The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  “Uh-huh. As a liar, you have neither talent, experience, nor desire.”

  “Right.” Briefly, she touched his arm. “And I’m doing it to them,”

  “The price we pay. I should have put you in touch with your uncle Steve. He could make you feel better about it.”

  “I thought of that, but you—well—”

  He smiled ruefully. “Father figure?”

  “I don’t know. I truly don’t. I mean, well, yes, you’re high in the Patrol and you rescued me and you’ve sponsored me and, and everything, but I—It’s hard getting in touch with my feelings—Psychobabble! I think I want to think of you as a friend but don’t quite dare.”

  “Let’s see what we can do about that,” he suggested, calmer on the outside than the inside. Damn, but she’s attractive.

  She looked around her. “Where are you headed?”

  “I thought we could park on Twin Peaks and talk. The sky’s clear, the view’s superb, and nobody else who happens to be there will pay any attention to us.”

  She hesitated an instant. “Okay.”

  Could be preliminary to a seduction. Which’ d be fine under different circumstances. However, as is—“When we’re finished, I look forward to the beanery you’ve picked. Then, if you aren’t too tired, I know an Irish pub off lower Clement Street where they blarney and sing and two or three middle-aged, gentlemanly working stiffs will doubtless ask you to dance.”

  He could hear that she understood what he was saying. “Sounds great. I never heard of it. You do get around, don’t you?”

  “In random fashion.” He kept conversation easy while he drove, and sensed that already her spirits were lifting.

  Magnificence spread below the mountain, city like a galaxy of million-hued stars, bridges a-soar over shimmering waters toward heights where homes gleamed beyond counting. Wind boomed, full of sea. It was too cold to stand in for long. While they did, her hand sought his. When they took shelter in the car, soon she leaned against him and he put an arm about her shoulder; and at last, gently, once, they kissed.

  What she had to say was what he had awaited. Demons needed exorcising. Her guilt toward her family was genuine, yet also the mask of a hundred fears. The first excitement, that she—she!—could join the Time Patrol, had inevitably waned. Nobody was able to sustain such joy. There followed the interviews, tests, preliminary study material, and the thinking, the thinking.

  All is flux. Reality eddies changeful upon ultimate quantum chaos. Not only is your life forever in danger, the fact of your ever having lived is, with the whole world and its history that you know.

  You will be denied foreknowledge of your triumphs, because that would make more likely your disasters. As nearly as may be, you shall work from cause to effect, without turn or twist, like any other mortal. Paradox is the enemy.

  You will have the capability of going back and visiting again your beloved dead, but you shall not, for you might feel temptation to fend off death from them, and you would surely feel your heart torn asunder.

  Over and over, helpless to help, you will dwell amidst sorrow and horror.

  We guard what is. We may not ask whether it should be. We had best not ask what “is” means.

  “I don’t know, Manse, I just don’t know. Do I have the strength? The wisdom, the discipline, the … the hardness? Should I quit while I can, take silence conditioning, go back to the life … my folks hoped I’d have?”

  “Aw, now, things aren’t that bad, they just seem that way. And ought to, at this stage. If you didn’t have the intelligence and sensitivity to wonder, worry, yes, fear—why, you wouldn’t belong in the corps.

  “—doing science, studying prehistoric life. I more’n half envy you. Earth was a planet fit for gods, unbelievable, before civilization mucked it up.

  “—no harm to your parents or anybody. Just a secret you keep from them. Don’t tell me you were always absolutely frank at home! And in fact, there’ll be undercover helps you can give them that’d be impossible otherwise.

  “—centuries of lifespan, and never sick a single day.

  “—friendship. Some pretty splendid people in our ranks.

  “—fun. Experiences. Living to the hilt. Come a furlough, how’d you like to see the Parthenon when it was new or Chrysopolis when it will be new, on Mars? Camp out in Yellowstone before Columbus sailed, then stand on the dock at Huelva and wave him bon voyage? Watch Nijinksy dance or Garrick play Lear or Michelangelo paint? You name it, and within reasonable limits, you’ve got an excellent chance it can be arranged. Not to mention parties we throw among ourselves. Imagine what a mixed gang!

  “—you know damn well you won’t back out. It’s not in your nature. So go for broke.”

  —until she hugged him a final time and said shakily, between tears and laughter, “Yes. You’re right. Oh, thank you, Manse, thank you. You’ve put my head straight, and in … in … why, less than two hours, hasn’t it been?”

  “Naw, I didn’t do much, except nudge you toward the decision you were bound to reach.” Everard shifted his legs, cramped after sitting. “It made me hungry, though. How about that dinner?”

  “You know it!” she exclaimed, as eager as he for escape into lightness. “You mentioned clam chowder on the phone—”

  “Doesn’t have to be,” he said, touched that she remembered. “Whatever you want. Name it.”

  “Well, we were talking small and unfancy, plus delicious, and I thought of Ernie’s Neptune Fish Grotto on Irving Street.”

  “Tally-ho.” He started the car.

  As they wound downward, losing the galaxy and the wind that roared above it, she turned pensive. “Manse?”

  “Yes?”

  “When I called you in New York, some music was playing in the background. I suppose you were having yourself a concert.” She smiled. “I can see you, shoes off, feet up, pipe in one hand and beer mug in the other. What was it? Something Baroque, sounded like, and I imagined I knew Baroque, sort of, but this was strange to me and … and beautiful, and I’d like to get a copy of that cassette.”

  He harked back. “Not exactly a cassette. I use equipment from uptime when I’m alone. But, sure, I’ll be glad to transcribe for you. It’s Bach. The St. Mark Passion.”

  “What? Wait a minute!”

  Everard nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t exist today, apart from a few fragments. Never published. But on Good Friday, 1731, a time traveler brought disguised recording gear to the cathedral in Leipzig.”

  She shivered. “That makes goose bumps.”

  “Uh-huh. Another value of chronokinesis, and another perk of being in the Patrol.”

  She turned her head and considered him. “You aren’t the simple Garrison Keillor farm boy you claim to be, are you?” she murmured. “No, not at all.”

  He shrugged. “Why can’t a farm boy enjoy Bach along with his meat and potatoes?”

  209 B.C.

  About four miles northeast of Bactra, a spring rose in a grove of poplars, halfway up a low hill. It had long been sacred to the god of underground waters. Folk brought offerings there in hopes of protection from earthquake, drought, and murrain on their livestock. When Theonis endowed remodeling of the shrine and rededication to Poseidon, with a regular priest coming out of the city from time to time to conduct rites, no one objected. They simply identified this deity with theirs, continued using the old name if they wished, and felt they might well have gained some special benefits for their horses.

  Approaching, Everard saw the trees first. Their leaves shivered silvery in the morning airs. They surrounded a low earthen wall with an entry but no gate. It simply defined the temenos, the holy ground. Uncounted generations of feet had beaten hard the path toward it.

  Elsewhere stretched trampled fields where some farmsteads stood intact but abandoned; others had become smoldering ash and blackened adobe. The invaders hadn’t begun systematically plundering, nor had they ventured against the settlements close to the city. That would soon happen.


  Their camp stood two miles south, thence reaching in ordered ranks of tents within a ditch and embankment. The royal pavilion lifted gaudily hued above the plain leather that housed the grunts. Pennons fluttered and standards gleamed. Metal flashed too, on men at their posts. Smoke drifted from fires. A muted surf of noise came to Everard, tramping, shouting, neighing, clangor. Afar, several parties of mounted scouts raised dust clouds as they cantered about.

  Nobody had molested him, but he had bided his time, watchful, till none were near his route. Else he might have gotten killed on general principles; he didn’t think the Syrians were ready yet to take captives for the slave market. Nor were they prepared to hazard Poseidon’s wrath—especially after the king’s aide Polydorus issued orders to that effect. It was a relief to enter the grove. The shade against the rising heat of the day was like a benison itself.

  It scarcely eased the grimness within him.

  The temple occupied most of its unpaved court although it was not much bigger now than when it had been just a shrine. Three steps led to a portico supported by four Corinthian columns, before a windowless building. The pillars were stone, perhaps veneer, and the roof ruddy tile. Everything else was whitewashed mud brick. Nothing fancier was expected at such a minor halidom, and of course to Raor it would have served its entire purpose when it had been the scene of two or three meetings between Draganizu and Buleni.

  Two women squatted in a corner of the temenos. The young one held a baby to her breast. The old one clutched a half-eaten round of chapatti that, with a clay water jug, must be the entire rations they had. Their peasant gowns were torn and dirtied. When Everard appeared, they huddled back against the wall and terror overrode the exhaustion in their faces.

  A man emerged from the temple’s single entrance. He wore a plain but decent white tunic. Shuffling bent, almost toothless, squinting and blinking, he could be as old as sixty or as young as forty. Before scientific medicine, unless you were upper class you needed a lot of luck to reach middle age still in good health, if you reached it at all. Twentieth-century intellectuals call technofixes dehumanizing, Everard recollected.

  The man wasn’t senile, however. “Rejoice, O stranger, if you come peacefully,” he said in Greek. “Know that this precinct is sacred, and though the Kings Antiochus and Euthydemus be at war, both have declared it sanctuary.”

  Everard lifted his palm, saluting. “I am a pilgrim, reverend father,” he averred.

  “Eh? Not me, not me. I’m no priest, only the caretaker here, Dolon, slave to the priest Nicomachus,” replied the other. Evidently he lived in a hut somewhere nearby and was present during the day. “Truly a pilgrim? How did you ever hear of our little naos? Are you sure you’ve not gone astray?” He drew close, stopped, peered dubiously. “Are you indeed a pilgrim? We can’t let anybody in for warlike purposes.”

  “I am no soldier.” Everard’s cloak draped over his sword, not that a traveler could be blamed for going armed. “I’ve come a weary way to find the temple of Poseidon that stands outside the City of the Horse.”

  Dolon shook his head. “Have you food along? I can offer nothing. Supplies are cut off. I’ve no idea when anything will get through to sustain me, let alone anybody else.” He glanced at the women. “I dreaded a pack of fugitives, but it seems most countryfolk got into town or elsewhere in time.”

  Everard’s belly growled. He ignored it and the pang. A man in good shape and properly trained could go several days without eating before he weakened significantly. “I ask for no more than water.”

  “Holy water, from the god’s own well, remember. What brings you here?” Suspicion sharpened. “How can you know about this temple when it’s only been Poseidon’s these past few months?”

  Everard had his story prepared. “I am Androcles from Thrace,” he said. That half-barbarian region, its interior little known to Greeks, could plausibly have bred a man his size. “An oracle there told me last year that if I came to Bactria, I’d find a temple of the god outside the royal city, and help for my trouble. I mustn’t tell you about that trouble, except that I haven’t sinned, I’m not impure.”

  “A prophecy, then, a foreseeing of the future,” Dolon breathed. He wasn’t awed into immediate acceptance. “Did you travel all that way alone? Hundreds of parasangs, wasn’t it?”

  “No, no, I paid to accompany caravans and the like. I was in one such, bound for Bactra at last, when news came of a hostile army moving in. The caravan master turned back. I couldn’t bear to, but rode on, believing the god I seek would look after me. Yesterday a robber band—peasants made homeless and desperate, I think—waylaid me. They got my horse and baggage mule, but by the god’s grace I escaped, and continued afoot. So here I am.”

  “You’ve suffered many woes indeed,” said Dolon, turning sympathetic. “What must you do now?”

  “Wait till the god gives me, uh, further instructions. I suppose that will be in a dream.”

  “Well, now—well—I don’t know. This is, is irregular. Ask the priest. He’s in the city, but they should let him come out to … see to things.”

  “No, please! I told you I’m vowed to silence. If the priest asks questions, and I refuse to answer, and he insists—wouldn’t the Earthshaker be angered?”

  “Well, but—”

  “See here,” Everard proposed, hoping he came across as both forceful and friendly, “I have a purse of money left. Once I’ve gotten my sign from the god, I mean to make a substantial donation. A gold stater.” It was the rough equivalent of a thousand 1980’s U.S. dollars, insofar as comparisons of purchasing power between different milieus meant anything. “I should think that would let you—the temple buy what you need from the Syrians for a long time to come.”

  Dolon hesitated.

  “It’s the god’s will at work,” Everard pursued. “You wouldn’t thwart his will, I’m sure. He helps me, I help you. All I ask is to wait in peace till the miracle happens. Call me a fugitive. See.” He reached down, opened the purse, took forth several drachmas. “Plenty of money, if nothing else. Let me give you this for yourself. You deserve it. For me, it’s a deed of piety.”

  Dolon trembled a moment more, reached decision, and held out his hands. “Very well, very well, pilgrim. The gods do move in mysterious ways.”

  Everard paid him. “Let me go inside now, to pray and to drink of the god’s bounty, become his guest in truth. Afterward I’ll sit quietly out here and bother nobody.”

  The cool dimness kissed sweaty, dusty skin and dry lips. The spring bubbled up at the center, out of a slope on which the foundation rested. It partly filled a hole in the floor, then drained through a pipe inside the masonry, which must lead under the temenos wall to a rivulet in its natural channel. Behind was a rough stone block, the ancient altar. The image of Poseidon stood painted on the rear wall, barely discernible in this light. Elsewhere on the floor lay a clutter of offerings, mostly crude clay models of houses, beasts, or human organs that the god was thought to have aided. No doubt priest Nicomachus took whatever was perishable or valuable back with him when he returned to town from his visits.

  Your simple faith hasn’t availed you much, folks, has it? Everard thought sadly.

  Dolon made reverence. Everard followed suit as best he was able, about as well as you would expect of a Thracian. Kneeling, the caretaker dipped a cup of water and gave it to the suppliant. In Everard’s present state, the icy tang was more welcome than a beer. His prayer of thanks came close to sincerity.

  “I will leave you alone with the god for a while,” Dolon said. “You may fill yonder jug for yourself and, duly grateful, carry it out.” Bowing to the icon, he left.

  I’d better not take long, the Patrolman realized. However, a little comfort and privacy, a chance to think—

  His plans were vague. The objective was to get into the Syrian camp and find the military surgeon Caletor of Oinoparas, known at home as Hyman Birnbaum and, like Everard, long since given a regenerative procedure enablin
g him to live among pagans without drawing comment. Maybe they could invent some excuse to go off together, maybe Birnbaum could arrange for Everard’s unhindered departure. What counted was to take a transceiver sufficiently many miles away that the Exaltationist instruments wouldn’t detect a call, above the faint intermittent background of communication between unheeding time travelers elsewhere in the world. Let the Patrol know what Everard had learned, so it could prepare a trap.

  Though judging by what I’ve discovered about their precautions, the likelihood of our bagging all four is very small Damn. God damn.

  Never mind. The immediate need was to reach Birnbaum, with enemy troops apt to skewer a stranger on sight. He might deter them by shouting that he bore a vital message, but then he’d be haled before officers who’d want to know what it was, and if he named Caletor, the surgeon would surely be examined too—under torture, when it turned out neither man had anything convincing to say.

  He’d come to the temple in hopes of finding somebody in charge with more authority than the slave, an under-priest or acolyte or whatever. From such a person he might have gotten religious tokens, an escort, or the like, passing him through the Syrian pickets tomorrow. If he demonstrated his flashlight and said Poseidon had personally given it to him in the night—Of course, that must wait till Nicomachus-Draganizu had met with Polydorus-Buleni and both had left again. Everard had considered not arriving here before then; but skulking about this countryside meanwhile was at least as dangerous as sitting unobtrusively in the court, and he just might observe something useful—

  The scheme had been precarious at best. Now it looked ridiculous. Well, maybe a fresh notion will occur. He grinned, largely a snarl. An action too unsubtle for them, same as yesterday only more so.

  He went out into sunlight that briefly overwhelmed vision. “I think already I felt the god’s nearness, strengthening me,” he said weightily. “I believe I am doing what he wants, and you are, Dolon. Let’s not go astray.”