Time Patrol

by Poul Anderson

  Some saw him pass over. He glimpsed upturned faces, heard cries. There followed a thunder of gallop, a deep-toned "Sant'Iago and at them!"

  He crossed the southern bounds of the city, banked, swung about for his onslaught. Now that he knew this machine, how splendidly it responded to him—his horse of the wind, that he would ride into liberated Jerusalem—and at last, at last, into the presence of the Saviour on earth?

  Ya-a-a!

  Alongside him, another flyer, two men upon it. His fingers stabbed for the controls. Agony seared. "Mother of God, have mercy!" His steed was slain. It toppled through emptiness. At least he would die in battle. Though the forces of Satan had prevailed against him, they would not against the gates of Heaven that stood wide for Christ's soldier.

  His soul whirled from him, away into night.

  24 May 1987

  "The ambush worked almost perfectly," Carlos Navarro reported to Everard. "When we spotted him from space, we activated the electromagnetic generator and jumped to his vicinity. The field it projected induced voltages that caused his machine to give him a severe electric shock. Disabled it, too, scrambled the electronics. But you know this. We gave him a stun shot to make sure and plucked him out of the air before he hit the ground. Meanwhile the cargo carrier appeared, scooped up the crippled vehicle, and made off. Everything was complete in less than two minutes. I suppose a number of men glimpsed us, but it would have been fleetingly, and in the general confusion of battle."

  "Good work," said Everard. He leaned back in his shabby old armchair. His New York apartment surrounded them, comfortable with souvenirs—Bronze Age helmet and spears above the bar, polar bear rug from Viking Age Greenland on the floor, stuff such as would not cause outsiders to wonder much but did hold memories for him.

  He hadn't gone on the mission. No reason thus to waste an Unattached agent's lifespan. There had been no danger, except that Castelar would be too quick and get away. The electric gimmick prevented that.

  "As a matter of fact," he said, "your operation is part of history." He gestured at the volume of Prescott on an end table beside him. "I've been reading that. The Spanish chronicles describe apparitions of the Virgin above the burning hall of Viracocha, where the cathedral was later built, and of Saint James on the battlefield, inspiring the troops. That's generally taken to be a pious legend, or an account of hysterical illusions, but—ah, well. How's the prisoner?"

  "When I left him, he was resting under sedation," Navarro replied. "His burns will heal without scars. What will they do with him?"

  "That depends on a number of things." Everard took his pipe from the ashtray where he had laid it and coaxed it back to life. "High on the list is Stephen Tamberly. You know about him?"

  "Yes." Navarro scowled. "Unfortunately, though unavoidably, the current surge through the vehicle wiped the molecular record of where and when it's traveled. Castelar's gotten a preliminary kyradex quiz—we knew you'd want to know—and doesn't recall the place and date he left Tamberly at, merely that it was thousands of years ago and near the Pacific coast of South America. He knew he could retrieve the exact data if he wanted to, and rather doubted he would. Therefore he didn't bother memorizing the coordinates."

  Everard sighed. "I was afraid of that. Poor Wanda."

  "Sir?"

  "Never mind." Everard consoled himself with smoke. "You may leave. Go out on the town and enjoy yourself."

  "Wouldn't you like to come along?" Navarro asked diffidently.

  Everard shook his head. "I'll sit tight for a while. It's barely possible that Tamberly found some way to get rescued. If so, he was brought first to one of our bases for debriefing, and inquiry has shown I'm involved in his case, and I'll be informed. Naturally, that couldn't be before we wind up this job otherwise. Maybe I'll get a call soon."

  "I see. Thank you. Good-bye."

  Navarro departed. Everard settled back down. Dusk seeped into the room, but he didn't turn on the lights. He wanted just to sit thinking, and quietly hoping.

  18 August 2930 B.C.

  Where the river met the sea, the village clustered its houses of clay. Only two dugout canoes lay drawn up on the shore, for fishers were out on this calm day. Most women were likewise gone, cultivating small patches of gourd, squash, potato, and cotton at the edge of the mangrove swamp. Smoke lifted slow from the communal fire that an old person always tended. Other women and aged men had tasks to do in their homes, while small children took care of smaller. Folk wore brief skirts of twisted fiber, ornaments of shell, teeth, feathers. They laughed and chattered.

  The Vesselmaker sat cross-legged in the doorway of his dwelling. Today he did not shape pots and bowls or bake them hard. Instead, he stared into space and kept silence. He often did, since he learned the speech of men and began his wondrous labors. It must be respected. He was kindly, but these fits came upon him. Perhaps he planned a beautiful new piece of work, or perhaps he communed with spirits. Certainly he was a special being, with his great height, pale skin and hair and eyes, enormous whiskers. A cape decked him against the sun, which he found harsher than common folk did. Inside the house, his woman ground wild seeds in her mortar. Their two living infants slept.

  Shouts arose. The field tillers swarmed into sight. People in the village hurried to see what this meant. The Vesselmaker rose and followed them.

  Along the riverbank came a stranger striding. Visitors were frequent, mainly bringing trade goods, but nobody had seen this man before. He looked much like anyone else, though heavier muscled. His garb was noticeably different. Something hard and shiny rested in a sheath on his hip.

  Where could he be from? Surely hunters would days ago have noticed a newcomer making his way down the valley. The women squealed when he hailed them. The old men gestured them back and offered seemly greeting.

  The Vesselmaker arrived.

  For a long while Tamberly and the explorer stood gaze upon gaze. He's of the local race. Odd how calm the knowledge was in him, now when at last time had brought him to the goal of his yearnings. Would be. Best not to raise extra questions, even in the heads of simple Stone Agers. How'd he plan to explain that sidearm?

  The explorer nodded. "I half expected this," he said in slow Temporal. "Do you understand me?"

  The language had rusted in Tamberly. However—"I do. Welcome. You're what I've waited for these past . . . seven years, I think."

  "I am Guillem Cisneros. Thirtieth-century born, but with the Universarium of Halla."—in a milieu after time travel had been achieved and could therefore be done openly.

  "And I, Stephen Tamberly, twentieth century, field historian for the Patrol."

  Cisneros laughed. "A handshake is appropriate."

  The villagers watched in dumbstruck awe.

  "You were marooned here?" Cisneros asked redundantly.

  "Yes. The Patrol must be told. Take me to a base."

  "Certainly. I hid my vehicle about ten kilometers upstream." Cisneros hesitated. "My object was to pose as a wanderer, stay for a time, try to solve an archaeological mystery. I suspect you are the answer to it."

  "I am," Tamberly said. "When I realized I was trapped unless help should come, I remembered the Valdivia ware."

  The most ancient ceramics known in the western hemisphere, as of his home period. Almost a duplicate of the contemporaneous Jomon pottery in archaic Japan. The conventional explanation was that a fishing boat was blown across the Pacific, and the crew found refuge where they landed and taught the art to the natives. It didn't make much sense. More than eight thousand nautical miles to survive; and those men just happened to possess a set of intricate skills which in their society were the province of women. "So I provided it, and waited for somebody from the future to come looking."

  He hadn't entirely violated the law for which the Patrol existed. It was necessarily flexible. Under the circumstances, his return was important.

  "You were ingenious," Cisneros said. "How was your life here?"

  "They're sweet people
," Tamberly answered.

  It will hurt, saying farewell to Aruna and the little ones. If I were a saint, I'd never have accepted her father's offer of her to me. Those seven years grew very long, and I didn't know if they would ever end. My family will miss me, but I'll leave them with such mana that she'll soon get a new husband—a strong provider, probably Ulamamo—and they'll live as well and gladly as any of their tribe. Which in its humble fashion is better than a lot of human beings live much farther up in time.

  He could not quite shed doubts and guilt, and knew he never would, but joy awakened. I'm going home.

  25 May 1987

  Soft light. Fine china, silverware, glass. I don't know if Ernie's is the top restaurant in San Francisco—matter of taste, that—but it's sure in the top ten. Except Manse has said he'd like to take me back to the nineteen-seventies, before the owners of the Mingei-Ya retired.

  He raises his sherry. "To the future," he says.

  I do the same. "And the past." Clink. Magnificent stuff.

  "We can talk now." When he smiles, his face kind of creases and isn't homely at all. "I'm sorry we couldn't earlier, aside from my calling to let you know your uncle's okay and invite you to dinner, but I've been hopping around like a flea on a griddle, tying up loose ends in this case."

  Tease him. "Couldn't you have done it and then ducked back several hours to let me off the hook?"

  He goes serious. Oh, a lot of unspoken sorrow in his voice. "No. That would have cut things too close. We're allowed our pleasure jaunts in the Patrol, but not when they'd tangle events."

  "Aw, Manse, I was kidding." Reach across the linen, pat his hand. "I'm getting a great meal out of this, am I not?" And a slinky dress on me, and my hair brushed just so.

  "You've earned it," he says, more relieved than a big tough guy who's rambled from end to end of space-time reality ought to be.

  Enough of this, for the time being. Too much to ask. "What about Uncle Steve? You told me how he released himself, but not where he is."

  Manse chuckles. "That's hardly relevant, is it? A debriefing center somewhere and somewhen. He'll spend a long furlough with his wife in London before returning to duty. I'm sure he'll visit you and the rest of his kin. Be patient."

  "And . . . afterward?"

  "Well, we do have to terminate matters in a way that leaves the time structure intact. We'll put Fray Estebán Tanaquil and Don Luis Castelar in that treasure house in Cajamarca, 1533, a minute or two after the Exaltationists bore them away. They'll exit on foot, and that will be that."

  Frown. "Uh, you mentioned before that the guards got worried, looked inside, and found nobody. It caused a nasty sensation. Can you change that?"

  He beams. "Smart lady! Excellent question. Yes, in such cases, when the past has been deformed, the Patrol does annul the events that flow from it. We restore the 'original' history, so to speak. As nearly as possible, anyhow."

  Concern, oddly hurtful. "Luis, though. After what he's been through."

  Manse takes a sip, twirls his glass between his fingers, stares into the amber it holds. "We considered inviting him to enroll, but his values are incompatible with ours. He will receive secrecy conditioning. It's harmless in itself, but makes a person unable to reveal anything about time travel. If he tries, and he will, his throat squeezes shut and his tongue locks on him. He'll soon stop trying."

  Shake my head. "For him, terrible."

  Manse stays calm. He's like a mountain, small shy flowers scattered around, but underneath them, that rock mass. "Would you rather we killed him, or wiped his memories and left him mindless? In spite of the woe he gave us, we bear no grudge."

  "He does!"

  "Uh-huh. He doesn't attack your uncle in the treasury, because Fray Tanaquil opens the door at once and tells the sentries that he's done. However, it wouldn't be wise keeping Fray Tanaquil around. In the morning he wanders off, as if to take a stroll while he meditates, and nobody sees him again. The soldiers miss him, he was such a nice fellow, and search, and fail, and decide at last that he came to grief in some unknown way. Don Luis tells them he knows nothing." Manse sighs. "We'll have to write off the holography project. Well, maybe someone can go to those objects when they were in their rightful places. We'll plant new agents to monitor the rest of Pizarro's career. Your uncle will get a different assignment. He may well elect to go into administration, as his wife wishes he would."

  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.