“You’ll meet none from the Far East,” Zoilus warned. “That trade has shriveled.”
I know, Everard recollected. China’s been under the rule of Shi Huang-Ti, the Mao of his day. Totally xenophobic. And now at his death, it’ll be turmoil till the Han Dynasty gets established. Meanwhile the Hiung-nu and other nomad gangsters prowl freely beyond the Great Wall. He shrugged. “Well, what about India, Arabia, Africa, or in Europe Rome, Areconia, or even Gaul?”
The others showed surprise. “Areconia?” Hipponicus asked.
Everard’s pulse thuttered. He kept his manner as casual as it had been when he planted the word. “You haven’t heard? Maybe you know the Areconians under a different name. I heard mention in Parthia when I passed through there, and that was second or third hand. I got the impression of occasional traders from pretty far northwest. Sounded interesting.”
“What are they like?” Creon inquired, still fairly genial toward him.
“Unusual-looking, I was told. Tall, slim, handsome as gods, black hair but skin like alabaster and eyes light; and the men don’t grow beards, their cheeks are as smooth as a girl’s.”
Hipponicus wrinkled brows, then shook his head. Zoilus tautened. Creon rubbed his own bristly chin and murmured, “I seem to have heard talk, these past months—Wait!” he exclaimed. “That sounds like Theonis. Not that she’d have a beard, whatever she is, but hasn’t she got men like that with her? Does anybody really know where she’s from?”
Hipponicus went thoughtful. “I gather she set up in business about a year ago, very quietly,” he said. “She’d have needed permits and so forth. There was no fuss about them, no, nor any gossip to speak of. All at once, here she was.” He laughed. “A powerful protector, I suppose, who takes it out in trade.”
A chill tingle passed along Everard’s scalp. Topflight courtesan, yeah, that’s how a woman could get full freedom of action in these surroundings. I sort of expected it. He bent his mouth upward. “Think she’d at least talk to a homely vagabond?” he asked. “If she does have kin-folk here, or if she herself thinks best to leave, well, my sword is for hire.”
Zoilus’ palm cracked onto his couch. “No!” he yelled. The rest stared. He collected himself and challenged Everard, raggedly: “Why are you so interested, if you know so little about these … Areconians, did you call them? I didn’t think a hardheaded mercenary would chase after… a fairy tale.”
Hoy, I’ve touched a nerve, haven’t I? Back off! Everard raised a hand. “Please, it was just a notion of mine. Not worth making a fuss about. I’ll inquire around town in a general way tomorrow, if I may. Meanwhile, you gentlemen have more important things to talk about, don’t you?”
Creon’s lips thinned. “We do,” he said.
Nonetheless, throughout that evening Zoilus’ glance kept straying toward Meander the Illyrian.
976 B.C.
After their attack on the Exaltationists, the Patrol squadron flitted to an uninhabited island in the Aegean to rest, care for the wounded, and assess the operation. It had gone as well as Everard dared hope: four bandit timecycles shot down, seven prisoners taken off the foundering ship on which they had left Phoenicia. True, three riders had flashed away into space-time before an energy beam could strike. His heart would have no real ease until the last of their breed was captured or slain. Still, there could be very few remaining at large, and today he had—finally, finally—nabbed the ringleader.
Merau Varagan walked some yards off from the group, to a cliff edge, where he stood looking out over the sea. The Patrolmen on guard let him. They had snapped a neuroinduction collar around the neck of each prisoner. At the first sign of any suspicious move, a remote-control switch would activate it and the wearer would collapse paralyzed. On impulse. Everard went to join him.
Water sparkled blue, flecked with white, dusted with radiance. Sunlight called pungencies out of dittany underfoot. A breeze ruffled Varagan’s hair, which sheened obsidian black. He had shed his drenched robe and stood like a marble statue newly from the hand of Phidias. His face might also have been the ideal of a Hellas not yet born, except that it was too fine-chiseled and nothing Apollonian dwelt in the great green eyes or on the blood-red mouth. Dionysian, perhaps….
He nodded at Everard. “A lovely vista,” he said in American English, which his voice turned into music. The tone was calm, almost nonchalant. “May I savor it while we are here?”
“Sure,” agreed the Patrolman, “though we’ll leave pretty soon.”
“Does the exile planet offer anything comparable?”
“I don’t know. They don’t tell us.”
“To make it more feared, I daresay. That un-discover’d country from whose bourn No traveler returns.’” Sardonically: “You needn’t persuade me not to escape it by leaping off this verge, no matter how relieved some of your companions might feel.”
“As a matter of fact, we’d cuss. It wouldn’t be nice of you, putting us to all the trouble of fishing out your carcass and reviving it.”
“In order to subject me to the kyradex.”
“Yeah. You’ve got a headful of information we want.”
“I fear you will be disappointed. We have taken care that none of us shall know much about any other’s resources, capabilities, or contingency plans.”
“Uh-huh. Natural-born loners, the bunch of you.”
“And the genetic engineers of the thirty-first millennium set themselves to bring forth a race of supermen, bred to adventure on the cosmic frontier,” Shalten said once, “and lo, they found they had begotten Lucifer.” He sometimes talks in that vaguely Biblical style. Otherwise nothing about him is vague.
“Well, I will preserve what dignity I can,” Varagan said. “Once on the planet”—he smiled—“who knows what may be possible?”
Physical weariness and letdown after excitement left Everard vulnerable to emotion. “Why do you do it?” he blurted. “You lived like gods—”
Varagan nodded. “Very much like gods. Have you ever considered the fact that that includes changelessness, trapped in a myth, ultimate meaninglessness? Our civilization was older to us than the Stone Age was to yours. In the end, that made it unendurable.”
So you tried to overthrow it, and failed, but some of you had managed to seize timecycles, and fled back into the past. “You could have left it peacefully. The Patrol, for instance, would’ve been overjoyed to have people with your abilities as recruits; and for your part, I swear you’d never have been bored.”
“We would have been what is worse, perverting our innermost natures. The Patrol exists to conserve one version of history.”
“And you’ve kept trying to destroy it! In God’s name, why?”
“So stupid a question is unworthy of you. You know quite well why. We have tried to remake time in order that we may rule it; and we have desired to rule in order that our wills may be wholly free. Enough.”
Haughtiness departed, lightness returned. Varagan trilled a laugh. “The stodgy have triumphed again, it seems. Congratulations. You’ve done a remarkable piece of detective work, tracking us. Would you tell me how? I’ll be most interested.”
“Ah, it’d take too long,” and parts of it would hurt too much.
The arched brows lifted higher. “Your mood has shifted, has it? You seemed amiable a minute ago. I still feel thus. You’ve been a rather exciting enemy, Everard. In Colombia-to-be,” where Varagan came close to taking over Simón Bolívar’s government, “in Perú,” where his gang tried to steal Atahuallpa’s ransom from Pizarro and change the course of the Spanish Conquest, “and now in Tyre,” which they had threatened to blow up, were they not given an instrumentality that could have made them nearly omnipotent, “we have played our game, you and I. Where-when else, less directly?”