The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  It thudded in Everard’s head. He laid his pipe down and built his poker face. “Unconventional,” his mouth said.

  Tamberly laughed. “One thing I’ll ask you to do is tip the word to the good doctor that he’s not my type. I wouldn’t want him disappointed. Besides, we’ll both have a whopping lot of work to get done in a short time, or we really might affect those people too much.”

  She grew altogether serious. Did he see tears sparkle in her lashes? “Manse, that’s what I need you for. Your advice, for openers, but then, if you decide I’m not totally out of my gourd, your influence. I asked my immediate superior what he thought, and he told me to get lost. As you say, unconventional; he’s no prude, but in his mind the policy has been set and nobody should bother him about it. Ralph Corwin, too. He’ll probably be taken aback when something he said over his second cocktail rises up and hollers, ‘Boo!’ You’ve got the authority, the prestige, the connections in this outfit. Please, won’t you at least think about it?”

  He did, stormily at first. They talked and talked. Before he agreed, the sun was down. When he had invited her into the Patrol, she whooped for joy. Now she was too tired for more than a whispered “Thank you, thank you.”

  They both revived, though, when they went out to dinner. He’d arrived sufficiently well dressed for the Empress of China, and she already was. Afterward they did some pub crawling. They talked and talked. When he bade her goodnight at her parents’ door, she kissed hirn.

  13,211 B.C.

  I

  Days dwindled away into winter, blizzards laid snow thick over earth frozen ringingly hard, the brown bear shared dreams with the dead but the white bear walked the sea ice. We spent most of the enormous nights in their shelters.

  Step by step, slow at first but faster and faster, the sun returned. Winds mildened, drifts melted, streams brawled swollen, floes ground each other to bits, calves of horned beasts and mammoth tottered newborn over steppe where flowers burst forth as many as stars, the migratory birds were coming home. For Us it had always been the happiest of seasons, until now.

  They dreaded the trackless interior, its wolves and ghosts, but cross it they must. In fall the hunters had come along to show the way and made them pile up cairns to mark it. Thereafter they went by themselves, bearing the gifts required of them. Once snow was on the ground they were free until spring. But during the warmer time, between every full moon and full moon, men from each family would make the journey. So did the hunters command.

  Heavily burdened, Aryuk and his sons took three days. He knew the return would need less than two. Some homes were farther off than his, some not so far, but these absences weighed upon all, for while traveling you could not hunt, gather, or work for your household. Having come back, you would spend more days getting together the next load. Not much time or strength was left to take care of your own livelihood.

  There had been talk of meeting so as to fare in a single band. Against the protection and consolation of that you must set the still more days it would cost most people. In the end, We decided groups should go by themselves. Perhaps they would do differently later, when they had learned more about this new order of things.

  Thus Aryuk made the first springtime trek with his sons Barakyn, Oltas, and Dzuryan. Behind them they left Aryuk’s and Barakyn’s women and small children. They carried long, stout pieces of wood, such as they had been told to bring, and food to keep them going. Wind and rainshowers harried them, often mud caught at their feet, always the loads bore downward. Howls and distant roars haunted their nights. By day they trudged on over the rising land. At last they reached the hunter camp.

  From a height they looked across it. The site lay not far below them, a broad flat ground where soil was well-drained. From still higher hills northward, a brook ran through the middle of it.

  Awe smote Us. On their last visit in fall, they had thought the steep-sided leather shelters were many, surely more than all the Tula dwellings put together. Aryuk had wondered if they would be warm enough for winter. Today he saw that the strangers had since made themselves great huts of stone, turf, and hides. Tiny at their distance, people moved among them. Smoke from fires rose into an afternoon gone calm and sunny.

  “How did they do this?” marveled Oltas. “What powers are theirs?”

  Aryuk remembered certain remarks of Her Who Knows Strangeness. “I think they have tools we do not,” he answered slowly.

  “Just the same,” Barakyn said, “so much work! How could they find time for it?”

  “They kill large beasts,” Aryuk reminded him. “One of those will feed them for many days.”

  Tears of weariness and pain coursed down Dzuryan’s cheeks. “Then why n-need they take from Us?” he stammered. To that his father had no reply.

  He led the party downslope. On the way they passed a long, gravelly hillock. Beneath it, where a spring ran forth, hidden from the settlement and hitherto from them, stood something that brought them up short. For a moment darkness whirled through Aryuk’s head.

  “She,” Barakyn croaked.

  “No, no,” wailed Oltas. “She is our friend, she would not move here.”

  Aryuk took hold of his spirit, lest it flutter from him. He might have cried out too, were he not so numbingly tired. Staring at the round gray shell, he said, “We do not know, but perhaps soon we shall. Come.”

  They plodded onward. Folk spied them. Children dashed out, shouting, skipping, fearless. Several men followed at a lope. They carried spears and hatchets—Aryuk had learned those words—but smiled. He supposed the rest were off hunting. Women and more children seethed around as We reached the huts. Again he noticed persons who were wrinkled, toothless, bent, blind. Here the weak need not go off to die. The young and strong could feed them.

  The guides brought Us to a dwelling larger than others. Before it, clad in fur-trimmed leather and a headband with three eagle feathers, waited the man who spoke for these folk. Aryuk had come to know him as Red Wolf. That was what the name meant in his speech. He would change it now and then during his life, therefore it had to mean something. To Aryuk, his own name was merely a sound that singled him out. If he had thought about it, he might have understood that it said “Northwest Breeze” with an accent different from his, but he never did think about it.

  He forgot Red Wolf. He forgot all else. Another man was coming through the crowd. He loomed over them, even over their leader. They made way for him with much respect, yet also with smiles and greetings which showed he had been among them for some while. His face was thin and lacked beard, though a mustache grew beneath the curving nose. His hair was short. Skin and eyes, body and gait, recalled Her Who Knows Strangeness; his garments and the things hung at his waist were wholly like hers.

  Dzuryan groaned aloud.

  “Lay down loads,” Red Wolf bade Us. He had gained some knowledge of their tongue. “Good. We feed you, you sleep here.”

  The one from beyond the world halted at his side. Unburdened, Aryuk ached but felt oddly light, as if about to fly off on the wind. Or was it only his head spinning? “Rich gathering be yours,” the one hailed in Our words. “Be not afraid. Do you remember Khara-tse-tuntyn-bayuk?”

  “She … she lived near our dwelling,” Aryuk said.

  “You are that very family?” The one was plainly delighted. “You yourself are Aryuk? I have been waiting for this.”

  “Is she with you?”

  “No. She is of my kindred, however, and asked me to give you her friendliest thoughts. My name is—the Cloud People call me Tall Man. I have come to spend a few years among them and learn about them and their ways. I want to know you better too.”

  Red Wolf stirred, impatiently, and barked something in his own speech. Tall Man replied likewise. Words went between them, until Red Wolf made a chopping gesture, as if to say, “So be it.” Tall Man looked back at Aryuk and his sons, who stood mute within the encirclement of hunters’ eyes.

  “Talk goes easiest when I help,�
� Tall Man said, “though I have warned them they should take the trouble to learn your tongue better. In time I also will depart this country, and meanwhile I will not always be here. Red Wolf wants to talk with you when you have rested, about what you and your folk are to bring later.”

  “What have we to bring, other than driftwood and deadwood?” Aryuk asked, his voice gone as dull as his heart.

  “They want more of that. But also they want good stone for their tools and weapons. They want peat and dung, dried for burning. They want pelts. They want dried fish, blubber, everything the sea gives.”

  “We cannot!” Aryuk cried. “They already crave so much that we can barely feed ourselves.”

  Tall Man looked unhappy. “This is hard for you,” he said. “I cannot free you of it. But I can make it bearable, if you heed me. I will tell the Cloud People that they can get nothing from you if they cause you to die. I will have them give you and show you the use of things that make fishing and hunting easier. They fashion … points that fish bite on and then cannot escape, spearheads that go into án animal and stay fast. Clothes like theirs will keep you warm and dry—-” His tone faltered. “I am sorry I may not do more for you than this. But we can try—”

  He stopped, because Aryuk no longer heard him.

  Red Wolf had shifted to the side of the entrance. Forth from it crept a woman. She was garbed like others, but the clothes were dirty, greasy, and stenchful. Her belly bulged them out. Hair hung lank past a face gone gaunt. When she rose to her feet, she wavered on them and her arms dangled slack.

  “Daraku,” Aryuk whispered. “Is it you?” He had not seen her here before, nor been able to ask what had become of her. He had wondered whether Red Wolf told her to stay out of sight, lest she bring on trouble, or whether she hid in fear and shame, or whether she was dead.

  She stumbled to him. He embraced her and wept.

  Red Wolf threw a command at her. She cowered against Aryuk. Tall Man frowned. He spoke harshly. Red Wolf and the hunters who were in earshot bristled. Tall Man lowered his voice. Bit by bit, Red Wolf eased. At last he spread his hands and turned his back, a sign that he was done with the matter.

  Aryuk looked across Daraku’s shoulder. How sharply her bones jutted under the buckskin coat. Hope flickered in him. Through a blur, through a surf he saw, he heard Tall Man:

  “This girl that they took away is your daughter, is she not? I have spoken to her, a little, though she hardly ever answers. They wanted to learn your speech from her. They have done that now, as much as she was able to tell them before sadness grew too heavy in her. They still want the child she carries, to be another hunter or another mother for them, but I have gotten them to let her go. She may return with you.”

  Aryuk flattened himself and Daraku on the earth before Tall Man. Her brothers did the same.

  Afterward it was to eat—the Cloud women were generous, though the food was so different that We could not swallow much—and sleep, together again, in a tent raised for them, and then talk at length, Tall Man explaining between Aryuk and Red Wolf. A great deal was said about what We must do henceforward and what would be done for them in exchange. Aryuk wondered how long it would take for him to discover the full meaning. Certain was that life had changed beyond his power to grasp.

  He and his children set out for home on a morning when wind flung raw gusts of rain. They walked slowly and often stopped, for Daraku could only stumble along. She stared before her and seldom answered when spoken to, then in just two or three words. Yet when Aryuk stroked her cheek or took her hand, she smiled enough for him to see.

  That night while they were camped, her pangs came upon her. Rain cut and torrented. Aryuk, Barakyn, Oltas, and Dzuryan clustered close around, trying to give shelter and warmth. She began screaming and did not stop. She was so young; her hips were still narrow. When morning sneaked gray from the unseen east, Aryuk saw that she bled heavily. Rain washed it off into the peat moss. Her face was stretched across the skull and her look was blind. She had scant voice left. The last noises rattled away into silence.

  “The baby is dead too,” Barakyn said.

  “That is as well,” Aryuk mumbled. “I do not know what I would have done about it.”

  Afar, a mammoth trumpeted. The wind loudened. This was going to be a cold summer.

  II

  The Patrol team came late on a moonless night, to do their work as fast and quietly as possible and then disappear. Local folk would soon know that another marvelous thing had happened, but best not have it occur in their sight. Always minimize impact.

  However, Wanda Tamberly could arrive after sunrise. Her hopper brought her straight inside the shelter that had been erected for her. Heart thumping hard, she dismounted and looked around. The transparency was set at translucent and light was ample. Familiar stuff was arranged neatly enough. She’d need a while, though, to shift it around to the way she liked it. First let’s have a peek at the neighborhood. Warmly clad in preparation, she added a mackinaw, unsealed the entrance, and stepped out.

  The time was fall in the year after she last left Beringia (and she had spent only a few weeks in the twentieth century before this return). Astronomically, the season was not very far along, but snow could fly any day now, at a subarctic latitude in an ice age. Morning lay bright and bleak. Wind whistled over sere grass. Hills narrowed horizons north and south. A heap of till, left when the glacier retreated, bulked above her dome and Corwin’s. A spring trickled from its foot. She missed the sea and dwarf trees at her earlier camp. What birds wheeled overhead were fewer, and inland species.

  The domes were almost touching. Corwin emerged from his, immaculate in khaki, cardigan, and high boots. He beamed. “Welcome,” he greeted, striding over to shake hands. “How are you?”

  “Okay, thanks,” Tamberly said. “How’ve you been getting along?”

  He raised his brows. “What, you haven’t played back my reports?” he asked playfully. “I am shocked and grieved. After all the trouble I went to, composing them.”

  “Composing” is right, she thought. Not that they aren’t scientific accounts. Elegant diction doesn’t hurt them any. It’s this sense I got of… glossing over, here and there. Maybe I’m prejudiced. “Of course I did,” she replied. Taking care to smile: “Including the objections you registered to my being reassigned here.”

  He stayed amicable. “No reflection on you, Agent Tamberly, as I hope you realized. I simply thought it would add an unnecessary complication and risk, including the risk to you. I was overruled. Quite possibly I was mistaken. Indeed, I’m sure we can work well together. From a personal standpoint, how can I be other than happy to have company like yours?”

  Tamberly made haste to sidestep that question. “No hard feelings, sir. But we won’t actually collaborate, you know. You study the, uh, Cloud People. I need to do a winter’s worth of observations on the animals, to get a halfway Complete picture of certain life cycles that seem to be critical to the ecology.”

  She had repeated the obvious as the most gracious way she could think of to say, “Let me go about my business in peace. I mean to keep out from under your feet, and from under you.”

  He took it in good part: “Certainly. With experience, we’ll work out the practical details, of noninterference with one another’s projects, cooperation and mutual assistance as called for. Meanwhile, may I invite you to breakfast? Since you’ve doubtless synchronized yourself with local time, I imagine you didn’t eat before you left.”

  “Well, I figured—”

  “Oh, do accept. We must have a serious discussion, and it may as well be in comfort. I assure you, I am not a bad cook.”

  Tamberly yielded. Corwin had arranged things inside his shelter more neatly and compactly than she had ever managed in hers, making it a trifle roomier. He insisted that she take the chair, and poured coffee from a pot already at work. “This is an upper-case Occasion,” he declared. “Ordinarily in the field one merely refuels, eh? Today, what would you
say to bacon, French toast, and maple syrup?”

  “I’d say, ‘Let me at ’em before I trample the fence down,’” she admitted.

  “Splendid.” He busied himself at the tiny electric stove. The nuclear miniunit that powered it also kept the dome warm. She shed her mackinaw, leaned back, sipped the excellent coffee, and let her gaze rove. Books—his tastes were more highbrow than hers, unless he’d gone for these when he knew she would join him; they didn’t seem much handled. The two he had published while in academe stood among them. Some implements rested on a shelf, gifts or exchanges which he probably meant to take home for souvenirs. Among them were a lance with a composite head and a stone-bladed, antler-hafted hatchet, held together by thongs and glue. Even the handleless cutters, scrapers, burins, and other tools were finely made. Tamberly recalled the crude work of the We; tears stung her eyes.

  “I trust you are aware,” he said, keeping his look on the cookery, “the Wanayimo think you’re my wife. That is, when I told them you were coming, they took it for granted. They haven’t the free and easy sexual mores of the Tulat.”

  “Wanayimo? Oh, yes, the Cloud People. Uh—”

  “Not to worry. They accept that you will have your own house, to work your own magic. You’re safe among them, especially since they think of you as mine. Otherwise … fear of your powers might stay their hands, but scruples would not, and some young bucks could decide this was a test of their courage, their manhood. After all, I had to tell them beforehand what they were bound to find out, that you were earlier associated with the Tulat, whom they don’t really consider human.”