That thought was vague. The whole of him was drowned in her death. He scarcely noticed how the shadows shifted — the house which had been hers and his torn down for a larger, which caught fire when the Turks took Pera, and was succeeded by building after building filled with faces and faces and faces, until the final incandescence and the drifting radioactive ash — nor their halt among ruins, their flight across the ocean, their further journey to that future where the Sachem waited. In him was nothing except Xenia, who saw him vanish and lay back to die alone, unshriven.
While summer blanketed the Eyrie in heat and brazen light, the tower room where Havig was confined stored cool dimness in its bricks. It was bare save for a washstand, a toilet, a mattress, and two straight chairs. A single window gave upon the castle, the countryside, the peasants at labor for their masters. When you had looked out into yonder sunshine, you were blind for a while.
A wire rope, welded at the ends, stretched five feet from a ring locked around his ankle to a staple in the wall. That sufficed. A time traveler bore along whatever was in direct contact with him, such as clothing. In effect, Havig would have had to carry away the entire keep. He did not try.
“Sit down, do sit down,” Caleb Wallis urged.
He had planted his broad bottom in one of the chairs, beyond reach of his prisoner. Black, epauletted uniform, neatly combed gingery whiskers, bare pate were an assertion of lordship over Havig’s grimed archaic clothes, stubbly jaws, bloodshot and murk-encircled eyes.
Wallis waved his cigar. “I’m not necessarily mad at you,” he said. “In fact, I kind of admire your energy, your cleverness. I’d like to recall them to my side. That’s how come I ordered the boys to let you rest before this interview. I hope the chow was good? Do sit down.”
Havig obeyed. He had not ceased to feel numb. During the night he had dreamed about Xenia. They were bound somewhere on a great trimaran whose sails turned into wings and lifted them up among stars.
“We’re private here,” Wallis said. An escort waited beyond the door, which stood thick and shut. “You can talk free.”
“Supposing I don’t?” Havig replied.
The eyes which confronted him were like bullets. “You will. I’m a patient man, but I don’t aim to let you monkey any further with my destiny. You’re alive because I think maybe you can give us some compensation for the harm you’ve done, the trouble you’ve caused. For instance, you know your way around in the later twentieth century. And you have money there. That could be mighty helpful. It better be.”
Havig reached inside his tunic. He thought dully: How undramatic that a new-made widower, captive and threatened with torture, should be unbathed, and on that account should stink and itch. He’d remarked once to Xenia that her beloved classical poets left out those touches of animal reality; and she’d shown him passages in Homer, the playwrights, the hymners, oh, any number of them to prove him wrong; her forefinger danced across the lines, and bees hummed among her roses …
“I gather you were keeping a wench in Constantinople, and she fell sick and had to be let go,” Wallis said. “Too bad. I sympathize, kind of. Still, you know, lad, in a way you brought it on yourself. And on her.” The big bald head swayed. “Yes, you did. I’m not telling you God has punished you. That could be, but nature does give people what they deserve, and it is not fitting for a proper white man to bind himself to a female like that. She was Levantine, you know. Which means mongrel-Armenian, Asiatic, hunky, spig, Jew, probably a touch of nigger—” Again Wallis’s cigar moved expansively. “Mind, I’ve nothing against you boys having your fun,” he said with a jovial wink. “No, no. Part of your pay, I guess, sampling damn near anyone you want, when you want her, and no nonsense afterward out of her or anybody else.” He scowled. “But you, Jack, you married this’n.”
Havig tried not to listen. He failed. The voice boomed in on him:
“There’s more wrongness in that than meets the eye. It’s what I call a symbolic thing to do. You bring yourself down, because a mixed-breed can’t possibly be raised to your level. And so you bring down your whole race.” The tone harshened. “Don’t you understand? It’s always been the curse of the white man. Because he is more intelligent and sensitive, he opens himself to those who hate him. They divide him against himself, they feed him lies, they slide their slimy way into control of his own homelands, till he finds he’s gotten allied with his natural enemy against his brother. Oh, yes, yes, I’ve studied your century, Jack. That’s when the conspiracy flowered into action, wrecked the world, unlocked the gates for Mong and Maurai … You know what I think is one of the most awful tragedies of all time? When two of the greatest geniuses the white race ever produced, its two possible saviors from the Slav and the Chinaman, were lured into war on different sides. Douglas MacArthur and Adolf Hitler.”
Havig knew — an instant later, first with slight surprise, next with a hot satisfaction — that he had spat on the floor and snapped: “If the General ever heard you say that, I wouldn’t give this for your life, Wallis! Not that it’s worth it anyway.”
Surprisingly, or maybe not, he provoked no anger. “You prove exactly what I was talking about.” The Sachem’s manner verged on sorrow. “Jack, I’ve got to make you see the plain truth. I know you have sound instincts. They’ve only been buried under a stack of cunning lies. You’ve seen that nigger empire in the future, and yet you can’t see what ought to be done, what must be done, to put mankind back on the right evolutionary road.”
Wallis drew upon his cigar till its end glowed beacon-red, exhaled pungent smoke, and added benign-voiced: “Of course, you’re not yourself today. You’ve lost this girl you cared about, and like I told you, I do sympathize.” Pause. “However, she’d be long dead by now regardless, wouldn’t she?”
He grew utterly intense. “Everybody dies,” he said. “Except us. I don’t believe we travelers need to. You can be among us. You can live forever.”
Havig resisted the wish to reply, “I don’t want to, if you’re included in the deal.” He waited.
“They’re bound to find immortality, far off in the world we’re building,” Wallis said. “I’m convinced. I’ll tell you something. This is confidential, but either I can trust you eventually or you die. I’ve been back to the close of Phase One, more thoroughly than I’d been when I wrote the manual. You remember I’ll be old then. Sagging cheeks, rheumy eyes, shaky liver-spotted hands… not pleasant to see yourself old, no, not pleasant.” He stiffened. “This trip I learned something new. At the end, I am going to disappear. I will never be seen any more, aside from my one short visit I’ve already paid to Phase Two. Never. And likewise a number of my chief lieutenants. I didn’t get every name of theirs — no use spending lifespan on that — but I wouldn’t be bowled over if you turned out to be among them.”
Faintly, the words pricked Havig’s returning apathy. “What do you suppose will have happened?” he asked.
“Why, the thing I wrote about,” Wallis exulted. “The reward. Our work done, we were called to the far future and made young forever. Like unto gods.”
In the sky outside, a crow cawed.
The trumpet note died from Wallis’s words. “I hope you’ll be included, Jack,” he said. “I do. You’re a go-getter. I don’t mind admitting your talk about your experiences on your own hook in Constantinople was what gave Krasicki the idea of our raid. And you did valuable work there, too, before you went crazy. That was our best haul to date. It’s given us what we need to expand into the period. Believe me, Caleb Wallis is not ungrateful.