Poul Anderson - There Will Be Time

He paused for a drink of my Scotch. “No,” he finished, “we simply didn’t want bandits loose who’re able to skip clear of their crimes. And I think — I dare hope — that never happened. How can, say, a condottiere, penniless, educationless, entirely alone, how can he get along in any era of white America or make his way to Europe? No, really, his best bet is to seek out the Indians. And among them he can do better as a medicine man than a robber. He might actually end his days a useful member of the tribe! That’s a single example, of course, but I imagine you get the general idea.”

“Regardin’ the future,” Leonce said, her tone tiger-soft, “we hold that. The Eyrie for the years it has left; the Phase Two complex till it’s no longer needed — an’ we built it. We’ve learned from our campaign. Nobody will shake us loose.”

“Well, in a military sense,” her husband was quick to put in. “It can’t be done overnight, but we mean to raise the Eyrie’s subjects out of peonage, make them into a free yeomanry. Phase Two never will have subjects: instead, non-traveler members of our society. And — goes without saying — our agents behave themselves. They visit the past for nothing except research and recruitment. When they need an economic base for operations, they make it by trade which gives value for value.”

Leonce stroked fingers across his cheek. “Jack comes from a sentimental era,” she crooned.

I frowned in my effort to understand. “Wait a minute,” I protested. “You had one huge problem with spines and fangs, right after you took the Eyrie. Your prisoners. What about them?”

An old trouble crossed Havig’s countenance. “There was no good answer,” he said tonelessly. “We couldn’t release them, nor those we arrested as they came back from furlough or surprised in their fiefs. We couldn’t gun them down. I mean that in a literal sense; we couldn’t. Our whole force was drawn from people who had a conscience, able to learn humaneness if they hadn’t been brought up with it. Nor did we want to keep anybody chained for life in some secret dungeon.”

Leonce grimaced. “Worse’n shootin’, that,” she said.

“Well,” Havig plodded on, “you may remember — I think I told you, and the telling is closer to your present than it is to mine — about those psychodrugs they have in the late Maurai era. Do you recall? My friend Carelo Keajimu will be afraid of them, they give such power. Inject a person, talk to him while he’s under the influence, and he’ll believe whatever you order him to believe. Absolutely. Not fanatically, but in an ‘of course’ way that’s far more deeply rooted. His own mind will supply rationalizations and false memories to explain contradictions. You see what this is? The ultimate brainwash! So complete that the victim never even guesses there ever was anything else.”

I whistled. “Good Lord! You mean you converted those crooks and butcher boys to your side, en masse?”

Havig shuddered. “No. If nothing else, I at least could never have stood such a gang of, of zombies. It’d have been necessary to wipe their entire past lives, and — impractical, anyhow. Keajimu had arranged for several of my bright lads to be trained in psychotechnology, but their job was quite big enough already.”

He drew breath, as if gathering courage, before he proceeded: “What we destroyed in our prisoners was their belief in time travel. We brought them to their home milieus — that took a lot of effort by itself, you realize — and treated them. They were told they’d had fever, or demonic possession, or whatever was appropriate; they’d imagined uncanny things which, being totally impossible, must never be mentioned and best never thought about; now they were well and should return to their ordinary lives.

“Our men released them and came back for more.”

I pondered. “Well,” I said, “I admit finding the idea a bit repulsive myself. But not too much. I’ve been forced to do certain things, tell certain lies, to patients and—”

Leonce stated: “There were two exceptions, Doc.”

“Come with me,” the mind molder said. His voice was gentle. Drug-numbed, Caleb Wallis clung to his hand as he left.

Havig remained, often toiling twice around the same clock, till he and his lieutenants had properly underway the immense task of making over the Eyrie. But time flowed, time flowed. At last he had no escape from the moment when the psycho-technician told him he could enter that guarded tower.

Perhaps the most appalling thing was how well the Sachem looked, how jauntily he sat behind his desk in an office from which scars and bloodstains were blotted as if they had never been.

“Well!” he greeted. “Good day, my boy, good day! Sit down. No, pour for us first. You know what I like.”

Havig obeyed. The small eyes peered shrewdly at him. “Turned out to be a mighty long, tough mission, yours, hey?” Wallis said. “You’ve aged, you have. I’m sure glad you carried it off, though. Haven’t read your full report, but I intend to. Meanwhile, let’s catch up with each other.” His glass lifted. “To the very good health of us both.”

Havig forced down a sip and lowered himself to a chair.

“You’ve doubtless heard already, mine hasn’t been the best,” Walls continued. “Down and out for quite a while. Actual brain fever. Some damn germ from past or future, probably. The sawbones claims germs have evolution like animals. I’ve about decided we should curtail our explorations, partly on that account, partly to concentrate on building up our power in normal time. What d’ you think of that?”

“I think it would be wise, sir,” Havig whispered.

“Another reason for pulling in our horns is, we lost a lot of our best men while you were away. Run of bad luck for us. Austin Caldwell, have you heard? And Waclaw Krasicki — Hey, you’re white’s a ghost! What’s wrong? Sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, sir… Still tired. I did spend a number of years downtime, and—”

— and it had been Leonce who found Krasicki chained, said, “Xenia,” drew her pistol and shot him in the head. But it was Havig who could not make himself be sorry this had happened, until Xenia sought him in his sleep and wept because he did not forgive.

Well. “I’ll recover, sir.”

“Fine. Fine. We need men like you.” Wallis rubbed his brow. For a minute his voice came high and puzzled: “So many people here. So many old gone — or are they? I can’t tell. I look from my balcony and see strangers, and think I ought to see, oh, somebody named Juan, somebody named Hans … many, many… but I can’t place them. Did I dream them while I lay sick?” He hugged himself, as if winter air had seeped through into the tropical warmth around him. “Often, these days, I feel alone, alone in all space and time—”

Havig mustered briskness: “What you need, sir, if I may suggest it, is an extended vacation. I can recommend places.”

“Yes, I think you’re right. I do.” Walls gulped from his tumbler and fumbled after a cigar.

“When you return, sir,” Havig said, “you ought to work less hard. The foundation has been laid. We’re functioning smoothly.”

“I know. I know.” Walls lost hold of his match.

“What we need, sir, is not your day-by-day instruction any longer. We have plenty of competent men to handle details. We need more your broad overview, the basic direction you foresee — your genius.”

Behind the gray whiskers, Walls simpered. This time he got his cigar lit.

“I’ve been talking about it with various officers, and thinking a lot, too,” Havig proceeded. “They’ve discussed the matter with you, they said. Sir, let me add my words to theirs. We believe the ideal would be if a kind of schedule was established for your passage through the future. Of course, it’d include those periods your past self will visit, to let you show him how well everything is going. Otherwise, however — uh — we don’t think you should spend more than a minimum of your lifespan in any single continuous set of dates. You’re too precious to the grand project.”