He emptied the goblet and debated pouring himself more, lighting his pipe. Instead, he turned to something he hadn't had time to think about lately: the question of just when now was.
He wasn't at any time in the past or the future of May 19, 1964, when he'd walked into that dome of light. He'd settled that in his mind definitely. So what did that leave? Another time-dimension.
Say time was a plane, like a sheet of paper. Paper, experiment with manufacture of, that mental memo popped up automatically, and was promptly shoved down again. He wished he'd read more science fiction; time dimensions were a regular science-fiction theme, and a lot of it carefully thought out. Well, say he was an insect, capable of moving only in one direction, crawling along a line on the paper, and say somebody picked him up and set him down on another line.
That figured. And say, long ago, one of these lines of time had forked, maybe before the beginning of recorded history. Or say these lines had always existed, an infinite number of them, and on each one, things happened differently. That could be it. He was beginning to be excited; Dralm-dammit, now he'd be awake half the night, thinking about this. He got up and filled the goblet with almost-brandy.
He'd found out a little about these people's history. Their ancestors had been living on the Atlantic coast for over five hundred years; they all spoke the same language, and were of the same stock: Zarthani. They hadn't come from across the Atlantic, but from the west, across the continent. Some of that was recorded history he had read, and some was legend; all of it was supported by the maps, which showed all the important seacoast cities at the mouths of rivers. There were no cities on the sites of such excellent harbors as Boston, Baltimore or Charleston. There was the Grefftscharr Kingdom, at the west end of the Great Lakes, and Dorg at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, and XipWon at the site of New Orleans. But there was nothing but a trading town at the mouth of the Ohio, and the Ohio valley was full of semi-savages. Rivers flowing east and south had been the pathway.
So these people had come from across the Pacific. But they weren't Asiatics, as he used the word; they were blond Caucasians. Aryans! Of course; the Aryans had come out of Central Asia, thousands of years ago, sweeping west and south into India and the Mediterranean basin, and west and north to Scandinavia. On this line of events, they'd gone the other way.
The names sounded Greek-all those -os and -es and -on endings-but the language wasn't even the most corrupt Greek. It wasn't even grammatically the same. He'd had a little Greek in college, dodging it as fast as it was thrown at him, but he knew that.
Wait a minute. The words for "father" and "mother." German, vater; Spanish, padre; Latin, pater; Greek, as near that as didn't matter; Sanskrit, pitr. German, mutter; Spanish, madre; Latin, mater; Greek, meter; Sanskrit, matr. In Zarthani, they were phadros and mavra.
IT was one of those small late-afternoon gatherings, nobody seeming to have a care in the world, lounging indolently, sipping tall drinks, nibbling canapйs, talking and laughing. Verkan Vall held his lighter for his wife, Hadron Dalia, then applied it to his own cigarette. Across the low table, Tortha Karf was mixing himself a drink, with the concentrated care of an alchemist compounding the Elixir of Life. The Dhergabar University people-the elderly professor of Paratemporal Theory, the lady professor of Outtime History (IV), and the young man who was director of outtime study operations-were all smiling like three pussy-cats at a puddle of spilled cream.
"You'll have it all to yourselves," Vall told them. "The Paratime Commission has declared that time-line a study-area, and it's absolutely quarantined to everybody but University personnel and accredited students. I'm making it my personal business to see that the quarantine is enforced."
Tortha Karf looked up. "After I retire, I'm taking a seat on the Paratime Commission," he said. "I'll see to it that the quarantine isn't revoked or modified."
"I wish we could account for those four hours from the time he got out of that transposition field until he stopped at that peasant's cottage," the paratemporal theorist said. "We have no idea what he was doing."
"Wandering in the woods, trying to orient himself," Dalla said. "Sitting and thinking, most of the time, I'd say. Getting caught in a conveyer field must be a pretty shattering experience if you don't know what it is, and he seems to have adjusted very nicely by the time he had those Nostori to fight. I don't believe he Was changing history all by himself."
"You can't say that," the old professor chided. "He could have shot a rattlesnake which would otherwise have bitten and killed a child who would otherwise have grown up to be an important personage. That sounds far-fetched and trivial, but paratemporal alternate probability is built on different trivialities. Who knows what started the Aryan migration eastward on that sector instead of westward, as on all the others? Some tribal chief's hangover; some wizard's nightmare."
"Well, that's why you're getting those five adjoining time-lines for controls," the outtime study operations director said. "And I'd keep out of Hostigos on all of them. We don't want our people massacred along with the resident population by Gormoth's gang, or forced to defend themselves with Home Time-Line weapons."
"What bothers me," the lady professor of history said, "is Vall's beard."
"It bothers me, too," Dalla said, "but I'm getting used to it."
"He hasn't shaved it off since he came back from Kalvan's time-line, and it begins to look like a permanent fixture. And I notice that Dalla's a blonde, now. Blondes are less conspicuous on Aryan-Transpacific. They're both going to be on and off that time-line all the time."
"Well, nobody's exclusive rights to anything outtime excludes the Paratime Police. I told you I was going to give that time-line my personal attention. And Dalla is officially Special Chief's Assistant's Special Assistant, now; she'll be promoted automatically along with me."
"Well, you won't introduce a lot of probability contamination, will you?" the elderly theorist asked anxiously. "We want to observe the effect of this man's appearance on that time-line..
"You know any kind of observation that doesn't contaminate the thing observed, professor?" Tortha Karf, who had gotten the drink mixed, asked.
"If anything, I'll be able to minimize the amount of contamination his study-teams introduce. I'm already well established with these people as Verkan the Grefftscharr trader. Why, Lord Kalvan offered me a commission in his army, commanding a rifle regiment he's raising, and right now I'm supposed to be recruiting brass-founders for him in Zygros." Vall turned to the operations director. "I can't plausibly get back to Hostigos for another thirty days. Can you have your first team ready by then? They'll have to know their trade; if they cast cannon that blow up on the first shot, I know where their heads will go, and I won't try to intervene for them."
"Oh, yes. They have everything now but local foundry techniques and correct Zygrosi accent. Thirty days will be plenty."
"But that's contamination!" the professor of Paratemporal Theory objected. "You're teaching his people to make cannon, and…"
"Just to make better cannon, and if I didn't bring in fake Zygrosi founders, Kalvan would send somebody else to bring in real ones. I will help him in any other way a wandering pack-trader could; information and things like that. I may even go into battle with him again-with one of those back-acting flintlocks. But I want him to win. I admire the man too much to want to hand him an unearned victory on a platter."