More reminiscence followed, which took a couple of hours to disentangle. Finally Everard could ask, his tongue dry despite the wine: “Do you remember just when this was? How many years ago?”
“Why, sure I do, sure I do,” Gisgo answered. “An even one score and six years, come fifteen days before the fall equinox, or pretty near to that.”
He waved a hand. “How do I know, you wonder? Well, it’s like the Egyptian priests, that keep such a close calendar because their river floods and falls every year. A seaman who doesn’t take care, he’s not likely to get old. Did you know that beyond the Pillars of Melqart the sea rises and falls like the Nile, but twice a day? You’d better watch those times sharp, if you’d fare in those parts.
“But the Sinim, they were what really drove the idea home in this head. There I was, attendant on my captain while they bargained with him for passage, and they kept talking about exactly which day we’d depart—talking him into it, you understand. I listened, and I thought what gains might lie in that kind of remembering, and told myself I’d make a point of it. Back then, I couldn’t read or write, but what I could do was mark whatever special things happened each year, and keep those happenings in order and count back over them when I needed to. So this was the year in between a venture to the Red Cliff Shores and the year when I caught the Babylonian disease—”
Everard and Pum emerged and began walking from the Sidonian Harbor quarter, down a Street of the Ropemakers now filling with dusk and quietness, toward the palace.
“My lord gathers his forces, I see,” murmured the boy after a while.
The Patrolman nodded absently. His mind was in a storm of its own.
Varagan’s procedure seemed clear to him. (Everard felt well-nigh certain it was Merau Varagan, perpetrating a fresh enormity.) From wherever in space-time his hideout was, he and half a dozen of his confederates had sought the Usu area, twenty-six years ago. Others must have carried them on hoppers, which let them off and immediately returned. The Patrol couldn’t hope to catch the vehicles in that brief an interlude, when the exact place and moment were unknown. Varagan’s band had gone afoot into town and ingratiated themselves with King Abibaal.
They must have done this after bombing the temple, leaving the ransom note, and probably making the attempt on Everard—after, that is, in terms of their world lines, their continuity of experience. It would not have been hard to pick such a target, or even plant such an assassin. Scientists studying Tyre had written books which were readily available. The preliminary mischief would give Varagan an idea as to the feasibility of his entire scheme. Having decided that it would be worth a substantial investment of lifespan and effort, he thereupon sought the detailed knowledge, the kind that seldom gets into books, which he would need in order to do a really thorough job of wrecking this society.
When they had learned as much at the court of Abibaal as they felt was called for, Varagan and his followers left town in conventional wise, so as not to engender stories among the people that would spread and persist and eventually give the Patrol a lead. For the same reason, the dying out of public interest in them, they wanted it thought that they had perished.
Hence their departure date, on which they had insisted; a scouting flight had revealed that a storm would suddenly rise within hours. Those of the gang who were to pick them up had fired energy beams to destroy the ship and kill the witnesses. Had they not chanced to miss Gisgo, they would have covered their tracks almost completely. In fact, without Sarai’s assistance, Everard would most likely never have heard of those Sinim who were unfortunately lost at sea.
From his base, Varagan had “already” dispatched agents to keep an eye on Patrol HQ in Tyre, as the time of his demonstration attack drew near. If such a gunman succeeded in recognizing and killing one or more of the scarce, valued Unattached officers, excellent! It would increase the probability of the Exaltationists getting what they wanted—whether that be the matter transmuter or the destruction of the Danel-lian future. Everard didn’t think Varagan cared which. Either would gratify his power hunger and Schadenfreude.
Well, but Everard had found the spoor. He could loose the hounds of the Patrol—Can I?
He gnawed his Celtic mustache and thought irrelevantly how glad he’d be to mow the damned fungus off, once this operation was finished. Will it be?
Outnumbered, outgunned, Varagan was not necessarily outsmarted. His scheme had a built-in fail-safe that might be impossible to break.
The trouble was, the Phoenicians possessed neither clocks nor accurate navigation instruments. Gisgo didn’t know, any closer than a week or two, when his ship suffered disaster; nor did he know, any closer than fifty miles or so, where it had been at the time. Therefore Everard didn’t.
Of course, the Patrol could easily ascertain the date, and the course for Cyprus was known. But anything more precise required keeping watch from the air nearby, didn’t it? And the enemy must have detectors which would warn him of that. The pilots who were to scuttle the ship and take away Vara-gan’s group could arrive prepared for a dogfight. They wouldn’t need but a few minutes to carry out their mission, then they’d be untraceably gone.
Worse, they might cancel the mission altogether. They could wait for a more favorable instant to recover their associates—or, worse yet, do it at an earlier time, before the ship ever sailed. In either case, Gisgo would not have (had) the experience which Everard had just heard him relate. The trail that the Patrolman had so painfully uncovered would never have existed. Probably the long-range consequences to history would be trivial, but there was no guarantee of that, once you started monkeying around with events.
For the same reasons, certain nullification of clues and possible upheaval in the continuum, the Patrol could not anticipate Varagan’s plan. It dared not, for instance, swoop down on the ship and arrest the passengers before the gale and the Exaltationists struck.
Looks like the only way we can proceed is to appear exactly where they are, within that time-slot of five minutes or less when the riders carry out their dirty work. But how are we to pinpoint it without alerting them?
“I think,” said Pum, “my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.”
Am I that transparent to him? “Yes, it may be,” Everard replied. “I’ll first recompense you well, for you’ve been a right-hand man to me.”
The youth plucked his sleeve. “Lord,” he implored, “let your servant follow you.”
Astounded, Everard stopped in mid-stride. “Huh?”
“I would not be parted from my master!” cried Pum. Tears gleamed in his eyes and down his cheekbones. “Better death at his side—aye, better the demons cast me down to hell—than return to that cockroach life you raised me from. Teach me what I should do. You know I learn fast. I shall not be afraid. You have made me into a man!”
By God, I do believe that for once his passion is perfectly genuine.
It’s out of the question, of course. Is it? Everard stood thunderstruck. Pum danced before him, laughing and weeping. “My lord will do it, my lord will take me!”
And maybe, maybe, after this is all over, if he’s survived—maybe we’ll have gained something very precious.
“The danger will be great,” Everard said slowly. “Moreover, I await things and happenings from which hardy warriors would flee, screaming. And earlier, you’ll have to acquire knowledge which, most of the wise men in this world could not even understand, were it told them.”