The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  Jammed against walls, leaning out of windows and over rooftops, folk watched them go past, waved, cheered, wept. Women held infants up, crying against all hope, “See! See your child,——” and a beloved name. Oldsters blinked, peered, shook their heads, more nearly resigned to the caprices of the gods. Boys shouted loudest, sure that the enemy’s doom would soon be upon him.

  The soldiers never stopped. They were bound for their quarters, a gulp of water, assignments, immediate duty for some on the ramparts. Later, if the foe did not try to storm the gates, they’d get brief leaves in rotation. Then wineshops and joyhouses would fill.

  That wasn’t going to last, Everard knew. If nothing else, the city could not long feed so many animals. Zoilus and Creon had declared that granaries were well-stocked. The siege would not be a total encirclement. Properly guarded, people could take water from the river. Antiochus might try interdicting traffic on the stream with catapults, but he couldn’t stop many supply-laden barges. Under strong escort, an occasional caravan might actually make it overland from other parts of the kingdom. Still, there would only be fodder for a limited number of horses, mules, and camels. The rest must be slaughtered—unless Euthydemus used them in an early effort to break the Syrians.

  Short commons for the next couple of years. I’m sure glad I won’t be stuck here. Though how I’ll get out is, urn, problematical.

  Once this operation was completed, whether or not it had caught any Exaltationists, the Patrol would come in surreptitious fashion to look for Everard, if he hadn’t already called in; and, of course, they’d check to see whether Chandrakumar was okay, and remove their agent in Antiochus’ army. Until then, however, all were expendable. It mattered not that Everard was Unattached, thus more valuable than the other two, who made their respective careers as scientist and constable in this milieu. Everard was inside Bactra precisely because his capabilities were equal to a wide variety of unforeseeable situations. Shalten judged it likeliest by far that Raor would base herself here. Unless something went wildly awry, the man who accompanied Antiochus was a backup, no more. But rank made no difference now. What counted was getting the job done. If that cost the life of an Unattached agent, the loss to the corps would be heavy; but the gain was a future saved, everybody who would ever be born and everything they would ever do, learn, create, become. Not a bad bargain. His friends could grieve at their leisure.

  This is assuming we do block the bandits and, preferably, nail them.

  Records uptime said that the Patrol did succeed, at least in the first objective. But if it should fail, then those records had never existed, the Patrol was never founded, Manse Everard never lived…. He pushed the thought off, as he always did when it came to haunt him, and concentrated on his work.

  Rumor fanned agitation, Eastern excitability broke into flame, and turmoil filled the streets from gate to gate. It was camouflage for Everard as he went around and around, observing detail after detail, annotating the map in his head.

  Repeatedly he passed the house he had ascertained was Theonis’. Two-storied, it obviously surrounded a courtyard like other dwellings of the well-to-do. Though rather small of its kind, much less than Hipponicus’, it was faced with polished stone rather than stucco and boasted a porch, narrow but colonnaded beneath a basrelief frieze. Alleys separated it from its neighbors. The street on which it fronted held the mixture of residences and shops common in an absence of zoning laws. None of the nearby businesses were of a sort to stay open after dark, unless you counted Theonis’ own, and it did not advertise itself. That suited her purposes best. Good. It suits me too. His plan of action was taking shape.

  The populace couldn’t sit still. They sought friends, milled aimlessly about, consoled themselves at foodstalls and wineshops where prices had gone into orbit. Hookers, of either sex or none, and cutpurses did a booming trade. Everard had some trouble late in the day finding places open that would sell him what he wanted, mainly a knife and a long rope. He too paid more than he should; the sellers were in no mood to haggle much. The city was hysterical. In due course it would settle down to the long grind of beleaguerment.

  Unless Euthydemus sallies and wins. No, no way can he do that. But if he dies trying, and Antiochus enters—the Syrians will doubtless sack Bactra. Poor Hipponicus and family. Poor city. Poor future.

  When racket of battle surfed unmistakable over the walls, Everard saw panic erupt. He betook himself elsewhere, fast, but spied guardsmen making for the scene. They must have quelled the disturbance before it touched off a riot, for the swarms began ebbing out of the streets. People realized they’d best get home, or wherever they might find shelter, and stay put.

  Presently the noise receded. Trumpets pealed triumph on the battlements. It wasn’t really, he knew. The Syrians had merely harassed the Bactrian rear guard until the last of it went through and archers kept off further attack long enough for the gates to be shut. Thereupon the invaders withdrew to make camp. The sun was almost down, the pavements overshadowed. On that account, as well as being emotionally wrung dry, few inhabitants ventured back outside to celebrate.

  Everard found a foodstall not yet closed, ate and drank sparingly, sat down on the plinth of a statue’s base and rested. That was easier for his body than his mind. He sorely missed his pipe.

  Dusk deepened until the city brimmed with night. Coolness descended from stars and Milky Way. Everard got moving. Though he went as unobtrusively as he was able, in the quiet his footfalls sounded loud to him.

  Gandarian Street seemed empty of all but shadows. He slouched past Theonis’ house to make sure, before he returned to take stance a short distance from one corner of the porch. Now it was to act fast.

  He let the coiled fifty feet of hempen rope slither from his arm to the ground. In the end that he kept he had made a running noose. A cornice jutted from the entablature, wan against heaven. Adapted, his eyes saw it pretty clearly, though distances were tricky to gauge. The noose widened as he swung it around his head. At the right moment, he let fly.

  Damn! Not quite the right moment. He tautened, ready to flee. Nothing happened. Nobody had heard the slight impact. He drew the lasso back. On his third try, he caught the cornice and gave a silent whoop when the cord snugged tight. Not bad, considering.

  He wasn’t a celebrity hound, but after he’d decided roping was an art that might come in handy, he’d gone to the trouble of making acquaintance with an expert in 1910, who agreed to teach him. His hours with Will Rogers were among the pleasantest of his life.

  If he hadn’t seen a projection on the house, he’d have used some other way to get up, such as a ladder. He figured this was the least unsafe. Once he’d made his entry—what he did next depended on what he found. His hope was to retrieve some or all of his Patrol gear. If perchance then the whole Exaltationist gang were together for him to gun down—Hardly.

  He swarmed aloft and pulled the rope after him. Crouched on the tiles, he removed his sandals and tucked them into a fold of the cloak, which he rolled together and secured to his belt with a short length cut off the cord. The lariat itself he left fast, carrying a bight along as he padded to the ridge above the courtyard.

  There he stopped short. He had expected a well of blackness. Instead, light reached yellow fingers from the opposite side. They touched shrubbery around a pool where starlight glimmered. Oh, oh! Do I roost here till whoever that is has gone to bed, or what?

  After a moment: No. This might be too good to pass up. If I’m caught—he touched his sheathed knife—I should manage not to get taken alive. Bleakness blew away. And if I can pull it off, what a stunt! Toujours I’audace and damn the torpedoes.

  Nevertheless he lowered the rope, and at last himself, inch by inch.

  Jasmine kissed his face, night-fragrant. He used the hedge for cover while he wormed his way around. It was forever and it was an eyeblink before he hunched in a position to watch and listen.

  The heat of the day must still be oppressive inside, for a wind
ow stood open, uncurtained. From his blind of leaves, he saw straight into the room beyond, and voices floated clear. Luck, luck, luck! Ungratefully: About time I had some. His efforts had left him sweaty, dry-mouthed, skinned on an ankle, and itching in a dozen places he dared not scratch.

  He forgot that, observing.

  Raor alone could make a man forget everything else.

  The chamber was small, for intimate meetings. Wax tapers in gilt papyrus-shape candlesticks, extravagantly many, cast glow across a Persian rug; furnishings of ebony and rosewood inlaid with nacre; subtly erotic murals that would have done Alicia Austin proud. A man occupied a stool, the woman a couch. A girl was setting a tray of fruits and wine down on a table between them.

  Everard barely noticed her. Theonis lounged before him. She wore little jewelry; perhaps what gleamed on fingers, wrist, and bosom held electronics. The gown that fitted the curves and litheness of her was simply cut, thinly woven. She herself was the female of Merau Varagan, his clone mate, his anima. Enough.

  “You may go, Cassa,” her low voice sang more than said. “You and the other slaves are not to leave your quarters before dawn tonight, unless I call.” The eyes narrowed very slightly. It was as if their green shifted for a moment from the hue of malachite to that of seas breaking over a reef. “This is a strict command. Tell them.”

  Everard thought, though he wasn’t sure, that the girl shuddered. “Very good, my lady.” She backed out. He supposed the household staff lived dormitory style upstairs.

  Raor took a goblet and sipped. The man stirred on his seat. Clad in a blue-bordered white robe, he resembled her sufficiently to identify his race. The gray in his hair was probably artificial. The personality that spoke was forceful, though without the Varagan vividness. “Isn’t Sauvo back yet?”

  He used his birthtime language, which Everard had long since gotten imprinted. When this hunt ended, if it ever did, the Patrolman would be almost sorry to have those trills and purrs scrubbed from his brain. Not only was the tongue euphonious, it was precise and concise, so much so that a sentence might require an English paragraph to translate it, as if the speakers actually were telling each other what they both knew quite well.

  However, he couldn’t retain everything he learned in the course of his job. Memory capacity is finite, and there would be other hunts to come. There always were.

  “At any moment,” Raor said easily. “You are too impatient, Draganizu.”

  “We have spent years of lifespan already—”

  “Not much more than one.”

  “For you and Sauvo. For me, five, establishing this identity.”

  “Spend a few more days to protect the investment.” Raor smiled, and Everard’s heart missed a beat. “Fuming ill becomes a priest of Poseidon.”

  Oh-ho! Then that’s his alias. Theonis’ “kinsman.” Everard laid hold on the fact, gripped hard, stopped his slide down into infatuation.

  “And Buleni even longer, often in hardship and danger,” Draganizu continued.

  “The merrier for him,” Raor jested.

  “If Sauvo, then, can’t be troubled to time his arrivals—”

  Raor lifted a hand that Botticelli could have painted. Her dark-tressed head cocked. “Ah, I think that is he.”

  Another male Exaltationist entered. His beauty was harsher than Draganizu’s. He wore an ordinary tunic and sandals. Raor leaned a little forward, mercurially intent. “Did you lock the door behind you?” she demanded. “I didn’t hear.”

  “Of course,” Sauvo answered. “I’ve never forgotten, have I?” Discomfort crossed Draganizu’s visage. Maybe he had been absentminded in that respect. Once. Raor would have seen to it that he never was afterward. “Especially when the Patrol is on the prowl,” Sauvo added.

  So, Everard thought, their garage for timecycles is in a Bluebeard room on this floor … toward the rear, since that’s where Sauvo came from. …

  Draganizu half rose, sat back down, and asked anxiously, “It is, then? You have established it is active here-now?”

  Sauvo took another stool; in the ancient world, chairs with backs were rare, mostly for royalty. He helped himself to wine and a fig. “Not to fear, camarado. Whatever clues they came upon, they’ve misread. They think the trouble spot is elsewhere, years uptime. They sent a man to inquire here-now merely in the interests of thoroughness.”

  He related the story that Everard had told in the vihara. He got to Chandrakumar in prison and used a kyradex on him, the Patrolman realized. No secrets any more. But most of what Sauvo learned ain’t so. Thanks, Shalten.

  “Another change-scheme!” Draganizu exclaimed.

  “Ours will nullify it and its operators,” Raor murmured. “But first, yes, it would be interesting to learn more about them. Perhaps even to contact them—” Her words stole off into silence, like a snake after prey.

  “First,” Draganizu said sharply, “we have the fact that this … Holbrook … broke free and is running loose.”

  Raor recalled herself to immediacy. “At ease, at ease. We have his weapons and communication equipment.”

  “When he doesn’t report in—”

  “I doubt the Patrol expects to hear from him at once. Set him aside for the present, together with those conspirators. We have more urgent matters at hand.”

  Draganizu turned to Sauvo and asked, “How did you obtain privacy for interrogation?”

  “You haven’t heard?” His fellow was faintly surprised.

  “I only got here a few minutes ago. I have been busy with affairs of my Nicomachus persona. Raor’s note said nothing but ‘Come.’”

  Hand-delivered by a slave, Everard deduced. No radio. Maybe she feels confident still, but the “Holbrook” business has made her ultra-cautious.

  Silken shoulders rose and fell. “I had persuaded Zoilus to arrange solitary detention for any prisoners taken in this matter,” Raor said. “I told him that my connections led me to believe they are dangerous spies.”

  And when guards and prisoners at the hoosegow were mostly asleep, Sauvo used a timecycle to pop into the cell. Raor was willing to allow that much risk; she didn’t figure it was likely the Patrol had anyone in Bactra besides Chandrakumar and Holbrook, one now locked away, the other deprived of his gear and on the lam. Sauvo gave Chandrakumar a stun beam, clapped the kyradex on his head, and when he came to, interviewed him. Thoroughly.

  I hope he left the little guy alive. Yes, he doubtless did. Why make the jailers wonder? What could Chandrakumar tell them tomorrow that’d show them he was anything but a lunatic?

  Draganizu stared at Raor. “You do have him besotted, do you not?” he said.

  “Him and several more,” Sauvo responded, while Raor demurely sipped her wine. He laughed. “The seething, jealous looks that Majordomo Xeniades gets! And I’m only supposed to be her employee, not her pimp.”

  Ah. Sauvo is Xeniades, chief of the household staff. Worth remembering…. I sympathize with Zoilus and company. Wouldn’t I love to get milady in the sack myself? Everard’s grin twisted. Though I wouldn’t dare fall asleep in her arms. She might have a hypo of cyanide tucked away in those raven locks.

  “The Greeks are holding Chandrakumar for us, then,” Draganizu said. “But what of the equipment that Holbrook had?”

  “He left it behind when he went out, at the house of the man in whose company he arrived,” Raor explained. “That person is simply a local merchant. He was dismayed when the squad came to say his guest is a spy and confiscate the guest’s baggage. We have no reason to make further trouble for this Hipponicus, and in fact, obviously, it would be unwise.” That’s a relief! “As for the baggage, it is here.” Her smile curved feline. “That took a little persuasion too, but Zoilus obliged. He has his ways. I have passed instruments over the property. Most is of this era. Some contains Patrol apparatus.”

  I guess she stowed it with the timecycles.

  Raor set her goblet down and sat straight. Metal rang in the liquid tones. “It shows we must
be warier than ever. Overleaping space-time to get access to the prisoner was taking a necessary chance.”

  “Not a substantial one.” Sauvo presumably wanted to remind her, and perhaps inform Draganizu, that he had maintained this beforehand and that events had justified him. “Holbrook was no more than a courier, and of low grade. Physically formidable, but now his teeth are drawn, and it is clear that his intellect is limited.”

  Thanks, buddy.

  “Still,” Raor said, “we must track him down and dispose of him before he somehow gets in touch with others, or before the Patrol takes alarm and comes looking for him.”

  “They won’t know where to look. They will need days merely to gather the first clues.”

  “We need not help them,” Raor clipped. “If we can detect electronics, nucleonics, gravitronics, chronokinesis in action, so can they, and at much greater range. We must not give them any hint that any time travelers other than themselves are present. Between tonight and the climax, we use no more high technology. Is that understood?”

  “Unless in emergency,” Sauvo persisted. Yeah, he’s trying to assert himself, trying not to be overwhelmed by the Varagan.

  “That emergency would likely be so extreme that our only course is to abandon this whole effort and scuttle off.” Raor’s scorn softened. “Which would be a pity. It’s gone gloriously thus far.”

  Draganizu had his own self-assertion to make, in his own more querulous style. “Glorious, pleasurable, for you.”

  He got a look that could have frozen helium. “If you think I enjoy the attentions of Zoilus and his kind, you are welcome to them.”

  Their nerves are wearing thin, after all the long underground toil. They’re mortal too. It encouraged.

  Raor relaxed again, took up her wine, crooned, “I admit the puppeting of them has its interest.”