by John Brunner
"As I said, sir, the mouth of the cave -- of the mine gallery, rather -- was closed by this balanced boulder. Earth and grass-roots had made an almost perfect seal around it, and the interior of the cave was dry. In any case the climate there is equable."
For some moments the Prince was silent. His dark eyes searched Don Miguel's face. At length he said heavily, "I wish it were not so, Navarro, but in my judgment you've made out a case. We'll get time apparatus to California as quickly as we can, and see if we can secure objective evidence." He rose to his feet. "Meantime, we'll also notify Londres, and bring out our most highly trained investigators. I'm not questioning your analysis of the situation, but you must appreciate that an unfounded charge concerning a breach of the Treaty of Prague could ruin the precarious trust we've managed to nurture between ourselves and the Temporal College."
"Sir," Don Miguel said with feeling. "I pray that I am wrong! For how much more disastrous it will be if I'm right!"
IV
Before the discovery Of humane drugs to unlock the gates of truth in the human mind, there had been a torture -- used even by the Holy Office -- consisting in the placing upon the subject of a large wooden board, and in turn upon the board a succession of stones of increasing weight, so that in the end a stubborn man would be crushed like an insect beneath a boot.
For Don Miguel the next several weeks were like a session of such torture. And he was not the only one to suffer.
The first of the stones was a light one, and added nothing more to his burden of anxiety than simple confirmation of what he had already suspected. It had been rumoured for some while that more gold and silver were circulating in the Confederacy than their known resources could account for. The logical deduction was that new and so far secret lodes had been located, perhaps in the inhospitable unexplored wastes of Siberia.
Present information made it seem likelier that for "Siberia" should be substituted "California" . . .
The second stone was header and more painful. A metallurgical expert compared the mysterious drill-bit with samples of other steels, and reported unequivocally: made in Augsburg! It was of a type commonly used in the Confederacy, but hardly ever encountered elsewhere -- certainly not in California, where a number of the trace constituents, notably cobalt, were unavailable.
The third, and heaviest, was a report from a team of men whom Two Dogs -- at Don Miguel's urgent request -- had set to searching the route between the site of the poachers' mine and the nearest convenient harbour on the coast. One of the earliest questions to have arisen, naturally, had been this: how did the poachers reach the site where their traces had been discovered? It was of course possible to operate a time apparatus to transmit its occupant spatially as well as temporally -- all that was required was an adjustment of the dimensional relationships dictated by the power-carrying bars in its frame. So long as the gravitational potential at the arrival point was roughly the same as that at base, no harm would come to the traveller . . . although transmitting from a hilltop to a valley resulted in the messy dispersal of surplus potential energy and the death or injury of the victim.
Yet it seemed improbable that one should voyage blind across a thousand years and also displace oneself by several thousand miles; it would be a fearful leap into the dark, and there was the risk of the shape of the landscape having been changed by erosion or earthquake, so that one might arrive inside a hill, or in mid-air. It seemed more likely that the poachers must first have gone back in time at some place whose topography they could establish beyond doubt, and then at least a scouting party would have proceeded to the mining site by more conventional means.
And the men dispatched by Two Dogs, following the most obvious route to the sea, came across a shlp's timber buried in the sand, of a form not commonly employed by the aboriginal inhabitants and in a condition to suggest it had been lying where they found it for some such period as a thousand years . . .
Driven almost to a frenzy by the cumulative pressure of this news, the experts sent out from New Madrid and Londres by the Society of Time redoubled the pace of their preparations. Transportable time apparatus was brought to the lonely Californian valley under habitual conditions of secrecy -- few people outside the Society ever saw an actual time apparatus, because it was so dangerously simple, being composed only of bars of silver and magnetised iron in precisely determined relationships. It might have entered someone's head to make a model of what he had seen, with the disturbing consequence that the model might work .
Accordingly, a small town of canvas marquees bloomed in the sunlight, and the labourers and their families went by incuriously for the most part, occasionally pausing to watch, but not often, as yet one more manifestation of the madness of these Europeans intruded into their quiet private world.
On the evening of the day when suspicion turned to cruel certainty, Don Miguel encountered his friend Two Dogs again. Head bowed, he was plodding up the slope of the hill that separated the modern mining area from the one established by the poachers and feeling as though the limping world were using him for a crutch, when he heard his name called. Raising his eyes, he saw the Mohawk waiting on the path ahead, face inscrutable, prepared for any news.
"Well?" he said as Don Miguel approached.
"We found them," Don Miguel said. "At the summer of A.D. 984. They killed a Mohawk Licentiate who showed himself to them. And they used a gun."
Two Dogs gave a slow nod. He said, "So your millstones are going to grind again, and this time we shall be ground between them."
"What do you mean?" Don Miguel said. But he was too weary to be genuinely interested in the reply.
"I should have thought it was obvious. Did you not imply that you've found what you expected -- poachers from the Confederacy?"
"Yes, there isn't any doubt. They were seen, as I said. What's more, they were overheard talking."
"In that case, it follows that there's been a breach of the Treaty of Prague -- am I not correct?"
"It would appear so. I'm not an expert, though, and we're waiting for Father Ramón himself now, who's supposed to be on the way from Londres, so I won't commit myself."
There was a pause. At last the Mohawk said musingly, "You are a strange people --- you really are! When it came to matters of honour and justice, my ancestors didn't wait to consult some far-distant expert. We made our own minds up and acted in accordance with the principles we believed in, heedless of the consequences to ourselves. And I'd always been told that this was also the hidalgo code, the reason why it was the Spanish among all the competing European intruders who managed to form a successful alliance with the Red Indians rather than the French or the Swedes."
"True enough." In spite of his tiredness, Don Miguel felt a stir of interest provoked by the Mohawk's argument. Cultural analysis was inevitably a subject he'd had to delve into deeply before completing his training as a time-traveller.
"So why are you not acting to set right the injustice that's been done to you?"
"Because it's not only ourselves we must consider," Don Miguel pointed out. "This is a temporal matter. One ill-judged action might so deform history that we ruled ourselves out of existence -- and you along with us."
"While admiring your scruples," Two Dogs murmured, "I still find your behaviour puzzling. I've been reading up on matters connected with time-travel recently, since this business broke out, and it seems to me that you could wipe out the poachers, couldn't you, at the end of their stay? I mean, when the changes their mining had wrought in the landscape corresponded to what can be seen in the present day."
"Oh, possibly! In fact, that may well be the course we have to adopt in the end. But . . ." Don Miguel shook his head unhappily. "We'd risk creating a closed causative loop, you see, where a future action entailed past consequences, and this is something so dangerous one dare not commit oneself before examining every alternative."
Although if the alternative is the death of a king . . .
But he firmly suppres
sed recollection of that New Year's night when he had had the truth of what he was now saying so fearfully demonstrated.
"If they're allowed to get away with it, though, surely these poachers will be tempted to repeat what they've done? Elsewhere, I mean. The next place you run across them may be in your coal-mines at home, or the Cornish tin-mines, or some other place where you can ill afford to lose what you have close to the heart of the Empire."
"But they won't be allowed to get away with it. A Papal interdict will certainly follow concrete proof of their interference, and if necessary the whole Confederacy could be put under ban."
"And this, you think, is a powerful enough weapon to dissuade men who've already shown they're willing to tamper with the past? If they're unafraid of material consequences due to meddling with history, are they likely to be impressed by the threat of spiritual displeasures from one old man sitting on a throne in Rome?"
"You're a hard-bitten sceptic, aren't you?" Don Miguel exclaimed. "Are you . . .? No, I'm sorry; it's not something I'm entitled to ask."
"Ask what you Like." Two Dogs shrugged. "By my tradition, to call a man a friend is to make him a brother, and a brother is permitted to know anything about you."
Don Miguel still hesitated. Eventually he said, "Well, I was actually going to ask whether you're not a believer."
Two Dogs gave a wry chuckle. "You are, I take it?" he countered, and without waiting for the foregone reply continued, "As a matter of fact, I am, but not a Catholic. Not even what you would regard as a Christian, come to that. Oh, I was raised as one -- sent for the ordinary priestly education of your European mission-schools -- and I was taught a lot of facts about the world which our own tradition ignored or overlooked. But there were so many contradictions that ultimately I was driven out of the fold by my conscience."
Don Miguel had vaguely heard that there was a revival of pre-contact faiths currently developing among the Mohawks -- correction, echoing Two Dog's own words many weeks ago: among the Indians whom the Imperials casually subsumed all under the one tribal name of "Mohawk." But this was the first inkling he'd had that Two Dogs himself might belong to this movement. He said, with great curiosity, "What were these -- these contradictions?"
"Oh! I couldn't reconcile your commitment to a Prince of Peace with what you did in the way of massacring my ancestors -- nor could I reconcile your ability to travel in time with your unwillingness to go back and see for yourselves the true nature of the Saviour you worship."
That had, more than once, troubled Don Miguel also. He said with feigned certainty, this time hearing Father Ramón in his memory. "But we have visited the time of Jesus's ministry. A new Pope, for instance, is always permitted to hear Christ speak following his accession, and over nearly a hundred years the Church has survived any consequences. Whatever you may think of Christ as a Son of God, surely it follows that he was a very exceptional man."
"Perhaps. But exceptional in his day and his environment. I've been told that my great-great grandfather. was the most skilful buffalo-hunter his tribe had ever seen. Fine! Marvellous! But since you brought guns to this country, who can live by killing buffalo? Admire him, I may -- but am I to imitate him now that the buffalo are rare to the point where they have to be protected?"
Don Miguel found he had no immediate answer to that. He shrugged and wiped his face, and at once Two Dogs was contrite. Stepping forward and putting an arm around his friend's shoulders, he said, "But I'm being cruel, keeping you out in the hot sun arguing about abstracts! Here, we'll go and sit on my verandah for a while and drink a few glasses of our local wine that you seem to enjoy so much, and talk about things which don't involve the fate of the universe."
Don Miguel gave a wan smile. "That," he said feelingly, "would be a very welcome relief."
V
Don Arturo Cortés came to the isolated valley, who still had the look of a man haunted by the ghost of himself, and who had not been a friend of Don Miguel's until he saw that ghost. Don Felipe Basso came, and said that the Lady Kristina was sad at not having seen Don Miguel again but had had to leave Londres suddenly upon her father being appointed Ambassador to the Confederacy of the East; Father Ramón came, and unlike the other two showed no sign of strain from his appalling journey, night and day from New Madrid in the huge cushion-wheeled transcontinental express-wagon which stopped only to change horses and pick up provisions.
Don Miguel saw the last relay of horses as they were led away from the wagon. They looked ready for the knacker.
These three, the night of their arrival, forgathered with Don Miguel and the two experts from New Madrid who had taken temporary charge of the investigation until their seniors from Londres could reach the spot; of these, one was an Inquisitor. They met in one of the huge marquees set up by the Society's technicians just over the hill from the mines which Two Dogs managed. There was a breeze at nightfall, and their shadows -- cast by riadng lamps on to the white canvas -- moved in eerie fashion as they sat around their table.
Don Rodrigo Juarez had personally conducted the expedition to the year 984 on which the existence of the poachers had been proved. Though he had been born and bred in New Castile rather than Europe, his reputation stood high, and since what had happened last New Year to Don Arturo Cortés, men had begun to speak of him, rather than Don Arturo, as Red Bear's probable successor in the key post of Director of Fieldwork. Don Rodrigo was aware of what was being said, and moreover was pleased to find that Don Arturo did too; this -- to Don Miguel's way of thinking -- endowed his manner with an unpleasant smugness almost as nasty as Don Arturo's former overweening arrogance.
But there was no time now for personal likes and dislikes. There was the very structure of history to be underpinned.
"What we found," said Don Rodrigo, "left absolutely no room for doubt. We saw the poachers at work, and we heard them talking among themselves. To avoid anachronism we were clothed -- unclothed , rather, ha-ha! -- like Indians such as we know frequented California in those days. I called for a volunteer to show himself at their encampment, and a Mohawk Licentiate from New Castile, named Roan Horse, came forward. Without questioning him, they shot him dead. I agree with Don Miguel Navarro: we have a crime far greater than mere murder, foul though that may be. We have indubitably a breach of the Treaty of Prague!"
He sat back, jutting out his jaw. He was a large man whose mother had been Scots, and his gingery hair and lantern chin stemmed from her family.
All eyes turned to Father Ramón, who had been listening with total concentration to Don Rodrigo's views. Keenest of all to hear the Jesuit's opinion was Don Miguel; his mind was aching almost physically.
"Not proven," said Father Ramón at length.
"What?" All of them said it, except Don Felipe, who was keeping himself to himself in such distinguished company.
"Not proven!" Father Ramón turned his bird-like head to regard them one after the other. "For various reasons. Not the least compelling grounds for withholding judgment can be found here: a breach of the Treaty is of its nature an irremediable disaster to be avoided at all costs. Luckily one has not yet been committed."
"But -- !" Don Rodrigo expostulated. Father Ramón's thin hand went up to interrupt him.
"No, hear me out, if you please. Before leaving Londres I checked your qualifications. They're admirable. But they omit one important item. You've never attended the School of Casuistry in Rome; if you had, you'd have gone through a gruelling course of disputation on this very subject of a breach of the Treaty of Prague. Believe me, when the Vatican's experts framed that Treaty, they did not do so in a hurry, or in such a way as to leave loopholes."
"I'm not talking about sneaking through a loophole!" flared Don Rodrigo. "I'm talking about poachers who've torn it up and spat on the shreds!"
Calmly Father Ramón stared him down. "You should know better than that," he said at length. "In your position you should. Don Miguel's reaction is forgivable; in the ordinary course of his career he woul
d not be due to attend the School of Casuistry for another five years or so. Your colleague, however, I'm also surprised at." He bent a frown on the Inquisitor. "How say you, Brother Vasco?"
The man shifted on his hard bench. He said, "I'm reserving my judgment until I can consult a text I needn't name. There's no copy nearer than New Madrid, and I confess my memory of it has worn thin."
The Jesuit pursed his lips. After a moment he shrugged. "Well, there's no need to prolong the argument, is there? Don Arturo, if I recall correctly, has attended the School, and should by now be bursting with the right solution."
They looked at Don Arturo, their heads moving as though pulled by strings, and saw him pass his hand shakily across his face. "Solutions to the present problem I have none, Father," he said. "But I know one thing almost beyond doubt."
"Which is . . . ?" prompted Father Ramón.
"There hasn't been a breach of the Treaty of Prague because such a thing is virtually inconceivable."