Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

“What are you hoping against?”

Guion met Everard’s gaze. “I cannot say precisely. It may well be unknowable.”

“Tell me something, for Christ’s sake!”

Guion sighed. “Monitors have observed anomalous variations in reality.”

“Aren’t they all?” Everard asked. And few of them matter much. You might say the course of the world has enormous inertia. The effects of most changes made by time travelers soon damp out. Other things happen that compensate. Negative feedback. How many little fluctuations go on, to and fro, hither and yon? How constant, really, is reality? That’s a question without any fixed answer and maybe without any meaning.

But once in a while you do get a nexus, where some key incident decides the whole large-scale future, for better or worse.

The calm voice chilled him. “These have no known cause. That is, we have failed to identify any chronokinetic sources. For example, the Asinaria of Plautus is first performed in 213 B.C., and in 1196 A.D. Stefan Nemanya, Grand Zhupan of Serbia, abdicates in favor of his son and retires to a monastery. I could list several other instances in either of those approximate times, some as far away from Europe as China.”

Everard tossed off his shot and chased it with a long draught. “Don’t bother,” he said harshly. “I can’t place those two you did. What’s strange about them and the rest?”

“The precise dates of their occurrences do not agree with what scholars from their future have recorded. Nor do various other minor details, such as the exact text of that play or the exact objects depicted on a certain scroll by Ma Yuan.” Guion sipped. “Minor, mind you. Nothing that changes the general pattern of later events, or even anyone’s daily life to a noticeable degree. Nevertheless they indicate instability in those sections of history.”

Everard fought down a shudder. “Two-thirteen B.C., did you say?” My God. The Second Punic War. He stuffed his pipe with needless force.

Guion nodded again. “You were largely responsible for aborting that catastrophe.”

“How many others have there been?” Everard rasped.

The query was absurd, put in English. Before he could go to Temporal, Guion said, “That is a problem inherently insolvable. Think about it.”

Everard did.

“The Patrol, existent humankind, the Danellians themselves owe you much because of the Carthaginian episode,” Guion continued after a silent while. “If you wish, regard the steps lately taken on your behalf as a small recompense.”

“Thanks.” Everard struck fire and puffed hard. “Although I wasn’t being entirely unselfish, you realize. I wanted my home world back.” He tautened. “What have these anomalies you speak of got to do with me?”

“Quite possibly nothing.”

“Or with Wanda—Specialist Tamberly? What’re you getting at with the pair of us?”

Guion lifted a hand. “Please don’t develop resentments of your own. I know of your desire for emotional privacy, your feeling that it is somehow your right.”

“Where I come from, it damn well is,” Everard grumbled. His cheeks smoldered.

“But if the Patrol is to watch and guard the evolution of the ages, must it not also watch over itself? You have in truth become one of the more important agents operating within the past three millennia. Because of this, whether you know it or not, your influence radiates farther than most. Inevitably, some of the action is through your friends. Tamberly did have a catalytic effect on a milieu she was supposed merely to study. When you protected her from the consequences of her act, you became involved in them. No harm was done in either case, and we do not expect that either of you will ever willingly or wittingly do harm; but you must understand that we want to know about you.”

The hairs stood up on Everard’s arms. “‘We,’ you say,” he whispered. “Who are you, Guion? What are you?”

“An agent like you, serving the same ends as you, except that my work is within the Patrol.”

Everard pushed the attack. “When are you from? The Danellian era?”

Defense broke down. “No!” Guion made a violent fending gesture. “I have never even met one!” He looked away. The aristocratic visage writhed. “You did, once, but I—No, I am nobody.”

You mean you are human, like me, Everard thought. We are both to the Danellians what Homo erectus — or Australopithecus?—is to us. Though you, born in a later and higher civilization, must know more about them than I’d be able to. Enough more to be terrified?

Guion recovered himself, drank, and said, again quietly, “I serve as I am bidden. That is all.”

With a sudden sympathy, an irrational wish to give comfort, that was itself heartening, Everard murmured, “And so at present you’re just tying up loose ends, clearing the decks, nothing fancy.”

“I hope so. I pray so.” Guion drew breath. He smiled. “Your commonplace way of putting it, your workaday attitude—what strength they give.”

Tension ebbed out of Everard too. “Okay. We went up a bad street for a minute, didn’t we? Actually, I shouldn’t worry, on my account or Wanda’s.”

Beneath his regained coolness, Guion sounded equally relieved. “That is what I came to assure you. The aftermath of your clash with Agent Corwin and others is no more. You can dismiss it from your mind and go about your business.”

“Thanks. Cheers.” They raised glasses.

It would take a little ordinary conversation, gossip and shop talk, to achieve genuine relaxation. “I hear you are preparing for a new mission,” Guion remarked.

Everard shrugged. “No biggie. Securing the Altamont case. You wouldn’t know about that, nor care.”

“No, please, you rouse my curiosity.”

“Well, why not?” Everard leaned back, puffed his pipe, savored his beer. “It’s in 1912. World War One is brewing. The Germans think they’ve found a spy who can infiltrate the opposition, an Irish-American called Altamont. Actually he’s an English agent, and in the end will turn the tables on them very neatly. The trouble from our viewpoint is, he’s too observant and smart. He’s uncovered certain odd goings-on. They could lead him to our military studies group in those years. A member of the group knows me and asked me to come help work up something to divert the man’s attention. Nothing major. Mainly we’ll have to do it in such a way that he doesn’t deduce something still curiouser is afoot. It should be kind of fun.”

“I see. Your life isn’t entirely hairbreadth adventure, then.”

“It better not be!”

They swapped trivia for an hour, till Guion took his leave. Alone, Everard felt hemmed in. Conditioned air hung lifeless around him. He went to a window and opened it. The lungful that he drew was sharp with the smell of the oncoming thunderstorm. Wind boomed and buffeted.

Foreboding touched him anew. He’s obviously a high-powered type. Would the far future really send him on an errand as trifling as what he described? Might they not, rather, be afraid of what he barely hinted at, a chaos they cannot chart and therefore cannot turn aside? Are they making what desperate provision they can?

Lightning flared like a banner suddenly flown above the enclosing towers. Everard’s mood responded. Cut that out. You’ve got the word that all’s well, haven’t you? Let him proceed in good spirits with his next job, and afterward seek what pleasure he could hope for.

The door opened. Sunlight struck bright and bleak into the silk merchant’s shop. Autumn air streamed after it, full of chill and street noises. Then the apprentice stumbled through. Seen from the dimness inside, against the day outside, he was almost a shadow. But they heard how he wept. “Master Geoffrey, oh, Master Geoffrey!”