The Shield of Time (6 page)

A dull anger had in fact come upon Everard. “It was no game to me, buster,” he snapped, “and you’re well out of it.”

Irritation flicked back at him: “As you wish. Then kindly leave me to my thoughts. Among them is the reflection that you have not caught the last Exaltationist yet. In a certain sense, you have not caught me.”

Everard bunched his fists. “Huh?”

Varagan regained self-possession, the will to cruelty. “I may as well explain. The interrogation machine will bring it out. Among the remnants of us is Raor. She was not on this expedition, because women are hampered in the Phoenician milieu, but she has taken part in others. My clone mate, Everard. She has her ways of finding out what went wrong here. She will be as vengeful as she always was ambitious. Pleasant dreams.” He smiled and turned his back, again gazing out at sea and sky.

The Patrolman left him but, for a while, sought solitude also. He walked to the other side of the islet, sat down on a rock, brought out pipe and tobacco, got a smoke started.

Staircase wit,
he thought. I
should’ve retorted, “Suppose she succeeds. Suppose she does blot out the future. You’ll be in it, remember? You’ll stop ever having existed.”

Except, of course, in those bits of space-time pastward of that change moment, in which he was engaged on his pranks. He’d’ve pointed that out with some glee, maybe. Or maybe not. In any case, I doubt he fears obliteration. The ultimate nihilist.

To hell with it. Repartee never was my long suit. Let me just go back to Tyre, tie up the loose ends there—

Bronwen. No. I’ve got to make provision for her, but that’s a matter of common decency, nothing more. After that, we’d better both start learning how to stop missing each other. For me the best place will be my familiar old
twentieth-century USA, where I can put my feet up for a while.

He often felt that the privilege of an Unattached agent, essentially to make his or her own assignments, was worth the risks and responsibilities that the status entailed. I
might want to pursue this Exaltationist business further, once I’ve had a good rest. I might.

He shifted about on his rock.
Not too good a rest! Some activity, some fun.

That girl who got caught in the Peruvian events, Wanda
Tamberly
—Across months of his personal lifespan and three millennia of history, memory rose bright.
Why, sure. No problem. She accepted the Patrol’s invitation to join. If I can catch her between that dinner I took her to and the day she leaves for the Academy
—
Cradle robbing? No, damn it. Just to enjoy myself, giving her a cheerful send-off, and then I’ll get on with the raunchy part of my furlough.

At last the teaching of Gautama Buddha would ebb from his native India until there it was all but forgotten. Today it still flourished, and the tide of it flowed strongly outward. Thus far, converts in Bactria were scarce. The topes and stupas whose ruins Everard saw in twentieth-century Afghanistan would not be built for generations. However, Bactra city numbered sufficient believers to maintain a vihara, at which visiting coreligionists usually called and sometimes stayed; and those merchants, caravaneers, guards, mendicants, monks, and other travelers were numerous, hailing from a wide range of territories. Hence it made a superb listening post, a principal reliance of the historical study project.

Everard sought it the morning after his arrival. The sanctuary-cum-hostel was a modest adobe building, a former tenement, in Ion’s Lane off the Street of the Weavers, distinguished from the neighbors crammed wall to wall against it largely by motifs painted on the whitewash, lotus, jewel, flame. When he knocked, a brown man in a yellow robe opened the door and gave benign
greeting. Everard inquired about Chandrakumar of Pa-taliputra. He learned that the esteemed philosopher did indeed live here, but was off on his accustomed Socratic argufying, unless he had settled down someplace to meditate. He should return by evening.

“Thank you,” said Everard aloud, and
Damn!
to himself. Not that the news ought to surprise him. He’d had no way to make an advance appointment. Chandra-kumar’s job was to learn what the meager chronicles that survived had omitted, not only details of politics but economics, social structure, cultural activity, multifarious and ever-mutable everyday life. You did that largely by mingling.

Everard wandered away. Maybe he’d come upon his man. Or he might find some clues on his own. Partly he wished he weren’t so conspicuous, towering above the average of this time and place, with features more suggestive of a barbarian Gaul than of a Greek or even an Illyrian. (A German would have been closer still, but nobody in Asia had ever heard of Angles, Saxons, or any of that lot.) A detective did best when he could fade into his background. On the other hand, curiosity about him should make it easy to strike up conversations; and the Exaltationists should have no reason to suspect the Patrol was on their trail.

If the Exaltationists were here. Quite possibly they had never winded the bait set out for them, or had been too wary to go after it.

Anyway, as for his appearance, no one else with equivalent ability and experience had been available for the groundside part of the operation. The joke was well-worn among English-speaking members of the Patrol, that their corps was chronically overextended. You used whomever and whatever came to hand.

The streets seethed. Beneath its permanent reeks, the air stank of anxiety-sweat. Criers were going about, announcing the imminent return of glorious King Euthydemus and his army. They did not say it was in defeat, but the populace already had a good idea.

Nobody panicked. Men and women continued their ordinary work or their emergency preparations. They spoke little or not at all about the thoughts that crawled in them, siege, hunger, epidemic, sack. That would have been like clawing at one’s flesh. Besides, most people in the ancient world were more or less fatalistic. Events to come might work out for the better instead of the worst. Undoubtedly many a mind was occupied with schemes to make an extra profit from the situation.

Still, talk was apt to be loud, gestures jerky, laughter shrill. Foodstuffs disappeared from the bazaars as hoarders grabbed what had not gone into the royal storehouses. Fortune-tellers, charm vendors, and shrines did land-office business. Everard had no difficulty making acquaintances. On the contrary, he never bought a drink for himself. Men panted for any fresh word from outside.

In streets, marketplace arcades, wineshops, foodshops, a public bath where he took refuge for a while, he fielded questions as noncommittally and kindly as he was able. What he got in exchange was scant. Nobody knew anything about “Areconians.” That was to be expected; but only three or four said they had seen a person of such appearance, and they were vague about it. Maybe someone was correct, but it had been an individual belonging in this milieu, a stray tribesman from afar who happened to fit an imperfectly understood description. Maybe memory was at fault. Maybe the respondent simply told Meander what he supposed Meander wanted to hear; that was an immemorial Oriental custom.

So much for the dash and derring-do of the Time Patrol,
Everard said dryly to his recollection of Wanda.
Ninety-nine percent of our efforts are slogwork, same as for any other police force.

He did finally luck out, to the extent of gaining information marginally more definite. In the bath he met one Timotheus, a dealer in slaves, plump, hairy, quick to set his worries aside and discuss lechery when Meander offered that gambit. Theonis’ name entered readily. “I’ve heard tell about her. I’m not sure what to believe.”

“So am I. So are most of us. Seems too good to be true, what gossip says.” Timotheus wiped his brow and stared before him into the gloom, as if to conjure her from the steam-clouds. “An avatar of Anaitis.” Hastily, he sketched a symbol with his forefinger. “No disrespect to the goddess. What I know is only what filters forth to the world, by way of friends and servants and such. Her lovers are few, and higher-ups, every one of them. They don’t say much about her. I guess she doesn’t want them to. Else she’d be as widely spoke of as Phryne or Aspasia or Lais. But her men do let words slip now and then, and those words pass on. Maybe growing in the telling. I don’t know.”

“Face and form like Aphrodite’s, voice like song, skin like snow, gait like a panther’s. Midnight hair. Eyes the green of a fire where copper is about to melt. That’s what they say.”

“I’ve never seen her. Few have. She seldom leaves her house, and then it’s in a curtained litter. But, yes, so the song goes. A tavern song. Unfortunately, we can’t do more than sing about her, we commoners. And it could well be exaggerated.” Timotheus sniggered. “Maybe the bard was just wet-dreaming in public.”

If
she is Raor, it is not exaggerated.
For Everard, the room suddenly lost its heat. He forced his tone to stay casual. “Where’s she from? Any kin here with her?”

Timotheus turned his face to the big man. “Why so inquisitive? She’s not for you, my friend, no, not if you offered a thousand staters. For one thing, the patrons she’s got would be jealous. That could get unhealthy.”

Everard shrugged. “I’m only curious. Somebody out of nowhere, almost overnight fascinating ministers of the king—”

Timotheus looked uneasy. “They do whisper she’s a sorceress.” Fast: “I’m not backbiting her, mind you. Listen, she’s endowed a small temple of Poseidon outside town. A pious work.” He couldn’t resist cynicism. “It gives employment to her kinsman Nicomachus, its priest. But then, he was here before her, I don’t know what he
was doing, and maybe he prepared her way.” Quickly again: “No disrespect. For all I know, she is a goddess among us. Let’s change the subject.”

Poseidon?
wondered Everard.
This far inland?
…
Oh, yes. As well as the sea, he’s god of horses and earthquakes, and this is a country of both.

Toward evening, he figured Chandrakumar would be back. First he stilled hunger at a vendor’s brazier, with lentils and onions dished into a folded chapatti. Tomatoes, green pepper, and a roast ear of corn on the side were for the future. He would have liked coffee, too, but must settle for diluted sour wine. Another need he took care of in an alley that happened to be unoccupied. That amenity of civilization, the French pissoir, stood equally far uptime, and all too briefly.

The sun was under the ramparts and streets were cooling off in shadow when he reached the vihara. This time the monk led him to a room inside. Rather, it was a cell, tiny, windowless, a thin curtain across the doorway for privacy. A clay lamp on a shelf gave barely enough flickery, odorous light for Everard to pick his way over a floor whose sole furniture was a straw tick and a bit of rug on which a man sat cross-legged.

Eyeballs gleamed through murk as Chandrakumar looked up. He was small, thin, chocolate-skinned, with the delicate features and full lips of a Hindu—born in the late nineteenth century, Everard knew, a university graduate whose thesis on Indo-Bactrian society had led to the Patrol seeking him out with an offer to conduct his further studies in person. Here his garb was a white dhoti, his hair hung long, and he was holding near his mouth an object that Everard deduced was not really an amulet.

“Rejoice,” he said uncertainly.

Everard returned the greeting in the same Greek. “Rejoice.” The monk’s footfalls dwindled away. Everard spoke softly, in Temporal: “Can we talk without anybody trying to listen?”

“You are an agent?” The question trembled. Chandra
kumar made to rise. Everard waved him back and lowered his own bulk to the clay.

“Correct,” he said. “Things are getting urgent.”

“I should hope so.” Chandrakumar had recovered equilibrium. Though he was a researcher, not a constable, field specialists too must needs be tough and quick-witted. His voice held an edge. “I have spent this past year wondering when somebody would arrive. We are now at the very crisis point.” Pause. “Are we not?” A spectacular episode in history was not necessarily one on which the whole future hinged.

Everard gestured at the disc on its chain. “Best turn that off. We don’t want to risk our conversation falling into the wrong hands.” It doubtless contained a molecular-level recorder, into which Chandrakumar had been whispering notes on this day’s observations. His communicator and other, similarly disguised equipment were stowed somewhere else.

When the medallion dangled loose, Everard proceeded: “I’m passing for Meander, an Illyrian soldier of fortune. What I am is Specialist Jack Holbrook, born 1975, Toronto.” On a mission as damnable as his, you didn’t tell even an ally more than he had to know. Everard shook hands, the polite thing for men of their natal backgrounds to do. “And you are … Benegal Dass?”

“At home. Chandrakumar is the name I currently use here. You caused me a bit of trouble about that, you know. Before, I was ‘Rajneesh.’ Wasn’t reasonable he should pop up so soon after he left for home, so I had to concoct a jolly good kinship story to explain why I look just like him.”

They had slipped into English, almost unconsciously, a breath of the commonplace in this darkness. Perhaps for the same reason, they did not go immediately to the point.

“I was surprised to learn you hadn’t meant to be present,” Everard said. “Famous siege. You could fill in all the lacunae and correct the errors in Polybius, and whatever other fragments of chronicle will survive.”

Chandrakumar spread his palms. “Given my limited resources and finite lifespan, I did not care to squander any of it on a war. Bloodshed, waste, misery, and after two years, what result? Antiochus can’t take the city and doesn’t wish or dare to stay bogged down before it any longer. He makes a peace that is sealed by betrothing a daughter of his to Prince Demetrius, and proceeds on south to India. The evolution of a society is what matters. Wars are nothing but its pathologies.”

Everard refrained from expressing disagreement. Not that he liked wars; he had seen too many. By the same token, though, they must be as much a norm of history as blizzards were of Arctic weather; and all too often, their outcomes did make a difference.