, my duty, sworn before God, forbids me to reveal certain things to anyone but the sovereign. It would be catastrophic, did the knowledge become public. Think of small children given fire to play with.” He cast a significant look at the guards. The effect was spoiled by the need to repeat.

Response was clear: “The Inquisition knows well how to keep silent.”

“I do not doubt that. But neither do I doubt that the master will be most displeased should word intended for him alone be uttered elsewhere.”

Matiou scowled. Denison saw hesitation underneath and pressed his advantage. They were catching on to each other’s French rather fast. Part of the trick was to talk somewhat like an American who had read but never heard the language.

Confronted with something unprecedented like this, the monk wouldn’t be human if he didn’t welcome an excuse to pass the buck. After all, Denison argued, the sovereign could always remand him for interrogation.

“What do you mean by the sovereign?” Matiou asked. “The Holy Father? Then why did you not come to Rome?”

“Well, the king—”

“The
king?”

Denison realized he’d made a mistake. Apparently the monarch, if they had one, was not on top. He hastened on: “The king, I was about to say, would be the natural person to see in certain countries.”

“Yes, among the Russian barbarians. Or in those lands of black Mahound where they acknowledge no caliph.” Matiou’s gnarled forefingers stabbed. “Where were you truly bound, Keith Denison?”

“To Paris, in France. This is Paris, isn’t it? Please let me finish. I seek the highest ecclesiastical authority in … these domains. Was I wrong? Is he not in the city?”

“The archcardinal?” Matiou breathed, while the expression on the guards shifted from nervous to awed.

Denison nodded vigorously. “Of course, the archcardinal.” What kind of rank was that?

Matiou looked away. Beads on his rosary clicked between his fingers. After a while that became very long to the listener, he clipped: “We shall see. Conduct yourself carefully. You will remain under observation.” His robe swirled as he swung about and departed.

Denison sank onto his pallet, wrung out.
Well,
he thought faintly,
I’
ve won a little time before they take me
to the rack and thumbscrews, or whatever worse they’ve invented since the Middle Ages. Unless I’ve somehow landed
—
No, can’t be.

When a jailer with an armed escort brought him bread, water, and greasy stew, he inquired about the date. “St. Anton’s, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and eighty” drove the last nail into the coffin for him.

From despair he drew at length a bleak determination. Something might turn up yet, rescue or—No, to think of oblivion was not only useless, it could paralyze him. Better to keep going, always ready to jump at whatever piece of luck chanced by.

Shivering through the night on his inadequate bed, he tried to lay plans. They were inevitably tentative. What he must do was get the protection of the big boss, the dictator, the—whatever an archcardinal was. That meant convincing the man he was not dangerous but, instead, potentially valuable, or at any rate interesting. He could not reveal himself as a time traveler. The Patrol inhibition would freeze his larynx. Anyway, quite probably no one in this world could comprehend the truth. However, he could scarcely deny having appeared out of thin air, though he might claim that witnesses were confused about details. Things Matiou had let fall suggested a belief in magic, even among educated people. But he should proceed most cautiously if he tried an explanation along those lines. They had enough technology here to produce efficient-looking small arms, and doubtless artillery. The rubber pot indicated contact with the New World on a regular basis, which implied a sufficient knowledge of astronomy for navigation if nothing else—
Would you believe a visitor from Mars?

Denison coughed a chuckle. Nevertheless, that kind of story looked less unpromising than others. He must feel his way forward. “First let me humbly inquire what the savants among your Sanctity’s (?) flock assume to be the case. My nation has perhaps made discoveries they have not.” Awkward communication, frequent pauses to figure
out what a sentence had meant, would be immensely helpful, giving him opportunities to think and to retrieve any
faux pas
….

He fell into uneasy, dream-ridden sleep.

In the morning, a while after he’d received a bowl of gruel, guards accompanied by a priest took him away. What he glimpsed in an adjacent cell chilled his sweat. He was merely brought to a tiled room where a tub of hot water steamed, and told to bathe himself well. Afterward he was issued a dark set of present-day male clothes, his wrists were manacled, and he was led into an office where Brother Matiou sat behind a desk beneath a crucifix.