She frowned. "I know a bit already."
"Hm, I suppose you do. Look, we needn't discuss this till you feel recovered. Take a couple of days and get over the shock."
She lifted her head pridefully. "Thanks, but no need. I'm unhurt, hungry, and eaten alive by curiosity. Concern, too. My uncle—No, really, please, I'd much rather not wait."
"Wow, you're a tough cookie. Okay. Let's start by you telling me your experiences. Take it slow. I'll interrupt you a lot with questions. The Patrol needs to know everything. Needs it more than you're aware."
"And the world is?" She shivered, swallowed, clenched fingers on the tabletop edge, launched into her story. They were halfway through their meal before he had exhausted it of detail.
Starkly, he said, "Yes, this is very bad. Be a lot worse if you hadn't proved so courageous and resourceful, Miss Tamberly."
She flushed. "Please, I'm Wanda."
He forced a smile. "All right, I'm Manse. Spent my boyhood in Middle America of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. The manners they installed have stuck. But if you prefer first names, that's fine by me."
She gave him a long look. "Yes, you would stay a polite country boy, wouldn't you? Roving through history, you'd miss out on the social changes in your homeland."
Intelligent, he thought. And beautiful, in a strong-boned fashion.
Anxiety touched her. "What about my uncle?"
He winced. "I'm sorry. The Don told you nothing more than that he left Steve Tamberly on the same continent but in the far past. No location, no date."
"You have—time to search for him."
He shook his head. "I wish we did, but we don't. We could use up thousands of man-years. And we haven't got them. The Patrol's stretched too thin. We're barely enough to carry out our normal missions and try to cope with emergencies like this. Only so many man-years available, you see, because sooner or later every agent is bound to die or be disabled. Here events have gotten out of hand. We'll need every resource we can spare to set matters right—if we can."
"Might Luis go back for him?"
"Maybe. I suspect not. He'll have more important things in mind. Hide out till his injury heals, and then—" Everard stared past her. "A hard, smart, unmerciful, reckless man, loose on a machine. He could appear anywhere, any when. The harm he can do is unlimited."
"Uncle Steve—"
"He might be able to help himself. I'm not sure how, but he may hit on a plan, if he survives. He's bright and strong. I see now why you've been his favorite relative."
She dabbed at a tear. "Damn it, I will not bawl! Maybe later—maybe later we'll find a clue. Meanwhile, m-my steak's getting cold." She attacked it as if it were an enemy.
He resumed his own eating. In an odd way, the silence between them changed from strained to companionable. After a while she asked quietly, "How about telling me the whole truth?"
"An outline of it," he agreed. "That alone will take a couple of hours."
—In the end she sat wide-eyed on the sofa while he paced before her, to and fro. His fist hammered his palm. "A Ragnarok situation," he said. "But not hopeless. Wanda, whatever has become or will become of Stephen Tamberly, he did not live in vain. Through Castelar, he passed two names on to you, 'Exaltationists' and 'Machu Picchu.' Not that I imagine Castelar would have done it if you hadn't had the wits—under those conditions, at that—to lead him on, get him to tell what he knew."
"That was very little," she demurred.
"A bomb can be small too, till it explodes. Look, the Exaltationists—I'll tell you more in due course, but briefly, they're a gang of desperados from the rather far future. Outlaws in their milieu; snatched several vehicles and escaped into space-time tracklessness. We've had to cope with results of their doings before now—'before now' in terms of my life, that is—but they've always avoided capture. Well, you've told me they were in Machu Picchu. We know the natives didn't abandon that city entirely till the last resistance to the Spaniards was crushed. So from the descriptions you got out of Castelar, the date the Exaltationists were there must be soon after. That's a sufficient lead for our scouts to locate the scene exactly.
"An agent of ours had 'already' reported outsiders active in the court of the Inca, some years before Pizarro arrived. It seems they tried and failed to head off an apportionment of power that led to civil war and paved the way for that corporal's guard of invaders. In the light of what you've told me, I'm sure they were the Exaltationists, attempting to change history. When it didn't work, they decided they'd at least hijack Atahualpa's ransom. That'd be disruptive enough, and could well enable them to do still more mischief."
"Why?" she whispered.
"Why, to abort the whole future. Make themselves overlords, first in America, eventually throughout the world. There'd never have been a you or a me, a United States, a Danellian destiny, a Time Patrol . . . unless they organized one of their own to protect the misshapen history they brought into being. Not that I think they could long have stayed in charge. Selfishness like that generally turns on itself. Battles through time, a chaos of changes—I wonder how much flux the space-time fabric could survive."
She whitened, then whistled. "Ye gods, Manse!"
He stopped his prowling, leaned over, touched her below the chin to bring her face upward toward his, and asked with a crooked smile. "How does it feel knowing you may have saved the universe?"
15 April 1610
The spacecraft was black, lest they on Earth see a star pass over them, swift before sunrise or after sunset, and know they were watched. Nevertheless a broad one-way transparency filled it with light. It was orbiting dayside when Everard arrived, and the planet stretched vast, blue swirled with white around the ruddinesses that were continents.
His cycle appeared in the receiver bay and he jumped off without pausing to love the sight as he had done often and often. The gravitor put full weight under his feet. He hastened to the pilot deck. Three agents whom he knew, though centuries sundered their births, awaited him.
"We believe we've acquired the moment," said Umfanduma immediately. "Here's the playback."
Another vessel, of those that between them kept Machu Picchu under surveillance, had taken the data. This was the command ship. Everard had come as soon as messages transmitted through space and relayed through time reached him. The image was from minutes earlier. At ultramagnification after light had crossed atmosphere, it was blurry. Yet when Everard froze its motion and peered closer, he saw metal shine on the head and torso of a man. That one and another were getting to their feet beside a timecycle, on a platform where the view swept from end to end of the great dead city, on to the mountains around. Dark-clad people crowded near.
He nodded. "Got to be," he said. "We don't know just when Castelar will make his break for freedom, but I'd guess it as within the next two or three hours. What we want to do is hit the Exaltationists right afterward."
Not before, because that did not happen. We dare not undermine even this forbidden pattern of events. The enemy dares do anything. That is why we must destroy him.
Umfanduma frowned. "Tricky," she said. "They always keep a machine aloft, well equipped with detectors. I'm sure they're prepared to flee at an instant's notice."
"Uh-huh. However, their scooters are too few to carry them all at once. They'd have to ferry. Or else, likelier, abandon those who aren't so lucky as to be right by the transportation. We won't need many of our own. Let's get organized."
In the span that followed, the ships filled with armed vehicles and their riders. Tight-beamed communications flickered back and forth. Everard developed his plan, gave out his assignments.