Poul Anderson: The Year of the Ransom

And Tamberly was not alone. Luis Castelar crouched beside him, stupefaction fading out before a snarl. Men and women stood around, themselves tense. The timecycle rested near the platform edge.

First Tamberly was aware of weapons aimed at him. Then he stared at the people. They were like none he had met in his wanderings. Their very alienness made them look somehow alike. Faces were finely chiseled, high in the cheekbones, thin in the noses, large in the eyes. Despite raven darkness of hair, skin was alabaster and irises were light, while men seemed never to have had any growth of beard. Bodies poised tall, slender, supple. Basic clothing for both sexes was a close-fitted one-piece garment with no visible seams or fastenings, and soft half-boots of the same lustrous black. Silver patterns, an Oriental-like tracery, ornamented most, and several persons added cloaks of flamboyant red, orange, or yellow. Wide belts held pockets and holsters. Hair fell to the shoulders, held in place by a simple headband, arabesqued fillet, or diamond-glittery coronet.

They numbered about thirty. All seemed young—or ageless? Tamberly thought he perceived many years of lifespan behind them. It showed in both the pride and the alertness, above a feline self-composure.

Castelar glared from side to side. He had been deprived of knife and sword. The latter flashed in the hand of a stranger. He tautened as if to attack. Tamberly caught him by the arm. “Peace, Don Luis,” he urged. “This is hopeless. Call on the saints if you wish, but stay quiet.”

The Spaniard growled before he subsided. Tamberly felt him shiver beneath sleeve and skin. Somebody in the group said something in a language that purred and trilled. Another gestured, as if for silence, and stepped forward. The grace of the motion was such that one could say he flowed. Clearly, he dominated the rest. His features were aquiline, green-eyed. Full lips curved in a smile.

“Greeting,” he said. “You are unexpected guests.”

He used fluent Temporal, the common speech of the Time Patrol and many civilian travelers; and the machine was scarcely different from a Patrol runabout; but he must surely be an outlaw, an enemy.

Breath shuddered into Tamberly. “What . . . year is this?” he mumbled. Peripherally, he noticed Castelar’s reactions when Fray Tanaquil replied in the unknown tongue—astonishment, dismay, grimness.

“By the Gregorian calendar, which I suppose you are accustomed to, it is the fifteenth of April, 1610,” said the stranger. “I daresay you recognize the site, although your companion obviously does not.”

Of course he doesn’t, passed through Tamberly. What the natives of a later day called Machu Picchu was built by the Inca Pachacutec as a holy city, a center for the Virgins of Sun. It lost its purpose when the headquarters of resistance to the Spaniards became Vilcabamba, till they captured and killed Tupac Amaru, the last who bore the name of Inca before the Andean Resurgence of the twenty-second century. So nothing led the Conquistadores to find it, and it lay empty, forgotten by everyone but a few poor countryfolk, till 1911. . . . He barely heard: “I suppose, likewise, you are an agent of the Time Patrol.”

“Who are you?” Tamberly choked.

“Let us discuss matters in a more convenient location,” said the man. “This is merely the place to which our scouts have returned.”

Why? A timecycle could appear within seconds and centimeters of any point, any moment within its range—from here to Earth orbit, from now to the age of the dinosaurs, or, futureward, the age of the Danellians, though that was forbidden—Tamberly guessed these conspirators built this landing stage, exposed to outside eyes, in order to keep the local Indians frightened and therefore distant. Stories about magical comings and goings would die out in the course of generations, but Machu Picchu would remain shunned.

Most of those who had been watching dispersed to whatever their business was. Four guards with drawn stunners walked behind the leader and prisoners. One also carried the sword, perhaps as a souvenir. By ramp, paths, and staircases they made their way down among the compounds of the city. Silence lay thick about them until the chieftain said, “Apparently your companion is just a soldier who happened to be with you.” At the American’s nod: “Well, then, we’ll put him aside while you and I talk. Yaron, Sarnir, you know his language. Interrogate him. Psychological means only, for the time being.”

They had reached that structure which Tamberly, if he remembered aright, knew as the King’s Group. An outer wall marked off a small courtyard where another timecycle was parked. Curtains of nacreous iridescence shimmered in doorways and across the roofless tops of the buildings that bounded the rest of the open space. Those were force fields, Tamberly recognized, impervious to anything short of a nuclear blast.

“In God’s name,” Castelar cried when a boot nudged him, “what is this? Tell me before I go mad!”

“Easy, Don Luis, easy,” Tamberly answered fast. “We’re captives. You’ve seen what their weapons can do. Go as they command. Heaven may have mercy on us, but by ourselves we’re helpless.”

The Spaniard clenched his jaws and went with the two assigned him, into a lesser unit. The leader’s group sought the largest. Barriers blinked out of existence to admit both parties. They stayed off, giving a look at stones and sky and freedom. Tamberly supposed that was to let fresh air in; the room he entered did not appear to have been used lately.

Sunshine joined radiance from the canopy overhead to illuminate its windowlessness. The floor had been given a deep-blue covering that responded slightly to footfalls, like living muscles. A couple of chairs and a table bore halfway familiar shapes, though their darkly glowing material was new to him. He could not identify the things shelved in what might have been a cabinet.

The guards took stance on either side of the entrance. One was male, one a woman no less steely. The leader settled into a chair and invited Tamberly to take the other. It fitted itself to his contours, to his every motion. The leader pointed at a carafe and glasses on the table. Those were enameled—made in Venice about now, Tamberly judged. Bought? Stolen? Looted? The man glided forward to fill two vessels. His master and Tamberly took them.

Smiling, the leader lifted his goblet and murmured, “Your health.” The implication was: You’d better do whatever is necessary to keep it. The wine was a tart chablis type, so refreshing that Tamberly thought it might contain a stimulant. They had broad and subtle knowledge of human chemistry in his future.

“Well, then,” the leader said. His tone continued mild. “You are obviously of the Patrol. That was a holographic recorder in your hand. And the Patrol would never permit any visitor out of time to prowl about a moment so critical, except its own.”

Tamberly’s throat contracted. His tongue stiffened. It was the block laid in his mind during his training, a reflex to keep him from revealing to any unauthorized person, ever, that traffic went up and down the tiers of history. “Uh, uh—I—” Sweat sprang forth cold upon his skin.

“My sympathies.” Did laughter run through the words? “I am quite aware of your conditioning. I also realize that it operates within the bounds of common sense. We being time travelers, you are free to discuss that subject, if not those details the Patrol prefers to keep secret. Will it help if I introduce myself? Merau Varagan. If you have heard of my race, it is probably under the name of the Exaltationists.”

Tamberly recalled enough to make this an hour of nightmare. The thirty-first millennium was—is—will be—only Temporal grammar has the verbs and tenses to deal with these concepts—it is far earlier than the development of the first time machines, but chosen members of its civilization know about the travel, take part in it; some join the Patrol, like individuals in most milieus. Only . . . this era had its supermen, their genes created for adventurousness on the space frontier; and they came to chafe beneath the weight of that civilization of theirs, which to them was older than the Stone Age is to me; and they rebelled, and lost, and must flee; but they had learned the great fact, that timefaring exists, and had, incredibly, managed to seize some vehicles; and “since then” the Patrol has been on their track, lest they do worse mischief, but I know of no report that the Patrol “will” catch them. . . .