Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

A man emerged from the temple’s single entrance. He wore a plain but decent white tunic. Shuffling bent, almost toothless, squinting and blinking, he could be as old as sixty or as young as forty. Before scientific medicine, unless you were upper class you needed a lot of luck to reach middle age still in good health, if you reached it at all. Twentieth-century intellectuals call technofixes dehumanizing , Everard recollected.

The man wasn’t senile, however. “Rejoice, O stranger, if you come peacefully,” he said in Greek. “Know that this precinct is sacred, and though the Kings Antiochus and Euthydemus be at war, both have declared it sanctuary.”

Everard lifted his palm, saluting. “I am a pilgrim, reverend father,” he averred.

“Eh? Not me, not me. I’m no priest, only the caretaker here, Dolon, slave to the priest Nicomachus,” replied the other. Evidently he lived in a hut somewhere nearby and was present during the day. “Truly a pilgrim? How did you ever hear of our little naos? Are you sure you’ve not gone astray?” He drew close, stopped, peered dubiously. “Are you indeed a pilgrim? We can’t let anybody in for warlike purposes.”

“I am no soldier.” Everard’s cloak draped over his sword, not that a traveler could be blamed for going armed. “I’ve come a weary way to find the temple of Poseidon that stands outside the City of the Horse.”

Dolon shook his head. “Have you food along? I can offer nothing. Supplies are cut off. I’ve no idea when anything will get through to sustain me, let alone anybody else.” He glanced at the women. “I dreaded a pack of fugitives, but it seems most countryfolk got into town or elsewhere in time.”

Everard’s belly growled. He ignored it and the pang. A man in good shape and properly trained could go several days without eating before he weakened significantly. “I ask for no more than water.”

“Holy water, from the god’s own well, remember. What brings you here?” Suspicion sharpened. “How can you know about this temple when it’s only been Poseidon’s these past few months?”

Everard had his story prepared. “I am Androcles from Thrace,” he said. That half-barbarian region, its interior little known to Greeks, could plausibly have bred a man his size. “An oracle there told me last year that if I came to Bactria, I’d find a temple of the god outside the royal city, and help for my trouble. I mustn’t tell you about that trouble, except that I haven’t sinned, I’m not impure.”

“A prophecy, then, a foreseeing of the future,” Dolon breathed. He wasn’t awed into immediate acceptance. “Did you travel all that way alone? Hundreds of parasangs, wasn’t it?”

“No, no, I paid to accompany caravans and the like. I was in one such, bound for Bactra at last, when news came of a hostile army moving in. The caravan master turned back. I couldn’t bear to, but rode on, believing the god I seek would look after me. Yesterday a robber band—peasants made homeless and desperate, I think—waylaid me. They got my horse and baggage mule, but by the god’s grace I escaped, and continued afoot. So here I am.”

“You’ve suffered many woes indeed,” said Dolon, turning sympathetic. “What must you do now?”

“Wait till the god gives me, uh, further instructions. I suppose that will be in a dream.”

“Well, now—well—I don’t know. This is, is irregular. Ask the priest. He’s in the city, but they should let him come out to … see to things.”

“No, please! I told you I’m vowed to silence. If the priest asks questions, and I refuse to answer, and he insists—wouldn’t the Earthshaker be angered?”

“Well, but—”

“See here,” Everard proposed, hoping he came across as both forceful and friendly, “I have a purse of money left. Once I’ve gotten my sign from the god, I mean to make a substantial donation. A gold stater.” It was the rough equivalent of a thousand 1980’s U.S. dollars, insofar as comparisons of purchasing power between different milieus meant anything. “I should think that would let you—the temple buy what you need from the Syrians for a long time to come.”

Dolon hesitated.

“It’s the god’s will at work,” Everard pursued. “You wouldn’t thwart his will, I’m sure. He helps me, I help you. All I ask is to wait in peace till the miracle happens. Call me a fugitive. See.” He reached down, opened the purse, took forth several drachmas. “Plenty of money, if nothing else. Let me give you this for yourself. You deserve it. For me, it’s a deed of piety.”

Dolon trembled a moment more, reached decision, and held out his hands. “Very well, very well, pilgrim. The gods do move in mysterious ways.”

Everard paid him. “Let me go inside now, to pray and to drink of the god’s bounty, become his guest in truth. Afterward I’ll sit quietly out here and bother nobody.”

The cool dimness kissed sweaty, dusty skin and dry lips. The spring bubbled up at the center, out of a slope on which the foundation rested. It partly filled a hole in the floor, then drained through a pipe inside the masonry, which must lead under the temenos wall to a rivulet in its natural channel. Behind was a rough stone block, the ancient altar. The image of Poseidon stood painted on the rear wall, barely discernible in this light. Elsewhere on the floor lay a clutter of offerings, mostly crude clay models of houses, beasts, or human organs that the god was thought to have aided. No doubt priest Nicomachus took whatever was perishable or valuable back with him when he returned to town from his visits.

Your simple faith hasn’t availed you much, folks, has it? Everard thought sadly.

Dolon made reverence. Everard followed suit as best he was able, about as well as you would expect of a Thracian. Kneeling, the caretaker dipped a cup of water and gave it to the suppliant. In Everard’s present state, the icy tang was more welcome than a beer. His prayer of thanks came close to sincerity.

“I will leave you alone with the god for a while,” Dolon said. “You may fill yonder jug for yourself and, duly grateful, carry it out.” Bowing to the icon, he left.

I’d better not take long, the Patrolman realized. However, a little comfort and privacy, a chance to think —

His plans were vague. The objective was to get into the Syrian camp and find the military surgeon Caletor of Oinoparas, known at home as Hyman Birnbaum and, like Everard, long since given a regenerative procedure enabling him to live among pagans without drawing comment. Maybe they could invent some excuse to go off together, maybe Birnbaum could arrange for Everard’s unhindered departure. What counted was to take a transceiver sufficiently many miles away that the Exaltationist instruments wouldn’t detect a call, above the faint intermittent background of communication between unheeding time travelers elsewhere in the world. Let the Patrol know what Everard had learned, so it could prepare a trap.

Though judging by what I’ve discovered about their precautions, the likelihood of our bagging all four is very small Damn. God damn.

Never mind. The immediate need was to reach Birnbaum, with enemy troops apt to skewer a stranger on sight. He might deter them by shouting that he bore a vital message, but then he’d be haled before officers who’d want to know what it was, and if he named Caletor, the surgeon would surely be examined too—under torture, when it turned out neither man had anything convincing to say.

He’d come to the temple in hopes of finding somebody in charge with more authority than the slave, an under-priest or acolyte or whatever. From such a person he might have gotten religious tokens, an escort, or the like, passing him through the Syrian pickets tomorrow. If he demonstrated his flashlight and said Poseidon had personally given it to him in the night—Of course, that must wait till Nicomachus-Draganizu had met with Polydorus-Buleni and both had left again. Everard had considered not arriving here before then; but skulking about this countryside meanwhile was at least as dangerous as sitting unobtrusively in the court, and he just might observe something useful—