Time Patrol (80 page)

I take a gently molten swallow from my glass. "What will—what became of Luis?"

He looks at me closely. "You do care about him, don't you?"

Heat in my cheeks. "Not in any, you know, romantic way. I wouldn't have him off the Christmas tree. But he's a person I've
known.
"

He smiles afresh. "I see. Well, that's another thing I've been looking into this day. We keep tabs on Don Luis Castelar for the remainder of his life, just in case.

"He adapts fast. Continues as an officer of Pizarro's, distinguishes himself at Cuzco and in the fight against Almagro." With what inward-bitten grimness. "Finally, when the country is divvied up among the conquerors, he becomes a large landowner. By the way, he's one of those few Spaniards who tried to get a reasonably square deal for the Indians. Later, when his wife has died, he takes holy orders and ends as a monk. He's had children by her, whose descendants flourish. Among them is a woman who marries a sea captain from North America. Yes, Wanda, the man you had that runaround with is your ancestor."

Whew!

Recover after a minute. "Time travel indeed." All the ages open to wandering.

We ought to study our menus. But.

Be still, my heart, or whatever that foolish phrase is. I lean forward. Somehow I'm not afraid, not when he's looking at me like that. Only, my words stumble, while little cold lightnings run along my backbone. "Wh-wh-what about me, Manse? I know the secret too."

"Ah, yes," he says. How gently. "Typical of you, I think, that first you asked about the others. Well, you have your role to play out. We'll return you to your Galapagos island, dressed in the same clothes as then, a few minutes afterward. You'll rejoin your friends, finish your jaunt, fly from Baltra to that madhouse known as Guayaquil International Airport, and so home to California."

And then? Then?

"What happens next is for you to decide," he goes on. "You can take the conditioning. Not that we don't trust you, but the rule is firm. I repeat, it's painless and does no harm, and since I'm positive you'd never willingly betray us, it should make no noticeable difference. You can proceed with your twentieth-century life. Whenever you and your Uncle Steve get together privately, you'll be able to talk freely with him."

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. "Have I got any other choice?"

"Sure. You can become a time traveler yourself. You'd be a valuable recruit."

Unbelievable. Me? And yet I expected this. And yet. "I, I, I wonder how good a policewoman I'd make."

"Probably not very," I hear across the radiance. "You're too independent. But the Patrol's responsible for prehistoric as well as historic eras. That requires a knowledge of the environment, which requires field scientists. How'd you like to do your paleontology with living animals?"

Okay, okay, I disgrace myself. I jump to my feet and violate the peace of Ernie's with a war-whoop. Manse laughs.

Mammoths and cave bears and dodos, oh, my!

DEATH AND THE KNIGHT

Introduction

In 1952 I attended the world science fiction convention in Chicago and there encountered a young lady named Karen Kruse. We quickly became inseparable, right through the last party in the hotel penthouse, where Stuart Byrne sang Gilbert and Sullivan till, side by side with Anthony Boucher, we saw daybreak over Lake Michigan. Afterward we kept in touch—only by mail, she being a Kentucky girl now living in the Washington, D.C. area, but the letters grew more and more frequent. Committed to go back to Europe next summer, on the way I visited her for some days, and we realized we were in love. We both wanted a change of scene and decided to try the San Francisco Bay area. I'd already seen it and liked it. Besides, through science fiction we'd become friends with a number of people there. She moved out to Berkeley and got a job. After I returned in the fall I joined her. She soon lost the job, but that was a liberation. We were married late that year. Our daughter Astrid was born in 1954. In 1960 we bought a house in suburban Orinda where, except for travels, we've lived ever since.

Anthony Boucher, co-founder and at the time co-editor of
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
(later sole editor until he resigned), become one of the dearest of those friends. He was also a mystery writer, a book reviewer, an expert on Sherlock Holmes, a linguist, an opera buff with a radio program on which he played items from his large collection of rare recordings, a gourmet who could cook to meet his own standards, a limerickologist, a fluent and witty public speaker, a tolerant but devout Roman Catholic who knew more about his faith than most priests do, a fiendish poker player, and an all-around delightful human being. So was his wife in her quieter way.

He never let friendship affect his editorial or critical judgment, but he did buy quite a lot from me. This was where the Time Patrol stories got started and most of them appeared. They have been collected in two volumes,
The Time Patrol
and
The Shield of Time.
Then, just a few years ago, Katherine Kurtz invited me to contribute to a book she was getting together,
Tales of the Knights Templar,
and it seemed a good place for another. Since that paperback is probably less readily available by now, I'm letting this item represent the series; but I hope Tony would have liked it.

Ms. Kurtz moved its exposition of the background assumption from the body of it to the front. She was right, and I'll put those few words here.

"'What is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." What is real, what is might-be or might-have-been? The quantum universe
flickers to and fro on the edge of the knowable. There is no way to foretell the destiny of a single particle; and in a chaotic world, larger destinies may turn on it. St. Thomas Aquinas declared that God Himself cannot change the past, because to hold otherwise would be a contradiction in terms; but St. Thomas was limited to the logic of Aristotle. Go into that past, and you are as free as ever you have been in your own day, free to create or destroy, guide or misguide, stride or stumble. If thereby you change the course of events that was in the history you learned, you will abide untouched, but the future that brought you into being will have gone, will never have been; it will be a reality different from what you remember. Perhaps the difference will be slight, even insignificant. Perhaps it will be monstrous. Those humans who first mastered the means of traveling through time brought about this danger. Therefore the superhumans who dwell in the ages beyond them returned to their era to ordain and establish the Time Patrol.

PARIS, TUESDAY, 10 OCTOBER 1307

Clouds raced low, the hue of iron, on a wind that boomed through the streets and whined in the galleries overhanging them. Dust whirled aloft. Though the chill lessened stenches—offal, horse droppings, privies, graves, smoke ripped ragged out of flues—the city din seemed louder than erstwhile: footfalls, hoof-beats, wheels creaking, hammers thudding, voices raised in chatter, anger, plea, pitch, song, sometimes prayer. Folk surged on their manifold ways, a housewife bound for market, an artisan bound for a task, a priest bound for a deathbed, a mountebank in his shabby finery, a blind beggar, a merchant escorted by two apprentices, a drunken man-at-arms, a begowned student from the university, a wondering visitor from foreign parts, a carter driving his load through the crowd with whip and oaths, others and others and others in their hundreds. Church bells had lately rung tierce and the work of the day was fully acourse. All made way for Hugue's Marot. That was less because of his height, towering over most men, than his garb. Tunic, hose, and shoes were of good stuff, severe cut, subdued color, and the mantle over them was plain brown; but upon it stood the red cross that signed him a Templar. Likewise did the short black hair and rough beard. Whether or no the rumors were true that the Order was in disfavor with the king, one did not wish to offend such a power. The grimness on his lean features gave urgency to deference. At his heels trotted the boy who had brought his summons to him.

They kept close to the housefronts, avoiding as much as possible the muck in the middle of the street. Presently they came to a building somewhat bigger than its similar and substantial neighbors. Beyond its stableyard, now vacant and with the gate shut, was an oaken door set in half-timbered walls that rose three stories. This had been the home and business place of a well-to-do draper. He fell in debt to the Templars, who seized the property. It was some distance from the Paris Temple, but upon occasion could accommodate a high-born visitor or a confidential meeting.

Hugues stopped at the front door and struck it with his knuckles. A panel slid back from an opening. Someone peered through, then slowly the door swung aside. Two men gave him salutation as befitted his rank. Their faces and stances were taut, and halberds lifted in their fists—not ceremonial, but working weapons. Hugues stared.

"Do you await attack already, brothers, that you go armed indoors?" he asked.

"It is by command of the Knight Companion Fulk," replied the larger. His tone rasped.

Hugues glanced from side to side. As if to forestall any retreat, the second man added, "We are to bring you to him straightway, brother. Pray come." To the messenger: "Back to your quarters, you." The lad sped off.

Flanked by the warrior monks, Hugues entered a vestibule from which a stairway ascended. A door on his right, to the stableyard, was barred. A door on his left stood open on a flagged space filling most of the ground floor. Formerly used for work, sales, and storage, this echoed empty around wooden pillars supporting the ceiling beams. The stair went up over an equally deserted strongroom. The men climbed to the second story, where were the rooms meant for family and guests; underlings slept in the attic. Hugues was ushered to the parlor. It was still darkly wainscoted and richly furnished. A charcoal brazier made the air warm and close.

Fulk de Buchy stood waiting. He was tall, only two inches less than Hugues, hooknosed, grizzled, but as yet lithe and possessing most of his teeth. His mantle was white, as befitted a celibate knight bound by lifelong vows. At his hip hung a sword.

Hugues stopped. "In God's name . . . greeting," he faltered.

Fulk signed to his men, who took positions outside in the corridor, and beckoned. Hugues trod closer.

"In what may I serve you, Master?" he asked. Formality could be a fragile armor. The word conveyed by the boy had been just that he come at once and discreetly.

Fulk sighed. After their years together, Hugues knew that seldom-heard sound. An inward sadness had whispered past the stern mask.

"We may speak freely," Fulk said. "These are trusty men, who will keep silence. I have dismissed everyone else."

"Could we not always speak our minds, you and I?" Hugues blurted.

"Of late, I wonder," Fulk answered. "But we shall see." After a moment: "At last, we shall see."

Hugues clenched his fists, forced them open again, and said as levelly as he was able, "Never did I lie to you. I looked on you as not only my superior, not only my brother in the Order, but my—" His voice broke. "My friend," he finished.

The knight bit his lip. Blood trickled forth into the beard.

"Why else would I warn you of danger afoot?" Hugues pleaded. "I could have departed and saved myself. But I warn you anew, Fulk, and beg you to escape while time remains. In less than three days now, the ax falls."

"You were not so exact before," the other man said without tone.

"The hour was not so nigh. And I hoped—"

Fulk's hand chopped the protest short. "Have done!" he cried.

Hugues stiffened. Fulk began pacing, back and forth, like one in a cage. He bit off his words, each by each.

"Yes, you claimed a certain foresight, and what you said came to pass. Minor though those things were, they impressed me enough that when you hinted at a terrible morrow, I passed it on in a letter to my kinsman—after all, we know charges are being raised against us. But you were never clear about how you got your power. Only in these past few days, thinking, have I seen how obscure was your talk of Moorish astrologic lore and prophetic dreams." He halted, confronting his suspect, and flung, "The Devil can say truth when it fits his purposes. Whence comes your knowledge, you who call yourself Hugues Marot?"

The younger man made the sign of the cross. "Lawful, Christian—"

"Then why did you not tell me more, tell me fully what to await, that I might go to the Grand Master and all our brothers have time to make ready?"

Hugues lifted his hands to his face. "I could not. Oh, Fulk, dear friend, I cannot, even now. My tongue is locked. What I—I could utter—that little was forbidden—But you
know
me!"

Starkness responded. "I know you would have me flee, saying naught to anyone. At what peril to my soul, that I break every pledge I ever swore and abandon my brethren in Christ?" Fulk drew breath. "No, brother, if brother you be, no. I have arranged that you are under my command for the next several days. You shall remain here, sequestered, secret from all but myself and these your warders. Then, if indeed the king strikes at us, I can perhaps give you over to the Inquisition—a sorcerer, a fountainhead of evil, whom the Knights of the Temple have discovered among themselves and cast from them—"

The breath sobbed. Pain stretched the face out of shape. "But meanwhile, Hugues, I will hourly pray, with great vows, pray that you prove innocent—merely mistaken, and innocent of all save love. And can you then forgive me?"

He stood for a moment. When he spoke again, the words tolled. "It is for the Order, which we have plighted our loyalty under God. Raoul, Jehan, take him away."

Tears glistened on Hugues's cheekbones. The guards entered. He had no weapon but a knife. With a convulsive movement, he drew it and offered it hilt foremost to Fulk. The knight kept his hands back and it dropped on the floor. Mute, Hugues went off between the men. As he walked, he gripped a small crucifix that hung about his neck, symbol and source of help from beyond this world.