Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Sure. When she learned what had happened at the vihara, which she soon would, Raor could dispatch a comrade of hers downtime to lurk above the merchant’s dwelling until the fugitive showed up or the troopers came in ordinary wise. The Patrol had no vehicle anywhere close, and Everard had no way to call one in. Not that he would. Nabbing the rider wasn’t worth alarming the rest into flight.

Maybe she won’t think of it. I almost didn’t.

Everard gusted a sigh. Too dicey. The Exaltationists may be crazy, but they aren’t stupid. If anything, their weakness is oversubtlety. I’m just going to have to let my outfit fall into their hands.

What would they make of it? They might or might not have the equipment to probe its secrets. If they did, well, they wouldn’t discover anything they didn’t know already, except that Jack Holbrook was not a complete fool.

Small consolation, when Manse Everard was completely disarmed.

What to do? Depart the city before the Syrians reached it, strike out for the nearest Patrol station? Hundreds of miles, and he’d likeliest leave his bones along them, the scraps of knowledge he had gained blown away on a desert wind. If he did survive the journey, the corps couldn’t well hop him back to carry on where he’d left off. Nor could it spend more man-years on insinuating a different agent by the same kind of tortuous devices as for him. He’d used up all the good opportunities.

That wouldn’t matter to Raor, if she faced this dilemma. She’d double through time, annul her original attempt, and start on a fresh one. To hell with the possibility of generating a causal vortex, unforeseeable and uncontrollable consequences to the course of events. Chaos is what the Exaltationists want. Out of it they’ll make their kingdom.

If I quit here, and somehow convey a warning to the Patrol, it can only come in force, an escadrille of timecycles swooping secretly into this night. Probably it can rescue Chandrakumar. Certainly it can put a stop to Raor’s plot. But she and her buddies will escape, to try again at a place and year we’ll know nothing about.

Everard shrugged. Not much choice for me, is there?

He changed direction, toward the waterfront. According to his neural briefing, yonder lay several low-life taverns, any of which could provide a doss, a hidey-hole, and perhaps some more palaver about Theonis. Tomorrow—Tomorrow the king came home, the enemy at his heels.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised at how things have worked out. Shalten and company crafted a fine scheme. But every officer knows, or should know, that in every action, the first casualty is your own battle plan.

The house was in a bedroom community outside Oakland, where you encountered your neighbors as little as you chose. It was small, screened by pines and live oaks at the end of an uphill driveway. Entering, Everard found the interior cool, dim, anachronistic. Mahogany, marble, embroidered upholstery, deep carpet, maroon hangings, leather-bound books with gold-stamped French titles, molecularly perfect copies from Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, hadn’t much business nowabouts, did they?

Shalten noticed him noticing. “Ah, yes,” he said in English whose accent Everard couldn’t identify, “my preferred pied-à-terre is Paris of the Belle Époque. Refinement that will turn into revulsion, innovation that will turn into insanity, and thus, for the foreknowledgeable observer, piquancy becoming poignancy. When required to work away from it, I take souvenirs along. Welcome. Have a seat while I fetch refreshment.”

He offered his hand, which Everard clasped. It felt bony and dry, like a bird’s foot. Unattached agent Shalten was a wisp of a man, features wizened on a huge bald head. He wore pajamas, slippers, a faded dressing gown, and, though he was presumably not Jewish, a skullcap. When the arrangements for this meeting were being made at milieu HQ, Everard asked where-when his host-to-be originated. “You don’t need to know” was the answer.

Still, Shalten bustled about hospitably enough. Everard took an overstuffed armchair, declined Scotch because later he must drive back to his hotel but accepted a Nevada Pale. Shalten’s tea with Amaretto and Triple Sec didn’t fit his French affection; he seemed uninterested in personal consistency. “I will remain standing, if you do not mind,” said his rusty voice. A churchwarden lay beside a humidor on a bureau. He filled it and kindled a rather nauseatingly perfumed tobacco. Partly in self-defense, Everard stoked his briar. Nevertheless the atmosphere was companionable.

Well, they shared a purpose, and belike Shalten was wise to tone grimness down.

Gab about weather, traffic strangulation, and the food at Tadich’s in San Francisco occupied the first minutes. Then he turned oddly luminous yellow-green eyes on his visitor and said, tone unchanged, “So. You have thwarted the Exaltationists in Peru and disposed of several. You have captured your runaway Spanish Conquistador and put him back in his proper setting. You have thwarted the Exaltationists again in Phoenicia and, again, disposed of several.” Lifting a hand: “No, please, no modesty. It required well-coordinated teams, yes. Yet though the cells of the body be many, the works of the body are naught save that the spirit order them. Not only did you lead these undertakings, when necessary you worked solo. My compliments. The question is simply, have you since had sufficient free time, on your world line, to recuperate?”

Everard nodded.

“Are you certain?” Shalten persisted. “We can allow you more. The stress was undoubtedly considerable. The next stage that we contemplate is likely to be still more dangerous and taxing.” He sketched a smile. “Or, on the basis of what I have heard about your political views, perhaps I should say ‘dangerous and demanding.’”

Everard laughed. “Thanks! No, really, I’m raring to go. Why else should I claim privilege? It bothers me that Exaltationists are still running loose.” In English, his remark was ridiculous; but Temporal, alone among languages, had the grammatical structure to handle chronokinesis. Unless precision was essential, Everard favored his mother tongue. Both men knew what he meant. “Let’s finish this job before they finish us.”

“You need not have insisted on taking a key part, you know,” Shalten said. “Your qualifications for it made the Middle Command hope very much you would volunteer, but it was not required of you.”

“I wanted,” Everard growled. He gripped his pipe bowl tightly, warm between his fingers. “Okay, what is your plan and how do I fit in?”

Shalten blew smoke of his own. “Background first. We know the Exaltationists were in northern California on the thirteenth of June 1980. At any rate, one of them was, in connection with their Phoenician devilry. They took adequate precautions, used legitimate crosstemporal activity to help camouflage theirs, et cetera. We have no prospect of finding them. The fact of their presence might give us a way of playing some kind of trick, except that, in the nature of the case, they know that we know. That day they were certainly on the qui vive, avoiding everything of which they were not absolutely assured.”

“Uh-huh. Obvious.”

“Well, upon studying the matter, I realized that there is another little space-time region in which one or more Exaltationists probably lurk. It is not guaranteed, and the precise dates are unknowable, but it is well worth considering.” The long pipestem jabbed in Everard’s direction. “Can you guess what?”

“Why, m-m … why, here and now, because you are.”

“Correct.” Shalten grimaced. “Wherefore I pass weeks in this abominable milieu, nursing the development of my trap along, detail by daily detail. And perhaps all for naught. How often does man, vain of his intellect, find that the harvest of his efforts is vanity! Whether mine bear fruit shall be for you to discover.” He sent another leisurely stream of smoke from his lips. “Can you guess how I concluded this miniperiod might have potentialities for us?”