“An agent like you, serving the same ends as you, except that my work is within the Patrol.”
Everard pushed the attack. “When are you from? The Danellian era?”
Defense broke down. “No!” Guion made a violent fending gesture. “I have never even met one!” He looked away. The aristocratic visage writhed. “You did, once, but I—No, I am nobody.”
You mean you are human, like me, Everard thought. We are both to the Danellians what Homo erectus—or Australopithecus?—is to us. Though you, born in a later and higher civilization, must know more about them than I’d be able to. Enough more to be terrified?
Guion recovered himself, drank, and said, again quietly, “I serve as I am bidden. That is all.”
With a sudden sympathy, an irrational wish to give comfort, that was itself heartening, Everard murmured, “And so at present you’re just tying up loose ends, clearing the decks, nothing fancy.”
“I hope so. I pray so.” Guion drew breath. He smiled. “Your commonplace way of putting it, your workaday attitude—what strength they give.”
Tension ebbed out of Everard too. “Okay. We went up a bad street for a minute, didn’t we? Actually, I shouldn’t worry, on my account or Wanda’s.”
Beneath his regained coolness, Guion sounded equally relieved. “That is what I came to assure you. The aftermath of your clash with Agent Corwin and others is no more. You can dismiss it from your mind and go about your business.”
“Thanks. Cheers.” They raised glasses.
It would take a little ordinary conversation, gossip and shop talk, to achieve genuine relaxation. “I hear you are preparing for a new mission,” Guion remarked.
Everard shrugged. “No biggie. Securing the Altamont case. You wouldn’t know about that, nor care.”
“No, please, you rouse my curiosity.”
“Well, why not?” Everard leaned back, puffed his pipe, savored his beer. “It’s in 1912. World War One is brewing. The Germans think they’ve found a spy who can infiltrate the opposition, an Irish-American called Altamont. Actually he’s an English agent, and in the end will turn the tables on them very neatly. The trouble from our viewpoint is, he’s too observant and smart. He’s uncovered certain odd goings-on. They could lead him to our military studies group in those years. A member of the group knows me and asked me to come help work up something to divert the man’s attention. Nothing major. Mainly we’ll have to do it in such a way that he doesn’t deduce something still curiouser is afoot. It should be kind of fun.”
“I see. Your life isn’t entirely hairbreadth adventure, then.”
“It better not be!”
They swapped trivia for an hour, till Guion took his leave. Alone, Everard felt hemmed in. Conditioned air hung lifeless around him. He went to a window and opened it. The lungful that he drew was sharp with the smell of the oncoming thunderstorm. Wind boomed and buffeted.
Foreboding touched him anew. He’s obviously a high-powered type. Would the far future really send him on an errand as trifling as what he described? Might they not, rather, be afraid of what he barely hinted at, a chaos they cannot chart and therefore cannot turn aside? Are they making what desperate provision they can?
Lightning flared like a banner suddenly flown above the enclosing towers. Everard’s mood responded. Cut that out. You’ve got the word that all’s well, haven’t you? Let him proceed in good spirits with his next job, and afterward seek what pleasure he could hope for.
PART SIX
AMAZEMENT OF THE WORLD
1137 α A. D.
The door opened. Sunlight struck bright and bleak into the silk merchant’s shop. Autumn air streamed after it, full of chill and street noises. Then the apprentice stumbled through. Seen from the dimness inside, against the day outside, he was almost a shadow. But they heard how he wept. “Master Geoffrey, oh, Master Geoffrey!”
Emil Volstrup left the desk at which he had stood doing accounts. The stares of the other two boys, one Italian and one Greek, followed him, and their hands fell still upon the bolts of fabric. “What is it, Odo?” he called. The Norman French that he used here rang harsh in his ears. “Did you meet trouble on your errand?”
The slender form stumbled into his arms, the face pressed against his robe. He felt the shuddering. “Master,” sobbed at him, “the king is dead. I heard—they are crying it from mouth to mouth through the city—”
Volstrup’s embrace dropped away. He looked outward. You couldn’t see much through the grilles over the arched windows. The door was still agape, though. Cobblestones, an arcaded building opposite, a Saracen passing by in white cloak and turban, sparrows fluttering up from some scrap of food, none of it seemed real any longer. Why should it? Whatever he saw could at any instant cease ever having been. Everything around him could. He himself.
“Our King Roger? No,” he denied. “Impossible. A false rumor.”
Odo drew back and flailed a wild gesture. “It’s true!” His voice cracked across. The shame of that steadied him a little. He swallowed, swiped at tears, tried to straighten. “Messengers from Italy. He fell in battle. His army is broken. They say the prince is dead too.”
“But I know—” Volstrup’s tongue locked in his mouth. Appalled, he realized that he had been about to describe the future until his conditioning stopped him. Had this tale shaken him so badly? “How would people in the street know? Such news would go straight to the palace.”
“The m-messengers—they called it out as they passed by—”
A sound broke through the noises of Palermo, overrode them, strode between the city walls and out the harbor to the bay. Volstrup knew that voice. All did. It was the bells of the cathedral. They were tolling.
For a moment he stood motionless. At the edge of vision he saw the apprentices at the workbench cross themselves, the Catholic left to right, the Orthodox right to left. It came to him that he had better do likewise. That broke his paralysis. He turned to the Greek lad, the most levelheaded. “Michael,” he ordered, “speed forth, learn what has indeed happened, as nearly as you can in a short time, and come tell me.”
“Yes, master,” the apprentice replied. “They should be giving out the news publicly soon.” He left.
“Back to your work, Cosimo,” Volstrup went on. “Join him, Odo. Never mind what I sent you for. I’ll not want it today.”
As he sought the rear of the shop he heard a racket rising beneath the clang and jangle of the bells. It wasn’t talk, song, footfalls, hoofbeats, wheel-creak, the city’s pulsebeat. It was shouts, screams, prayers—Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, a score of vernaculars, dismay that wailed in this neighborhood and everywhere else. Ja, det er nok sandt. He noticed that his mind had gone back to Danish. The story was probably true. If so, he alone understood in full how terrible it was.
Unless the cause of it also did.
He came out into a small garden court with a water basin, cloistered in Moorish style. This house had been built when the Saracens ruled Sicily. After purchasing it, he had adapted it to his business and to the fact that he would maintain no harem, unlike most of those Normans who could afford to. Now the other sides of the enclosure gave on storerooms, kitchen, dormitories for apprentices and servants, and similar utility. A stair led to the upper story, living quarters for himself, his wife, and their three children. He climbed it.
She met him on the gallery, a small, dark woman, gone plump and her hair, black beneath its covering, streaked with gray, nevertheless rather attractive. He had looked at her middle years before returning to her youth and asking for her hand. That skirted the law of the Time Patrol, but he’d spend a long while with her. He needed a wife for appearance’s sake, for family connections, to maintain his household and, yes, warm his bed; by temperament he was a benedict, not a womanizer.