The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  “My ... apologies.” First McCready went to the sideboard. He mixed a stiff Scotch and soda. “Would you like this?”

  “No, thank you. Another Drambuie, if I may. Do you know, it never came to my attention before tonight. But then, only recently has Turkey become a modern, secular state. Marvelous stuff. I must lay some in before the next war makes it unobtainable.”

  McCready overcame interior tumult and returned to the table. “What do you want to say?” he asked.

  Saygun barely smiled. “Well,” he replied, “things were growing hectic, weren’t they? To be expected, no doubt, when you made such extraordinary claims. Not that I deny them, kyrie. I am no scientist, to decide what is and is not possible. Nor am I so rude as to call my host deluded, let alone a liar. But we should calm down. May I tell you a story?”

  “By all means,” McCready rasped, and drank deep.

  “Perhaps I can better label it a speculation,” Saygun said. “A flight of fancy, like some works of Mr. H. G. Wells. What if such-and-such were true? What consequences?”

  “Go on.”

  Saygun relaxed, smoked, sipped, let his voice amble. “Weft, now, shall we imagine a man bora rather long ago? For example, in Italy toward the end of the Roman Republic. Family of the equestrian class, undistinguished, its men seldom much interested in war or politics, seldom succeeding or failing greatly in commerce, often making careers in the civil service. The state and its conquered provinces had grown swiftly, enormously. There was need for clerks, registrars, annalists, archivists, every class of those workers who provide a government with its memory. Once Augustus had taken control, procedures were soon regularized, organization made firm, order and predictability instilled. For a peaceful man, the lower and median ranks of the civil service were a good place to be.”

  McCready inhaled sharply. Saygun ignored it: “Next I would like to borrow your imaginative concept of the occasional person who never grows old. Since you have obviously considered every ramification, I need not spell out the difficulties that the years must bring to such a man. Perforce, when he reaches the normal retirement age, he gives up his position and moves away, telling his acquaintances that it will be to someplace with a mild climate and a low cost of living. Yet if he is entitled to a pension, he dares not draw it forever; and if pensions are not customary, he cannot live forever on savings, or even on investments. He must go back to work.

  “Well, he seems youthful and he has experience. He re-enters the bureaucracy in a different city, under a different name, but quickly proves his worth and earns promotion from junior grade to about the middle of the hierarchy among the record-keepers. In due course he retires again. By then sufficient time has gone by that he can return to, say, Rome and start over.

  “Thus it goes. I shan’t bore you with details, when you can readily visualize them. For example, sometimes he marries and raises a family, which is pleasant—or if it happens not to be, will pass, so all he needs is patience. This does complicate his little deceptions, hence he spends other periods in tranquil bachelorhood, varied by discreet indulgences. He is never in any danger of being found out. His position in the archives enables him to make cautious but’adequate insertions, deletions, emendations. Nothing to harm the state, nothing to enrich himself, no, never. He simply avoids military service and, in general, covers his tracks.” Saygun snickered. “Oh, now and then he might slip in something like a letter of recommendation for the young recruit he plans to become. Please remember, though, that he does do honest work. Whether he puts stylus to wax, pen to paper, nowadays types or dictates, he helps maintain the memory of the state.”

  “I see,” McCready whispered. “But states come and go.”

  “Civilization continues,” responded Saygun. “The Princi-pate hardens into the Empire and the Empire begins to crack like drying mud, but people go on getting bom and getting married, they ply their trades and die, always they pay taxes, and whoever rules must hold the records of this or he has no power over the life of the people. The usurper or the conqueror may strike off heads at the top, but he will scarcely touch the harmless drudges of the civil service. That would be like chopping off his own feet.”

  “It has happened,” McCready said bleakly.

  Saygun nodded. “True. Corruption rewards its favorites with jobs. However, certain jobs are not especially tempting, while at the same time their holders would be hard to dispense with. Then occasionally barbarians, fanatics, megalomaniacs attempt to make a clean sweep. They cause desolation. Nevertheless, more often than not, some continuity endures. Rome fell, but the Church preserved what it could.”

  “I suppose, though,” McCready said, word by word, “this man ... you are imagining ... had moved to Constantinople.”

  Saygun nodded. “Of course. With Constantine the Great himself, who necessarily expanded the government offices in his new capital and welcomed personnel willing to transfer. And the Roman Empire, in its Byzantine incarnation, lasted another thousand years.”

  “After which—”

  “Oh, there were difficult times, but one manages. Actually, my man was stationed in Anatolia when the Osmanlis overran it, and did not get back to Constantinople until they had taken it too and renamed it Istanbul. Meanwhile he had fitted into their order of things without many problems. Changed his religion, but surely you can sympathize with that, and with a certain recurring necessity that an immortal Muslim or Jew faces.” Saygun half grinned. “One wonders about possible women. Recurrent intactness?”

  His mien went back to mock professorial: “Physically, this man would stay inconspicuous. The original Turks were not very unlike the people here, and soon melted into them the same as Hittites, Gauls, Greeks, Romans, countless nations had done before. The sultans reigned until after the World War. In name, at any rate; frequently not in fact. It made small difference to my man. He simply helped maintain the records.

  “Likewise under the republic. I must confess I—my man prefers Istanbul and looks forward to his next period of working there. It is more interesting, and alive with ghosts. But you know that. However, by now Ankara has become quite liveable.”

  “Is that all he wants?” McCready wondered. “Shuffling papers in an office, forever?”

  “He is used to it,” Saygun explained. “Perhaps it actually has a trifle more social value than soaring hopes and high adventure. Naturally, I wanted to hear what you had to say, but—forgive me—the situation you describe is ill-suited to one of my temperament. Let me wish you every good fortune.

  “May I have your card? Here is mine.” He reached in his pocket. McCready did likewise. They exchanged. “Thank you. We can, if you so desire, mail new cards to each other as occasion arises. The time may possibly come when we have reason to communicate. Meanwhile, absolute confidentiality on both sides, agreed?”

  “Well, but listen—”

  “Please. I detest disputes.” Saygun glanced at his watch. “My, my. Time flies, eh? I really must go. Thank you for an evening I will never forget.”

  He rose. McCready did too and, helplessly, shook hands. Having bade goodnight, the bureaucrat, still relishing his cigar, departed. McCready stood in the hall door till the elevator bore him off, down into the city and its crowds of the anonymous.

  XVII. Steel

  This was not the forest of old, but there was cover aplenty for a hunter, oh, yes, and all too much quarry. First, though, Katya had open ground to cross. She went from the battered yellow brick of the Lazur Chemical Plant on her belly. The pavement beneath her was as rough, after nearly three months of war. It felt colder against her palms than did the wind on her face. Clouds and a little snow had slightly warmed the November air.

  She slipped forward a meter or so at a time, stopped, peered about, before the next advance. Heaven rested heavy, hiding the sun behind its gray. Sometimes it let fall a thin white flurry for the gusts to scatter. On Katya’s left the ground sloped to the Volga. Ice floes drifted, bumped together, churned and turned on
their way down its steel-hued stream. No boats dared moved among them. Scant help could come to the Russians from the east until the river froze hard. The shore opposite seemed deserted, steppe reaching, wan with winter, on and on into Asia.

  To her right, beyond the railroad tracks, Mamaev Hill rose a hundred meters aloft. Its slopes were black. Shells and boots quickly beat snow into mud. She identified two or three gun emplacements. Silence brooded. The soldiers who had contested that height for weeks must be catching their breath or a few moments’ sleep, briefly brothers in exhaustion and wretchedness, before the next combat erupted.

  The stillness foreboded. It was abnormal to hear no fire, anywhere, for this long a stretch. War waited—eyes and gunsights wholly upon her?

  Nonsense, she snapped to herself, and moved onward.

  Nevertheless, when she came in among walls, breath shuddered from a breast cage that had begun to ache.

  She rose and stood crouched. These were not truly walls, after what had happened to them. Concrete blocks still Itfted sheer, but doorless doorways and glassless windows yawned on emptiness. A heap of rubble had spilled into the street.

  Rifles cracked. A submachine gun chattered. A grenade popped, another, another. Shouts ripped raw. She couldn’t make out words. The sounds were un human. Her own rifle was off her shoulder and she inside the shell of a building as die first echoes died.

  Boots thudded. They hit without rhythm, and too often a shard rattled from them. Whoever drew near stumbled and staggered more than he ran. Katya risked a peek around the door jamb. From behind a ruin some twenty meters south, a man lurched into the intersection of this street and the one down which he fled. He wore a Red Army uniform and helmet, but carried no weapon. Blood smeared his right hand and dripped down that leg. He stopped. She saw how he panted. He swung his head to and fro. Almost, she called to him, but checked herself. After a few seconds he continued his weaving way in the same direction, out of her view.

  She brought her rifle up.

  Two more men appeared, at a lope that should soon overtake him. Squarish helmets and gray-green garb proclaimed mem Germans. Either could easily have lifted his own firearm and shot the fugitive. So their officer must have told mem to bring him back for interrogation. That looked safe, a short run through an area believed to be free of life.

  It had stabbed through Katya: Let the thing happen. I mustn’t compromise my mission. But she knew too well what awaited that fellow. Also, what he could tell might prove as valuable as anything she would observe.

  Decision was nearly instant. Sometimes she weighed a matter for years before she settled on what to do. Sometimes she could simply wait several decades and let time wear the problem away. Yet she had not stayed alive this long by being always hesitant. At need, she leaped with the unheeding energy of youth.

  She fired. A German spun on his heel and flopped bonelessly down. His companion yelled and threw himself prone. His rifle barked. He probably hadn’t seen her, but knew at once, more or less, whence that shot had come. Quick-witted. Not for the first time, the thought stirred in Katya that maybe among the invaders was one of her kind, as full of centuries and solitude as she was.

  She barely noticed the thought, afar at the back of her skull. She had pulled inside straightway after shooting. A windowframe beckoned. She closed her eyes for three breaths while she considered the geometry of what she had seen. The enemy must be there. Quick, before he moves elsewhere. She stepped to the hole and squeezed trigger even as she aimed.

  The butt gave her a stiff, friendly nudge. The soldier screamed. He let go his rifle and lifted his torso on hands that spread white, helpless, upon asphalt. She had gotten him in the back. Best silence him. Those yells would call his mates. She drew a bead. His face exploded.

  Extraordinary marksmanship. By far the most shots in battle went wild. Comrade Zaitsev would be proud of her. She wished the German would lie still like the first, not writhe and kick and gush blood. Well, he was quiet now.

  She. hadn’t time to cringe. Surety the rest understood something had gone wrong. No matter how cautious, they would find this place within minutes.

  Katya dashed forth, over the rabble, up the street, past her prey. Horrible, when it was human. Of course, then it hunted you likewise. She turned left down the cross street.

  The Soviet soldier had not gone far. Her ambush had been quick, while he slowed still more. In fact, he was shuffling by a wrecked tram, leaning on it. Katya wondered if he would prove such a burden that she must abandon him. She sped in pursuit. “Stop!” she cried. “I’m your help!” Her voice sounded small and hollow among the ruins, beneath die leaden sky.

  He obeyed, turned around, braced himself against the metal, slumped. She drew close and halted. He was quite young, she saw, not shaven lately but with just a dark fuzz over the skin. Otherwise his face was old, pinched, white as the snowflakes that drifted about and powdered his shoulders. His eyes stared and his jaw hung slack. Shock, she realized. That hand of his was pretty badly mangled. A grenade, no doubt.

  “Can you follow me?” she asked. “We’ll have to move fast.”

  His left forefinger rose and wobbled in the air, as if to trace her outline. “You are a soldier,” he mumbled. “Like me. But you are a woman.”

  “What of it?” Katya snapped. She took hold of his forearm and shook him. “Listen. I can’t stay. That’s death. Come along if you’re able. Do you understand? Do you want to live? Come!”

  He shuddered. Breath went raggedly down his throat. “I ... can ... try.”

  “Good. This way.” Katya shoved him around and forward. Turn right at the next comer, left at the next after that, put a maze between yourself and the enemy. This’dis-trict was smashed, like the city center toward which she aimed—snags, debris, choked lanes, masonry still fire-blackened in spots, a wilderness where you could shake your hunters. Despite lacking sun or shadows, she kept her sense of direction ... A growl resounded.

  “Take cover!” Katya ordered. The youth joined her beneath a rusted metal sheet which stuck out of a vast heap of wreckage like an awning. A stench hung beneath, oozing from bricks, beams, broken glass, thick and sickly-sweet even in the chill. A shell or bomb must have made a direct hit, bringing this whole tenement down on everybody inside. Children, their mothers, their babushkas? No, most who couldn’t fight were evacuated early on. Likeliest it was soldiers who rotted here. Any building could become a fort when defenders fought invaders street by street. Which had these been? ... It didn’t matter, least of all to them.

  Her companion retched. He must have recognized the smell. That was a hopeful sign. He was coming out of his daze.

  The aircraft swept low above rooflessness. She had a glimpse of it, lean, swift, swastika on its tail, then it was gone. Reconnaissance, or what? Probably the pilot wouldn’t have noticed them, or troubled about them if he did. But you could never tell. The fascists had strafed crowds of evacuees waiting for ferries across the river. Two Soviet soldiers were game more fair.

  The throbbing receded. Katya heard no other. “Let’s go,” she said.

  The young man accompanied her for some paces before he exclaimed weakly, “Is this right, comrade? I think we’re headed south.”

  “We are,” she told him.

  “B-but, but the enemy has that part. Our people, they’re in the north end of town.”

  “I know.” She took his elbow and hurried him onward. “I have my orders. Turn back if you wish. I doubt you’ll get far. Or you may come with me if you can. If you can’t, I’ll have to leave you. If you make a noise, or any kind of trouble for me, I must kill you. But I do believe it’s your only chance.”

  He clenched his usable fist. “I’ll try,” he whispered. “Thank you, comrade.”

  She wondered whether Zaitsev would thank her. This mission was .worth more lives than a single cripple’s. Well, sharpshooters must rely on their own judgment oftener than not. And supposing she did get this private back to his unit, her superi
ors needn’t know. Unless he really could tell something worthwhile—

  The street ended at Krutoy Gully. On the opposite side of the ravine, buildings were equally damaged but more high and massive than here. That was where the central city began. “We have to get across,” Katya said. “No bridge. We crawl down and creep up. You go first.”

  He nodded, jerkily, nevertheless a nod. Stooping, he scuttled over the open space and wriggled out of sight. She had been prepared to let him draw any fire. She hadn’t wanted a stalking horse, but there he was, and if he proved hopelessly clumsy she couldn’t let him destroy her too. Instead, he did well enough. So he’d been rather lightly shocked, and was shaking that off with the vitality of youth.

  Rifle in hand, every sense honed, she followed. Dirt gritted, leafless bushes scratched. After they started up, his strength flagged. He scrabbled, slid back a way, sank together and sobbed for air. She slung her weapon and went on all fours to his side. He gave her a desperate look. “I can’t,” he wheezed. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “We’re nearly there.” Her left hand clasped his. “Now, work, damn you, work.” She clambered backward, boot heels dug into soil, straining like a horse at a mired field gun. He set his teeth and did what he was able. It sufficed. They reached the top and found shelter by a heap of bricks. Her tunic was dank with sweat. Wind chilled her to the bone.

  “Where ... are we ... bound?” coughed from him.

  “This way.” They got to their feet. She herded him along, keeping them next to walls, halting at each doorway or corner to listen and peer. A couple of fighters flew sentinel well above. Their drone fell insect-faint over the desolation. She began to hear a deeper rumble, artillery. A duel somewhere out on the steppe? Mamaev remained quiet. The whole city did, it seemed, one great graveyard that waited for the thunders of doomsday.