The Shield of Time (4 page)

“Right. I’m surprised a, uh, a person of your generation knows the story.”

“I don’t only skindive and backpack for recreation, Mr. Everard.” He heard a tinge of resentment. “I take a book along.”

“Sure. Sorry. Uh—”

“Frankly, I’m a little surprised you’d know.”

Sure,
he thought,
no matter how wild the circumstances, you couldn’t mistake what I am, a plain Mid-westerner who’s never quite gotten the mud off his boots.

Her voice softened. “But of course you live history.” The honey-colored head shook. “I can’t yet get a handle
on it. Time travel. It won’t come real for me, in spite of everything that’s happened. Too fabulous. Am I being slow on the uptake, Mr. Everard?”

“I thought we were using first names.”
The norm of this period in America. Which, damn it, is not so alien to me. I base myself in it. I belong here too. I’m not really old. Born sixty-three years ago. Run up a lot more lifespan than that, traipsing around through time. But biologically I’m in my thirties,
he wanted to tell her and mustn’t.
Antisenescence treatment, preventive medicine future to this century. We Patrol agents have our perks. We need them, to carry us through some of the things we see.
He wrenched his mind into an attempt at lightness. “Actually, Galileo never said what I quoted, under his breath or aloud. It’s a myth.”
The kind of myth humans live by, more than they do by facts.

“Too bad.” She leaned back on the sofa and, in her turn, smiled again. “Manse. Okay, then, those timecycles or hoppers or whatever you call them, they are what they are, and if you tried to explain, scientists today wouldn’t understand.”

“They’ve got a glimmering already. Non-inertial reference frames. Quantum gravity. Energy from the vacuum. Bell’s theorem was lately violated in the laboratory, wasn’t it? Or won’t that happen for another year or two? Stuff about wormholes in the continuum, Kerr metrics, Tipler machines—Not that I understand it myself. Physics was not my best subject at the Patrol Academy, by a long shot. It’ll be many thousands of years from now when the last discoveries are made and the first working space-time vehicle is built.”

She frowned, concentrating. “And … expeditions begin. Scientific, historical, cultural—commercial, I suppose? Even military? I hope not that. But I can see where they’d soon need police, a Time Patrol, to help and advise and rescue and … keep travelers in line, so you don’t get robberies or swindles or”—she grimaced—“taking advantage of people in the past. They’d be help
less against knowledge and apparatus from the future, wouldn’t they?”

“Not always. As you can testify.”

She started, then uttered a shaky laugh. “Hoo boy, can I ever! Are there many guys in history as tough and smart as Luis Castelar?”

“Enough. Our ancestors didn’t know everything we do, but they did know things we don’t, stuff we’ve forgotten or leave moldering in our libraries. And they averaged the same brains.” Everard sat forward in his chair. “Yes, mainly we in the Patrol are cops, doing the work you mentioned, plus conducting research of our own. You see, we can’t protect the pattern of events unless we know it well. That’s our basic job, protection. That’s the reason the Danellians founded our corps.”

She lifted her brows. “Danellians?”

“English version of their name in Temporal. Temporal’s our mutual language, artificial, developed to deal with the twists and turns of time travel. The Danellians—Some of them appeared, will appear, when chronokinesis was newly developed.”

He paused. His words turned low and slow. “That must have been … awesome. I met one once, for a few minutes. Didn’t get over it for weeks. Of course, no doubt they can disguise themselves when they want to, go among us in the form of human beings,
if
they ever want to. I’m not sure they do. They’re what comes after us in evolution, a million or more years uptime. The way we come after apes. At least that’s what most us suppose. Nobody knows for certain.”

Her eyes went large, staring past him. “How much could Australopithecus know for certain about us?” she whispered.

“Yeah.” Everard forced prosiness back into his tone. “They appeared, and commanded the founding of the Patrol. Otherwise the world, theirs and everybody’s, was doomed. It would not simply be wrecked, it would never have existed. On purpose or by accident, time travelers
would change the past so much that everything future-ward of them would be something else; and this would happen again and again till—I don’t know. Till complete chaos, or the extinction of the human race, or something like that brought a halt, and time travel had never occurred in the first place.”

She had gone pale. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

“By ordinary logic, it doesn’t. Think, though. If you go into the past, you’re as free an agent as you ever were. What mystical powers has it got to constrain your actions that the present doesn’t have? None. You, Wanda Tamberly, could kill your father before he married. Not that you’d want to. But suppose, innocently bumbling around in a year when your parents were young, you did something that kept them from ever meeting each other.”

“Would I … stop existing?”

“No. You’d still be there in that year. You’ve mentioned a sister, though.
She
would never be born.”

“Then where would I have come from?” Impishness flickered: “Hardly from under a cabbage leaf!” and died away.

“From nowhere. From nothing. Cause-and-effect doesn’t apply. It’s sort of like quantum mechanics, scaled up from the subatomic to the human level.”

Almost audibly, tension crackled. Everard sought to bleed it off. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Things aren’t that delicately balanced in practice. The continuum is seldom easy to distort. For instance, in the case of you and your parents, your common sense would be a protective factor. Prospective time travelers are pretty carefully screened before they’re allowed to take off unsupervised. And most of what they do makes no long-range difference. Does it matter whether you or I did or did not attend a play at the Globe Theater one of the times when Shakespeare was on stage? Even if, oh, if you did cancel your parents’ marriage and your sister’s life—with all due respect, I don’t think world history would notice. Her husband-who-would-have-been would marry some
body else, and the somebody else would … happen … to be such a person that after a few generations the gene pool would be the same as it would have been anyway. The same famous descendant would be born, several hundred years from now. And so on. Do you follow?”

“You’re throwing me curve balls till it’s my head that’s spinning. But, oh, I did learn a little about relativity. World lines, our tracks through space-time. They’re like a mesh of tough rubber bands, right? Pull on them, and they’ll try to spring back to their proper, uh, configuration.”

He whistled softly. “You do catch on fast.”

She wasn’t relieved in the least. “However, there are events, people, situations where the balance is … unstable. Aren’t there? Like if some well-meaning idiot kept Booth from shooting Lincoln, maybe that’d change everything afterward?”

He nodded.

She sat straight, shivering, and gripped her knees. “Don Luis wanted—he wants to get hold of modern weapons—go back to Perú in the sixteenth century and … take charge of the Conquest, then stamp out the Protestants in Europe and drive the Muslims out of Palestine—”

“You’ve got the idea.”

Everard leaned farther forward and caught her hands in his. She clung. Hers were cold. “Don’t be afraid, Wanda,” he urged. “Yes, it is terrifying. It could turn out that you and I never had this talk today, that we and our whole world never were, not even a dream in somebody’s sleep. It’s harder to imagine and harder to take than the idea of personal annihilation when we die. How well I know. But it isn’t going to be, Wanda. Castelar is a fluke. By a freak of chance, he got hold of a timecycle and learned how to operate it. Well, he’s one man alone, otherwise ignorant; he barely escaped from here last night; the Patrol is on his trail. We’ll nail him, Wanda, and repair any damage he may have done. That’s what
we’re for. Our record is pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. And I do.”

She gulped. “Okay, I believe you, Manse.” He felt warmth begin returning to the fingers between his.

“Good girl. You’re helping us a lot, you know. Your account of your experience was excellent, full of clues to what he’ll try next. I expect to gather more hints as new questions occur to me. Quite likely you’ll have suggestions of your own.”

Further reassurance: “That’s why I’m being this open with you. As I told you earlier, ordinarily it’s forbidden to reveal to outsiders that time travel goes on. More than forbidden; we’re conditioned against it, we’re unable to. But these are rather special circumstances, and I’m what they call an Unattached agent, with authority to waive the rules.”

She withdrew her hands, gently but firmly.
Cool customer,
he thought. I
don’t mean frigid. Independent. Guts, backbone, brains. At twenty-one years of age.
Her look upon him cleared, and the slightly husky voice was again steady, unstrained. “Thanks. Thanks more than I can say. You’re rather special yourself, you know?”

“Naw. I simply happen to be the operative working on this case.” He smiled. “Too bad you didn’t draw a hotshot glamour boy, like maybe from the Planetary Engineers milieu.”

“The what?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “I gather the Patrol recruits in all periods.”

“Well, not exactly. Prior to the scientific revolution around 1600 A.D., persons capable of imagining the idea are few and far between. Castelar’s an extraordinary guy.”

“How did they find you?”

“I answered an ad and took some tests, back in—well, it was a while ago.”
Not to say “1957” flat out. Why not? Because she doesn’t have the whole background. She’d think of me as ancient…. And why should that matter, Everard, you old goat?
“Recruits are found in many different ways.” He stirred. “Look, I realize you have ten
million questions, and I’d like to answer them for you, and maybe later I can. But right now, could we get on with business? I want more details of what happened. Time is short.”

“Really?” she murmured. “I thought you could double back to a split second before or after any moment.”

Shrewd, shrewd,
“Sure we can. But—well, we in the corps have only so much lifespan to give. Sooner or later the Old Man is bound to catch up with each of us. And the Patrol has too much history to guard; we’re badly understaffed. And, okay, I personally have trouble sitting still like this when action is pending. I want to … to work my way to that point on my personal world line where the case is closed and I know we’re safe.”

“I see,” she said quickly. Then: “It doesn’t begin or end with Don Luis, does it?”

“No,” Everard admitted. “He acquired a timecycle because some bandits out of the distant future tried to hijack Atahuallpa’s ransom on a night when he was there. Those bandits are the really dangerous characters. For the present, though, let’s track down our Conquistador.”

Like most well-to-do Hellenistic houses this far east, that of Hipponicus mingled Classical simplicity with Oriental lavishness. In the dining room, gilt molding framed walls on which frescoes depicted fanciful birds, beasts, and plants, gaudily hued. The same flowing lines graced the bronze candelabra whose tapers took over as daylight faded. Incense sweetened the air. Now in summer, a door stood open on the roses and fishpond of the inner court. However, the company reclined in Attic fashion, two on a couch, at a pair of small tables, wearing white tunics with little ornament. They watered their wine and ate food that was good but not elaborate, soup and soft bread followed by a dish of lamb, barley, and vegetables, lightly seasoned. The presence of any meat was somewhat special. Dessert was fresh fruit.

Normally the merchant would have made his first supper at home a family occasion, the only guest his friend Meander. The next evening would have seen a stag party complete with girls engaged to play music, dance, and otherwise entertain. This time circumstances were dif
ferent. He needed an early and accurate briefing on them. The message he sent ahead bade his wife invite certain men at once. Male slaves waited on them.

He counted for enough in city affairs that the two who were able to come on such short notice did. Besides, what he had to tell from the northern frontier might be useful. They lay opposite him and Everard and, after the amenities, got directly to the way things were. It was not pleasant.

“—the latest courier,” growled Creon. “The army should get here day after tomorrow.” He was a burly, scar-faced man, second in command of the garrison left behind when King Euthydemus departed.

Hipponicus blinked. “The whole expeditionary force?”

“Minus the dead,” said Creon grimly.

“But what about the rest of the country?” asked Hipponicus, Shalten. He had hinterland properties. “If most of our men are bottled in this one city, Antiochus’ troops can plunder and burn everywhere else, unhindered.”

“First plunder,
then
burn!”
Everard recalled. The twentieth-century joke, which doubtless had a hoary lineage, was not very funny when the reality drew nigh, but a man was apt to grab at any straw of humor.

“Fear not,” soothed Zoilus. Hipponicus had explained to Everard that this minister of the treasury had connections throughout the realm. Beneath the big nose, gaunt features creased in a pursy little smile. “Our king knows well what he does. With his forces concentrated here, the enemy must stay close by. Else we could send detachments out to take them from behind, piecemeal. Isn’t that right, Creon?”

“Not quite that simple, especially over the long haul.” The officer’s glance at his couchmate added,
You civilians always fancy yourselves strategists, don’t you?
“But, true, Antiochus is playing it cautious. That’s plain to see. After all, our army is still in working order, and he’s far from home.”

Everard, who had kept a respectful silence in the presence of the dignitaries, decided he could venture a query.
“Just what did happen, sir? Can you tell us, from the dispatches you’ve gotten?”