Buleni was still alive, barely. Everard pointed. “Bring him and the killed Exaltationist to operation headquarters,” he ordered through an unsoiled transceiver given him. “They’ll know there what they want to do with ’em.” He walked around. Poor old Dolon sprawled in the dust at his feet. “Carry this man into the temple, out of the sun. Give him a medic check and whatever care he needs that you can administer on the spot. I suspect he’d benefit from a stimulant injection. The rest can lie where they are till they rouse.”
The women had not been stunned, in the corner where they were. They cowered back, made alive again by terror, the grandmother embracing the mother, the mother clutching the child. Everard went over and stood above them. He knew he was a fearsome sight, bloodstained, sweat-dripping, begrimed, but he could fashion a smile.
“Listen,” he said, as gently as his hoarsened voice was able, “listen well. You have seen the wrath of Poseidon. But it was not against you. I repeat, the Earthshaker is not angry at you. Men here have offended him. They shall be borne to Hades. You are innocent. The god blesses you. In token of that, I am to give you this.” He had been unshipping his purse. He dropped it in front of them. “It is yours. Poseidon cast a slumber on these soldiers, lest they behold what they should not, but he will do them no further harm after they awaken, if they in their turn will see to the well-being of you, his wards. Tell them that. Do you understand me?”
The baby cried, the mother sobbed. The granny met Everard’s eyes and said, with a steadiness that must be due in part to shock, “I who am old believe I dare understand you and remember.”
“Good.” He left them and resumed his Patrol business. He had done the best for them that he possibly could—bending rules well out of shape, but after all, he was an Unattached agent.
Anxiety touched his rescuers. “Sir,” ventured the young woman, “excuse me for asking, but this thing we’ve done—”
She must be pretty new in the field, but she had handled her job smartly. He decided she and her fellows were worth a minute’s field education. “Don’t worry. We’ve not upset history. What’s your birth milieu?”
“Jamaica, sir, 1950.”
“Okay, to put it in terms of your era, imagine you see a brawl start. Suddenly several helicopters come down. They drop tear gas bombs that disable the crowd without seriously hurting anybody. Men climb out wearing masks. They lug two of the brawlers into a chopper. One man tells the witnesses that these are dangerous Communists and this squadron is from the CIA, seizing them at the request of the local government. The squadron flits away. Let’s suppose this all happens in an isolated valley, the phone lines are cut, there’s no immediate linkage with anywhere else.
“Well, locally it’d be a ninety days’ wonder. By the time the story got to the rest of the world, though, it’d be stale and diluted, the news media would give it little or no play, most people who heard about it at all would guess it was a wild exaggeration and soon forget it. Even you folks who were on hand would stop talking much about it, and it’d fade in your recollections. You weren’t really affected, and you have your lives to get on with. Besides, there’s nothing inherently impossible. You know helicopters, tear gas, and the CIA exist. This was a weird sort of incident, but still, just an incident. You’d tell your children, but probably they wouldn’t tell theirs.
“That’s what a brief intervention by the gods is like, in the minds of people here-now. Of course, we only stage one when we absolutely must, and the sooner we scramble, the better.”
Through his communicator Everard included the rest in his instructions. The slain and the live Exaltationist had been slung onto timecycles that blinked from the scene. An extra Patrolman had gone with them, leaving saddle and weapons for the Unattached. Everard’s companion was a tough, stocky man from Europe of his own period, Imre Ruszek, who sat behind him while he piloted. He cast the women a last glance as he rose on antigrav, and saw bewilderment struggling with hope.
The three hoppers lifted high enough to be no more than glints to any eyes that might chance to catch them, and glided toward Bactra. Below them the land rolled vast from the mountains in the south, fields green and brown, spotted with trees and tiny buildings, the river mercury-bright, the city and the invader camp toylike. No hint of hatred and misery reached these clean cold winds, save what the riders bore with them.
“Now hear this,” Everard intoned. “There are two bandits left, and if we go about it right, I think we may well take them. The operative phrase is ‘go about it right.’ We only get one shot. No fancy dodging around in time, trying to fix things, if this fails. It’s all very well to show the locals a miracle, but we will not play games with causality and risk setting off a temporal vortex, even if the risk does seem small. Is that clear? You’ve had the doctrine drilled into you, I know, but Ruszek and I are going down, and if we come to grief, somebody could be tempted to rashness. Don’t be.”
He described Raor’s house and its layout. Alarms were set to yell the moment a vehicle made a space-time jump, departing or arriving, anywhere in a radius of many miles. She and Sauvo would promptly dash for their own machine, or machines, and be off for parts unknown. To hell with the other two. Loyalty was a matter of expediency among those ultimate egoists.
That was the case if yonder alarms had been alert when Everard called and help for him appeared. The hoppers’ computers knew to the microsecond when that was. He designated an instant sixty seconds earlier, when he was assaulting Draganizu and Buleni; they’d not been in a position to benefit from any warnings that were flashed them a minute later. “Call it Time Zero.”
At hover, he used magnifying opticals and electronic range finders to determine within a few feet the spot at which he wanted to come into the house. He set the controls for that and Time Zero. The rest of the vehicles would return to then also, but remain aloft till it became clear what had happened on the ground.
“Go!” His finger stabbed the main control point.
He, his partner, his timecycle were in a corridor. A window on their right stood open to the light and fragrance of the garden court. The door on their left was massive, shut, and locked. They had cut off access to the enemy’s transport.
Sauvo sped around the corner of the hall, deer-swift. His hand gripped an energy pistol. Ruszek shot first. A thin blue flame streaked past Everard. It pierced Sauvo’s chest. The tunic around it scorched. For that eyeblink of time, the fury on his face became the pathetic surprise of a child suddenly struck. He fell. Scant blood ran from him, most was cooked, but otherwise he died in the usual human uncleanliness.
“A stunner might have been too slow,” Ruszek said.
Everard nodded. “Okay,” he answered. “Sit tight. I’ll hunt for the last of ’em.” Into his communicator: “Third down, one to go.” The squad should catch his meaning. “We hold the depot. Watch the doors. If a woman comes out, nab her.” As if from far away he heard terrified sobbing, a female slave, and wished that none of those innocents would suffer.
“That will not be necessary,” sang coldly through the noise. “I will be no game for your curs to chase.”
Raor walked toward them. A thin gown clung to every flowing stride. The ebon hair fell loose around beauty and scorn. Everard thought of Artemis the Huntress. His heart stumbled.
She halted a short way off. He dismounted and approached her. My God, he thought, filthy and stinking, I feel like a naughty schoolboy called up by the teacher. He straightened and stopped. His pulse throbbed, but he could meet the sea-green eyes.