There Will Be Time

by Poul Anderson

  He stopped for breath. I waited. “The everyday, too,” he concluded. “When you finished up in the office, weren’t you in­terested in what Kate had been doing? And then”--he looked away--”there was us. We were always in love.”

  She used to sing while she went about her household tasks. Riding past the walls to the stable, he would hear those little minor-key melodies, floating out of a window, suddenly sound very happy.

  On the whole, he and she were comparatively asocial. Now and then, to keep up his façade, it was necessary to entertain a Western merchant, or for Havig alone to attend a party given by one. He didn’t mind. Most of them weren’t bad men for their era, and what they told was interesting. But Xenia had all she could do to conceal her terrified loathing. Fortunately, no one expected her to be a twentieth century-style gracious hostess.

  When she stepped from the background and welled and sparkled with life was when Eastern friends came to dinner. Havig got away with that because Jon Andersen, advance man for an extremely distant company, must gather information where he could, hunting crumbs from the tables of Venice and Genoa. He liked those persons himself: scholars, tradesmen, artists, artisans, Xenia’s priest, a retired sea captain, and more exotic types, come on diplomacy or business, whom he sought out--Russians, Jews of several origins, an occasional Arab or Turk.

  When he must go away, he both welcomed the change and hated the loss of lifespan which might have been shared with Xenia. Fairly frequent absences were needed for him to stay in character. To be sure, a man’s office was normally in his house, but Jon Andersen’s business would require him not only to go see other men in town, but irregularly to make short journeys by land or sea to various areas.

  “Some of that was unavoidable, like accepting an invitation,” he told me. “And once in a while, like every man regardless of how thoroughly married, I wanted to drift around on my own for part of a day. But mainly, you realize, I’d go uptime. I didn’t--I don’t know what good it might do, but I’ve got this feeling of obligation to uncover the truth. So first I’d project myself to Istanbul, where I kept a false identity with a fat bank account. There/then I’d fly to whatever part of the world was indicated, and head futureward, and continue my study of the Maurai Federation and civilization, its rise, glory, decline, fail, and aftermath.”

  Twilight stole slow across the island. Beneath its highest hill, land lay darkling save where firefly lanterns glowed among the homes of sea ranchers; but the waters still glimmered. White against a royal blue which arched westward toward Asia, seen through the boughs of a pine which a hundred years of weather had made into a bonsai, Venus gleamed. On the verandah of Carelo Keajimu’s house, smoke drifted fragrant from a censer. A bird sat its perch and sang that intricate, haunting repertoire of melodies for which men had created it; yet this bird was no cageling, it had a place in the woods.

  The old man murmured: “Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.”

  He fell silent where he knelt beside his friend, until at last he said: “What you relate makes me wonder if we did not stamp our sigil too deeply.”

  (“I’d followed his life,” Havig told me. “He began as a bril­liant young philosopher who went into statecraft. He finished as an elder statesman who withdrew to become a philosopher. Then I decided he could join you, as one of the two normal-time human beings I dared trust with my secret.

  (“You see, I’m not wise. I can skim the surface of destiny for information; but can I interpret, can I understand? How am I to know what should be done, or what can be done? I’ve scuttled around through a lot of years; but Carelo Keajimu lived, worked, thought to the depths of ninety unbroken ones. I needed his help.”)

  “That is,” Havig said, “you feel that, well, one element of your culture is too strong, at the expense of too much else, in the next society?”

  “From what you have told me, yes.” His host spent some minutes in rumination. They did not seem overly long. “Or, rather, do you not have the feeling of a strange dichotomy uptime, as you say ... between two concepts which our Maurai ideal was to keep in balance?”

  Science, rationality, planning, control. Myth, the liberated psyche, man an organic part of a nature whose rightness tran­scends knowledge and wisdom.

  “It seems to me, from what you tell, that the present over-valuation of machine technology is a passing rage,” Keajimu said. “A reaction, not unjustified. We Maurai grew overbear­ing. Worse, we grew self-righteous. We made that which had once been good into an idol, and thereby allowed what good was left to rot out of it. In the name of preserving cultural di­versity, we tried to freeze whole races into shapes which were at best merely quaint, at worst grotesque and dangerous anach­ronisms. In the name of preserving ecology, we tried to ban work which could lay a course for the stars. No wonder the Ruwenzorya openly order research on a thermonuclear power­plant! No wonder disaffection at home makes us impotent to stop that!”

  Again a quietness, until he continued: “But according to your report, Jack my friend, this is a spasm. Afterward the bulk of mankind will reject scientism, will reject science itself and only keep what ossified technology is needful to maintain the world, They will become ever more inward-turning, contempla­tive, mystical; the common man will look to the sage for en­lightenment, who himself will look into himself. Am I right?”

  “I don’t know,” Havig said. “I have that impression, but nothing more than the impression. Mostly, you realize, I don’t understand so much as the languages. One or two I can barely puzzle out, but I’ve never had the time to spare for gaining any­thing like fluency. It’s taken me years of lifespan to learn what little I have learned about you Maurai. Uptime, they’re further removed from me.”

  “And the paradox is deepened,” Keajimu said, “by the con­trasting sights you have seen. In the middle of a pastoral land­scape, spires which hum and shimmer with enigmatic energies. Noiseless through otherwise empty skies glide enormous ships which seem to be made less of metal than of force. And … the symbols on a statue, in a book, chiseled across a lintel, re­vealed by the motion of a hand ... they are nothing you can comprehend. You cannot imagine where they came from. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Havig said miserably. “Carelo, what should I do?”

  “I think you are at a stage where the question is, What should I learn?”

  “Carelo, I, I’m a single man trying to see a thousand years. I can’t! I just, well, feel this increasing doubt ... that the Eyrie could possibly bring forth those machine aspects ... Then what will?”

  Keajimu touched him, a moth-wing gesture. “Be calm. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.”

  “What’s right? Is the future a tyranny of a few technic mas­ters over a humankind that’s turned lofty-minded and passive because this world holds nothing except wretchedness? If that’s true, what can be done?”

  “As a practical politician, albeit retired,” Keajimu said with that sudden dryness which could always startle Havig out of a mood, “I suspect you are overlooking the more grisly possibili­ties. Plain despotism can be outlived. But we Maurai, in our concentration on biology, may have left a heritage worse than the pain it forestalls.”

  “What?” Havig tensed on his straw mat.

  “Edged metal may chop firewood or living flesh,” Keajimu declared. “Explosives may clear away rubble or inconvenient human beings. Drugs--well, I will tell you this is a problem that currently troubles our government in its most secret councils. We have chemicals which do more than soothe or stimulate. Under their influence, the subject comes to believe whatever he is told. In detail. As you do in a dream, supplying every nec­essary bit of color or sound, happiness or fear, past or future.”

  “To what extent dare we administer these potions to our key troublemakers?”

 
; “I am almost glad to learn that the hegemony of the Federa­tion will go under before this issue becomes critical. The guilt cannot, therefore, be ours.” Keajimu bowed toward Havig. “But you, poor time wanderer, you must think beyond the next century. Come, this evening know peace. Observe the stars tread forth, inhale the incense, hear the songbird, feel the breeze, be one with Earth.”

  I sat alone over a book in my cottage in Senlac, November 1969. The night outside was brilliantly clear and ringingly cold. Frostflowers grew on my windowpanes.

  A Mozart symphony lilted from a record player, and the words of Yeats were on my lap, and a finger or two of Scotch stood on the table by my easy chair, and sometimes a memory crossed my mind and smiled at me. It was a good hour for an old man.

  Knuckles thumped the door. I said an uncharitable word, hauled my body up, constructed excuses while I crossed the rug. My temper didn’t improve when Fiddlesticks slipped between my ankles and nearly tripped me. I only kept the damn cat be­cause he had been Kate’s. A kitten when she died, he was now near his ending--As I opened the door, winter flowed in around me. The ground beyond was not snow-covered, but it was frozen. Upon it stood a man who shivered in his inadequate topcoat. He was of medium height, slim, blond, sharp-featured. His age was hard to guess, though furrows were deep in his face.

  Half a decade without sight of him had not dimmed my memories. “Jack!” I cried. A wave of faintness passed through me.

  He entered, shut the door, said in a low and uneven voice, “Doc, you’ve got to help me. My wife is dying.”

  12

  “CHILLS AND FEVER, chest pain, cough, sticky reddish sputum yes, sounds like lobar pneumonia,” I nodded. “What’s scarier is that development of headache, backache, and stiff neck. Could be meningitis setting in.”

  Seated on the edge of a chair, mouth writhing, Havig im­plored, “What to do? An antibiotic--”

  “Yes, yes. I’m not enthusiastic about prescribing for a patient I’ll never see, and letting a layman give the treatment. I would definitely prefer to have her in an oxygen tent.”

  “I could ferry--” he began, and slumped. “No. A big enough gas container weighs too much.”

  “Well, she’s young,” I consoled him. “Probably streptomycin will do the trick.” I was on my feet, and patted his stooped back. “Relax, son. You’ve got time, seeing as how you can re­turn to the instant you left her.”

  “I’m not sure if I do,” he whispered; and this was when he told me everything that had happened.

  In the course of it, fear struck me and I blurted my confes­sion. More than a decade back, in conversation with a writer out California way, I had not been able to resist passing on those hints Havig had gotten about the Maurai epoch on his own early trips thence. The culture intrigued me, what tiny bit I knew; I thought this fellow, trained in speculation, might in­terpret some of the puzzles and paradoxes. Needless to say, the information was presented as sheer playing with ideas. But presented it was, and when he asked my permission to use it in some stories, I’d seen no reason not to agree.

  “They were published,” I said miserably. “In fact, in one of them he even predicted what you’d discover later, that the Maurai would mount an undercover operation against an un­derground attempt to build a fusion generator. What if an Eyrie agent gets put on the track?”

  “Do you have copies?” Havig demanded.

  I did. He skimmed them. A measure of relief eased the lines in his countenance. “I don’t think we need worry,” he said. “He’s changed names and other items; as for the gaps in what you fed him, he’s guessed wrong more often than right. If any­body who knows the future should chance to read this, it’ll look at most like one of science fiction’s occasional close-to-target hits.” His laugh rattled. “Which are made on the shotgun prin­ciple, remember! ... But I doubt anybody will. These stories never had wide circulation. They soon dropped into complete obscurity. Time agents wouldn’t try to scan the whole mass of what gets printed. Assuredly, Wallis’s kind of agents never would.”

  After a moment: “In a way, this reassures me. I begin to think I’ve been over-anxious tonight. Since nothing untoward has happened thus far to you or your relative, it scarcely will. You’ve doubtless been checked up on, and dismissed as of no particular importance to my adult self. That’s a major reason I’ve let a long time pass since our last meeting, Doc--your safety. This other Anderson--why, I’ve never met him at all. He’s a connection of a connection.”

  Again a silence until, grimly: “They haven’t even tried to strike at me through my mother, or bait a trap with her. I sup­pose they figure that’s too obvious, or too risky in this era they aren’t familiar with--or too something-or-other--to be worth­while. Stay discreet, and you should be okay. But you’ve got to help me!”

  Night was grizzled with dawn when at last I asked: “Why come to me? Surely your Maurai have more advanced medicine.”

  “Yeah. Too advanced. Nearly all of it preventive. They con­sider drugs as first aid. So, to the best of my knowledge, theirs are no better than yours for something like Xenia’s case.”

  I rubbed my chin. The bristles were stiff and made a scratchy noise. “Always did suspect there’s a natural limit to chemo­therapy,” I remarked. “Damn, I’d like to know what they do about virus diseases!”

  Havig stirred stiffly. “Well, give me the ampoules and hypo­dermic and I’ll be on my way,” he said.

  “Easy, easy,” I ordered. “Remember, I’m no longer in prac­tice. I don’t keep high-powered materials around. We’ve got to wait till the pharmacy opens--no, you will not hop ahead to that minute! I want to do a bit of thinking and studying. A different antibiotic might be indicated; streptomycin can have side effects which you’d be unable to cope with. Then you need a little teaching. I’ll bet you’ve never made an injection, let alone nursed a convalescent. And first off, we both require a final dose of Scotch and a long snooze.”

  “The Eyrie--”

  “Relax,” I said again to the haggard man in whom I could see the despair-shattered boy. “You just got through deciding those bandits have lost interest in me. If they were onto your arrival at this point in time, they’d’ve been here to collar you already. Correct?”

  His head moved heavily up and down. “Yeah. I s’pose.”

  “I sympathize with your caution, but I do wish you’d con­sulted me at an earlier stage of your wife’s illness.”

  “Don’t I? ... At first, seemed like she’d only gotten a bad cold. They’re tougher then than we are today. Infants die like flies. Parents don’t invest our kind of love in a baby, not till it’s past the first year or two. By the same token, though, if you survive babyhood the chances are you’ll throw off later sick­nesses. Xenia didn’t go to bed, in spite of feeling poorly, till overnight--” He could not finish.

  “Have you checked her personal future?” I asked.

  The sunken eyes sought me while they fought off sleep. The exhausted voice said: “No. I’ve never dared.”

  Nor will I ever know how well-founded was his fear of fore­seeing when Xenia would die. Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom? I know nothing except that he stayed with me for a pair of days, dutifully resting his body and training his hands, until he could minister to his wife. In the end he said good-by, neither of us sure we would come together again; and he drove his rented car to the city airport, and caught his flight to Istanbul, and went pastward with what I had given him, and was captured by the Eyrie men.

  It was likewise November in 1213. Havig had chosen that month out of 1969 because he knew it would be inclement, his enemies not likely to keep a stakeout around my cottage. Along the Golden Horn, the weather was less extreme. However, a chill had blown down from Russia, gathering rain as it crossed the Black Sea. For defense, houses had nothing better than charcoal braziers; hypocausts were too expensive for this climate and these straitened times. Xenia’s slight body shivered, day after day, until the germ
s awoke in her lungs.

  Havig frequently moved his Istanbul lair across both miles and years. As an extra safety factor, he always kept it on the far side of the strait from his home. Thus he must take a creaky-oared ferry, and walk from the dock up streets nearly deserted. In his left hand hung the chronolog, in his right was clutched a flat case containing the life of his girl. Raindrops spattered out of a lowering grayness, but the mists were what drenched his Frankish cloak, tunic, and trousers, until they clung to his skin and the cold gnawed inward. His footfalls resounded hol­low on slickened cobblestones. Gutters gurgled. Dim amidst swirling vapors, he glimpsed himself hurrying down to the waterfront, hooded against the damp, too frantic to notice him­self. He would have been absent a quarter hour when he re­turned to Xenia. Though the time was about three o’clock in the afternoon, already darkness seeped from below.

  His door was closed, the shutters were bolted, wan lamplight shone through cracks.

  He knocked, expecting the current maid--Eulalia, was that her name?--to lift the latch and grumble him in. She’d be sur­prised to see him back this soon, but the hell with her.

  Hinges creaked. Gloom gaped beyond. A man in Byzantine robe and beard occupied the doorway. The shotgun in his grasp bulked monstrous. “Do not move, Havig,” he said in English. “Do not try to escape. Remember, we hold the woman.”