Poul Anderson: There Will Be Time

“Yes. I’d about decided the same for myself.” Wallis nodded and nodded. “First, like you say, a real good vacation, to straighten out my thoughts and get this fuzziness out of my head. Then, a … a progress through tomorrow, observing, issuing orders, always bound onward … till at the end, when my work is done — Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“God!” I exclaimed, a word as close to prayer as I’d come in fifty skeptical years. “If ever there was a revenge—”

“This wasn’t,” Havig said through lips drawn taut.

“What, well, what’d it feel like, when he came?”

“I’ve avoided being on hand for most of that. When I had to be, it was naturally always a festive occasion, and nobody cared if I got drunk. Men who regularly deal with him told me — tell me — one gets used to leading the poor apparition through his Potemkin villages, and off to some sybaritic place downtime for one of the long orgiastic celebrations which use up and shorten his lifespan. They’re almost fond of him. They go to great lengths to put on a good show. That eases their thought of the end.”

“Huh? Isn’t he supposed to vanish in his old age?”

Havig’s fist knotted on the arm of his chair. “He did. He will. He’ll scream in the night, and his room will be empty. He must have thrown himself far in time, because searchers up and down will find nothing reappearing.” Havig tossed off his drink. I saw he needed more, and obliged.

Leonce caressed him. “Aw, don’t let it gnaw you, darlya,” she murmured. “He’s not worth that.”

“Mostly I don’t,” he said, rough-throated. “Rather not discuss the business.”

“I, I don’t see—” I couldn’t help stammering.

The big woman turned to me. She smiled in tenderness for her vulnerable man. What she said was, to her, a remark of no importance: “We been told, now an’ then as it’s dyin’ a brain throws off the effect o’ that drug an’ recalls what was real.”

IN 1971, October 31 fell on a Sunday. That meant school next day. The little spooks would come thick and fast to my door if they must be early abed. I laid in ample supplies. When I was a boy, Halloween gave license for limited hell-raising, but I’m glad the custom has softened. Seeing them in their costumes brings back my own children at that same age, and Kate. When my doorbell has rung for the last time, I usually make a fire, settle with my favorite pipe and a mug of hot cider, maybe put some music she liked on the record player, look into the flames and remember. In a quiet way I am happy.

But this day called me forth. It was cool, noisy with wind, sunshine spilling through diamond-clear air, and the trees stood scarlet, yellow, bronze, in enormous tossing rustling masses against blueness where white clouds scudded, and from a V passing high overhead drifted down a trumpet song. I went for a hike.

On the sidewalks of Senlac, leaves capered before me, making sounds like laughter at the householders who tried to rake them into neat piles. The fields outside of town stretched bare and dark and waiting; but flocks of crows still gleaned them, until rising in a whirl of wings and raucous merriment. I left the paved county road for an old dirt one which cars don’t use much, thanks be to whatever godling loves us enough to wage his rearguard fight against this kind of Progress. In its roundabout fashion it also brought me to Morgan Woods.

I went through that delirium of color till I reached the creek. There I stood a while on the bridge, watching water gurgle above stones, a squirrel assert his dominion over an oak which must be a century old, branches toss, leaves tear loose; I listened to the rush and skirl and deeper tones around me, felt air slide by like chilly liquid, drew in odors of damp and fulfillment; I didn’t think about anything in particular, or contemplate, or meditate, I just was there.

At last my bones and thin flesh reminded me they had a goodly ways to go, and I started home. Tea and scones seemed an excellent idea. Afterward I should write Bill and Judy a letter, make specific proposals about my visit to them this winter in California.

I didn’t notice the car parked under the chestnut tree before I was almost upon it. Then my pulse jumped inside me. Could this be — ? Not the same machine as before, but of course he always rented — I forgot whatever ache was in my legs and trotted forward.

Jack and Leonce Havig sprang forth to greet me. We embraced, the three of us in a ring. “Welcome, welcome!” I babbled. “Why didn’t you call ahead? I’d not’ve kept you waiting.”

“That’s okay, Doc,” he answered. “We’ve been sitting and enjoying the scene.” He was mute for a second or two. “We’re taking in as much of Earth as we’re able.”

I stepped back and considered him. He was leaner than before, deep furrows beside his mouth and between his eyes, the skin sun-touched but leather-dry, the blond hair fading toward gray. Middle forties, I judged; something like a decade had gone through him in the weeks of mine since last we met.

I turned to his wife. Erect, lithe, more full-figured than earlier but carrying it well, she showed the passage of those years less than he did. To be sure, I thought, she was younger. Yet I marked crow’s-feet wrinkles and the tiny frost-flecks in that red mane.

“You’re done?” I asked, and shivered with something else than the weather. “You beat the Eyrie?”

“We did, we did,” Leonce jubilated. Havig merely nodded. A starkness had entered the alloy of him. He kept an arm around her waist, however, and I didn’t suppose she could stay happy if at heart he were not too.

“Wonderful!” I cried. “Come on in.”

“For tea?” she laughed.

“Lord, no! I had that in mind, but — my dear, this calls for Aalborg akvavit and Carlsberg beer, followed by Glenlivet and — Well, I’ll phone Swanson’s and have ’em deliver gourmet items and we’ll fix the right breed of supper and — How long can you stay?”

“Not very long, I’m afraid,” Havig said. “A day or two at most. We’ve a lot to do in the rest of our lifespans.”

Their tale was hours in the telling. Sunset flared gold and hot orange across a greenish western heaven, beyond trees and neighbor roofs, when I had been given the skeleton of it. The wind had dropped to a mumble at my threshold. Though the room was warm enough, I felt we could use a fire and bestirred myself to fill the hearth. But Leonce said, “Let me.” Her hands had not lost their woodcraft, and she remained a pleasure to watch. Pleasure it was, also, after the terrible things I had heard, to see how his gaze followed her around.

“Too bad you can’t forestall the founding of the Eyrie,” I said.

“We can’t, and that’s that,” Havig replied. Slowly: “I’m not sure it is too bad, either. Would a person like me ever have had the … determination? I started out hoping for no more than to meet my fellows. Why should I have wanted to organize them for any special purpose, until—” His voice trailed off.

“Xenia,” I murmured. “Yes.”

Leonce glanced around at us. “Even Xenia doesn’t tip the balance,” she said in a gentle tone. “The Crusaders would not’ve spared her. As was, she got rescued and lived nine years onward.” She smiled. “Five of them were with Jack. Oh, she had far less than luck’s given me, but she did have that.”

I thought how Leonce was outwardly changed less than her man, and inwardly more than I had guessed.

While Havig made no remark, I knew his wound must have healed — scarred over, no doubt, but nonetheless healed — as wounds do in every healthy body and spirit.

“Well,” I said, trying to break free of somberness, “you did get your kind together, you did overcome the wrong and establish the right — Well, I hardly expected I’d entertain a king and queen!”