Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Almost, he grabbed her. Would she like me to? By God, I believe she would. But no. It would be wrong. She was too wholehearted. Let her first become clear in her mind about this. Yes, and let him decide what his foremost wishes and needs were.

Be grateful for what you’ve had, this past couple of weeks, son. He knotted the fist she wasn’t holding and muttered, “Fine. Fine. Where might you like to go next?” To get better acquainted.

She also seemed to take refuge in banality. “Gee, I’d have to think. Suggestions?”

Then they were at the lodge, mounting its veranda, entering the common room. Flames crackled in a huge stone fireplace. A rack of Irish elk antlers curved above it. On the opposite wall, cast in brass, a heraldic shield bore a stylized hourglass. It was the emblem of the Patrol, the insigne on uniforms that were seldom worn. Folk lounged about awaiting supper, with drinks, conversation, a game of chess, a game of go, a few clustered at the grand piano in a corner, from which danced a Chopin scherzo.

Agents of similar backgrounds tended to visit the same decades of the lodge’s long existence. However, the pianist tonight was born in the thirty-second century Anno Domini, in orbit around Saturn. Patrol people did feel curious about other eras than their own, and sometimes they got enchanted by some aspect of one.

Everard and Tamberly draped their mackinaws over their arms. She went around saying goodbye. He lingered near the pianist. “Will you stay on here?” she asked him in Temporal.

“A few days, I think,” he answered.

“Good. I too.” The topaz gaze dropped. The hairless alabaster-white head—not albino; a healthy product of genetic technology—bent again above the keys. “If you desire your heart eased, I have the Gift of Quietness.”

“I know. Thanks.” He didn’t expect he’d want more than some rambles by himself, but the offer was generous.

Tamberly returned to him. He accompanied her to her room. While he waited in the corridor, she changed into clothes she had brought, suitable for the San Francisco area, summer’of 1989, and packed her other stuff. They went down to the underground garage. Hoppers stood row on row, like wheelless futuristic motorcycles, beneath bleak white light. At the one assigned her, she stowed her luggage.

Turning about, “Well, au revoir, Manse,” she said. “New York HQ, noon, Thursday the tenth of April, 1987, agreed?” They had settled on it in a few awkward words.

“Agreed. I’ll, uh, I’ll have tickets to The Phantom of the Opera. Take care.”

“And you, buster.” She came to him. The kiss was long and became hungry.

He stepped back. Breathing hard, a little rumpled, she swung into the saddle, smiled, waved, touched controls. She and her vehicle blinked out of sight. He paid no heed to the usual snap of air rushing in where they had been.

A minute or two he stood alone. She’d spoken of a three-month hitch in the field after her trip home, before their intended holiday. He didn’t know how long it would be for him. That depended on what he’d be doing. He had no immediate call, but something was certain, when the Patrol must keep order in the traffic across a million years of time, with what was really a bare scattering of agents.

Abruptly he laughed aloud at himself. After—however much lifespan it was—traipsing through the continuum, was he finally over the hill? Second childhood, no, second adolescence. He saw that he’d felt as if he were sixteen again, and it made no sense. He’d fallen in love often enough before. A few times he’d done nothing about it, because to go ahead would have brought more harm than good. This might be such a case. Probably was, God damn it. Maybe not. He’d find out. They would, bit by bit, together, and either get serious and make whatever sacrifices proved necessary or else part as friends. Meanwhile—He started to go.

Another noise, of a different kind, passed softly behind him. He knew that difference. He halted, looked around, and saw a vehicle newly arrived. The person aboard was about seven feet tall and spidery long-limbed but, in a close-fitting leatherlike coverall, clearly female. Her hair, drawn into a crest as if on a helmet, shone Asian blue-black, but no Mongoloid skin was so deep a yellow, and the eyes were enormous and the same faded blue as his, while the face was narrow and hook-nosed. He didn’t recognize the race at all. Her origin must be very far futureward.

Temporal fell harsh from incongruously full lips. “Unattached Agent Komozino,” she identified herself. “Quick, tell me, are any of my rank at these coordinates?”

It stabbed in him: Trouble. She knew more, and probably had a better brain, than he did. Army habits from the Second World War, almost forgotten, brought him half to attention. “Me,” he clipped. “Manson Emmert Everard.”

“Good.” She got off and approached him. Through the tight control in her voice he heard the tension, the dread. “What data I could access indicated you might be. Listen, Manson Emmert Everard. We have had a catastrophe, some kind of temporal upheaval. As nearly as I have been able to ascertain, it occurred approximately on Julian day 2,137,000. Beyond that, events diverge. No Patrol stations appear to exist. We must rally whatever forces we have left.”

She stopped and waited. She knows what a hammerblow she’s dealt me, trickled down the back of his mind. I’ll need a minute to catch my balance.

The astronomical number she’d spoken—Somewhen during the European Middle Ages? He’d calculate exactly, no, he’d ask her. Wanda was bound for twentieth-century California. “Now” she won’t come out into anything of the kind. And she isn’t trained for such a situation. None of us are—our job is to prevent it—but to her it’ll be no more than vaguely remembered classroom theory. She’ll be stunned worse than I am. My God, what’ll she do?

The dining room in the lodge accommodated all guests and staff, though chairs around tables got a bit crowded. Light came silver-gray and uneasy through the windows, for clouds swept low before a wind whose booming went as an undertone, the sound of autumn on its way south. Everard knew he imagined, but he felt as if a breath of the cold outside seeped inward.

More did he feel the gazes upon him. He stood at the far end, beneath a vigorous mural of bison that a local artist had painted some fifty years ago. Komozino was at his side, impassive. She had told him he had better take the lead. He was much closer in birthtime, memories, ways of thinking, to everybody else. Moreover, behind him lay a relevant experience unique among them.

“We spent most of the night talking, when we weren’t shuttling message tubes in hopes of more contacts and information,” he said into the appalled silence that followed his announcement. “So far, we know very little. There’s reason to think the key event is in Italy, mid-twelfth century. At least, the Patrol has a man then at Palermo, island of Sicily. He got word that the king there was killed in battle on the mainland. It was not supposed to happen. His database says the king lived on for nearly twenty years and was important. Like a sensible fellow, our man sent a tube a short way uptime to his milieu headquarters. It returned, informing him that that office was gone, spurlos versenkt, never founded. He called other stations contemporary to himself, and they checked their own futures—very cautiously, of course, not venturing more than a couple of decades ahead. No new Patrol agencies anywhere. As you’d expect, otherwise the scenes weren’t strange. They wouldn’t be—yet—except perhaps in southern Europe. The effects of a change propagate across the world at varying speeds, depending on factors like distance, ease of travel, and closeness of relations between countries. The Far East might begin to be touched, slightly, pretty soon; but the Americas may well go on unaffected for centuries, Australia and Polynesia longer still. Even in Europe, at first the differences are probably mainly political. And … that’s a whole new political history, about which we here know nothing.