Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Thuliash stood watching until the chariot was gone from sight. He did not fear for them. Game was plentiful, highlanders were hospitable, and wild men would not likely attack when the pair went equipped like the northern conquerors. Besides, although Denesh had made no show of powers, he was clearly a wizard. If only he had stayed … the Bakhri might well have changed their minds and crossed the mountains…. Thuliash sighed, hefted his weapon, returned to camp. There would be fighting enough in years ahead. The tribes owing tribute to him were growing too big for their pasturelands. He would presently lead half of them around the inland sea and thence eastward to win themselves a new country.

—Neither aboard the chariot spoke much. Keeping their balance as it rocked and swayed had become automatic, but they were suddenly overwhelmed by memories, thoughts, hope tinged the least bit with regret. After an hour they came onto a ridge, a realm of wind and loneliness. “This will do,” Keith Denison said in English.

Agop Mikelian drew rein. The team snorted wearily. Light though the vehicle was, pulling it on such terrain, long before horse collars were invented, or stirrups and horseshoes for that matter, wore them down fast. “Poor beasts, we should have stopped sooner,” he said.

“We had to be sure nobody was watching,” Denison reminded him. He sprang to the ground. “Ah, this feels almost as good as homecoming will.” He saw the look on Mikelian. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“That’s all right, sir.” His assistant came down likewise. “I’ve got places to go to.” The Patrol recruited him in 1908, following the massacre at Van. Helping trace the dim origins of the Armenian people heartened him to live with their history. Resilient, he grinned. “Like California in the 1930s, trading on William Saroyan’s publicity.”

Denison nodded. “I remember you telling me.” They hadn’t had much chance to get acquainted, as busy as their job kept them. Personnel—total available lifespans—were so few, to map a field so vast as the migrations of the early Indo-Europeans. Yet the task was vital. Without a record of them, how could the Patrol guard events that had shaken the world and shaped the future? Denison and his new helper went straight to work.

Still, he thought, the fellow had proved steady and intelligent. Having gained experience, he could take a more active part in the next expedition.

“Where’d you say you’re bound for, sir?” Mikelian asked.

“Paris, 1980. Got a heavy date with my wife.”

“Why just then? I mean, didn’t you tell me she’s an attached agent in her own birthtime, closer to the middle twentieth century?”

Denison laughed. “You forget the problems longevity brings. Somebody who didn’t grow visibly older in the course of several decades would cause her friends and neighbors to wonder about her. Cynthia was winding up our affairs when I left, prior to moving away. She’s to begin a new identity—same name, might as well, but different location—in 1981. And me in my persona as her peripatetic anthropologist husband, of course. How better for us to segue into the manners and mores of a later generation than by taking a twelve-month holiday amongst them, and where better to start than Paris?”

And, by God, I’ve earned it, he thought. She too, yes, yes. The time between my leaving and my return will have been much shorter for her than it was for me, and she’ll have had her clerical duties in the Patrol to keep her mind occupied, as well as making our move away from New York plausible to our acquaintances there. Still, she’ll have worried, and chafed at the rule that she mustn’t skip ahead those few weeks to make sure I do come back alive. (Even so slight a loop in causality could breed trouble. Not likely, but it could, and we must often take chances as is, without adding needlessly to the hazard. How well I know. Oh, how very well.) But I have roved for more than a quarter year among those herdsmen.

Sun, stars, and campfire smoke, rain, lightning, and a river in spate, wolves, stampede, and a cattle raid, song, saga, and ancestral epic, birth, death, and blood sacrifice, comradeship, contests, and lovemaking—Cynthia didn’t ask about more than he chose to tell. He knew that, beneath her silence, she had guessed there was somebody in an ancient Persia whose history had been subtly altered. He’d been working ever since on putting Cassandane behind him. But months away from home added up, and if he’d declined Thuliash’s kindly offer he might never have gained the king’s confidence, which it was necessary for him to do, and—And he wished little Ferya all the best in her nomad world, and this second honeymoon in Paris should bring him back closer to Cynthia, whom the Lord knew was a dear and valiant lady—

His exuberance had faded. He lifted the ax that marked him as of warrior class, worthy to speak with chieftains. It was also a communicator. “Specialist Keith Denison calling milieu headquarters, Babylon,” he said in Temporal. “Hello, hello. Talk freely; my associate and I are alone.”

The air crackled: “Greeting, Agent. Glad to hear from you. We were growing worried.”

“Yes, I’d planned to get away a little sooner, but they wanted me to take part in their equinox rite and I couldn’t well refuse.”

“Equinox? A pastoral society keeping a solar calendar?”

“Well, this particular tribe observes the quarter days—which is a possibly useful datum. Can you fetch us? We have a chariot and two horses, Patrol stock.”

“At once, Agent. Only let me get a fix on your location.”

Mikelian danced in the grass. “Home!” he caroled.

A carrier appeared, no hopper but a large cylinder that hovered on antigravity a few inches above ground. It hadn’t skipped through time, merely across space. Four men in Mesopotamian costume of the period, complete with curled beards, emerged. Quickly, they got team and vehicle aboard. Everybody embarked, the pilot took his seat, the Caucasus Mountains blinked from sight.

What appeared in the viewscreens was a plain where grass billowed to the horizon. Tree-shaded, a set of timber buildings and a corral stood nearby. Two women clad for rough work hastened to greet the newcomers. They took charge of Denison’s transportation. The Patrol could safely maintain a ranch in North America before humans arrived. Mikelian patted the horses an affectionate goodbye. Maybe he’d get the same ones on his next trip.

The carrier jumped again. It emerged in a secret vault below the Babylon where Hammurabi still reigned.

The director of the base met the anthropologists and invited them to dine. They’d be here a couple of days, downloading the information they had gathered. Most was of purely scientific interest, but what was the Patrol for if not to serve civilization in every possible way? Too bad that the knowledge couldn’t be made public for thousands of years, after time travel had been developed, Denison thought. Meanwhile scholars would exhaust their lives following merely archaeological clues, often onto wholly false trails…. It wasn’t for nothing. Their labors carved a bridgehead from which Patrol Specialists launched the real quests.

Over the dinner table, he related those of his findings that were operationally significant. “Thuliash and his confederation will not cross the mountains. They’ll be migrating east instead. So he won’t augment Gandash’s forces on this side, and I believe that is why the Kassites don’t make any more gains against the Babylonians, nineteen years from now, than history records.”

“Which means we have a somewhat less complicated military-political situation to keep track of than I feared,” said the director. “Excellent. Great work.” Obviously he was thinking of lifespan released to mount guard over other potential trouble spots.