The Sorrow of Odin the Goth

1858

Unlike most Patrol agents above the rank of routineer, Herbert Ganz had not abandoned his former surroundings. Middle-aged when recruited, and a confirmed bachelor, he liked being Herr Professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. As a rule, he would come back from his time trips within five minutes of departure to resume an orderly, slightly pompous academic existence. For that matter, his jaunts were seldom to anywhere but a superbly equipped office centuries uptime, and scarcely ever to the early Germanic milieus which were his field of research. “They are unsuitable for a peaceful old scholar,” he had said when I asked why. “And vice versa. I would make a fool of myself, earn contempt, arouse suspicion, perhaps get killed. No, my usefulness is in study, organization, analysis, hypothesis. Let me enjoy my life in these decades that suit me. Too soon will they end. Yes, of course, before Western civilization begins self-destruction in earnest, I must needs have aged my appearance, until I simulate my death… What next? Who knows? I will inquire. Perhaps I should simply start over elsewhere: exempli gratia, post-Napoleonic Bonn or Heidelberg.”

He felt it incumbent on him to give hospitality to field operatives when they reported in person. For the fifth time in my lifespan thus far, he and I followed a gargantuan midday meal by a nap and a stroll along Unter den Linden. We came back to his house through a summer twilight. Trees breathed fragrance, horsedrawn vehicles clop-clopped past, gentlemen raised their tall hats to ladies of their acquaintance whom they met, a nightingale sang in a rose garden. Occasionally a uniformed Prussian officer strode by, but his shoulders did not obviously carry the future.

The house was spacious, though books and bric-a-brac tended to disguise that fact. Ganz led me to the library and rang for a maid, who entered arustle in black dress, white cap and apron. “We shall have coffee and cakes,” he directed. “And, yes, put on the tray a bottle of cognac, with glasses. Thereafter we are not to be disturbed.”

When she had left on her errand, he lowered his portly form onto a sofa. “Emma is a good girl,” he remarked while he polished his pince-nez. Patrol medics could easily have corrected his eyeballs, but he’d have had trouble explaining why he no longer required lenses, and declared it made no particular difference. “Of a poor peasant family—ach, they breed fast, but the nature of life is that it overflows, not true? I take an interest in her. Avuncular only, I assure you. She is to leave my service in three years because she marries a fine young man. I will provide a modest dowry in the guise of a wedding present, and stand godfather to their firstborn.” Trouble crossed the ruddy, jowly visage. “She dies of tuberculosis at the age of forty-one.” He ran a hand over his bare scalp. “I am allowed to do nothing about that except provide some medicines that make her comfortable. We dare not mourn, we of the Patrol: certainly not beforehand. I should save pity, sense of guilt, for my poor unwitting friends and colleagues, the brothers Grimm. Emma’s life is better than most of mankind will ever have known.”

I made no reply. Our privacy being assured, I got more intent than necessary on setting up the apparatus I’d brought in my luggage. (Here I passed for a visiting British scholar. I’d practiced my accent. An American would have been pestered with too many questions about Red Indians and slavery.) While Tharasmund and I were among the Visigoths, we’d met Ulfilas. I’d recorded that event, as I did all of special interest. Surely Ganz would want a look at Constantinople’s chief missionary, the Apostle to the Goths, whose translation of the Bible was virtually the sole source of information about their language which survived until time travel came along.

The hologram sprang into being. Suddenly the room—chandelier, bookshelves, up-to-date furniture which I knew as Empire, busts, framed etchings and oils, crockery, Chinese-motif wallpaper, maroon drapes—became the mystery, darkness around a campfire. Yet I was not there, in my own skull: for it was myself on whom I looked, and he was the Wanderer.

(The recorders are tiny, operating on the molecular level, self-directing as they collect full sensory input. Mine, one of several I took along, was hidden in the spear that I had leaned against a tree. Wanting to encounter Ulfilas informally, I’d laid out the route of my party to intercept that of his as we both traveled through what the Romans had known as Dacia before they withdrew from it, and I in my day knew as Rumania. After mutual avowals of peaceful intentions, my Ostrogoths and his Byzantines pitched tents and shared a meal.)

Trees walled the forest meadow in gloom. Flame-lit smoke rose to hide stars. An owl hooted, over and over. The night was still mild, but dew had begun chilling the grass. Men sat cross-legged near the coals, save for Ulfilas and me. He had stood up in his zeal, and I could not let myself be dominated before the others. They stared, listened, furtively drew signs of Ax or Cross.

Despite his name—Wulfila, originally—he was short, thick-set, fleshy-nosed; for he took after Cappadocian grandparents, carried off in the Gothic raid of 264. In accordance with the treaty of 332, he had gone to Constantinople as both hostage and envoy. Eventually he returned to the Visigoths as missionary. The creed he preached was not that of the Nicean Council, but the austere doctrine of Arius, which it had rejected as heresy. Nonetheless he moved in the vanguard of Christendom, the morrow.

“—No, we should not merely trade stories of our farings,” he said. “How can those be sundered from our faiths?” His tone was soft and reasonable, but keen was the gaze he leveled at me. “You are no ordinary man, Carl. That I see plain upon you, and in the eyes of your followers. Let none take offense if I wonder whether you are entirely human.”

“I am no evil demon,” I said. Was it truly me looming over him, lean, gray, cloaked, doomed and resigned to foreknowledge—yon figure out of darkness and the wind? On this night, one and a half thousand years after that night, I felt as if it were somebody else, Wodan indeed, the forever homeless.

Ulfilas’ fervor burned at him: “Then you will not fear to debate.”

“What use, priest? You know well that the Goths are not a people of the Book. They would offer to Christ in his lands; they often do. But you never offer to Tiwaz in his.”

“No, for God has forbidden that we bow down to any save him. It is only God the Father who may be worshipped. To the Son, let men give due reverence, yes; but the nature of Christ—” And Ulfilas was off on a sermon.

It was not a rant. He knew better. He spoke calmly, sensibly, even good-humoredly. He did not hesitate to employ pagan imagery, nor did he try to lay more than a groundwork of ideas before he let conversation go elsewhere. I saw men of mine nodding thoughtfully. Arianism better fitted their traditions and temperament than did a Catholicism of which they had no knowledge anyway. It would be the form of Christianity that all Goths finally took; and from this would spring centuries of trouble.

I had not made a particularly good showing. But then, how could I in honesty have argued for a heathenism in which I had no belief and which I knew was going under? For that matter, how could I in honesty have argued for Christ?

My eyes, 1858, sought Tharasmund. Much lingered in his young countenance of Jorith’s dear features…

—“And how goes the literary research?” Ganz asked when my scene was done.

“Quite well.” I escaped into facts. “New poems; lines in them that definitely look ancestral to lines in Widsith and Walt here. To be specific, since the battle at Dnieper side—” That hurt, but I brought forth my notes and recordings, and plowed ahead.