Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

The Academy stood closer, on an elevation which the builders had reinforced to keep it safe above the occasional floods. Through millennium after millennium, gardens, lawns, bowers, low-lying structures of subtle curves and shifty colors, remained inviolate. When the last graduate departed, the builders took it down, eliminating every trace of its existence. But that would not happen for another fifty thousand years.

Riding, Tamberly drank air that was mild, rich with odors of growth, soil, sulfury-sweet herbs. And yet the sun had barely passed through the vernal equinox. What was to be South Dakota lay about her like a dream of what was to be California. Not for geological epochs would the Ice come down from the north.

The trail broadened to a beaten path. A fork in it led around campus to stables at the rear. Sequeira and Tamberly stalled and cared for their horses themselves. Not all Patrol work, probably not most, required that kind of skills, but the Academy did—in case of need and, she suspected, to instill workmanship and responsibility. Banter flew back and forth across the chores. He is a fetching rascal, she thought.

They emerged hand in hand. Sunset rays fell hazily over the man who waited outside and cast his shadow gigantic behind him. “Good evening,” he greeted. The voice was unemphatic, his garb resembled theirs, but somehow she got a sense of utter control. “Cadet Tamberly?” It was not actually a question. “My name is Guion. I would like a word with you.”

Sequeira stiffened at her side. Her pulse jumped. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing to cause you worry.” Guion smiled. She couldn’t tell how deep it went. Nor could she identify his race. The finely formed countenance hinted at—aristocracy?—but from what century beyond hers? “In fact, may I have the honor of your company at dinner? If you will pardon us, Cadet Sequeira.”

How did he know I’d be here? Plenty of possible ways, of course, if you’re high-ranking. Why, though? “Oh, gosh,” she blurted, “I’m all dusty and sweaty and, and everything.”

“You will have cleaned and changed in any case,” Guion said dryly. “Would an hour hence suit you? Number 207, Faculty Lodge. Quite informal. Thank you. I look forward.” He gave her a courtesy salute. Dazed, she returned it. He walked off toward officer country. His gait flowed.

“What’s happening?” Sequeira whispered.

“I, I haven’t the faintest idea. But I’d better go. Sorry, Tu. Another time.” Maybe. She hastened from him. Soon she forgot about him.

Preparing herself helped clear away bewilderment. A cadet had a private room, plus a bath cubicle as exotically, efficiently equipped as Manse Everard had promised. Like most of her classmates, she’d brought along a few clothes from home. The mingling of costumes added color to social occasions. Not that those weren’t amply romantic, give the diversity of origins. (At that, it was limited. She had had explained to her that people from really unlike civilizations would find one another too distracting—incomprehensible or downright repulsive. Most of her fellow recruits came from the years approximately between 1850 and 2000. Some, like Sequeira, originated farther uptime; their cultures were compatible with hers and exposure to her sort was a valuable part of their particular training.) After a while she chose a plain black dress, silver-and-turquoise Navaho pendant, low shoes, the least touch of makeup.

Neutral, she hoped, neither brash nor standoffish. Whatever Guion’s agenda, she didn’t imagine seduction was on it. Nor on mine. God, no! She must somehow be of some interest to him. At the same time, she was the merest rookie and he was … a big wheel. Unattached, almost certainly. Or more than that? She had been taught very little—hardly anything, she realized now that she examined it—about the upper hierarchy of the Patrol.

Maybe none existed. Maybe by Guion’s era humankind had outgrown the necessity. Maybe tonight she’d learn a snippet about that. Eagerness tingled anxiety out of her.

Crossing the campus, where luminous paths shone softly beneath dusk, she hailed those of her fellows whom she met less warmly than they did her. Close friendships were developing, but her mind had gone elsewhere. Seeing how she was clad and where she was bound, they didn’t try to detain her. Naturally, speculation would be thick in the dorms, and tomorrow she must be prepared with responses, if only “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Confidential. Excuse me, I’ve got a class.”

Briefly, she wondered whether every lot of new recruits spent its year in the same collegiate format as hers. Probably not. Societies, ways of living and thinking and feeling, must vary too much through a million years of history. Indeed, a large part of what she did would look crazy to her professors at Stanford, utterly boggle them. She couldn’t repress a giggle.

She had never been inside Faculty Lodge or seen any pictures from it, and a side entrance brought her into a small, bare chamber from which a gravity shaft bore her straight upward. The democratic atmosphere of the Academy was merely that, an atmosphere, useful for purposes of getting on with the job. She stepped into a corridor where the floor, uncarpeted, lay soft and warm underfoot, like live flesh, and light poured iridescent from all around. Door 207 vanished at her approach and reappeared when she had passed through. The rooms beyond were graciously furnished, in a style more nearly familiar—to put visitors such as she at their ease, she guessed. There was no window, but ceilings revealed the sky, the light of the stars enhanced so that she could see them blink forth, unblurred by the clean air, until the night was full of their majesty.

Guion welcomed her with a gentlemanly handshake and in the same wise conducted her to a seat. Frames on the walls enclosed moving, three-dimensional scenes, cliffs above surf and a mountain silhouetted against dawn. She didn’t know whether they were recorded or live. She didn’t recognize the background music either, but it could be Japanese, and again she suspected it had been carefully chosen for her.

“May I offer you an apéritif?” Guion invited. He used fluent, barely accented English.

“Well, a small dry sherry, if you please, sir,” she ventured in the same language.

He chuckled and sat down across from her. “Yes, you shall keep a clear head for tomorrow morning. The dinner I have planned won’t upset your Spartan routine too badly. How do you like our organization thus far?”

She spent several seconds arranging her words. “Very much, sir. Tough but fascinating. You knew I would.”

He nodded. “The preliminary tests are reliable.”

“And then you have reports on how I did—how I will do—No, let me try saying it in Temporal.”

His gaze was steady upon her. “Don’t. You should know better than that, Cadet Tamberly.”

A machine glided in bearing her drink and something in a snifter glass for him. It gave her the chance to recover. “I’m sorry if I misspoke myself. The time travel paradoxes—” Mustering courage: “But honestly, sir, I can’t believe you haven’t looked.”

He nodded. “Yes. That can be done with reasonable assurance and safety, in this protected environment. To no one’s surprise, you will perform creditably.”

“Which doesn’t let me off the hook earlier, does it?”

“Of course not. You must do the work, gain the abilities. Some individuals, hearing that they will succeed, would be tempted to slack off on the grueling effort; but you have more sense.”

“I know. Success isn’t really guaranteed. I could change that bit of history by goofing; and I sure don’t want to.” Despite his low-key manner, tension was again gathering in her. She sipped fragrant pungency and tried to make muscles loosen, the way she was learning in phy ed. “Sir, why am I here? I didn’t think I was anybody special.”