There Will Be Time

15

THE SHADOWS which were time reeled past. They had form and color, weight and distances, only when one emerged for food or sleep or a hurried gulp of air. Season after season blew across the hills; glaciers from the north ground heights to plains and withdrew in a fury of snowstorms, leaving lakes where mastodon drank; the lakes thickened to swamps and finally to soil on whose grass fed horses and camels, whose treetops were grazed by giant sloths, until the glaciers returned; mild weather renewed saw those earlier beasts no more, but instead herds of bison which darkened the prairie and filled it with an earthquake drumroll of hoofs; the pioneers entered, coppery-skinned men who wielded flint-tipped spears; again was a Great Winter, again a Great Springtime, and now the hunters had bows, and in this cycle forest claimed the moraines, first willow and larch and scrub oak, later an endless cathedral magnificence — and suddenly that was gone, in a blink, the conquerors were there, grubbing out a million stumps which the axes had left, plowing and sowing, reaping and threshing, laying down trails of iron from which at night could be heard a rush and a long-drawn wail strangely like mastodon passing by.

Havig’s group stopped for a last rest in the house of a young farmer who was no traveler but could be trusted. They needed it for a depot, too. It would have been impossible to go this far through time on this point of Earth’s surface without miniature oxygen tanks. Otherwise, they’d more than once have had to stop for air when the country lay drowned, or been unable to because they were under a mile of ice. Those were strong barriers which guarded the secret of their main base from the Eyrie.

The equipment absorbed most of their mass-carrying ability. Here was a chance to get weapons.

Lantern light glowed mellow on an oilcloth-covered kitchen table, polished iron and copper, stove where wood crackled to keep warm a giant pot of coffee. Though the nearest neighbors were half an hour’s horseback ride straight across the fields, and screened off by trees, Olav Torstad must always receive his visitors after dark. At that, he was considered odd for the occasional midnight gleam in his windows. But he was otherwise a steady fellow; most likely, the neighbors decided, now and then a bachelor would have trouble sleeping.

“You’re already fixing to go again?” he asked.

“Yes,” Havig said. “We’ve ground to cover before dawn, remember.”

Torstad stared at Leonce. “Sure don’t seem right, a lady bound for war.”

“Where else but by her man?” she retorted. With a grin:

“Jack couldn’t talk me out of it either. Spare your breath.”

“Well, different times, different ways,” Torstad said, “but I’m glad I was born in 1850.” In haste: “Not that I don’t appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

“You’ve done more for us,” Havig answered. “We grub-staked you to this place strictly because we needed something of the kind close to where the Eyrie will be. You assumed the ongoing risk, and the burden of keeping things hidden, and — No matter. Tonight it ends.” He constructed a smile. “You can get rid of what stuff we leave behind, marry that girl you’re engaged to, and live the rest of your days at peace.”

For a few seconds, behind Torstad’s eyes, something rattled its chains. “At peace?” Abruptly: “You will come back, won’t you? Tell me what happened? Please!”

“If we win,” Havig said, and thought how many such promises he had left, how many more his followers must have left, across the breadth and throughout the duration of the spacetime they had roved. He jumped from his chair. “Come on, let’s get the military gear for our men. If you’ll hitch up a team, we’d like a wagon ride to the site. Let’s move!”

Others were moving. They are. They will be.

It was no enormous host; it totaled perhaps three thousand. Some two-thirds were women, the very young, the old, the handicapped: time porters, nurses, whatever kind of noncombatants were required. But this was still too many to gather at one intermediate station, making rumors and traces which an enemy might come upon. Simply bringing them all to America had been an endlessly complex problem in logistics and secrecy.

Beneath huge trees, in a year before Columbus, some took a deer path. The Dakotan who guided them would have become the next medicine man of his tribe, had a patient wanderer not found him. The chronolog he carried, like other leaders elsewhere and elsewhen, would identify an exact place before he set it for an equally precise instant.

Once during the eighteenth century, certain coureurs de bois made rendezvous and struck off into the wilderness.

Not quite a hundred years after, the captain of a group explained to what few white people he met that the government in Washington wished a detailed survey prior to establishing a territory.

Later it became common if unofficial knowledge that you saw Negroes hereabouts — briefly — because this was a station on the Underground Railway.

In the 1920’s one did not question furtive movements and gatherings. It was common if unofficial knowledge that this was a favorite route for importers of Canadian whiskey.

Later an occasional bus marked CHARTERED passed through the area, setting off passengers and baggage in the middle of the night, then proceeding with its sign changed to NOT IN SERVICE.

Toward the close of the century, a jumbo jet lumbered aloft. The motley lot of humans aboard drew no special attention. “International Friendship Tours” were an almost everyday thing, as private organizations and subdivisions of practically every government snatched at any imaginable means to help halt the dream-dance down to catastrophe.

Well afterward, a fair-sized band of horsemen trotted through the region. Their faces and accouterments said they were Mong. The invaders never did establish themselves in these parts, so their early scouts were of no importance.

Havig and his half dozen flashed back into normal time.

His chronolog had winked red an hour before sunrise, on New Year’s Day in the one hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Eyrie’s continuous existence. The sky loomed darkling to the west, where stars and planets stood yet aglow, but icegray in the east. Shadowless light brought forth every brick of walls and keep and towers; it glimmered off window glass and whitened frost upon courtyard paving. Enormous stillness enclosed the world, as if all sound had frozen in that cold which bit lungs and smoked from nostrils.

This band had rehearsed what they must do often enough. Nonetheless his glance swept across them, these his troopers chosen for the heart of the mission.

They were dressed alike, in drab-green parkas, padded trousers tucked into leather boots, helmets and weapons and equipment-loaded belts. He knew their faces better, their very gaits, after lifespan years of comradeship: Leonce, ablaze with eagerness, a stray ruddy lock crossing the brow he had kissed; Chao, Indhlovu, Gutierrez, Bielawski, Maatuk ibn Nahal. For a pulsebeat their hands remained clasped together. Then they let go. He set down his chronolog. They readied their guns ere the sentries at the battlements should spy them and cry out.

The odds favored surprise. The hinterland was firmly controlled, had been for long years, would be for longer. Had not the Sachem verified this on his journeys to his future selves? More and more the Eyrie prospered, not alone in wealth but in recruits to serve the great purpose. So one could be at ease during a holiday. As many agents as possible took their furloughs in winter, to escape its gloom and cold. But the Sachem was always present for a New Year, whose eve began with ceremonies and speeches, ended with revelry. Who could blame a guard if, in the bitterness before dawn, eyes bleared and lids drooped?

“Okay,” Havig said; and: “I love you, Leonce,” he whispered. Her lips winged across his. The band loped to the door of that tower wherein dwelt Caleb Wallis.

It was immovable. The woman cursed: “—Oktai’s tail, I didn’ ’spec’—” Maatuk’s .45 blasted out the lock. The noise smote eardrums and rang between the sleeping walls. A thought flashed through Havig. No combat operation goes perfectly. My studies told me, always allow a margin — But this was the one part of the whole thing where slippage could most readily throw him off the cliff.

He led their way inside. Behind them, he heard a shout. Was it more puzzled than alarmed, or did he delude himself? Never mind. In the entryroom, up the stairs!

Soles clattered on stone. The impact jarred through Havig’s shins, clear to his teeth. Four were at his back, leaping along a dusky skyward spiral. Gutierrez and Bielawski had taken station below, to guard main door and elevator exit. Indhlovu and Chao peeled off on the second and third levels, to capture the apartments of a secretary — Havig didn’t know who he currently was — and Austin Caldwell. And here, next landing, brass-bound, here bulked the portal to Wallis.

That wasn’t secured. Nobody dared enter uninvited, unless they came armed to bring this whole creation down. Havig flung the door wide.

Again he knew wainscoting, furriness, heavy desk and chairs, photographs of masters and mother. The air lay hot and damp. Frost blinded windowpanes, making twilight within. Maatuk whirled about to keep the entrance. Havig and Leonce burst on into the suite beyond.

Wallis surged from a canopied double bed. Havig was flickeringly shocked at how the past several lifespan years had bitten the man. He was quite gray. The face was less red than netted in broken veinlets, and sagged beneath its weight. Horrible, somehow, because of being funny to see, was his nightshirt. He groped for a pistol on an end table.

“Ya-a-a-ah!” Leonce screamed, and launched herself in a flying leap.

Wails vanished from sight. Likewise did she, her fingers upon him. They reappeared, rolling over and over across the floor, wrestling, he unable to flee through time while she gripped him and set her will to stay in the now. Their breath rasped through the shrieks of some commoner girl behind the bed draperies. Havig circled about, in search of a way to help. The grapplers were well matched, and desperate. He saw no opening which wasn’t gone before he could strike.

Gunfire raged in the anteroom.

Havig pelted to the inner door, flattened himself, peered around the jamb. Maatuk sprawled moveless. Above him Austin Caldwell swayed, dripped blood, wheezed air through torn lungs, while his revolver wavered in search of more foe-men. The old Indian fighter must have gotten the drop on Chao, or taken a couple of bullets and slain him anyway, as Maatuk had then been slain — “You’re covered! Surrender!” Havig called.

“Go … to … hell … traitor’s hell …“ The Colt roared anew.

Across years Havig remembered many kindnesses and much grim swallowing of pain at what had seemed to be horrors inescapable in the service of the Sachem. He recalled his own followers, and Xenia. He slipped a minute uptime while he stepped into the doorway, emerged, and fired. His bullet clove air and shattered the glass on Charlemagne’s photograph. Caldwell had crumpled.

Explosions racketed down in the yard, throughout keep and ancillary buildings. Havig hastened back to Leonce. She had gotten legs around Walls’s lower body and thumbs on his carotid arteries. He beat her about the shoulders, but she lowered her head and hung on. His blows turned feeble. They stopped.

“Make him fast,” she panted. “Quick.”

From a pocket Havig drew the set of manacles and chain which were standard equipment for every person of his. Squatting, he linked Wallis to the bedstead.

“He’s not going anywhere,” he said. “Unless somebody comes to release him. You stand guard against that.”

She bridled. “An’ miss the fun?”

“That’s an order!” he snapped. She gave him a mutinous look but obeyed. Their whole plan turned on this prisoner. “I’ll see about getting somebody to spell you, soon’s may be,” he said, adding: When the battle’s over. He left. The concubine had fled, he noticed, and wondered briefly whether she was bereaved or relieved.

On the next level a balcony overlooked the courtyard. Here the Sachem delivered his speeches. Havig stepped forth, into waxing bleak light, and gazed across chaos. Fights ramped between men and knots of men; wounded stirred and groaned, the slain looked shrunken where they lay. Yells and weapon-cracks insulted the sky.

There didn’t seem to be a pattern to anything which happened, only ugliness. He unshipped a pair of binoculars and studied the scene more closely. They let him identify an occasional combatant. Or corpse … yes, Juan Mendoza yonder, and, O Christ, Jerry Jennings, whom he’d hoped could be saved — A new squadron of his army blinked into normal time and deployed. And suddenly parachutes bloomed overhead, as those who had leaped out of a twentieth-century airplane, each with his chronolog, entered this day.

The confusion was more in seeming than truth. From the start, Wallis’s on-duty garrison, most of them commoners, was nearly matched in numbers by a group of their traveler associates — who had been here for years and had quietly avoided drinking themselves befuddled last night. The fifth column was invented long before Havig was born; but his generation saw the unmerciful peak of its development and use.

Given it, and information carried forth by its members, and that precise timing which the chronolog made possible, and plans hammered out by a team which included professional soldiers, tested and rehearsed over and over on a mockup of the Eyrie itself … given this, Havig’s victory was inevitable.

What counted was to minimize the number of agents who, seeing their disaster, would escape before they could be killed or secured. Of secondary importance in theory, but equal in Havig’s breast, was to minimize casualties. On both sides.

He let the binoculars dangle loose, took a walkie-talkie radio off his shoulder, and began calling his squadron leaders.

“Between surprise and efficiency,” he told me, “we didn’t lose many who time-hopped. Some of those we collared ‘later.’ Knowing from the registers who they were, we could make fairly good guesses at where — when they’d head for. It wouldn’t be a random flight, you see. A man would have to seek a milieu where he might survive by himself. That didn’t give too wide a choice.”

“You didn’t net the entire lot?” I fretted.

“No, not quite. We could scarcely hope for that.”

“I should think even one, prowling loose, is too many. He can slip back uptime, though pastward of your attack, and warn—”

“That never worried me, Doc. I knew nobody ever has, therefore nobody ever will. Not that that can’t be explained in ordinary human terms, quite apart from physics or metaphysics…

“Look, these were none of them supermen. In fact, they were either weaklings who’d been assigned civilian-type jobs, or warriors as ignorant and superstitious as brutal. Aside from what specialized training fitted them for Wallis’s purposes, he’d never tried to get them properly educated. If nothing else, that might have led to questioning of his righteousness and infallibility.

“Therefore, those who did escape had their morale pretty well shattered. Their main concern must be to stay hidden from us. And if they thought about the possibility of returning, they’d realize that we’d have agents of our own planted throughout the period of Wallis’s reign, just a few but enough to keep a lookout for them and hustle them away before any warning could be delivered.” Havig chuckled. “I was surprised myself, when first I learned who some of those people would be. Reuel Orrick, the old carnival charlatan … Boris, the monk who went to Jerusalem …”

He paused for a drink of my Scotch. “No,” he finished, “we simply didn’t want bandits loose who’re able to skip clear of their crimes. And I think — I dare hope — that never happened. How can, say, a condottiere, penniless, educationless, entirely alone, how can he get along in any era of white America or make his way to Europe? No, really, his best bet is to seek out the Indians. And among them he can do better as a medicine man than a robber. He might actually end his days a useful member of the tribe! That’s a single example, of course, but I imagine you get the general idea.”

“Regardin’ the future,” Leonce said, her tone tiger-soft, “we hold that. The Eyrie for the years it has left; the Phase Two complex till it’s no longer needed — an’ we built it. We’ve learned from our campaign. Nobody will shake us loose.”

“Well, in a military sense,” her husband was quick to put in. “It can’t be done overnight, but we mean to raise the Eyrie’s subjects out of peonage, make them into a free yeomanry. Phase Two never will have subjects: instead, non-traveler members of our society. And — goes without saying — our agents behave themselves. They visit the past for nothing except research and recruitment. When they need an economic base for operations, they make it by trade which gives value for value.”

Leonce stroked fingers across his cheek. “Jack comes from a sentimental era,” she crooned.

I frowned in my effort to understand. “Wait a minute,” I protested. “You had one huge problem with spines and fangs, right after you took the Eyrie. Your prisoners. What about them?”

An old trouble crossed Havig’s countenance. “There was no good answer,” he said tonelessly. “We couldn’t release them, nor those we arrested as they came back from furlough or surprised in their fiefs. We couldn’t gun them down. I mean that in a literal sense; we couldn’t. Our whole force was drawn from people who had a conscience, able to learn humaneness if they hadn’t been brought up with it. Nor did we want to keep anybody chained for life in some secret dungeon.”

Leonce grimaced. “Worse’n shootin’, that,” she said.

“Well,” Havig plodded on, “you may remember — I think I told you, and the telling is closer to your present than it is to mine — about those psychodrugs they have in the late Maurai era. Do you recall? My friend Carelo Keajimu will be afraid of them, they give such power. Inject a person, talk to him while he’s under the influence, and he’ll believe whatever you order him to believe. Absolutely. Not fanatically, but in an ‘of course’ way that’s far more deeply rooted. His own mind will supply rationalizations and false memories to explain contradictions. You see what this is? The ultimate brainwash! So complete that the victim never even guesses there ever was anything else.”

I whistled. “Good Lord! You mean you converted those crooks and butcher boys to your side, en masse?”

Havig shuddered. “No. If nothing else, I at least could never have stood such a gang of, of zombies. It’d have been necessary to wipe their entire past lives, and — impractical, anyhow. Keajimu had arranged for several of my bright lads to be trained in psychotechnology, but their job was quite big enough already.”

He drew breath, as if gathering courage, before he proceeded: “What we destroyed in our prisoners was their belief in time travel. We brought them to their home milieus — that took a lot of effort by itself, you realize — and treated them. They were told they’d had fever, or demonic possession, or whatever was appropriate; they’d imagined uncanny things which, being totally impossible, must never be mentioned and best never thought about; now they were well and should return to their ordinary lives.

“Our men released them and came back for more.”

I pondered. “Well,” I said, “I admit finding the idea a bit repulsive myself. But not too much. I’ve been forced to do certain things, tell certain lies, to patients and—”

Leonce stated: “There were two exceptions, Doc.”

“Come with me,” the mind molder said. His voice was gentle. Drug-numbed, Caleb Wallis clung to his hand as he left.

Havig remained, often toiling twice around the same clock, till he and his lieutenants had properly underway the immense task of making over the Eyrie. But time flowed, time flowed. At last he had no escape from the moment when the psycho-technician told him he could enter that guarded tower.

Perhaps the most appalling thing was how well the Sachem looked, how jauntily he sat behind his desk in an office from which scars and bloodstains were blotted as if they had never been.

“Well!” he greeted. “Good day, my boy, good day! Sit down. No, pour for us first. You know what I like.”

Havig obeyed. The small eyes peered shrewdly at him. “Turned out to be a mighty long, tough mission, yours, hey?” Wallis said. “You’ve aged, you have. I’m sure glad you carried it off, though. Haven’t read your full report, but I intend to. Meanwhile, let’s catch up with each other.” His glass lifted. “To the very good health of us both.”

Havig forced down a sip and lowered himself to a chair.

“You’ve doubtless heard already, mine hasn’t been the best,” Walls continued. “Down and out for quite a while. Actual brain fever. Some damn germ from past or future, probably. The sawbones claims germs have evolution like animals. I’ve about decided we should curtail our explorations, partly on that account, partly to concentrate on building up our power in normal time. What d’ you think of that?”

“I think it would be wise, sir,” Havig whispered.

“Another reason for pulling in our horns is, we lost a lot of our best men while you were away. Run of bad luck for us. Austin Caldwell, have you heard? And Waclaw Krasicki — Hey, you’re white’s a ghost! What’s wrong? Sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, sir… Still tired. I did spend a number of years downtime, and—”

— and it had been Leonce who found Krasicki chained, said, “Xenia,” drew her pistol and shot him in the head. But it was Havig who could not make himself be sorry this had happened, until Xenia sought him in his sleep and wept because he did not forgive.

Well. “I’ll recover, sir.”

“Fine. Fine. We need men like you.” Wallis rubbed his brow. For a minute his voice came high and puzzled: “So many people here. So many old gone — or are they? I can’t tell. I look from my balcony and see strangers, and think I ought to see, oh, somebody named Juan, somebody named Hans … many, many… but I can’t place them. Did I dream them while I lay sick?” He hugged himself, as if winter air had seeped through into the tropical warmth around him. “Often, these days, I feel alone, alone in all space and time—”

Havig mustered briskness: “What you need, sir, if I may suggest it, is an extended vacation. I can recommend places.”

“Yes, I think you’re right. I do.” Walls gulped from his tumbler and fumbled after a cigar.

“When you return, sir,” Havig said, “you ought to work less hard. The foundation has been laid. We’re functioning smoothly.”

“I know. I know.” Walls lost hold of his match.

“What we need, sir, is not your day-by-day instruction any longer. We have plenty of competent men to handle details. We need more your broad overview, the basic direction you foresee — your genius.”

Behind the gray whiskers, Walls simpered. This time he got his cigar lit.

“I’ve been talking about it with various officers, and thinking a lot, too,” Havig proceeded. “They’ve discussed the matter with you, they said. Sir, let me add my words to theirs. We believe the ideal would be if a kind of schedule was established for your passage through the future. Of course, it’d include those periods your past self will visit, to let you show him how well everything is going. Otherwise, however — uh — we don’t think you should spend more than a minimum of your lifespan in any single continuous set of dates. You’re too precious to the grand project.”

“Yes. I’d about decided the same for myself.” Wallis nodded and nodded. “First, like you say, a real good vacation, to straighten out my thoughts and get this fuzziness out of my head. Then, a … a progress through tomorrow, observing, issuing orders, always bound onward … till at the end, when my work is done — Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“God!” I exclaimed, a word as close to prayer as I’d come in fifty skeptical years. “If ever there was a revenge—”

“This wasn’t,” Havig said through lips drawn taut.

“What, well, what’d it feel like, when he came?”

“I’ve avoided being on hand for most of that. When I had to be, it was naturally always a festive occasion, and nobody cared if I got drunk. Men who regularly deal with him told me — tell me — one gets used to leading the poor apparition through his Potemkin villages, and off to some sybaritic place downtime for one of the long orgiastic celebrations which use up and shorten his lifespan. They’re almost fond of him. They go to great lengths to put on a good show. That eases their thought of the end.”

“Huh? Isn’t he supposed to vanish in his old age?”

Havig’s fist knotted on the arm of his chair. “He did. He will. He’ll scream in the night, and his room will be empty. He must have thrown himself far in time, because searchers up and down will find nothing reappearing.” Havig tossed off his drink. I saw he needed more, and obliged.

Leonce caressed him. “Aw, don’t let it gnaw you, darlya,” she murmured. “He’s not worth that.”

“Mostly I don’t,” he said, rough-throated. “Rather not discuss the business.”

“I, I don’t see—” I couldn’t help stammering.

The big woman turned to me. She smiled in tenderness for her vulnerable man. What she said was, to her, a remark of no importance: “We been told, now an’ then as it’s dyin’ a brain throws off the effect o’ that drug an’ recalls what was real.”