Sun, stars, and campfire smoke, rain, lightning, and a river in spate, wolves, stampede, and a cattle raid, song, saga, and ancestral epic, birth, death, and blood sacrifice, comradeship, contests, and lovemaking—Cynthia didn’t ask about more than he chose to tell. He knew that, beneath her silence, she had guessed there was somebody in an ancient Persia whose history had been subtly altered. He’d been working ever since on putting Cassandane behind him. But months away from home added up, and if he’d declined Thuliash’s kindly offer he might never have gained the king’s confidence, which it was necessary for him to do, and—And he wished little Ferya all the best in her nomad world, and this second honeymoon in Paris should bring him back closer to Cynthia, whom the Lord knew was a dear and valiant lady—
His exuberance had faded. He lifted the ax that marked him as of warrior class, worthy to speak with chieftains. It was also a communicator. “Specialist Keith Denison calling milieu headquarters, Babylon,” he said in Temporal. “Hello, hello. Talk freely; my associate and I are alone.”
The air crackled: “Greeting, Agent. Glad to hear from you. We were growing worried.”
“Yes, I’d planned to get away a little sooner, but they wanted me to take part in their equinox rite and I couldn’t well refuse.”
“Equinox? A pastoral society keeping a solar calendar?”
“Well, this particular tribe observes the quarter days—which is a possibly useful datum. Can you fetch us? We have a chariot and two horses, Patrol stock.”
“At once, Agent. Only let me get a fix on your location.”
Mikelian danced in the grass. “Home!” he caroled.
A carrier appeared, no hopper but a large cylinder that hovered on antigravity a few inches above ground. It hadn’t skipped through time, merely across space. Four men in Mesopotamian costume of the period, complete with curled beards, emerged. Quickly, they got team and vehicle aboard. Everybody embarked, the pilot took his seat, the Caucasus Mountains blinked from sight.
What appeared in the viewscreens was a plain where grass billowed to the horizon. Tree-shaded, a set of timber buildings and a corral stood nearby. Two women clad for rough work hastened to greet the newcomers. They took charge of Denison’s transportation. The Patrol could safely maintain a ranch in North America before humans arrived. Mikelian patted the horses an affectionate goodbye. Maybe he’d get the same ones on his next trip.
The carrier jumped again. It emerged in a secret vault below the Babylon where Hammurabi still reigned.
The director of the base met the anthropologists and invited them to dine. They’d be here a couple of days, downloading the information they had gathered. Most was of purely scientific interest, but what was the Patrol for if not to serve civilization in every possible way? Too bad that the knowledge couldn’t be made public for thousands of years, after time travel had been developed, Denison thought. Meanwhile scholars would exhaust their lives following merely archaeological clues, often onto wholly false trails…. It wasn’t for nothing. Their labors carved a bridgehead from which Patrol Specialists launched the real quests.
Over the dinner table, he related those of his findings that were operationally significant. “Thuliash and his confederation will not cross the mountains. They’ll be migrating east instead. So he won’t augment Gandash’s forces on this side, and I believe that is why the Kassites don’t make any more gains against the Babylonians, nineteen years from now, than history records.”
“Which means we have a somewhat less complicated military-political situation to keep track of than I feared,” said the director. “Excellent. Great work.” Obviously he was thinking of lifespan released to mount guard over other potential trouble spots.
He arranged for his guests to tour the city, properly disguised and under close guidance. It was Mikelian’s first time, and Denison always found such a visit interesting. Nevertheless eagerness seethed in them, and release at last was joy.
They got shaves and haircuts at the base. It didn’t keep twentieth-century clothes in stock, but their field outfits were durable, comfortable, pungent in a clean outdoor way that evoked a lot of memories. “I’d like to keep mine for a souvenir,” Mikelian said.
“You’ll probably want it again for use,” Denison told him. “Unless our next assignment is to a very different region, and I don’t expect that. You would like to join me, wouldn’t you?”
“Would I ever, sir!” Tears stood forth in the brown young eyes. Mikelian wrung his hand, leaped aboard a hopper, waved, and vanished.
Denison selected one for himself from among those that waited in the whitely lit garage. “God be with you, Agent,” said the attendant. He was a twenty-first-century Iraqi. The Patrol tried to match somatotypes to eras, and race changes far more slowly than language or faith.
“Thank you, Hassan. Likewise.”
Having mounted, for a moment Denison sat half adream. He’d arrive in a cavern little different from this, register, obtain garments and money and passport and whatever else he needed, then walk from the office building that fronted for the Patrol yonder, forth onto the Boulevard Voltaire, Saturday morning, the tenth of May, most beautiful of all Parisian months…. Traffic would be frantic, but in 1980 the city hadn’t yet suffered its full monstrous overgrowth…. The hotel where Cynthia was to make a reservation and meet him stood on the Left Bank, a charming, slightly dilapidated anachronism where croissants for breakfast were fresh-baked on the premises and the staff liked guests who were lovers….
He set for his destination and touched the main switch.
1980 α A. D.
Daylight flooded him.
Daylight?
Shock froze his hands on the control bars. As if by a lightning flash at night, he saw a narrow street, high-peaked walls, a crowd that howled and recoiled in pandemonium from him, the women all wore dark ankle-length gowns and kept their heads covered, the men had some color to long coats and baggy pants, the air was full of smoke and barnyard smells—As instantaneously he knew that no vault existed and his machine, built not to arrive within solid matter, had brought him to the surface of some place that was not his Paris—
Get out of here!
Untrained for combat missions, he reacted half a second too slowly. A man in blue leaped, tackled him around the waist, dragged him from the saddle. Denison had barely time and drilled-in reflex to hit the emergency go-button. A vehicle must never, under no circumstances whatsoever, fall into outsider possession. His disappeared. He and his assailant tumbled to the pavement.
“God damn it, stop that!” Denison did know martial arts, they were part of his Patrol education. The blue-clad man got fingers on his throat. Denison struck the edge of his palm into the neck, under the angle of the jaw. His attacker gasped and sagged, a dead weight upon him. Denison could breathe anew. The rags of darkness cleared from his eyes. He scrambled free and onto his feet.
Again too late. The civilians stumbled over each other to get clear—through the general yelling he made out “sorcier!” and “juif vengeur!”—but another man in blue rode a well-trained horse through the midst of them. Denison saw boots, short cape, flat helmet, yes, some kind of trooper or policeman. Mostly he saw a sidearm drawn and pointed at him. He saw, in the clean-shaven face behind, the fear that can kill.
He raised his hands.
The trooper put whistle to mouth and shrilled thrice. Thereafter he shouted for order and silence. Denison followed his words with difficulty and gaps. They weren’t any French he knew, different accent and a lot of what seemed to be English, though this wasn’t franglais either, he thought dazedly: “Calm! Control yourselves! I have him arrested…. The saints…. Almighty God…. His Majesty—”