The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  Christ, I’m thirsty. Can’t I even have a cup of water? He clutched the bars, strained against them, called his hoarse appeal. For answer, somebody gibed from another cell somewhere down the passage. “Stop hoping, will ye? Leave me be!” English, by God, though strangely accented. When Denison replied in that language, he got an inarticulate snarl.

  He slumped down on the mattress. What he’d just heard boded ill. Well, he did have time to think, try to prepare himself for interrogation. He’d better start. The decision strengthened him. Presently he was upright again, pacing.

  Perhaps two hours had passed when a turnkey opened the door to admit a pair of guards, hands on pistol butts, and a cleric. The blackrobe was an old man, wrinkled, blinking, but sharp. “Loquerisne latine?” he demanded.

  Do I speak Latin? Denison realized. Sure, that’d still be a universal second language in this world. How I wish I did. Never thought I’d need it, in my line of work, and nothing is left from high school but “amo, amas, amat.” The image of little old Miss Walsh rose before him. “I told you so,” she said. He choked back a hysterical laugh and shook his head. “Non, monsieur, je le regrette,” he attempted in French.

  “Ah, vo parlezz alorss fransay?”

  Denison formed his words slowly, with care: “I seem to speak another French than yours, reverend father. I come from far away.” He must repeat himself twice, trying what synonyms occurred to him, before he got his meaning across.

  Withered lips quirked humorlessly. “That is clear, if you do not so much as recognize a friar. Know, I am Brother Matiou of the Dominican order and the Holy Inquisition.”

  When Denison had understood, fear grabbed his guts. He kept it leashed and slogged ahead. “There has been an unfortunate accident. I assure you, I am on a mission peaceful although of the utmost importance. I arrived untimely and in the wrong place. It is understandable if this aroused fears and caused precautions to be taken. But if you will bring me to your highest authority”—king, Pope, what the hell?—“I will explain the situation to him.”

  Again unraveling was necessary before Matiou snapped, “You will explain here and now. Think not that demonic art can avail you in Christ’s own stronghold. Declare your name!”

  The Patrolman got the drift. “Keith Denison, your Rev—uh, Brother.” Why not? What did it matter? What did anything matter anymore?

  Matiou was also catching on, quickly interpreting otherwise unintelligible bits from context. “Ah, of England?” He used that word, not “Angleterre,” and went on: “We can fetch one who speaks the patois, if that will make you answer more readily.”

  “No, my home is—Brother, I cannot give the secrets I bear to anyone less than the supremacy.”

  Matiou glared. “You will speak to me, and speak truth. Must we put you to the full question? Then, believe me, when you go to the stake you will bless him who lights the fire.”

  He needed three attempts before he conveyed his threat. The full question? I suppose less extreme torture is routine. This is only a preliminary quiz. Fear keened in Denison’s brain. He was faintly astonished at his firmness: “With respect, Brother, my duty, sworn before God, forbids me to reveal certain things to anyone but the sovereign. It would be catastrophic, did the knowledge become public. Think of small children given fire to play with.” He cast a significant look at the guards. The effect was spoiled by the need to repeat.

  Response was clear: “The Inquisition knows well how to keep silent.”

  “I do not doubt that. But neither do I doubt that the master will be most displeased should word intended for him alone be uttered elsewhere.”

  Matiou scowled. Denison saw hesitation underneath and pressed his advantage. They were catching on to each other’s French rather fast. Part of the trick was to talk somewhat like an American who had read but never heard the language.

  Confronted with something unprecedented like this, the monk wouldn’t be human if he didn’t welcome an excuse to pass the buck. After all, Denison argued, the sovereign could always remand him for interrogation.

  “What do you mean by the sovereign?” Matiou asked. “The Holy Father? Then why did you not come to Rome?”

  “Well, the king—”

  “The king?”

  Denison realized he’d made a mistake. Apparently the monarch, if they had one, was not on top. He hastened on: “The king, I was about to say, would be the natural person to see in certain countries.”

  “Yes, among the Russian barbarians. Or in those lands of black Mahound where they acknowledge no caliph.” Matiou’s gnarled forefingers stabbed. “Where were you truly bound, Keith Denison?”

  “To Paris, in France. This is Paris, isn’t it? Please let me finish. I seek the highest ecclesiastical authority in … these domains. Was I wrong? Is he not in the city?”

  “The archcardinal?” Matiou breathed, while the expression on the guards shifted from nervous to awed.

  Denison nodded vigorously. “Of course, the archcardinal.” What kind of rank was that?

  Matiou looked away. Beads on his rosary clicked between his fingers. After a while that became very long to the listener, he clipped: “We shall see. Conduct yourself carefully. You will remain under observation.” His robe swirled as he swung about and departed.

  Denison sank onto his pallet, wrung out. Well, he thought faintly, I’ve won a little time before they take me to the rack and thumbscrews, or whatever worse they’ve invented since the Middle Ages. Unless I’ve somehow landed—No, can’t be.

  When a jailer with an armed escort brought him bread, water, and greasy stew, he inquired about the date. “St. Anton’s, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and eighty” drove the last nail into the coffin for him.

  From despair he drew at length a bleak determination. Something might turn up yet, rescue or—No, to think of oblivion was not only useless, it could paralyze him. Better to keep going, always ready to jump at whatever piece of luck chanced by.

  Shivering through the night on his inadequate bed, he tried to lay plans. They were inevitably tentative. What he must do was get the protection of the big boss, the dictator, the—whatever an archcardinal was. That meant convincing the man he was not dangerous but, instead, potentially valuable, or at any rate interesting. He could not reveal himself as a time traveler. The Patrol inhibition would freeze his larynx. Anyway, quite probably no one in this world could comprehend the truth. However, he could scarcely deny having appeared out of thin air, though he might claim that witnesses were confused about details. Things Matiou had let fall suggested a belief in magic, even among educated people. But he should proceed most cautiously if he tried an explanation along those lines. They had enough technology here to produce efficient-looking small arms, and doubtless artillery. The rubber pot indicated contact with the New World on a regular basis, which implied a sufficient knowledge of astronomy for navigation if nothing else—Would you believe a visitor from Mars?

  Denison coughed a chuckle. Nevertheless, that kind of story looked less unpromising than others. He must feel his way forward. “First let me humbly inquire what the savants among your Sanctity’s (?) flock assume to be the case. My nation has perhaps made discoveries they have not.” Awkward communication, frequent pauses to figure out what a sentence had meant, would be immensely helpful, giving him opportunities to think and to retrieve any faux pas….

  He fell into uneasy, dream-ridden sleep.

  In the morning, a while after he’d received a bowl of gruel, guards accompanied by a priest took him away. What he glimpsed in an adjacent cell chilled his sweat. He was merely brought to a tiled room where a tub of hot water steamed, and told to bathe himself well. Afterward he was issued a dark set of present-day male clothes, his wrists were manacled, and he was led into an office where Brother Matiou sat behind a desk beneath a crucifix.

  “Thank God and your patron saint, if you have one, that his Venerability, Albin Archcardinal Fil-Johan, Grand Duke of the Northern Provinces, gr
aciously consents to see you,” the friar intoned.

  “I do, I do.” Denison crossed himself two-handedly. “I will make many thank offerings as soon as I am able.”

  “Since you are a foreigner, indeed more foreign than a pagan from Tartary or Mexique, first I shall give you some instruction, that you not squander too grossly his Venerability’s time.”

  Hey, a break! Denison paid his closest heed. He sensed how shrewdly Matiou extracted nibbles of information from him in the course of the hour, but that was all right; it was a chance to rehearse and develop his story.

  And at last he was brought in a closed carriage to a palace atop that hill called Montmartre in the lost world, and ushered through sumptuous corridors and up a grand staircase and past a gilt bronze door where bas-reliefs showed Biblical scenes; and he found himself in a high white room, where sunlight streamed through stained glass onto an Oriental carpet, and confronting him sat a man on a throne, in a robe of scarlet and gold.

  As ordered, Denison prostrated himself. “You may be seated,” said a deep voice. The archcardinal was middle-aged but vigorous. The consciousness of power seemed engraved on his countenance. Spectacles diminished his dignity not at all. Just the same, he was clearly intrigued, prepared to question and to listen.

  “I thank your Venerability.” Denison took the chair, some twenty feet from the throne. They weren’t allowing needless risks at this private audience. A bellpull hung by the prelate’s right hand.

  “You may simply call me ‘lord,’”—the English word—Albin told him. “We have much to speak of, you and I.” Sternly: “Beware of attempting tricks or subtleties. There are ample grounds already for suspicion. Know, the Chief Inquisitor, the superior of that cleric you have met, urges me to order you to the flames at once, before you wreak harm. He feels a magician such as this can only be an Avenging Jew.”

  Denison understood enough to breathe, “A … a what, lord?” from a throat suddenly going dry.

  Albin raised his brows. “You do not know?”

  “No, lord. Believe me, I am from a land so remote that—”

  “Yet you know something of our language, and claim to bear a message for me.”

  Yeah, I’m up against a first-class intellect. “A message of goodwill, lord, in hopes of establishing closer relations. Our knowledge of you is slight, from visions vouchsafed prophets ancient and modern. Unhappily, I suffered shipwreck. No, I am certainly not an Avenging Jew, whatever that may be.”

  Albin too grasped the general intent, if not every word. His mouth tightened. “The Jews are skilled craftsmen and engineers at the very least, and it is quite possible that they also command black arts. They are descendants of those who escaped when our forefathers scoured Europe clean of their kind. They settled among the worshippers of Mahound, and now they lend their help to them. Have you not even heard that Austria has fallen to those paynim? That the heretic legions of the Russian emperor are at the gates of Berlin?”

  And the Inquisition busy in western Christendom. God! I believed my twentieth century was pretty grim.

  18,244 B. C.

  I

  Later Manse Everard thought the fact that he was chosen, and precisely where and how it happened to him, would be ironic were the coincidence not so absurd. Later yet he remembered his conversations with Guion, and wondered mightily.

  But they were more distant than the stars from his mind when the summons came upon him. He and Wanda Tamberly had been sharing a vacation at the lodge the Patrol maintained in the Pleistocene Pyrenees. On this their last day, they left off skiing and climbing, nor did they flit north to seek out the magnificent wildlife of a glacial era, nor call on any of the nearby Crô-Magnon settlements to enjoy picturesque hospitality. They simply went for a long walk on easy trails, looked at mountain scenery, said little, were aware of much.

  Sunset washed gold across white peaks and ridges. The lodge stood at no great altitude, but snowline was lower than in the birthtime of these two. Timberline was also; around them reached alpine meadow, intensely green, flecked with small summer flowers. A little way upslope, several ibex lifted horns and watched them, alertly but without fear. The sky, greenish in the west, deepening through azure overhead to purple in the east, was full of homebound wings. Cries drifted down through silence and gathering chill. Human hunters had made scant mark thus far; they were almost in balance with nature, like wolf and cave lion. The air tasted of purity.

  The main building loomed ahead, a darkness from which windows glowed. “It’s been grand,” Everard said in American English. “For me, anyhow.”

  “Ditto,” Tamberly replied. “You’ve been so kind, taking a rookie like me in hand and getting me to feel easy here.”

  “Shucks, a pleasure. Besides, you’re the naturalist. You introduced me to stuff in the wilderness I’d never heard or dreamed of.” Including hunts for mammoth, reindeer, wild horse with camera rather than gun. Born and raised when she was, Wanda disapproved of blood sports. His background had been different.

  Not that such details mattered a lot otherwise if you were in the Patrol. Except—She hasn’t added but four or five years to the twenty-one that were hers when first we met. How many have I? Longevity treatments or no, Everard didn’t care, just then, to reckon them up.

  “I wish—” She gulped and looked aside. Finally, in a rush: “I wish I weren’t leaving.”

  His pulse stumbled. “You don’t have to, you know,” he said.

  “Yes. I really must. I’ve such limited lifespan to give my folks,” parents, sister, who would never know that she fared through the ages, whose own years above ground would number less than a hundred and all on world lines running straight from conception to dissolution. “And then I should, I want to, call on Steve,” her uncle who was also a Patrol agent, in Victorian England. “Before I go back to work.” She could have spent years of experienced time on vacation, then reported to her base camp within minutes of the moment she left it; but agents didn’t do that sort of thing. You owed the outfit a fair proportion of your existence. Besides, too long away from the job, you’d go stale, and that could prove fatal, to yourself or, worse, a comrade.

  “Okay, I understand,” Everard sighed. He plunged at the question they had skirted this whole while. “Can we make another date?”

  She laughed and caught his hand. How warm hers was. “Why, sure.” Her glance turned toward his. In the fading light he couldn’t see the blue of her eyes. Strong bones stood forth, though, and page-bobbed hair bore the hue of amber. She was shorter than he by the breadth of his palm, and he was a big man. “To tell the truth, I was hoping. Didn’t want to get pushy. Don’t tell me you felt shy!”

  “M-m, well—” He had never been glib. How could he now explain? It wasn’t quite clear to him, anyway. The gap between our ranks, I guess. I’m afraid of seeming to condescend, or else of seeming to be trying to overwhelm. Her generation of women grew up with a touchy kind of pride built in. “Old bachelor type. You, you’ve got a wide field to play if you want.” She had frankly enjoyed the attention paid her by other male guests. And they were exotic to her, several of them handsome and vivacious, while he was only another twentieth-century American, slow-spoken, plain in his tastes, war-battered in the face.

  “Foof,” she snorted. “You’ve cut a wider swathe than any field I’m ever likely to find myself in. Don’t deny it. You wouldn’t be normal if you hadn’t taken advantage of opportunities.”

  And you? … None of my business.

  “Not that you’ve ever abused your chances,” she added hastily. “I know you never would. I was surprised and, and delighted when you stayed in touch after Beringia. For Pete’s sake, did you think I didn’t want to?”

  Almost, he grabbed her. Would she like me to? By God, I believe she would. But no. It would be wrong. She was too wholehearted. Let her first become clear in her mind about this. Yes, and let him decide what his foremost wishes and needs were.

  Be grateful for what you’ve
had, this past couple of weeks, son. He knotted the fist she wasn’t holding and muttered, “Fine. Fine. Where might you like to go next?” To get better acquainted.

  She also seemed to take refuge in banality. “Gee, I’d have to think. Suggestions?”

  Then they were at the lodge, mounting its veranda, entering the common room. Flames crackled in a huge stone fireplace. A rack of Irish elk antlers curved above it. On the opposite wall, cast in brass, a heraldic shield bore a stylized hourglass. It was the emblem of the Patrol, the insigne on uniforms that were seldom worn. Folk lounged about awaiting supper, with drinks, conversation, a game of chess, a game of go, a few clustered at the grand piano in a corner, from which danced a Chopin scherzo.

  Agents of similar backgrounds tended to visit the same decades of the lodge’s long existence. However, the pianist tonight was born in the thirty-second century Anno Domini, in orbit around Saturn. Patrol people did feel curious about other eras than their own, and sometimes they got enchanted by some aspect of one.

  Everard and Tamberly draped their mackinaws over their arms. She went around saying goodbye. He lingered near the pianist. “Will you stay on here?” she asked him in Temporal.

  “A few days, I think,” he answered.

  “Good. I too.” The topaz gaze dropped. The hairless alabaster-white head—not albino; a healthy product of genetic technology—bent again above the keys. “If you desire your heart eased, I have the Gift of Quietness.”

  “I know. Thanks.” He didn’t expect he’d want more than some rambles by himself, but the offer was generous.

  Tamberly returned to him. He accompanied her to her room. While he waited in the corridor, she changed into clothes she had brought, suitable for the San Francisco area, summer’of 1989, and packed her other stuff. They went down to the underground garage. Hoppers stood row on row, like wheelless futuristic motorcycles, beneath bleak white light. At the one assigned her, she stowed her luggage.