Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Hey, a break! Denison paid his closest heed. He sensed how shrewdly Matiou extracted nibbles of information from him in the course of the hour, but that was all right; it was a chance to rehearse and develop his story.

And at last he was brought in a closed carriage to a palace atop that hill called Montmartre in the lost world, and ushered through sumptuous corridors and up a grand staircase and past a gilt bronze door where bas-reliefs showed Biblical scenes; and he found himself in a high white room, where sunlight streamed through stained glass onto an Oriental carpet, and confronting him sat a man on a throne, in a robe of scarlet and gold.

As ordered, Denison prostrated himself. “You may be seated,” said a deep voice. The archcardinal was middle-aged but vigorous. The consciousness of power seemed engraved on his countenance. Spectacles diminished his dignity not at all. Just the same, he was clearly intrigued, prepared to question and to listen.

“I thank your Venerability.” Denison took the chair, some twenty feet from the throne. They weren’t allowing needless risks at this private audience. A bellpull hung by the prelate’s right hand.

“You may simply call me ‘lord,’”—the English word—Albin told him. “We have much to speak of, you and I.” Sternly: “Beware of attempting tricks or subtleties. There are ample grounds already for suspicion. Know, the Chief Inquisitor, the superior of that cleric you have met, urges me to order you to the flames at once, before you wreak harm. He feels a magician such as this can only be an Avenging Jew.”

Denison understood enough to breathe, “A … a what, lord?” from a throat suddenly going dry.

Albin raised his brows. “You do not know?”

“No, lord. Believe me, I am from a land so remote that—”

“Yet you know something of our language, and claim to bear a message for me.”

Yeah, I’m up against a first-class intellect. “A message of goodwill, lord, in hopes of establishing closer relations. Our knowledge of you is slight, from visions vouchsafed prophets ancient and modern. Unhappily, I suffered shipwreck. No, I am certainly not an Avenging Jew, whatever that may be.”

Albin too grasped the general intent, if not every word. His mouth tightened. “The Jews are skilled craftsmen and engineers at the very least, and it is quite possible that they also command black arts. They are descendants of those who escaped when our forefathers scoured Europe clean of their kind. They settled among the worshippers of Mahound, and now they lend their help to them. Have you not even heard that Austria has fallen to those paynim? That the heretic legions of the Russian emperor are at the gates of Berlin?”

And the Inquisition busy in western Christendom. God! I believed my twentieth century was pretty grim.

Later Manse Everard thought the fact that he was chosen, and precisely where and how it happened to him, would be ironic were the coincidence not so absurd. Later yet he remembered his conversations with Guion, and wondered mightily.

But they were more distant than the stars from his mind when the summons came upon him. He and Wanda Tamberly had been sharing a vacation at the lodge the Patrol maintained in the Pleistocene Pyrenees. On this their last day, they left off skiing and climbing, nor did they flit north to seek out the magnificent wildlife of a glacial era, nor call on any of the nearby Crô-Magnon settlements to enjoy picturesque hospitality. They simply went for a long walk on easy trails, looked at mountain scenery, said little, were aware of much.

Sunset washed gold across white peaks and ridges. The lodge stood at no great altitude, but snowline was lower than in the birthtime of these two. Timberline was also; around them reached alpine meadow, intensely green, flecked with small summer flowers. A little way upslope, several ibex lifted horns and watched them, alertly but without fear. The sky, greenish in the west, deepening through azure overhead to purple in the east, was full of homebound wings. Cries drifted down through silence and gathering chill. Human hunters had made scant mark thus far; they were almost in balance with nature, like wolf and cave lion. The air tasted of purity.

The main building loomed ahead, a darkness from which windows glowed. “It’s been grand,” Everard said in American English. “For me, anyhow.”

“Ditto,” Tamberly replied. “You’ve been so kind, taking a rookie like me in hand and getting me to feel easy here.”

“Shucks, a pleasure. Besides, you’re the naturalist. You introduced me to stuff in the wilderness I’d never heard or dreamed of.” Including hunts for mammoth, reindeer, wild horse with camera rather than gun. Born and raised when she was, Wanda disapproved of blood sports. His background had been different.

Not that such details mattered a lot otherwise if you were in the Patrol. Except— She hasn’t added but four or five years to the twenty-one that were hers when first we met. How many have I? Longevity treatments or no, Everard didn’t care, just then, to reckon them up.

“I wish—” She gulped and looked aside. Finally, in a rush: “I wish I weren’t leaving.”

His pulse stumbled. “You don’t have to, you know,” he said.

“Yes. I really must. I’ve such limited lifespan to give my folks,” parents, sister, who would never know that she fared through the ages, whose own years above ground would number less than a hundred and all on world lines running straight from conception to dissolution. “And then I should, I want to, call on Steve,” her uncle who was also a Patrol agent, in Victorian England. “Before I go back to work.” She could have spent years of experienced time on vacation, then reported to her base camp within minutes of the moment she left it; but agents didn’t do that sort of thing. You owed the outfit a fair proportion of your existence. Besides, too long away from the job, you’d go stale, and that could prove fatal, to yourself or, worse, a comrade.

“Okay, I understand,” Everard sighed. He plunged at the question they had skirted this whole while. “Can we make another date?”

She laughed and caught his hand. How warm hers was. “Why, sure.” Her glance turned toward his. In the fading light he couldn’t see the blue of her eyes. Strong bones stood forth, though, and page-bobbed hair bore the hue of amber. She was shorter than he by the breadth of his palm, and he was a big man. “To tell the truth, I was hoping. Didn’t want to get pushy. Don’t tell me you felt shy!”

“M-m, well—” He had never been glib. How could he now explain? It wasn’t quite clear to him, anyway. The gap between our ranks, I guess. I’m afraid of seeming to condescend, or else of seeming to be trying to overwhelm. Her generation of women grew up with a touchy kind of pride built in. “Old bachelor type. You, you’ve got a wide field to play if you want.” She had frankly enjoyed the attention paid her by other male guests. And they were exotic to her, several of them handsome and vivacious, while he was only another twentieth-century American, slow-spoken, plain in his tastes, war-battered in the face.

“Foof,” she snorted. “You’ve cut a wider swathe than any field I’m ever likely to find myself in. Don’t deny it. You wouldn’t be normal if you hadn’t taken advantage of opportunities.”

And you? … None of my business.

“Not that you’ve ever abused your chances,” she added hastily. “I know you never would. I was surprised and, and delighted when you stayed in touch after Beringia. For Pete’s sake, did you think I didn’t want to?”