The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  From people on hand, she had gotten an idea of the situation. Reveling under the water, he shouted through its rush and the open bathroom door that Operation Rignano had apparently gone well. “Details later.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she called back. “Boy, have we got gossip to swap.”

  “Starting with your escapades, young lady.” While he toweled himself, he listened to her account. His skin prickled at the knowledge of what might easily have resulted.

  “Keith was shot before I could snap us out of there,” Tamberly finished. “I went randomly, then set for here and now—two days ago, that is—and jumped again. The medic took charge of him immediately. Slug through the left lung. Patrol surgery and healing techniques are quite something, aren’t they? He’s supposed to stay mostly in bed for another week, but right away he got ornery. Maybe you’ll calm him down.”

  “I’d certainly like to compare notes. You said he was four years in that world?”

  “More like nine, originally. He emerged in 1980, I in ‘89. But I pulled him out in ‘84, so the rest of those years never happened to him and he has no recollection of them or anything.”

  He donned the fresh clothes he’d taken into the bathroom. “Tsk-tsk. A time alteration. Violating the Prime Directive.”

  “Foof! In that universe, who cares?”

  “Good question. To be frank, and don’t spread this around, the Patrol does occasionally make, uh, adjustments. Keith and I were involved in one such case. Someday I’ll be free to give you the story.” The pain in it has left me. She doesn’t leave room for that kind of regret,

  Everard emerged to find Tamberly cross-legged in his armchair, a small neat Scotch from his bottle for company. “You didn’t have to spare my modesty,” she remarked.

  He grinned. “Impudent wench. Give me a shot of the same, and let’s go say hello to Keith.”

  The man lay in his room, propped against the headboard, plucking at the pages of a book. His visage was pale and drawn. It kindled when the pair entered. “Manse!” he exclaimed huskily. “My God, it’s great to see you. I’ve been worried sick.”

  “About Cynthia, sure,” Everard said.

  “Of course, but also—”

  “I know. Felt the same way. Well, we can turn our fears out to pasture. The mission went like a hush puppy down a hound dog.” Not really. It was misery, danger, the death and maiming of brave men. But in this glow of mine, everything is wonderful.

  “I heard a racket, and wondered—Thanks, Manse, thanks.”

  Everard and Tamberly took chairs on opposite sides of the bed. “Thank Wanda,” Everard said.

  Denison nodded. “Who more? She even lopped five years off my sentence, d’you know? Five years I can very well do without. The four were bad enough.”

  “Were you mistreated?”

  “Well, not exactly.” Denison described his capture.

  “You have a knack for getting caught, don’t you?” Everard teased.

  He wished he hadn’t when Denison’s face went bleak and the man whispered, “Yes. Has it been entirely coincidence? I’m no physicist, but I have read and heard something about quantum probability fields, temporal nexuses.”

  “Don’t fret over it,” Everard said hastily. Don’t worry whether chance has made you a gun loaded with trouble, always cocked on a hair trigger. I’m not well up on the theory of that myself. “You came through both affairs smelling like a rose, which is more than I did. Ask Wanda; she met me before I’d showered. Go on.”

  Encouraged, Denison smiled and obeyed. “The arch-cardinal was decent in his fashion, though his position didn’t give him a lot of scope in that regard. Besides being a prince of the Church, he was a top-drawer nobleman of France, which included the British Isles. He had to order both the burning of heretics and the massacre of peasants who got above themselves. Not that he minded, he considered it his duty, but he didn’t enjoy it either, like some characters I met. Anyway. The clerical title was more important than the secular one. Kings were—are—puppets in that Europe, or junior partners at best.

  “Albin, the archcardinial, was an intelligent and educated chap. It took me a long while and a lot of sweat to convince him my visitor-from-Mars story might be true. He’d ask me the damnedest sharp questions. But, well, I had appeared from nowhere. I told him my chariot flew too fast to see, like a bullet. That was all right, because they didn’t know about sonic booms and stuff. They had telescopes and understood the planets are separate globes. Geocentric astronomy was still doctrine, though it was permissible to assume a heliocentric universe as a mathematical fiction, to help calculations…. Never mind. Later. There’s so much, so many strangenesses I met, even sequestered as I was.

  “You see, not only didn’t Albin trust me, he wanted to squirrel me away from the zealous Inquisition types, who’d have interrogated me till any more torture would be fatal and then burned alive what was left. Albin realized that with patience he could learn a great deal more, and he didn’t share the common terror about sorcery. Yes, he accepted that magic worked, but looked on it as essentially another set of technologies, with its own limitations. So he put me on an estate of his outside Paris. It wasn’t too bad, except for—well, you can guess. I had comfortable quarters, good food, leave to walk around the palace and grounds though always under guard. Yes, and access to his library. He owned a lot of books. Printing had been invented. A monopoly of Church and state, death penalty for unlicensed possession of a press, but books were available to the upper classes. They saved my sanity.

  “The archcardinal visited whenever he got a chance. We’d talk the sun down and back up again. He was a fascinating conversationalist. I did my best to keep him interested. Gradually I persuaded him to put a sign outside, in the form of a garden plot. I said an ethereal wind had crashed my chariot and swept it away. However, my friends on Mars would search for me. If one of them happened by, he’d see the symbol and land. Albin meant to bag that fellow and his vehicle. I can’t really blame him. He didn’t intend any harm, if the prisoner cooperated. Martian knowledge or maybe a Martian alliance would mean plenty. Western Europe was in a bad way.”

  Denison stopped. His voice had gone raspy. “Don’t overdo,” Everard said. “We can finish tomorrow.”

  Denison’s lips bent upward. “Now that’d be cruelty to dumb animals. You’re more curious than the Elephant’s Child. Wanda too. I wasn’t up to saying much till today. Your news is a tonic, man. If I could just have a glass of water?”

  Tamberly went to fetch it. “I gather she read your intention correctly,” Everard said. “Your idea was to declare that a Patrolman was present, but whoever came along should be ultra-cautious, and not take risks on your account.” Denison nodded. “Well, we can both be glad she did, and not only sprang you free, but canceled those extra five years. I daresay they ground you pretty far down, or would have.”

  Tamberly brought the water. Denison took it, his hands lingering noticeably over hers. “You’re recovering fast,” she laughed. He chuckled and drank.

  “Wanda remarked you told her you studied a lot of history,” Everard said. “Anybody would, I suppose. Especially in hopes of finding where and when it went wrong. Did you?”

  Denison shook his head on the pillows. “Not really. The medieval era isn’t my field. I know it as well as an average educated person should, but no better. The most I could deduce was that sometime during the later Middle Ages, the Catholic Church came decisively out on top in its rivalry with the kings, the state. Yesterday I did get some explanation about Roger of Sicily, and remembered that a couple of books mentioned him as a particular villain. Maybe you can fill me in on the initial course of might-have-been.”

  “I’ll try. Meanwhile you rest.” Everard was mainly aware of Tamberly’s gaze upon him. “In the continuum we aborted, Roger and his oldest, ablest son died in battle at Rignano, 1137. The prince who succeeded couldn’t cope. Roger’s enemy, Pope Innocent’s ally, Rainulf took all their mainland
possessions away from the Sicilians. Soon they also lost such African conquests as they’d made. Meanwhile anti-Pope Anacletus died and Innocent reigned with a strong hand. When Rainulf died too, the Papacy became the real power in southern Italy as well as in its own states. This encouraged the election of a series of aggressive Popes. Piecemeal they acquired the rest of Italy and, along the way, Sicily.

  “Otherwise, for a spell, history proceeded roughly as before. Frederick Barbarossa restored order in the Holy Roman Empire but didn’t come off so well in his quarrels with the Curia. However, in the absence of papal schisms and the presence of papal states growing constantly stronger, imperial ambitions southward were checked. They turned west instead.

  “Meanwhile, same as in our world, the Fourth Crusade dropped its original objective. It captured and sacked Constantinople, and installed a Latin king. The Orthodox Church was forcibly united with the Catholic.

  “The Far East was little affected as yet, the Americas and the Pacific not at all. I don’t know what happened next. This—roughly 1250—was as far as we investigated, and that only sketchily. Too much else to do, too few people for the job.”

  “And you itch for the rest of the story, both of you,” Denison said, more vigorously than before. “Okay, I’ll give you a synopsis. No more. In due course I may write a book or two.”

  “We need that,” Tamberly replied soberly. “We’ll learn things about ourselves we never would otherwise.”

  She does have her serious side, and a damn good mind to back it up, Everard thought. Still young. But am I really old?

  Denison cleared his throat. “Here goes. Barbarossa didn’t conquer France, but he gave it enough trouble that its unification process was halted, and in the course of the Plantagenet-Capetian Wars—they must correspond roughly to our Hundred Years’ War—the English prevailed, till there was an Anglo-French state. In its shadow, Spain and Portugal never amounted to a lot. And early on, the Holy Roman Empire fell apart in a welter of civil wars.”

  Everard nodded. “I’d’ve expected that,” he said. “Frederick II was never born.”

  “Hm?”

  “Barbarossa’s grandson. Remarkable character. Pulled his ramshackle Empire back together and gave the Popes a hell of a time. But his mother was a posthumous daughter of Roger II, who in our history died in 1154.”

  “I see. That explains quite a bit…. In yonder world, the Welf faction, pro-papal, generally got the upper hand, so Germany became more and more another set of papal states, in fact if not in name. Meanwhile the Mongols penetrated far into Europe, I think farther than in our world, because their internal wars left the Germans in no shape to send help against them. When they withdrew, eastern Europe was a wreck, and German colonists gradually took it over. The Italians got control of the Balkans. The French tail wagged the English dog till there wasn’t much to show except a funny pronunciation—”

  Denison sighed, “No matter details. As almighty as the Catholic Church became, it suppressed all dissent. The Renaissance never happened, the Reformation, the scientific revolution. As the secular states decayed, they fell more and more under the sway of the Church. That began when the Italian city-states started picking clergymen to head their republics. There was a period of religious wars, schismatic more than doctrinal, but Rome prevailed. In the end, the Pope was supreme over all kings in Europe. A sort of Christian Caliphate.

  “They were technologically backward by our standards, but did reach America in the eighteenth century. Their spread over there was very slow. The old countries didn’t have the kind of society that would support explorers or entrepreneurs on an adequate scale, and they kept their colonists on a tight leash. Also, in the nineteenth century the whole system began breaking down, rebellions and wars and depressions and general misery. When I arrived, the Mexicans and Peruvians were holding out against conquest, though their leaders were half white and half Christian. Muslim adventurers were intervening. You see, Islam was enjoying a rebirth of energy and enterprise. So was Russia. After they got rid of the Mongols, the Tsars looked more west than east, because weakened Europe was such a tempting prize.

  “At the time Wanda rescued me, the Russians were close to the Rhine and the Turk-Arab alliance was pushing into the eastern Alps. Men like Archcardinal Albin tried to play one off against another. I guess they had some success for a while, because she found my garden intact in 1989, but I doubt it lasted long beyond that. I’d say the Muslims and Russians overran Europe and afterward went for each other’s throats.”

  Denison sank back, finally exhausted.

  “Looks like we’ve restored what was better,” Everard said awkwardly.

  Tamberly stared into a corner. Listening, she had grown sober, even somber. “But we’ve done away with billions of human beings, haven’t we?” she murmured. “And their songs and jokes, loves and dreams.”

  Anger touched Everard. “Together with their serfdoms, diseases, ignorances, and superstitions,” he snapped. “That world never got the idea of science, checking logic against fact. Obviously not. So it went on and on in its wretchedness, till—Except it didn’t, We prevented. I refuse to feel guilty. We made our people real again.”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” Tamberly breathed. “I didn’t—”

  The hall door opened. They looked about. A woman stood there, seven feet tall, gaunt, long-limbed, golden-skinned, eagle-faced. “Komozino!” Everard cried. He scrambled to his feet. “Unattached agent,” he told his friends, toppling or climbing from homely English to precise Temporal.

  “Like you,” she said. Her stiff courtesy shattered. “Agent Everard, I have been searching for you. We have reports from our scouts uptime. The mission has failed.”

  He stood numbed.

  “True, King Roger continues his days,” Komozino went on unmercifully. “He secures the Regno, extends his holdings in Africa, draws to his court some of the greatest intellects of the age, dies in bed 1154, is succeeded by his son William, yes, everything as it should be. But we still have no contact with the farther future. There is still no Patrol post established later than about the mid-twelfth century. A quick reconnaissance uptime found a world still alien to everything we knew. What now has chaos done?”

  1989 β A. D.

  Three timecycles hung at eagle height over the Golden Gate. Morning fog whitened the coast, the great bay shone, earth rolled inland, summer-tawny. Beside the strait, rock masses traced where walls, towers, strongholds had been. Brush grew about them. It had almost wholly reclaimed the crumbled adobe of lesser buildings. A village occupied the site of Sausalito and a few fishing smacks were out on the water.

  Tamberly’s radio voice came thin beneath the whittering wind: “My guess is that the city never recovered from the 1906 quake. Maybe enemies took advantage of the broken defenses and sacked what was left. And nobody since has had the means or the heart to restore it. Shall we go downtime and see?”

  Everard shook his head. “No point in that, and we’ve no right to take extra risks. Where should we next look?”

  “The Central Valley ought to give us clues. In our twentieth century it was one of the world’s richest agricultural areas.” He heard the slight quaver, like a shivering in the cold.

  “Okay. Pick the coordinates,” he said.

  She did. He and Karel Novak repeated them aloud before they made the jump. Everard saw light flash off the automatic rifle the Czech kept ready in his grasp. Well, his life, the life of all his forefathers, made wariness a reflex. We Americans were luckier, in the world where there was a United States of America.

  Already Everard felt sure that, given reasonable caution, his scouting party would meet no danger. Even before they left, he’d expected as much. Else he might have refused Tamberly’s suggestion that she be the guide, overridden her insistence, and skipped ahead to Denison’s full recovery, despite the difficulties that would create.

  Or would he have? The sensible thing in any case probably was to suppress his protective insti
ncts and bring her. The idea was to compare this future with the future now averted. Denison had come to know the latter in depth, but vicariously. Tamberly had had an overview, which was all Everard wanted anyway. And Lord knows the girl has proved she can cope.

  Small strung-out farms huddled along the rivers and what remained of a rather primitive canal network. Mostly, middle California had gone back to arid wilderness. Mud-walled fortresses stood guard at intervals. Afar, through his optical, Everard spied what seemed to be a band of wild horsemen.

  Huge holdings occupied the Midwest. Many lay plundered and desolate, survivors or invaders eking out a squalid existence in sod huts on thinly worked fields. Others endured, ranching or raising a diversity of crops. At the middle of each clustered several large buildings, usually stockaded. Cities, which had never been of much size, were shrunk to towns or hamlets amidst abandoned ruins.

  “Manorial economy,” Everard muttered. “Produce nearly everything you use at home, because damn little trade goes on any more.”

  Fragments of a higher civilization clung in the East, though here too cities were dwindled and run-down, often laid waste. Everard noticed the gridiron pattern of nearly all streets and the formidable stone structures at every center. What prosperity anybody still enjoyed was evidently founded on slave labor; he saw coffles driven along the roads and field gangs toiling under armed supervision. He thought they included whites as well as blacks, though sunburn, grime, and distance made it hard to tell. He didn’t care for a closer view.

  Cannon boomed in the Hudson Valley, cavalry charged, men hewed and perished. “I believe an empire has died, and these are its ghosts at war with each other,” Novak said.

  Surprised, for he’d come to think of the man as dour and down-to-earth, Everard replied, “Yeah. A dark age. Well, let’s try the seaboard, and maybe mid-ocean, before Europe.”

  It made sense thus to retrace Tamberly’s course, more or less. Europe must hold the wellspring of this time distortion, as it did of the last. Approach it from the periphery, always ready to skip out at the first sign of menace. Everard’s glance never quite left the array of detectors whose readings glimmered between his hands.