Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

The emblem of the Time Patrol.

No. Not quite. That circle and line — Coincidence? Impossible. Here under my eyes is the signal I’ve strained my ears for.

Tamberly saw her hand positioned over the controls to push for descent. She pulled it back as if the bar had gone white-hot. No! You whoop and swoop and — why do you think those guards are waiting?

She shuddered. What’s a circled red stroke on top of a symbol mean? Why, in the twentieth century, at least, it means “Don’t.” Prohibited. Verboten. Danger. No parking. No smoking. No admittance. Get out. Stay out.

Only I can’t, can I? That’s the Patrol emblem.

Shadow flowed across the world. A gilt weather vane on the palace flashed once and went dark. Also at Tamberly’s altitude, the sun slipped from sight. Early stars trembled in dusk. The cold on high deepened. Wind had died and silence crowded inward.

Oh, Lordy, Lordy, I feel so alone. I’d better skite back to my nice Stone Age and report this. Manse can organize a rescue expedition.

She stiffened. “Nyet,” she said to the stars. Not till she’d used up all her options. If the world of the Patrol had been destroyed, then the remnants of the Patrol had more to do than bail out one marooned comrade. Or two. Should I bust in bawling and distract them from their real duty? Or should I do whatever I can on my own?

She swallowed hard I am … expendable, I guess.

And if she did bring Manse a victory—

Blood heat thrust the night chill from her. She crouched in the saddle and thought.

A time traveler, who might or might not be a Patrol agent, had replanted that garden, or gotten it replanted. That could only be as a signal to any other who might come by. The person wouldn’t have gone to the trouble if he or she were in possession of a vehicle; its communicator would serve so much better.

Therefore the person— Let’s dub him or her X, for the sake of originality, and use “heesh” for the pronoun —was stranded. Up the famous crick with no paddle. Damn it, stop these childish quips! If X were otherwise a free agent, the insigne alone would be the thing to use, and in fact heesh could have added more: for instance, an arrow pointing to a repository for a written account. Therefore, probably the bar meant, “Danger. Don’t land.” Those gunmen indicated the same; likewise the estate itself, isolated and defensible. X was a prisoner here. Apparently a prisoner with some freedom, some influence over hiser keepers, since heesh had talked them into planting and bordering those flower beds. Nevertheless, heesh was closely guarded, and any new arrivals would be taken into custody, for whatever use the lord of the manor wanted to make of them.

Will they? We’ll see about that.

Over and over, while the stars came forth, Tamberly counted her assets. They were pathetically few. She could fly, or she could spring instantaneously from one spot to another, into and out of the deepest dungeon or the strongest strongpoint—unless and until a bullet dropped her from the saddle—but she didn’t know her way around or where X might be or anything. She could knock a man out at short range with a squeeze on her stun pistol, but meanwhile the rest of them might be everywhere around. Maybe her advent would scare them off in a superstitious frenzy, but she doubted that—all those preparations, as well as whatever the big cheese had learned from X—and it was too long a chance to take, a worse bet than a state lottery. How about doubling around in time, getting a disguise somewhere, spying things out? No, that meant leaving her cycle, with the risks that that entailed. And she had no idea of local customs, manners, life. While her Spanish was fluent, her French had long since fallen down in a cloud of rust, and besides, she doubted Spanish or French or English was much like what she’d ever heard before.

No wonder X left a warning. Maybe heesh was telling every Patrolman, “Sheer off. Forget me. Save yourself.”

Tamberly pressed her lips together. I repeat, we’ll see about that.

As if the sun had suddenly risen: Yes! We’ll see.

The sun did rise, standing at noon one year earlier. Gardeners were at work around the message, raking, pruning, sweeping.

Ten years earlier, brightly clad men and darkly clad women promenaded among beds in a simple geometrical array.

Tamberly flung a laugh at the wind. “Okay, we’ve got you bracketed.”

The skipping, blink-blink-blink, sun and rain, actions and configurations of people, dizzied her. She ought to go slower. No, she was too wired. Of course, she needn’t check every month of every year. The emblem. The not-emblem. The emblem again. Okay, they tore out the old stuff in March 1984 and the new was doing well in June—

Toward the end, she proceeded day by day, and knew it would have to become hour by hour, at last minute by minute. Fatigue weighted bones and made eyeballs smolder. She withdrew, found a meadow on a forested Dordogne hillside where nobody else was near, ate and drank of her supplies, soaked up sunshine, finally slept.

Return to the job. She had grown quite steady, coolly watchful.

25 March 1984, 1337 hours. Gray weather, low clouds, wind noisy across fields and in trees not yet leafed, slight spatters of rain. (Had the weather been the same this day in the destroyed world? Probably not. There, humans had cut down the vast American forests, plowed the plains, filled skies and rivers with chemicals. They also invented liberty, eradicated smallpox, sent spacecraft aloft.) Two men paced over the stripped and trenched garden. One was in a gold-and-scarlet robe, with something halfway between a crown and a miter on his head. The other, at his side, wore the coat and baggy pants Tamberly had seen elsewhere. He was the taller, lean and gray-haired. Behind them stepped six of the liveried soldiers, rifles at port.

For minutes Tamberly watched, till the knowledge crystallized in her: Yes, they’re discussing the exact plan of the new arrangement.

Here goes. For broke.

She’d met danger before, sometimes purposely. Now was the same. Everything slowed down, the world became a dancing mosaic of details but she plucked forth those she needed, fear scuttled out of her way, she aimed herself and shot.

Cycle and rider appeared six feet before the pair. “Time Patrol!” Tamberly yelled, perhaps needlessly. “To me, quick!” She worked the stun pistol. The robed man crumpled. That gave her a clear field for the soldiers.

The lean man Stood stupefied. “Hurry!” she cried. He lurched forward. A guard brought rifle down, aimed, fired. The crack went flat through the wind. The lean man staggered.

Tamberly left her vehicle. He fell into her arms. She dragged him back. A buzz passed her head. She lowered him across the front saddle, vaulted into the buddy seat, leaned over his body to the controls. Now we skite after help. A third bullet spanged and whined off the metal.

Everard left his hopper in the garage and started for his room. Some who had been at Rignano were appearing too. Most had gone elsewhere, housing being limited at any single post. All would stand by till success had been confirmed. Those who were staying at the Pleistocene lodge made for the common room, exuberant and loud, to celebrate. Everard wasn’t in that mood. He wanted merely a long hot shower, a long stiff drink, and sleep. A night’s forgetfulness. Tomorrow and its memories would arrive bloody soon enough.

Shouts and laughter pursued him down the hall. He turned a corner, and there she was.