But Nagkmur does not understand the accusation. Madwoman, he thinks above the underlying babble of his native tongue. Zendahl and Stacey stare at her and Janet flushes. Yet, she has come here in company with one alien in search of another, and she herself is a telepath, so the conclusion does not seem a stretch to her.
The nature of her senses is such that Janet can hear anyone’s presence even if she cannot see him. So the hand that comes down suddenly and heavily on her shoulder sends a shock through her like a live wire.
“Teleporter?” says Annie Troy. “That’s absurd. He’s a time traveler.”
Which, of course, is not nearly so absurd. For one thing, Nagkmur’s thoughts confirm the charge and Janet overhears: Has Patrol found me? Is this rescue? And from his further thoughts she learns that he is not merely a traveler in time but a policeman of time, arresting smugglers, preventing assaults on the integrity of the time stream, rescuing tourists, and presumably issuing parking tickets. For another, as the newcomer explains to Zendahl, time travel accounts for the data; namely, that Nagkmur’s trouser bore a grease stain in the evening in New York that it did not acquire until early the next morning in Chicago.
Janet stares at Annie Troy and it is like peering through two open windows into an empty house. There is no whisper of thought in the void within. Janet knows the fear of a sighted person confronted with a ghost. Or of a bat bumping into a sound-absorbing tile.
“Saw woman on television,” Nagkmur explains with a toss of his head toward Stacey. “Recognize her from first meeting.” Pheasant’s wings falter and droop from exhaustion. The Superior Man goes where he must. He shows his brilliance by keeping it veiled. Stay true to course. This knowledge will not matter once history restored.
“What first meeting?” Janet asks. But it is Stacey who provides the silent answer: In Constantinople a millennium and a half ago.
She also hears her denial. Sidd is not a time traveler. It’s a cover story to explain how he could be in different eras. But really, a cover story ought to be more plausible than the truth. We must slip away before we are exposed. They don’t believe in witchcraft these days, but they’ll lock us up, stab us for biopsies, cut us open, looking for the secret of unending life.
Janet leans toward her and lays a hand on her forearm. “We have no intention of exposing you. Neither Colonel Zendahl nor myself would welcome too close a scrutiny.” She looks at the apkallu. “Isn’t that right, colonel?” After a pause, the man nods.
Zendahl’s thoughts are a turmoil. What does Murchison know? Was she following me and not the headwalker all the time? Are my people in danger of exposure? He also wonders why Annie is here, but Janet cannot help him there. A blank slate bears no message.
“I don’t think they understand the urgency,” Janet tells Zendahl. “Maybe you can explain what we saw in Passaic.” Unspoken is the challenge: If you don’t, I will.
The apkallu explains about headwalkers and the potential for invasion—he says “infestation”—but he ascribes the knowledge to a secret government program “about which I am not at liberty to speak” rather than to a secret alien population already resident on Earth.
Stacey receives the news with something like delight: Area 51, Roswell, Men in Black, all vindicated! But Nagkmur listens with greater skepticism. Aliens from other stars cannot invade Earth because it would take too long to get here. The economics are not there. Besides, he thinks, no such invasion took place in the “true history.” Annie Troy provides no thoughts, but neither does she voice any objections. Her solitary remark—that such aliens would be unlikely to maintain human machines—makes no sense to the others.
Zendahl’s subconscious tosses a dimly remembered couplet from an ancient poem into his consciousness:
And he cries out, “I know why the headwalker broke cover! It never made sense before, but…” He stops himself on the verge of revealing too much. A great deal of lore had been lost during the Dark Age, after the Six Ships had reached New Apkal and the One had gone on to parts unknown. The apkallu of later ages remembered only what had been transferred to new media before the old media decayed. Genetic engineering, vital to their survival, had been preserved. Ancient history, being of less immediate application, had faded into stories. Accounts had been shortened, complexities sloughed off, analogous figures fused. Only the essential lessons had been kept, to become fables to inspire or frighten children.
“An interstellar invasion might work if the invaders are a self-contained, migratory group. But if the creature that attacked Nagkmur expected to report to its fleet, they must have a way of shortening transit times.”
“Nothing faster than light,” scoffs Nagkmur.
“Unless it travels backward in time at the same time.” Interstellar travel would be impossible, or at least unpopular, unless transit times were a tolerable interval rather than a significant fraction of forever.
Stacey is bewildered, but Nagkmur, though initially astonished, is already considering the potentials.
Annie Troy processes the information and puts two and two together. “The creature’s ship is damaged and it’s trying to repair it. It’s filching electronics on the down-low because it doesn’t want to reveal its presence here, which suggests it is alone.”
“And it attack me because it need temporal precessor?”
“It wasn’t to snatch your shiny hubcaps,” Janet comments.
“Your equipment probably emits a field,” Zendahl speculates, and receives a cautious nod in return. “And the headwalker is probably able to detect the field and home in on it.”
“Then I leave field off. Wait out danger.”
“Wait how long?” says Annie. “It’s stranded, but how long can it hold out? Can it send a message to summon others? Are its companions already searching for it?”
“Not,” says Nagkmur, “my problem.” Phantom world, he thinks. Alien invasion moot.
“Perhaps,” says Janet. “But you will be mooted with it.”
But the time traveler reacts strangely to the caution. Janet detects fragmentary comments indicating satisfaction and just punishment for his sins, although the nature of those sins remains obscure.
“There is a better choice,” says Zendahl. “If you activate the field, the invader will detect it and try to seize it. We’ll be waiting for it and, uh, neutralize it.” If there is a fleet coming behind it, Earth is doomed. We don’t have the sort of defenses we had on Old Apkal. And even there, we lost.
“I am to be bait in your trap?” says Nagkmur with a thin-lipped smile. “Very honored, but respectfully decline.”
Annie Troy whispers to Janet, “If I were he, I’d be thinking about bugging out about now and ducking back to a time to before this headwalker showed up.”
The telepath nods. “He is.”
Nagkmur takes a step toward his machine. Stacey cries out, “Sidd!” and the time traveler hesitates. What is this world to him? An accident, a blunder, a defect in the space-time manifold, something to be overwritten. Why risk anything to preserve its phantoms?
Yet the woman is one of his own. He cannot leave her behind. “Hurry,” he says. “Come with me.” And he reaches out a hand.
But Stacey shakes her head. During her durance in the meat-packing plant, she has fashioned a pair of shanks from pieces of metal and wood scavenged from the detritus and from tape and wire in Siddhar’s kit. She grips them both, one overfist in her left, the other underfist in her right. She does not understand what the two strangers have said about an alien threat, but she is not prepared to flee.