Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

He arranged for his guests to tour the city, properly disguised and under close guidance. It was Mikelian’s first time, and Denison always found such a visit interesting. Nevertheless eagerness seethed in them, and release at last was joy.

They got shaves and haircuts at the base. It didn’t keep twentieth-century clothes in stock, but their field outfits were durable, comfortable, pungent in a clean outdoor way that evoked a lot of memories. “I’d like to keep mine for a souvenir,” Mikelian said.

“You’ll probably want it again for use,” Denison told him. “Unless our next assignment is to a very different region, and I don’t expect that. You would like to join me, wouldn’t you?”

“Would I ever, sir!” Tears stood forth in the brown young eyes. Mikelian wrung his hand, leaped aboard a hopper, waved, and vanished.

Denison selected one for himself from among those that waited in the whitely lit garage. “God be with you, Agent,” said the attendant. He was a twenty-first-century Iraqi. The Patrol tried to match somatotypes to eras, and race changes far more slowly than language or faith.

“Thank you, Hassan. Likewise.”

Having mounted, for a moment Denison sat half adream. He’d arrive in a cavern little different from this, register, obtain garments and money and passport and whatever else he needed, then walk from the office building that fronted for the Patrol yonder, forth onto the Boulevard Voltaire, Saturday morning, the tenth of May, most beautiful of all Parisian months…. Traffic would be frantic, but in 1980 the city hadn’t yet suffered its full monstrous overgrowth…. The hotel where Cynthia was to make a reservation and meet him stood on the Left Bank, a charming, slightly dilapidated anachronism where croissants for breakfast were fresh-baked on the premises and the staff liked guests who were lovers….

He set for his destination and touched the main switch.

Daylight flooded him.

Daylight?

Shock froze his hands on the control bars. As if by a lightning flash at night, he saw a narrow street, high-peaked walls, a crowd that howled and recoiled in pandemonium from him, the women all wore dark ankle-length gowns and kept their heads covered, the men had some color to long coats and baggy pants, the air was full of smoke and barnyard smells—As instantaneously he knew that no vault existed and his machine, built not to arrive within solid matter, had brought him to the surface of some place that was not his Paris—

Get out of here!

Untrained for combat missions, he reacted half a second too slowly. A man in blue leaped, tackled him around the waist, dragged him from the saddle. Denison had barely time and drilled-in reflex to hit the emergency go-button. A vehicle must never, under no circumstances whatsoever, fall into outsider possession. His disappeared. He and his assailant tumbled to the pavement.

“God damn it, stop that!” Denison did know martial arts, they were part of his Patrol education. The blue-clad man got fingers on his throat. Denison struck the edge of his palm into the neck, under the angle of the jaw. His attacker gasped and sagged, a dead weight upon him. Denison could breathe anew. The rags of darkness cleared from his eyes. He scrambled free and onto his feet.

Again too late. The civilians stumbled over each other to get clear—through the general yelling he made out “sorcier!” and “juif vengeur!” —but another man in blue rode a well-trained horse through the midst of them. Denison saw boots, short cape, flat helmet, yes, some kind of trooper or policeman. Mostly he saw a sidearm drawn and pointed at him. He saw, in the clean-shaven face behind, the fear that can kill.

He raised his hands.

The trooper put whistle to mouth and shrilled thrice. Thereafter he shouted for order and silence. Denison followed his words with difficulty and gaps. They weren’t any French he knew, different accent and a lot of what seemed to be English, though this wasn’t franglais either, he thought dazedly: “Calm! Control yourselves! I have him arrested…. The saints…. Almighty God…. His Majesty—”

I’m trapped, hammered in Denison. Worse than I was in Persia. That was at least rightful history. This —

Surprisingly fast, the near panic died down. People stood where they were and stared. They crossed themselves repeatedly and muttered prayers. The man whom Denison had hit groaned back into consciousness. More mounties showed up. Two bore some kind of carbines, though no firearm was familiar to the prisoner. They surrounded him. “Declarezz vos nomm,” barked one with a silver eagle on his breast. “Quhat e vo? Faite quick!”

Sickness closed Denison’s gullet. I am lost, Cynthia is, the world is. He could only mumble. A trooper unhooked a billy from his belt and stuck him with cruel precision across the spine. He reeled. The officer reached a decision and barked an order.

Turned stiffly silent, they marched him off. It was a walk of about a mile. Shambling at first, he regained a blurred alertness on the way and began to look around him. Hemmed in by the riders, he couldn’t get more than glimpses, but they told him something. The streets he went on were constricted and twisting, though smoothly enough paved. No buildings stood higher than six or seven stories and most seemed centuries old, many of them half-timbered and with leaded windowpanes. Pedestrians were numerous, brisk, men often animated as he remembered from his France but women subdued, decorous. Children were few; were they generally in school? Once away from the scene of action, the party drew little more than glances, now and then a sign of the cross; were captives an everyday sight? Horses pulled wagons and an occasional ornate carriage, leaving their droppings behind them. When he reached the bank of the Seine, he saw barges tugged by twenty-oared rowboats.

From there, too, he spied Notre Dame. But it wasn’t the cathedral he remembered. It seemed to cover nearly half the island, a mountain of soot-gray stone soaring up and up and up, tier upon tier, tower above tower, like a Christian ziggurat, till the topmost spires raked heaven a thousand feet aloft. What ambition had replaced the lovely Gothic with this?

He forgot it when the squad brought him to another building, massive and fortress-like above the river. A life-size crucifix was carved over the main door. Within were gloom, chill, more guards, and men in hooded black robes, bearing rosaries and pectoral crosses, whom he took for monks or lay clergy of some kind. His awareness continued vague, as stunned and heartsick as he felt. Not until he was alone in a cell did he come fully conscious.

The room was tiny, dark, its concrete walls bedewed. Light straggled in from the corridor, through the locked and iron-barred door. The furniture was a pallet, with a thin blanket, on the floor, and a chamber pot that he found, dimly surprised, was rubber. Well, he could have used a hard one for a weapon. A cross was chiseled into the ceiling.

Christ, I’m thirsty. Can’t I even have a cup of water? He clutched the bars, strained against them, called his hoarse appeal. For answer, somebody gibed from another cell somewhere down the passage. “Stop hoping, will ye? Leave me be!” English, by God, though strangely accented. When Denison replied in that language, he got an inarticulate snarl.

He slumped down on the mattress. What he’d just heard boded ill. Well, he did have time to think, try to prepare himself for interrogation. He’d better start. The decision strengthened him. Presently he was upright again, pacing.

Perhaps two hours had passed when a turnkey opened the door to admit a pair of guards, hands on pistol butts, and a cleric. The blackrobe was an old man, wrinkled, blinking, but sharp. “Loquerisne latine?” he demanded.