Time Patrol

by Poul Anderson

  "No. No. Nor anything else special. Let me think. . . . Was it two years, or three, after Captain Ribadi brought back such a treasure trove from—from—where was it? Somewhere beyond Tharshish. . . . No, wasn't that later? . . . My first wife died in childbed a while afterward, that I remember, but 'twas several years before I could arrange a second marriage, and meanwhile I had to make do with harlots, heh, heh. . . ." With the abruptness of the aged, Bomilcar's mood changed. Tears trickled forth. "And my second wife, my Batbaal, she died too, of a fever. . . . Crazed, she was, didn't know me any longer. . . . Don't plague me, my lord, don't plague me, leave me in peace and darkness and the gods will bless you."

  I'll get nothing further here. What did I get? Maybe nothing.

  Before he went, Everard made Jantin-hamu a present of metal which should allow the family to live in more comfort. The ancient world had some few advantages over his; it was free of gift and income taxes.

  * * *

  A couple of hours past sunset, Everard returned to the palace. That was late in local eyes. The sentries raised rushlights, squinted at him, and summoned their officer. When Eborix had been identified, they let him in with apologies. His indulgent laugh was better than a large tip would have been.

  He didn't really feel like laughing. Lips gone tight, he followed a lamp bearer to his room.

  Bronwen lay asleep. A single flame still burned. He undressed and stood for a minute or three looking down at her through the flickery dimness. Unbound, her hair glowed across the pillow. One arm, out of the blanket, didn't quite cover a bare young breast. It was her face he regarded, though. How innocent she looked, childlike, woundable even now, even after everything she had endured.

  If only. No. We may be a little bit in love already. But no possible way could it last, could we ever really live together, unless as a mere pair of bodies. Too much time sunders us.

  What shall become of her?

  He started to get into bed, intending simply slumber. She roused. Slaves learn to sleep alertly. He saw joy blossom in her. "My lord! Welcome, a thousand welcomes!"

  They held each other close. Just the same, he found he wanted to talk with her. "How did your day go?" he asked into the warmth where her jaw met her ear.

  "What? I—O master—" She was surprised that he would ask. "Why, it was pleasant, surely because your dear magic lingered. Your servant Pummairam and I chatted a long while." She giggled. "He's an engaging scoundrel, isn't he? Some of his questions struck too near the bone, but have no fear, my lord; those I refused to answer, and he backed off at once. Later I sallied forth, leaving word where I could be found should my lord return, and spent the afternoon in the nursery where my children are. They are such darlings." She didn't venture to inquire if he would care to meet them.

  "Hm." A thought nudged Everard. "What did Pum do meanwhile?" I can't see him sitting idle all day, that squirrel.

  "I know not. Well, I glimpsed him twice, on his errands down the corridors, but took it for given that my lord must have commanded—My lord?"

  Alarmed, she sat straight as Everard left the bed. He flung open the door to the cubicle. It stood empty. What in hell was Pum up to?

  Perhaps nothing much. Yet a servant who got into mischief might cause trouble for his master.

  Standing there in a brown study, the floor cold beneath his feet, Everard grew aware of arms around his waist, and a cheek stroking across his shoulder blades, and a voice that crooned: "Is my lord overly weary? If so, let his handmaiden sing him a lullaby from her homeland. But if not—"

  To hell with my worries. They'll keep. Everard turned his attention elsewhere, and himself.

  * * *

  The boy was still missing when the man awoke. Discreet questions revealed that he had spent hours the day before talking with various members of the staff. They agreed he was inquisitive and amusing. Finally he had gone out, and no one had seen him since.

  Probably he got restless and flitted off to spend what I've given him in the wineshops and cathouses. Too bad. In spite of his scapegrace style, I thought he was basically reliable, and meant to do something or other that'd give him a chance at a better life.

  Never mind. I've Patrol business on hand.

  Everard excused himself from further activities and went alone into the city. As a hireling admitted him to the house of Zakarbaal, Yael Zorach appeared. Phoenician dress and hairdo became her charmingly well, but he was too preoccupied to appreciate it. The same strain showed on her features. "This way," she said, unwontedly curt, and led him to the inner chambers.

  Her husband sat in conference with a craggy-faced bushy-bearded man whose costume varied in numerous ways from local male dress. "Oh, Manse," Chaim exclaimed. "What a relief. I wondered if we'd have to send for you, or what." He switched to Temporal: "Agent Manson Everard, Unattached, let me present Epsilon Korten, director of Jerusalem Base."

  The other man rose in a future-military fashion and snapped a salute. "An honor, sir," he said. Nonetheless, his rank was not much below Everard's. He was responsible for temporal activities throughout the Hebrew lands, between the birth of David and the fall of Judah. Tyre might be more important in secular history, but it would never draw a tenth of the visitors from uptime that Jerusalem and its environs did. The position he held told Everard immediately that he was both a man of action and a scholar of profundity.

  "I'll have Hanai bring in refreshments, and then tell the household to stay out of here and not let anybody in," Yael proposed.

  Everard and Korten spent those minutes getting an acquaintance started. The latter was born in twenty-ninth-century New Edom on Mars. While he didn't brag, Everard gathered that his computer analyses of early Semitic texts had joined his exploits as a spaceman in the Second Asteroid War to attract Patrol recruiters. They sounded him out, got him to take tests which proved him trustworthy, revealed the existence of the organization, accepted his enlistment, trained him—the usual procedure. What was less usual was his level of competence. In many ways, his job was more demanding than Everard's.

  "You'll understand that this situation is especially alarming to my office," he said when the foursome had settled down by themselves. "If Tyre is destroyed, Europe may take decades to show any major effects, the rest of the world centuries—millennia, in the Americas or Australasia. But it will be an immediate catastrophe for Solomon's kingdom. Lacking Hiram's support and the prestige it confers, he probably can't hold his tribes together long; and without Tyre at their backs, the Philistines won't be slow to seek revenge. Judaism, Yahwistic monotheism, is new and frail, still half pagan. My extrapolation is that it won't survive either. Yahweh will sink to being one more character in a crude and mutable pantheon."

  "And there goes a good deal of Classical civilization," Everard added. "Judaism influenced philosophy as well as events among both the Alexandrine Greeks and the Romans. Obviously, no Christianity, therefore no Western civilization, or Byzantine, or any of their successors. No telling what will arise instead." He thought of another altered world, which he had helped abort, and a wound twinged that he would bear throughout his life.

  "Yes, of course," said Korten impatiently. "The point is, granted that the resources of the Patrol are finite—and, yes, spread terribly thin over a continuum that has many nexuses as critical as this one—I don't believe it should concentrate all available effort on rescuing Tyre. If that happens, and we fail, everything is lost; the chances of our being able to restore the original world become vanishingly small. No, let us establish a strong standby—personnel, organization, plans—in Jerusalem, ready to minimize the effects there. The less that Solomon's kingdom suffers, the less powerful the change vortex will be. That should give us more likelihood of damping it out altogether."

  "Do you mean to, to write Tyre off?" Yael asked, dismayed.

  "No, certainly not. But I do want us to have some insurance against its loss."

  "That in itself is playing fast and loose with history." Chaim's tone trembl
ed.

  "I know. But extreme situations call for extreme measures. I came here first to discuss it with you, but please be advised that I intend to press for this policy in the highest echelons." Korten turned to Everard. "Sir, I regret the need to reduce further the slender resources you have at your command, but my judgment is that we must."

  "They aren't slender," the American grumbled, "they're downright emaciated." Following the preliminary legwork, what has the Patrol got here other than me?

  Does that mean the Danellians know I'll succeed? Or does it mean they'll agree with Korten—even, that Tyre is "already" doomed? If I fail—if I die—

  He straightened, reached into his pouch for pipe and tobacco, and said: "My lady and gentlemen, this could too easily turn into a shouting match. Let's talk it over like reasonable people. The beginning of that is to assemble what hard facts we have, and look at them. Not that I've collected many so far."

  The debate went on for hours.

  It was afternoon before Yael suggested they break for food. "Thanks," Everard said, "but I think I'd better get back to the palace. Otherwise Hiram might suspect I'm loafing, at his expense. I'll check in again tomorrow, okay?"

  The truth was that he had no appetite for the usual heavy meal of the day, roast lamb or whatever else it would be. He'd rather get a slab of bread and a hunk of goat cheese at some food stall, while he tried to sort out this new problem. (Thank technology again. Without the gene-tailored protective microbes the Patrol medics had implanted in him, he'd never have dared touch local stuff that wasn't cooked dead. And vaccinations against every sort of disease that came and went through the ages would long since have overloaded his immune system.)

  Twentieth-century style, he shook hands all around. Korten might be wrong, or he might not be, but he was pleasant, able, and well-intentioned. Everard went forth into a street that brooded and simmered beneath the sun.

  Pum waited. He rose less exuberantly than before. An odd gravity was on the thin young face. "Master," he breathed, "can we talk unheard?"

  They found themselves a tavern where they were the only customers. In actuality, it was a lean-to roof shading a small area on which cushions lay; you sat cross-legged, and the landlord fetched clay goblets of wine from inside his home. Everard paid him in beads, after desultory haggling. Foot traffic swarmed and babbled up and down the street on which the shop intruded, but at this hour men were generally busied. They'd relax here, those who could afford to, when cooling shadows had fallen between the walls.

  Everard sipped the thin, sour drink and grimaced. In his opinion, nobody understood wine before about the seventeenth century A.D. Beer was worse. No matter. "Speak, son," he said. "And you needn't waste breath or time calling me the radiance of the universe and offering to lie down for me to wipe my feet on. What have you been doing?"

  Pum gulped, shivered, leaned forward. "O lord of mine," he began, and his voice broke in an adolescent squeak, "your underling has dared take much upon his head. Upbraid me, beat me, have me whipped, whatever your will may be, if I have transgressed. But never, I beg, never think I have sought anything but your welfare. My sole wish is to serve you as far as my poor abilities allow."

  A brief grin flashed. "You see, you pay so well!"

  Soberness returned: "You are a strong man, a man of great powers, in whose service I may hope to flourish. Now for that, I must prove myself worthy. Any lout can carry your baggage or lead you to a pleasure house. What can Pummairam do, over and above this, that my lord will wish to keep him as a retainer? Well, what does my lord require? What does he need?

  "Master, it pleases you to pose as a rude tribesman, but from the very first I had a feeling there was far more to you. Of course you would not confide in a chance-met guttersnipe. So, without knowledge of you, how could I tell what use I might be?"

  Yeah, Everard thought, in his kind of hand-to-mouth existence, he had to develop a pretty keen intuition, or else go under. He kept his tone mild: "I am not angry. But tell me what you did."

  Pum's big, russet-hued eyes met his and stayed, almost as equal to equal. "I made bold to query others about my master. Always carefully, never letting out what my purpose was or, in sooth, letting the person suspect what he or she revealed. As proof of this, has anyone seemed to doubt my lord?"

  "M-m . . . no . . . not any more than I could expect. Who did you talk with?"

  "Well, the lovely Pleshti—Bo-ron-u-wen, for a start." Pum lifted a palm. "Master! She said never a word you would not have approved. I read her face, her movements, while I asked certain questions. No more. She refused me answers, now and then, herself, and those refusals told me something too. And her body does not know how to keep secrets. Is that her fault?"

  "No." Also, I wouldn't be surprised but what you reopened your door a crack that night and eavesdropped. Never mind. I don't want to know.

  "Thus I learned you are not of the . . . the Geyil folk, is that their name? It was no surprise. I had already guessed as much. You see, although I am sure my master is terrible in battle, he is as forbearing with women as a mother with her child. Would a half-savage wanderer be?"

  Everard laughed ruefully. Touché! On previous missions, he'd sometimes heard remarks about his lack of normal callousness, but nobody else had drawn conclusions from it.

  Encouraged, Pum hurried on: "I shan't weary my lord with details. Menials are always watching the mighty, and love to gossip about them. I may have deceived Sarai the housekeeper a tiny bit. Since I was your footman, she saw no reason to bid me begone. Not that I asked her very much directly. That would have been both foolish and unnecessary. I was content to get myself steered toward the dwelling of Jantin-hamu, where they were agog over their visitor yesterday eventide. Thus did I get a hint of what it is my lord seeks."

  He puffed himself up. "That, resplendent master, was what his servant required. I hied myself down to the docks and started gadding about. Lo!"

  A billow passed through Everard. "What did you find?" he nearly yelled.

  "What," Pum declaimed, "but a man who lived through the shipwreck and onslaught of demons?"

  * * *

  Gisgo appeared to be in his mid-forties, short but wiry, his weathered nutcracker face full of life. Over the years, he had risen from deckhand to coxswain, a skilled and well-rewarded post. Over the years, too, his cronies had tired of hearing about his remarkable experience. They took it for just another tall tale, anyway.

  Everard appreciated what a fantastic piece of detective work Pum had done, tracing the man down by getting sailors in wineshops to talk about who told what kind of yarns. He himself could never have managed it; they'd have been too leery of such an outsider, who moreover was a royal guest. Like sensible people throughout history, the average Phoenician wanted as little to do with his government as possible.

  It had been a lucky break that Gisgo was home in voyaging season. However, he had attained enough seniority and saved enough wealth that he need no more join long expeditions, hazardous and uncomfortable. His ship was on the Egypt run, and took layovers between passages.

  In his neat fifth-floor apartment, his two wives brought refreshments while he lolled back and spouted at his guests. A window gave on a court between tenements. The view was of clay walls and laundry strung on lines between. Yet sunlight came in alongside an eddy of breeze, to touch souvenirs of many a trip—a miniature Babylonian cherub, a syrinx from Greece, a faience hippopotamus from the Nile, an Iberian juju, a leaf-shaped bronze dagger from the North. . . . Everard had made a substantial golden gift, and the mariner waxed expansive.

  "Aye," Gisgo said, "that was an eldritch journey, 'twas. Bad time of year, equinox drawing nigh, and those there Sinim from who knows where, carrying misfortune in their bones for aught we knew. But we were young, the whole crew of us, from the captain on down; we reckoned on wintering in Cyprus, where the wines are strong and the girls are sweet; those Sinim, they'd pay well, they would. For that kind of metal, we were ready to give the
fig to death and hell. I've since grown wiser, but won't claim I'm gladder, no, no. I'm still spry, but I feel the teeth gnawing, and believe me, my friends, it was better to be young."

  He signed himself. "The poor lads who went down, may their shades rest peaceful." With a glance at Pum: "One of them looked like you, younker. Gave me a start, you did, when first we met. Adiyaton, was that his name? Aye, I think so. Maybe he was your grandsire?"

  The boy gestured ignorance. He had no way of knowing.

  "I've made my offerings for the lot of them, I have," Gisgo went on, "as well as in thanks for my own deliverance. Always stand by your friends and pay your debts, then the gods will help you in your need. They surely helped me.

  "The Cyprus run is tricky at best. Can't make camp; it's overnight on the open sea, sometimes for days on end if the wind's foul. This time—ah, this time! Scarce were we beyond sight of land when the gale struck, and little did it avail us to spread oil on those waters. Out oars and keep her head to the waves, it was, till breath failed and sinews cracked but we must row regardless. Black as a pig's bowels, it was, and howling and lashing and rolling and pitching while the salt crusted my eyes and stung the cracks in my lips—and how to keep stroke when we couldn't hear the cox's drum through the wind?

  "But on the midships catwalk I saw the chief of the Sinim, cloak flapping about him, faced straight into the blast, and laughing, laughing!

  "I don't know whether he was bold, or landlubber-ignorant of the danger, or wiser than I then was in the ways of the sea. Afterward I've harked back, in the light of much hard-won knowledge, and decided that with any luck we could have ridden out the storm. That was a well-found ship, and her officers knew their trade. However, the gods, or the demons, would have it otherwise.

  "For suddenly, crack and blaze! The brightness blinded me. I lost hold of my oar, like most of us did. Somehow I fumbled out and got a grip on it again before it slid away between the tholes. That may have saved my sight, because I wasn't looking up when the second bolt smote.