“I don’t know. Yet. But our key point is back there somewhere.”
Everard returned his attention to Deirdre. “This may surprise you,” he said smoothly. “Our people visited this world about 2500 years ago. That’s why I speak Greek but don’t know what has occurred since. I would like to find out from you; I take it you’re quite a scholar.”
She flushed and lowered long dark lashes such as few redheads possess. “I will be glad to help as much as I can.” With a sudden appeaclass="underline" “But will you help us in return?”
“I don’t know,” said Everard heavily. “I’d like to. But I don’t know if we can.”
Because after all, my job is to condemn you and your entire world to death.
5
When Everard was shown to his room, he discovered that local hospitality was more than generous. He was too tired and depressed to take advantage of it.… but at least, he thought on the edge of sleep, Van’s slave girl wouldn’t be disappointed.
They got up early here. From his upstairs window, Everard saw guards pacing the beach, but they didn’t detract from the morning’s freshness. He came down with Van Sarawak to breakfast, where bacon and eggs, toast and coffee added the last touch of dream. Ap Ceorn had gone back to town to confer, said Deirdre; she herself had put wistfulness aside and chattered gaily of trivia. Everard learned that she belonged to an amateur dramatic group which sometimes gave Classical Greek plays in the originaclass="underline" hence her fluency. She liked to ride, hunt, sail, swim—“And shall we?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Swim, of course?” Deirdre sprang from her chair on the lawn, where they had been sitting under flame-colored leaves, and whirled innocently out of her clothes. Everard thought he heard a dull clunk as Van Sarawak’s jaw hit the ground.
“Come!” she laughed. “Last one in is a Sassenach!”
She was already tumbling in the gray surf when Everard and Van Sarawak shuddered their way down to the beach. The Venusian groaned. “I come from a warm planet. My ancestors were Indonesians. Tropical birds.”
“There were some Dutchmen too, weren’t there?” grinned Everard.
“They had the sense to move to Indonesia.”
“All right, stay ashore.”
“Hell! If she can do it, I can!” Van Sarawak put a toe in the water and groaned again.
Everard summoned up all the control he had ever learned and ran in. Deirdre threw water at him. He plunged, got hold of a slender leg, and pulled her under. They frolicked about for several minutes before running back to the house for a hot shower. Van Sarawak followed in a blue haze.
“Speak about Tantalus,” he mumbled. “The most beautiful girl in the whole continuum, and I can’t talk to her and she’s half polar bear.”
Toweled dry and dressed in the local garb by slaves, Everard returned to stand before the living-room fire. “What pattern is this?” he asked, pointing to the tartan of his kilt.
Deirdre lifted her ruddy head. “My own clan’s,” she answered. “An honored guest is always taken as a clan member during his stay, even if a blood feud is going on.” She smiled shyly. “And there is none between us, Manslach.”
It cast him back into bleakness. He remembered what his purpose was.
“I’d like to ask you about history,” he said. “It is a special interest of mine.”
She nodded, adjusted a gold fillet on her hair, and got a book from a crowded shelf. “This is the best world history, I think. I can look up any details you might wish to know.”
And tell me what I must do to destroy you.
Everard sat down with her on a couch. The butler wheeled in lunch. He ate moodily, untasting.
To follow up his hunch—“Did Rome and Carthage ever fight a war?”
“Yes. Two, in fact. They were allied at first, against Epirus, but fell out. Rome won the first war and tried to restrict Carthaginian enterprise.” Her clean profile bent over the pages, like a studious child. “The second war broke out 23 years later, and lasted… hm… 11 years all told, though the last three were only a mopping up after Hannibal had taken and burned Rome.”
Ah-hah! Somehow, Everard did not feel happy at his success.
The Second Punic War (they called it the Roman War here—or, rather, some crucial incident thereof—was the turning point. But partly out of curiosity, partly because he feared to tip his hand, Everard did not at once try to identify the deviation. He’d first have to get straight in his mind what had actually happened, anyway. (No… what had not happened. The reality was here, warm and breathing beside him; he was the ghost.)
“So what came next?” he asked tonelessly.
“The Carthaginian empire came to include Hispania, southern Gaul, and the toe of Italy,” she said. “The rest of Italy was impotent and chaotic, after the Roman confederacy had been broken up. But the Carthaginian government was too venal to remain strong. Hannibal himself was assassinated by men who thought his honesty stood in their way. Meanwhile, Syria and Parthia fought for the eastern Mediterranean, with Parthia winning and thus coming under still greater Hellenic influence than before.
“About a hundred years after the Roman Wars, some Germanic tribes overran Italy.” (That would be the Cimbri, with their allies the Teutones and Ambrones, whom Marius had stopped in Everard’s world.) “Their destructive path through Gaul had set the Celts moving too, eventually into Hispania and North Africa as Carthage declined. And from Carthage the Gauls learned much.
“A long period of wars followed, during which Parthia waned and the Celtic states grew. The Huns broke the Germans in middle Europe, but were in turn defeated by Parthia; so the Gauls moved in and the only Germans left were in Italy and Hyperborea.” (That must be the Scandinavian peninsula.) “As ships improved, trade grew up with the Far East, both from Arabia and directly around Africa.” (In Everard’s history, Julius Caesar had been astonished to find the Veneti building better vessels than any in the Mediterranean.) “The Celtanians discovered southern Afallon, which they thought was an island—hence the ‘Ynys’—but they were thrown out by the Mayans. The Brittle colonies further north did survive, though, and eventually won their independence.
“Meanwhile Littorn was growing apace. It swallowed up most of Europe for a while. The western end of the continent only regained its freedom as part of the peace settlement after the Hundred Years’ War I’ve told you about. The Asian countries have shaken off their exhausted European masters and modernized themselves, while the Western nations have declined in their turn.” Deirdre looked up from the book, which she had been skimming as she talked. “But this is only the barest outline, Manslach. Shall I go on?”
Everard shook his head. “No, thanks.” After a moment: “You are very honest about the situation of your own country.”
Deirdre said roughly, “Most of us won’t admit it, but I think it best to look truth in the eyes.”
With a surge of eagerness: “But tell me of your own world. This is a marvel past belief.”
Everard sighed, switched off his conscience, and began lying.
The raid took place that afternoon.
Van Sarawak had recovered his poise and was busily learning the Afallonian language from Deirdre.They walked through the garden hand in hand, stopping to name objects and act out verbs. Everard followed, wondering vaguely if he was a third wheel or not, most of him bent to the problem of how to get at the scooter.
Bright sunlight spilled from a pale cloudless sky. A maple was a shout of scarlet, a drift of yellow leaves scudded across the grass. An elderly slave was raking the yard in a leisurely fashion, a young-looking guard of Indian race lounged with his rifle slung on one shoulder, a pair of wolf-hounds dozed under a hedge. It was a peaceful scene; hard to believe that men prepared murder beyond these walls.