Poul Anderson - There Will Be Time

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.”

“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 germs 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.