Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Merau Varagan walked some yards off from the group, to a cliff edge, where he stood looking out over the sea. The Patrolmen on guard let him. They had snapped a neuroinduction collar around the neck of each prisoner. At the first sign of any suspicious move, a remote-control switch would activate it and the wearer would collapse paralyzed. On impulse. Everard went to join him.

Water sparkled blue, flecked with white, dusted with radiance. Sunlight called pungencies out of dittany underfoot. A breeze ruffled Varagan’s hair, which sheened obsidian black. He had shed his drenched robe and stood like a marble statue newly from the hand of Phidias. His face might also have been the ideal of a Hellas not yet born, except that it was too fine-chiseled and nothing Apollonian dwelt in the great green eyes or on the blood-red mouth. Dionysian, perhaps….

He nodded at Everard. “A lovely vista,” he said in American English, which his voice turned into music. The tone was calm, almost nonchalant. “May I savor it while we are here?”

“Sure,” agreed the Patrolman, “though we’ll leave pretty soon.”

“Does the exile planet offer anything comparable?”

“I don’t know. They don’t tell us.”

“To make it more feared, I daresay. That un-discover’d country from whose bourn No traveler returns.’” Sardonically: “You needn’t persuade me not to escape it by leaping off this verge, no matter how relieved some of your companions might feel.”

“As a matter of fact, we’d cuss. It wouldn’t be nice of you, putting us to all the trouble of fishing out your carcass and reviving it.”

“In order to subject me to the kyradex.”

“Yeah. You’ve got a headful of information we want.”

“I fear you will be disappointed. We have taken care that none of us shall know much about any other’s resources, capabilities, or contingency plans.”

“Uh-huh. Natural-born loners, the bunch of you.”

“And the genetic engineers of the thirty-first millennium set themselves to bring forth a race of supermen, bred to adventure on the cosmic frontier,” Shalten said once, “and lo, they found they had begotten Lucifer.” He sometimes talks in that vaguely Biblical style. Otherwise nothing about him is vague.

“Well, I will preserve what dignity I can,” Varagan said. “Once on the planet”—he smiled—“who knows what may be possible?”

Physical weariness and letdown after excitement left Everard vulnerable to emotion. “Why do you do it?” he blurted. “You lived like gods—”

Varagan nodded. “Very much like gods. Have you ever considered the fact that that includes changelessness, trapped in a myth, ultimate meaninglessness? Our civilization was older to us than the Stone Age was to yours. In the end, that made it unendurable.”

So you tried to overthrow it, and failed, but some of you had managed to seize timecycles, and fled back into the past. “You could have left it peacefully. The Patrol, for instance, would’ve been overjoyed to have people with your abilities as recruits; and for your part, I swear you’d never have been bored.”

“We would have been what is worse, perverting our innermost natures. The Patrol exists to conserve one version of history.”

“And you’ve kept trying to destroy it! In God’s name, why?”

“So stupid a question is unworthy of you. You know quite well why. We have tried to remake time in order that we may rule it; and we have desired to rule in order that our wills may be wholly free. Enough.”

Haughtiness departed, lightness returned. Varagan trilled a laugh. “The stodgy have triumphed again, it seems. Congratulations. You’ve done a remarkable piece of detective work, tracking us. Would you tell me how? I’ll be most interested.”

“Ah, it’d take too long,” and parts of it would hurt too much.

The arched brows lifted higher. “Your mood has shifted, has it? You seemed amiable a minute ago. I still feel thus. You’ve been a rather exciting enemy, Everard. In Colombia-to-be,” where Varagan came close to taking over Simón Bolívar’s government, “in Perú,” where his gang tried to steal Atahuallpa’s ransom from Pizarro and change the course of the Spanish Conquest, “and now in Tyre,” which they had threatened to blow up, were they not given an instrumentality that could have made them nearly omnipotent, “we have played our game, you and I. Where-when else, less directly?”

A dull anger had in fact come upon Everard. “It was no game to me, buster,” he snapped, “and you’re well out of it.”

Irritation flicked back at him: “As you wish. Then kindly leave me to my thoughts. Among them is the reflection that you have not caught the last Exaltationist yet. In a certain sense, you have not caught me.”

Everard bunched his fists. “Huh?”

Varagan regained self-possession, the will to cruelty. “I may as well explain. The interrogation machine will bring it out. Among the remnants of us is Raor. She was not on this expedition, because women are hampered in the Phoenician milieu, but she has taken part in others. My clone mate, Everard. She has her ways of finding out what went wrong here. She will be as vengeful as she always was ambitious. Pleasant dreams.” He smiled and turned his back, again gazing out at sea and sky.

The Patrolman left him but, for a while, sought solitude also. He walked to the other side of the islet, sat down on a rock, brought out pipe and tobacco, got a smoke started.

Staircase wit, he thought. I should’ve retorted, “Suppose she succeeds. Suppose she does blot out the future. You’ll be in it, remember? You’ll stop ever having existed.”

Except, of course, in those bits of space-time pastward of that change moment, in which he was engaged on his pranks. He’d’ve pointed that out with some glee, maybe. Or maybe not. In any case, I doubt he fears obliteration. The ultimate nihilist.

To hell with it. Repartee never was my long suit. Let me just go back to Tyre, tie up the loose ends there—

Bronwen. No. I’ve got to make provision for her, but that’s a matter of common decency, nothing more. After that, we’d better both start learning how to stop missing each other. For me the best place will be my familiar old twentieth-century USA, where I can put my feet up for a while.

He often felt that the privilege of an Unattached agent, essentially to make his or her own assignments, was worth the risks and responsibilities that the status entailed. I might want to pursue this Exaltationist business further, once I’ve had a good rest. I might.

He shifted about on his rock. Not too good a rest! Some activity, some fun.

That girl who got caught in the Peruvian events, Wanda Tamberly —Across months of his personal lifespan and three millennia of history, memory rose bright. Why, sure. No problem. She accepted the Patrol’s invitation to join. If I can catch her between that dinner I took her to and the day she leaves for the Academy — Cradle robbing? No, damn it. Just to enjoy myself, giving her a cheerful send-off, and then I’ll get on with the raunchy part of my furlough.

At last the teaching of Gautama Buddha would ebb from his native India until there it was all but forgotten. Today it still flourished, and the tide of it flowed strongly outward. Thus far, converts in Bactria were scarce. The topes and stupas whose ruins Everard saw in twentieth-century Afghanistan would not be built for generations. However, Bactra city numbered sufficient believers to maintain a vihara, at which visiting coreligionists usually called and sometimes stayed; and those merchants, caravaneers, guards, mendicants, monks, and other travelers were numerous, hailing from a wide range of territories. Hence it made a superb listening post, a principal reliance of the historical study project.