The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  “May I offer you an apéritif?” Guion invited. He used fluent, barely accented English.

  “Well, a small dry sherry, if you please, sir,” she ventured in the same language.

  He chuckled and sat down across from her. “Yes, you shall keep a clear head for tomorrow morning. The dinner I have planned won’t upset your Spartan routine too badly. How do you like our organization thus far?”

  She spent several seconds arranging her words. “Very much, sir. Tough but fascinating. You knew I would.”

  He nodded. “The preliminary tests are reliable.”

  “And then you have reports on how I did—how I will do—No, let me try saying it in Temporal.”

  His gaze was steady upon her. “Don’t. You should know better than that, Cadet Tamberly.”

  A machine glided in bearing her drink and something in a snifter glass for him. It gave her the chance to recover. “I’m sorry if I misspoke myself. The time travel paradoxes—” Mustering courage: “But honestly, sir, I can’t believe you haven’t looked.”

  He nodded. “Yes. That can be done with reasonable assurance and safety, in this protected environment. To no one’s surprise, you will perform creditably.”

  “Which doesn’t let me off the hook earlier, does it?”

  “Of course not. You must do the work, gain the abilities. Some individuals, hearing that they will succeed, would be tempted to slack off on the grueling effort; but you have more sense.”

  “I know. Success isn’t really guaranteed. I could change that bit of history by goofing; and I sure don’t want to.” Despite his low-key manner, tension was again gathering in her. She sipped fragrant pungency and tried to make muscles loosen, the way she was learning in phy ed. “Sir, why am I here? I didn’t think I was anybody special.”

  “Every agent of the Time Patrol is,” he answered.

  “Well, uh, but me—I’m just going to be a field scientist. In the prehistoric, and not even anthropology. About as far from any causal nexus as you can get, I should think. What have I got that, uh, that interests you?”

  “The circumstances that brought you to us are unusual.”

  “Isn’t everything unusual?” she exclaimed. “How likely was it ever that I, this exact I with this exact combination of genes, would get born? My sister isn’t a lot like me.”

  “Sensibly put.” Guion leaned back and partook of his own drink. “Probability is relative. Granted, the events that caught you up were melodramatic; but in a way melodrama is the norm of reality. What could be more sensational than the fiery creation of the universe, of the galaxies and stars? What could have appeared amidst them more strange than life? Dire need, mortal conflict, desperation made it evolve. We survive by waging incessant warfare against invading microscopic hosts and betrayals within. Set beside this, clashes between humans seem ridiculously incidental. Yet they determine our fate.”

  His quiet tone and donnish diction calmed her more than did a little alcohol or relaxation technique. “Well, sir, what can I tell you?” she asked. “I’ll do my best.”

  He sighed. “If I had definite questions, this session would doubtless not be necessary.” Another smile. “Which would be my loss, true. I am not so alien to you that I don’t expect to find pleasure in your company during these next few hours.” On a level below words, she understood that his courtliness had no ulterior motive—except to soothe her till she could reveal the nuances he desired—and might be sincere.

  “I search for clues to a certain matter,” he went on. “You are analogous to a witness, an innocent bystander, who may or may not have noticed something at an accident or a crime, something helpful to the officer investigating the case. That is why I use your mother tongue. In any other, including Temporal, your expressiveness would be too limited. Your very body language would be poorly coordinated with what you are saying.”

  A crime? She shivered a bit. “Whatever I can do, sir.”

  “That will mainly be to talk freely, for the most part about yourself. People seldom object to doing that, eh?” He turned grave. “I repeat, you have done nothing wrong, and quite possibly have nothing to do with the business. But you understand I must find out.”

  “How?” she breathed. “What is this … business?”

  “I cannot say.” She wondered if that meant he was forbidden to. “But think of the countless world lines intermeshed throughout the continuum as a spiderweb. A touch on one strand trembles through many. A disruption somewhere changes the configuration of the whole. You have learned that causality does not work exclusively from past to future; it can double back on itself, can even annul itself. There are occasions when we know only that the web is troubled, not where or when the source of the disturbance lies; for that source perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality. We can only try to trace it back up the threads—” He broke off. “Enough. I do not mean to frighten you.”

  “I don’t scare easy, sir.” This could do it, though.

  “Consider my mission precautionary,” he urged. “You, like Agent Everard, have been intimately”—sketched a grin—“if unwillingly associated with the Exaltationists, a major disruptive force.”

  “But they’ve all been, will be caught or killed,” she protested. “Won’t they?”

  “Yes. However, they could be related to something larger.” He raised a palm. “Not a larger organization or conspiracy, no. We have no reason to suspect that. Butchaos itself has a certain basic coherence. Things have a way of recurring. People do.

  “Therefore it is wise to study those who have been part of great events. They may again, whether or not our extant records know anything of it.”

  “But I was just, just borne along,” she stammered. “Manse—Agent Everard, he was the one who counted.”

  “I want to make sure of that,” Guion said.

  He let her sit a span in silence, while the stars strengthened overhead and shaped constellations unknown to Galileo. When he spoke anew, she had come to terms with the situation.

  She wasn’t important, she decided. Impossible. This wasn’t humility—she expected to do a topflight job in her coming line of work—but common sense. Enigmatic though he might be, this man was simply behaving like any conscientious detective, checking out every conceivable lead, aware that most led nowhere.

  And, yes, he might well enjoy a meal and conversation with a young woman who wasn’t bad-looking. Then why shouldn’t she enjoy too? What might she learn about him and the world from which he hailed?

  As it turned out, nothing.

  Guion was affable. She could almost call him charming, in his detached scholastic fashion. He made no display of his authority, but left her in no doubt of it, much like her father during her childhood. (Oh, Dad, who’ll never know!) Instead, he drew her out about herself, her life, Everard, asking for no confidences but nonetheless so deftly that only later did she realize she had told him more than she meant to. At first, after bidding him adieu, she knew simply that she had had an interesting dinner date. He didn’t imply they would meet anymore.

  Walking back to her room on paths now deserted, among the night scents of ancient Earth, she found herself, oddly, thinking less about him, not to mention Sequeira, than about big, soft-spoken, and—she believed—rather lonely Manse Everard.

  PART FOUR

  BERINGIA

  13,212 B.C.

  I

  She stopped when she reached her shelter and stood a moment, looking around her and back the way she had come. Why? she wondered. As though this is the last time ever. With an unawaited pang: Well, maybe it is, almost Southwesterly the sun hung low above the sea, but would not sink for hours yet, and then only briefly. Its rays washed chill gold over cumulus clouds towering in the east and set the waters agleam, half a mile away. Thence land rose steeply toward northern ridges. It was wan with summer’s short grass, broken here and there by intense greens and browns of peat moss. Leaves shivered pale on stands of stunted aspen. Elsewhere grew thick patches
of scrub willow, seldom more than ankle-high. Sedges rippled and rustled along a nearby brook. It tinkled down to a river not very wide either, sunken from her sight in a ravine. She could see the tops of dwarf alder clustered on the sides. Smoke tatters blew from the dens of Aryuk and his family.

  A wind had risen off the sea. It made her face tingle. The boisterous damp quenched some of the weariness in her but roused hunger; she had tramped quite a ways today. Cries cut through, from birds aloft in their hundreds, gulls, ducks, geese, cranes, swans, plover, snipe, curlews, an eagle high at hover. After two years she still found marvel in the lavishness of life, at the very gates of the Ice. Not before leaving her home world had she really known how impoverished it was.

  “Sorry, friends,” she murmured. “My teapot and crackerbox are calling me.” After which I’d better do up my report. Dinner can wait. She grimaced. Reporting won’t be the kind of fun it used to be.

  She stiffened. Naw, why’re you so spooky about what’s happened? she demanded. A big event, sure, but not necessarily a big bad one. Premonitions? Scat! Listen, gal, it’s natural to talk to yourself now and then, and okay to talk to the fauna just a bit, but when your bugaboos start talking to you, quite likely you have been in the field long enough.

  Unsealing the dome, she entered and closed it again. The interior was dim until she activated a transparency. (Nobody around to peep in it at her, not that the dear We ever would without her leave.) Warmth let her slip off her parka, sit down to remove boots and stockings, wiggle her toes.

  There wasn’t much else she could move freely, as cramped as the place was. Her timecycle occupied a large part of the floor, under a shelf on which she kept mattress pad and sleeping bag. The single chair stood at the single table, where a computer and auxiliary apparatus claimed half the top. Alongside was a unit for cooking, washing, et cetera. Miscellaneous boxes and cabinets completed the circle. Two held clothes and other personal possessions; the rest were full of stuff related to her mission. Policy required the dome be as small, as unobtrusive in the land and lives of the natives, as possible. Outdoors was plenty of space, elbows few and far between.

  Having set water to boil, she undid her gun belt and put the pistols, stunner and killer, away beside the long weapons. For the first time, they felt ugly in her hands. She had seldom killed, just for meat and when she reluctantly deemed it necessary to take a specimen—and, once, a snow lion that Ulungu’s family at Bubbling Springs told her had turned man-eater. Humans? Nonsense! Judas priest, but you’ve gotten edgy all of a sudden.

  Recognizing the exclamation in her mind, she smiled. She’d picked it up from Manse Everard. He tried to keep his language polite in the presence of women, as he’d been taught. She’d noticed that he was more comfortable if she curbed hers likewise, and obliged him except when she forgot.

  Some music ought to soothe. She touched the computer. “Mozart,” she said. “Uh, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” The strains lilted forth. Only then did she notice, with faint surprise, what she had ordered. Not that she didn’t like Mozart, but she’d been remembering Manse and he detested rock. Well, probably this’ll work better anyway.

  A cup of Darjeeling and an oatmeal cookie wrought their own wonders. Presently she could settle down to record. Nevertheless, after speaking her preamble she played it back before going on, to find whether it was as unwontedly awkward as it had sounded to her.

  From the screen, blue eyes under blond brows gazed out of a countenance blunt-nosed, strong of cheekbones and chin. Hair irregularly sun-bleached fell tousled to the jawline, past skin tanned darker than ever on a California beach. Oh, dear, have I actually gotten to look like that? You’d think I was thirty, and I am only—I’m not born yet. The thin-worn joke somehow heartened. Once I’m back, beauty parlor, here I come.

  A slightly husky contralto said: “Wanda Tamberly, Specialist second class, scientific field agent, at—” Chronological and geographical identification followed, in the coordinates used by the Time Patrol. The spoken language was its Temporal.

  “I suspect a crisis is in the making. As, uh, as reference to my previous reports shows, hitherto, throughout the duration in which I have made my visits—”

  “Dry up!” she told the image, and blanked it. Since when has the Patrol wanted academese? You’re overwrought, girl. Reverting to the classroom. Don’t. It’s four whole years since you were an undergrad. Lifeline years, full of experience and history. Prehistory. She took several deep breaths, consciously relaxed herself muscle by muscle, and thought about a certain koan. Though she wasn’t into Zen or anything like that, some of the tricks were helpful. Starting over:

  “I think they’ve got troubles ahead of them here. You remember how these people are the only ones in the world, as far as they are concerned. I’m the first outsider they’ve met.” The explorers who learned how to talk with them and something of their ways had touched down three centuries ago and were totally forgotten, unless a wisp of folk memory had slipped into myth. “Well, today Aryuk and I found some newcomers.

  “I’ll take it from the beginning. Yesterday his son Dzuryan returned from a bachelor wandering. That was experimental, adolescent; the kid’s no more than twelve or thirteen, I’d guess, not seriously looking for a mate. Never mind. Dzuryan returned and among other things told how he’d seen a herd of mammoth at Bison Swale.”

  The designation would suffice. She had already sent uptime the maps she sketched as she ranged around. Place names were her own. Those that the We bestowed often varied according to who was talking. They did tell the same stories about sites, over and over. (“In this hollow, in the spring after the Great Hard Winter, Khongan saw a pack of wolves bringing down a bison. He fetched men from two camps. With stones and torches they drove the wolves off. They carried the meat home and everybody feasted. They left the head for the spirits.”)

  “I got pretty excited.” Hoo boy, did If “Mammoth seldom come within twenty miles of the coast, never this close before. Why? When I said I’d go look, Aryuk insisted on accompanying me personally.” He’s a darling, so concerned about his guest, his miracle-working, tale-telling, land-ignorant klutz. “Well, I certainly didn’t mind a partner. I’m not much acquainted with that area. We set off today at sunrise.”

  Tamberly reached up to remove her headband. She popped out the thumbnail-sized instrument that had captured everything she saw and heard, plugged it into the databox, ran fingers over keyboard. The whole contents would go into the record, but for this report she should enter only what was immediately relevant. However, as hours unreeled in minutes, she could not resist slowing down for an occasional scene.

  A southern hillside gave shelter from wind. She and Aryuk had stopped to drink at a spring welling out of it Watching, she remembered how cold the water was and how it tasted of earth and stone; she remembered sunlight on her back and the pungencies that it baked from small herbs. Soil lay soft underfoot, still wet from springtime’s melt. Mosquitoes whined innumerable.

  Aryuk filled his hands and slurped. Drops glistened in the black beard that fell to his breast. “You want to rest a while?” he asked.

  “No, let’s push on, I’m eager.” That was approximately what Tamberly said. Still less than Temporal—which, being devised for time travelers, at least originated in a high-tech culture—did the Tula language have English equivalents. It was a trilling, clucking tongue, agglutinative, embodying concepts at whose subtleties she could only guess. For a single instance, the genders were seven, four pertaining to certain plants, weather phenomena, the heavenly bodies, and the dead.

  Aryuk laughed, revealing the absence of various teeth. “Your strength is boundless. You wear an old man out.”

  The Tulat, a word that she rendered as “We,” didn’t keep track of days or years. She gauged him as being in his middle or late thirties. Few among his people got much past forty. Already he had two living grandchildren. His body, thin but whipcord tough, continued in good shape, aside from the scars left by i
njuries that got infected. He stood three inches shorter than she, but then, she was a fairly tall woman in the twentieth-century United States. All was plain to see, for he went quite nude. Ordinarily at this season he might have worn a grass poncho as protection against the mosquitoes. Today he traveled with Her Who Knows Strangeness. They never came near her. Tamberly hadn’t tried to explain how a little gadget on her belt worked. She wasn’t too sure herself; it was from the future of her birthtime. Supersonics?

  Aryuk cocked his shock head and glanced at her from beneath heavy brow ridges. “You could wear me out in ways more fun than walking,” he suggested.

  When she waved dismissal, the weathered, big-nosed visage crinkled with more laughter. It had been evident that his proposition was mere teasing. Quick to realize that the foreigner meant them no harm, and indeed could occasionally use her powers to relieve distress, the We were soon joking and frolicking in her presence. She was mysterious, true, but so was well-nigh everything else in their world.

  “We shall go on,” she said.

  Volatile, Aryuk sobered and agreed. “Wisest. If we make haste, we can be home before sundown.” He flinched. “Yonder is not our territory. Perhaps you know what ghosts prowl it after dark. I do not.” That mood also breezed away. “Perhaps I will knock down a rabbit. Tseshu”—his woman—“loves rabbit.”

  He picked up the rudely chipped, almond-shaped stone he carried along, missile and knife and bone-cracker. Other tools were as primitive and little more specialized. The style traced to the Mousterian or a similar tradition, Neanderthal man’s. Of course, Aryuk was fully Homo sapiens, archaic Caucasoid; his ancestors had drifted here from western Asia. Tamberly had sometimes reflected on the irony that the very first Americans were closer to being white than anything else.