The Shield of Time (43 page)

No wonder X left a warning. Maybe heesh was telling every Patrolman, “Sheer off. Forget me. Save yourself.”

Tamberly pressed her lips together.
I
repeat, we’ll see about that.

As if the sun had suddenly risen:
Yes! We’ll see.

The sun did rise, standing at noon one year earlier. Gardeners were at work around the message, raking, pruning, sweeping.

Ten years earlier, brightly clad men and darkly clad women promenaded among beds in a simple geometrical array.

Tamberly flung a laugh at the wind. “Okay, we’ve got you bracketed.”

The skipping, blink-blink-blink, sun and rain, actions and configurations of people, dizzied her. She ought to go slower. No, she was too wired. Of course, she needn’t check every month of every year. The emblem. The not-emblem. The emblem again. Okay, they tore out the old stuff in March 1984 and the new was doing well in June—

Toward the end, she proceeded day by day, and knew it would have to become hour by hour, at last minute by minute. Fatigue weighted bones and made eyeballs smolder. She withdrew, found a meadow on a forested Dordogne hillside where nobody else was near, ate and drank of her supplies, soaked up sunshine, finally slept.

Return to the job. She had grown quite steady, coolly watchful.

25 March 1984, 1337 hours. Gray weather, low clouds, wind noisy across fields and in trees not yet leafed, slight spatters of rain. (Had the weather been the same this day in the destroyed world? Probably not. There, humans had cut down the vast American forests, plowed the plains, filled skies and rivers with chemicals. They also invented liberty, eradicated smallpox, sent spacecraft aloft.) Two men paced over the stripped and trenched garden. One was in a gold-and-scarlet robe, with something halfway between a crown and a miter on his head. The other, at his side, wore the coat and baggy pants Tamberly had seen elsewhere. He was the taller, lean and gray-haired. Behind them stepped six of the liveried soldiers, rifles at port.

For minutes Tamberly watched, till the knowledge
crystallized in her:
Yes, they’re discussing the exact plan of the new arrangement.

Here goes. For broke.

She’d met danger before, sometimes purposely. Now was the same. Everything slowed down, the world became a dancing mosaic of details but she plucked forth those she needed, fear scuttled out of her way, she aimed herself and shot.

Cycle and rider appeared six feet before the pair. “Time Patrol!” Tamberly yelled, perhaps needlessly. “To me, quick!” She worked the stun pistol. The robed man crumpled. That gave her a clear field for the soldiers.

The lean man Stood stupefied. “Hurry!” she cried. He lurched forward. A guard brought rifle down, aimed, fired. The
crack
went flat through the wind. The lean man staggered.

Tamberly left her vehicle. He fell into her arms. She dragged him back. A buzz passed her head. She lowered him across the front saddle, vaulted into the buddy seat, leaned over his body to the controls.
Now we skite after help.
A third bullet spanged and whined off the metal.

Everard left his hopper in the garage and started for his room. Some who had been at Rignano were appearing too. Most had gone elsewhere, housing being limited at any single post. All would stand by till success had been confirmed. Those who were staying at the Pleistocene lodge made for the common room, exuberant and loud, to celebrate. Everard wasn’t in that mood. He wanted merely a long hot shower, a long stiff drink, and sleep. A night’s forgetfulness. Tomorrow and its memories would arrive bloody soon enough.

Shouts and laughter pursued him down the hall. He turned a corner, and there she was.

They both jarred to a halt. “I thought I heard—” she began. She sped toward him. “Manse, oh, Manse!”

The collision nearly bowled him over, in his condition. They caught hold of each other. Mouth sought mouth. It was a while before they came up for air.

“I thought you were gone,” he groaned against her cheek. Her hair smelled like sunshine. “I thought you
must have been trapped in the false world and you’d … go out … the light turned off … when it did.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as unevenly. “I didn’t stop to think you’d worry. Figured, instead, you w-would need time to find out things, get organized, without us underfoot. So I jumped to a m-month after I’d left here. Been waiting two days, so scared about you.”

“Like me about you.” Understanding broke upon him. Still holding her by the waist, he stepped back a pace and looked into the blue eyes. Slowly, he asked, “What do you mean, ‘us’?”

“Why, Keith Denison and me. He’s told me you’re friends. I hauled him clear and brought him—Manse, what’s wrong?”

His hands fell to his sides. “Are you telling me you found yourself in an obviously altered future and
stayed?”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“What they taught you at the Academy.” His voice rose. “Couldn’t you be bothered to remember? What every other agent and civilian traveler who arrived in the changed world had the elementary common sense to do, if conditions didn’t prevent. Hop straight back to the departure point, keep your mouth shut till you could report it to the nearest Patrol brass, and follow whatever orders you were given. You fluffhead,” he raged, “if you’d gotten stuck there, nobody would ever have come after you. That world doesn’t exist any more. You wouldn’t have! I assumed you’d had bad luck, not that you were an idiot.”

Whitening, she clenched her fists. “I m-m-meant to bring you a report. Information. It might have helped you, mightn’t it? And I, I did save Keith. Now you can go to hell.”

The defiance collapsed. She shivered, struggled against tears, and stammered, “No, I’m sorry, I guess it was a, a breach of discipline, but my training and experience
didn’t cover anything like this—” Stiffening: “No. No excuses. Sir, I did wrong.”

His own wrath vanished. “Oh, God, Wanda. You’re in the right. I shouldn’t have barked at you. It’s just I’d taken you for lost and—” He managed a smile. “No officer worth his salt farts around about regs when breaking them’s led to success. You did save my old pal from becoming nothing? I’m going to put a commendation in your file, Specialist Tamberly, and suggest a raise in rank for you.”

“I—I—Let’s do something, Manse, before I bawl. Want to see Keith? He’s in bed. Took a wound, but it’s mending.”

“Suppose I get cleaned up first,” he said, as anxious as she to find firmer ground. “After that, you tell me what happened.”

“And you tell me, okay?” She cocked her head. “You know, we needn’t wait. We can talk while you—Manse, I believe you’re blushing.”

Exhaustion had steamed out of him. Temptation whistled.
No,
he decided.
Better not push my luck. And Keith’d be hurt if I didn’t visit him right away.
“If you want, sure.”

From people on hand, she had gotten an idea of the situation. Reveling under the water, he shouted through its rush and the open bathroom door that Operation Rignano had apparently gone well. “Details later.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she called back. “Boy, have we got gossip to swap.”

“Starting with your escapades, young lady.” While he toweled himself, he listened to her account. His skin prickled at the knowledge of what might easily have resulted.

“Keith was shot before I could snap us out of there,” Tamberly finished. “I went randomly, then set for here and now—two days ago, that is—and jumped again. The medic took charge of him immediately. Slug through the left lung. Patrol surgery and healing techniques are quite something, aren’t they? He’s supposed to stay mostly in
bed for another week, but right away he got ornery. Maybe you’ll calm him down.”

“I’d certainly like to compare notes. You said he was four years in that world?”

“More like nine, originally. He emerged in 1980, I in ‘89. But I pulled him out in ‘84, so the rest of those years never happened to him and he has no recollection of them or anything.”

He donned the fresh clothes he’d taken into the bathroom. “Tsk-tsk. A time alteration. Violating the Prime Directive.”

“Foof! In that universe, who cares?”

“Good question. To be frank, and don’t spread this around, the Patrol does occasionally make, uh, adjustments. Keith and I were involved in one such case. Someday I’ll be free to give you the story.”
The pain in it has left me. She doesn’t leave room for that kind of regret,

Everard emerged to find Tamberly cross-legged in his armchair, a small neat Scotch from his bottle for company. “You didn’t have to spare my modesty,” she remarked.

He grinned. “Impudent wench. Give me a shot of the same, and let’s go say hello to Keith.”

The man lay in his room, propped against the headboard, plucking at the pages of a book. His visage was pale and drawn. It kindled when the pair entered. “Manse!” he exclaimed huskily. “My God, it’s great to see you. I’ve been worried sick.”

“About Cynthia, sure,” Everard said.

“Of course, but also—”

“I know. Felt the same way. Well, we can turn our fears out to pasture. The mission went like a hush puppy down a hound dog.”
Not really. It was misery, danger, the death and maiming of brave men. But in this glow of mine, everything is wonderful.

“I heard a racket, and wondered—Thanks, Manse, thanks.”

Everard and Tamberly took chairs on opposite sides of the bed. “Thank Wanda,” Everard said.

Denison nodded. “Who more? She even lopped five years off my sentence, d’you know? Five years I can very well do without. The four were bad enough.”

“Were you mistreated?”

“Well, not exactly.” Denison described his capture.

“You have a knack for getting caught, don’t you?” Everard teased.

He wished he hadn’t when Denison’s face went bleak and the man whispered, “Yes. Has it been entirely coincidence? I’m no physicist, but I have read and heard something about quantum probability fields, temporal nexuses.”

“Don’t fret over it,” Everard said hastily.
Don’t worry whether chance has made you a gun loaded with trouble, always cocked on a hair trigger. I’m not well up on the theory of that myself.
“You came through both affairs smelling like a rose, which is more than I did. Ask Wanda; she met me before I’d showered. Go on.”

Encouraged, Denison smiled and obeyed. “The arch-cardinal was decent in his fashion, though his position didn’t give him a lot of scope in that regard. Besides being a prince of the Church, he was a top-drawer nobleman of France, which included the British Isles. He had to order both the burning of heretics and the massacre of peasants who got above themselves. Not that he minded, he considered it his duty, but he didn’t enjoy it either, like some characters I met. Anyway. The clerical title was more important than the secular one. Kings were—are—puppets in that Europe, or junior partners at best.

“Albin, the archcardinial, was an intelligent and educated chap. It took me a long while and a lot of sweat to convince him my visitor-from-Mars story
might
be true. He’d ask me the damnedest sharp questions. But, well, I had appeared from nowhere. I told him my chariot flew too fast to see, like a bullet. That was all right, because they didn’t know about sonic booms and stuff. They had
telescopes and understood the planets are separate globes. Geocentric astronomy was still doctrine, though it was permissible to assume a heliocentric universe as a mathematical fiction, to help calculations…. Never mind. Later. There’s so much, so many strangenesses I met, even sequestered as I was.

“You see, not only didn’t Albin trust me, he wanted to squirrel me away from the zealous Inquisition types, who’d have interrogated me till any more torture would be fatal and then burned alive what was left. Albin realized that with patience he could learn a great deal more, and he didn’t share the common terror about sorcery. Yes, he accepted that magic worked, but looked on it as essentially another set of technologies, with its own limitations. So he put me on an estate of his outside Paris. It wasn’t too bad, except for—well, you can guess. I had comfortable quarters, good food, leave to walk around the palace and grounds though always under guard. Yes, and access to his library. He owned a lot of books. Printing had been invented. A monopoly of Church and state, death penalty for unlicensed possession of a press, but books were available to the upper classes. They saved my sanity.

“The archcardinal visited whenever he got a chance. We’d talk the sun down and back up again. He was a fascinating conversationalist. I did my best to keep him interested. Gradually I persuaded him to put a sign outside, in the form of a garden plot. I said an ethereal wind had crashed my chariot and swept it away. However, my friends on Mars would search for me. If one of them happened by, he’d see the symbol and land. Albin meant to bag that fellow and his vehicle. I can’t really blame him. He didn’t intend any harm, if the prisoner cooperated. Martian knowledge or maybe a Martian alliance would mean plenty. Western Europe was in a bad way.”

Denison stopped. His voice had gone raspy. “Don’t overdo,” Everard said. “We can finish tomorrow.”

Denison’s lips bent upward. “Now that’d be cruelty to dumb animals. You’re more curious than the Elephant’s
Child. Wanda too. I wasn’t up to saying much till today. Your news is a tonic, man. If I could just have a glass of water?”

Tamberly went to fetch it. “I gather she read your intention correctly,” Everard said. “Your idea was to declare that a Patrolman was present, but whoever came along should be ultra-cautious, and not take risks on your account.” Denison nodded. “Well, we can both be glad she did, and not only sprang you free, but canceled those extra five years. I daresay they ground you pretty far down, or would have.”

Tamberly brought the water. Denison took it, his hands lingering noticeably over hers. “You’re recovering fast,” she laughed. He chuckled and drank.

“Wanda remarked you told her you studied a lot of history,” Everard said. “Anybody would, I suppose. Especially in hopes of finding where and when it went wrong. Did you?”