She did. He and Karel Novak repeated them aloud before they made the jump. Everard saw light flash off the automatic rifle the Czech kept ready in his grasp. Well, his life, the life of all his forefathers, made wariness a reflex. We Americans were luckier, in the world where there was a United States of America.
Already Everard felt sure that, given reasonable caution, his scouting party would meet no danger. Even before they left, he’d expected as much. Else he might have refused Tamberly’s suggestion that she be the guide, overridden her insistence, and skipped ahead to Denison’s full recovery, despite the difficulties that would create.
Or would he have? The sensible thing in any case probably was to suppress his protective instincts and bring her. The idea was to compare this future with the future now averted. Denison had come to know the latter in depth, but vicariously. Tamberly had had an overview, which was all Everard wanted anyway. And Lord knows the girl has proved she can cope.
Small strung-out farms huddled along the rivers and what remained of a rather primitive canal network. Mostly, middle California had gone back to arid wilderness. Mud-walled fortresses stood guard at intervals. Afar, through his optical, Everard spied what seemed to be a band of wild horsemen.
Huge holdings occupied the Midwest. Many lay plundered and desolate, survivors or invaders eking out a squalid existence in sod huts on thinly worked fields. Others endured, ranching or raising a diversity of crops. At the middle of each clustered several large buildings, usually stockaded. Cities, which had never been of much size, were shrunk to towns or hamlets amidst abandoned ruins.
“Manorial economy,” Everard muttered. “Produce nearly everything you use at home, because damn little trade goes on any more.”
Fragments of a higher civilization clung in the East, though here too cities were dwindled and run-down, often laid waste. Everard noticed the gridiron pattern of nearly all streets and the formidable stone structures at every center. What prosperity anybody still enjoyed was evidently founded on slave labor; he saw coffles driven along the roads and field gangs toiling under armed supervision. He thought they included whites as well as blacks, though sunburn, grime, and distance made it hard to tell. He didn’t care for a closer view.
Cannon boomed in the Hudson Valley, cavalry charged, men hewed and perished. “I believe an empire has died, and these are its ghosts at war with each other,” Novak said.
Surprised, for he’d come to think of the man as dour and down-to-earth, Everard replied, “Yeah. A dark age. Well, let’s try the seaboard, and maybe mid-ocean, before Europe.”
It made sense thus to retrace Tamberly’s course, more or less. Europe must hold the wellspring of this time distortion, as it did of the last. Approach it from the periphery, always ready to skip out at the first sign of menace. Everard’s glance never quite left the array of detectors whose readings glimmered between his hands.
Did transatlantic commerce exist yet? Ships were few, but he saw two or three that were obviously capable of ocean crossings. In fact, they looked somewhat more advanced than those Tamberly had described, perhaps roughly equivalent to the Patrol world’s eighteenth century. However, like lesser craft, they were only sailing, well gunned, along the coasts; he found none on deep water.
London was a big version of the slums in the New World. Paris resembled it, astonishingly so. A leveling influence had been at work everywhere, to produce the same right-angle intersections and grim central complexes. Various medieval churches abided, but in poor shape; Notre Dame de Paris was half demolished. More recent ones were small, of humble design.
The smoke and thunder of another battle drifted from those grounds on which Versailles had never stood.
“London and Paris were a lot bigger in the other history.” Tamberly sounded quite subdued.
“I guess the power in this one, that’s now collapsed, lay farther south or east,” Everard sighed.
“Shall we go see?”
“No. No reason to, and we’ve plenty else ahead of us. We’ve confirmed what I suspected, which was the main purpose of this junket.”
Interest livened Tamberly’s tone. “What’s that?”
“You didn’t know? Sorry, I forgot to explain. It seemed obvious to me. But your field is natural history.” Everard drew breath. “Before we try again to correct matters, we have to make certain that this, too, hasn’t been due to any time travelers, whether by accident or on purpose. Our operatives pastward are working on that, of course, but I figured we could quickly pick up an important piece of the evidence by reconnoitering far uptime. If someone in the twelfth century did have some scheme, today the world would doubtless look very strange. Instead, what we’ve seen indicates a, uh, a hegemony over Western civilization, an empire that never had any Renaissance or scientific revolution either, and at last fell apart. So I think we can assume no conscious agency acted; and a blunder is extremely unlikely. Once again, what we’re up against is quantum chaos, randomness, events gone wild of their own accord.”
Novak spoke uneasily: “Sir, does that not make our task still more difficult and dangerous?”
Everard’s mouth tightened. “It sure does.”
“What can we do?” Tamberly asked low.
“Well,” Everard said, “by ‘randomness’ I don’t mean that things have taken this direction without any cause. In human terms, people have done whatever they did for their own reasons. It just happens that what they did was different from what they did in our history. We’ve got to find that turning point—or fulcrum point—and see if we can’t swing the lever back the way we want it to act. Okay, let’s return to base.”
Tamberly interrupted before he could read off destination coordinates. “What’ll we do then?”
“I’ll see what the investigators have found out, and on that basis try a little further detective work. You, well, probably you’d best proceed to your naturalist station.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, you’ve done fine, but—”
Indignation flared. “But you mean that now I should sit twiddling my thumbs when I’m not chewing the nails off them. Well, you pull that self-satisfaction out of your ears, Manson Everard, and listen to me.”
He did. Never mind if Novak was disconcerted. She had a point or two to make, and they were valid. What knowledge she needed could readily be instilled. The more basic knowledge, of how to deal with people and danger, could not be; but she already had it, in her experience and her genes. Besides, the Patrol’s orphans needed every able campaigner they could find.
1137 A. D.
In his private chamber the silk merchant Geoffrey of Jovigny received two visitors. They were a huge man, well clad, and a tall, fair-haired young woman who, though decently quiet in public, looked about her with a boldness well-nigh brazen. The apprentices were astounded when they learned she would sleep with the children.
Otherwise these callers drew less heed than they would ordinarily have done, for Palermo seethed with tidings. Each newcomer brought a new story. At the end of October King Roger met disaster at Rignano and barely, by aid of the saints, escaped the battlefield. At once he rebounded, laid fresh siege to Naples, won back Benevento and Monte Cassino, forced his enemy Abbot Wibald out of Italy, and got a clerical friend elected to head the great abbey. Now only Apulia held out against him, and it seemed he might actually become arbitrator between the rival Popes. Sicily rejoiced.
In the paneled room upstairs, Everard, Tamberly, and Volstrup sat as bleak as the December day outside.
“We’ve come to you,” the Unattached agent said, “because what the databases know about you suggests you’re the best man available for a certain mission.”
Volstrup blinked above his winecup. “I? Sir, with respect, jokes are inappropriate when we have gone immediately from one crisis to a second, equally desperate one.” He alone in the city had experienced Everard’s previous visit; in the course of that salvage operation he had twice been brought downtime for consultation.