Pastwatch: The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus

Chapter 8 -- Dark Futures

Father Talavera had listened to all the eloquent, methodical, sometimes impassioned arguments, but he had known from the start that he had to make the final decision about Colўn by himself. How many years had they listened to Colўn -- and harangued him, too -- so that all were weary of the same conversations endlessly repeated? For so many years, since the Queen first asked him to lead the examination of Colўn's claims, nothing had changed. Maldonado still seemed to regard Colўn's very existence as an affront, while Deza seemed almost infatuated with the Genovese. The others still lined up behind one or the other, or, like Talavera himself, remained neutral. Or rather, they seemed neutral. They merely wavered like grass, dancing in whatever wind was blowing. How many times had each one come to him privately and spent long minutes -- sometimes hours -- explaining their views, which always amounted to the same thing: They agreed with everybody.

I alone am truly neutral, thought Talavera. I alone am swayed by no argument whatsoever. I alone can listen to Maldonado bring forth sentences from ancient, long-forgotten writings in languages so obscure that quite possibly no one ever spoke them except the original writer himself -- I alone can listen to him and hear only the voice of a man who is determined not to allow the slightest new idea to disrupt his own perfect understanding of the world. I alone can listen to Deza eloquizing about Colўn's brilliance in finding truths so long overlooked by scholars and hear only the voice of a man who yearned to be a knight-errant from the romances, championing a cause which is noble only because he champions it.

I alone am neutral, thought Talavera, because I alone understand the utter stupidity of the entire conversation. Which of these ancients they all quote with such certainty was lifted by the hand of God to see the Earth from an appropriate vantage point? Which of them was given calipers by the hand of God to make an accurate measurement of the diameter of the Earth? No one knew anything. The only serious attempt at measurement, more than a thousand years before, could have been disastrously flawed by the tiniest inconsistency in the original observations. All the argument in the world could not change the fact that if you build the foundation of your logic upon guesswork, then your conclusions will be guesswork also.

Of course Talavera could never say this to anyone else. He had not risen to his position of trust by freely expressing his skepticism about the wisdom of the ancients. On the contrary: All who knew him were sure that he was utterly orthodox. He had labored hard to make sure they had that opinion of him. And in a sense they were right. He simply defined orthodoxy quite differently from them.

Talavera did not put his faith in Aristotle or Ptolemy. He already knew what the examination of Colўn was demonstrating in such agonizing detail: that for every ancient authority there was a contradictory authority just as ancient and (he suspected) just as ignorant. Let the other scholars claim that God had whispered to Plato as he wrote the Symposium; Talavera knew better. Aristotle was clever but his wise sayings were no likelier to be true than the opinions of other clever men.

Talavera put his faith in only one person: Jesus Christ. His were the only words that Talavera cared about, Christ's cause the only cause that stirred his soul. Every other cause, every other idea, every other plan or party or faction or individual, was to be judged in light of how it would either help or hinder the cause of Christ. Talavera had realized early in his rise within the Church that the monarchs of Castile and Aragon were good for the cause of Christ, and so he enlisted himself in their camp. They found him to be a valuable servant because he was deft at marshaling the resources of the Church in their support.

His technique was simple: See what the monarchs want and need in order to further their effort to make of Spain a Christian kingdom, driving the unbeliever from any power or influence, and then interpret all the pertinent texts to show how scripture, Church tradition, and all the ancient writers were united in supporting the course that the monarchs had already determined to pursue. The funny thing -- or, when he was in another mood, the sad thing -- was that no one ever caught on to his method. When he invariably brought in scholarship that would support the cause of Christ and the monarchs of Spain, everyone assumed that this meant that the course the monarchs were pursuing was the right one, not that Talavera had been clever about manipulating the texts. It was as if they did not realize the texts could be manipulated.

And yet they all manipulated and interpreted and transformed the ancient writings. Certainly Maldonado did it to defend his own elaborate preconceptions, and Deza just as much to attack them. But none of them seemed to know that this was what they were doing. They thought they were discovering truth.

How many times Talavera had wished to speak to them with utter scorn. Here is the only truth that matters, he wanted to say: Spain is at war, purifying Iberia as a Christian land. The King has conducted this war deftly and patiently, and he will win, driving the last Moors from Iberia. The Queen is now setting into motion what England wisely did years ago: the expulsion of the Jews from her kingdom. (Not that the Jews were dangerous by intent -- Talavera had no sympathy with Torquemada's fanatical belief in the evil plots of the Jews. No, the Jews had to be expelled because as long as the weaker Christians could look around them and see unbelievers prospering, see them marrying and having children and living normal and decent lives, they would not be firm in their faith that only in Christ is there happiness. The Jews had to go, just as the Moors had to go.)

And what had Colўn to do with this? Sailing west. So what? Even if he was right, what would it accomplish? Convert the heathen in a far-off land when Spain itself was not yet unified in its Christianity? That would be marvelous and well worth the effort -- as long as it didn't interfere in any way with the war against the Moors. So, while the others argued about the size of the Earth and the passability of the Ocean Sea, Talavera was always weighing far more important matters. What would the news of this expedition do to the prestige of the Crown? What would it cost and how would the diversion of such funds affect the war? Would supporting Colўn cause Aragon and Castile to draw closer together or farther apart? What do the King and Queen actually want to do? If Colўn were sent away, where would he go next and what would he do?

Until today, the answers had all been clear enough. The King did not intend to spend one peso on anything but the war against the Moors, while the Queen very much wanted to support Colўn's expedition. That meant that any decision at all would be divisive. In the delicate balance between King and Queen, between Aragon and Castile, any decision on Colўn's expedition would cause one of them to think that power had drifted dangerously in the other direction, and suspicion and envy would increase.

Therefore, regardless of all the arguments, Talavera was determined that no verdict would be reached until the situation changed. It was easy enough at first, but as the years passed and it became clear that Colўn had nothing new to offer, it became harder and harder to keep the issue alive. Fortunately, Colўn was the only other person involved in the process who seemed to understand it. Or if he didn't understand it, at least he cooperated with Talavera to this degree: He kept hinting that he knew more than he was telling. Veiled references to information he learned while in Lisbon or Madeira, mentions of proofs that had not yet been brought forward, this was what allowed Talavera to keep the examination open.

When Maldonado (and Deza, for opposite reasons) wanted him to force Colўn to lay these great secrets on the table, to settle things once and for all, Talavera always agreed that it would be a great help if Colўn would do so, but one must understand that anything Colўn learned in Portugal must have been learned under sacred oath. If it was just a matter of fear of Portuguese reprisals, then no doubt Colўn would tell, for he was a brave man and not afraid of anything King John might do. But if it was a matter of honor, then how could they insist that he break his oath and tell? That would be the same as asking Colўn to damn himself to hell for all eternity, just to satisfy their curiosity. Therefore they must listen carefully to all that Colўn said, hoping that, clever scholars that they were, they could determine just what it was he could not tell them openly.

And, by the grace of God, Colўn himself played along. Surely the others had all taken him aside, at one time or another, trying to pry from him the secrets that he would not tell. And in all these long years, Colўn had never given a hint of what his secret information was. Just as important, he had also never given a hint that there was no secret information.

For a long time Talavera had not studied the arguments -- he had grasped those at the start and nothing important had been added in years. No, what Talavera studied was Colўn himself. At first he had assumed that Colўn was just another courtier on the make, but that impression was quickly dispelled. Colўn was absolutely, fanatically determined to sail west, and could not be distracted by any other sort of preferment. Gradually, though, Talavera had come to see that this voyage west was not an end in itself. Colўn had dreams. Not of personal wealth or fame, but rather dreams of power. Colўn wanted to accomplish something, and this westward voyage was the foundation of it. And what was it that Colўn wanted to do? Talavera had puzzled about this for months, for years.

Today, at last, the answer had come. Departing from his usual scholarly bludgeoning, Maldonado had remarked, rather testily, that it was selfish of Colўn to try to distract the monarchs from their war with the Moors, and Colўn had suddenly erupted in anger. "A war with the Moors? For what, to drive them from Granada, from a small corner of this dry peninsula? With the wealth of the East we could drive the Turk from Constantinople, and from there it is only a short step to Armageddon and the liberation of the Holy Land! And you tell me that I must not do this, because it might interfere with the war against Granada? You might as well tell a matador that he cannot kill the bull because it might interfere with the effort to stomp on a mouse!"

At once Colўn had regretted his remarks, and was quick to reassure everyone that he had nothing but the greatest enthusiasm for the great war against Granada. "Forgive me for letting my passion rule my mouth," said Colўn. "Never for a moment have I wished for anything but the victory of the Christian armies over the infidel in Granada."

Talavera had immediately forgiven him and forbidden anyone to repeat Colўn's remarks. "We know that what you said was in zeal for the cause of Christ, wishing that we could accomplish even more than victory against Granada, not less."

Colўn himself seemed relieved indeed to hear Talavera's words. It could have been the death of his petition right on the spot, if his remarks had been taken as disloyalty -- and the personal consequences could have been severe as well. The others had also nodded wisely. They had no wish to denounce Colўn. For one thing, it would hardly redound to their credit if it had taken them this many years to discover that Colўn was a traitor!

What Colўn did not know, what none of them knew, was how deeply his words had touched Talavera's soul. A Crusade to liberate Constantinople! To break the power of the Turk! To plunge a knife into the heart of Islam! In a few sentences Colўn had forced Talavera to view his life's work in a new light. All these years that Talavera had devoted himself to the cause of Spain for Christ's sake, and now he realized that next to Colўn his own faith was childish. Colўn is right: If we serve Christ, why are we chasing mice when the great bull of Satan struts through the greatest Christian city?

For the first time in years, Talavera realized that serving the King and Queen might not be identical to serving the cause of Christ. He realized that for the first time in his life he was in the presence of someone whose devotion to Christ might well be the match of his own. Such was my pride, thought Talavera, that it took me this many years to see it.

And in those years, what have I done? I have kept Colўn trapped here, leading him on, keeping the question open year after year, all because making any kind of decision might weaken the relationship between Aragon and Castile. Yet what if it is Colўn, and not Ferdinand and Isabella, who understands what will best serve the cause of Christ? How does the purification of Spain compare to the liberation of all the ancient Christian lands? And with the power of Islam broken, what then would stop Christianity from spreading forth to fill the world?

If only Colўn had come to us with a plan for Crusade instead of this strange voyage to the west. The man was eloquent, forceful, and there was something about him that made you want to be on his side. Talavera imagined him going from king to king, from court to court. He might well have been able to convince the monarchs of Europe to unite in common cause against the Turk.

Instead, Colўn seemed sure that the only way to bring about such a Crusade was to establish a direct, quick connection with the great kingdoms of the East. Well, what if he was right? What if God had put this vision in his mind? Certainly it was nothing an intelligent man would have thought of on his own -- the most rational plan was to sail around Africa as the Portuguese were doing. But wasn't that, too, a species of madness? Weren't there ancient writers who had assumed that Africa extended all the way to the south pole, so there was no way to sail around it? Yet the Portuguese had persisted, finding again and again that no matter how far south they sailed, Africa was always there, extending even farther than they had imagined. Yet last year Dias at last returned with the good news -- they had rounded a cape and found that the coast ran to the east, not to the south; and then, after hundreds of miles, it definitely ran to the northeast and then the north. They had rounded Africa. And now the irrational persistence of the Portuguese was widely known to be rational after all.

Couldn't Colўn's irrational plans turn out the same way? Only instead of a years-long voyage, his route to the Orient would bring wealth much faster. And his plan, instead of enriching a tiny useless country like Portugal, would lead eventually to the Church of Christ filling the entire world!

So now, instead of thinking how to drag out the examination of Colўn, waiting for the desires of the monarchs to resolve themselves, Talavera sat in his austere chamber trying to think how to force the issue. One thing he certainly could not do was suddenly, after all these years and with no significant new arguments, announce that the committee was deciding in favor of Colўn. Maldonado and his supporters would protest directly to the King's men, and a power struggle would ensue. The Queen would almost certainly lose such an open struggle, since her support from the lords of her realm depended in large part on the fact that she was known to "think like a man." Disagreeing openly with the King would give the lie to that idea. Thus open support for Colўn would lead to division and probably would not lead to a voyage.

No, Talavera thought, the one thing I cannot do is support Colўn. So what can I do?

I can set him free. I can end the process and let him go on to another king, to another court. Talavera well knew that Colўn's friends had made discreet inquiries in the courts of France and England. Now that the Portuguese had achieved their quest for an African route to the East, they might be able to afford a small exploratory expedition toward the west. Certainly the Portuguese advantage in trading with the Orient will be envied by other kings. Colўn might well succeed somewhere. So whatever else happens, I must end his examination immediately.

But could there not also be a way to end the examination and yet turn things to the advantage of Colўn's supporters?

With a half-formed plan in mind, Talavera sent to the Queen a note bearing his request for a secret audience with her on the matter of Colўn.

Tagiri did not understand her own reaction to the news of success from the scientists working on time travel. She should be happy. She should be rejoicing to know that her great work could, physically, be accomplished. Yet ever since the meeting with the team of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers working on the time travel project, she had been upset, angry, frightened. The opposite of how she had expected she would feel.

Yes, they said, we can send a living person into the past. But if we do so there is no chance, no chance whatsoever, that our present world will survive in any form. To send someone into the past to change it is the end of ourselves.

They were so patient, trying to explain temporal physics to historians. "If our time is destroyed," Hassan asked, "then won't that also destroy the very people that we send back? If none of us are ever born, then the people we send won't have been born either, and therefore they could never have been sent. "

No, explained the physicists, you're confusing causality with time. Time itself, as a phenomenon, is utterly linear and unidirectional. Each moment happens only once, and passes into the next moment. Our memories grasp this one-way flow of time, and in our minds we link it with causality. We know that if A causes B, then A must come before B. But there is nothing in the physics of time that requires this. Think of what your predecessors did. The machine they sent back in time was the product of a long causal network. Those causes were all real, and the machine actually existed. Sending it back in time did not undo any of the events that led to the creation of that machine. But in the moment that the machine caused Columbus to see his vision on that beach in Portugal, it began to transform the causal network so that it no longer led to the same place. All of those causes and effects really happened -- the ones leading to the creation of the machine, and the ones following from the machine's introduction into the fifteenth century.

"But then you're saying that their future still exists," Hunahpu protested.

That depends on how you define existence, they explained. As a part of the causal network leading to the present moment, yes, they continue to exist in the sense that any part of their causal network that led to the existence of their machine in our time is still having effects in the present world. But anything peripheral or irrelevant to that is now utterly without effect in our timestream. And anything in their history that the introduction of that machine in our history caused not to happen is utterly and irrevocably lost. We can't go back into our past and view it because it didn't happen.

"But it did happen, because their machine exists."

No, they said again. Causality can be recursive, but time cannot. Anything that the introduction of their machine caused not to happen, did not in fact happen in time. There is no moment of time in which those events exist. Therefore they cannot be seen or visited because the temporal loci which they occupied are now occupied by different moments. Two contradictory sets of events cannot occupy the same moment: You are only confused because you cannot separate causality from time. And that's perfectly natural, because time is rational. Causality is irrational. We've been playing speculative games with the mathematics of time for centuries, but we would never have seen this distinction between time and causality ourselves if we hadn't had to account for the machine from the future.

"So what you're saying," Diko offered, "is that the other history still exists, but we just can't see it with our machines."

That's not what we're saying, they replied with infinite patience. Anything that was not causally connected to the creation of that machine cannot be said to have ever existed at all. And anything that did lead to the creation of that machine and its introduction into our time exists only in the sense that unreal numbers exist.

"But they did exist," Tagiri said, more passionately than she had expected. "They did."

"They did not," said old Manjam, who had let his younger colleagues speak for him till now. "We mathematicians are quite comfortable with this -- we have never dwelt in the realm of reality. But of course your mind rebels against it because your mind exists in time. What you must understand is that causality is not real. It does not exist in time. Moment A does not really cause Moment B in reality. Moment A exists, and then Moment B exists, and between them are Moments A.a through A.z, and between A.a and A.b there are A.aa through A.az. None of these moments actually touches any other moment. That is what reality is -- an infinite array of discreet moments unconnected with any other moment because each moment in time has no linear dimension. When the machine was introduced into our history, from that point forward a new infinite set of moments completely replaced the old infinite set of moments. There were no spare leftover moment-locations for the old moments to hang around in. And because there was no time for them, they didn't happen. But causality is unaffected by this. It isn't geometric. It has a completely different mathematics, one which does not fit well with concepts like space and time and certainly doesn't fit within anything that you could call 'real.' There is no space or time in which those events happened."

"What does that mean?" said Hassan. "That if we send somebody back in time, they will suddenly cease to remember anything about the time they came from, because that time no longer exists?"

"The person that you send back," said Manjam, "is a discrete event. He will have a brain, and that brain will contain memories that, when he accesses them, will give him certain information. This information will cause him to think he remembers a whole reality, a world and a history. But all that exists in reality is him and his brain. The causal network will only include those causal connections which led to the creation of his physical body, including his brain state, but any part of that causal network which is not part of the new reality cannot be said to exist in any way."

Tagiri was shaken. "I don't care that I don't understand the science of it," she said. "I only know that I hate it."

"It's always frightening to deal with something that is counterintuitive," said Maniam.

"Not at all," said Tagiri, trembling. "I didn't say I was frightened. I'm not. I'm angry and ... frustrated. Horrified."

"Horrified about the mathematics of time?"

"Horrified at what we are doing, at what the Interveners actually did. I suppose that I always felt that in some sense they went on. That they sent their machine and then went on with their lives, comforted in their miserable situation by knowing that they had done something to help their ancestors."

"But that was never possible," said Manjam.

"I know it," said Tagiri. "And so when I really thought about it, I imagined them sending the machine and in that moment they sort of -- disappeared. A clean painless death for everyone. But at least they had lived, up to that moment."

"Well," said Maniam, "how is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than a clean, painless death?"

"You see," said Tagiri, "it's not. Not any worse. And not any better, either, for the people themselves."

"What people?" said Marjam, shrugging.

"Us. Manjam. We are talking about doing this to ourselves."

"If you do this, then there will have been no such people as ourselves. The only aspect of our causal network that will have any future or past are those that are connected to the creation of the physical bodies and mental states of the persons you send into the past."

"This is all so silly," said Diko. "Who cares about what's real and what isn't real? Isn't this what we wanted all along? To make it so that the terrible events of our history never happened in the first place? And as for our own history, the parts that will be lost, who cares if a mathematician calls us dirty names like 'unreal'? They say such slanders about the square root of minus two, as well."

Everyone laughed, but not Tagiri. They did not see the past as she saw it. Or rather, they didn't feel the past. They didn't understand that to her, looking through the Tempoview and the TruSite II, the past was alive and real. Just because the people were dead did not mean that they were not still part of the present, because she could go back and recover them. See them, hear them. Know them, at least as well as any human being ever knows any other. Even before the TruSite and the Tempoview, though, the dead still lived in memory, some kind of memory. But not if they changed the past. It was one thing to ask humankind of today to choose to give up their future in the hope of creating a new reality. That would be hard enough. But to also reach back and kill the dead, to uncreate them as well -- and they had no vote. They could not be asked.

We must not do this, she thought. This is wrong. This win be a worse crime than the ones we are trying to prevent.

She got up and left the meeting. Diko and Hassan tried to leave with her, but she brushed them off. "I need to be alone," she said, and so they stayed behind, returning to a meeting that she knew would be in shambles. For a moment she felt remorse at having greeted the physicists' triumphant moment with such a negative response, but as she walked the streets of Juba that remorse faded, replaced by one far deeper.

The children playing naked in the dirt and weeds. The men and women going about their business. She spoke to them all in her heart, saying, How would you like to die? And not only you, but your children and their children? And not only them, but your parents, too? Let's go back into the graves, open them up, and kill them all. Every good and evil thing they did, all their joy, all their suffering, all their choices -- let's kill them all, erase them, undo them. Reaching back and back and back, until we finally come to the golden moment that we have chosen, declaring it worthy to continue to exist, but with a new future tied to the end of it. And why must all of you and yours be killed? Because in our judgment they didn't make a good enough world. Their mistakes along the way were so unforgivable that they erase the value of any good that also happened. All must be obliterated.

How dare I? How dare we? Even if we got the unanimous consent of all the people of our own time, how will we poll the dead?

She picked her way down the bluffs to the riverside. In the waning afternoon, the heat of the day was finally beginning to break. In the distance, hippos were bathing or feeding or sleeping. Birds were calling, getting ready for their frenzied feeding on the insects of the dusk. What goes through your minds, Birds, Hippopotamuses, Insects of the late afternoon? Do you like being alive? Do you fear death? You kill to live; you die so others can live; it's the path ordained for you by evolution, by life itself. But if you had the power, wouldn't you save yourselves?

She was still there by the river when the darkness came, when the stars came out. For a moment, gazing at the ancient light of the stars, she thought: Why should I worry about uncreating so much of human history? Why should I care that it will be worse than forgotten, that it will be unknown? Why should that seem to be a crime, when all of human history is an eyeblink compared to the billions of years the stars have shone? We will all be forgotten in the last exhalation of our history; what does it matter, then, if some are forgotten sooner than others, or if some are caused to have never existed at all?

Oh, this is such a wise perspective, to compare human lives to the lives of stars. The only problem is that it cuts both ways. If in the long run it doesn't matter that we wipe out billions of lives in order to save our ancestors, then in the long ran saving our ancestors doesn't matter, either, so why bother changing the past at all?

The only perspective that matters is the human one, Tagiri knew. We are the only ones who care; we are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.

The light of an electric torch bobbed into view as she heard someone approaching through the grass.

"That torch will only attract animals that we don't want," she said.

"Come home," said Diko It isn't safe out here, and Father's worried."

"Why should he be worried? My life doesn't exist. I never lived."

"You're alive now, and so am I, and so are the crocodiles."

"If individual lives don't matter," said Tagiri, "then why bother going back to make them better? And if they do matter, then how dare we snuff some out in favor of others?"

"Individual lives matter," said Diko. "But life also matters. Life as a whole. That's what you've forgotten today. That's what Manjam and the other scientists also forgot. They talk of all these moments, separate, never touching, and say that they are the only reality. Just as the only reality of human life is individuals, isolated individuals who never really know each other, never really touch at any point. No matter how close you are, you're always separate."

Tagiri shook her head. "This has nothing to do with what is bothering me."

"It has everything to do with it," said Diko. "Because you know that this is a lie. You know that the mathematicians are wrong about the moments, too. They do touch. Even if we can't really touch causality, the connections between moments, that doesn't mean they aren't real. And just because whenever you look closely at the human race, at a community, at a family, all you can ever find are separate individuals, that doesn't mean that the family is not also real. After all, when you look closely enough at a molecule, all you can see are atoms. There is no physical connection between them. And yet the molecule is still real because of the way the atoms affect each other."

"You're as bad as they are," said Tagiri, "answering anguish with analogies."

"Analogies are all I have," said Diko. "Truth is all I have, and truth is never a comfort. But understanding truth, that is what you taught me to do. So here is the truth. What human life is, what it's for, what we do, is create communities. Some of them are good, some of them are evil, or somewhere between. You taught me this, didn't you? And there are communities of communities, groups of group's, and--"

"And what makes them good or bad?" demanded Tagiri. "The quality of the individual lives. The ones we're going to snuff out."

"No," said Diko. "What we're going to do is go back and revise the ultimate community of communities, the human race as a whole, history as a whole here on this planet. We're going to create a new version of it, one that will give the new individuals who live within it a far, far better chance of happiness, of having a good life, than the old version. That's real, and that's good, Mother. It's worth doing. It is."

"I've never known any groups," said Tagiri. "Just people. Just individual people. Why should I make those people pay so this imaginary thing called 'human history' can be better? Better for whom?"

"But Mother, individual people always sacrifice for the sake of the community. When it matters enough, people sometimes even die, willingly, for the good of the community that they feel themselves to be a part of. As well as a thousand sacrifices short of death. And why? Why do we give up our individual desires, leave them unfulfilled, or work hard at tasks we hate or fear because others need us to do them? Why did you go through such pain to bear me and Acho? Why did you give up all the time it took to take care of us?"

Tagiri looked at her daughter. "I don't know, but as I listen to you, I begin to think that perhaps it was worth it. Because you know things that I don't know. I wanted to create someone different from myself, better than myself, and willingly gave up part of my life to do it. And here you are. And you're saying that that's what the people of our time will be to the people of the new history we create. That we will sacrifice to create their history, as parents sacrifice to create healthy, happy children."

"Yes, Mother," said Diko. "Manjam is wrong. The people who sent that vision to Columbus did exist. They were the parents of our age; we are their children. And now we will be the parents to another age."

"Which just goes to show," said Tagiri, "that one can always find language to make the most terrible things sound noble and beautiful, so you can live with doing them."

Diko looked at Tagiri in silence for a long moment. Then she threw the electric torch to the ground at her mother's feet and walked away into the night.

Isabella found herself dreading the meeting with Talavera. It would be about Cristobal Colўn, of course. It must mean that he had reached a conclusion. "It's foolish of me, don't you think?" Isabella said to Lady Felicia. "Yet I am as worried about his verdict as if I myself were on trial."

Lady Felicia murmured something noncommittal.

"Perhaps I am on trial."

"What court on Earth can try a queen, Your Majesty?" asked Lady Felicia.

"That is my point," said Isabella. "I felt, when Cristobal spoke that first day in court, so many years ago, that the Holy Mother was offering me something very sweet and fine, a fruit from her own garden, a berry from her own vine."

"He is a fascinating man, Your Majesty."

"Not him, though I do think him a sweet and fervent fellow." One thing Isabella would never do was leave the impression with anyone that she looked on any man but her husband with anything approaching desire. "No, I mean that the Queen of Heaven was giving me the chance to open a vast door that had long been closed." She sighed. "But the power even of queens is not infinite. I had no ships to spare, and the cost of saying yes on the spot would have been too great. Now Talavera has decided, and I fear that he is about to close a door whose key will only be given me that one time. Now it will pass into another hand, and I will regret it forever."

"Heaven cannot condemn Your Majesty for failing to do what was not within your power to do," said Lady Felicia.

"I'm not worried at this moment about the condemnation of heaven. That's between me and my confessors."

"Oh, Your Majesty, I was not saying that you face any kind of condemnation from--"

"No no, Lady Felicia, don't worry, I didn't take your remark as anything but the kindest reassurance."

Felicia, still flustered, got up to answer the soft knock on the door. It was Father Talavera.

"Would you wait by the door, Lady Felicia?" asked Isabella.

Talavera bowed over her hand. "Your Majesty, I am about to ask Father Maldonado to write the verdict."

The worst possible outcome. She heard the door of heaven clang shut against her. "Why today of all days?" she asked him. "You've taken all these years over this Colўn fellow, and today it's suddenly an emergency that must be decided at once?"

"I think it is," he said.

"And why is that?"

"Because victory in Granada is near."

"Oh, has God spoken to you about this?"

"You feel it too. Not God, of course, but His Majesty the King. There is new energy in him. He is making the final push, and he knows that it will succeed. This next summer. By the end of 1491, all of Spain will be free of the Moor."

"And this means that you must press the issue of Colўn's voyage now?"

"It means," said Talavera, "that one who wishes to do something so audacious must sometimes proceed very warily. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if our verdict were positive. Go ahead, Your Majesty, we say. This voyage is worthy of success. What then? At once Maldonado and his friends will seek His Majesty's ear, criticizing this voyage. And they will speak to many others, so that the voyage will soon be known as a folly. In particular, Isabella's folly."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I say only what will surely be said by those with malicious hearts. Now imagine if this verdict is reached when the war is over, and His Majesty can devote his fall attention to the matter. The issue of this voyage could easily become quite a stumbling block in the relations between the two kingdoms."

"I see that in your view, supporting Colўn will be disastrous," she said.

"Now imagine, Your Majesty, that the verdict is negative. In fact, that Maldonado himself writes it. From that point on, Maldonado has nothing to gossip about. There will be no whispers."

"There will also be no voyage."

"Won't there?" asked Talavera. "I imagine a day when a queen might say to her husband, 'Father Talavera came to me, and we agreed that Father Maldonado should write the verdict.'"

"But I don't agree."

"I imagine this queen saying to her husband, 'We agreed that Maldonado should write the verdict because we know that the war with Granada is the most vital concern of our kingdom. We want nothing to distract you or anyone else from this holy Crusade against the Moor. Most certainly we don't want to give King John of Portugal reason to think we are planning any kind of voyage through waters he thinks of as his own. We need his unflagging friendship during this final struggle with Granada. So even though in my heart I want nothing more than to take the chance and send this Colўn west, to carry the cross to the great kingdoms of the East, I have set aside this dream.'"

"What an eloquent queen you have imagined," said Isabella.

"All controversy dies. The king sees the queen as a statesman of great wisdom. He also sees the sacrifice she has made for their kingdoms and the cause of Christ. Now imagine that time passes. The war is won. In the glow of victory, the queen comes to the king and says, 'Now let's see if this Colўn still wants to sail west.'"

"And he will say, 'I thought that business was finished. I thought Talavera's examiners put a Stop to all that nonsense.'"

"Oh, does he say that?" asked Talavera. "Fortunately, the queen is quite deft, and she says, 'Oh, but you know that Talavera and I agreed to have Maldonado write that verdict. For the good of the war effort. The matter was never really settled. Many of the examiners thought Colўn's project was a worthy one with a decent chance of success. Who can know, anyway? We'll find out by sending this Colўn. If he comes back successful, we'll know he was right and we'll send great expeditions at once to follow through. If he comes back empty-handed, then we'll put him in prison for defrauding the Crown. And if he never comes back, we'll waste no more effort on such projects.'"

"The queen you imagine is so dry," said Isabella. "She talks like a cleric."

"It's a shortcoming of mine," said Talavera. "I haven't heard enough great ladies in private conversation with their husbands."

"I think this queen should say to her husband, 'If he sails and never returns, then we have lost a handful of caravels. Pirates take more than that every year. But if he sails and succeeds, then with three caravels we will have accomplished more than Portugal has achieved in a century of expensive, dangerous voyages along the African coast.'"

"Oh, you're right, that's much better. This king that you're imagining, he has a keen sense of competition."

"Portugal is a thorn in his side," said Isabella.

"So you agree with me that Maldonado should write the verdict?"

"You're forgetting one thing," said Isabella.

"And that is?"

"Colўn. When the verdict comes, he will leave us and head for France or England. Or Portugal."

"There are two reasons why he will not, Your Majesty."

"And those are?"

"First, Portugal has Dias and the African route to the Indies, while I happen to know that Colўn's first approaches to Paris and London, through intermediaries, did not meet with any encouragement."

"He has already turned to other kings?"

"After the first four years," said Talavera dryly, "his patience began to flag a little."

"And the second reason that Colўn will not leave Spain between the verdict and the end of the war with Granada?"

"He will be informed of the verdict of the examiners in a letter. And that letter, while it will contain no promises, will nevertheless give him leave to understand that when the war ends, the matter can be reopened."

"The verdict closes the door, but the letter opens the window?"

"Just a little. But if I know Colўn at all, that slight crack in the window will be enough. He is a man of great hopes and great tenacity."

"Do I take it, Father Talavera, that your own personal verdict is in favor of the voyage?"

"Not at all," said Talavera. "If I had to guess which view of the world is the more correct, I think I would favor Ptolemy and Maldonado. But I would be guessing, because no one knows and no one can know with the information we now have."

"Then why did you come here today with all these -- suggestions?"

"I think of them as imaginings, Your Majesty. I would not presume to suggest anything." He smiled. "While the others have been trying to determine what is correct, I have been thinking more along the lines of what is good and right. I have been thinking of St. Peter stepping from the boat and walking on the water."

"Until he doubted."

"And then he was lifted up by the hand of the Savior."

Tears came to Isabella's eyes. "Do you think Colўn may be filled with the Spirit of God?"

"The Maid of Orleans was either a saint or a madwoman."

"Or a witch. They burned her as a witch."

"My point exactly. Who could know, for certain, whether God was in her? And yet by putting their trust in her as God's servant, the soldiers of France drove the English from held after field. What if she had been mad? What then? They would have lost one more battle. What difference would that have made? They had already lost so many."

"So if Colўn is a madman, we will only lose a few caravels, a little money, a wasted voyage."

"Besides, if I know His Majesty at all, I suspect he'll find a way to get the boats for very little money."

"They say that if you pinch the coins with his face on them, they screech."

Talavera's eyes went wide. "Someone told Your Majesty that little jest?"

She lowered her voice. They were already talking so low that Lady Felicia could not possibly hear them; still, he leaned toward the Queen so he could hear her faint whisper. "Father Talavera, just between you and me, when that little jest was first told, I was present. In fact, when that little jest was first told, I was speaking."

"I will treat that," said Father Talavera, "with all the secrecy of a confession."

"You are such a good priest, Father Talavera. Bring me Father Maldonado's verdict. Tell him not to make it too cruel."

"Your Majesty, I will tell him to be kind. But Father Maldonado's kindness can leave scars."

Diko came home to find Father and Mother both still awake, dressed, sitting up in the front room, as if they were waiting to go somewhere. Which turned out to be the case. "Manjam has asked to see us."

"At this hour?" asked Diko. "Go then."

"Us," said Father, "including you."

They met in one of the smaller rooms at Pastwatch, but one designed for the optimum viewing of the holographic display of the TruSite II. It did not occur to Diko, however, that Manjam chose the room for anything but privacy. What would he need with the TruSite II? He was not of Pastwatch. He was a noted mathematician, but that was supposed to mean he had no use for the real world. His tool was a computer for number manipulation. And, of course, his own mind. After Hassan, Tagiri, and Diko arrived, Manjam had them wait just a moment more for Hunahpu and Kemal. Then they all sat.

"I must begin with an apology," said Manjam. "I realize in retrospect that my explanation of temporal effects was inept in the extreme."

"On the contrary," said Tagiri, "it couldn't have been clearer."

"I don't apologize for a lack of clarity. I apologize for a lack of empathy. It isn't one of the things mathematicians get much practice at. I actually thought that telling you that our own time would cease to be real would be a comfort to you. It would be to me, you see. But then, I don't spend my life looking at history. I didn't understand the great ... compassion that fills your lives here. Tagiri, you especially. I know now what I should have said.

"That the end will be painless. There will be no cataclysm. There will be no sense of loss. There will be no regret. Instead, there will be a new Earth. A new future. And in this new future, because of the wise plans that Diko and Hunahpu have devised, there will be far more chance of happiness and fulfilment than in our own time. There will still be unhappiness, but it will not be so pervasive. That's what I should have said. That you will indeed succeed in erasing much misery, while you will create no new sources of misery."

"Yes," said Tagiri, "you should have said that."

"I'm not used to speaking in terms of misery and happiness. There is no mathematics of misery, you see. It doesn't come up in my professional life. And yet I do care about it." Manjam sighed. "More than you know."

Something that he said struck a wrong note in Diko's mind. She blurted out the question as soon as she realized what it was. "Hunahpu and I have not finalized any plans."

"Haven't you?" said Manjam. He reached out his hands to the TruSite II, and to Diko's astonishment he manipulated the controls like an expert. In fact, he almost immediately called up a control screen that Diko had never seen before, and entered a double password. Moments later the holographic display came alive.

In the display, to Diko's astonishment, she saw herself and Hunahpu.

"It isn't enough to stop Cristoforo, " Diko was saying in the display. "We have to help him and his crew on Hispaniola to develop a new culture in combination with the Taino. A new Christianity that adapts to the Indies the way that it adapted to the Greeks in the second century. But that also isn't enough."

"I hoped you would see it that way," said Hunahpu in the display. "Because I intend to go to Mexico."

"What do you mean, Mexico?"

"That wasn't your plan?"

"I was going to say that we need to develop technology rapidly, to the point where the new hybrid culture can be a match for Europe."

"Yes, that's what I thought you were going to say. But of course that can't be done on the island of Haiti. Oh, the Spaniards will try, but the Tainos are simply not ready to receive that level of technology. It will remain Spanish, and that means a permanent class division between the white keepers of the machines and the brown laboring class. Not healthy."

Manjam paused the display. The images of Diko and Hunahpu froze.

Diko looked around at the others and saw that the fear and anger in their eyes was a match for what she felt.

"Those machines," said Hassan, "they aren't supposed to be able to see anything more recent than a hundred years ago."

"Normally they can't," said Marjam.

"Why does a mathematician know how to use the TruSite?" asked Hunahpu. "Pastwatch already duplicated all the lost private notes of the great mathematicians of history."

"This is an unspeakable violation of privacy," said Kemal icily.

Diko agreed, but she had already leaped to the most important question. "Who are you really, Marjam?"

"Oh, I'm really Manjam," he said."But no, don't protest, I understand your real question." He regarded them all calmly for a moment. "We don't talk about what we do, because people would misunderstand. They would think we are some kind of secret cabal that rules the world behind closed doors, and nothing could be farther from the truth."

"That reassures me completely," said Diko.

"We do nothing political. Do you understand? We don't interfere with government. We care a great deal about what governments do, but when we want to achieve some goal, we act openly. I would write to a government official as myself, as Manjam. Or appear on a broadcast. Stating my opinions. Do you see? We are not a secret shadow government. We have no authority over human lives."

"And yet you spy on us."

"We monitor all that is interesting and important in the world. And because we have the TruSite II, we can do it without sending spies or openly talking to anybody. We just watch, and then, when something is important or valuable, we encourage."

"Yes yes," said Hassan. "I'm sure you're noble and very kind in your godlike role. Who are the others?"

"I'm the one who came to you," said Manjam.

"And why are you showing us this? Why are you telling us?" asked Tagiri.

"Because you have to understand that I know what I'm talking about. And I have to show you some things before you will understand why your project has been so encouraged, why you've had no interference, why you've been allowed to bring together so many people from the moment you discovered, Tagiri and Hassan, that we can reach back and affect the past. And most especially since you, Diko, discovered that someone had already done so, canceling their own time in order to create a new future."

"So show us," said Hunahpu.

Manjam typed in new coordinates. The display changed. It was a long-distance aerial view of a vast stony plain with only a few desert plants every square meter, except for thick trees and grass along the banks of a wide river.

"What is this, the Sahara project?" asked Hassan.

"This is the Amazon," said Manjam.

"No," murmured Tagiri. "That's how bad it was before the restoration began?"

"You don't understand," said Maniam. "That is the Amazon right now. Or, technically speaking, about fifteen minutes ago." The display moved quickly, mile after mile down the river, and nothing changed until at last, after what must have been a thousand miles, they came to scenes familiar from the broadcasts: the thick growth of the rain-forest restoration project. But in just a few moments they had passed through the entire rain forest and were back to stony ground growing almost nothing. And so it remained, all the way to the marshy mouth of the river where it flowed into the sea.

"That was all? That was the Amazon rain forest?" asked Hunahpu.

"But that project has been going for forty years," said Hassan.

"It wasn't that bad when they started," said Diko.

"Have they been lying to us?" asked Tagiri.

"Come now," said Manjam. "You've all heard about the terrible loss of topsoil. You all know that with the forests gone, erosion was uncontrolled."

"But they were planting grass."

"And it died, " said Manjam. "They're working on new species that can live in the scarcity of important nutrients. Don't look so glum. Nature is on our side. In ten thousand years the Amazon should be right back to normal."

"That's longer than -- that's older than civilization."

"A mere hiccup in the ecological history of Earth. It simply takes time for new soil to be brought down from the Andes and built up on the banks of the river, where grasses and trees will thrive and gradually push their way outward from the river. At the rate of about six to ten meters a year for the grass, in the good spots. Also, it would help if there were some really massive flooding now and then, to spread new soil. A new volcano in the Andes would be nice -- the ash would be quite helpful. And the odds of one erupting in the next ten thousand years are pretty good. Plus there's always the topsoil blown across the Atlantic from Africa. You see? Our prospects are good."

Manjam's words were cheerful, but Diko was sure he was being ironic. "Good? That land is dead."

"Oh, well, yes, for now."

"What about Sahara restoration?" asked Tagiri.

"Going very well. Good progress. I give us five hundred years on that."

"Five hundred!" cried Tagiri.

"That's presupposing great increases in rainfall, of course. But our weather prediction is getting very good at the climatic level. You worked on part of that project for a while in school, Kemal."

"We were talking about restoring the Sahara in a hundred years."

"Well, yes, and that would happen, if we could continue to keep so many teams working on it. But that won't be possible for even ten more years."

"Why not?"

Again the display changed. The ocean in a storm, beating against a levee. It broke through. A wall of seawater broke across -- fields of grain?

"Where is that?" demanded Diko.

"Surely you heard about the breaching of the Carolina dike. In America."

"That was five years ago," said Hunahpu.

"Right. Very unfortunate. We lost the coastal barrier islands fifty years ago, with the rising of the ocean. This section of the North American east coast had been converted from tobacco and lumber production to grain, in order to replace the farmland killed by the drying of the North American prairie. Now vast acreages are under water."

"But we're making progress on finding ways to reduce the greenhouse gases," said Hassan.

"So we are. We think that, with safety, we can reduce the greenhouse effect significantly within perhaps thirty years. But by then, you see, we won't want to reduce it."

"Why not?" asked Diko. "The oceans are rising as the ice cap melts. We have to stop global warming."

"Our climate studies show that this is a self-correcting problem. The greater heat and the increased surface area of the ocean lead to significantly greater evaporation and temperature differentials worldwide. The cloud cover is increasing, which raises the Earth's albedo. We will soon be reflecting more sunlight than ever before since the last ice age."

"But the weather satellites," said Kemal.

"They keep the extremes from getting unbearable in any one location. How long do you think those satellites can last?"

"They can be replaced when they wear out," said Kemal.

"Can they?" asked Manjam. "Already we're taking people out of the factories and putting them into the fields. But this won't really help, because we're already farming very close to one hundred percent of the land where there's any topsoil left at all. And since we've been farming at maximum yields for some time, we're already noticing the effects of the increasing cloud cover -- fewer crops per hectare."

"What are you saying?" said Diko. "That we're already too late to restore the Earth?"

Manjam didn't answer. Instead, he brought onto the display a large region filled with grain silos. He zoomed in and they viewed the inside of silo after silo.

"Empty," murmured Tagiri

"We're eating up our reserves," said Manjam.

"But why aren't we rationing?"

"Because politicians can't do that until the people as a whole see that there's an emergency. Right now they don't see it."

"Then warn them!" said Hunahpu.

"Oh, the warnings are there. And in a while people will start talking about it. But they'll do nothing, for the simple reason that there's nothing to be done. Crop yields will continue to go down."

"What about the ocean?" asked Hassan.

"The ocean has its own problems. What do you want us to do, scrape away all the plankton so that the ocean dies, too? We harvest as much fish as we dare. We are at maximum right now. Any more, and in ten years our yields will be a tiny fraction of what they are now. Don't you see? The damage our ancestors did was too great. It is not within our power to stop the forces that have already been in motion for centuries. If we started rationing right now, it would mean that the devastating famines would begin in twenty years instead of six. But of course we won't start rationing until the first famine. And even then, the areas that are producing enough food will become quite surly about having to go hungry in order to feed people in faraway lands. Right now we feel that all human beings are one tribe, so that no one anywhere is hungry. But how long do you think that will last, when the food-producing people hear their children pleading for bread and the ships are carrying so much grain away to other lands? How well do you think the politicians will do at containing the forces that will move through the world then?"

"So what is your little non-cabal doing about it?" asked Hassan.

"Nothing," said Manjam. "As I said, the processes have gone too far. Our most favorable projections show collapse of the present system within thirty years. That's if there are no wars. There simply won't be food enough to maintain the present population or even a major fraction of it. You can't keep up the industrial economy without an agricultural base that produces far more food than is needed just to sustain the food producers. So industry starts collapsing. Now there are fewer tractors. Now the fertilizer factories produce less, and less of what they do produce can get distributed because transportation can't be maintained. Food production falls even further. Weather satellites wear out and can't be replaced. Drought. Flood. Less land in production. More deaths. Therefore less industry. Therefore lower food production. We have run a million different scenarios and there's not one of them that doesn't lead us to the same place. A worldwide population of about five million before we stabilize. Just in time for the ice age to begin in earnest. At that point the population could start a slower decline until it's down to about two million. That's if there's no warfare, of course. All these projections are based on an assumption of a completely docile response. We all know how likely that is. All it will take is one full-fledged war in one of the major food-producing countries and the drop will be much steeper, with the population stabilizing at a much lower level."

No one could say anything to that. They knew what it meant.

"It's not all glum news," said Manjam. "The human race will survive. As the ice age ends, our distant children will again start to build civilizations. By then the rain forests will have been restored. Herd animals will once more graze the rich grassland of the Sahara and the Rub' al Khali and the Gobi. Unfortunately, all the easy iron was taken out of the ground years ago. Also the easy tin and copper. In fact, one can't help but wonder what they'll do for metals in order to rise out of the stone age. One can't help but wonder what their transitional energy source is going to be, with all the oil gone. There's still a little peat in Ireland. And of course the forests will have come back, so there'll be charcoal until they burn all the forests back down to nothing and the cycle starts over."

"You're saying that the human race can't rise again?"

"I'm saying that we've used up all the easy-to-find resources," said Manjam. "Human beings are very resourceful. Maybe they'll find other paths into a better future. Maybe they'll figure out how to make solar collectors out of the rusted debris of our skyscrapers."

"I ask again," said Hassan. "What are you doing to prevent this?"

"And I say again, nothing," said Manjam. "It can't be prevented. Warnings are useless because there's nothing that people can do to change their behavior to make this problem go away. The civilization we have right now cannot be maintained even for another generation. And people do sense it, you know. The birthrates are falling all over the world. They all have their own individual reasons, but the cumulative effect is the same. People are choosing not to have children who will compete with them for scarce resources."

"Why did you show us this, then, if there's nothing we can do?" said Tagiri.

"Why did you search the past, when you believed there was nothing you could do?" asked Manjam, smiling grimly. "Besides, I never said that there was nothing YOU could do. Only that WE could do nothing."

"That's why we've been allowed to pursue time travel," said Hunahpu. "So we can go back and prevent all this."

"We had no hope, until you discovered the mutability of the past," said Manjam. "Until then, our work was turned toward preservation. Collecting all of human knowledge and experience and storing it in some permanent form that might last in hiding for at least ten thousand years. We've come up with some very good, compact storage devices. And some simple nonmechanical readers that we think might last two or three thousand years. We could never do better than that. And of course we never managed to come up with the sum of all knowledge. Ideally what we do have we would have rewritten as a series of easy-to-learn lessons. Step by step through the acquired wisdom of the human race. That project lasted up through algebra and the basic principles of genetics and then we had to give it up. For the last decade we've just been dumping information into the banks and duplicating it. We'll just have to let our grandchildren figure out how to codify and make sense of it all, when and if they find the caches where we hide the stuff. That's what our little cabal exists for. Preserving the memory of the human race. Until we spotted you."

Tagiri was weeping.

"Mother," said Diko. "What is it?"

Hassan put his arm around his wife and drew her close. Tagiri raised her tear-streaked face and looked at her daughter. "Oh, Diko," she said. "For all these years I thought we lived in paradise."

"Tagiri is a woman of astonishing compassion," said Manjam. "When we found her, we watched her out of love and admiration. How could she endure the pain of so many other people? We never dreamed that it would be her compassion, and not the cleverness of our clever ones, that would finally lead us to the one road away from the disaster lying ahead of us." He rose and walked to Tagiri, and knelt before her. "Tagiri, I had to show you this, because we feared that you would decide to stop the Columbus project."

"I already did. Decide it, I mean," she said.

"I asked the others. They said we had to show you. Though we knew that you would not see this as parched earth or statistics or anything safe and distant and containable. You would see it as each life that was lost, each hope that was destroyed. You would hear the voices of the children born today, as they grew up cursing their parents for their cruelty in not having killed them in the womb. I'm sorry for the pain of it. But you had to understand that if in fact Columbus is a fulcrum of history, and stopping him opens a way to creating a new future for the human race, then we must do it."

Tagin slowly nodded. But then she wiped the tears off her cheeks and faced Manjam, speaking fiercely. "Not in secret," she said.

Manjam smiled wanly. "Yes, some of us warned that you would feel that way."

"The people must consent to our sending someone back to undo our world. They must agree."

"Then we will have to wait to tell them," said Manjam. "Because if we asked today, they would say no."

"When?" asked Diko.

"You'll know when," said Manjam. "When the famines start."

"What if I'm too old to go?" asked Kemal.

"Then we'll send someone else," said Hassan.

"What if I'm too old to go?" asked Diko.

"You won't be," said Manjam. "So get ready. And when the emergency is upon us, and the people can see that their children are hungry, that people are dying, then they will consent to what you're going to do. Because then they'll finally have the perspective."

"What perspective?" asked Kemal.

"First we try to preserve ourselves," said Manjam, "until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see that we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see that we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left? We finally have the perspective of trying to act for the good of humanity as a whole."

"Or despairing," said Tagiri.

"Yes, well, that's the other choice," said Manjam. "But I don't see that as an option for anyone in this room. And when we offer this chance to people who see their world collapsing around them, I think they'll choose to let you make the attempt."

"If they don't agree, then we won't do it," said Tagiri fiercely.

Diko said nothing, but she also knew that the decision was no longer Mother's to make. Why should the people of one generation have the right to veto the only chance to save the future of the human race? But it didn't matter. As Manjam said, the people would agree once they saw death and horror staring them in the face. After all, what had the old man and the woman in that village on Haiti Island prayed for, when they prayed? Not for deliverance, no. In their despair they asked for swift and merciful death. If nothing else, the Columbus project could certainly provide that.

Cristoforo sat back and let Father Perez and Father Antonio continue their analysis of the message from court. All he had really cared about was when Father Perez said to him, "Of course this is from the Queen. Do you think, after all these years, she would let you be sent a message without making sure she approved of the wording? The message speaks of the possibility of a reexamination at a 'more convenient time.' That sort of thing is not lightly said. Monarchs do not have time to be pestered by people about matters that are already closed. She invites you to pester her. Therefore the matter is not closed."

The matter is not closed. Almost he wished it were. Almost he wished that God had chosen someone else.

Then he shrugged off the thought and let his mind wander as the Franciscans discussed the possibilities. It didn't matter anymore what the arguments were. The only argument that really mattered to Cristoforo was that God and Christ and the dove of the Holy Ghost appeared to him on the beach and called him to sail west. All the rest -- it must be true, of course, or God wouldn't have told him to sail west. But it had nothing to do with Cristoforo. He was bent on sailing west for ... for God, yes. And why for God? Why had Christ become so important in his life? Other men -- even churchmen -- didn't deform their whole lives as he had. They pursued their private ambitions. They had careers, they planned their futures. And, oddly enough, it seemed that God was much kinder to those who cared little for him, or at least cared less than Cristoforo did.

Why do I care so much?

His eyes were looking across the table, toward the wall, but he was not seeing the crucifix there. Instead a memory washed through his mind. Of his mother huddling behind a table. Murmuring to him, as someone shouted in the distance. What was this memory? Why did it come to him now?

I had a mother; poor Diego has none. And no father either, in truth. He writes to me that he's tired of La Rabida. But what can I do? If I succeed in my mission, then his fortune is made, he will be son of a great man and therefore he will also be a great man. And if I fail, he had better be well educated, which no one can do better than Franciscans like these good priests. Nothing he would see or hear with me in Salamanca -- or wherever I go next in pursuit of kings or queens -- would prepare him for any life he is likely to lead.

Gradually, as Cristoforo's thoughts drifted toward sleep, he became aware that under the crucifix was a blackamoor girl, simply but brightly dressed, watching him intently. She was not really there, he knew, because he could still see the crucifix on the wall behind her. She must be very tall, for the crucifix was placed quite high. What should I be dreaming of blackamoor women, thought Cristoforo. Only I'm not dreaming, because I'm not asleep. I can still hear Father Perez and Father Antonio arguing about something. About Perez going to the Queen himself. Well, that's an idea. Why is that girl watching me?

Is this a vision? he wondered idly. Not as clear as it was on the beach. And this is certainly not God. Could a vision of a black woman come from Satan? Is that what I'm seeing? Satan's dam?

Not with a crucifix visible behind her head. This woman is like glass, black glass. I can see inside her. There's a crucifix inside her head. Does this mean that she dreams of crucifying Christ again? Or that the Son of Mary dwells always in her mind? I'm not good at visions and dreams. I need more clarity than this. So if you sent this, God, and if you mean something by it, I'm not understanding it well enough and you'll have to make things much clearer for me.

As if in answer, the blackamoor girl faded and Cristoforo became aware of someone else moving in the corner of the room. Someone who could not be seen through; someone solid and real. A young man, tall and handsome, but with questioning, uncertain eyes. He looked like Felipa. So much like Felipa. As if she dwelt in him, a continuous reproach to Cristoforo, a continuous plea. I did love you, Felipa. But I loved Christ more. That can't be a sin, can it?

Speak to me, Diego. Say my name. Demand what is yours by right: my attention, my respect for you. Don't stand there weakly waiting. Hoping for a crumb from my table. Don't you know that sons must be stronger than their fathers, or the world will die?

He said nothing. He said nothing.

Not all men have to be strong, thought Cristoforo. It is enough that some are simply good. That is enough for me to love my son, that he be good. I will be strong enough for us both. I have enough strength to hold you up as well. "Diego, my good son," said Cristoforo.

Now the boy could speak. "I heard voices."

"I didn't want to wake you," said Cristoforo.

"I thought it was another dream."

Father Perez whispered, "He dreams of you, often."

"I dream of you, my son," said Cristoforo. "Do you also dream of me?"

Diego nodded, his eyes never leaving his father's face.

"Do you think the Holy Spirit gives these dreams to us, so we don't forget the great love we have for each other?"

He nodded again. Then he walked to his father, uncertainly at first; but then, as Cristoforo rose to his feet and held out his arms, the boy's strides became more certain. And when they embraced, Cristoforo was startled at how tall the boy had become, how long his arms, how strong he was. He held him, held him long.

"They tell me you're good at drawing, Diego."

"Yes, I am," said Diego.

"Show me."

As they walked toward Diego's room, Cristoforo talked to him. "I'm drawing again myself. Quintanilla cut off my funds a couple of years ago, but I fooled him. I didn't go away. I draw maps for people. Have you ever drawn a map?"

"Uncle Bartolomeu came and taught me how. I've mapped the monastery. Right down to the mouseholes!"

They laughed together all the way up the stairs.

"We wait and wait," said Diko. "We're not getting any y ounger.

"Kemal is," said Hunahpu. "He works out constantly. To the neglect of his other studies."

"He has to be strong enough to swim under the ships and set the charges," said Diko.

"I think we should have a younger man."

Diko shook her head.

"What if he has a heart attack, did you think of that? We send him back in time to stop Columbus, and he dies in the water. What good is that? I'll be among the Zapotecs. Will you set the charges and keep Columbus there? Or will he sail back to Europe and make the whole effort a waste?"

"Just by going we'll accomplish something. We'll be infected with the carrier viruses, you remember."

"So the New World will be immune to smallpox and measles. All that means is that more of them will survive to enjoy many years of slavery."

"The Spanish weren't that far ahead, technologically speaking. And without the plagues to make them think the gods are against them, the people won't lose heart. Hunahpu, we can't help but make things better, at least to some degree. But Kemal won't fail."

"No," said Hunahpu. "He's like your mother. Never say die."

Diko laughed bitterly. "He never says it, but he plans it all the same."

"Plans what?"

"He hasn't mentioned it in years. I think I only heard him say it as a half-formed thought, and then he simply decided to do it."

"What?"

"Die," said Diko.

"What do you mean?"

"He was talking, back in -- oh, forever ago. About how the sinking of one ship is a misfortune. Two ships is a tragedy. Three ships is a punishment from God. What good will it do if Columbus thinks God is against him?"

"Well, that's a problem. But the ships have got to go."

"Listen, Hunahpu. He went on. He said, 'If only they knew that it was a Turk who blew up the boats. The infidel. The enemy of Christ.' Then he laughed. And then he stopped laughing."

"Why didn't you mention this before?"

"Because he chose not to mention it. But I thought you should understand why he isn't taking all the other learning assignments seriously. He doesn't expect to live to need them. All he needs is athletic ability, knowledge of explosives, and enough Spanish or Latin or whatever to tell Columbus's men that he is the one who blew up their ships, and that he did it in the name of Allah."

"And then he kills himself?"

"Are you joking?. Of course not. He lets the Christians kill him."

"It won't be gentle."

"But he'll be taken up to heaven. He died for Islam."

"Is he really a believer?" asked Hunahpu.

"Father thinks so. He says that the older you get, the more you believe in God, whatever face he wears."

The doctor came back into the room, smiling. "All very excellent, just like I tell you. Your heads are very fall of interesting things. No one in all of history has ever had so much knowledge in their heads as you and Kemal!"

"Knowledge and electromagnetic time bombs," said Hunahpu.

"Yes, well," said the doctor, "it is true that when the signaling device is set off, it could cause cancer after several decades of exposure. But it does not signal until a hundred years, so I think you are nothing but bones in the ground and cancer is not a big problem for you." He laughed.

"I think he's a ghoul," said Hunahpu.

"They all are," said Diko. "It's one of the classes in med school."

"Save the world, young man, young woman. Make a very good new world for my children."

For a horrible moment Diko thought that the doctor didn't understand that when they went, his children would all be snuffed out, like everyone else in this dead-end time. If only the Chinese made more of an effort to teach their people English so they could understand what the rest of the world was saying.

Seeing the consternation on their faces, the doctor laughed. "Do you think I'm so smart I can put phony bones in your skull, but so dumb I don't know? Don't you know Chinese were smart when all other people were stupid? When you go back, young man, young woman, then all the people of the new future, they are my children. And when they hear your phony bones talking to them, then they find the records, they find out about me and all the other people. So they remember us. They know we are their ancestors. This is very important. They know we are their ancestors, and they remember us." He bowed and left the room.

"My head hurts," said Diko. "Don't you think we could get more drugs?"

Santangel looked from the Queen to his books, trying to figure out what the monarchs wanted from him. "Can the kingdom afford this voyage? Three caravels, supplies, a crew? The war with Granada is over. Yes, the treasury can afford it."

"Easily?" asked King Ferdinand. So he really hoped to have it stopped for financial reasons. All Santangel had to do was say, Not easily, no, it will be a sacrifice right now, and then the King would say, Let's wait then, for a better time, and then the issue would never come up again.

Santangel did not so much as glance at the Queen, for a wise courtier never allowed it to seem that, before he could answer one of the monarchs, he had to look to the other one for some kind of signal. Yet he saw out of the corner of his eye that she gripped the arms of her throne. She cares about this, he thought. This matters to her. It does not matter to the King. It annoys him, but he has no passion about it either way.

"Your Majesty," said Santangel, "if you have any doubts about the ability of the treasury to pay for the voyage, I will be glad to underwrite it myself."

A hush fell over the court, and then a low murmur arose. At a stroke, Santangel had changed the whole mood. If there was one thing people were sure of, it was that Luis de Santangel knew how to make money. It was one of the reasons why King Ferdinand absolutely trusted him in financial matters. He did not have to cheat the treasury to be rich -- he was extravagantly wealthy when he came into office and had the knack for easily making more without having to become a parasite on the royal court. So if he was enthusiastic enough about the voyage to offer to underwrite it himself ...

The King smiled slightly. "And if I take you up on that generous offer?"

"It would be a great honor if your majesty allowed me to link my name to the voyage of Se¤or Colўn."

The King's smile faded. Santangel knew why. The King was very sensitive to how people perceived him. Bad enough that he had to spend his life in this delicate balance with a reigning and ruling queen, in order to assure a peaceful unification of Castile and Aragon when one of them died. He did not like imagining the gossip. King Ferdinand wouldn't pay for this great voyage himself. Only Luis de Santangel had the foresight to fund it.

"Your offer was generous, my friend," said the King. "But Aragon does not shirk its responsibility."

"Nor does Castile," said the Queen. Her hands had relaxed.

Did she know that I would see how she tensed before? Was it a deliberate signal?

"Assemble this new council of examiners," said the King. "If their verdict is positive, we will give this voyager his caravels."

And so it began again, or so it seemed. Santangel, watching from a distance, soon realized that this time the fix was in. Instead of years it took weeks. The new council included most of the pro Colўn faction from the previous group, and few of the conservative theologians who had so vehemently opposed him. It was no surprise when they made a perfunctory examination of Colўn's proposals and returned with a favorable verdict. It remained only for the Queen to call Colўn to court and tell him.

After all those years of waiting, after it had seemed a few months ago that it was all wasted, Santangel expected Colўn to be joyful when he heard the news. He stood in the court and instead of gratefully accepting the Queen's commission, he began to list demands. It was unbelievable. First, this commoner wanted a noble title befitting the commission that was being given him. And that was only the beginning.

"When I return from the Orient," he said, "I will have done what no other captain has ever done or dared to do. I must sail with the authority and rank of Admiral of the Ocean-Sea, exactly equal in station to the Grand Admiral of Castile. Along with this rank, it will be appropriate that I be granted the powers of viceroy and governor-general of all lands that I might discover in the name of Spain. Furthermore these titles and powers must be hereditary, to be passed down to my son and his sons after him forever. It will also be appropriate that I be granted a commission of ten percent of all commerce that passes between Spain and the new lands, and the same commission on all mineral wealth found there."

After all these years in which Colўn had shown not a sign of personal greed, did he now stand revealed before them as just another parasitic courtier?

The Queen was speechless for a moment. Then she curtly told Colўn that she would take his requests under counsel, and dismissed him.

When Santangel took word of Colўn's requests to the King, he was livid. "He dares to make demands? I thought he came to us as a supplicant. Does he expect kings to make contracts with commoners?"

"Actually, no, Your Majesty," said Santangel. "He expects you to make him a nobleman first, and then make a contract with him."

"And he doesn't budge on these points?"

"He is very courteous, but no, he simply does not bend, not a jot."

"Then send him away," said the King. "Isabella and I are preparing to enter Granada in a great procession, arriving there as liberators of Spain and champions of Christ. A Genovese mapmaker dares to demand the titles of viceroy and admiral? He does not even merit a se¤or."

Santangel was sure Colўn would back down when he heard the King's reply. Instead, he coolly announced his departure and began packing to leave.

It was chaos all evening around the King and Queen. Santangel began to see that Colўn was not such a fool to make these demands. For all these years he had to wait, because if he left Spain and went to England or France with his proposal, he would already have two failures behind him. Why would France or England be interested in him, when the two great seafaring nations of Europe had already rejected him? Now, though, it was widely known and witnessed by many that the monarchs of Spain had accepted his proposal and agreed to fund his voyage. The dispute was not over whether to give him ships, but rather what his reward would be. He could walk away today and be assured an eager welcome in Paris or London. Oh, were Ferdinand and Isabella unwilling to reward you for your great achievement? See how France rewards her great sailors, see how England honors those who carry the banners of the king to the Orient! At long last Colўn was negotiating from strength. He could walk away from the Spanish offer, because Spain had already given him the ftrst and most important thing he needed -- and it had been given him for free.

What a negotiator, thought Santangel. If only he were in trade. What I could accomplish with a man like that in my service! I would soon hold the mortgage on St. Peter's in Rome! On the Hagia Sophia! On the Church of the Holy Sepulchre!

And then he thought: If Colўn were in business, he would not be my agent, he would be my competitor. He shuddered.

The Queen vacillated. She truly wanted this voyage, and that made it very difficult for her. The King, however, was adamant. Why should he even have to discuss this foreigner's absurd demands?

Santangel watched how uselessly Father Diego de Deza tried to argue against the King's inclinations. Has this man no sense of how to deal with monarchs? Santangel was grateful when Father Talavera soon drew Deza out of the conversation. Santangel himself remained silent until at last the King asked for his opinion. "Of course these demands are just as absurd and impossible as they seem. The monarch who grants such titles to an untried foreigner is not the monarch who drove the Moors from Spain."

Almost everyone nodded wisely. They all assumed Santangel was playing the game of flattery, and like any careful courtier they were quick to agree with any praise of the King. Thus he was able to win the general approval for his most important stipulation: "untried foreigner."

"Of course, after the voyage, which Your Majesties have already agreed to authorize and fund, if he returns successful, then he will have brought such honor and wealth to the crowns of Spain that he would deserve all the rewards he has asked for, and more. He is so confident of success that he feels he already deserves them. But if he is that confident, surely he will accept without hesitation a stipulation on your part -- that he receive these rewards only upon his successful return."

The King smiled. "Santangel, you fox. I know you want this Colўn to sail. But you didn't get your wealth by paying people until after they delivered. Let them take the risk, is that it?"

Santangel bowed modestly.

The King turned to a clerk. "Write up a set of capitulations to Colўn's demands. Only make them all contingent upon his successful return from the Orient." He grinned wickedly at Santangel. "Too bad I'm a Christian king and refuse to gamble. I would make a bet with you -- that I will never have to grant these titles to Colўn."

"Your Majesty, only a fool would bet against the conqueror of Granada," said Santangel. Silently he added: Only an even bigger fool would bet against Colўn.

The capitulations were written in the small hours of the moming, after much last-minute consultation between the counselors of the King and the Queen. When at dawn a beadle was sent to deliver the message to Colўn, he returned flustered and upset. "He's gone!" he cried.

"Of course he's gone," said Father Perez. "He was told that his conditions were rejected. But he will only have left at dawn. And I suspect he will not be riding quickly."

"Then fetch him back," said the Queen. "Tell him to present himself at once before me, for I am ready to conclude this affair at last. No, don't say 'at last.' Now hurry."

The beadle rushed from the court.

While they waited for Colўn to be brought back, Santangel took Father Perez aside. "I didn't figure Colўn for a greedy man."

"He's not," said Father Perez. "A modest man, in fact. Ambitious, but not the way you think."

"In what way is he ambitious, then, if not the way I think?"

"He wanted the titles to be hereditary because he has spent his life pursuing this voyage," said Perez. "He has no other inheritance for his son -- no fortune, nothing. But with this voyage he will now be able to make his son, not just a gentleman, but a great lord. His wife died years ago, and he has many regrets. This is also his gift to her, and to her family, who are among the lesser nobility in Portugal."

"I know the family," said Santangel.

"You know the mother?"

"Is she still alive?"

"I think so," said Perez.

"Then I understand. I'm sure the old lady made him keenly aware that any claim to gentility he had came through her family. It will be sweet indeed for Colўn if he can turn it backward, so that any claim of true nobility for her family comes through their connection to him."

"So you see," said Perez.

"No, Father Juan Perez, I see nothing yet. Why did Colўn put this voyage at risk, solely to gain such lofty titles and absurd commissions?"

"Perhaps," said Father Perez, "because this voyage is not the end of his mission, but the beginning."

"The beginning! What can a man do, having discovered vast new lands for Christ and Queen? Having been made viceroy and admiral? Having been given wealth beyond imagining?"

"You, a Christian, you have to ask me that?" said Perez. Then he walked away.

Santangel thought himself a Christian, but he never was sure what Perez meant. He thought of all sorts of possibilities, but they all sounded ludicrous because no man could possibly dream of accomplishing such lofty purposes.

Then again, no man could possibly dream of getting monarchs to agree to a mad voyage into unknown western seas with no high probability of success. And yet Colўn had achieved it. So if he had dreams of reconquering the Roman Empire, or liberating the Holy Land, or driving the heathen Turk from Byzantium, or making a mechanical bird to fly to the moon, Santangel would not bet against him.

There was famine now, only in North America, but there was no surplus food anywhere else to relieve it. To send help required rationing in many other places. The tales of bloodshed and chaos in America persuaded the people of Europe and South America to accept rationing so that some relief could be sent. But it would not be enough to save everyone.

This hopeless inadequacy came to humanity as a terrible shock, not least because they had believed for two generations that at last the world was a good place to live. They had believed theirs was a time of rebirth, rebuilding, restoration. Now they learned that it was merely a rear guard action in a war whose conclusion was already decided before they were even born. Their work was in vain, because nothing could last. The Earth was too far gone.

It was in the midst of the agony of this realization that the ftrst news came out about the Columbus project. The discussion was grim. When the choice came, it was not unanimous, but it was overwhelming. What else was there, really? To watch their children die of hunger? To take up arms again, and fight for the last scraps of food-producing land? Could anyone happily choose a future of caves and ice and ignorance, when there might be another way, if not for them and their children, then for the human race as a whole?

Manjam sat with Kemal, who had come to wait out the voting with him. When the decision came, and Kemal knew that he would indeed be taking the voyage backward in time, he was at once relieved and frightened. It was one thing to plan one's own death when the prospect was still remote. Now, though, it would be a matter of days before he went back in time, and then no more than weeks before he would stand scornfully before Columbus and say, "Did you think Allah would let a Christian discover these new lands? I spit on your Christ? He had not the power to sustain you against the power of Allah! There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet!"

And then someday perhaps, a future searcher in Pastwatch would see him standing there, and would nod his head and say, That was the man who stopped Columbus. That was the man who gave his life to create this good and peaceful world we live in. That was the man who gave the human race a future. As much as Yewesweder before him, this man chose the course of humanity.

That would be a life worth living, thought Kemal. To earn a place in history that could be spoken of in the same breath with Yewesweder himself.

"You seem melancholy, my friend," said Manjam.

"Do I?" said Kemal. "Yes. Sad and happy, both at once."

"How do you think Tagiri will take this?"

Kemal shrugged with some impatience. "Who can figure out this woman? She works all her life for this, and then we have to practically tie her down to keep her from going out urging people to vote against the very thing she worked for!"

"I don't think it's hard to understand her, Kemal," said Manjam. "It's as you said -- it was the force of her will that caused the Columbus project to reach this point. She was responsible for it. That was too much of a burden for her to bear alone. Now, though, she can be satisfied inside herself that she opposed the destruction of our time, that the final decision was taken away from her, was forced on her by the will of the vast majority of humankind. Now her responsibility for the end of our time is not hers alone. It will be shared by many, borne on many shoulders. She can live with it now."

Kemal chuckled grimly. "She can live with it -- for how many days? And then she will wink out of existence along with all the rest of humanity in this world. What does it matter now?"

"It matters," said Manjam, "because she has those few days, and because those few days are all the future she has. She will spend it with clean hands and a peaceful heart."

"And is this not hypocrisy?" asked Kemal. "For she did cause it, just as much as ever."

"Hypocrisy? No. The hypocrite knows what he really is, and labors to conceal it from others in order to gain from their misplaced faith in him. Tagiri fears the moral ambiguity in something that she knows she must do. She cannot live with not doing it, and yet fears she cannot live with doing it, either. So conceals it from herself in order to proceed with what she must do."

"If there's a difference there, it's damned hard to see," said Kemal.

"That's right," said Manjam. "There's a difference. And it's damned hard to see."

From time to time, as he rode toward Palos, Cristoforo pressed his hand to his chest, to feel the stiff parchment tucked into his coat. For you, my Lord, my Savior. You gave this to me, and now I will use it for you. Thank you, thank you, for granting my prayer, for letting this also be a gift to my son, to my dead wife.

As he rode long into the day, Father Perez fell silent beside him, a memory came into his mind. His father, stepping forward eagerly toward a table where richly dressed men were seated. His father poured wine. When would that have happened? Father is a weaver. When did he pour wine? What am I remembering? And why does it come to me now of all times?

No answer came to his mind, and the horse plodded on, pounding dust up into the air with every step. Cristoforo thought of what lay ahead. Much work, outfitting a voyage. Would he even remember how, all these years since the last voyage he was really a part of? No matter. He would remember what he needed to remember, he would accomplish all he needed to accomplish. The worst obstacle was past. He had been lifted up by the arms of Christ, and Christ would carry him across the water and bring him home again. Nothing would stop him now.