The Shield of Time Read online

  Red Wolf drew a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

  Five men went at his side. Running Fox was no surprise to him, nor Snowstrider and Broken Blade. He decided that Horsecatcher and Caribou Antler had need to wrestle down their fears. The quest bore them south. In that direction the yellow-haired woman had gone; also, the signs of man were not quite so sparse there as everywhere else.

  The land grew drier as it rolled downward. Grass and patches of woods took it over. Finally the travelers came to where the Great Water rolled gray beneath a smoky, flying, whistling sky. Surf brawled, ran up the sands, hissed back. Gulls soared on a sharp salt wind. Bones, shells, plants, and driftwood lay strewn. The Cloud People had only a slight knowledge of this; their usual prey kept inland. Mustering courage, Red Wolf and his men followed the shore east, for it seemed likeliest they would find somebody yonder.

  As they fared, they became aware of riches. Stranded fish meant live ones in the water. Shells must have held flesh. Seal clamored and cormorants spread their wings on crowded skerries. Otter and sea cow rode the waves. “But we know not how to take this game,” Broken Blade regretted.

  “We might learn how,” said Running Fox.

  Red Wolf kept his own counsel. Within him stirred an idea, like a child stirring in its mother’s womb.

  Where a river flowed down a ravine and emptied across the beach, they suddenly spied two persons. Those saw them in turn and retreated up the stream. “Go easily,” Red Wolf told his companions. “We would be unwise to scare them off.”

  He led the way, a spear in his right hand but the left palm held open before him. The strangers continued edging backward. They were young, boys rather than men, the beastlike whiskers of their breed still fuzzy. Hides, untanned but chewed to softness, were flung over their backs against the chill, fastened at the neck by thongs. The condition of the hides showed they must have been taken off carrion, not a kill. Pouches, not sewn but lashed together, hung over their loins. Footgear was of the same rough making. Each carried a shaped stone and a skin in which lay the mussels he had been gathering.

  Snowstrider crowed laughter. “Why, they’re brave as voles!”

  Hope thumped in Red Wolf’s temples. “They may be worth more than mammoths,” he said. “Softly, now.”

  Alder grew on the slopes, man-high or less, seldom thickly enough to hinder movement or sight. A lad called out. His voice wavered. The wind bore it upward, through the rustling boughs. The Cloud People advanced. Others appeared from above the channel. They scrambled down to stand stiff. The boys turned and scampered to join them.

  At the head of the forlorn group was a man whom Red Wolf recognized. Another, young but full-grown, was beside him. At their backs, two women and a girl entering upon womanhood, clad no better than the males, hushed several naked children. “Is this all?” Caribou Antler wondered.

  “Some may be out searching for food,” Red Wolf said, “but they cannot be many or we would have known of them earlier.”

  “Where is … she, the tall one with hair like sunshine?”

  “Wherever she is. Do you fear a woman? Come.” Red Wolf strode forward. His hunters took formation to right and left. Thus had the Cloud People warred against the Horned Men until numbers finally overcame them. This band were striplings then, but their fathers had later given them training. Someday they might have to fight again.

  Red Wolf stopped three paces from the leader. Eyes stared into eyes. Silence stretched amidst the wind. “Greeting,” Red Wolf said at last. “Who are you?’

  The bearded lips moved. What came out sounded like birds twittering. “Can they not speak?” Horsecatcher grumbled. “Are they human?”

  “They are certainly hideous,” Caribou Antler said.

  “Not the woman so much,” Broken Blade murmured.

  Red Wolf’s gaze traveled across the maiden. Her tresses tumbled thick past a delicate face. She shivered and clutched the cape about her slight form. He pulled his attention back to the man, whom he guessed was her father. Tapping his chest, he named himself. The third time he did so, the other seemed to understand, pointed at his own breast, and uttered, “Aryuk.” Waving a hand: “Tulat.”

  “Well, we know what to call them,” Red Wolf said.

  “Real names?” wondered Running Fox. Among his folk, that was a secret between a man and his dream spirit.

  “No matter,” Red Wolf snapped. He saw, he could Well-nigh smell, the strain in his company. It was in him too. What of that mysterious woman? They must not let fear suck away their courage. “Come, we will look about.”

  He stalked onward. Aryuk and the oldest youth moved to stand side by side, to hold him off. He grinned and jabbed air with his spear. They shrank, made way, whispered among themselves. “Where is your protector today?” Red Wolf jeered. Only the wind replied. Emboldened, his men pressed at his back. The dwellers trailed them, a disordered gaggle, half frightened, half sullen.

  A little farther on, the Cloud People found their home. The gulch broadened and a bluff jutted into the river above high-water mark. From the brush-grown slope behind trickled a spring—surely fresh, for the stream was too salt to drink. Three tiny shelters huddled close together. For each, their makers had piled rocks in a circle about as high as a short man’s shoulders, leaving a gap for entry, and rudely chinked them. Deadwood poles laid across the tops held slabs of peat for roofs. Sticks, lashed into bundles with gut, formed windbreaks to lean across the entrances. A banked fire, doubtless always kept burning, glowed red in the gloom of one den. Nearby was a rubbish midden, around which flies buzzed in swarthy clouds.

  “Faugh, the stink!” Broken Blade snorted. “And a rabbit digs a better burrow than this.” The sod huts his people would make against winter, until someday they could build real houses, would have more room and would be kept clean. Meanwhile, their leather tents were both snug and airy.

  “See what is inside,” Red Wolf ordered. “Snowstrider, stand guard by me.”

  The Tulat were plainly unhappy at having their places ransacked, though only Aryuk and the oldest son dared do so much as glower. The searchers found an abundance of meat and fish, dried or smoked, as well as fine pelts and birdskins. “They are clever trappers, at least,” Red Wolf laughed. “Tulat, we will take hospitality of you.”

  His men brought out what they wanted and ate well. Presently Aryuk joined them, squatting on his haunches where they sat cross-legged. He gnawed a bit of salmon and often smiled, ingratiatingly.

  Afterward Red Wolf’s band explored the neighborhood above the riverbed. Their eye for tracks led them to a spot some distance off, at a brook. A patch of bare, packed soil showed that something round like a shelter, but far larger, had lately rested there. What was it? Who had made it, and why? Who had removed it, and how? From one another they hid the creeping in their flesh.

  Red Wolf overcame his uneasiness first. “I think this was where the witch-woman stayed,” he told them, “but she has left. Did she fear us or our help-spirits?”

  “The dwellers can tell us,” Running Fox said, “once we can talk with them “

  “The dwellers can do much more than that,” Red Wolf answered slowly. Exultance leaped. “We have nothing to dread, I believe. Nothing! The spirits have brought us to a better home than we dreamed of.”

  His men gaped. He did not explain at once. Entering the settlement again, he said thoughtfully, “Yes, we must learn their tongue, we must teach them … what we want them to know.” His glance went ahead, to Aryuk’s family. They stood bunched, waiting for whatever would happen. Hands gripped hands, arms lay around children. “We will begin on both these things by taking one of them along to our camp.” He smiled at the girl. Terror stared back.

  1965 A.D.

  On this gentle April afternoon, across the Bay in San Francisco, Wanda Tamberly was being born. Time Patrol agent or no, she must stave off a certain eeriness. Happy birthday, me.

  Coincidence. Ralph Corwin had requested she visit him then
because it was the earliest afternoon on which his Berkeley house would not be a-bustle. As undermanned as it was, the outfit could spare but a handful of people to trace the migrations of man into the New World, no matter how important to the future those might be. Overwhelmed by the task, they were always coming and going at his administrative base.

  Like many other special offices, this was a residential building, rented for several years by persons who did actually live there. Twentieth-century America was a logical locale. Most of the workers were native to it, blending easily in. They could not well use regional headquarters in San Francisco; too much activity would make it undesirably noticeable. Berkeley in the ’60s came near being ideal. Nobody paid particular attention to an occasional oddity when everybody was being nonconformist. Eventually hysteria about drug abuse would make official surveillance too likely. However, by then the Patrol’s group would have finished their job and quit the house.

  Granted, it lacked a hidden space for timecycles to appear in. Tamberly took public transportation, got off on Telegraph Avenue, strolled north on it and across the campus. The day was gorgeous and she felt curious about the decade. It had been a legend of sorts while she was growing up.

  Disappointment. Scruffiness, pretentiousness, self-righteousness. When a boy in dirt-stiffened jeans and what he probably imagined was an Indian blanket thrust a leaflet of pomposities about peace at her, she remembered ahead—Cambodia, boat people—and told him, with a sweet smile, “Sorry, I’m a fascist warmonger.” Well, Manse had once reminisced about the Youth Revolution to her, in terms that she should have taken for a warning. Why care now, when cherry trees stood like sunlit snowstorms?

  The address she sought was a few blocks west of the university on Grove Street (which would be solemnly renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and referred to by her generation as Milky Way). The house was modest, well maintained. A satisfied landlord would not get inquisitive. She mounted its porch and rang the bell.

  The door opened. “Miss Tamberly?” After she nodded: “How do you do. Please come in.” She saw a man tall, slender, with a Roman profile and toothbrush mustache beneath sleek gray-shot hair. His tan shirt had shoulder straps and several pockets, his tan slacks were razor-creased, his feet bore Birkenstock sandals. He looked about forty, but lifeline age meant little if you had received the Patrol’s longevity treatment.

  He closed the door behind her and gave a firm handshake. “I am Corwin.” He smiled. “Pardon the ‘Miss.’ I couldn’t safely call you Agent Tamberly’ when you might have been a solicitor for a worthy cause. Or do you prefer ‘Ms’?”

  “Whatever,” she replied, carefully casual. “Manse Everard’s explained to me how honorifics mutate.” Let him know I’m on friendship terms with an Unattached. In case he likes playing dominance games. “Most recently—I suppose ‘recently’ is right, when I left Beringia less than a week ago, personal timespan—I was Khara-tsetuntyn-bayuk, She Who Knows Strangeness.” Show the big anthropologist that a humble naturalist is not a complete naif in his field.

  She wondered if it was the British accent that put her off. Inquiring at HQ, she’d learned he was born in Detroit, 1895. He had, though, done good work on American Indians during the ’20s and ’30s, before he joined the Patrol.

  “Indeed?” His smile broadened. Actually kind of charming, she admitted. “Brace yourself. I shall want every last drop of your information about that country. But first let’s make you comfortable. What would you like in the way of refreshment? Coffee, tea, beer, wine, something a bit more authoritative?”

  “Coffee, thanks. It’s early yet.” He guided her to the living room and an armchair. Furniture was well-worn. Full bookshelves lined the walls, holding mainly reference works. He excused himself, went kitchenward, soon came back bearing a tray of ware and morsels which she discovered were delicious. Having set things on a low table in front of her, he took a seat opposite and asked whether she minded if he smoked. That was quite considerate of a person from his birthtime; and he lit a cigarette, not a pipe like Manse.

  “Are we alone here?” she wondered.

  “For the nonce. I went to some trouble about that.” Corwin laughed. “Have no fears. I simply thought we should get acquainted without distractions. I can better appreciate what I’m told when I know a bit about the teller. What’s a nice girl like you doing in an organization like this?”

  “Why, you know,” she answered, surprised. “Zoology, ecology—what I think they called natural history when you were young.”

  Hey, that was tactless. To her relief, he showed no offense. “Yes, of course I’ve been informed.” Soothingly: “You’re a pure scientist, for the sake of the knowledge. I confess to a touch of envy.”

  She shook her head. “No, not really, or I wouldn’t be in the Patrol. The pure scientists belong to civilian institutions uptime, don’t they? My job, well, it’s just that we, the Patrol, can’t: understand what goes on among people, especially people close to nature, unless we have some knowledge of their environments. That’s why I was doing my Jane Goodall when and where I was, instead of elsewhere or earlier. The arrival of the Paleo-Indians was expected sometime about then. Not that I’d necessarily meet them personally—that just happened—but I’d’ve reported on the conditions they’d find, the resources available to them, and so on.”

  Concurrently, with dismay: What a motormouth I’m being. He knows all this by heart. Nervousness. Pull yourself together, nit.

  Corwin had blinked. “I beg your pardon? Doing your, er, Jane Goodall?”

  Tamberly relaxed a little. “Sorry, I forgot. She isn’t famous yet. A breakthrough ethologist out in the wilds.”

  “Role model for you, eh? And a jolly good one, to judge by the result.” He sipped from his cup. “I misspoke myself. Obviously I’ve been aware of your role, why you were where-when you were. What I’d like to know is more basic, why you enlisted, how you first learned about us.”

  To speak of that to an interested, interesting, handsome man quickly became more than pleasant—a release. How it hurt, up in 1987 and afterward, that she must lie to her parents, sister, old friends about her reasons for not going on to grad school and about the work that took her away from them. More than once, training at the Patrol Academy, she’d needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. She was past that now. Or was she entirely?

  “Well, it’s a long story, too long for details, I think. My uncle was already a Patrolman, unbeknownst to me or his other kin, when I was studying evolutionary biology at Stanford. He was, is, uh—oh, damn, shouldn’t we speak Temporal? English ties itself in knots, trying to handle time travel.”

  “No, I’d prefer to hear this in your mother tongue. You reveal more of yourself. Which is delightful, if I may make bold to say so. Pray continue.”

  Good Lord, do I feel a blush? Tamberly hastened on: “Uncle Steve was in sixteenth-century Peru, with Pizarro, using the persona of a monk, to keep track of events.”

  (For surely that conquest was among the decisive episodes of history. Had matters gone otherwise than they did, all the future would have been different, more and more as time went on, until by the twentieth century, whatever there was on Earth, it would not have included a United States of America or parents for one Wanda Tamberly. Beneath reality lies ultimate quantum indeterminacy. On the level of observable happenings it manifests itself as chaos in the physics sense of the word, the fact that often immeasurably small forces bring illimitably large consequences. If you go into the past, you can change it, you can annul the future that begot you. You will exist still, parentless, causeless, like an embodiment of universal meaninglessness; but the world from which you fared will exist—will have existed—only in your memories.

  (When time travel became a fact, did altruism call the Danellian superhumans out of the remote future to ordain and establish the Patrol? It does help, succor, advise, adjudicate, the kind of work that mostly occupies any decent police force. But it also seeks to keep the foolish, th
e criminal, the mad from destroying that history which leads through the ages to the Danellians. For them this may be a

  matter of simple survival. They have never told us, we hardly ever see them, we do not know.)

  “Bandits from far uptime, trying to hijack Atahuallpa’s ransom—no, it is too complicated. We’d spend hours. What it came to was, one of Pizarro’s men got hold of a timecycle, learned what it could do and how to operate it, also learned about me, where I was at a particular time. He kidnapped me with the idea of making me guide him around in the twentieth century, help him acquire modern weapons. He had grandiose plans.”

  Corwin whistled. “I can well imagine. Win or lose, yes, the mere attempt could have been disastrous. And I would never have known, because I would never have been born. Not that I matter, but that sort of thought drives the implications home, eh? What happened?”

  “Unattached Agent Everard had already contacted me, investigating Uncle Steve’s disappearance. He didn’t let me in on the secret, of course, but he left me his phone number and I … I made a chance for myself to call him. He freed me.” Tamberly must needs grin. “In the best marines-to-the-rescue style. Which blew his cover.

  “Then he was duty-bound to make sure I kept my mouth shut. I could take conditioning against ever mentioning the subject to anybody not in the know, and pick up my life where I’d dropped it. Except he offered me another choice. I could enlist. He didn’t think I’d make a very good cop, and he was doubtless right, but the Patrol needs field scientists too.

  “Well, when I got a chance to do my paleontology with live critters, did I agree? Does a bear—uh, is the Pope Catholic?”

  “And so you went through the Academy,” Corwin murmured. “I daresay the setting was especially wonderful to you. Afterward, I presume, you worked as part of a team until it was decided you were probably the best person to station in Beringia for conducting independent research.” Tamberly nodded.