The Shield of Time

More noises, less arrogant. Again Dolon went flat. Dignified in a white robe that must have complicated his muleback ride from town, Nicomachus paced through the entrance. A slave boy trotted at his side, upholding a parasol. A soldier followed, obviously a Syrian assigned as escort. He and the boy halted while the priest went into the building, after which they hunkered down and relaxed.

Everard was barely aware of them. He sat as if blinded by sun-blaze off the thing he had seen on Draganizu’s breast. It wasn’t big, a medallion hung on a chain, but he knew what was on the obverse, he’d have known that thing in a coal bin could he have touched it. Athene’s owl. His own two-way communicator.

The world steadied around him. Why not? he thought. Why surprised, even? They’re maintaining radio silence for the time being, but they’ll want to get in touch right away, should the need arise. Buleni’s bound to have one on his person somewhere. Patrol issue is superior to anything they likely brought with them, and wearing this is typical Exaltationist swank, and there’s no reason why a priest of Poseidon shouldn’t pay Athene honor. In fact, it’s a tactful gesture, considering how often those two are at loggerheads in the Odyssey. Ecumenicism— He strangled a laugh. What startled me when I saw?

The knowledge came forth. He understood he had seen what might be his death.

And yet-—and yet, by God!

He’d have a fighting man’s chance of pulling it off. His prospects of survival were poor in any event. This way, he stood to nail yonder bastards, and maybe, maybe—

I needn’t commit right this minute. Let me think, let me marshal my memories elsewhere than in this oven of a courtyard.

Everard rose. He was stiff and he hurt after his long immobility. He started slowly toward the gateway.

A trooper drew blade. “Halt!” he barked. “Where are you going?”

Everard stopped. “Please, to the privy behind the temenos,” he said.

“Now you just wait—”

Everard loomed at him. “You wouldn’t make me befoul the holy ground, would you? I hate to think what the god would do to us both.”

Dolon tottered over. “He’s a victim of robbers, the Earthshaker’s given him refuge, he’s Poseidon’s guest,” the caretaker explained.

The soldier swapped looks with his mates and sheathed his sword. “All right,” he agreed. Stepping to the entry, he called to the pair who watched the horses beyond that this fellow had leave to go. The women’s gazes trailed the large man wistfully. He had given them a kind word.

Everard sauntered among the trees, savoring their shade. Not too slow, he reminded himself. I don’t imagine Buleni and Draganizu will be inside any longer than it takes them to update each other. He didn’t need the shack as such, but it screened him while he did a few exercises to limber his muscles and took sword in hand beneath his cloak. On the way back, he did drag his feet. That would seem natural enough to anyone who noticed. With his height, he could look over the wall into the temenos.

He was rounding the far corner when the two principals reappeared. Everard quickened his steps. The Exaltationists reached the ground as the Patrolman came through the opening. “Out o’ the way, you,” the nearest guardsman told him.

“Yes, sir.” Everard made a production of clumsily salaaming and scuffing off at a slant that brought him closer to his prey. Those two walked on, side by side. Buleni noticed the loutish form ahead and scowled.

It was a small enclosure. When Everard sprang, he had just six feet to go.

Draganizu could touch a point on his medallion while he lifted it toward his mouth, and send an alarm. He must die first. Everard’s leap was a lunge. His steel went in at the throat and out the nape. Blood spouted, sunbrilliant red. The corpse crashed backward.

Shifting weight as he pounced, Everard landed on his heel, pivoted, and brought his left fist in an uppercut to Buleni’s chin. It was the only blow he could deliver quickly to a man in helmet and mail. The Exaltationist’s weapon was already half free. He lurched, caught his balance, and completed the draw. A superman. But a little shaken, a tad slow. Everard closed. His left hand chopped edge on at the sword wrist. The blade of his right hand cracked into Buleni’s larynx. He felt cartilage break. Buleni dropped on all fours and retched blood.

Dolon wailed. The soldiers dashed forward, armament aflash. Everard cast himself down beside Draganizu’s gaping face. He snatched the wet medallion, thumbed it, and rasped in Temporal, “Unattached Everard. Come immediately. Combat.”

That was what he had time for. The first Syrian was at him. He rolled over. Supine, he gave a two-footed kick. The man reeled from him. More arrived. They blotted out the sky.

One crumpled onto Everard. “O-oof-f-f!” A metal-clad body flopping bonelessly onto your stomach takes the wind out of you.

When Everard got it back again and sat up, the troopers lay around him where they had collapsed, an ungainly heap. Their breathing snored and wheezed. He knew those beyond the wall had likewise received stun beams and would be comatose for about a quarter hour. Otherwise they were unharmed. A timecycle had landed nearby. A Chinese-looking man and a black woman, hard and supple in skin-tight coveralls, helped him rise. Four more vehicles poised low above the temple; he spied energy projectors in taut hands. “Overkill,” he croaked.

“What, sir?” asked the man.

“Never mind. Let’s look this situation over, fast.” Everard would not allow himself to think, yet, how nearly dead he was. He would not permit himself sentiment. That way lay the shakes, which he couldn’t afford. Patrol training summoned the full reserves of mind and body. Later, at leisure, he would pay nature’s debt.

When it got his call, the Patrol had mobilized a force, safely distant from here, and dispatched it to the instant of his need. Now he must use the resource given him with the same precision. However, he could spare a few minutes to plan his next move.

Buleni was still alive, barely. Everard pointed. “Bring him and the killed Exaltationist to operation headquarters,” he ordered through an unsoiled transceiver given him. “They’ll know there what they want to do with ’em.” He walked around. Poor old Dolon sprawled in the dust at his feet. “Carry this man into the temple, out of the sun. Give him a medic check and whatever care he needs that you can administer on the spot. I suspect he’d benefit from a stimulant injection. The rest can lie where they are till they rouse.”

The women had not been stunned, in the corner where they were. They cowered back, made alive again by terror, the grandmother embracing the mother, the mother clutching the child. Everard went over and stood above them. He knew he was a fearsome sight, bloodstained, sweat-dripping, begrimed, but he could fashion a smile.

“Listen,” he said, as gently as his hoarsened voice was able, “listen well. You have seen the wrath of Poseidon. But it was not against you. I repeat, the Earthshaker is not angry at you. Men here have offended him. They shall be borne to Hades. You are innocent. The god blesses you. In token of that, I am to give you this.” He had been unshipping his purse. He dropped it in front of them. “It is yours. Poseidon cast a slumber on these soldiers, lest they behold what they should not, but he will do them no further harm after they awaken, if they in their turn will see to the well-being of you, his wards. Tell them that. Do you understand me?”

The baby cried, the mother sobbed. The granny met Everard’s eyes and said, with a steadiness that must be due in part to shock, “I who am old believe I dare understand you and remember.”

“Good.” He left them and resumed his Patrol business. He had done the best for them that he possibly could—bending rules well out of shape, but after all, he was an Unattached agent.

Anxiety touched his rescuers. “Sir,” ventured the young woman, “excuse me for asking, but this thing we’ve done—”

She must be pretty new in the field, but she had handled her job smartly. He decided she and her fellows were worth a minute’s field education. “Don’t worry. We’ve not upset history. What’s your birth milieu?”

“Jamaica, sir, 1950.”

“Okay, to put it in terms of your era, imagine you see a brawl start. Suddenly several helicopters come down. They drop tear gas bombs that disable the crowd without seriously hurting anybody. Men climb out wearing masks. They lug two of the brawlers into a chopper. One man tells the witnesses that these are dangerous Communists and this squadron is from the CIA, seizing them at the request of the local government. The squadron flits away. Let’s suppose this all happens in an isolated valley, the phone lines are cut, there’s no immediate linkage with anywhere else.

“Well, locally it’d be a ninety days’ wonder. By the time the story got to the rest of the world, though, it’d be stale and diluted, the news media would give it little or no play, most people who heard about it at all would guess it was a wild exaggeration and soon forget it. Even you folks who were on hand would stop talking much about it, and it’d fade in your recollections. You weren’t really affected, and you have your lives to get on with. Besides, there’s nothing inherently impossible. You know helicopters, tear gas, and the CIA exist. This was a weird sort of incident, but still, just an incident. You’d tell your children, but probably they wouldn’t tell theirs.

“That’s what a brief intervention by the gods is like, in the minds of people here-now. Of course, we only stage one when we absolutely must, and the sooner we scramble, the better.”

Through his communicator Everard included the rest in his instructions. The slain and the live Exaltationist had been slung onto timecycles that blinked from the scene. An extra Patrolman had gone with them, leaving saddle and weapons for the Unattached. Everard’s companion was a tough, stocky man from Europe of his own period, Imre Ruszek, who sat behind him while he piloted. He cast the women a last glance as he rose on antigrav, and saw bewilderment struggling with hope.

The three hoppers lifted high enough to be no more than glints to any eyes that might chance to catch them, and glided toward Bactra. Below them the land rolled vast from the mountains in the south, fields green and brown, spotted with trees and tiny buildings, the river mercury-bright, the city and the invader camp toylike. No hint of hatred and misery reached these clean cold winds, save what the riders bore with them.

“Now hear this,” Everard intoned. “There are two bandits left, and if we go about it right, I think we may well take them. The operative phrase is ‘go about it right.’ We only get one shot. No fancy dodging around in time, trying to fix things, if this fails. It’s all very well to show the locals a miracle, but we will not play games with causality and risk setting off a temporal vortex, even if the risk does seem small. Is that clear? You’ve had the doctrine drilled into you, I know, but Ruszek and I are going down, and if we come to grief, somebody could be tempted to rashness. Don’t be.”

He described Raor’s house and its layout. Alarms were set to yell the moment a vehicle made a space-time jump, departing or arriving, anywhere in a radius of many miles. She and Sauvo would promptly dash for their own machine, or machines, and be off for parts unknown. To hell with the other two. Loyalty was a matter of expediency among those ultimate egoists.

That was the case if yonder alarms had been alert when Everard called and help for him appeared. The hoppers’ computers knew to the microsecond when that was. He designated an instant sixty seconds earlier, when he was assaulting Draganizu and Buleni; they’d not been in a position to benefit from any warnings that were flashed them a minute later. “Call it Time Zero.”

At hover, he used magnifying opticals and electronic range finders to determine within a few feet the spot at which he wanted to come into the house. He set the controls for that and Time Zero. The rest of the vehicles would return to then also, but remain aloft till it became clear what had happened on the ground.

“Go!” His finger stabbed the main control point.

He, his partner, his timecycle were in a corridor. A window on their right stood open to the light and fragrance of the garden court. The door on their left was massive, shut, and locked. They had cut off access to the enemy’s transport.

Sauvo sped around the corner of the hall, deer-swift. His hand gripped an energy pistol. Ruszek shot first. A thin blue flame streaked past Everard. It pierced Sauvo’s chest. The tunic around it scorched. For that eyeblink of time, the fury on his face became the pathetic surprise of a child suddenly struck. He fell. Scant blood ran from him, most was cooked, but otherwise he died in the usual human uncleanliness.

“A stunner might have been too slow,” Ruszek said.

Everard nodded. “Okay,” he answered. “Sit tight. I’ll hunt for the last of ’em.” Into his communicator: “Third down, one to go.” The squad should catch his meaning. “We hold the depot. Watch the doors. If a woman comes out, nab her.” As if from far away he heard terrified sobbing, a female slave, and wished that none of those innocents would suffer.

“That will not be necessary,” sang coldly through the noise. “I will be no game for your curs to chase.”

Raor walked toward them. A thin gown clung to every flowing stride. The ebon hair fell loose around beauty and scorn. Everard thought of Artemis the Huntress. His heart stumbled.

She halted a short way off. He dismounted and approached her. My God, he thought, filthy and stinking, I feel like a naughty schoolboy called up by the teacher. He straightened and stopped. His pulse throbbed, but he could meet the sea-green eyes.

She continued in Greek: “This is remarkable. I do believe you are that same agent my clone mate spoke of, who almost captured him in Colombia.”

“And almost in Perú, and did it in Phoenicia,” he replied, not as a boast but because it seemed she had the imperial right to know.

“You are no ordinary animal, then.” Venom slid into the softness. “Nevertheless, an animal. The apes have triumphed. The universe has lost any meaning it ever held.”

“What … would you … have done with it?”

The glorious head lifted. Pride rang. “We would have made it what we chose, and unmade and remade it, and stormed the stars as we warred for possession, with an entire reality the funeral pyre of each who fell and entire histories the funeral games, until the last god reigned alone.”

Desire blew out of him on a winter wind. Suddenly he wanted to be home, among homely things and old friends. “Secure her, Ruszek,” he ordered. Through the transceiver: “Come join us and let’s get this business finished.”

1902 A.D.

Shalten’s flat in Paris was large and luxurious, but on the Left Bank overlooking the Boulevard St. Germain. Had he chosen that street purposely? He did have a devious sense of humor. To Everard he remarked that he enjoyed the Bohemian life around him and his neighbors were used to eccentrics, paying him no special notice.

It was a warm fall afternoon. Windows admitted air that smelled slightly of smoke, richly of horse droppings. An occasional automobile stuttered among the wagons and carriages. Between soot-gray walls, under trees where green had begun turning yellow and brown, people thronged the sidewalks. Cafés, boutiques, boulangeries, patisseries did lively trade. The noise that rolled in was full of cheer. Everard tried not to remember that in a dozen years this world would crash to ruin.

The clutter around him, furniture, hangings, pictures, books, busts, bric-à-brac, declared a solidity that had endured and accumulated since the Congress of Vienna. But he recognized a few of the objects from California, 1987. That was quite another world, remote as a dream—a nightmare?

He leaned back in his armchair. Leather creaked, horsehair rustled. He puffed on his pipe. “We had a little trouble finding Chandrakumar,” he finished, “not knowing where in the jail he was. Prisoners in several cells got an astonishing vision. But we did locate him and take him out. He hadn’t been harmed. I admit that added to the mess we’d already made, apparitions and vanishings and everything else. It might’ve caused a real sensation in peacetime. People then had too much else on their minds, though, and in crises, you always get a lot of hysterical stories flying about. They’re soon forgotten. The field report I’ve seen says history is intact. But you’ve surely seen it too.”

History. The stream of events, great and small, running from cavemen to the Danellians. But what about the eddies, the bubbles, the insignificant little individuals and happenings that are also soon forgotten, whose being or nonbeing makes no difference to the course of the stream? I’d like to go back and find out what became of my trekmates, Hipponicus, those two women and the baby. … No. I’ve only so much lifespan left me, whatever the length of it turns out to be, and it’ll hold heartbreak enough. Maybe they survived okay.

Seated opposite, Shalten nodded above his churchwarden. “Naturally,” he said. “Not that I ever feared. You might or might not have laid the Exaltationists by the heels—congratulations on your success—but you were certain to act in an informed and responsible manner. Besides, that is a particularly stable section of space-time.”

“Huh?”

“Hellenistic Syria was important, but Bactria lay on the fringe of that civilization. Its influence was always marginal, at most. After Antiochus and Euthydemus made peace—”

Yeah, a nice reconciliation, the prince marrying the princess, everything lovey-dovey again, and who cares about a lot of killing, maiming, raping, looting, burning, famine, pestilence, impoverishment, enslavement, hopes crushed and lives broken? All in the day’s work, if you’re a government

“—Antiochus, as you know, proceeded to India, but achieved nothing. His real interests lay in the West. When Demetrius succeeded to the Bactrian throne, he in his turn invaded India, but a fresh usurper rose behind his back and took Bactria itself from him. Civil strife followed.” The big bald head shook. “I must admit that the genius of the Greeks never extended to statecraft.”

“True,” murmured Everard. “In, uh, 1981, I think it is, they’ll take for their prime minister a professor from Berkeley.”

Shalten blinked, shrugged the interruption off, and proceeded: “By 135 B.C., Bactria had fallen to the nomads. They were not inhumane, but under them civilization withered. The Hellenic dynasty in western India had meanwhile been absorbed culturally by its subjects, and it did not long outlive its northern cousin. It had had no lasting effect worth mention, and the memory of it faded fast.”

“I know,” said Everard, annoyed.

“I did not mean to patronize you,” Shalten replied blandly, “only to make clear my point. Greek Bactria was as safe a piece of history as we could find to lure the Exaltationists to. It had never much mattered to the rest of the world, and an extraordinary concatenation of fantastically implausible occurrences, not just there but around the entire Hellenistic sphere, would have been required to change this. Therefore, by the law of action and reaction, its own mesh of world lines is especially stable, especially hard to distort. Of course, we were at pains to give the Exaltationists the opposite impression.”

Everard sank back in his chair. “I’ll … be … damned.” Probably, gibed his mind.

Shalten’s parched little smile twitched. “And now,” he said, “we must terminate the deception. As I recall, the expression in your natal period is ‘tie up the loose ends.’ In your position among us, you need to know the whole truth. For you to learn it later in this century could pose a hazard. Causational loops can be very subtle. Your experiences and accomplishments in Bactria must continue to have happened. Therefore you must be informed well pastward of our preparations for them. I thought you would enjoy a visit to my Belle Époque.”

“Uh, you mean, uh, that letter the Russian soldier found in Afghanistan, that became the bait in our trap—it was a fake?”

“Exactly. Did the thought never occur to you?”

“But—you had a million years or more to find some suitable incident—”

“Better to create one to specifications. Eh? Well, it has served its purpose. Prudence dictates that it be removed, annulled. There shall never have been a letter to find.”

Everard sat straight. The stem of his pipe broke in his fist. He ignored the coals that fell onto the lush carpet. “Wait a minute!” he cried. “You’ve been tinkering with reality yourself?”

“Under authorization,” he heard; and his jaws locked on silence.

1985 A.D.

Here, where the Bear stars wheeled too low, night struck cold into blood and bone. By day, mountains closed off every horizon with stone, snow, glaciers, clouds. A man’s mouth dried as he gasped his way over the ridges, rocks rattling from beneath his boots, for he could never draw one honest breath of air. And then there was fear of the rifle bullet or the knife after, dark that would spill his bit of life out on this empty land. Yuri Alexeievitch Garshin stumbled lost and alone.

PART THREE

BEFORE THE GODS THAT MADE THE GODS

31,275,389 B.C.

“Oh!” Wanda Tamberly cried. “Oh, look!”

Her horse snorted and shied. Hands and knees worked for her, quieting it, while she herself leaned forward, sight grabbing what it could as the marvel passed by. Alarmed at the approach of the great beasts, a dozen animals had bolted from the underbrush on her left. Brightness flashed over mottled coats, bodies of wolfhound size, trifurcate hoofs, heads eerily equine. Then they were across the trail and lost again in wilderness. Tu Sequeira laughed. “Ancestors?” He touched his mount and hers, as though to demonstrate he knew that man’s forebears were snuffling and scuttling about in African jungles. On their way back, his fingers stroked across her thigh.

She hardly noticed. Happiness bubbled and danced. Earth of the Oligocene epoch was a paleontologist’s paradise. “Mesohippus?” she wondered aloud. “I think not, not quite. Nor miohippus; too early for that, isn’t it? But they know so little, really. Even with time machines, they’ve learned so little. An intermediate species? If only I’d brought a camera!”

“A what?” he asked. Unthinkingly, she had thrown the English word into the Temporal that was, thus far, their sole common language.

“An optical recording device.” The act of explaining drew off most of her excitement. After all, today she had spied any number of creatures. Patrol folk could not avoid an impact on the surroundings of their Academy, a thinning out of nature. If nothing else, lionlike nimravus and saber-toothed eusmilus had long since been shot by holiday makers whom they attacked; and that affected the entire local ecology. However, when cadets had more than a single day free, they generally flitted to some distant region, a mountain to climb, a scenic path to hike, an idyllic island. On the whole, humankind touched very lightly the ages before humankind evolved. To Tamberly this region seemed still almost virginal, set against the Sierra or the Yellowstone of her birthtime.

“You’ll have to learn about cameras,” she said, “and a lot of other crude gadgets. Whew! Suddenly I get a notion of just how much you have got to learn.”

“We all do,” he replied. “I’d be hard put to master everything you must.”

Modesty wasn’t his usual style. The thought crossed her mind that maybe he was realizing that, although she enjoyed his flamboyancy, it wasn’t the sort of thing that could hold her for long. Or—an inward shrug—maybe he’d decided to start practicing a more subdued manner. He’d need that capability in the career ahead of him.

Whichever, he spoke truth. The Patrol took education techniques from the far future of both their eras. In a couple of hours you could gain fluency in any language, directly imprinted in your memory; and that was a minor example. Nevertheless the intensity of training and education pushed the edge of human endurance. Any respite came, and went, like sunshine striking into a hurricane’s eye. She had joined Sequeira on this excursion because she’d slightly rather do that than sleep.

“Well, but I’ll be dealing with critters,” she demurred. The Americanism dropped into her Temporal before she noticed. “People are what’s complicated, and they’ll be your problem.”

Born on Mars in the Solar Commonwealth, after graduation he would be among those who studied and monitored the earliest stages of spacefaring. To work one’s way into such places as Peenemünde, White Sands, and Tyuratam meant not only personal risk. It meant any sacrifice necessary to preserve the course of events heavy with consequences for history.

Sequeira’s lips crinkled upward. “Speaking of people and complications, we don’t have to report for class till 0800 tomorrow.”

She felt the blood rise and beat in her face. What cadets did on their own scant time was their own business, provided it didn’t make them unfit. Temptation, oh, my. A fling before the next long grind—But do I want any such involvement? “At the moment the mess hall calls,” she said fast. They ate well there, often gloriously. The staff had the cuisines of the ages at their command.

He laughed again. “Far be it from me to stand in your way. I could get a Wanda-sized hole through me, couldn’t I? Afterward—Let’s go!” The trail was barely wide enough for them to sit side by side, knees touching. He put heels to his horse and set off at a brisk canter. Following, she thought that his litheness should not be clad in a plain issue coverall; a scarlet cloak ought to ripple from those shoulders. Hey, gal, ease off.

They left the woods and descended steeply out of the hills. An eastward view opened to her. For a moment she lost everything but the awe and the wonder of being here, now, she herself, thirty million years before she was born.

Light streamed golden across a prairie reaching beyond sight. Wildflower-starred, grass rippled and, she knew, rustled under the wind. In places, a grove or a thicket interrupted immensity, and in the distance trees lined a great brown river. She knew also how its water and its mud surged with life, larvae, insects, fish, frogs, snakes, waterfowl, herds of rooting merycoidodon like giant hogs or small slender hippopotami. Wings filled heaven.

The Academy stood closer, on an elevation which the builders had reinforced to keep it safe above the occasional floods. Through millennium after millennium, gardens, lawns, bowers, low-lying structures of subtle curves and shifty colors, remained inviolate. When the last graduate departed, the builders took it down, eliminating every trace of its existence. But that would not happen for another fifty thousand years.

Riding, Tamberly drank air that was mild, rich with odors of growth, soil, sulfury-sweet herbs. And yet the sun had barely passed through the vernal equinox. What was to be South Dakota lay about her like a dream of what was to be California. Not for geological epochs would the Ice come down from the north.

The trail broadened to a beaten path. A fork in it led around campus to stables at the rear. Sequeira and Tamberly stalled and cared for their horses themselves. Not all Patrol work, probably not most, required that kind of skills, but the Academy did—in case of need and, she suspected, to instill workmanship and responsibility. Banter flew back and forth across the chores. He is a fetching rascal, she thought.

They emerged hand in hand. Sunset rays fell hazily over the man who waited outside and cast his shadow gigantic behind him. “Good evening,” he greeted. The voice was unemphatic, his garb resembled theirs, but somehow she got a sense of utter control. “Cadet Tamberly?” It was not actually a question. “My name is Guion. I would like a word with you.”

Sequeira stiffened at her side. Her pulse jumped. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing to cause you worry.” Guion smiled. She couldn’t tell how deep it went. Nor could she identify his race. The finely formed countenance hinted at—aristocracy?—but from what century beyond hers? “In fact, may I have the honor of your company at dinner? If you will pardon us, Cadet Sequeira.”

How did he know I’d be here? Plenty of possible ways, of course, if you’re high-ranking. Why, though? “Oh, gosh,” she blurted, “I’m all dusty and sweaty and, and everything.”

“You will have cleaned and changed in any case,” Guion said dryly. “Would an hour hence suit you? Number 207, Faculty Lodge. Quite informal. Thank you. I look forward.” He gave her a courtesy salute. Dazed, she returned it. He walked off toward officer country. His gait flowed.

“What’s happening?” Sequeira whispered.

“I, I haven’t the faintest idea. But I’d better go. Sorry, Tu. Another time.” Maybe. She hastened from him. Soon she forgot about him.

Preparing herself helped clear away bewilderment. A cadet had a private room, plus a bath cubicle as exotically, efficiently equipped as Manse Everard had promised. Like most of her classmates, she’d brought along a few clothes from home. The mingling of costumes added color to social occasions. Not that those weren’t amply romantic, give the diversity of origins. (At that, it was limited. She had had explained to her that people from really unlike civilizations would find one another too distracting—incomprehensible or downright repulsive. Most of her fellow recruits came from the years approximately between 1850 and 2000. Some, like Sequeira, originated farther uptime; their cultures were compatible with hers and exposure to her sort was a valuable part of their particular training.) After a while she chose a plain black dress, silver-and-turquoise Navaho pendant, low shoes, the least touch of makeup.

Neutral, she hoped, neither brash nor standoffish. Whatever Guion’s agenda, she didn’t imagine seduction was on it. Nor on mine. God, no! She must somehow be of some interest to him. At the same time, she was the merest rookie and he was … a big wheel. Unattached, almost certainly. Or more than that? She had been taught very little—hardly anything, she realized now that she examined it—about the upper hierarchy of the Patrol.

Maybe none existed. Maybe by Guion’s era humankind had outgrown the necessity. Maybe tonight she’d learn a snippet about that. Eagerness tingled anxiety out of her.

Crossing the campus, where luminous paths shone softly beneath dusk, she hailed those of her fellows whom she met less warmly than they did her. Close friendships were developing, but her mind had gone elsewhere. Seeing how she was clad and where she was bound, they didn’t try to detain her. Naturally, speculation would be thick in the dorms, and tomorrow she must be prepared with responses, if only “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Confidential. Excuse me, I’ve got a class.”

Briefly, she wondered whether every lot of new recruits spent its year in the same collegiate format as hers. Probably not. Societies, ways of living and thinking and feeling, must vary too much through a million years of history. Indeed, a large part of what she did would look crazy to her professors at Stanford, utterly boggle them. She couldn’t repress a giggle.

She had never been inside Faculty Lodge or seen any pictures from it, and a side entrance brought her into a small, bare chamber from which a gravity shaft bore her straight upward. The democratic atmosphere of the Academy was merely that, an atmosphere, useful for purposes of getting on with the job. She stepped into a corridor where the floor, uncarpeted, lay soft and warm underfoot, like live flesh, and light poured iridescent from all around. Door 207 vanished at her approach and reappeared when she had passed through. The rooms beyond were graciously furnished, in a style more nearly familiar—to put visitors such as she at their ease, she guessed. There was no window, but ceilings revealed the sky, the light of the stars enhanced so that she could see them blink forth, unblurred by the clean air, until the night was full of their majesty.

Guion welcomed her with a gentlemanly handshake and in the same wise conducted her to a seat. Frames on the walls enclosed moving, three-dimensional scenes, cliffs above surf and a mountain silhouetted against dawn. She didn’t know whether they were recorded or live. She didn’t recognize the background music either, but it could be Japanese, and again she suspected it had been carefully chosen for her.

“May I offer you an apéritif?” Guion invited. He used fluent, barely accented English.

“Well, a small dry sherry, if you please, sir,” she ventured in the same language.

He chuckled and sat down across from her. “Yes, you shall keep a clear head for tomorrow morning. The dinner I have planned won’t upset your Spartan routine too badly. How do you like our organization thus far?”

She spent several seconds arranging her words. “Very much, sir. Tough but fascinating. You knew I would.”

He nodded. “The preliminary tests are reliable.”

“And then you have reports on how I did—how I will do—No, let me try saying it in Temporal.”

His gaze was steady upon her. “Don’t. You should know better than that, Cadet Tamberly.”

A machine glided in bearing her drink and something in a snifter glass for him. It gave her the chance to recover. “I’m sorry if I misspoke myself. The time travel paradoxes—” Mustering courage: “But honestly, sir, I can’t believe you haven’t looked.”

He nodded. “Yes. That can be done with reasonable assurance and safety, in this protected environment. To no one’s surprise, you will perform creditably.”

“Which doesn’t let me off the hook earlier, does it?”

“Of course not. You must do the work, gain the abilities. Some individuals, hearing that they will succeed, would be tempted to slack off on the grueling effort; but you have more sense.”

“I know. Success isn’t really guaranteed. I could change that bit of history by goofing; and I sure don’t want to.” Despite his low-key manner, tension was again gathering in her. She sipped fragrant pungency and tried to make muscles loosen, the way she was learning in phy ed. “Sir, why am I here? I didn’t think I was anybody special.”

“Every agent of the Time Patrol is,” he answered.

“Well, uh, but me—I’m just going to be a field scientist. In the prehistoric, and not even anthropology. About as far from any causal nexus as you can get, I should think. What have I got that, uh, that interests you?”

“The circumstances that brought you to us are unusual.”

“Isn’t everything unusual?” she exclaimed. “How likely was it ever that I, this exact I with this exact combination of genes, would get born? My sister isn’t a lot like me.”

“Sensibly put.” Guion leaned back and partook of his own drink. “Probability is relative. Granted, the events that caught you up were melodramatic; but in a way melodrama is the norm of reality. What could be more sensational than the fiery creation of the universe, of the galaxies and stars? What could have appeared amidst them more strange than life? Dire need, mortal conflict, desperation made it evolve. We survive by waging incessant warfare against invading microscopic hosts and betrayals within. Set beside this, clashes between humans seem ridiculously incidental. Yet they determine our fate.”

His quiet tone and donnish diction calmed her more than did a little alcohol or relaxation technique. “Well, sir, what can I tell you?” she asked. “I’ll do my best.”

He sighed. “If I had definite questions, this session would doubtless not be necessary.” Another smile. “Which would be my loss, true. I am not so alien to you that I don’t expect to find pleasure in your company during these next few hours.” On a level below words, she understood that his courtliness had no ulterior motive—except to soothe her till she could reveal the nuances he desired—and might be sincere.

“I search for clues to a certain matter,” he went on. “You are analogous to a witness, an innocent bystander, who may or may not have noticed something at an accident or a crime, something helpful to the officer investigating the case. That is why I use your mother tongue. In any other, including Temporal, your expressiveness would be too limited. Your very body language would be poorly coordinated with what you are saying.”

A crime? She shivered a bit. “Whatever I can do, sir.”

“That will mainly be to talk freely, for the most part about yourself. People seldom object to doing that, eh?” He turned grave. “I repeat, you have done nothing wrong, and quite possibly have nothing to do with the business. But you understand I must find out.”

“How?” she breathed. “What is this … business?”

“I cannot say.” She wondered if that meant he was forbidden to. “But think of the countless world lines intermeshed throughout the continuum as a spiderweb. A touch on one strand trembles through many. A disruption somewhere changes the configuration of the whole. You have learned that causality does not work exclusively from past to future; it can double back on itself, can even annul itself. There are occasions when we know only that the web is troubled, not where or when the source of the disturbance lies; for that source perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality. We can only try to trace it back up the threads—” He broke off. “Enough. I do not mean to frighten you.”

“I don’t scare easy, sir.” This could do it, though.

“Consider my mission precautionary,” he urged. “You, like Agent Everard, have been intimately”—sketched a grin—“if unwillingly associated with the Exaltationists, a major disruptive force.”

“But they’ve all been, will be caught or killed,” she protested. “Won’t they?”

“Yes. However, they could be related to something larger.” He raised a palm. “Not a larger organization or conspiracy, no. We have no reason to suspect that. Butchaos itself has a certain basic coherence. Things have a way of recurring. People do.

“Therefore it is wise to study those who have been part of great events. They may again, whether or not our extant records know anything of it.”

“But I was just, just borne along,” she stammered. “Manse—Agent Everard, he was the one who counted.”

“I want to make sure of that,” Guion said.

He let her sit a span in silence, while the stars strengthened overhead and shaped constellations unknown to Galileo. When he spoke anew, she had come to terms with the situation.

She wasn’t important, she decided. Impossible. This wasn’t humility—she expected to do a topflight job in her coming line of work—but common sense. Enigmatic though he might be, this man was simply behaving like any conscientious detective, checking out every conceivable lead, aware that most led nowhere.

And, yes, he might well enjoy a meal and conversation with a young woman who wasn’t bad-looking. Then why shouldn’t she enjoy too? What might she learn about him and the world from which he hailed?

As it turned out, nothing.

Guion was affable. She could almost call him charming, in his detached scholastic fashion. He made no display of his authority, but left her in no doubt of it, much like her father during her childhood. (Oh, Dad, who’ll never know!) Instead, he drew her out about herself, her life, Everard, asking for no confidences but nonetheless so deftly that only later did she realize she had told him more than she meant to. At first, after bidding him adieu, she knew simply that she had had an interesting dinner date. He didn’t imply they would meet anymore.

Walking back to her room on paths now deserted, among the night scents of ancient Earth, she found herself, oddly, thinking less about him, not to mention Sequeira, than about big, soft-spoken, and—she believed—rather lonely Manse Everard.

PART FOUR

BERINGIA

13,212 B.C.

I

She stopped when she reached her shelter and stood a moment, looking around her and back the way she had come. Why? she wondered. As though this is the last time ever. With an unawaited pang: Well, maybe it is, almost Southwesterly the sun hung low above the sea, but would not sink for hours yet, and then only briefly. Its rays washed chill gold over cumulus clouds towering in the east and set the waters agleam, half a mile away. Thence land rose steeply toward northern ridges. It was wan with summer’s short grass, broken here and there by intense greens and browns of peat moss. Leaves shivered pale on stands of stunted aspen. Elsewhere grew thick patches of scrub willow, seldom more than ankle-high. Sedges rippled and rustled along a nearby brook. It tinkled down to a river not very wide either, sunken from her sight in a ravine. She could see the tops of dwarf alder clustered on the sides. Smoke tatters blew from the dens of Aryuk and his family.

A wind had risen off the sea. It made her face tingle. The boisterous damp quenched some of the weariness in her but roused hunger; she had tramped quite a ways today. Cries cut through, from birds aloft in their hundreds, gulls, ducks, geese, cranes, swans, plover, snipe, curlews, an eagle high at hover. After two years she still found marvel in the lavishness of life, at the very gates of the Ice. Not before leaving her home world had she really known how impoverished it was.

“Sorry, friends,” she murmured. “My teapot and crackerbox are calling me.” After which I’d better do up my report. Dinner can wait. She grimaced. Reporting won’t be the kind of fun it used to be.

She stiffened. Naw, why’re you so spooky about what’s happened? she demanded. A big event, sure, but not necessarily a big bad one. Premonitions? Scat! Listen, gal, it’s natural to talk to yourself now and then, and okay to talk to the fauna just a bit, but when your bugaboos start talking to you, quite likely you have been in the field long enough.

Unsealing the dome, she entered and closed it again. The interior was dim until she activated a transparency. (Nobody around to peep in it at her, not that the dear We ever would without her leave.) Warmth let her slip off her parka, sit down to remove boots and stockings, wiggle her toes.

There wasn’t much else she could move freely, as cramped as the place was. Her timecycle occupied a large part of the floor, under a shelf on which she kept mattress pad and sleeping bag. The single chair stood at the single table, where a computer and auxiliary apparatus claimed half the top. Alongside was a unit for cooking, washing, et cetera. Miscellaneous boxes and cabinets completed the circle. Two held clothes and other personal possessions; the rest were full of stuff related to her mission. Policy required the dome be as small, as unobtrusive in the land and lives of the natives, as possible. Outdoors was plenty of space, elbows few and far between.

Having set water to boil, she undid her gun belt and put the pistols, stunner and killer, away beside the long weapons. For the first time, they felt ugly in her hands. She had seldom killed, just for meat and when she reluctantly deemed it necessary to take a specimen—and, once, a snow lion that Ulungu’s family at Bubbling Springs told her had turned man-eater. Humans? Nonsense! Judas priest, but you’ve gotten edgy all of a sudden.

Recognizing the exclamation in her mind, she smiled. She’d picked it up from Manse Everard. He tried to keep his language polite in the presence of women, as he’d been taught. She’d noticed that he was more comfortable if she curbed hers likewise, and obliged him except when she forgot.

Some music ought to soothe. She touched the computer. “Mozart,” she said. “Uh, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” The strains lilted forth. Only then did she notice, with faint surprise, what she had ordered. Not that she didn’t like Mozart, but she’d been remembering Manse and he detested rock. Well, probably this’ll work better anyway.

A cup of Darjeeling and an oatmeal cookie wrought their own wonders. Presently she could settle down to record. Nevertheless, after speaking her preamble she played it back before going on, to find whether it was as unwontedly awkward as it had sounded to her.

From the screen, blue eyes under blond brows gazed out of a countenance blunt-nosed, strong of cheekbones and chin. Hair irregularly sun-bleached fell tousled to the jawline, past skin tanned darker than ever on a California beach. Oh, dear, have I actually gotten to look like that? You’d think I was thirty, and I am only—I’m not born yet. The thin-worn joke somehow heartened. Once I’m back, beauty parlor, here I come.

A slightly husky contralto said: “Wanda Tamberly, Specialist second class, scientific field agent, at—” Chronological and geographical identification followed, in the coordinates used by the Time Patrol. The spoken language was its Temporal.

“I suspect a crisis is in the making. As, uh, as reference to my previous reports shows, hitherto, throughout the duration in which I have made my visits—”

“Dry up!” she told the image, and blanked it. Since when has the Patrol wanted academese? You’re overwrought, girl. Reverting to the classroom. Don’t. It’s four whole years since you were an undergrad. Lifeline years, full of experience and history. Prehistory. She took several deep breaths, consciously relaxed herself muscle by muscle, and thought about a certain koan. Though she wasn’t into Zen or anything like that, some of the tricks were helpful. Starting over:

“I think they’ve got troubles ahead of them here. You remember how these people are the only ones in the world, as far as they are concerned. I’m the first outsider they’ve met.” The explorers who learned how to talk with them and something of their ways had touched down three centuries ago and were totally forgotten, unless a wisp of folk memory had slipped into myth. “Well, today Aryuk and I found some newcomers.

“I’ll take it from the beginning. Yesterday his son Dzuryan returned from a bachelor wandering. That was experimental, adolescent; the kid’s no more than twelve or thirteen, I’d guess, not seriously looking for a mate. Never mind. Dzuryan returned and among other things told how he’d seen a herd of mammoth at Bison Swale.”

The designation would suffice. She had already sent uptime the maps she sketched as she ranged around. Place names were her own. Those that the We bestowed often varied according to who was talking. They did tell the same stories about sites, over and over. (“In this hollow, in the spring after the Great Hard Winter, Khongan saw a pack of wolves bringing down a bison. He fetched men from two camps. With stones and torches they drove the wolves off. They carried the meat home and everybody feasted. They left the head for the spirits.”)

“I got pretty excited.” Hoo boy, did If “Mammoth seldom come within twenty miles of the coast, never this close before. Why? When I said I’d go look, Aryuk insisted on accompanying me personally.” He’s a darling, so concerned about his guest, his miracle-working, tale-telling, land-ignorant klutz. “Well, I certainly didn’t mind a partner. I’m not much acquainted with that area. We set off today at sunrise.”

Tamberly reached up to remove her headband. She popped out the thumbnail-sized instrument that had captured everything she saw and heard, plugged it into the databox, ran fingers over keyboard. The whole contents would go into the record, but for this report she should enter only what was immediately relevant. However, as hours unreeled in minutes, she could not resist slowing down for an occasional scene.

A southern hillside gave shelter from wind. She and Aryuk had stopped to drink at a spring welling out of it Watching, she remembered how cold the water was and how it tasted of earth and stone; she remembered sunlight on her back and the pungencies that it baked from small herbs. Soil lay soft underfoot, still wet from springtime’s melt. Mosquitoes whined innumerable.

Aryuk filled his hands and slurped. Drops glistened in the black beard that fell to his breast. “You want to rest a while?” he asked.

“No, let’s push on, I’m eager.” That was approximately what Tamberly said. Still less than Temporal—which, being devised for time travelers, at least originated in a high-tech culture—did the Tula language have English equivalents. It was a trilling, clucking tongue, agglutinative, embodying concepts at whose subtleties she could only guess. For a single instance, the genders were seven, four pertaining to certain plants, weather phenomena, the heavenly bodies, and the dead.

Aryuk laughed, revealing the absence of various teeth. “Your strength is boundless. You wear an old man out.”

The Tulat, a word that she rendered as “We,” didn’t keep track of days or years. She gauged him as being in his middle or late thirties. Few among his people got much past forty. Already he had two living grandchildren. His body, thin but whipcord tough, continued in good shape, aside from the scars left by injuries that got infected. He stood three inches shorter than she, but then, she was a fairly tall woman in the twentieth-century United States. All was plain to see, for he went quite nude. Ordinarily at this season he might have worn a grass poncho as protection against the mosquitoes. Today he traveled with Her Who Knows Strangeness. They never came near her. Tamberly hadn’t tried to explain how a little gadget on her belt worked. She wasn’t too sure herself; it was from the future of her birthtime. Supersonics?

Aryuk cocked his shock head and glanced at her from beneath heavy brow ridges. “You could wear me out in ways more fun than walking,” he suggested.

When she waved dismissal, the weathered, big-nosed visage crinkled with more laughter. It had been evident that his proposition was mere teasing. Quick to realize that the foreigner meant them no harm, and indeed could occasionally use her powers to relieve distress, the We were soon joking and frolicking in her presence. She was mysterious, true, but so was well-nigh everything else in their world.

“We shall go on,” she said.

Volatile, Aryuk sobered and agreed. “Wisest. If we make haste, we can be home before sundown.” He flinched. “Yonder is not our territory. Perhaps you know what ghosts prowl it after dark. I do not.” That mood also breezed away. “Perhaps I will knock down a rabbit. Tseshu”—his woman—“loves rabbit.”

He picked up the rudely chipped, almond-shaped stone he carried along, missile and knife and bone-cracker. Other tools were as primitive and little more specialized. The style traced to the Mousterian or a similar tradition, Neanderthal man’s. Of course, Aryuk was fully Homo sapiens, archaic Caucasoid; his ancestors had drifted here from western Asia. Tamberly had sometimes reflected on the irony that the very first Americans were closer to being white than anything else.

At a swinging, energy-conserving, mile-devouring pace, he and she had proceeded northwest. In the dome, she fast-forwarded. Why’d I stop for that scene? Nothing significant. Unless it’s the last of its kind for me, ever.

She let herself relive two more. Once she saw a herd of wild ponies, shaggy and long-headed, gallop on a ridge against the sky. Once she saw, afar, a herd of Pleistocene bison, the lead bull eight feet at the hump. To those mighty ones Aryuk sang a song of awe.

His folk were not really hunters. They took fish from the rivers and lakes with their hands or in crude weirs. They collected shellfish, eggs, nestlings, grubs, roots, berries in season. They snared birds, rodents, other small game. Now and then they came upon a fawn, calf, whelp, or upon a large carcass still edible; in the latter case they took the hide too. It was no wonder they were scarce and had left hardly a trace of their presence, even in lands far south of the glacier.

A flicker in the screen caught Tamberly’s eye. She stopped the playback, recognized the view, nodded. Restarting the record function, she moistened lips gone suddenly dry and said, “About noon, we reached what we were after.” Distorted molecules held a notation of the precise local time. “I will enter this unedited.” She could have done so in a fractional second, but decided to sit back and watch it through. Maybe she’d notice details that had escaped her before or think of a new interpretation. In any event, it was wise to refresh memory. At mission headquarters she was bound to get a skinningly intense debriefing.

Again she saw where she had been. The scattered woodlands of the seaboard were behind her. Watery though it was, this open country was better called steppe than tundra. Herbal growth spread like a carpet, dull greens occasionally interrupted by a few scrub willows or silvery patches of reindeer moss. In the offing were some birch, not much larger than the willows but densely clustered, vanguards of an invasion. Pools and sedgy marshes glinted manifold. Two hawks cruised the wind, theirs the only wings in sight; grouse, ptarmigan, and the rest must be lying as low as the muskrats and lemmings. The mammoths moved slowly, feeding, less than a mile away. Stomach rumbles rolled across the distance.

Aryuk heard her cry out. He tensed. “What is wrong?” he asked.

The screen showed her extended arm and the tiny figures at which her finger pointed. “There! Can you see them?”

Aryuk shaded his eyes, squinted, strained. “No, things blur away.” That savages all have keen sight is a superstition on a par with their all enjoying robust health.

“Men. And—and—oh, come.” The scene jounced. Tamberly had broken into a run. Aryuk tightened his grip on the hand ax and loped at her side, though fear stood naked on his face.

The strangers spied them, poised, briefly conferred, and sped likewise toward a meeting. Tamberly counted them: seven. That was as many adults as dwelt at Aryuk’s place, if you included the half-grown, and these were entirely male.

They did not make straight for her and him, but at an angle. Soon she could see their leader beckon, and altered her course accordingly. She recalled thinking between breaths: Yeah, they don’t want to alarm the mammoths. Must’ve been trailing them for days, skillfully harassing, to bring them into parts where they wouldn’t ordinarily go, an area poor in their kind of food but rich in mudholes and suchlike spots where hunters have a fair chance of trapping one and killing it.

They were stocky, black-haired, attired in leather coats, trousers, boots. Each carried a spear with a head of bone slotted to hold a row of flint bladelets, a cutting edge long and keen. At his waist hung a pouch, which doubtless bore provisions and a sharpened stone that served as a knife. Under the belt was a hatchet. A roll of hide across the shoulders must be a blanket. It wrapped two or three more lances. Readily accessible beneath the lashings was tucked a spearthrower of the grooved type. Stone, wood, antler, bone, skin were beautifully worked. As Tamberly and Aryuk neared, the men halted. They took loose formation, ready to fight.

No band of Tulat would have done that. Personal violence, including homicide, was not unknown among them, though rare. Collective conflict did not exist, whether in action or imagination.

Both parties stopped. “What are they?” Aryuk gasped. Sweat shone on his sun-darkened skin and he breathed hard, not because of the sprint. To him the unknown was always supernatural, terrifying unless he could come to terms with it. Yet she had seen him venture out on broken ice floes in a storm, to club a seal pup that would feed his family.

“I will try to find out,” she said, her voice not altogether steady. Palms raised, she walked toward the strangers; but first she had loosened her pistols in their holsters.

The peaceful approach eased them a trifle. Her vision flickered from one to the next. Beneath their individuality, she searched for underlying sameness, race. Twin braids framed broad countenances with naturally bronze complexions, almond eyes, strong noses, whiskers sparse or absent. Lines of paint patterned brows and cheeks. I’m no anthropologist, she had thought amidst her heartbeats, but I’d guess these count as archaic or proto-Mongoloid. They have surely come from the west….

“Rich be your gathering,” she greeted as she reached them. The Tula language had no word for welcome, which was taken for granted. “What do you find lucky to tell me?” Certain revelations might give an opening to evil spirits or hostile magic.

The tallest of the men, almost her height, young but hard-featured and bold-mannered, trod forth to confront her. What purred and growled from his lips was incomprehensible. She signed as much, smiling, shrugging, shaking her head.

He peered. She understood how weird she must be to him, size, coloring, clothes, accouterments. But he showed none of the initial timidity of the We. After a moment, inch by inch, his free hand crept forward until the fingertips touched her throat. They moved downward.

She had stiffened, then stifled a lunatic impulse to laugh. Copping a feel, are you? The exploration moved over her breasts, belly, crotch. It remained moth-gentle and, she saw, impersonal. He was simply verifying that she was the female she seemed to be. What’d you do if I gave you a gotcha? She had suppressed that too. Avoid conveying any wrong ideas. When he had finished, she stepped back a pace.

He snapped something to his fellows. They also scowled, first at her, next at Aryuk. Probably women in their tribe didn’t go hunting. Probably they supposed she was his mate. Okay, why did he hang behind her?

The leader called to Aryuk. It sounded contemptuous. The Tula cowered the least bit before he braced himself. The leader raised his spear and moved as if to cast it. Aryuk threw himself to the ground. The newcomers barked laughter.

“Now hold on there. Just a minute, bo,” Tamberly exclaimed in English.

In the shelter, she lost desire to watch further. She directed the capsule to transfer its remaining information immediately, sighed, and spoke: “As you’ve seen, we didn’t stick around. Those were tough customers. Not stupid tough, though.” Her show of indignation, as she brandished her steel sheath knife, had quieted them down. They couldn’t decide what to make of her, but stayed put when she and Aryuk withdrew, staring after them until the horizon walled them off. “I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot into the air or any such demonstration. Heaven knows what the consequences would have been.”

A second later: “Heaven knows what they will be anyway. Those are surely Paleo-Indians out of Siberia. I’ll sit tight and wait for further orders.”

Removing her recording, she bore it over to one of the message capsules stored by her vehicle, inserted it, set the controls, activated. The cylindroid vanished in a pop of air. It wasn’t bound for milieu headquarters, because none was maintained this far in the past. Its leap through space-time took it to the project office, which happened to be in her home country and century. All at once she felt very lonesome, very tired.

No prompt response came. They’d figure she needed a night’s rest. And a square meal. Scrambling it together, eating, washing dishes relaxed her a lot. However, she wasn’t sleepy. She sponge-bathed, donned nightclothes, stretched out on her bunk shelf with a pillow against the dome side for a backrest. As the sun lowered more and the interior darkened, she turned on a light. For a while she hesitated over what show to screen or book to read. She’d brought War and Peace along, thinking that on this expedition she’d finally get around to it; but she never had, and after a day like today, she wasn’t about to start. How about the Travis McGee novels she’d been saving, carried here from her last furlough? No, MacDonald cut too near the bone.

Ah, yes, good old Dick Francis.

II

Red Wolf and his men could not harry the mammoths much farther onto ground well suited for taking one. The beasts no longer gave way, almost carelessly, to their small pests. Oftener and oftener they stopped, stamped their feet, only moved on when they had eaten everything in reach. Yesterday a bull charged, forcing the hunters to scatter and wait till dawn to return. Clearly this herd had come about as far from its wonted range as it would endure.

“By now, hunger dwells in the camp,” Horsecatcher said. “I think our undertaking was foredoomed. If the land-wights are angry, let us not offend them more, but go after other game instead, and give them our first kill.”

“Not yet,” Red Wolf replied. “You know how badly we need to bring down a mammoth. And we shall.” More than the flesh and fat were the great bones, tusks, teeth, hide, hair, for making things grown scarce among the Cloud People. More even than that was the victory itself, luck reborn. The trek had been long and grim.

Fear fluttered in the eyes of Caribou Antler. “Has that witch whose hair is like straw said otherwise?” he mumbled. “Too many whispers blow on these winds.”

“Why must you think she has powers?” Red Wolf challenged. “She and the shaggy man went away from us. That was three days ago. Wait and hear what news Running Fox brings.”

With such words he kept the band steady until their scout rejoined them. Running Fox told of a deep bog not far off. Thereupon Red Wolf harangued them and they agreed to try.

First everybody went about gathering twigs, dead reeds, and other dry stuff, which they bound into faggots. Red Wolf then took the fire drill. While he worked he sang the Raven Song, and his comrades danced the slow measures of it around him. Night had fallen, but it was the short light night of summer, a dusk through which ponds glimmered and earth reached gray to horizons still visible. The sky was like a shadow overhead, wherein a few stars dimly flickered. Cold deepened.

Red Wolf brought up the rear as they approached the mammoths, lest the burning torch he carried alarm the quarry too soon. Twigs crackled, herbs rustled, ground squelched underfoot. A breeze carried rankness and, he thought, a touch of warmth off the bulks ahead. It made him a little dizzy; he had eaten scantily of late. Noises from throats, trunks, shuffling huge feet quickened his heart and cleared his head. The animals were uneasy after being annoyed throughout these past days. They were ready to stampede.

When he deemed the moment ripe, he whistled. The men heard and dashed back to him. They kindled their brands at his. Now he took the lead. In a broad arc, his band leaped forward. They whirled their fires on high; flames flared, sparks streamed. They sounded forth the wolf’s howl, the lion’s roar, the bear’s growl, and that terrible, sharp-edged, endlessly rising and falling scream which is man’s alone.

A mammoth squealed. Another trumpeted. The herd fled. Earth quaked beneath. “Ya-a-ah, ya-a-ah!” Red Wolf shrieked. “This way! Yonder one—drive him—To me, brothers, to me, right and left, drive him! Yee-i-i-i-ya!”

The chosen prey was a young bull that happened to bolt straight toward the bog. Though his companions did not spread widely, they went separate ways, blundering and bleating through the dark. Men saw better than they did. Men overtook him, bounded along his flanks. As the faggots burned short, the hunters threw them. He bawled his terror. Red Wolf sprang close. The tail brushed his shoulders. He drove his spear in underneath, left it to waggle and rip, himself fell back. More weapons whirred from throwing-sticks. When they struck, they hurt almost as much. The mammoth pounded faster. His breath gusted hoarse.

Soil came apart, muck spurted and gulped, he sank to his belly and stood mired. His kin boomed past him, on into the night.

Left in peace, he could have worked free. The hunters gave him none. They darted yelping around the morass and cast spears. They waded out to thrust. Blood blackened starlit water. The bull bellowed in his agony. Trunk lashed, tusks swung to and fro, blindly, uselessly. The stars walked their silent paths above him.

His struggles weakened. His voice sank to a rasping pant. The men crowded close. Lighter in weight and helping each other, they did not sink deep in the mire. Their knives slashed, their axes chopped. Snowstrider lanced him in the eye. Even so, his other eye saw the sun rise, dulled and chilled by mist that had drifted in while he was being killed.

“Enough,” said Red Wolf. The men withdrew to firm ground.

He led them in the Ghost Song. On behalf of everyone, he spoke aloud, northward, telling the Father of Mammoths why this deed was needful. Then: “Go, Running Fox, and fetch the people. Let the rest of us recover what spears we can.” Though a point was easily made, nobody knew yet where the right kinds of stone were in these parts, and wooden shafts were always precious.

Having taken care of that, the band rested. They ate the last of the dried meat and berries in their pouches. Some spread blankets, which they had no reason to roll up in after air had warmed, and slept. Some talked, japed, watched the bull’s death throes. Those went on until midmorning, when the vast body shuddered, filled the bog with dung, and slumped into stillness.

Thereupon the men stripped off their clothes and brought their knives to it. They sucked blood while it was fresh and hacked off pieces of tongue and hump fat such as were hunters’ right. Afterward they washed themselves in a clean pool, to which they gave the unpierced eyeball as a thank offering. They hastened to get dressed again, for mosquitoes blackened the surroundings. Then they feasted. Shooing and throwing rocks, they defended the carcass against carrion birds. Drawn by the stenches, a wolf pack hovered in the offing but did not venture close.

“They know somewhat about men, these namesakes of mine do,” Red Wolf said.

The tribe arrived late next day. They had had no great way to go after breaking camp, for the mammoth hunt went slowly and zigzag; but they were burdened with hides, tent poles, and other gear, as well as having small children and aged persons among them. Weariness weighted their cries of joy. Just the same, they were quickly settled; and Red Wolf went in that evening to Little Willow, his wife.

In the morning folk began butchering the catch, a task that would take days. Red Wolf sought Answerer in the shaman’s tent. They sat silent while they breathed the smoke of a sacred peat fire into which herbs of power had been cast. It made the dimness stir with half-seen presences; noise outside reached them as if from across the world. Yet Red Wolf’s thoughts flowed strong.

“We have come long and far,” he said, “Enough?”

“The Horned Men walk no more in my dreams,” replied the shaman cautiously.

Red Wolf moved a hand up and down, showing he understood. The folk who drove the Cloud People from their ancestral country had had no cause to pursue them, but the flight eastward had hitherto been through lands held by tribes much like their enemies, a threat that soon forced them onward. “Ill is homelessness,” he said.

Answerer’s face drew together till the wrinkles and furrows met the painted lines. He fingered his necklace of claws. “Often at night I hear those we buried as we traveled, wailing in the wind. If we could tend our dead as we ought, they would have the strength to help us, or even to go join the Winter Hunters.”

“We seem at last to have reached territory where nobody else lives, save for a very few weaklings.”

“Are you sure they lack might? Also, your followers complain of how hard the mammoth drive was.”

“Will we ever find a place where it is easier? I wonder if we do not remember Skyhome as better than it truly was. Or else mammoth are everywhere becoming rare. Well, hereabouts I have found ample trace of bison, horse, caribou, and more. Also, when we were on this hunt we met something wonderful, and this is what I want to ask you about. Did it mean welcome or did it mean danger?”

Red Wolf told of the encounter with the strange pair. He went on to other things he and his fellows had noticed—stone chips, firesites, rabbit bones cracked for the marrow—that meant humans. Those must be feeble, unlike the tribes westward, for the big game of the region showed no special fear of man; and the one who accompanied the woman had been naked, carrying merely a rough-hewn rock for weapon. She was different, big, bright-pale of hair and eyes, peculiarly outfitted. She had shown anger when the hunters gibe-tested her companion. But she did nothing worse than depart. Might her kind be willing to deal with the Cloud People, with real men?

“Unless she is some sort of troll, and we should again move on,” Red Wolf finished.

As he expected, the shaman gave him no answer to that, only: “Do you want to go find out?”

“I and a few bold friends,” Red Wolf said. “If we have not come back when the carcass is ready, you will know this country is not for you. But we have been so long homeless.”

“I will cast the bones.” They fell in such a pattern that the shaman ordered, “Leave me by myself until dawn.”

During the night Red Wolf and Little Willow heard him chant. His drum thuttered. Their children crept over to them and everybody clung together, yearning for sunlight.

At its first glow Red Wolf approached Answerer’s tent. The shaman came out, haggard and trembling. “My spirit roved widely,” he said low. “I walked in a meadow where the flowers were beautiful, but they forbade me to taste of them. I, an owl, hatched from the moon and in my talons caught the morning star. Snow fell in summer. Go if you dare.”

Red Wolf drew a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

Five men went at his side. Running Fox was no surprise to him, nor Snowstrider and Broken Blade. He decided that Horsecatcher and Caribou Antler had need to wrestle down their fears. The quest bore them south. In that direction the yellow-haired woman had gone; also, the signs of man were not quite so sparse there as everywhere else.

The land grew drier as it rolled downward. Grass and patches of woods took it over. Finally the travelers came to where the Great Water rolled gray beneath a smoky, flying, whistling sky. Surf brawled, ran up the sands, hissed back. Gulls soared on a sharp salt wind. Bones, shells, plants, and driftwood lay strewn. The Cloud People had only a slight knowledge of this; their usual prey kept inland. Mustering courage, Red Wolf and his men followed the shore east, for it seemed likeliest they would find somebody yonder.

As they fared, they became aware of riches. Stranded fish meant live ones in the water. Shells must have held flesh. Seal clamored and cormorants spread their wings on crowded skerries. Otter and sea cow rode the waves. “But we know not how to take this game,” Broken Blade regretted.

“We might learn how,” said Running Fox.

Red Wolf kept his own counsel. Within him stirred an idea, like a child stirring in its mother’s womb.

Where a river flowed down a ravine and emptied across the beach, they suddenly spied two persons. Those saw them in turn and retreated up the stream. “Go easily,” Red Wolf told his companions. “We would be unwise to scare them off.”

He led the way, a spear in his right hand but the left palm held open before him. The strangers continued edging backward. They were young, boys rather than men, the beastlike whiskers of their breed still fuzzy. Hides, untanned but chewed to softness, were flung over their backs against the chill, fastened at the neck by thongs. The condition of the hides showed they must have been taken off carrion, not a kill. Pouches, not sewn but lashed together, hung over their loins. Footgear was of the same rough making. Each carried a shaped stone and a skin in which lay the mussels he had been gathering.

Snowstrider crowed laughter. “Why, they’re brave as voles!”

Hope thumped in Red Wolf’s temples. “They may be worth more than mammoths,” he said. “Softly, now.”

Alder grew on the slopes, man-high or less, seldom thickly enough to hinder movement or sight. A lad called out. His voice wavered. The wind bore it upward, through the rustling boughs. The Cloud People advanced. Others appeared from above the channel. They scrambled down to stand stiff. The boys turned and scampered to join them.

At the head of the forlorn group was a man whom Red Wolf recognized. Another, young but full-grown, was beside him. At their backs, two women and a girl entering upon womanhood, clad no better than the males, hushed several naked children. “Is this all?” Caribou Antler wondered.

“Some may be out searching for food,” Red Wolf said, “but they cannot be many or we would have known of them earlier.”

“Where is … she, the tall one with hair like sunshine?”

“Wherever she is. Do you fear a woman? Come.” Red Wolf strode forward. His hunters took formation to right and left. Thus had the Cloud People warred against the Horned Men until numbers finally overcame them. This band were striplings then, but their fathers had later given them training. Someday they might have to fight again.

Red Wolf stopped three paces from the leader. Eyes stared into eyes. Silence stretched amidst the wind. “Greeting,” Red Wolf said at last. “Who are you?’

The bearded lips moved. What came out sounded like birds twittering. “Can they not speak?” Horsecatcher grumbled. “Are they human?”

“They are certainly hideous,” Caribou Antler said.

“Not the woman so much,” Broken Blade murmured.

Red Wolf’s gaze traveled across the maiden. Her tresses tumbled thick past a delicate face. She shivered and clutched the cape about her slight form. He pulled his attention back to the man, whom he guessed was her father. Tapping his chest, he named himself. The third time he did so, the other seemed to understand, pointed at his own breast, and uttered, “Aryuk.” Waving a hand: “Tulat.”

“Well, we know what to call them,” Red Wolf said.

“Real names?” wondered Running Fox. Among his folk, that was a secret between a man and his dream spirit.

“No matter,” Red Wolf snapped. He saw, he could Well-nigh smell, the strain in his company. It was in him too. What of that mysterious woman? They must not let fear suck away their courage. “Come, we will look about.”

He stalked onward. Aryuk and the oldest youth moved to stand side by side, to hold him off. He grinned and jabbed air with his spear. They shrank, made way, whispered among themselves. “Where is your protector today?” Red Wolf jeered. Only the wind replied. Emboldened, his men pressed at his back. The dwellers trailed them, a disordered gaggle, half frightened, half sullen.

A little farther on, the Cloud People found their home. The gulch broadened and a bluff jutted into the river above high-water mark. From the brush-grown slope behind trickled a spring—surely fresh, for the stream was too salt to drink. Three tiny shelters huddled close together. For each, their makers had piled rocks in a circle about as high as a short man’s shoulders, leaving a gap for entry, and rudely chinked them. Deadwood poles laid across the tops held slabs of peat for roofs. Sticks, lashed into bundles with gut, formed windbreaks to lean across the entrances. A banked fire, doubtless always kept burning, glowed red in the gloom of one den. Nearby was a rubbish midden, around which flies buzzed in swarthy clouds.

“Faugh, the stink!” Broken Blade snorted. “And a rabbit digs a better burrow than this.” The sod huts his people would make against winter, until someday they could build real houses, would have more room and would be kept clean. Meanwhile, their leather tents were both snug and airy.

“See what is inside,” Red Wolf ordered. “Snowstrider, stand guard by me.”

The Tulat were plainly unhappy at having their places ransacked, though only Aryuk and the oldest son dared do so much as glower. The searchers found an abundance of meat and fish, dried or smoked, as well as fine pelts and birdskins. “They are clever trappers, at least,” Red Wolf laughed. “Tulat, we will take hospitality of you.”

His men brought out what they wanted and ate well. Presently Aryuk joined them, squatting on his haunches where they sat cross-legged. He gnawed a bit of salmon and often smiled, ingratiatingly.

Afterward Red Wolf’s band explored the neighborhood above the riverbed. Their eye for tracks led them to a spot some distance off, at a brook. A patch of bare, packed soil showed that something round like a shelter, but far larger, had lately rested there. What was it? Who had made it, and why? Who had removed it, and how? From one another they hid the creeping in their flesh.

Red Wolf overcame his uneasiness first. “I think this was where the witch-woman stayed,” he told them, “but she has left. Did she fear us or our help-spirits?”

“The dwellers can tell us,” Running Fox said, “once we can talk with them “

“The dwellers can do much more than that,” Red Wolf answered slowly. Exultance leaped. “We have nothing to dread, I believe. Nothing! The spirits have brought us to a better home than we dreamed of.”

His men gaped. He did not explain at once. Entering the settlement again, he said thoughtfully, “Yes, we must learn their tongue, we must teach them … what we want them to know.” His glance went ahead, to Aryuk’s family. They stood bunched, waiting for whatever would happen. Hands gripped hands, arms lay around children. “We will begin on both these things by taking one of them along to our camp.” He smiled at the girl. Terror stared back.

1965 A.D.

On this gentle April afternoon, across the Bay in San Francisco, Wanda Tamberly was being born. Time Patrol agent or no, she must stave off a certain eeriness. Happy birthday, me.

Coincidence. Ralph Corwin had requested she visit him then because it was the earliest afternoon on which his Berkeley house would not be a-bustle. As undermanned as it was, the outfit could spare but a handful of people to trace the migrations of man into the New World, no matter how important to the future those might be. Overwhelmed by the task, they were always coming and going at his administrative base.

Like many other special offices, this was a residential building, rented for several years by persons who did actually live there. Twentieth-century America was a logical locale. Most of the workers were native to it, blending easily in. They could not well use regional headquarters in San Francisco; too much activity would make it undesirably noticeable. Berkeley in the ’60s came near being ideal. Nobody paid particular attention to an occasional oddity when everybody was being nonconformist. Eventually hysteria about drug abuse would make official surveillance too likely. However, by then the Patrol’s group would have finished their job and quit the house.

Granted, it lacked a hidden space for timecycles to appear in. Tamberly took public transportation, got off on Telegraph Avenue, strolled north on it and across the campus. The day was gorgeous and she felt curious about the decade. It had been a legend of sorts while she was growing up.

Disappointment. Scruffiness, pretentiousness, self-righteousness. When a boy in dirt-stiffened jeans and what he probably imagined was an Indian blanket thrust a leaflet of pomposities about peace at her, she remembered ahead—Cambodia, boat people—and told him, with a sweet smile, “Sorry, I’m a fascist warmonger.” Well, Manse had once reminisced about the Youth Revolution to her, in terms that she should have taken for a warning. Why care now, when cherry trees stood like sunlit snowstorms?

The address she sought was a few blocks west of the university on Grove Street (which would be solemnly renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and referred to by her generation as Milky Way). The house was modest, well maintained. A satisfied landlord would not get inquisitive. She mounted its porch and rang the bell.

The door opened. “Miss Tamberly?” After she nodded: “How do you do. Please come in.” She saw a man tall, slender, with a Roman profile and toothbrush mustache beneath sleek gray-shot hair. His tan shirt had shoulder straps and several pockets, his tan slacks were razor-creased, his feet bore Birkenstock sandals. He looked about forty, but lifeline age meant little if you had received the Patrol’s longevity treatment.

He closed the door behind her and gave a firm handshake. “I am Corwin.” He smiled. “Pardon the ‘Miss.’ I couldn’t safely call you Agent Tamberly’ when you might have been a solicitor for a worthy cause. Or do you prefer ‘Ms’?”

“Whatever,” she replied, carefully casual. “Manse Everard’s explained to me how honorifics mutate.” Let him know I’m on friendship terms with an Unattached. In case he likes playing dominance games. “Most recently—I suppose ‘recently’ is right, when I left Beringia less than a week ago, personal timespan—I was Khara-tsetuntyn-bayuk, She Who Knows Strangeness.” Show the big anthropologist that a humble naturalist is not a complete naif in his field.

She wondered if it was the British accent that put her off. Inquiring at HQ, she’d learned he was born in Detroit, 1895. He had, though, done good work on American Indians during the ’20s and ’30s, before he joined the Patrol.

“Indeed?” His smile broadened. Actually kind of charming, she admitted. “Brace yourself. I shall want every last drop of your information about that country. But first let’s make you comfortable. What would you like in the way of refreshment? Coffee, tea, beer, wine, something a bit more authoritative?”

“Coffee, thanks. It’s early yet.” He guided her to the living room and an armchair. Furniture was well-worn. Full bookshelves lined the walls, holding mainly reference works. He excused himself, went kitchenward, soon came back bearing a tray of ware and morsels which she discovered were delicious. Having set things on a low table in front of her, he took a seat opposite and asked whether she minded if he smoked. That was quite considerate of a person from his birthtime; and he lit a cigarette, not a pipe like Manse.

“Are we alone here?” she wondered.

“For the nonce. I went to some trouble about that.” Corwin laughed. “Have no fears. I simply thought we should get acquainted without distractions. I can better appreciate what I’m told when I know a bit about the teller. What’s a nice girl like you doing in an organization like this?”

“Why, you know,” she answered, surprised. “Zoology, ecology—what I think they called natural history when you were young.”

Hey, that was tactless. To her relief, he showed no offense. “Yes, of course I’ve been informed.” Soothingly: “You’re a pure scientist, for the sake of the knowledge. I confess to a touch of envy.”

She shook her head. “No, not really, or I wouldn’t be in the Patrol. The pure scientists belong to civilian institutions uptime, don’t they? My job, well, it’s just that we, the Patrol, can’t: understand what goes on among people, especially people close to nature, unless we have some knowledge of their environments. That’s why I was doing my Jane Goodall when and where I was, instead of elsewhere or earlier. The arrival of the Paleo-Indians was expected sometime about then. Not that I’d necessarily meet them personally—that just happened—but I’d’ve reported on the conditions they’d find, the resources available to them, and so on.”

Concurrently, with dismay: What a motormouth I’m being. He knows all this by heart. Nervousness. Pull yourself together, nit.

Corwin had blinked. “I beg your pardon? Doing your, er, Jane Goodall?”

Tamberly relaxed a little. “Sorry, I forgot. She isn’t famous yet. A breakthrough ethologist out in the wilds.”

“Role model for you, eh? And a jolly good one, to judge by the result.” He sipped from his cup. “I misspoke myself. Obviously I’ve been aware of your role, why you were where-when you were. What I’d like to know is more basic, why you enlisted, how you first learned about us.”

To speak of that to an interested, interesting, handsome man quickly became more than pleasant—a release. How it hurt, up in 1987 and afterward, that she must lie to her parents, sister, old friends about her reasons for not going on to grad school and about the work that took her away from them. More than once, training at the Patrol Academy, she’d needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. She was past that now. Or was she entirely?

“Well, it’s a long story, too long for details, I think. My uncle was already a Patrolman, unbeknownst to me or his other kin, when I was studying evolutionary biology at Stanford. He was, is, uh—oh, damn, shouldn’t we speak Temporal? English ties itself in knots, trying to handle time travel.”

“No, I’d prefer to hear this in your mother tongue. You reveal more of yourself. Which is delightful, if I may make bold to say so. Pray continue.”

Good Lord, do I feel a blush? Tamberly hastened on: “Uncle Steve was in sixteenth-century Peru, with Pizarro, using the persona of a monk, to keep track of events.”

(For surely that conquest was among the decisive episodes of history. Had matters gone otherwise than they did, all the future would have been different, more and more as time went on, until by the twentieth century, whatever there was on Earth, it would not have included a United States of America or parents for one Wanda Tamberly. Beneath reality lies ultimate quantum indeterminacy. On the level of observable happenings it manifests itself as chaos in the physics sense of the word, the fact that often immeasurably small forces bring illimitably large consequences. If you go into the past, you can change it, you can annul the future that begot you. You will exist still, parentless, causeless, like an embodiment of universal meaninglessness; but the world from which you fared will exist—will have existed—only in your memories.

(When time travel became a fact, did altruism call the Danellian superhumans out of the remote future to ordain and establish the Patrol? It does help, succor, advise, adjudicate, the kind of work that mostly occupies any decent police force. But it also seeks to keep the foolish, the criminal, the mad from destroying that history which leads through the ages to the Danellians. For them this may be a

matter of simple survival. They have never told us, we hardly ever see them, we do not know.)

“Bandits from far uptime, trying to hijack Atahuallpa’s ransom—no, it is too complicated. We’d spend hours. What it came to was, one of Pizarro’s men got hold of a timecycle, learned what it could do and how to operate it, also learned about me, where I was at a particular time. He kidnapped me with the idea of making me guide him around in the twentieth century, help him acquire modern weapons. He had grandiose plans.”

Corwin whistled. “I can well imagine. Win or lose, yes, the mere attempt could have been disastrous. And I would never have known, because I would never have been born. Not that I matter, but that sort of thought drives the implications home, eh? What happened?”

“Unattached Agent Everard had already contacted me, investigating Uncle Steve’s disappearance. He didn’t let me in on the secret, of course, but he left me his phone number and I … I made a chance for myself to call him. He freed me.” Tamberly must needs grin. “In the best marines-to-the-rescue style. Which blew his cover.

“Then he was duty-bound to make sure I kept my mouth shut. I could take conditioning against ever mentioning the subject to anybody not in the know, and pick up my life where I’d dropped it. Except he offered me another choice. I could enlist. He didn’t think I’d make a very good cop, and he was doubtless right, but the Patrol needs field scientists too.

“Well, when I got a chance to do my paleontology with live critters, did I agree? Does a bear—uh, is the Pope Catholic?”

“And so you went through the Academy,” Corwin murmured. “I daresay the setting was especially wonderful to you. Afterward, I presume, you worked as part of a team until it was decided you were probably the best person to station in Beringia for conducting independent research.” Tamberly nodded.

“I must certainly hear the full story of your Spanish adventure,” Corwin said. “Extraordinary. But you are right, duty first. Let us hope for leisure later.”

“And let’s not talk more about me,” she suggested. “How did you come to join?”

“Nothing so sensational. Indeed, the most common way. A recruiter felt I might have potential, cultivated my acquaintance, got me to take certain tests, and when they confirmed his opinion, told me the truth and invited me in. He knew I would accept. To trace the unwritten ancient history of the New World—to help write it—you understand, my dear.”

“Was it hard to cut your ties?” I don’t believe I ever will be able to, not really, before—before Dad and Mother and Susie have died—No, not to think about that, not now. Yonder window’s too full of sunlight.

“Not especially,” Corwin said. “I was going through my second divorce, no children. I despised the petty infighting of academic life. Always have been rather a lone wolf. To be sure, I have led men, but field work and, yes, Patrol personnel are more congenial to me.”

Better not let conversation get any more intimate than this, Wanda decided. “Okay, sir, you asked for me to come around and tell you about Beringia. I’ll try, but I’m afraid my information is pretty limited. I generally stayed in the same area; the territory I have not seen is enormous. And I’ve spent only two personal years at it, including vacations back home or in some fun milieu. My presence there covers about five years, because naturally I spaced my visits months apart, according to what I hoped to observe at a particular season. It’s an awfully small sample, though.” The best that could be managed, she reminded herself.

“Even with your holidays, yours must have been a hard life. You’re a brave young lady.”

“No, no. It was utterly fascinating.” Tamberly’s pulse quickstepped. Here’s my chance. “Both in its own right and because it matters to the Patrol, more than meets the eye. Dr. Corwin, they’re doing wrong to stop it at this stage. I’m leaving some basic scientific problems half solved. Can’t you make them see that, so they’ll let me return?”

“Hm.” He stroked his mustache. “I’m afraid other considerations override yours. I can inquire, but don’t get your hopes up. Sorry.” Chuckling: “Science aside, I gather you enjoyed yourself.”

She nodded vigorously, though the sense of loss sharpened and sharpened in her. “I did, all in all. A stark land, but, oh, alive. And the We are sweethearts.”

“The We? Ah, yes. That’s how the aborigines referred to themselves, I presume. What the name Tulat’ means. They had forgotten the preliminary expedition to their forebears, and had no clear concept of anyone else in the world until you appeared.”

“Right. I can’t see why there’s no more interest in them. They were around for thousands of years. People like them got clear down into South America. But the Patrol sent only that one group. All it learned was their language and a vague notion of how they lived. When the machine had put the information into my head, I was, you know, appalled by how little it was. Why doesn’t anybody care?”

His reply was measured, grave. “Surely you have been told. We lack the personnel, the resources, to study in depth what … will make no significant difference. Those first wanderers who trickled across the land bridge during an interstadial, some twenty thousand years ago, their descendants remained changelessly primitive. In fact, through almost the whole twentieth century, most archaeologists have doubted humans ever reached the New World that early. What scanty tools and firesites they left could well be due to natural causes. It is the High Stone Age people, the big game hunters, arriving between the Cary and Mankato substages of the Wisconsin glaciation, as the Ice Age itself drew toward a close, it is they who properly populated the two continents. The forerunner folk were killed off or crowded out. If some did interbreed—captive women, perhaps—that was seldom and their blood was swamped, lost.”

“I know that! I know!” Her eyes stung. She barely kept from shouting, You don’t have to lecture me. I’m not some freshman class you used to teach. Old habits getting the upper hand? “What I meant was, why doesn’t anybody seem to give a damn?”

“A Patrol agent must become case-hardened, like a physician or a policeman. Otherwise what he witnesses will eventually break him.” Corwin leaned forward. He put a hand over the fist that lay knotted in her lap. “But, yes, I care. I am more than interested. My duty lies with the Paleo-Indians. They bear the future. But I do want to learn everything you know about the old folk, and everything I can discover for myself. I want to love them too.”

Tamberly gulped and straightened. She drew back from his touch, then said hastily, not wishing to seem as if she spurned his consolation: “Thanks. Thanks. What happens … at first … to the people I’ve known, the, the individuals … that doesn’t have to be terrible. Does it?”

“Why, no. The newcomers you met probably belonged to a very small tribe. I rather imagine it was far in advance of the rest, and no more arrived for a generation or two. Besides, I’ve gathered your Tulat lived on or near the coast, and didn’t go after big game. Hence no rivalry.”

“If only that’s true. If there is c-conflict, can’t you help?”

“I’m sorry. The Patrol may not intervene.”

Energy kindled anew. “Look,” Tamberly argued, “time travelers are bound to intervene, interfere. I affected people in all sorts of ways, didn’t I? Among other things, I saved several lives with antibiotics, shot a dangerous animal—and just my presence, the questions I asked and answered, everything I did had some effect. Nobody objected. I was up front about it, reported every incident, and nobody objected.”

“You know why.” Perhaps he realized that playing the professor had been a mistake, for now he spoke neither angrily nor patronizingly but mildly, as to a young person bewildered by pain. “The continuum does tend to maintain its structure. A radical change is only possible at certain critical points in history. Elsewhen, compensations occur. From that standpoint, what you did was unimportant. In a sense, it was ‘always’ part of the past.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” She curbed the resentment she had felt in spite of his effort. “Sorry, sir. I keep sounding stupid and ignorant, don’t I?”

“No. You are under stress. You are trying hard to make your intent clear.” Corwin smiled. “You needn’t. Relax.”

“What I’m getting at,” she persisted, “is why can’t you take a hand? Nothing big, nothing that’ll get into folk memory or anything like that. Just, oh, those hunters were … arrogant. If they start leaning too hard on the We, why can’t you tell them to lay off, and back it up with a harmless demonstration, fireworks or something?”

“Because this is a different situation from yours,” he replied. “Beringia is, was, no longer populated exclusively by a static society barely past the eolithic stage—if people that thinly scattered can even be called a society. An advanced, dynamic, progressive culture, or set of cultures, invaded. Let me remind you that in the course of mere generations they swept down the corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice, into the plains, where taiga was becoming fertile grassland as the glaciers dwindled. Their numbers exploded. Within two thousand years of the day you met them, they were making the superb flint points of the Clovis. Soon after, they finished off the mammoth, horse, camel, most of the large American beasts. They developed into the distinctive Amerindian races—but you know that story too, I’m sure.

“What it means is an unstable situation. True, the time is long ago. There will be no written record by which the dead can speak to the living. Nevertheless, the possibility of starting a causal vortex is no longer insignificant. We field researchers must henceforward keep our influence to an absolute minimum. No one less than an Unattached agent has competence to take decisive action; and such a man would only do it in extreme emergency.”

Or woman, Tamberly thought. But I should remember when he was born and raised, and make allowances. He means well. Though he does love to hear himself talk, doesn’t he?

Irritation somehow countered anxiety. When he added, “Remember, quite likely you are borrowing trouble and in fact nothing dreadful ever happened to your friends,” she could accept it. Why had her moods been seesawing like this, anyway? Well, she was newly back from wilderness, tossed into a period whose likeness and unlikeness to home were equally disturbing. She was rebellious at having her work stopped uncompleted, concerned about the We, grieved that she might never see them again, skittish at meeting a man who had decades of Patrol experience under his belt against her paltry four. High time you calmed down, gal

“Your coffee’s gone cold,” Corwin said. “Here, I’ll see to that.” He took her cup away, brought it back empty, gave it a partial refill from the pot, and held a flask of brandy above. “I prescribe a spot of additive for both of us.”

“M-m, a … a microspot,” she yielded.

It helped, more as a gesture and a taste than through the minute alcohol content. He didn’t press more on her. Instead, he got to business. Intelligent queries and comments were the real medicine for strained nerves.

He fetched books, opened them to maps, showed her the geological ages of the land where she had camped. She had studied the history before, of course, but he recalled the larger context to her, vividly and with fresh details.

In the era she knew, Beringia had shrunk from its greatest extent. However, it was still a big territory, joining Siberia to Alaska, and its disappearance would take a long while if you reckoned in human lives. Finally the sea, rising as the ice melted, would drown it; but by then America would be well peopled from the Arctic Ocean to the Land of Fire.

She had much to tell about the wildlife, less about the wild folk, yet she had inevitably and happily come to know those in some degree. Already implanted in him was the knowledge acquired by the first expedition, the Tula language, something of the customs and beliefs. She found he had pondered it, compared it to what he knew of savages elsewhere and elsewhen, extrapolated from his own experience.

That had been among the Paleo-Indians as they drifted southward through Canada. His aim was to trace their migrations back to the sources. Only by knowing what had happened could the Patrol hope to know what the nexus points were over which it should keep special watch. Though skeletal at best, the data would be better than nothing. Besides, others uptime were intensely interested as well, anthropologists, folklorists, artists of every kind seeking fresh inspiration.

Under Corwin’s guidance, Tamberly felt her recollections grow more fully fleshed than before—family groups dwelling apart, periodically gathering together, oftener linked by individual travelers, among whom young men in search of mates were commonest—simple rites, frequently grisly legends, pervasive fear of demons and ghosts, of storm and predator, of sickness and starvation—withal, merriment, much loving kindness, childlike joy whenever life offered pleasure—a special reverence for the bear, which might be older than the race itself—

“My goodness!” she exclaimed. Shadows stretched across the street outside. “I’d no idea we’d been at it this long.”

“Nor I,” Corwin said. “Time goes fast in company like yours. Best we call it a day, eh?”

“For sure. I can do horrid things to a hamburger and a beer.”

“You are staying in San Francisco?”

“Yes, at a small hotel near HQ till I’ve finished this debriefing. No sense in commuting between now and 1990.”

“Look here, you deserve better than a café meal. May I invite you to dinner? I know the worthwhile places in these years.”

“Uh, m-m—”

“That dress of yours is perfectly fine. I’ll make myself presentable. Half a tick.” He rose and left the room before she could respond.

Whew!… Oh, why not? In fact—hm, easy there, gal, It has been a long while, but—

Corwin returned as fast as promised, sporting tweed jacket and bolo tie. He drove them across the bridge to a Japanese restaurant near Fisherman’s Wharf. Over cocktails he suggested that perhaps, if she really wanted to continue in Beringia, he might just possibly arrange for a partnership. She decided on the spot that she’d better take that as a joke. When the cook came to prepare their sukiyaki at the table, Corwin told the man to stand aside and did the job himself, declaring, “Hokkaido style.” He described his experiences among the Paleo-Indians of Canada at length, dwelling on the dangerous moments. “Admirable chaps, but ferocious, touchy, no inhibitions about violence.” If any implications of that had crossed his mind, he didn’t seem to think they might occur to Tamberly.

After they were done, he proposed a drink at the Top of the Mark. She pleaded tiredness. Outside her hotel she gave him a handshake. “We should finish tomorrow,” she said, “and then I really must go straight uptime and see my folks.”

13,212 B.C.

Every fall We met at Bubbling Springs. When weather grew daily more chill it was very good to wallow in warm mud and wash in the hot water that welled up thereabouts. Strong tastes and smells were defense against sickness; steam-wraiths kept unfriendly ghosts at a distance. We came from dwelling places along the whole coast, as far as the known world reached, for the jolliest of the year’s festivities. They brought plenty of food, since no one family could feed such a crowd, and shared it around. Among the special delicacies were the tasty oysters of Walrus Bay, carried alive in water-filled skins; fish, fowl, animals freshly caught, stuffed with herbs; dried berries and flowers gathered on sunny slopes; blubber if someone had killed a seal ashore or, wonder of wonders, a whale had gone aground. They also brought things to trade, fine pelts, pretty feathers and stones. They gorged, sang, danced, jested, freely made love. They swapped news, dickered, laid plans, sighing recalled old days and smiling watched their little ones stump about. Sometimes they quarreled, but friends always composed that. When the food was gone, they thanked Ulungu for hosting them and went home, well provided with memories to brighten the dark months ahead.

So it had ever been. So should it ever have been. But the time came when a sorrow and a fear lay over Us. Talk was of the outsiders who, this summer, had arrived to live somewhere inland. Though few households had seen any, word had flitted on the lips of wandering youths and of fathers who sought their nearest neighbors. Unsightly, speaking with the tongues of wolves, wrapped in leather, fearsomely armed, the invaders went in small bands wherever they chose. When they came upon a homestead they helped themselves to whatever they wanted, food, goods, women, not like guests but like eagles robbing osprey. Men who tried to withstand them had been badly hurt, pierced or slashed. Orak’s wound got inflamed and he died.

You Who Know Strangeness, why have you forsaken Us?

The celebration at Bubbling Springs went heavily, the laughter was often too loud. Perhaps the bad ones would go away, as bad years when snow lay well into summer finally did. Those left many dead behind them. What of this new evil? Folk drew aside and muttered to each other.

Suddenly a boy who had strolled a ways off sped back shouting. Fright went in a wave through the crowd, dashing bodies to and fro. Aryuk of Alder River seized the lead, shook or drubbed the panic-stricken, called the men to him, until everyone but the infants was quiet, shuddering only under the skin. He had grown broody and short-spoken in the past season. Now he stood before the men, outside the settlement. Each gripped a hand ax or a club. Their women and young huddled among the huts.

Behind them surf growled, above them birds shrilled, around them wind whistled emptily. It was a clear day, just a few rapid clouds. Westering, the sun cast heatless light over hills turning yellow-gray with autumn. A pool simmered nearby, its brown the deepest color in sight. Wind scattered its warmth, vapors, and magical smells into nothingness.

Other men walked toward Us. The pointed shafts that they carried swayed to their stride.

Aryuk shaded his eyes and peered. “Yes, the outsiders,” he said, low in his gullet. “Fewer than Us, I think. Stand together. Stand fast.”

As they drew near: “But what, who is that with them? A woman? Clad the same, but—her hair and—Daraku!” he screamed. “Daraku, my daughter they took!”

He started to run, halted, returned, stood atremble. Soon she reached him. Her face was thin, and something had departed from behind those hollow eyes. A hunter went beside her, the rest spread right and left. Eagerness shone and shivered in them.

“Daraku,” Aryuk cried through tears, “what is this? Have you come back to your mother and me?”

“I am theirs,” she answered dully. Pointing at the man next to her: “He, the Red Wolf, wants me to help speak. They have not yet learned much about our speaking. I know some of theirs.”

“How … how have you been, my dear, oh, my dear?”

“Men use me. I work. Two of the women are kind when they meet me.”

Aryuk wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. He swallowed a lump of vomit. To the Red Wolf he said, “I know you. We met when you first came and I was with my powerful friend. Afterward, when she had gone away, you sought me out and took my girl. What wicked ghost is in you?”

The hunter made the motion of one who brushes off a fly. Had he understood? Did he care? “Wanayimo— Cloud People,” he answered. Aryuk could barely follow the thick utterance. “Want wood, fish, omulaiyeh—” He looked at Daraku and snarled a string of sounds.

She talked in words, tonelessly, staring past her father and brothers. “I told them how you meet here. I had to. They said it is a good time to come to tell you. They want Us—they want you to bring them things. Always. They will tell you what and how much. You must.”

“What do they mean?” cried Huyok of Otter Strand. “Are they hungry? We have little to spare, but—but—”

The Red Wolf ripped forth more noises. Daraku wet her lips. “Do what they say and they will not harm you. I am their mouth today.”

“We can trade—” Huyok began.

A roar cut him off. Khongan of Curlew Marsh was the boldest among Us. He had raged when he heard what the invaders did. “They do not trade! They take! Does the mink trade his skin for the bait in the trap? Tell them no! Drive them out!”

The hunters scowled and hefted their weapons. Aryuk knew he should signal for calm. His hands were too heavy, his throat too tight. One by one, his men took up Khongan’s shout. “No! No!”

Somebody threw a stone. Somebody else dashed forth and chopped at a hunter with a hand ax. Or so Aryuk afterward thought. He was never sure quite what happened. There was an uproar, a brawl, wildness, nightmare. Then We had fled. Scattered, they stared back and saw the invaders stand unharmed, blood dripping off edged stone.

Two men of Us sprawled dead. Guts spilled from a gashed belly, brains from a split skull. The less wounded had escaped, except for Khongan. Pierced again and again, he threshed on the earth and moaned a long while before he lay still. Daraku knelt at the Red Wolf’s feet and wept.

1990 A.D.

“Hi,” said Manse Everard’s answering machine. “This is Wanda Tamberly in San Francisco. Remember?” The sprightliness faded. It must have been forced. “Of course you do. Been, oh, like three years, though, hasn’t it? On my lifeline, anyway. I’m sorry. Time just slipped past and you—Never mind.” You didn’t get in touch again. Why should you? An Unattached agent has important things to do. “Manse, uh, sir, I feel bad about calling you, especially after so long. I oughtn’t go asking for special privileges. But I don’t know where else to turn. Could you possibly give me a ring, at least? Let me try to explain? If you then tell me I’m out of line, I’ll shut up and not pester you again. Please. I think it’s pretty big. Maybe you’ll agree. Please. You can reach me at—” There followed a telephone number and a list of hours on successive days in this February. “Thanks ever so much for listening. That’s all now. Thank you.” Silence.

Having heard, he stopped the tape and stood for several minutes. It was as if his apartment had withdrawn from New York to a space of its own. At length he shrugged, grinned ruefully, but nodded to himself. The remaining messages had no urgency that he couldn’t handle with a bit of time hopping. Nor did Wanda’s, actually. However—

He went to the little bar across the room. The floor felt bare, merely carpeted. He’d removed his polar bear rug. Too many visitors had been reproaching him for it. He couldn’t explain to them that it was from tenth-century Greenland, when, far from polar bears being an endangered species, things were oftenest the other way around. And truth to tell, it had gotten rather scruffy. The helmet and crossed spears remained on their wall; nobody could see they were not replicas of Bronze Age work.

He prepared a stiffish Scotch and soda, charged and lighted his pipe, retired to his study. The armchair received him as an old shoe would. He didn’t let many contemporary people in here. When it happened, they were apt to tell him how much better off he’d be with their brand of personal computer. He’d say, “I’ll look into it,” and change the subject. Most of what they saw on his desk was dummy.

“Give me the file to present date on Specialist Wanda May Tamberly,” he ordered, adding sufficient information to identify. When he had studied what appeared before him, he pondered, then started a search through related matters. Presently he thought he was on the right track, and called up details. Dusk stole in to surround him. He realized, startled, that he’d been busy for hours and was hungry. Hadn’t even unpacked from his latest trip.

Too restless to go out, he thawed some hamburger in the microwave, fried it, constructed a large sandwich, cracked a beer for accompaniment, and never noticed how anything tasted. A creative synthesizer could have whipped up a Cordon Bleu meal, but if you based yourself in a milieu before the technology to overleap space-time was developed, you didn’t keep any future stuff around that you didn’t absolutely require, and you kept it hidden or well disguised. When he had finished, the time in California was the third of the hours she had named. He went back to the living room and picked up the phone. Ridiculous, how his heartbeat speeded.

A woman answered. He recognized her tones. “Mrs. Tamberly? Good evening. This is Manson Everard. Could I speak to Wanda, please?” He should have remembered her parents’ number. It was no large span on his own time line since he’d last called there—though events had been tumultuous. Good kid, comes back to her folks whenever she gets a chance, happy family, not too damn many like that these days. The Midwest of his boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost, already one with Troy and Carthage and the innocence of the Inuit. He had learned better than to return.

“Hello!” exclaimed the breathless young voice. “Oh, I’m so glad, this is so kind of you.”

“Quite all right,” Everard said. “I’ve got a notion of what you have in mind, and yes, it does need talking about. Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon?”

“Anytime, anywhere. I’m taking leave.” She stopped. Others might overhear. “Vacation, I mean. Whatever’s convenient for you, sir.”

“The bookshop, then. Let’s say three o’clock.” While her parents weren’t necessarily aware that he was not in the Bay Area at this moment, best was not to rush matters as perceived by them. “Can you save the evening for me too?” Everard blurted.

“Why, why, of course.” Both abruptly shy, they exchanged only a few more words before hanging up.

He did need a night’s sleep, and there was in fact considerable accumulated business to handle. Another twilight had fallen, cold and dun around hectic lights, when he entered city headquarters. In the secret room beneath, he checked out a hopper, mounted the saddle, set his destination, touched the controls. The cellar garage that blinked into existence for him was smaller. He went out the camouflaged door and upstairs. Daylight poured through windows.

This front was a high-class used bookstore. He saw her looking at a volume; she had arrived early. Her hair was sun-bright amidst the freighted shelves, and a dress the color of her eyes fitted close. He approached. “Hello,” he said.

Almost, she gasped. “Oh! How d-do you do, Agent … Everard.” Strain vibrated through the sounds.

“Sh,” he cautioned. “Come on back where we can talk.” Two or three customers watched them go down the aisle, but simply with a bit of envy; they were male. “Howdy, Nick,” Everard said as he came to the proprietor. “Okay?” The little man smiled and nodded, though solemnity stared through thick lenses. Everard had sent a message in advance, commandeering his office.

It too held nothing overtly unusual. Along the walls, filing cabinets squeezed in between more bookcases. Boxes cluttered the floor, papers and tomes the table that acted as a desk. Nick was a genuine bibliophile; perhaps his main reason for serving the Patrol in this small but vital capacity was the ability he gained to go questing in other milieus. Some recent acquisitions, Victorian to judge by their appearance, lay next to the ostensible computer. Everard glanced over the titles. He made no pretense of being an intellectual, but he liked books. The Origin of Tree Worship, British Birds, Catullus, The Holy War—no doubt stuff that some collector would snap up, if the proprietor didn’t decide to keep them for himself.

“Sit down,” he invited, and pulled out a chair for Tamberly.

“Thank you.” When she smiled she seemed all at once easier, more herself. Not that anybody ever is, ever again, We can dance around in time all we want, but we don’t escape duration. “You still have your old-fashioned manners, I see.”

“Country boy. I’m trying to unlearn. Ladies these days have snapped my head off for being condescending, when I thought I was just being polite.” Everard went around the table and seated himself opposite her.

“Yes,” she sighed, “I suppose it can be harder to keep track of your birth century than to learn your way around in a whole past civilization. I’m finding that out, a little.”

“How’ve you been? Do you enjoy your work?”

Enthusiasm flashed. “Mostly super. Terrific. Splendiferous. No, language doesn’t reach to it.” A shadow fell. She looked away from him. “The drawbacks, well, you understand. I was getting toughened to them. Until now, this thing.”

He delayed coming to the point. First let him work the worst tension out of her, if he could. “It’s been a spell. I last saw you shortly after your graduation.”—from the Academy; on her personal time line. They’d gone to dinner in Paris, 1925, and afterward wandered along the Seine and around in the Rive Gauche, through a spring evening, and when they stopped for a drink at the Deux Magots a couple of her literary idols were at the same sidewalk café, two tables over, and when he bade her goodnight and goodbye at her parents’ door, 1988, she kissed him. “Nigh on three years since then, for you, hasn’t it been?”

She nodded. “Busy years for us both, I guess.”

“Well, the time for me wasn’t that long. I’ve had only two missions worth mentioning.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised. “Didn’t you return to your place in New York in ’88 when you were through? I mean, you didn’t let it stand months vacant, did you?”

“I lent—officially, sublet—it to an operative who needed such a base for a task of her own. They’ve got rent control there in these decades, you know. Always guarantees slums, plus decent housing in such short supply that to become a new tenant you’ve got to show more money than is wise for a Patrol agent.”

“I see.”

Tamberly had stiffened a little. “Her,” she’s thinking.

It’s also unwise for a Patrol agent to explain too much. Especially in a case like this. “Messages to me from fellow members were robotically bucked on. If you’d called before yesterday—”

Whatever pique she felt had dissipated. Her gaze dropped to hands that caught each other in her lap. “I had no reason to, sir,” she said low. “You’d been awfully kind, generous, but … I didn’t want to get pushy.”

“Nor did I.” The great Unattached overawing the new recruit Unfair. Could be resented. “Though if I’d known so much time was going by for you—”

Much time indeed, less in lifespan measured by pulsebeats than in life lived, newnesses, strangenesses, troubles, triumphs, gaieties, griefs. And loves? Her form had grown fuller, Everard saw, not in fat but muscle. The bones stood out more strongly than before in a face that weather had often savaged. The real change was subtler. She had been a girl—a young woman, if today’s feminists insisted, but how very young. The girl in her had not died; he doubted she ever quite would. The person across from him remained youthful: yet wholly a woman. His own pulse stumbled.

He achieved a laugh. “Okay, let’s drop the Alphonse-Gastonette act,” he said. “And please remember, my name isn’t ‘sir.’ Here, by ourselves, we can relax. Wanda.”

She rallied fast. “Thanks, Manse. I kind of expected this.”

He drew pipe and tobacco pouch out of his pockets. “And this? If you don’t mind.”

“No, go ahead.” She smiled. “Since we are not in public.” Unspoken: Bad example, among people for whom smoking’s lethal. Patrol medicine heads off or heals anything that doesn’t kill us outright. You were born in 1924, Manse. You look about forty. But how much duration have you endured? What is your real age?

He didn’t wish to tell her. Not today. “I raised your file yesterday,” he said. ‘You’ve been doing a crackerjack job.”

She grew sober. Her eyes took level aim at him. “And will I in my future?”

“I didn’t ask for that information,” he replied fast. “Discourteous, unethical, and it wouldn’t have been given me unless I could show a damn valid reason. We don’t look into our tomorrows, nor into our friends’.”

“And nevertheless,” she murmured, “the information is there. Everything you or I will ever do—everything I’ll discover about the life of the past—is known to them uptime.”

“Hey, we’re talking English, not Temporal. The paradoxes—”

The tawny head nodded. “Oh, yes. The work has to be done. Has to have been done, somewhere along the line. No point in my doing it if I already knew; and the danger of setting up a cause-and-effect whirlpool—”

“Besides, neither the past nor the future is cast in concrete. That’s why the Patrol exists. Have we repeated enough indoctrination lecture?”

“I’m sorry. It’s still sometimes hard for me to, well, comprehend. I have to replay the basic principles in my mind. My work is … straightforward. Like going to an unexplored continent. Nothing to remind me of the problems you cope with.”

“Sure. I understand.” Everard tamped the pipe hard. “I have no doubt you’ll continue doing first-class work. Your superiors are more than pleased with what you’ve accomplished in Ber—uh—Beringia. Not just the verbal reports and audiovisuals and such, but—well, it’s out of my field, but they say you were finding the fundamental pattern of that natural history. You were making sense of it, in a way that contributes a lot to the total picture.”

She tensed on her chair. The question rang. “Then why have they pulled me out?”

He busied himself before applying fire. “Um, as I understand it, you’ve done as much as necessary in Beringia. When you’ve had your well-earned furlough, they’ll put you onto some other aspect of the Pleistocene.”

“I have not done enough. A hundred solid man-years would be too few.”

“I know, I know. But you know, or should, the outfit hasn’t got them to spare. We, the scientists uptime and the Patrol itself, we have to settle for broad general outlines and forget about the nesting habits of the cootie-banded bandicoot.”

She flushed. “You know, or should know, that isn’t what I mean,” she flung back. “I’m talking about the entire circumpolar migration of species, two-way traffic between Asia and America. It’s a unique phenomenon, an ecology in time as well as space. If I can, at the bare least, learn why the mammoth population of Beringia is, was, shrinking that early, when it still flourished on either side—But my project’s been terminated. And all I get is the same runaround you gave me. I’d hoped you wouldn’t.”

Spirit, Everard thought. Reluctant to wheedle the Unattached man, but ready to tell him off when he seems to deserve it “I’m sorry, Wanda,” he said. “That was not my intention.” After a comforting draught of smoke: “The fact is, those human newcomers change everything. Wasn’t that explained to you?”

“Yes. After a fashion.” She spoke softly again. “But would my investigations really mess things up? One person, going quietly around on the steppe, in the hills and woods, along the beaches? When I stayed with the Tulat, you know, the aborigines, nobody worried about it.”

Everard frowned at his pipe. “I’m not familiar with the details,” he admitted. “I boned up yesterday as much as I could in a short time, but that wasn’t a hell of a lot. However, it seems pretty clear, your Tulat aren’t important to the long-range course of events. They vanish, leaving no record, not even as much of a clear-cut trace as the Vinland or Roanoke colonies. The Paleo-Indians become the real pre-Columbian Americans. And at this earliest entry of theirs, who can tell what might make a critical difference, might upset the entire future?” He raised a hand. “Sure, sure. It’s extremely unlikely. Little waves and wrinkles in the continuum will almost certainly smooth out, get history back where it belongs. That’s true of your … Tulat. But as for the Paleo-Indians, at this stage, who can guarantee the situation is stable? Also, the Ancient American office wants their history observed as their cultures develop uncontam—freely.”

Tamberly clenched her fists. “Ralph Corwin is off to live among them!”

“Yeah. Well, he’s a pro at that sort of thing, a high-rated anthropologist. I checked out his record too. He’s got an excellent background, from his work with later generations. He’ll minimize his own effect on these people, while he learns enough about them to give him a handle on what really happened—same as you’ve worked to find out what really happened among the animals and plants.”

Everard roiled smoke around in his mouth, loosed it streaming from his lips. “That’s the basic problem, Wanda. The newcomers are bound to interact with the aborigines. It may be slightly, it may be heavily, but it will happen and could well prove very complicated. We can’t allow an extra anachronism on the scene. That could scramble events beyond any repair. Especially since you don’t have Corwin’s skills. Can’t you see?

“The upshot is, your ecological studies are valuable, but the human studies now take absolute priority. No reflection on you, but it became necessary to end your project. You’ll get another, and they’ll try to make sure you can carry it to completion.”

“Yes, I do see. This has all been explained to me.” She sat mute for a space. When once more she looked squarely at him, her voice was calm.

“It’s more than my science, Manse. I fear for the We—for my Tulat. They’re dear people. Primitive, often childlike, but good. Boundlessly kind and hospitable to me, not because I was a wonder and powerful, but because that’s their nature. What’s going to become of them? What did? Their kind was lost, forgotten. How? I am afraid of the answer, Manse.”

He nodded. “Corwin reported his opinion, confidentially, after he’d interviewed you. He seconded the recommendation that your assignment in Beringia be terminated, because he feared you might succumb to … temptation, the temptation to interfere. Or, at least, untrained, unsupervised, you might do so without knowing it. Don’t think he’s a bastard. He has his duty. He did suggest you could transfer to an earlier period.”

Tamberly shook her head. “That’s no use. As rapidly as conditions were changing in the interstadial, I’d essentially have to start over from scratch. And what I found out would not be much help in the era of human migration that the Patrol is interested in.”

“Yeah. The suggestion was vetoed on those grounds. But give Corwin credit.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Her words quickened. “I’ve been thinking hard. And this is what I’ve come up with. My work is worth finishing—the rough sketch that’s all we can ever hope for, but that will be mighty useful. And maybe I could help the Tulat, just a little, very carefully, under supervision, not to change their destiny or anything but just to take some pain out of those few insignificant individual lives. Dr. Corwin hinted—we went out to dinner—At the time, I dismissed the notion out of hand, but since then I’ve been thinking. What if I didn’t go back to Aryuk, to the Tulat, but joined him among the newcomers?”

It thudded in Everard’s head. He laid his pipe down and built his poker face. “Unconventional,” his mouth said.

Tamberly laughed. “One thing I’ll ask you to do is tip the word to the good doctor that he’s not my type. I wouldn’t want him disappointed. Besides, we’ll both have a whopping lot of work to get done in a short time, or we really might affect those people too much.”

She grew altogether serious. Did he see tears sparkle in her lashes? “Manse, that’s what I need you for. Your advice, for openers, but then, if you decide I’m not totally out of my gourd, your influence. I asked my immediate superior what he thought, and he told me to get lost. As you say, unconventional; he’s no prude, but in his mind the policy has been set and nobody should bother him about it. Ralph Corwin, too. He’ll probably be taken aback when something he said over his second cocktail rises up and hollers, ‘Boo!’ You’ve got the authority, the prestige, the connections in this outfit. Please, won’t you at least think about it?”

He did, stormily at first. They talked and talked. Before he agreed, the sun was down. When he had invited her into the Patrol, she whooped for joy. Now she was too tired for more than a whispered “Thank you, thank you.”

They both revived, though, when they went out to dinner. He’d arrived sufficiently well dressed for the Empress of China, and she already was. Afterward they did some pub crawling. They talked and talked. When he bade her goodnight at her parents’ door, she kissed hirn.

13,211 B.C.

I

Days dwindled away into winter, blizzards laid snow thick over earth frozen ringingly hard, the brown bear shared dreams with the dead but the white bear walked the sea ice. We spent most of the enormous nights in their shelters.

Step by step, slow at first but faster and faster, the sun returned. Winds mildened, drifts melted, streams brawled swollen, floes ground each other to bits, calves of horned beasts and mammoth tottered newborn over steppe where flowers burst forth as many as stars, the migratory birds were coming home. For Us it had always been the happiest of seasons, until now.

They dreaded the trackless interior, its wolves and ghosts, but cross it they must. In fall the hunters had come along to show the way and made them pile up cairns to mark it. Thereafter they went by themselves, bearing the gifts required of them. Once snow was on the ground they were free until spring. But during the warmer time, between every full moon and full moon, men from each family would make the journey. So did the hunters command.

Heavily burdened, Aryuk and his sons took three days. He knew the return would need less than two. Some homes were farther off than his, some not so far, but these absences weighed upon all, for while traveling you could not hunt, gather, or work for your household. Having come back, you would spend more days getting together the next load. Not much time or strength was left to take care of your own livelihood.

There had been talk of meeting so as to fare in a single band. Against the protection and consolation of that you must set the still more days it would cost most people. In the end, We decided groups should go by themselves. Perhaps they would do differently later, when they had learned more about this new order of things.

Thus Aryuk made the first springtime trek with his sons Barakyn, Oltas, and Dzuryan. Behind them they left Aryuk’s and Barakyn’s women and small children. They carried long, stout pieces of wood, such as they had been told to bring, and food to keep them going. Wind and rainshowers harried them, often mud caught at their feet, always the loads bore downward. Howls and distant roars haunted their nights. By day they trudged on over the rising land. At last they reached the hunter camp.

From a height they looked across it. The site lay not far below them, a broad flat ground where soil was well-drained. From still higher hills northward, a brook ran through the middle of it.

Awe smote Us. On their last visit in fall, they had thought the steep-sided leather shelters were many, surely more than all the Tula dwellings put together. Aryuk had wondered if they would be warm enough for winter. Today he saw that the strangers had since made themselves great huts of stone, turf, and hides. Tiny at their distance, people moved among them. Smoke from fires rose into an afternoon gone calm and sunny.

“How did they do this?” marveled Oltas. “What powers are theirs?”

Aryuk remembered certain remarks of Her Who Knows Strangeness. “I think they have tools we do not,” he answered slowly.

“Just the same,” Barakyn said, “so much work! How could they find time for it?”

“They kill large beasts,” Aryuk reminded him. “One of those will feed them for many days.”

Tears of weariness and pain coursed down Dzuryan’s cheeks. “Then why n-need they take from Us?” he stammered. To that his father had no reply.

He led the party downslope. On the way they passed a long, gravelly hillock. Beneath it, where a spring ran forth, hidden from the settlement and hitherto from them, stood something that brought them up short. For a moment darkness whirled through Aryuk’s head.

“She,” Barakyn croaked.

“No, no,” wailed Oltas. “She is our friend, she would not move here.”

Aryuk took hold of his spirit, lest it flutter from him. He might have cried out too, were he not so numbingly tired. Staring at the round gray shell, he said, “We do not know, but perhaps soon we shall. Come.”

They plodded onward. Folk spied them. Children dashed out, shouting, skipping, fearless. Several men followed at a lope. They carried spears and hatchets—Aryuk had learned those words—but smiled. He supposed the rest were off hunting. Women and more children seethed around as We reached the huts. Again he noticed persons who were wrinkled, toothless, bent, blind. Here the weak need not go off to die. The young and strong could feed them.

The guides brought Us to a dwelling larger than others. Before it, clad in fur-trimmed leather and a headband with three eagle feathers, waited the man who spoke for these folk. Aryuk had come to know him as Red Wolf. That was what the name meant in his speech. He would change it now and then during his life, therefore it had to mean something. To Aryuk, his own name was merely a sound that singled him out. If he had thought about it, he might have understood that it said “Northwest Breeze” with an accent different from his, but he never did think about it.

He forgot Red Wolf. He forgot all else. Another man was coming through the crowd. He loomed over them, even over their leader. They made way for him with much respect, yet also with smiles and greetings which showed he had been among them for some while. His face was thin and lacked beard, though a mustache grew beneath the curving nose. His hair was short. Skin and eyes, body and gait, recalled Her Who Knows Strangeness; his garments and the things hung at his waist were wholly like hers.

Dzuryan groaned aloud.

“Lay down loads,” Red Wolf bade Us. He had gained some knowledge of their tongue. “Good. We feed you, you sleep here.”

The one from beyond the world halted at his side. Unburdened, Aryuk ached but felt oddly light, as if about to fly off on the wind. Or was it only his head spinning? “Rich gathering be yours,” the one hailed in Our words. “Be not afraid. Do you remember Khara-tse-tuntyn-bayuk?”

“She … she lived near our dwelling,” Aryuk said.

“You are that very family?” The one was plainly delighted. “You yourself are Aryuk? I have been waiting for this.”

“Is she with you?”

“No. She is of my kindred, however, and asked me to give you her friendliest thoughts. My name is—the Cloud People call me Tall Man. I have come to spend a few years among them and learn about them and their ways. I want to know you better too.”

Red Wolf stirred, impatiently, and barked something in his own speech. Tall Man replied likewise. Words went between them, until Red Wolf made a chopping gesture, as if to say, “So be it.” Tall Man looked back at Aryuk and his sons, who stood mute within the encirclement of hunters’ eyes.

“Talk goes easiest when I help,” Tall Man said, “though I have warned them they should take the trouble to learn your tongue better. In time I also will depart this country, and meanwhile I will not always be here. Red Wolf wants to talk with you when you have rested, about what you and your folk are to bring later.”

“What have we to bring, other than driftwood and deadwood?” Aryuk asked, his voice gone as dull as his heart.

“They want more of that. But also they want good stone for their tools and weapons. They want peat and dung, dried for burning. They want pelts. They want dried fish, blubber, everything the sea gives.”

“We cannot!” Aryuk cried. “They already crave so much that we can barely feed ourselves.”

Tall Man looked unhappy. “This is hard for you,” he said. “I cannot free you of it. But I can make it bearable, if you heed me. I will tell the Cloud People that they can get nothing from you if they cause you to die. I will have them give you and show you the use of things that make fishing and hunting easier. They fashion … points that fish bite on and then cannot escape, spearheads that go into án animal and stay fast. Clothes like theirs will keep you warm and dry—-” His tone faltered. “I am sorry I may not do more for you than this. But we can try—”

He stopped, because Aryuk no longer heard him.

Red Wolf had shifted to the side of the entrance. Forth from it crept a woman. She was garbed like others, but the clothes were dirty, greasy, and stenchful. Her belly bulged them out. Hair hung lank past a face gone gaunt. When she rose to her feet, she wavered on them and her arms dangled slack.

“Daraku,” Aryuk whispered. “Is it you?” He had not seen her here before, nor been able to ask what had become of her. He had wondered whether Red Wolf told her to stay out of sight, lest she bring on trouble, or whether she hid in fear and shame, or whether she was dead.

She stumbled to him. He embraced her and wept.

Red Wolf threw a command at her. She cowered against Aryuk. Tall Man frowned. He spoke harshly. Red Wolf and the hunters who were in earshot bristled. Tall Man lowered his voice. Bit by bit, Red Wolf eased. At last he spread his hands and turned his back, a sign that he was done with the matter.

Aryuk looked across Daraku’s shoulder. How sharply her bones jutted under the buckskin coat. Hope flickered in him. Through a blur, through a surf he saw, he heard Tall Man:

“This girl that they took away is your daughter, is she not? I have spoken to her, a little, though she hardly ever answers. They wanted to learn your speech from her. They have done that now, as much as she was able to tell them before sadness grew too heavy in her. They still want the child she carries, to be another hunter or another mother for them, but I have gotten them to let her go. She may return with you.”

Aryuk flattened himself and Daraku on the earth before Tall Man. Her brothers did the same.

Afterward it was to eat—the Cloud women were generous, though the food was so different that We could not swallow much—and sleep, together again, in a tent raised for them, and then talk at length, Tall Man explaining between Aryuk and Red Wolf. A great deal was said about what We must do henceforward and what would be done for them in exchange. Aryuk wondered how long it would take for him to discover the full meaning. Certain was that life had changed beyond his power to grasp.

He and his children set out for home on a morning when wind flung raw gusts of rain. They walked slowly and often stopped, for Daraku could only stumble along. She stared before her and seldom answered when spoken to, then in just two or three words. Yet when Aryuk stroked her cheek or took her hand, she smiled enough for him to see.

That night while they were camped, her pangs came upon her. Rain cut and torrented. Aryuk, Barakyn, Oltas, and Dzuryan clustered close around, trying to give shelter and warmth. She began screaming and did not stop. She was so young; her hips were still narrow. When morning sneaked gray from the unseen east, Aryuk saw that she bled heavily. Rain washed it off into the peat moss. Her face was stretched across the skull and her look was blind. She had scant voice left. The last noises rattled away into silence.

“The baby is dead too,” Barakyn said.

“That is as well,” Aryuk mumbled. “I do not know what I would have done about it.”

Afar, a mammoth trumpeted. The wind loudened. This was going to be a cold summer.

II

The Patrol team came late on a moonless night, to do their work as fast and quietly as possible and then disappear. Local folk would soon know that another marvelous thing had happened, but best not have it occur in their sight. Always minimize impact.

However, Wanda Tamberly could arrive after sunrise. Her hopper brought her straight inside the shelter that had been erected for her. Heart thumping hard, she dismounted and looked around. The transparency was set at translucent and light was ample. Familiar stuff was arranged neatly enough. She’d need a while, though, to shift it around to the way she liked it. First let’s have a peek at the neighborhood. Warmly clad in preparation, she added a mackinaw, unsealed the entrance, and stepped out.

The time was fall in the year after she last left Beringia (and she had spent only a few weeks in the twentieth century before this return). Astronomically, the season was not very far along, but snow could fly any day now, at a subarctic latitude in an ice age. Morning lay bright and bleak. Wind whistled over sere grass. Hills narrowed horizons north and south. A heap of till, left when the glacier retreated, bulked above her dome and Corwin’s. A spring trickled from its foot. She missed the sea and dwarf trees at her earlier camp. What birds wheeled overhead were fewer, and inland species.

The domes were almost touching. Corwin emerged from his, immaculate in khaki, cardigan, and high boots. He beamed. “Welcome,” he greeted, striding over to shake hands. “How are you?”

“Okay, thanks,” Tamberly said. “How’ve you been getting along?”

He raised his brows. “What, you haven’t played back my reports?” he asked playfully. “I am shocked and grieved. After all the trouble I went to, composing them.”

“Composing” is right, she thought. Not that they aren’t scientific accounts. Elegant diction doesn’t hurt them any. It’s this sense I got of… glossing over, here and there. Maybe I’m prejudiced. “Of course I did,” she replied. Taking care to smile: “Including the objections you registered to my being reassigned here.”

He stayed amicable. “No reflection on you, Agent Tamberly, as I hope you realized. I simply thought it would add an unnecessary complication and risk, including the risk to you. I was overruled. Quite possibly I was mistaken. Indeed, I’m sure we can work well together. From a personal standpoint, how can I be other than happy to have company like yours?”

Tamberly made haste to sidestep that question. “No hard feelings, sir. But we won’t actually collaborate, you know. You study the, uh, Cloud People. I need to do a winter’s worth of observations on the animals, to get a halfway Complete picture of certain life cycles that seem to be critical to the ecology.”

She had repeated the obvious as the most gracious way she could think of to say, “Let me go about my business in peace. I mean to keep out from under your feet, and from under you.”

He took it in good part: “Certainly. With experience, we’ll work out the practical details, of noninterference with one another’s projects, cooperation and mutual assistance as called for. Meanwhile, may I invite you to breakfast? Since you’ve doubtless synchronized yourself with local time, I imagine you didn’t eat before you left.”

“Well, I figured—”

“Oh, do accept. We must have a serious discussion, and it may as well be in comfort. I assure you, I am not a bad cook.”

Tamberly yielded. Corwin had arranged things inside his shelter more neatly and compactly than she had ever managed in hers, making it a trifle roomier. He insisted that she take the chair, and poured coffee from a pot already at work. “This is an upper-case Occasion,” he declared. “Ordinarily in the field one merely refuels, eh? Today, what would you say to bacon, French toast, and maple syrup?”

“I’d say, ‘Let me at ’em before I trample the fence down,’” she admitted.

“Splendid.” He busied himself at the tiny electric stove. The nuclear miniunit that powered it also kept the dome warm. She shed her mackinaw, leaned back, sipped the excellent coffee, and let her gaze rove. Books—his tastes were more highbrow than hers, unless he’d gone for these when he knew she would join him; they didn’t seem much handled. The two he had published while in academe stood among them. Some implements rested on a shelf, gifts or exchanges which he probably meant to take home for souvenirs. Among them were a lance with a composite head and a stone-bladed, antler-hafted hatchet, held together by thongs and glue. Even the handleless cutters, scrapers, burins, and other tools were finely made. Tamberly recalled the crude work of the We; tears stung her eyes.

“I trust you are aware,” he said, keeping his look on the cookery, “the Wanayimo think you’re my wife. That is, when I told them you were coming, they took it for granted. They haven’t the free and easy sexual mores of the Tulat.”

“Wanayimo? Oh, yes, the Cloud People. Uh—”

“Not to worry. They accept that you will have your own house, to work your own magic. You’re safe among them, especially since they think of you as mine. Otherwise … fear of your powers might stay their hands, but scruples would not, and some young bucks could decide this was a test of their courage, their manhood. After all, I had to tell them beforehand what they were bound to find out, that you were earlier associated with the Tulat, whom they don’t really consider human.”

Grimness drew Tamberly’s lips tight. “I’ve gathered that, from your accounts that I’ve seen. Frankly, I wish you’d paid more attention to it. The relationship between the two peoples, I mean.”

“My dear, I can’t cover everything. Not a fraction of what I should, if this were a proper anthropological undertaking. I’ve only been with them seven months or a bit less, their chronology.” He’d gone uptime occasionally, to confer and take a rest, but unlike her among the We, always came back to a day soon after his departure. Continuity was important in human affairs, in ways that it was not when you studied wildlife.

I’ve got to admit he’s done a remarkable job in so short a span, and under a lot of other handicaps as well, she thought. He did have a head start on the language; it’s close to that of tribes in eastern Siberia who’d been visited, and not terribly different from that of later generations migrating through Canada, whom he himself had worked with. But that was his solitary advantage at the beginning. It took nerve, too. He could’ve been killed. They’re a fierce and touchy lot … he reports.

“And I scarcely have more time ahead of me,” Corwin continued. “Next year the tribe moves on eastward. I may or may not find it worthwhile to travel with them, or rejoin them wherever they resettle, but the interruption will be disruptive at best.”

“What?” Tamberly exclaimed. “You haven’t entered that!”

“No, not yet. It’s such a new discovery for me. At present, they fully expect to stay, they believe they’ve reached their Promised Land. In order to get some idea of how they’d develop in it, the better to understand their interaction with the next immigrants, I jaunted several years uptime. The region is abandoned. I established that will happen this coming spring. No, I don’t know why. Do they find certain resources insufficient? Perhaps you can solve the riddle. I doubt they will feel any threat from the west. I ascertained that no new Paleo-Indians will arrive in these parts for some fifty years, as slow and fitful as their migrations are.”

Then my We will have that long a peace. The release within Tamberly lasted barely a second. She remembered what had been going on, and apparently would as long as the Cloud People remained. When they left, how many We would be alive?

She forced herself to tackle the matter. “You said a minute ago, they don’t look on the Tulat as being quite human,” she stated. “Your accounts say very little about how they actually treat them. You just mention ‘tribute.’ What is the truth?”

His tone grew slightly irritated. “I told you, I haven’t had the chance to examine every detail, and I never shall.” He broke eggs into a mixing bowl as if they were the heads of referees who had rejected an article. “I acquired the Tula language in advance. I spoke with some who came here bearing the levy; the season for that started shortly after my arrival. I mitigated the lot of two or three individuals. I paid a visit to one of their miserable little warrens on the coast. What more do you expect? Like it or not, my concern, my duty is with the peoples who will make the future. Aren’t you supposed to concentrate on those things in nature that are important to them?”

His testiness evaporated. He offered her a smile. “I don’t want to seem callous,” he added. “You are new in the service, and from a country that had had a remarkably fortunate history. I don’t want to seem condescending to you, either. But the fact is that throughout humanity’s existence, till indefinitely far uptime of our birth period, clans, tribes, nations normally regard the rest of mankind as booty, potential or actual—unless somebody else is sufficiently strong to be an enemy, potential or actual.

“You’ll find the Wanayimo aren’t so bad. Not Nazis or, for that matter, Aztecs. War was thrust on them, because Siberia is becoming overpopulated for the resources available to Paleolithic technology. They keep memories of that defeat, but you can’t call them warriors when they no longer have anyone to fight. They are bold, macho, yes. That’s a requirement for the life they lead, hunting big, dangerous animals. It’s as natural for them to exploit the Tulat as it is to exploit the caribou. They are not deliberately cruel. In fact, they have a certain reverence for all life. But they take from the world what they can, for their wives, children, old ones, and themselves. They must.”

Reluctantly, Tamberly nodded. Corwin’s reports had described what a stroke of fortune it was for the Cloud People to come upon the We. Yet it would not have been that had they failed to make use of it. He had not foreseen their doing so. Such a circumstance was unprecedented in their experience. Some genius among them had made an invention—taxation—that immensely benefited those folk to whom he owed his loyalty. It would be made again and again in the millennia ahead, around the world, usually with less justification.

The wandering had been as long as and far more desperate than the mythical forty years of the Hebrews in the wilderness. No manna fell from heaven, only snow, sleet, ice-cold rain. Others already occupied the good hunting grounds, and in a short time mustered themselves to drive the strangers onward. When at last they reached these parts, farther from the Asian motherland than men of their race had ventured before, their first winter was almost as cruel as the Pilgrims’ first winter was to be in Massachusetts.

Now they flourished. Wood brought by the We enabled them to replace improvised shelters with real houses. The breaking of a spearshaft was no longer a calamity. Usable stone, fuel, fish, flesh, fat, skins—such things they could and did get for themselves. However, what the We added was priceless. It freed the energies of the Cloud People for bolder hunts, bigger constructions, craftsmanship ever more careful, art ever more beautiful, songs and dances, thoughts and dreams.

Corwin had pointed out that, for pragmatic reasons, they were following his advice and giving their subjects some recompense, fishhooks, harpoons, needles, knives, stoneworking techniques, ideas. It was progress, he said. “Yeah, and I’ll bet the We sit happily around in the evenings singing spirituals,” Tamberly had muttered.

Still, she knew the primordial Americans were doomed. Hard though the newcomers made a life that had been tough to begin with, at least these aborigines weren’t being slaughtered like Tasmanians by nineteenth-century whites or pushed beyond their thin margin of survival like Ukrainians and Ethiopians by twentieth-century governments. Nor were alien diseases ravaging them; the bacteriological isolation of New World from Old would not start till Beringia drowned. As long as they brought their tribute and made no trouble, the We could live in their own ways. If occasionally a Wanayimo brave passing by forced himself upon a Tula girl, well, among her folk that wasn’t the shattering disgrace it would have been among his; and wasn’t it better the genes mingle than that one strain go entirely extinct? Wasn’t it?

Tamberly noticed Corwin’s regard. Time had passed. She shook herself. “Sorry,” she said. “Woolgathering.”

“Not overly pleasant, I suspect.” His voice was sympathetic. “Really, matters could be far worse. They are far worse, in too much of history. Here we can even ameliorate things a bit. Oh, just a bit, and most cautiously. But, for example, I found that, early on, the Wanayimo had taken a daughter of your friend Aryuk—Daraku, her name is; you probably know her well—they’d brought her here. She wasn’t purposely mistreated. Their idea was simply that they needed someone from whom to learn the rudiments of her language. But she’d fallen into deep depression—homesickness, culture shock, lack of companionship. I persuaded them to give her back to them.”

Tamberly had jumped to her feet. “Huh?” She stood for a moment staring. The horror receded. A measure of warmth followed. “Why, that, that’s wonderful of you. Thank you.” She swallowed.

He smiled. “Now, now. Common decency, after all, when the opportunity presented itself. Don’t get overwrought, especially not before breakfast. Which will be ready in the proverbial two lambshakes.”

The smell of frying bacon restored her mood faster than she supposed was morally right. Over the meal he kept conversation light, often humorous; yes, he could talk about something besides himself, and give her a chance to speak too. “Delightful city, San Francisco, agreed, but someday you must explore her in the 1930s, before she professionalized her charm. Tell me, though, about that Exploratorium you mentioned. It sounds like a marvelous innovation, quite in the old and truly spirit….”

When they were done and he had lighted what he called the virginal cigarette of the day, he got serious. “After I’ve washed the dishes—and no, you may not help, at any rate on this first morning—I had better take you to meet Worika-kuno.” She recognized the name, Red Wolf, from frequent mention in his reports. “A courtesy rather than a requirement, but among themselves, the Wanayimo value courtesy as much as will the Japanese.”

“He’s the chief, right?” Tamberly asked. Her studies had not made his status perfectly clear to her.

“Not in the sense of being invested with any formal authority. Tribal decisions are a matter of consensus among the men and the old women, those who’ve survived past childbearing age. Outside of council, young women have a tacitly granted say in everyday affairs. However, by sheer ability and force of personality, someone is bound to dominate, to be the most respected, whose word usually settles things. That man is Worika-kuno. Get on the right side of him, and your path will be reasonably smooth.”

“What about the, um, medicine man?”

“Yes, the shaman does have a unique and powerful position. My relationship with him is somewhat precarious. I have to go out of my way, over and over, to show that I have no intention of becoming his rival or stealing any of his prestige. So will you. Frankly, you were dispatched to this precise date on my recommendation, after it was determined that you would return, because he’ll be preoccupied, mostly secluded, for the next several days. Give you time to learn the ropes before you come in contact with him.”

“What’s he busy at?”

“A death. Yesterday a band that had been out hunting brought home the body of a comrade. A bison gored him. That was more than a loss, it was an evil omen, because he was a skillful hunter, a good provider. Now the shaman must magic the bad luck away. Fortunately for everyone’s morale, Worika-kuno played the animal till his followers got it killed.”

Tamberly whistled softly. She knew the Pleistocene bison.

In due course she accompanied Corwin to the village. It was an impressive sight after they came around the concealing hillock. She had seen images, but they conveyed no sense of the human energy that had gone into this work. A dozen or so rectangular sod houses, timber-framed, bungalow-sized, stood on clay foundations along the banks of a shallow stream. Smoke rose from most of the turf roofs. Offside lay a ceremonial area, defined by a ring of stones, at its center a firepit and a cairn covered with the skulls of big animals. Some were from the steppe, some from the woods and vales south of it: caribou, moose, bison, horse, bear, lion, mammoth on top. At the opposite end of the settlement was a workplace. There a fire blazed and women in buckskin gowns or, for the youngest and hardiest, the lightly woven tunics of summer, prepared the latest kill. Despite the death of Snowstrider, talk and laughter blew on the wind. Prolonged grief was a luxury these people could not afford.

The chatter died away as they saw the pair approaching. Others came from the houses or ceased their amusements among them. Those were mainly men, off duty; they did the hunting and the brute-force heavy work while women handled the home chores. Children hung back. Corwin had related that they were greatly loved and generally brash, but were taught to defer when deference was due.

The scientists passed on through an obbligato of greetings and ritual gestures, which Corwin returned. Nobody tagged after them. Someone had apprised Red Wolf, for he waited at his dwelling. Two mammoth tusks flanked its doorway and he was better clad than average. Otherwise nothing marked him out but his presence, his panther assurance. He raised a hand. “Always are you welcome, Tall Man,” he said gravely. “Always may you have good hunting and, in your home, contentment.”

“May fair weather and kindly spirits ever walk with you, Red Wolf,” Corwin responded. “Here I bring her of whom I told you, that we may pay our respects.”

Tamberly followed the speeches. Corwin had downloaded his knowledge of the language, once he had a reasonable command of it, into a mnemonic unit uptime, and she had had it entered in her brain. Likewise had he painlessly acquired the additional vocabulary and nuances of Tula that she discovered for herself. (He “had!” No, he “would,” some fifteen thousand years in the future.) Eventually, when they had no further use for the knowledge, it would be wiped from them to make room for something else. That was a rather sad thought.

She pulled her attention back to the Ice Age. Red Wolf’s look lay keen upon her. “We have met before, Sun Hair,” he murmured.

“W-we have.” She rallied her wits. “I belong to no folk here, but go among the animals. I want to be friends with the Cloud People.”

“From time to time you may wish a guide,” he said shrewdly.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Such a one will find me thankful.” That was the closest this language could come to saying that he would be well rewarded. Let’s face it, with the kind of help available here, I can accomplish ten times what I was able to earlier.

Red Wolf spread his arms. “Enter and be blessed. We shall talk undisturbed.”

The interior was a single room. Flat stones at the middle made a hearth on which a fire smoldered; starting one afresh was toilsome, to be avoided as much as possible. Low clay platforms along the walls, richly provided with hides, could sleep about twenty adults and children. Hardly any of them were now on hand. Given daylight and reasonable weather, the outdoors had far more to offer. Red Wolf introduced his pretty wife, Little Willow. He went on to present another woman. Her eyes were red from weeping, her cheeks were gashed, and her hair hung unbraided, signs of mourning. She was Moonlight on the Water, Snowstrider’s widow.

“We plan how to provide for her and her small ones,” Red Wolf explained. “She does not wish to take a new man at once. Well, I think she can stay here until she feels ready to.”

He gestured his guests to sit on skins spread near the fire. Little Willow brought a leather bottle, not unlike a Spanish bota, that held fermented cloudberry juice. Tamberly squirted a little into her mouth, just to be polite, and learned it wasn’t bad. She was being treated more or less as a man, she knew, but then, her status was extraordinary. At that, Little Willow and Moonlight on the Water weren’t kept in purdah, but listened. If either thought she had something important to say, she would speak.

“I heard how you slew the terrible bison,” Tamberly told Red Wolf. “That was valiantly done.”—the more so when, in his mind, it must have been possessed by a malignant spirit.

“I had help,” he said, not modestly but matter-of-factly. He grinned. “By myself, I do not always win. Maybe you can teach me how to make a fox trap that works. Mine never do. I wonder if somehow I once offended the Father of Foxes. Toddling around as a baby, did I leave my sign on top of his?” The grin became a laugh.

He can joke about the unknown, Tamberly heard herself think. Damn, I believe I’m going to like him. No doubt I shouldn’t, but I believe I’ll have to.

III

She mounted her timecycle, projected a map with a coordinate grid, set her destination, touched the activator. Immediately the dome was gone from around her and she back at her old campsite. Locking the controls, though neither man nor beast would come so near so alien an object in the next few hours, she started off afoot.

Sky and sea reached steely gray, sunless. Even over distance and against the wind she could hear how surf crashed on Beringia and tore at it. The wind skirled across dead grass, dark moss, bare shrubs and trees, strewn boulders, out of a north where darkness had engulfed the horizon. Cold laved her face and searched for any opening in her clothes. The season’s first blizzard was on its way southward.

Lifetimes of feet had beaten the path she found and took. It led her down into the gulch. Depth walled off most wind, but the river, engorged by high tide, foamed dirty white. She reached the bluff, now barely above that violence, where three stone huts huddled by a spring.

Somebody must have spied her through the dwarf alder, for as she arrived, Aryuk pulled aside the bundled wattles that served him for a door, crawled forth, and rose. He gripped a hand ax. His shoulders were stooped under a carrion skin. Between mane and beard she saw a haggardness that shocked her.

“Ar-Aryuk, my friend—” she stammered.

He stared at her a long time, as if trying to remember or understand what she was. When he spoke, she could hardly make out the mumble in the roar of river and surf. “We heard you have come back. Not to Us.”

“No, I—” She reached toward him. He flinched before he stood his ground. She lowered her arm. “Aryuk, yes, I stay with the Mammoth Slayers, but only because I need to. I am not of them. I want to help you.”

He eased a little—less in relief, she thought, than yielding to his weariness. “True, Ulungu said you were kind to him and his sons when they were there. You gave them the Lovely Sweet.” He meant chocolate. In earlier days she had perforce handed it around very rarely. Else a van-sized Patrol vehicle couldn’t have brought enough.

She recalled the dull gratitude of those who no longer hoped. God damn it, I will not cry. “I have Lovely Sweet for you and everybody here. First, though,” since Aryuk had made no move to invite her in, not that she really wanted to enter the hovel, “why did you not come too, this moon?”

It had been the probable last month until spring for the We to bring tribute. After encountering the Bubbling Springs folk, she’d been glad she was away in the field when others appeared. What consolation she could offer was so tiny, and she hadn’t slept that whole night. However, she had asked Corwin to inform her of Aryuk’s advent. She couldn’t forbear to meet him. If need be, she’d hop a few days downtime. But he never showed.

’The Mammoth Slayers are angry,” she warned. “I told them I would find out what the trouble is. Do you mean to go soon? I fear a storm is about to strike.”

The shaggy head drooped. “We cannot go. We have nothing to bring.”

She tautened. “Why?”

“At the fall gathering I told everybody that I did not think we would,” Aryuk said in the rambling Tula fashion, but with none of the Tula liveliness. “Ulungu is a true friend. After he and his sons had made their own last trip, they came to see if they could help us. That was when I learned you had joined the Tall Man.”

Oh, God, how betrayed you must have felt.

“They could do nothing, for we ourselves had done nothing,” Aryuk went on. “I told them they should go home and care for their women and children. This has been a hard summer. Fish, shellfish, small game, everything was scant. We went hungry because we must spend time getting things and traveling for the Mammoth Slayers. Others suffered too, but the new hooks and spears helped. They are not much use here, where schools of fish and the seal that prey on them seldom pass by.” Shoal water in the estuary, currents, something like that, Tamberly guessed. “We must make ready for winter. If we worked any more for the Mammoth Slayers, we would starve.”

Aryuk raised his head. His eyes met hers. Dignity descended upon them. “Perhaps we can give them more next summer than we did in this,” he finished. “Say to them that I alone decided.”

“I will.” She wet her lips. “No, I will do better than that. Fear not. They are not as—as—” Tula had no word meaning “cruel” or “merciless.” It wouldn’t be fair to the Cloud People anyway. “They are not as fierce as you think.”

Knuckles whitened above the hand ax. “They take whatever they want. They kill whoever stands against them.”

“There was a fight, true. Do the We never kill one another?”

His stare became wind-bleak. “Two more among Us have died at their hands since then.” I didn’t know that! Corwin doesn’t bother to inquire. “And you speak for the Mammoth Slayers. Well, you have heard what I have to say.”

“No, I, I only … only am trying to … make you happier.” Give you heart to last out the winter. In spring, for whatever reason, the invaders will pull up stakes. But I’m not allowed to predict that. And you doubtless wouldn’t believe me if I did. “Aryuk, I will see to it that the Cloud People are content. They will want no more from Alder River before the snow is off the ground again.”

He stayed wary. “Can you be sure? Even you?”

“I can. They will heed me. Did Tall Man not make them give you back Daraku?”

Abruptly an old man stood there under the darkening sky. “That was no use. She died on the way home. The child that so many of them put into her, it took her away with it.”

“What? Oh, no, no.” Tamberly realized she had moaned in English. “Why did you not let Tall Man know?”

“He was never there when I was, afterward,” said the flat voice. “I saw him twice, but not nearby, and he did not seek me. Why should I go to him, then, if I dared? Can he call back the dead? Can you?”

She remembered her own father, whom she could gladden with a phone call and overjoy by stepping across his threshold. “I think you would like me to leave you alone,” she said as emptily.

“No, come inside,” where the rest crouch in murk, in fear and stifled, stifling rage. “I am ashamed at how little food we can offer, but come inside.”

What can I do, what can I say? If I’d grown up alongside Manse, or in some earlier era, I’d have known what, young though I am. But where-when I hail from, they send printed sympathy cards and talk about the grief process. “I … I should not. I must not, today. You need … to think about me, till you understand I am your friend … always. Then we can be together. First think about me. I will watch over you. I will care for you.”

Am I wise or weak?

“I love you,” she blurted. “All of you. Here.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out the chocolate bars. They fell at his feet. Somehow she smiled before she turned and left him. He didn’t protest, merely stood where he was and looked after her. I guess I am doing the right thing.

A flaw of wind whirled down to rattle skinny boughs. She hastened her steps upward. Aryuk shouldn’t see her cry.

IV

The council, the grown men and old women of the tribe, crowded the house where they met; but the sacred fire could not burn outdoors when a storm bade fair to blow for days. The booming and snarling of air came through thick walls as an undertone. Flames on the hearthstones guttered low. They picked out of darkness, waveringly, the crone who squatted to tend them. Otherwise the long room was filled with gloom and smoke and the smells of leather-clad bodies packed together. It was hot. When the fire jumped high for a second, sweat glistened on the faces of Red Wolf, Sun Hair, Answerer, and others in the innermost circle around it.

The same light shimmered along the steel that Tamberly drew and raised high. “You have heard, you have understood, you know,” she intoned. On solemn occasions the Cloud People used a repetitive style that to her sounded almost Biblical. “For that which I ask, if you will grant me my wish, I give to you this knife. Take it of me, Red Wolf; try it; make known if it be good.”

The man received it. The sternness of his features had melted away. She thought of a child on Christmas morning. Silence gripped the assembly until their breath seemed as loud as the gale, heavy as surf. Nonetheless he tested its heft and balance with skilled care. Stooping, he picked up a stick. His first attempt to slice it was awkward. Flint and obsidian take edges as keen as any metal, but they won’t cut seasoned wood, being too fragile, and you can’t properly whittle with them. He was also unaccustomed to the shape, the handle. With a little coaching, though, he got the knack fast.

“This comes alive as I hold it,” he whispered raptly.

“It has many uses,” Tamberly said. “I will show them to you, and the way of caring for the blade.” When a stone grew blunt, you chipped it afresh, till it got too small. Sharpening steel properly is an art, but she felt sure he’d master it. “This is if you will grant me my wish, O People.”

Red Wolf looked about. “Is such our will?” he inquired sonorously. “That I take the knife on behalf of us all, and for our return gift we forgive the tribute that the family of the Vole man Aryuk should have brought?”

A buzz of assent ran among shadows. Answerer’s harsh voice cut through. “No, here is a bad thing.”

Damn! Tamberly thought, dismayed. I’d expected the whole business would be pro forma. What ails that wretch?

The talk rose to a soft hubbub and died out. Eyeballs gleamed. Red Wolf gave the shaman a hard stare. “We have beheld what the Bright Stone can do,” he said slowly. “You have beheld. Is this not worth many loads of wood or fish, many skins of otter and hare?”

The wrinkled countenance writhed. “Why do the tall pale strangers favor the Vole People? What secrets are between them?”

Anger flared in Tamberly. “All know that I dwelt with them before you entered this land,” she snapped. “They are my friends. Do you not stand by your own friends, O Cloud People?”

“Then are you friends to us?” Answerer shrilled.

“If you will let me be!”

Red Wolf lowered his arm between the two. “Enough,” he said. “Shall we squabble over a single moon’s share from a single family, like gulls over a carcass? Do you fear the Vole folk, Answerer?”

Shrewd! Tamberly cheered. The shaman could only glare and reply sullenly, “We know not what witchcraft they command, what sly tricks are theirs.” She remembered Manse Everard remarking once that societies frequently attribute abnormal powers to those whom they lord it over—early Scandinavians to the Finns, medieval Christians to the Jews, white Americans to the blacks….

Red Wolf’s tone went dry. “I have heard of none. Has anyone?” And he lifted the knife over his head. A natural-born leader for sure. Standing there like that, Lordy, but he’s handsome.

Neither debate nor vote followed. That was not the way of the Wanayimo, and would have been unnecessary in any case. While they depended on their shaman for intercession with the supernatural and for spells against sickness, they gave him no more homage than was reasonable, and indeed looked somewhat askance at him: a man celibate, sedentary, peculiar. Tamberly sometimes recalled Catholic acquaintances, respectful toward their priests but not slavish and not uncommonly in disagreement.

Acceptance of her proposal went like a quiet billow, more felt than uttered. Answerer sat down cross-legged, drew a buckskin cloak over his head, and sulked. Men gathered around Red Wolf to marvel at the thing they had gotten. Tamberly was free to leave.

Corwin joined her at the exit. He had stood silent in the background, as beseemed an outsider present by courtesy. Dim though the light was, she saw the dourness upon him. “Come to my dome,” he ordered. She bridled, then mentally shrugged. She’d rather expected something like this.

The door was hingeless but closely fitted into the entrance, a composite of sticks, withes, hide, and moss. Corwin freed it. Wind tried to snatch it from him. He wrestled it back into place when he and Tamberly had passed through. They raised their hoods, closed their jackets, and set off toward their camp. Air raved, bit, slammed, clawed. The snow that it drove was a white blindness. He needed a hand-held, compasslike direction indicator.

When they regained shelter, both were a little numb for a few minutes. The storm racketed, the dome fabric shivered. Objects clustered inside seemed fragile, weightless.

Neither sat down. When Corwin spoke, they stood as in confrontation. “Well,” he said, “evidently I was right. The Patrol should have kept you home where you belong.”

Tamberly had been preparing herself. Not insolent, not insubordinate, but firm. He does rank me, but he is not my boss. And Manse has told me the Patrol values independence, provided it goes along with competence. “What have I done wrong … sir?” she asked as gently as was possible in the noise.

“You know quite well,” Corwin rapped. “Unwarrantable interference.”

“I don’t believe it was, sir. Nothing that could affect events any more than we already do by being here.” And that’s taken care of. We have “always” been this small part of prehistory.

“Then why didn’t you confer with me in advance?”

Because you’d have forbidden it, of course, and I couldn’t buck that. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. No such intention, honest.” Ha! “I took for granted—well, what harm? We interact with these people. We talk, socialize, accompany them, use them for guides and reward them with little objects from uptime. Don’t we? I did more among the Tulat than I did today, by a long shot, and headquarters never objected. What’s a single knife? They can’t make any like it. It’ll break or wear out or rust away or be lost in a couple of generations at most, and nobody will remember it much longer.”

“You, a new and junior agent—” Corwin drew breath. A touch less coldly, he proceeded: “Yes, you too are given considerable discretion. That can’t be helped. But your motives. You had no sound reason for doing what you did, only a childish sentimentalism. We can’t allow that sort of attitude, Tamberly. We dare not.”

I couldn’t stand by and let Aryuk, Tseshu, their kids and grandkids be brutalized or killed. I …didn’t want Red Wolf involved in an atrocity. “I don’t know of any regulation forbidding us to do a kindness when we safely can.” She shaped a smile. “I can’t believe you’ve never been kind to somebody you cared about.”

He stood impassive for a space. It broke in a smile of his own. “Touché! I concede.” Gravely: “You did take more upon yourself than you should have. I won’t pursue the matter, but consider this a lesson, a warning.”

Genial again: “And now that that’s out of the way, let’s re-establish diplomatic relations, shall we? Sit down. I’ll make coffee, we’ll have a spot of brandy on the side, and it’s been far too long since we shared a meal.”

“I’ve mostly been in the field,” she reminded him.

“Yes, yes. However, we are weatherbound now, for days to come.”

“I figure I’ll skip uptime to when this has cleared.”

“Hm, really, my dear, your zeal is admirable, but heed the voice of experience. Occasional rest, recreation, outright loafing is highly advisable. All work and no play, you know.”

Yeah, she thought. I know what kind of R & R you have in mind. She didn’t resent it. A natural notion under these circumstances; and probably he imagined it was a compliment. No, thanks. What’s the most tactful way out of here?

V

The least of the houses, scarcely more than a hut, was Answerer’s: for the shaman dwelt alone, save for whatever demons he kept at his beck. Often, though, a man or woman of the tribe sought to him.

He and Running Fox sat at the fire. More light than it gave straggled through the hole in the roof and the smoke swirling up. Clear weather, almost warm, had followed the great wind. Magical objects seemed to stir in shadows. They were few, a drum, a whistle, engraved bones, dried herbs. Everyday possessions were meager too. His strength and life lay mainly in the spirit world.

He squinted at his visitor. They had exchanged some careful, meaningful words. “You also have your reasons for unease,” he said.

Running Fox’s sharp visage drew into a scowl. “I have,” he replied. “What quarry do the two tall strangers stalk among us?”

“Who knows?” Answerer breathed. “I have sought visions about them. None came.”

“Have they cast spells against yours?”

“I fear that may be so.”

“How could they?”

“We are far from the graves of our ancestors. Later we left our dead behind as we trekked onward. Thus far in this place there are very few to help us.”

“Snowstrider’s ghost is surely strong.”

“One man’s. Against how many of the Vole men’s?”

Running Fox bit his lip. “True. A musk ox or bison is stronger than any wolf, but a wolf pack can bring down any bull.” He pondered before he asked, “Yet—do the Vole People tend graves and stay friends with their dead, like us? Do their ghosts linger at all?”

“We do not know,” Answerer said.

Both men shivered. A mystery is more daunting than the starkest truth.

“Tall Man and Sun Hair command mighty spells and powers,” Running Fox said at last. “They call themselves our friends.”

“How much longer will they abide here?” Answerer retorted. “And would they really help us in dire need? Might they even be lulling us while they prepare our destruction?”

Running Fox smiled sourly. “Just by being on hand, they threaten your standing.”

“Enough!” snapped the shaman. “You feel yourself menaced.”

The hunter looked downward. “Well … Red Wolf and most others … honor them more than I think is wise.”

“And Red Wolf heeds you less than he did aforetime.”

“Enough!” Running Fox barked a laugh. “What would you do about it if you could?”

“If we learned more, and got a hold on them—”

Running Fox signed for caution. “One would be crazy rash to go straight against them. But they do care about the Vole People. At least, Sun Hair does.”

“So I was thinking. And what secrets, what powers, do she and they share?”

“By themselves the hairy ones are naught. They are indeed like voles, which a fox kills in a single bite. If we took them by surprise, unbeknownst to Tall Man and Sun Hair—”

“Can such a deed be hidden from those two?”

“I have seen both of them surprised when something unawaited happened, a ptarmigan breaking cover, river ice suddenly cracking underfoot, that kind of ordinary thing. They are not aware of all that is in the world … any more than you are.”

“Still, you are a daring man.”

“But not a stupid one,” said Running Fox, turning impatient. “How many days have we been sounding each other out, you and I?”

“It is time we spoke openly,” Answerer agreed. “You think to go there, I daresay to that very Aryuk whom she holds especially dear, and wring the truth out of him.”

“I need a companion.”

“I am not a man of weapons.”

“I can do that work. You, for your part, understand spells, demons, ghosts.” Running Fox peered at the shaman. “But can you make the journey?”

Answerer’s response came stiff. “I am no weakling.” He was in fact wiry and, while missing several teeth and seeing poorly, could walk long distances or run quite fast.

“I should have asked, do you wish to make the journey?” Running Fox amended.

Mollified, Answerer signed assent. “We will have a freeze in the next day or two,” he forecast. “This softened snow will become like stone, easy to move upon.”

Eagerness leaped behind Running Fox’s eyes, but he kept his face blank and spoke thoughtfully. “Best we leave by dark. I will say I want to go scouting by myself for a while, to learn this territory better and to think.” Folk would believe that of him.

“I will say I want to raise spirits in my house, and must not be disturbed for days and nights until I am ready to come forth,” Answerer decided.

“At that time you may indeed have mighty tidings.”

“And you may win much honor.”

“I do this for the Cloud People.”

“For all the Cloud People,” Answerer said, “now and always.”

VI

Like a hawk upon a lemming, there the invaders were. A shout pierced Aryuk’s winter drowse. He groped through its heaviness. Another cry tore it from him. That was the call of a woman and small children in fear.

His own woman, Tseshu, clutched at him. “Wait here,” he told her. Through the blindness of the den his hand found a weaponstone. He scrambled out of the skins, grass, and boughs in which they had rested, sharing warmth. Fear tore at him, but rage overwhelmed it. A beast, vexing his kin? On hands and knees, he shoved the windbreak aside and scuttled through the doorway. Rising to a crouch, he confronted what had come.

The courage spilled from him like water from a cupped hand flung open.

Cold seared his nakedness. Low in the south, the sun turned day to a blaze, hard blue sky, hard blue shadows, brilliant white over ground and alder branches. Ice gleamed duller on the stream, swept clean of snow by winds. Where the ravine ended, the stones of the beach lay rimed, and the sea itself had frozen a long ways out. Surf growled afar, as if the Bear Spirit spoke in anger.

Before him stood two men. Leather and fur covered them. One held a spear in his right hand, a hatchet in his left. Aryuk had met him before, yes, he knew that thin glittery-eyed face, they called him Running Fox in their tongue. The other was old, wrinkled, gaunt, though not much wearied by his traveling. He gripped a bone carved with signs. Both had painted their brows and cheeks, marks that must be powerful too. Tracks showed how they had come down the slope—quietly, so quietly, until they were here and yelled their summons.

Barakyn and Oltas had gone off to walk the trap lines. They would not return till tomorrow. Did these two watch and wait for my strong helpers to leave me? flashed through Aryuk. Barakyn’s woman Seset huddled at the entrance of their dwelling. Aryuk’s third living son, Dzuryan, hardly more than a boy, shuddered in front of the hut he shared with Oltas, where he had been tending the fire and otherwise dozing.

“What… what do you want?” faltered Aryuk. Though dread clogged his mouth, he could not bring himself to wish these newcomers well as one should for any visitor.

Running Fox replied, colder than the cloudlets that puffed from between his lips. He had learned Our speech better than any other Cloud man—in how many times with Daraku? “I talk to you. You talk to me.”

That, yes, of course, Aryuk thought. Talk. What else have we left? Unless they want to mount Seset. She is young and toothsome. No, I must not let myself know wrath. Besides, they do not look at her. “Come inside,” he said reluctantly.

“No,” spat Running Fox—half in scorn, half in wariness, Aryuk guessed. Crammed into a Tula shelter, he would have no room to wield those beautiful, deathful weapons. “We talk here.”

“Then I must cover me,” Aryuk said. His feet and fingertips were already numb.

Running Fox made a brusque gesture of agreement. Tseshu crept forth. She had put on shoes and a skin cloak, which she held tight as if afraid or ashamed to have strangers behold sagging breasts and slack belly. She brought the same garb for her man. Dzuryan and Seset slipped back and outfitted themselves likewise. They returned to the entrances, very quiet. Meanwhile Tseshu helped Aryuk dress.

That comforted him mightily, as belittling as it was to do this while Running Fox flung his questions. “What walks… between you … and Sun Hair?”

Aryuk gaped. “Sun Hair? Who?”

“Woman. Tall. Hair like sun. Eyes like—” Running Fox pointed at the sky.

“She Who Knows—We, we were friends.” Are we yet? She abides in your place.

“What else? Talk!”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Ho! Nothing? Why she give tribute for you?”

Aryuk stiffened. Tseshu finished tying on the moss-stuffed bags that were his shoes. “She did? What?” Joy rushed over him. “Yes, she promised she would save us!”

Tseshu straightened and took stance at his side. So had her way ever been.

His moment’s happiness blew off across the ice. “What kuyok in knife?” Running Fox snarled.

“Kuyok? Knife? I do not understand.” Was the man working a spell? Aryuk raised his free hand and made a sign against it.

The intruders tensed. Running Fox spoke to his companion. The elder man pointed his carven bone at Aryuk and uttered a short, shrill chant.

“No tricks,” Running Fox rasped. His hatchet waved toward the elder. “Here is Aakinninen—you say ‘Answerer.’ He kuyokolaia. Got kuyok much more strong than yours.”

The word must mean “magic,” Aryuk knew. His heart shook his ribs. The cold slid through cloak and flesh. “I meant you no harm,” he whispered.

Running Fox brought his spearhead near Aryuk’s throat. “My strength much more strong than yours.”

“It is, it is.”

“You see Wanayimo strength at Bubbling Springs.”

Aryuk clutched his hand ax tight, as if its weight could hold him from being whirled up by a gust of forbidden fury. Should I go flat in the snow?

“Do what I say!” Running Fox shouted.

Aryuk glimpsed Dzuryan and Seset, how they quailed. Somehow he stood fast, and Tseshu beside him. “What must we do?” he asked in bewilderment.

“You say what is with you and the tall ones. What they want? What they do?”

“Nothing, we know nothing.”

Running Fox slanted his spear downward. The stone-edged head sliced across Aryuk’s calf. A shallow cut reddened behind it. “Talk!”

The pain was little, the menace bigger than heaven. When at last he meets the lion, a man stops being afraid. Aryuk squared his shoulders. “You can kill me,” he said low, “but then this mouth cannot speak. Instead, my ghost will.”

Running Fox’s eyes widened. Either he knew the word for ghost or he guessed its meaning. He turned to Answerer. They conferred fast and harshly. But always Running Fox stayed mindful of where each of Us was. Aryuk’s free hand found Tseshu’s.

Answerer’s withered face hardened. He barked something. His companion clearly agreed. Aryuk waited to learn the fate of his family.

“You not make kuyok against us,” Running Fox said. “We take one along. She talk.”

He stuck his spear upright in the snow, made a long stride forward, seized Tseshu by the arm. He hauled her from her man’s clasp. She wailed.

Daraku!

A wind roared over Aryuk. He himself screamed as he sprang.

Running Fox chopped with his hatchet. Caught off balance, he missed Aryuk’s head but struck him on the left shoulder. Aryuk neither saw nor felt the blow. He was in against the Cloud man. His right arm swung. The hand ax crashed on Running Fox’s temple. The hunter crumpled.

Aryuk stood above him. Pain smote. He dropped the hand ax and went to his knees, pawing at the hurt shoulder. Dzuryan boiled toward him. A weaponstone of his own, hurled, barely went by Answerer. The old one whirled about and ran off, in among the trees, up the slope. Dzuryan joined Tseshu where Aryuk was. Seset silenced the children.

Aryuk’s soul returned as the darkness ebbed from him. Helped by both women, he regained his feet. Blood ran, a red flame amidst the snow, from his shoulder. That arm hung useless. When he tried moving it, the pain was so vast that the night rolled over him again. Tseshu drew his cloak aside to look at the wound. It wasn’t deep, the edge had hit bone, but surely that bone was broken.

“Father, shall I catch the other man and kill him?”

Dzuryan asked. Did his boy-voice waver, or was that how Aryuk heard it?

“No,” said Tseshu. “He is too far ahead of you now. You are too young.”

“But he, he will tell the Red Wolf what happened.”

Dimly surprised, Aryuk found he could think. “That is best,” he muttered. “We must not make this thing worse … for all of Us.”

He stared downward. Running Fox sprawled limp. The blood that had gushed from the man’s nose flowed no more, only trickled, slower and slower as the cold thickened it. The open mouth had gone dry, the open eyes had filmed over, the open bowels had emptied. A snowbank into which he had fallen hid the smashed part of his head.

“I forgot myself,” Aryuk whispered at him. “You should not have laid hand on my woman. Not after my daughter. We were both unwise, you and I.”

“Come in by the fire,” Tseshu said.

He shambled obediently along. The women tended him as best they could, stanching the cut with moss, binding arm to side with thongs. Dzuryan built the fire up and fetched a frozen rabbit from a small cairn nearby. Tseshu laid it in the coals.

Hot meat gave heart, and Aryuk drew more strength from the bodies pressed against his. At last he could tell them: “In the morning I must leave you.”

“No!” moaned Tseshu. He knew that she knew what he intended. Nonetheless she protested. “Where can you go?”

“Away,” he said. “They will come after their dead man when they hear, and after me. If they found us together, it would go very badly with you. When Barakyn and Oltas return, everybody must go different ways, seeking shelter and help among friends. The Cloud men will know that I and I alone killed him. I think, if they do not see you where he lies, they will be content with my death. Tracking me down will use up most of their anger.”