Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Unsealing the dome, she entered and closed it again. The interior was dim until she activated a transparency. (Nobody around to peep in it at her, not that the dear We ever would without her leave.) Warmth let her slip off her parka, sit down to remove boots and stockings, wiggle her toes.

There wasn’t much else she could move freely, as cramped as the place was. Her timecycle occupied a large part of the floor, under a shelf on which she kept mattress pad and sleeping bag. The single chair stood at the single table, where a computer and auxiliary apparatus claimed half the top. Alongside was a unit for cooking, washing, et cetera. Miscellaneous boxes and cabinets completed the circle. Two held clothes and other personal possessions; the rest were full of stuff related to her mission. Policy required the dome be as small, as unobtrusive in the land and lives of the natives, as possible. Outdoors was plenty of space, elbows few and far between.

Having set water to boil, she undid her gun belt and put the pistols, stunner and killer, away beside the long weapons. For the first time, they felt ugly in her hands. She had seldom killed, just for meat and when she reluctantly deemed it necessary to take a specimen—and, once, a snow lion that Ulungu’s family at Bubbling Springs told her had turned man-eater. Humans? Nonsense! Judas priest, but you’ve gotten edgy all of a sudden.

Recognizing the exclamation in her mind, she smiled. She’d picked it up from Manse Everard. He tried to keep his language polite in the presence of women, as he’d been taught. She’d noticed that he was more comfortable if she curbed hers likewise, and obliged him except when she forgot.

Some music ought to soothe. She touched the computer. “Mozart,” she said. “Uh, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” The strains lilted forth. Only then did she notice, with faint surprise, what she had ordered. Not that she didn’t like Mozart, but she’d been remembering Manse and he detested rock. Well, probably this’ll work better anyway.

A cup of Darjeeling and an oatmeal cookie wrought their own wonders. Presently she could settle down to record. Nevertheless, after speaking her preamble she played it back before going on, to find whether it was as unwontedly awkward as it had sounded to her.

From the screen, blue eyes under blond brows gazed out of a countenance blunt-nosed, strong of cheekbones and chin. Hair irregularly sun-bleached fell tousled to the jawline, past skin tanned darker than ever on a California beach. Oh, dear, have I actually gotten to look like that? You’d think I was thirty, and I am only—I’m not born yet. The thin-worn joke somehow heartened. Once I’m back, beauty parlor, here I come.

A slightly husky contralto said: “Wanda Tamberly, Specialist second class, scientific field agent, at—” Chronological and geographical identification followed, in the coordinates used by the Time Patrol. The spoken language was its Temporal.

“I suspect a crisis is in the making. As, uh, as reference to my previous reports shows, hitherto, throughout the duration in which I have made my visits—”

“Dry up!” she told the image, and blanked it. Since when has the Patrol wanted academese? You’re overwrought, girl. Reverting to the classroom. Don’t. It’s four whole years since you were an undergrad. Lifeline years, full of experience and history. Prehistory. She took several deep breaths, consciously relaxed herself muscle by muscle, and thought about a certain koan. Though she wasn’t into Zen or anything like that, some of the tricks were helpful. Starting over:

“I think they’ve got troubles ahead of them here. You remember how these people are the only ones in the world, as far as they are concerned. I’m the first outsider they’ve met.” The explorers who learned how to talk with them and something of their ways had touched down three centuries ago and were totally forgotten, unless a wisp of folk memory had slipped into myth. “Well, today Aryuk and I found some newcomers.

“I’ll take it from the beginning. Yesterday his son Dzuryan returned from a bachelor wandering. That was experimental, adolescent; the kid’s no more than twelve or thirteen, I’d guess, not seriously looking for a mate. Never mind. Dzuryan returned and among other things told how he’d seen a herd of mammoth at Bison Swale.”

The designation would suffice. She had already sent uptime the maps she sketched as she ranged around. Place names were her own. Those that the We bestowed often varied according to who was talking. They did tell the same stories about sites, over and over. (“In this hollow, in the spring after the Great Hard Winter, Khongan saw a pack of wolves bringing down a bison. He fetched men from two camps. With stones and torches they drove the wolves off. They carried the meat home and everybody feasted. They left the head for the spirits.”)

“I got pretty excited.” Hoo boy, did If “Mammoth seldom come within twenty miles of the coast, never this close before. Why? When I said I’d go look, Aryuk insisted on accompanying me personally.” He’s a darling, so concerned about his guest, his miracle-working, tale-telling, land-ignorant klutz. “Well, I certainly didn’t mind a partner. I’m not much acquainted with that area. We set off today at sunrise.”

Tamberly reached up to remove her headband. She popped out the thumbnail-sized instrument that had captured everything she saw and heard, plugged it into the databox, ran fingers over keyboard. The whole contents would go into the record, but for this report she should enter only what was immediately relevant. However, as hours unreeled in minutes, she could not resist slowing down for an occasional scene.

A southern hillside gave shelter from wind. She and Aryuk had stopped to drink at a spring welling out of it Watching, she remembered how cold the water was and how it tasted of earth and stone; she remembered sunlight on her back and the pungencies that it baked from small herbs. Soil lay soft underfoot, still wet from springtime’s melt. Mosquitoes whined innumerable.

Aryuk filled his hands and slurped. Drops glistened in the black beard that fell to his breast. “You want to rest a while?” he asked.

“No, let’s push on, I’m eager.” That was approximately what Tamberly said. Still less than Temporal—which, being devised for time travelers, at least originated in a high-tech culture—did the Tula language have English equivalents. It was a trilling, clucking tongue, agglutinative, embodying concepts at whose subtleties she could only guess. For a single instance, the genders were seven, four pertaining to certain plants, weather phenomena, the heavenly bodies, and the dead.

Aryuk laughed, revealing the absence of various teeth. “Your strength is boundless. You wear an old man out.”

The Tulat, a word that she rendered as “We,” didn’t keep track of days or years. She gauged him as being in his middle or late thirties. Few among his people got much past forty. Already he had two living grandchildren. His body, thin but whipcord tough, continued in good shape, aside from the scars left by injuries that got infected. He stood three inches shorter than she, but then, she was a fairly tall woman in the twentieth-century United States. All was plain to see, for he went quite nude. Ordinarily at this season he might have worn a grass poncho as protection against the mosquitoes. Today he traveled with Her Who Knows Strangeness. They never came near her. Tamberly hadn’t tried to explain how a little gadget on her belt worked. She wasn’t too sure herself; it was from the future of her birthtime. Supersonics?

Aryuk cocked his shock head and glanced at her from beneath heavy brow ridges. “You could wear me out in ways more fun than walking,” he suggested.