There Will Be Time

9

HE WAS GWEN a couple of days off, which he spent regaining his spirits in Leonce’s company. The period of his training and indoctrination had brought winter’s chances for old-fashioned sports outdoors and indoors. Thereafter he was assigned to reread Wallis’s history of the future, ponder it in the light of what he had witnessed, and discuss any questions with Waclaw Krasicki, who was the most scholarly of the garrison’s current directorate.

The Sachem admitted he was far from omniscient. But he had seen more than anyone else, on repeated expeditions with differing escorts. He had ranged more widely across Earth’s surface as well as through Earth’s duration than was feasible for subordinates, transport being as limited as it was. He had conducted interviews and interrogations, which others must not lest too many events of that sort arouse somebody’s suspicions.

He knew the Eyrie would be here, under his control, for the next two centuries. He had met himself then, who told him how satisfactorily Phase One of the plan had been carried out. At that date, the vastly augmented force he was shown must evacuate this stronghold. Nuclei of renascent civilization were spreading across all America, the Maurai were everywhere, a realm like his could no longer stay isolated nor maintain the pretense its leaders were nothing extraordinary.

A new base had been (would be) constructed uptime. He visited it, and found it totally unlike the old. Here were modern materials, sleek construction — mostly underground — housing advanced machinery, automation, a thermonuclear powerplant.

This was in the era of revolt against the Maurai. They had in the end failed to convert to their philosophy the gigantically various whole of mankind. Doubts, discontents, rebelliousness among their own people led to vacillation in foreign policy. One defiant nation redeveloped the fusion energy generator; and it made no attempt at secrecy. Old countries and alliances were disintegrating, new being born in turmoil.

“Always we need patience as well as boldness and briskness,” Wallis wrote. “We will have far more resources than we do in Phase One, and far more skill in employing them. That includes the use of time travel to multiply the size of a military force, each man doubling back again and again till the opposition is overwhelmed. But I am well aware this sort of thing has its limits and hazards. In no case can we hope to take over the whole world quickly. An empire which is to last thousands of years is bound to be slow in the building.”

Was that how Phase Two would end: with a planet once more pastoralized, in order that the overlordship of the Eyrie men, in the fabulous engines they would have developed, be unchallengeable? Wallis believed it. He believed Phase Three would consist of the benign remolding of that society by its new masters, the creation of a wholly new kind of man. Ranging very far uptime, he had glimpsed marvels he could not begin to describe.

But he seemed vague in this part of his book. Exact information was maddeningly hard to gather. He meant to continue doing so, though more and more by proxy. In general, he recognized, his lifespan would be spent on Phase One. The self he met at its end was an aged man.

“Let us be satisfied to be God’s agents of redemption,” he wrote. “However, those who wish may cherish a private hope. Is it not possible that at last science will find a way to make the old young again, to make the body immortal? And by then, I have no doubt, time travel will be understood, may even be commonplace. Will not that wonderful future return and seek us out, who brought it into being, and give us our reward?”

Havig’s mouth tightened. He thought: I’ve seen what happens when you try to straitjacket man into an ideology.

But later he thought: There is a lot of flexibility here. We could conceivably end more as teachers than masters.

And finally: I’ll stick around awhile, at least. The alternative to serving him seems to be to let my gift go for nothing, my life go down in futility.

Krasicki summoned him. It was a steely-cold day. Sunlight shattered into brilliance on icicles hanging from turrets. Havig shivered as he crossed the courtyard to the office.

Uniformed, Krasicki sat in a room as neat and functional as a cell. “Be seated,” he ordered. The chair was hard, and squeaked.

“Do you judge yourself ready for your work?” he asked.

A thrill went through Havig. His pulses hammered. “Y-yes. Anxious to start. I—” He straightened. “Yes.”

Krasicki shuffled some papers on his desk. “I have been watching your progress,” he said, “and considering how we might best employ you. That includes minimum risk to yourself. You have had a good deal of extratemporal experience on your own, I know, which makes you already valuable. But you’ve not hitherto been on a mission for us.” He offered a stiff little smile. “The idea which came to me springs from your special background.”

Havig somehow maintained a cool exterior.

“We must expand our capabilities, particularly recruiting,” Krasicki said. “Well, you’ve declared yourself reasonably fluent in the Greek koine. You’ve described a visit you made to Byzantine Constantinople. That seems like a strategic place from which to begin a systematic search through the medieval period.”

“Brilliant!” Havig cried, suddenly happy and excited. It rushed from him: “Center of civilization, everything flowed through the Golden Horn, and, and what we could do as traders—”

Krasicki lifted a palm. “Hold. Perhaps later, when we have more manpower, a wider network, perhaps then that will be worthwhile. But at present we’re too sharply limited in the man-years available to us. We cannot squander them. Never forget, we must complete Phase One by a definite date. No, Havig, what is necessary is a quicker and more direct approach.”

“What — ?”

“Given a large hoard of coin and treasure, we can finance ourselves in an era when this is currency. But you know yourself how cumbersome is the transportation of goods through time. Therefore we must acquire our capital on the … on the spot? … yes, on the spot. And, as I said, quickly.”

Havig’s suspicions exploded in dismay. “You can’t mean by robbery!”

“No, no, no.” Krasicki shook his head. “Think. Listen. A raid on a peaceful city, massive enough to reap a useful harvest, that would be dangerously conspicuous. Could get into the history books, and that could wreck our cover. Besides, it would be dangerous in itself, too. Our men would have small numbers, not overly well supplied with firearms. They would not have powered vehicles. The Byzantine army and police were usually large and well-disciplined. No, I don’t propose madness.”

“What, then?”

“Taking advantage of chaos, in order to remove what would otherwise be stolen by merciless invaders for no good purpose.”

Havig stared.

“In 1204,” his superior went on, “Constantinople was captured by the armies of the Fourth Crusade. They plundered it from end to end; what remained was a broken shell.” He waved an arm. “Why should we not take a share? It’s lost to the owners anyway.” He peered at the other’s face before adding:

“And, to be sure, we arrange compensation, give them protection from slaughter and rapine, help them rebuild their lives.”

“Judas priest!” Havig choked. “A hijacking!”

Having briefed himself in the Eyrie’s large microtape library, having had a costume made and similar details taken care of, he embarked.

An aircraft deposited him near the twenty-first-century ruins of Istanbul and took off again into the air as quickly as he into the past. A lot of radioactivity lingered in these ashes. He hadn’t yet revealed the fact of his chronolog and must find his target by the tedious process of counting sun-traverses, adding an estimate of days missed, making an initial emergence, and zeroing in by trial and error.

Leonce had been furious at being left behind. But she lacked the knowledge to be useful here, except as companion and consoler. Indeed, she would have been a liability, her extreme foreignness drawing stares. Havig meant to pass for a Scandinavian on pilgrimage — Catholic, true, but less to be detested than a Frenchman, Venetian, Aragonese, anyone from those western Mediterranean nations which pressed wolfishly in on the dying Empire. As a Russian he would have been more welcome. But Russians were common thereabouts, and their Orthodox faith made them well understood. He dared not risk a slip.

He didn’t start in the year of the conquest. That would be too turbulent, and every outsider too suspect, for the detailed study he must make. The Crusaders actually entered Constantinople in 1203, after a naval siege, to install a puppet on its throne. They hung around to collect their pay before proceeding to the Holy Land. The puppet found his coffers empty, and temporized. Friction between East Romans and “Franks” swelled to terrifying proportions. In January 1204, Alexius, son-in-law of the deposed Emperor, got together sufficient force to seize palace and crown. For three months he and his people strove to drive the Crusaders off. Their hope that God would somehow come to their aid collapsed when Alexius, less gallant than they, despaired and fled. The Crusaders marched back through opened portals. They had worked themselves into homicidal self-righteousness about “Greek perfidy,” and the horror began almost at once.

Havig chose spring, because it was a beautiful season, in 1195, because that was amply far downtime, for his basic job of survey. He carried well-forged documents which got him past the city guards, and gold pieces to exchange for nomismae. Alter finding a room in a good inn-nothing like the pigsty he’d have had to endure in the West-he started exploring.

His prior visit had been to halcyon 1050. The magnificence he now encountered, the liveliness and cosmopolitan colorfulness, were no less. However raddled her dominion, New Rome remained the queen of Europe.

Havig saw her under the shadow.

The house and shop of Doukas Manasses, goldsmith, stood on a hill near the middle of the city. Square-built neighbors elbowed it, all turning blind faces onto the steep, wide, well-paved and well-swept street. But from its flat roof you had a superb view, from end to end of the vast, towered walls which enclosed the city, and further: across a maze of thoroughfares, a countlessness of dweffings and soaring church domes; along the grand avenue called the Mesé to flowering countryside past the Gate of Charisius, on inward by columns which upbore statuary from the noblest days of Hellas, monasteries and museums and libraries which preserved works by men like Aeschylus and women like Sappho that later centuries would never read, through broad forums pulsing with life, to the Hippodrome and that sprawling splendid complex which was the Imperial Palace. On a transverse axis, vision reached from glittering blue across the Sea of Marmora to a mast-crowded Golden Horn and the rich suburbs and smaragdine heights beyond.

Traffic rivered. The noise of wheels, hoofs, feet, talk, song, laughter, sobbing, cursing, praying blended together into one ceaseless heartbeat. A breeze carried a richness of odors, sea, woodsmoke, food, animals, humanity. Havig breathed deep.

“Thank you, Kyrios Hauk,” Doukas Manasses said. “You are most courteous to praise this sight.” His manner implied mild surprise that a Frank would not sneer at everything Greek. To be sure, Hauk Thomasson was not really a Frank or one of the allied English, he was from a boreal kingdom.

“Less courteous than you, Kyrios Manasses, to show me it,” Havig replied.

They exchanged bows. The Byzantines were not basically a strict folk-besides their passionate religion and passionate sense for beauty, they had as much bustling get-up-and-go, as much inborn gusto, as Levantines in any era-but their upper classes set store by ceremonious politeness.

“You expressed interest,” Doukas said. He was a gray-bearded man with handsome features and nearsighted eyes. His slight frame seemed lost in the usual dalmatic robe.

“I merely remarked, Kyrios, that a shop which produced such elegance as does yours must be surrounded by inspiration.” You could case public buildings easily enough; but your way to learn what private hands held what wealth was to go in, say you were looking for a gift to take home, and inspect a variety of samples.

Well, dammit, Doukas and his apprentices did do exquisite work.

“You are too kind,” the goldsmith murmured. “Although I do feel — since all good stems from God — that we Romans should look more to His creation, less to conventionality, than we have done.”

“Like this?” Havig pointed at a blossoming crabapple tree in a large planter.

Doukas smiled. “That’s for my daughter. She loves flowers, and we cannot take her daily on an outing in the country.”

Women enjoyed an honorable status, with many legal rights and protections. But perhaps Doukas felt his visitor needed further explanation: “We may indulge her too much, my Anna and I. However, she’s our only. That is, I was wedded before, but the sons of sainted Eudoxia are grown. Xenia is Anna’s first, and my first daughter.”

On impulse he added: “Kyrios Hauk, think me not over-bold. But I’m fascinated to meet a… friendly… foreigner, from so remote a country at that. It is long since there were many from your lands in the Varangian Guard. I would enjoy conversing at leisure. Would you honor our home at the evening meal?”

“Why-why, thank you.” Havig thought what a rare chance this was to find things out. Byzantine trades and crafts were organized in tight guilds under the direction of the prefect. This man, being distinguished in his profession, probably knew all about his colleagues, and a lot about other businesses. “I should be delighted.”

“Would you mind, my guest, if wife and child share our board?” Doukas asked shyly. “They will not interrupt. Yet they’d be glad to hear you. Xenia is, well, forgive my pride, she’s only five and already learning to read.”

She was a singularly beautiful child.

Hauk Thomasson returned next year and described the position he had accepted with a firm in Athens. Greece belonged to the Empire, and would till the catastrophe; but so much trade was now under foreign control that the story passed. His work would often bring him to Constantinople. He was happy to have this opportunity of renewing acquaintanceship, and hoped the daughter of Kyrios Manasses would accept a small present — “Athens!” the goldsmith whispered. “You dwell in the soul of Hellas?” He reached up to lay both hands on his visitor’s shoulders. Tears stood in his eyes. “Oh, wonderful for you, wonderful! To see those temples is the dream of my life … God better me, more than to see the Holy Land.”

Xenia accepted the toy gratefully. At dinner and afterward she listened, rapt, till her nanny shooed her to bed. She was a sweet youngster, Havig thought, undeniably bright, and not spoiled even though it seemed Anna would bear no more children.

He enjoyed himself, too. A cultured, sensitive, observant man is a pleasure to be with in any age. This assignment was, for a while, losing its nightmare quality.

In truth, he simply skipped ahead through time. He must check up periodically, to be sure events didn’t make his original data obsolete. Simultaneously he could develop more leads, ask more questions, than would have been practical in a single session.

But — he wondered a few calendar years later — wasn’t he being more thorough than needful? Did he really have to make this many visits to the Manasses family, become an intimate, join them on holidays and picnics, invite them out to dinner or for a day on a rented pleasure barge? Certainly he was exceeding his expense estimate … To hell with that. He could finance himself by placing foreknowledgeable bets on events in the Hippodrome. An agent working alone had broad discretion.

He felt guilty about lying to his friends. But it had to be. After all, his objective was to save them.

Xenia’s voice was somewhat high and thin, but whenever he heard or remembered it, Havig would think of songbirds. Thus had it been since first she overcame her timidity and laughed in his presence. From then on, she chattered with him to the limit her parents allowed, or more when they weren’t looking.

She was reed-slender. He had never seen any human who moved with more gracefulness; and when decorum was not required, her feet danced. Her hair was a midnight mass which, piled on her head, seemed as if it ought to bend the delicate neck. Her skin was pale and clear; her face was oval, tilt-nosed, its lips always a little parted. The eyes dominated that countenance, enormous, heavy-lashed, luminous black. Those eyes may be seen elsewhere, in a Ravenna mosaic, upon Empress Theodora the Great; they may never be forgotten.

It was a strange thing to meet her at intervals of months which for Havig were hours or days. Each time, she was so dizzyingly grown. In awe he felt a sense of that measureless river which he could swim but on which she could only be carried from darkness to darkness.

The house was built around a courtyard where flowers and oranges grew and a fountain played. Doukas proudly showed Havig his latest acquisition: on a pedestal in one corner, a bust of Constantine who made Rome Christian and for whom New Rome was named. “From the life, I feel sure,” he said. “By then the art of portrayal was losing its former mastery. Nevertheless, observe his imperiously tight-held mouth—”

Nine-year-old Xenia giggled. “What is it, dear?” her father asked.

“Nothing, really,” she said, but couldn’t stop giggling.

“No, do tell us. I shan’t be angry.”

“He … he … he wants to make a very important speech, and he has gas!”

“By Bacchus,” Havig exclaimed, “she’s right!”

Doukas struggled a moment before he gave up and joined the fun.

“Oh, please, will you not come to church with us, Hauk?” she begged. “You don’t know how lovely it is, when the song and incense and candle flames rise up to Christ Pantocrator.” She was eleven and overflowing with God.

“I’m sorry,” Havig said. “You know I am, am Catholic.”

“The saints won’t mind. I asked Father and Mother, and they won’t mind either. We can say you’re a Russian, if we need to. I’ll show you how to act.” She tugged his hand. “Do come!”

He yielded, not sure whether she hoped to convert him or merely wanted to share something glorious with her honorary uncle.

“But it’s too wonderful!” She burst into tears and hugged her thirteenth birthday present to her before holding it out. “Father, Mother, see what Hauk gave me! This book, the p-p-plays of Euripides — all of them — for me!”

When she was gone to change clothes for a modest festival dinner, Doukas said: “That was a royal gift. Not only the cost of having the copy made and binding it as a codex. The thought.”

“I knew she loves the ancients as much as you do,” the traveler answered.

“Forgive me,” Anna the mother said. “But at her age … may Euripides not be, well, stern reading?”

“These are stern times,” Havig replied, and could no longer feign joy. “A tragic line may hearten her to meet fate.” He turned to the goldsmith. “Doukas, I tell you again, I swear to you, I know through my connections that the Venetians at this very moment are negotiating with other Frankish lords—”

“You have said that.” The goldsmith nodded. His hair and beard were nearly white.

“It’s not too late to move you and your family to safety. I’ll help.”

“Where is safety better than these walls, which no invader has ever breached? Or where, if I break up my shop, where is safety from pauperdom and hunger? What would my apprentices and servants do? They can’t move. No, my good old friend, prudence and duty alike tells us we must remain here and trust in God.” Doukas uttered a small sad chuckle. “‘Old,’ did I say? You never seem to change. Well, you’re in your prime, of course.”

Havig swallowed. “I don’t think I’ll be back in Constantinople for some while. My employers, under present circumstances — Be careful. Keep unnoticeable, hide your wealth, stay off the streets whenever you can and always at night. I know the Franks.”

“Well, I, I’ll bear your advice in mind, Hank, if — But you go too far. This is New Rome.”

Anna touched the arms of both. Her smile was uncertain. “Now that’s enough politics, you men,” she said. “Take off those long faces. We’re making merry on Xenia’s day. Have you forgotten?”

Time-skipping in an alley across the street, Havig checked the period of the first Latin occupation. Nothing terrible seemed to happen. The house drew back into itself and waited.

He went pastward to a happier year, took a night’s lodging, forced himself to eat a hearty supper and get a lot of sleep. Next morning he omitted breakfast: a good idea when you may soon be in combat.

He jumped ahead, to the twelfth of April, 1204.

He could be no more than an observer through the days and nights of the sack. His orders were explicit and made sense:

“If you can possibly avoid it, stay out of danger. Under no conditions mingle, or try to influence events. Absolutely never, and this is under penalties, never enter a building which is a scene of action. We want your report, and for that we need you alive.”

Fire leaped and roared. Smoke drifted bitter. People huddled like rats indoors, or fled like rats outside, and some escaped but thousands were ridden down, shot down, chopped down, beaten, stomped, tortured, robbed, raped, by yelling sooty sweaty blood-spattered men whose fleas hopped about on silks and altar cloths they had flung across their shoulders. Corpses gaped in the gutters, which ran red till they clotted. Many of the bodies were very small. Mothers crept about shrieking for children, children for mothers; most fathers lay dead. Orthodox priests in their churches were kept in pain until they revealed where the treasury was hidden; usually there was none, in which case it was great sport to soak their beards in oil and set these alight. Women, girls, nuns of any age lay mumbling or whimpering after a row of men had violated them. Humiliations more ingenious might be contrived.

A drunken harlot sat on the patriarch’s throne in Hagia Sophia, while dice games for plunder were played on the altars. The bronze horses of the Hippodrome were carted off to Venice’s Cathedral of St. Mark; artwork, jewelry, sacred objects would be scattered across a continent; but at least these things were preserved. More was melted down or torn apart for the precious metals and stones, or smashed or burned for amusement. So perished much classical art, and nearly all classical writing, which Constantinople had kept safe until these days. It is not true that the Turks of 1453 were responsible. The Crusaders were there before them.

Afterward came the great silence, broken by furtive crying, and the stench, and the sickness, and the hunger.

In this wise, at the beginning of that thirteenth century which Catholic apologists call the apogee of civilization, did Western Christendom destroy its Eastern flank. A century and a half later, having devoured Mia Minor, the Turks entered Europe.

Havig time-skipped.

He would return to a safe date, seek out one of his chosen sites, and advance through the whole period of the sack, flickering in and out of normal time, until he knew what was to happen there. When he saw a Frankish band enter a place, he focused more sharply. In most cases they staggered out after a while, sated with death and torment, kicking prisoners who carried away their spoils. Those buildings he wrote off. You couldn’t change the past or future, you could merely discover what parts were your own.

But in certain instances — and only a comparative few would be accessible to the Eyrie commandos; they hadn’t many man-months to spend on this job — Havig saw marauders frightened off, or cut down if need be, by submachine gun fire. The spectacle did not make him gloat. However, he knew a chilly satisfaction while he recorded the spot.

From it, the Eyrie men would cart their loot. They were dressed in conqueror style. Amidst this confusion, it was unlikely they would attract notice. A ship was arranged for, to bear the gains to a safe depot.

They would take care of the dwellers, Krasicki had promised. What to do would depend on circumstances. Some families need simply be left unharmed, with enough money to carry on. Others must be guided elsewhere and staked to a fresh beginning.

Paradoxes need not be feared. The tale of how veritable saints — or demons, if one was a Frank — had rescued so-and-so might live a while in folklore but would not get into any chronicle. Writers in Constantinople must be cautious for the next fifty-seven years, until Michael Paleologus ended the Latin kingdom and raised a ghost of Empire. By then, anecdotes would have been lost.

Havig didn’t look into the immediate sequels of these agent actions. Besides the prohibition laid on him, he already was overburdened. Many sights he witnessed sent him fleeing downtime, weeping and vomiting, to sleep till he had the strength to continue.

The Manasses home was among the earliest he investigated. It wasn’t quite the first; he wanted to gain experience elsewhere; but he knew he was going to be dulled later on.

He had cherished a hope it might be entirely overlooked. Some of his points were. It being unfeasible to check the Crusaders in the famous places, he had investigated lesser ones, whose aggregate wealth was what counted. And Constantinople was too big, too labyrinthine, too rich and strange for the pillagers to break down every door.

He felt no extreme fears. In this particular case, something would be done if need be, by himself if nobody else, and Caleb Wallis could take his destiny and stuff it. Nevertheless, when Havig from his alley saw a dozen filthy men lope toward that open entrance, the heart stumbled within him. When lead sleeted from it, and three Franks fell and were quiet, two lay sprattling and shrieking, and the rest howled and fled, Havig cheered.

His return was a sizable operation in itself.

Between the radioactivity and the time uncertainty, he couldn’t proceed up to dead Istanbul and hunt around for an agreed-on hour at which the aircraft would meet him. Nor could he appear in an earlier epoch — the Eyrie’s planes were not available then — or at a later one — the site would be reoccupied. He’d look too peculiar, and would still have the problem of reaching a geographical point where contact could be made.

“Now you tell me!” he muttered to himself. For a while he marveled that the obvious answer hadn’t occurred when this whole project was being discussed. Use his twentieth-century persona. Cache some funds and clothes in a contemporary Istanbul hotel; feed the management a line about being involved in production of a movie; and there he was, set.

Well, he’d been overwhelmed by things to think about. And the idea hadn’t come to anyone else. While Wallis employed some gadgets developed in the High Years, he and his lieutenants were nineteenth-century men who had organized an essentially nineteenth-century operation.

The plan called for Havig to double back downtime, make more money if he had to, engage passage on a ship to Crete, there find a specific isolated spot, and project himself uptime.

Actually, effort, cramped quarters, dirt, noise, smells, moldy hardtack, scummy water, weird fellow passengers, and all, he didn’t care. He needed something to take his mind off what he had seen.

“Splendidly done,” Krasicki said across the written report. “Splendidly. I’m sure the Sachem will give you public praise and reward, when next your two time-lines intersect.”

“Hm? Oh. Oh, yeah. Thanks.” Havig blinked.

Krasicki studied him. “You are exhausted, are you not?”

“Call me Rip van Winkle,” Havig muttered.

Krasicki understood his gauntness, sunken eyes, slumped body, tic in cheek, if not the reference. “Yes. It is common. We allow for it. You have earned a furlough. In your home milieu, I suggest. Never mind about the rest of the Constantinople business. If we need more from you, we can always ask when you return here.” His smile approached warmth. “Go, now. We’ll talk later. I think we can arrange for your girl friend to accompany-Havig? Havig?”

Havig was asleep.

His trouble was that later, instead of enjoying his leave, he started thinking.