The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  “And almost in Perú, and did it in Phoenicia,” he replied, not as a boast but because it seemed she had the imperial right to know.

  “You are no ordinary animal, then.” Venom slid into the softness. “Nevertheless, an animal. The apes have triumphed. The universe has lost any meaning it ever held.”

  “What … would you … have done with it?”

  The glorious head lifted. Pride rang. “We would have made it what we chose, and unmade and remade it, and stormed the stars as we warred for possession, with an entire reality the funeral pyre of each who fell and entire histories the funeral games, until the last god reigned alone.”

  Desire blew out of him on a winter wind. Suddenly he wanted to be home, among homely things and old friends. “Secure her, Ruszek,” he ordered. Through the transceiver: “Come join us and let’s get this business finished.”

  1902 A.D.

  Shalten’s flat in Paris was large and luxurious, but on the Left Bank overlooking the Boulevard St. Germain. Had he chosen that street purposely? He did have a devious sense of humor. To Everard he remarked that he enjoyed the Bohemian life around him and his neighbors were used to eccentrics, paying him no special notice.

  It was a warm fall afternoon. Windows admitted air that smelled slightly of smoke, richly of horse droppings. An occasional automobile stuttered among the wagons and carriages. Between soot-gray walls, under trees where green had begun turning yellow and brown, people thronged the sidewalks. Cafés, boutiques, boulangeries, patisseries did lively trade. The noise that rolled in was full of cheer. Everard tried not to remember that in a dozen years this world would crash to ruin.

  The clutter around him, furniture, hangings, pictures, books, busts, bric-à-brac, declared a solidity that had endured and accumulated since the Congress of Vienna. But he recognized a few of the objects from California, 1987. That was quite another world, remote as a dream—a nightmare?

  He leaned back in his armchair. Leather creaked, horsehair rustled. He puffed on his pipe. “We had a little trouble finding Chandrakumar,” he finished, “not knowing where in the jail he was. Prisoners in several cells got an astonishing vision. But we did locate him and take him out. He hadn’t been harmed. I admit that added to the mess we’d already made, apparitions and vanishings and everything else. It might’ve caused a real sensation in peacetime. People then had too much else on their minds, though, and in crises, you always get a lot of hysterical stories flying about. They’re soon forgotten. The field report I’ve seen says history is intact. But you’ve surely seen it too.”

  History. The stream of events, great and small, running from cavemen to the Danellians. But what about the eddies, the bubbles, the insignificant little individuals and happenings that are also soon forgotten, whose being or nonbeing makes no difference to the course of the stream? I’d like to go back and find out what became of my trekmates, Hipponicus, those two women and the baby. … No. I’ve only so much lifespan left me, whatever the length of it turns out to be, and it’ll hold heartbreak enough. Maybe they survived okay.

  Seated opposite, Shalten nodded above his churchwarden. “Naturally,” he said. “Not that I ever feared. You might or might not have laid the Exaltationists by the heels—congratulations on your success—but you were certain to act in an informed and responsible manner. Besides, that is a particularly stable section of space-time.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hellenistic Syria was important, but Bactria lay on the fringe of that civilization. Its influence was always marginal, at most. After Antiochus and Euthydemus made peace—”

  Yeah, a nice reconciliation, the prince marrying the princess, everything lovey-dovey again, and who cares about a lot of killing, maiming, raping, looting, burning, famine, pestilence, impoverishment, enslavement, hopes crushed and lives broken? All in the day’s work, if you’re a government

  “—Antiochus, as you know, proceeded to India, but achieved nothing. His real interests lay in the West. When Demetrius succeeded to the Bactrian throne, he in his turn invaded India, but a fresh usurper rose behind his back and took Bactria itself from him. Civil strife followed.” The big bald head shook. “I must admit that the genius of the Greeks never extended to statecraft.”

  “True,” murmured Everard. “In, uh, 1981, I think it is, they’ll take for their prime minister a professor from Berkeley.”

  Shalten blinked, shrugged the interruption off, and proceeded: “By 135 B.C., Bactria had fallen to the nomads. They were not inhumane, but under them civilization withered. The Hellenic dynasty in western India had meanwhile been absorbed culturally by its subjects, and it did not long outlive its northern cousin. It had had no lasting effect worth mention, and the memory of it faded fast.”

  “I know,” said Everard, annoyed.

  “I did not mean to patronize you,” Shalten replied blandly, “only to make clear my point. Greek Bactria was as safe a piece of history as we could find to lure the Exaltationists to. It had never much mattered to the rest of the world, and an extraordinary concatenation of fantastically implausible occurrences, not just there but around the entire Hellenistic sphere, would have been required to change this. Therefore, by the law of action and reaction, its own mesh of world lines is especially stable, especially hard to distort. Of course, we were at pains to give the Exaltationists the opposite impression.”

  Everard sank back in his chair. “I’ll … be … damned.” Probably, gibed his mind.

  Shalten’s parched little smile twitched. “And now,” he said, “we must terminate the deception. As I recall, the expression in your natal period is ‘tie up the loose ends.’ In your position among us, you need to know the whole truth. For you to learn it later in this century could pose a hazard. Causational loops can be very subtle. Your experiences and accomplishments in Bactria must continue to have happened. Therefore you must be informed well pastward of our preparations for them. I thought you would enjoy a visit to my Belle Époque.”

  “Uh, you mean, uh, that letter the Russian soldier found in Afghanistan, that became the bait in our trap—it was a fake?”

  “Exactly. Did the thought never occur to you?”

  “But—you had a million years or more to find some suitable incident—”

  “Better to create one to specifications. Eh? Well, it has served its purpose. Prudence dictates that it be removed, annulled. There shall never have been a letter to find.”

  Everard sat straight. The stem of his pipe broke in his fist. He ignored the coals that fell onto the lush carpet. “Wait a minute!” he cried. “You’ve been tinkering with reality yourself?”

  “Under authorization,” he heard; and his jaws locked on silence.

  1985 A.D.

  Here, where the Bear stars wheeled too low, night struck cold into blood and bone. By day, mountains closed off every horizon with stone, snow, glaciers, clouds. A man’s mouth dried as he gasped his way over the ridges, rocks rattling from beneath his boots, for he could never draw one honest breath of air. And then there was fear of the rifle bullet or the knife after, dark that would spill his bit of life out on this empty land. Yuri Alexeievitch Garshin stumbled lost and alone.

  PART THREE

  BEFORE THE GODS THAT MADE THE GODS

  31,275,389 B.C.

  “Oh!” Wanda Tamberly cried. “Oh, look!”

  Her horse snorted and shied. Hands and knees worked for her, quieting it, while she herself leaned forward, sight grabbing what it could as the marvel passed by. Alarmed at the approach of the great beasts, a dozen animals had bolted from the underbrush on her left. Brightness flashed over mottled coats, bodies of wolfhound size, trifurcate hoofs, heads eerily equine. Then they were across the trail and lost again in wilderness. Tu Sequeira laughed. “Ancestors?” He touched his mount and hers, as though to demonstrate he knew that man’s forebears were snuffling and scuttling about in African jungles. On their way back, his fingers stroked across her thigh.

  She hardly noticed. Happiness bub
bled and danced. Earth of the Oligocene epoch was a paleontologist’s paradise. “Mesohippus?” she wondered aloud. “I think not, not quite. Nor miohippus; too early for that, isn’t it? But they know so little, really. Even with time machines, they’ve learned so little. An intermediate species? If only I’d brought a camera!”

  “A what?” he asked. Unthinkingly, she had thrown the English word into the Temporal that was, thus far, their sole common language.

  “An optical recording device.” The act of explaining drew off most of her excitement. After all, today she had spied any number of creatures. Patrol folk could not avoid an impact on the surroundings of their Academy, a thinning out of nature. If nothing else, lionlike nimravus and saber-toothed eusmilus had long since been shot by holiday makers whom they attacked; and that affected the entire local ecology. However, when cadets had more than a single day free, they generally flitted to some distant region, a mountain to climb, a scenic path to hike, an idyllic island. On the whole, humankind touched very lightly the ages before humankind evolved. To Tamberly this region seemed still almost virginal, set against the Sierra or the Yellowstone of her birthtime.

  “You’ll have to learn about cameras,” she said, “and a lot of other crude gadgets. Whew! Suddenly I get a notion of just how much you have got to learn.”

  “We all do,” he replied. “I’d be hard put to master everything you must.”

  Modesty wasn’t his usual style. The thought crossed her mind that maybe he was realizing that, although she enjoyed his flamboyancy, it wasn’t the sort of thing that could hold her for long. Or—an inward shrug—maybe he’d decided to start practicing a more subdued manner. He’d need that capability in the career ahead of him.

  Whichever, he spoke truth. The Patrol took education techniques from the far future of both their eras. In a couple of hours you could gain fluency in any language, directly imprinted in your memory; and that was a minor example. Nevertheless the intensity of training and education pushed the edge of human endurance. Any respite came, and went, like sunshine striking into a hurricane’s eye. She had joined Sequeira on this excursion because she’d slightly rather do that than sleep.

  “Well, but I’ll be dealing with critters,” she demurred. The Americanism dropped into her Temporal before she noticed. “People are what’s complicated, and they’ll be your problem.”

  Born on Mars in the Solar Commonwealth, after graduation he would be among those who studied and monitored the earliest stages of spacefaring. To work one’s way into such places as Peenemünde, White Sands, and Tyuratam meant not only personal risk. It meant any sacrifice necessary to preserve the course of events heavy with consequences for history.

  Sequeira’s lips crinkled upward. “Speaking of people and complications, we don’t have to report for class till 0800 tomorrow.”

  She felt the blood rise and beat in her face. What cadets did on their own scant time was their own business, provided it didn’t make them unfit. Temptation, oh, my. A fling before the next long grind—But do I want any such involvement? “At the moment the mess hall calls,” she said fast. They ate well there, often gloriously. The staff had the cuisines of the ages at their command.

  He laughed again. “Far be it from me to stand in your way. I could get a Wanda-sized hole through me, couldn’t I? Afterward—Let’s go!” The trail was barely wide enough for them to sit side by side, knees touching. He put heels to his horse and set off at a brisk canter. Following, she thought that his litheness should not be clad in a plain issue coverall; a scarlet cloak ought to ripple from those shoulders. Hey, gal, ease off.

  They left the woods and descended steeply out of the hills. An eastward view opened to her. For a moment she lost everything but the awe and the wonder of being here, now, she herself, thirty million years before she was born.

  Light streamed golden across a prairie reaching beyond sight. Wildflower-starred, grass rippled and, she knew, rustled under the wind. In places, a grove or a thicket interrupted immensity, and in the distance trees lined a great brown river. She knew also how its water and its mud surged with life, larvae, insects, fish, frogs, snakes, waterfowl, herds of rooting merycoidodon like giant hogs or small slender hippopotami. Wings filled heaven.

  The Academy stood closer, on an elevation which the builders had reinforced to keep it safe above the occasional floods. Through millennium after millennium, gardens, lawns, bowers, low-lying structures of subtle curves and shifty colors, remained inviolate. When the last graduate departed, the builders took it down, eliminating every trace of its existence. But that would not happen for another fifty thousand years.

  Riding, Tamberly drank air that was mild, rich with odors of growth, soil, sulfury-sweet herbs. And yet the sun had barely passed through the vernal equinox. What was to be South Dakota lay about her like a dream of what was to be California. Not for geological epochs would the Ice come down from the north.

  The trail broadened to a beaten path. A fork in it led around campus to stables at the rear. Sequeira and Tamberly stalled and cared for their horses themselves. Not all Patrol work, probably not most, required that kind of skills, but the Academy did—in case of need and, she suspected, to instill workmanship and responsibility. Banter flew back and forth across the chores. He is a fetching rascal, she thought.

  They emerged hand in hand. Sunset rays fell hazily over the man who waited outside and cast his shadow gigantic behind him. “Good evening,” he greeted. The voice was unemphatic, his garb resembled theirs, but somehow she got a sense of utter control. “Cadet Tamberly?” It was not actually a question. “My name is Guion. I would like a word with you.”

  Sequeira stiffened at her side. Her pulse jumped. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing to cause you worry.” Guion smiled. She couldn’t tell how deep it went. Nor could she identify his race. The finely formed countenance hinted at—aristocracy?—but from what century beyond hers? “In fact, may I have the honor of your company at dinner? If you will pardon us, Cadet Sequeira.”

  How did he know I’d be here? Plenty of possible ways, of course, if you’re high-ranking. Why, though? “Oh, gosh,” she blurted, “I’m all dusty and sweaty and, and everything.”

  “You will have cleaned and changed in any case,” Guion said dryly. “Would an hour hence suit you? Number 207, Faculty Lodge. Quite informal. Thank you. I look forward.” He gave her a courtesy salute. Dazed, she returned it. He walked off toward officer country. His gait flowed.

  “What’s happening?” Sequeira whispered.

  “I, I haven’t the faintest idea. But I’d better go. Sorry, Tu. Another time.” Maybe. She hastened from him. Soon she forgot about him.

  Preparing herself helped clear away bewilderment. A cadet had a private room, plus a bath cubicle as exotically, efficiently equipped as Manse Everard had promised. Like most of her classmates, she’d brought along a few clothes from home. The mingling of costumes added color to social occasions. Not that those weren’t amply romantic, give the diversity of origins. (At that, it was limited. She had had explained to her that people from really unlike civilizations would find one another too distracting—incomprehensible or downright repulsive. Most of her fellow recruits came from the years approximately between 1850 and 2000. Some, like Sequeira, originated farther uptime; their cultures were compatible with hers and exposure to her sort was a valuable part of their particular training.) After a while she chose a plain black dress, silver-and-turquoise Navaho pendant, low shoes, the least touch of makeup.

  Neutral, she hoped, neither brash nor standoffish. Whatever Guion’s agenda, she didn’t imagine seduction was on it. Nor on mine. God, no! She must somehow be of some interest to him. At the same time, she was the merest rookie and he was … a big wheel. Unattached, almost certainly. Or more than that? She had been taught very little—hardly anything, she realized now that she examined it—about the upper hierarchy of the Patrol.

  Maybe none existed. Maybe by Guion’s era hum
ankind had outgrown the necessity. Maybe tonight she’d learn a snippet about that. Eagerness tingled anxiety out of her.

  Crossing the campus, where luminous paths shone softly beneath dusk, she hailed those of her fellows whom she met less warmly than they did her. Close friendships were developing, but her mind had gone elsewhere. Seeing how she was clad and where she was bound, they didn’t try to detain her. Naturally, speculation would be thick in the dorms, and tomorrow she must be prepared with responses, if only “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Confidential. Excuse me, I’ve got a class.”

  Briefly, she wondered whether every lot of new recruits spent its year in the same collegiate format as hers. Probably not. Societies, ways of living and thinking and feeling, must vary too much through a million years of history. Indeed, a large part of what she did would look crazy to her professors at Stanford, utterly boggle them. She couldn’t repress a giggle.

  She had never been inside Faculty Lodge or seen any pictures from it, and a side entrance brought her into a small, bare chamber from which a gravity shaft bore her straight upward. The democratic atmosphere of the Academy was merely that, an atmosphere, useful for purposes of getting on with the job. She stepped into a corridor where the floor, uncarpeted, lay soft and warm underfoot, like live flesh, and light poured iridescent from all around. Door 207 vanished at her approach and reappeared when she had passed through. The rooms beyond were graciously furnished, in a style more nearly familiar—to put visitors such as she at their ease, she guessed. There was no window, but ceilings revealed the sky, the light of the stars enhanced so that she could see them blink forth, unblurred by the clean air, until the night was full of their majesty.

  Guion welcomed her with a gentlemanly handshake and in the same wise conducted her to a seat. Frames on the walls enclosed moving, three-dimensional scenes, cliffs above surf and a mountain silhouetted against dawn. She didn’t know whether they were recorded or live. She didn’t recognize the background music either, but it could be Japanese, and again she suspected it had been carefully chosen for her.