Everard suppressed a remark about Antiochus’ love life. “You mean, if he’d gotten killed at Bactra—”
“The dispatch gives no indication that he was ever in danger. His enemies Euthydemus and Demetrius were. And, obscure though their country later became, their resistance changed the course of Antiochus’ career.”
Shalten knocked the dottle from his pipe, laid it aside, clasped hands behind back, continued his parched lecture; and chill went up and down Everard’s spine.
“Professor Soloviev, in his article, speculates at some length, with the weight of authority. He has, for the moment, caught popular fancy around the globe. The thesis is intriguing. The circumstances of the discovery are romantic. And, to be sure, albeit subtly, the professor by implication questions Marxist determinism. He implies that sheer accident—whether a given man does or does not die in a battle—can decide the whole future. That this can be published, and prominently, is a minor sensation itself. It is an early example of the glasnost that M. Gorbachev is proclaiming. Widespread attention is very natural.”
“Well, I look forward to reading it,” Everard said, almost mechanically. Most of him stood in a wind down which blew the scent of tiger … man-eater. “Does the idea really stand up, though?”
“Imagine. Bactria falls to Antiochus, early on. That frees the resources he needs for an outright conquest in western India. This in turn strengthens him against Egypt and, more significantly, Rome. One can well visualize him retaining his gains north of the Taurus and assisting Carthage sufficiently that it survives the Third Punic War. Although he himself is tolerant, a descendant of his attempted to crush Judaism in Palestine, as you may read in First and Second Maccabees. Given total power in Asia Minor, that attempt may well succeed. If so, then Christianity never arises. Therefore the entire world that brought you and me into being is a phantom, a might-have-been, which, conceivably, an alternate Time Patrol keeps suppressed.”
Everard whistled. “Yeah. And Exaltationists who got themselves an in with Antiochus—and showed up again among later generations of the Seleucids—they’d have a pretty good shot at creating a world to suit themselves, wouldn’t they?”
“The thought should occur to them,” Shalten said. “First, we know, they will make their Phoenician effort. When that too fails, the remnants of them may remember Bactria.”
209 B.C.
With a roar and a rattle that clamored for hours, the army of King Euthydemus re-entered the City of the Horse. Dust smoked over the land to the south, cast up by hoofs and feet, swirled by wind and human tumult. A cloud of it hazed that horizon, where the Bactrian rear guard staved off the foremost Syrians. Trumpets rang, drums boomed, mounts and pack animals neighed, men’s voices lifted raw.
Everard mingled with the throngs. He had bought a hooded cloak to obscure his features. In the heat and crowding, such a garment was as unusual as his size, but today nobody paid heed. He worked his way quietly through street and stoa, around the city—casing the joint, he told himself; shaping what plans he could, for every set of circumstances he could imagine, within the constraints of what he saw.
Whip-wielding riders cleared ways from gates to barracks. After them came the soldiers, gray with dust, slumped with weariness, mute with thirst. Nonetheless they moved smartly. Most went on horseback, in light armor, lanceheads nodding bright above pennons and regimental standards, ax or bow and quiver at the saddle. They were seldom used as shock troops, for the stirrup was unknown to them, but they sat like centaurs or Comanches, and their hit-run-hit tactics recalled an onslaught by wolves. The infantry that stiffened them was a mixed bag, mercenaries, no few from Ionia or Greece itself; a ripple went over their long, serried pikes, the cadence of their march. The officers riding in crested helmet and figured cuirass seemed mainly Greek or Macedonian.
Jammed against walls, leaning out of windows and over rooftops, folk watched them go past, waved, cheered, wept. Women held infants up, crying against all hope, “See! See your child,——” and a beloved name. Oldsters blinked, peered, shook their heads, more nearly resigned to the caprices of the gods. Boys shouted loudest, sure that the enemy’s doom would soon be upon him.
The soldiers never stopped. They were bound for their quarters, a gulp of water, assignments, immediate duty for some on the ramparts. Later, if the foe did not try to storm the gates, they’d get brief leaves in rotation. Then wineshops and joyhouses would fill.
That wasn’t going to last, Everard knew. If nothing else, the city could not long feed so many animals. Zoilus and Creon had declared that granaries were well-stocked. The siege would not be a total encirclement. Properly guarded, people could take water from the river. Antiochus might try interdicting traffic on the stream with catapults, but he couldn’t stop many supply-laden barges. Under strong escort, an occasional caravan might actually make it overland from other parts of the kingdom. Still, there would only be fodder for a limited number of horses, mules, and camels. The rest must be slaughtered—unless Euthydemus used them in an early effort to break the Syrians.
Short commons for the next couple of years. I’m sure glad I won’t be stuck here. Though how I’ll get out is, urn, problematical.
Once this operation was completed, whether or not it had caught any Exaltationists, the Patrol would come in surreptitious fashion to look for Everard, if he hadn’t already called in; and, of course, they’d check to see whether Chandrakumar was okay, and remove their agent in Antiochus’ army. Until then, however, all were expendable. It mattered not that Everard was Unattached, thus more valuable than the other two, who made their respective careers as scientist and constable in this milieu. Everard was inside Bactra precisely because his capabilities were equal to a wide variety of unforeseeable situations. Shalten judged it likeliest by far that Raor would base herself here. Unless something went wildly awry, the man who accompanied Antiochus was a backup, no more. But rank made no difference now. What counted was getting the job done. If that cost the life of an Unattached agent, the loss to the corps would be heavy; but the gain was a future saved, everybody who would ever be born and everything they would ever do, learn, create, become. Not a bad bargain. His friends could grieve at their leisure.
This is assuming we do block the bandits and, preferably, nail them.
Records uptime said that the Patrol did succeed, at least in the first objective. But if it should fail, then those records had never existed, the Patrol was never founded, Manse Everard never lived…. He pushed the thought off, as he always did when it came to haunt him, and concentrated on his work.
Rumor fanned agitation, Eastern excitability broke into flame, and turmoil filled the streets from gate to gate. It was camouflage for Everard as he went around and around, observing detail after detail, annotating the map in his head.
Repeatedly he passed the house he had ascertained was Theonis’. Two-storied, it obviously surrounded a courtyard like other dwellings of the well-to-do. Though rather small of its kind, much less than Hipponicus’, it was faced with polished stone rather than stucco and boasted a porch, narrow but colonnaded beneath a basrelief frieze. Alleys separated it from its neighbors. The street on which it fronted held the mixture of residences and shops common in an absence of zoning laws. None of the nearby businesses were of a sort to stay open after dark, unless you counted Theonis’ own, and it did not advertise itself. That suited her purposes best. Good. It suits me too. His plan of action was taking shape.