The Sorrow of Odin the Goth tp-7

by Poul Anderson

  My thoughts had fled into this familiar territory while I stood caged in the elevator. It made the ghosts more distant, less clamorous. Nevertheless, when I let myself into our home, they followed.

  A smell of turpentine drifted amidst the books which lined the living room. Laurie was winning somewhat of a name as a painter, here in the 1930’s when she was no longer the preoccupied faculty wife she had been later in our century. Offered a job in the Patrol, she had declined; she lacked the physical strength that a field agent—male or, especially, female—was bound to need upon occasion, while routine clerical or reference work didn’t interest her. To be sure, we’d shared vacations in mighty exotic milieus.

  She heard me enter and ran from her studio to meet me. The sight lifted my spirits a tiny bit. In spattered smock, red hair tucked under a kerchief, she was still slender, supple, and handsome. The lines around her green eyes were too fine to notice until she got near enough to embrace me.

  Our local acquaintances tended to envy me a wife who, besides being delightful, was far younger than myself. In fact, the difference in birthdates is a mere six years. I was in my mid-forties, and prematurely gray, when the Patrol recruited me, whereas she had kept most of her youthful looks. The antithanatic treatment that our organization provides will arrest the aging process but not reverse its effects.

  Besides, she spent most of her life in ordinary time, sixty seconds to the minute. As a field agent, I’d go through days, weeks, or months between saying goodbye to her in the morning and returning for dinner—an interlude during which she could pursue her career without me underfoot. My cumulative age was approaching a hundred years.

  Sometimes it felt like a thousand. That showed.

  “Hi, there, Carl, darling!” Her lips pulsed against mine. I drew her close. If a dab of paint got onto my suit, what the hell? Then she stepped back, took both my hands, and sent her gaze across me and into me.

  Her voice dropped low: “It’s hurt you, this trip.”

  “I knew it would,” I answered out of my weariness.

  “But you didn’t know how much… Were you gone long?”

  “No. Tell you about it in a while, the details. I was lucky, though. Hit a key point, did what I needed to do, and got out again. A few hours of observation from concealment, a few minutes of action, and fini.”

  “I suppose you might call it luck. Must you return soon?”

  “In that era, yes, quite soon. But I want a while here to—to rest, get over what I saw was about to happen… Can you stand me around, brooding at you, for a week or two?”

  “Sweetheart.” She came back to me.

  “I have to work up my notes anyway,” I said into her ear, “but evenings we can go out to dinner, the theater, have fun together.”

  “Oh, I hope you’ll be able to have fun. Don’t pretend for my sake.”

  “Later, things will be easier,” I assured us. “I’ll simply be carrying out my original mission, recording the stories and songs they’ll make about this. It’s just… I’ve got to get through the reality first.”

  “Must you?”

  “Yes. Not for scholarly purposes, no, I guess not. But those are my people. They are.”

  She hugged me tighter. She knew.

  What she did not know, I thought in an uprush of pain—what I hoped to God she did not know—was why I cared so greatly about yonder descendants of mine. Laurie wasn’t jealous. She’d never begrudged the while that Jorith and I had had. Laughing, she’d said it deprived her of nothing, while it gave me a position in the community I was studying which might well be unique in the annals of my profession. Afterward she’d done her best to console me.

  What I could not bring myself to tell her was that Jorith was not simply a close friend who happened to be a woman. I could not say to her that I had loved one who lay dust these sixteen hundred years as much as I loved her, and still did, and maybe always would.

  300

  The home of Winnithar the Wisentslayer stood on a bluff above the River Vistula. It was a thorp, half a dozen houses clustered around a hall, with barns, sheds, cookhouse, smithy, brewery, and other workplaces nearby: for his family had long dwelt here, and waxed great among the Teurings. Westward reached meadows and croplands. Eastward, across the water, wilderness remained, though settlement was encroaching heavily upon it as the tribe grew in numbers.

  They might have logged off the woods altogether, save that more and more of them were moving away. This was a time of unrest. Not only were plundering warbands on the trail; whole folk were pulling up stakes, and clashing when they met. Word drifted from afar that the Romans were often at each other’s throats too, while the mightiness which their forefathers had built crumbled. As yet, few Northerners had done anything bolder than to raid along the Imperial borders. But the southlands just outside those borders, warm, rich, scantily defended by their dwellers, beckoned many a Goth to come carve out a new home for himself.

  Winnithar stayed where he was. However, that forced him to pass almost as much of each year in fighting—especially against Vandals, though sometimes against Gothic tribes, Greutungs or Taifals—as he passed in farming. As his sons neared manhood, they began to yearn elsewhere.

  Thus matters stood when Carl arrived.

  He came in winter, when hardly anybody traveled. On that account, men made strangers doubly welcome, who broke the sameness of their lives.

  At first, spying him at a mile’s reach, they took him for a mere gangrel, since he fared alone and afoot. Nonetheless they knew their chief would want to see him.

  He drew nigh, striding easily over the frozen ruts of the road, making a staff of his spear. His blue cloak was the only color in that landscape of snow-decked fields, stark trees, dull sky. Hounds bayed and growled at him; he showed no fear, and afterward the men came to understand that he could have stricken those dead that attacked him. Today they called the beasts to heel and met the newcomer with sudden respect—for it became plain that his garments were of the finest, and not the least way-stained, while he himself was awesome. Taller than the tallest here he loomed, lean but sinewy, a graybeard as lithe as a youth. What had those pale eyes of his beheld?

  A warrior went ahead to greet him. “I hight Carl,” he said when asked: nothing further. “Fain would I guest you a while.” The Gothic words came readily from him, but their sound, and sometimes their order or endings, were not of any dialect known to the Teurings.

  Winnithar had stayed in his hall. It would have been unseemly for him to gape like an underling. When Carl entered, Winnithar said from his high seat, “Be welcome if you come in peace and honesty. May Father Tiwaz ward you and Mother Frija bless you.”—as was the ancient custom of his house.

  “My thanks,” Carl answered. “That was kindly spoken to a fellow you may well think is a beggar. I am not, and hope this gift will be found worthy.” He reached in the pouch at his belt and drew forth an arm-ring which he handed over to Winnithar. Gasps arose from those who had jostled close to watch, for the ring was heavy, of pure gold, cunningly wrought and set with gems.

  The host kept his calmness, barely. “That is a gift a king might have given. Share my seat, Carl.” It was the place of honor. “Abide for as long as you wish.” He clapped his hands. “Ho,” he shouted, “bring mead for our guest, and for me that I may drink his health!” To the swains, wenches, and children milling about: “Back to your work, you. We can all hear whatever he chooses to tell us after the evening meal. Now he’s doubtless weary.”

  Grumblingly, they heeded. “Why say you that?” Carl asked him.

  “The nearest dwelling where you might have spent last night is a goodly walk from this,” Winnithar replied.

  “I was at none,” Carl said.

  “What?”

  “You would be bound to find that out. I would not have you believe I lied to you.”

  “But—” Winnithar peered at him, tugged his mustache, and said slowly: “You are not of these parts; aye, you must hav
e fared far. Yet your garb is clean, though you carry no change of clothes, nor food or aught else that a traveler should. Who are you, whence have you come, and… how?”

  Carl’s tone was mild, but those who listened heard what steel underlay it. “There are things I may not talk about. I do give you my oath—may Donar’s lightning smite me if it is false—that I am no outlaw, nor foe to your kindred, nor a sort whom it would shame you to have beneath your roof.”

  “If honor demands that you keep certain secrets, none shall pry,” said Winnithar. “But you understand that we cannot help wondering—” Clear to see was the relief with which he broke off and exclaimed: “Ah, here comes the mead. That’s my wife Salvalindis who bears your horn to you, as befits a guest of rank.”

  Carl hailed her courteously, though his gaze kept straying to the maiden at her side, who brought Winnithar his draught. She was sweetly formed and moved like a deer; unbound hair streamed golden past a face with fine bones, shyly smiling lips, eyes big and the hue of summer heaven.

  Salvalindis noticed. “You meet our oldest child,” she told Carl, “our daughter Jorith.”

  1980

  After basic training at the Patrol Academy, I returned to Laurie on the same day as I’d left her. I’d need a spell to rest and readapt; it was rather a shock transferring from the Oligocene period to a Pennsylvania college town. We must also set our mundane affairs in order. For my part, I should finish out the academic year before resigning “to take a better-paying job abroad.” Laurie saw to the sale of our house and the disposal of goods we didn’t want to keep—wherever and whenever else we were going to establish residence.

  It wrenched us, bidding goodbye to the friends of years. We promised to make occasional visits, but knew that those would be few and far between, until they ceased entirely. The required lies were too great a strain. As was, we left an impression that my vaguely described new position was a cover for a post in the CIA.

  Well, I had been warned at the beginning that a Time Patrol agent’s life becomes a series of farewells. I had yet to learn what that really meant.

  We were still in the course of uprooting ourselves when I got a phone call. “Professor Farness? This is Manse Everard, Unattached operative. I wonder if we could meet for a talk, like maybe this weekend.”

  My heart bounded. Unattached is about as high as you can get in the organization; throughout the million or more years that it guards, such personnel are rare. Normally a member, even if a police officer, works within a single milieu, so that he or she can get to know it inside out, and as part of a closely coordinated team. The Unattached may go anyplace they choose and do virtually anything they see fit, responsible only to their consciences, their peers, and the Danellians. “Uh, sure, certainly, sir,” I blurted. “Saturday would be fine. Do you want to come here? I guarantee you a good dinner.”

  “Thanks, but I’d prefer it was my digs—the first time, anyway. Got my files and computer terminal and things like that handy. Just the two of us, please. Don’t worry about airline schedules. Find a spot, as it might be your basement, where nobody will see. You’ve been issued a locator, haven’t you?… Okay, read off the coordinates and call me back. I’ll pick you up on my hopper.”

  I found out later that that was characteristic of him. Large, tough-looking, wielding more power than Caesar or Genghis ever dreamed of, he was as comfortable as an old shoe.

  Me on the saddle behind his, we skipped through space, rather than time, to the current Patrol base in New York City. From there we walked to the apartment he maintained. He didn’t like dirt, disorder, and danger any better than I did. However, he felt he needed a pied-a-terre in the twentieth century, and had grown used to these lodgings before decay had advanced overly far.

  “I was born in your state in 1924,” he explained. “Entered the Patrol at age thirty. That’s why I decided I should be the guy who interviewed you. We have pretty much the same background; we ought to understand each other.”

  I took a steadying gulp of the whisky and soda he’d poured for us and said cautiously, “I’m not too sure, sir. Heard something about you at the school. Seems you led quite an adventurous life even before you joined. And afterward—Me, I’ve been a quiet, stick-in-the-mud type.”

  “Not really.” Everard glanced at a sheet of notes he held. His left hand curled around a battered briar pipe. Once in a while he’d take a puff or a sip. “Let’s refresh my memory, shall we? You didn’t see combat during your Army hitch, but that was because you served your two years in what we laughingly call peacetime. You did, though, make top scores on the target range. You’ve always been an outdoorsman, mountaineering, skiing, sailing, swimming. In college, you played football and won your letter in spite of that lanky build. In grad school your hobbies included fencing and archery. You’ve traveled a fair amount, not always to the safe and standard places. Yes, I’d call you adventurous enough for our purposes. Possibly a tad too adventurous. That’s one thing I’m trying to sound you out about.”

  Feeling awkward, I glanced again around the room. On a high floor, it was an oasis of quiet and cleanliness. Bookshelves lined the walls, save for three excellent pictures and a pair of Bronze Age spears. Else the only obvious souvenir was a polar bear rug that he had remarked was from tenth-century Greenland.

  “You’ve been married twenty-three years, to the same lady,” Everard remarked. “These days, that indicates a stable character.”

  There was no sign of femininity here. To be sure, he might well keep a wife, or wives, elsewhen. “No children,” Everard went on. “Hm, none of my business, but you do know, don’t you, that if you want, our medics can repair every cause of infertility this side of menopause? They can compensate for a late start on pregnancies, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Fallopian tubes—Yes, Laurie and I have discussed it. We may well take advantage someday. But we don’t think we’d be wise to begin parenthood and my new career simultaneously.” I formed a chuckle. “If simultaneity means anything to a Patroller.”

  “A responsible attitude. I like that.” Everard nodded.

  “Why this review, sir?” I ventured. “I wasn’t invited to enlist merely on the strength of Herbert Ganz’s recommendation. Your—people put me through a whole battery of far-future psych tests before they told me what it meant.”

  They’d called it a set of scientific experiments. I’d cooperated because Ganz had asked me to, as a favor to a friend of his. It wasn’t his field; he was in Germanic languages and literature, the same as me. We’d met at a professional gathering, become drinking buddies, and corresponded quite a bit. He’d admired my papers on Deor and Widsith, I’d admired his on the Gothic Bible.

  Naturally, I did not know then that it was his. It was published in Berlin in 1853. Later he was recruited into the Patrol, and eventually he came uptime under an alias, in search of fresh talent for his undertaking.

  Everard leaned back. Across the pipe, his gaze probed at me. “Well,” he said, “the machines told us you and your wife are trustworthy, and would both be delighted by the truth. What they could not measure was how competent you’d be in the job for which you were proposed. Excuse me, no insult intended. Nobody is good at everything, and these missions will be tough, lonesome, delicate.” He paused. “Yes, delicate. The Goths may be barbarians, but that doesn’t mean they are stupid, or that they can’t be hurt as badly as you or me.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But look, all you need do is read the reports I’ll have filed in my own personal future. If the early accounts show me bungling, why, just tell me to stay home and become a book researcher. The outfit needs those too, doesn’t it?”

  Everard sighed. “I have inquired, and been told you performed—will perform—will have performed—satisfactorily. That isn’t enough. You don’t realize, because you haven’t experienced it, how overburdened the Patrol is, how ghastly thin we’re spread across history. We can’t examine every detail of what a field agent does. That’s es
pecially true when he or she isn’t a cop like me, but a scientist like you, exploring a milieu poorly chronicled or not chronicled at all.” He treated himself to a swallow of his drink. “That’s why the Patrol does have a scientific branch. So it can get a slightly better idea of what the hell the events are that it is supposed to keep careless time travelers from changing.”

  “Would it make a significant difference, in a situation as obscure as that?”

  “It might. In due course, the Goths play an important role, don’t they? Who knows what a happening early on—a victory or a defeat, a rescue or a death, a certain individual getting born or not getting born—who knows what effect that could have, as its results propagate through the generations?”

  “But I’m not even concerned with real events, except indirectly,” I argued. “My objective is to help recover various lost stories and poems, and unravel how they evolved and how they influenced later works.”

  Everard grinned ruefully. “Yeah, I know. Ganz’s big deal. The Patrol has bought it because it is an opening wedge, the single such wedge we’ve found, to getting the history of that milieu recorded.”

  He knocked back his drink and rose. “How about another?” he proposed. “And then we’ll have lunch. Meanwhile, I wish you’d tell me exactly what your project is.”

  “Why, you must have talked to Herbert—to Professor Ganz,” I said, astonished. “Uh, thanks, I would like a refill.”

  “Sure,” Everard said, pouring. “Retrieve Germanic literature of the Dark Ages. If ‘literature’ is the right word for stuff that was originally word of mouth, in illiterate societies. Mere chunks of it have survived on paper, and scholars don’t agree on how badly garbled those copies are. Ganz’s working on the, um-m, the Nibelung epic. What I’m vague about is where you fit in. That’s a story from the Rhineland. You want to go gallivanting solo away off in eastern Europe, in the fourth century.”