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He had been breathing in and out, deep slow breaths which oxygenated his blood to the fullest. Now he took a lungful — not straining, which would have spent energy, just storing a fair amount — and launched himself down the world lines.
There was the sensation, indescribable, but which he had told me was not quite unlike swimming against a high tide. The sun rose in the west and skidded eastward; then, as he “accelerated,” light became a vague pulsation of grayness, and everywhere around him reached shadow. It was altogether silent.
He glimpsed a shellburst — soundless, misty — but was at once past the Six Day War, or had that been the War of Independence or the First World War? Wan unshapes drifted past. On a cloudy night in the late nineteenth century he must reenter normal time for air. The chronolog could have given him the exact date, had he wanted to shoot the stars again; its detectors included sensitivities to those radiations which pierce an overcast. But no point in that. A couple of mounted men, probably Turkish soldiers, happened to be near. Their presence had been too brief for him to detect while traveling, even were it daylight. They didn’t notice him in the dark. Horseshoes thumped by and away.
He continued.
Dim though it was, the landscape began noticeably changing. Contours remained about the same, but now there were many trees, now few, now there was desert, now planted fields. Fleetingly, he glimpsed what he guessed was a great wooden stadium wherein the Crusaders held tourneys before Saladin threw them out of their blood-smeared kingdom, and he was tempted to pause but held to his purpose. Stops for breath grew more frequent as he neared his goal. The journey drained strength; and, too, the idea that he might within hours achieve his dream made the heart hammer in his breast.
A warning light blinked upon the chronolog.
It could follow sun, moon, planets, and stars with a speed and precision denied to flesh. It could allow for precession, perturbation, proper motion, even continental drift; and when it identified an aspect of heaven corresponding to the destination, that could be nothing except the hour which was sought.
A light flashed red, and Havig stopped.
Thursday night was ending. If the Bible spoke truly, the Last Supper had been held, the agony in the garden was past, and Jesus lay in bonds, soon to be brought before Pilate, condemned, scourged, lashed to the cross, pierced, pronounced dead, and laid in the tomb.
(“They tie them in place,” Havig told me. “Nails wouldn’t support the weight; the hands would tear apart. Sometimes nails are driven in for special revenge, so the tradition could be right as far as it goes.” He covered his face. “Doc, I’ve seen them hanging, tongues black from thirst, bellies bloated — after a while they don’t cry out any longer, they croak, and no mind is left behind their eyes. The stink, the stink! They often take days to die. I wonder if Jesus wasn’t physically frail, he won to his death so soon … A few friends and kinfolk, maybe, hover on the fringes of the crowd, hardly ever daring to speak or even weep. The rest crack jokes, gamble, drink, eat picnic lunches, hold the kiddies up for a better view. What kind of a thing is man, anyway?”
(Put down your pride. Ours is the century of Buchenwald and Vorkuta — and Havig reminded me of what had gone on in the nostalgically remembered Edwardian part of it, in places like the Belgian Congo and the southern United States — and he told me of what has yet to happen. Maybe I don’t envy him his time travel after all.)
Morning made an eastward whiteness. Now he had an olive orchard at his back, beyond which he glimpsed a huddle of adobe buildings. The road was a rutted dirt track. Afar, half hidden in lingering twilight, Jerusalem of the Herodian kings and the Roman proconsulate crouched on its hills. It was smaller and more compact than the city he remembered two mille
He sat panting while light quickened and vigor returned. Hungry, he broke off chunks of goat cheese and tortilla-like bread, and was surprised to realize that he was taking a perfectly ordinary meal on the first Good Friday in the world.
If it was. The scholars might have gotten the date wrong, or Jesus might be nothing more than an Osirian-Essene-Mithraic myth. Suppose he wasn’t, though? Suppose he was, well, maybe not the literal incarnation of the Creator of these acres, those wildfowl, yonder universe … but at least the prophet from whose vision stemmed most of what was decent in all time to come. Could a life be better spent than following him on his ministry?
Well, Havig would have to become fluent in Aramaic, plus a million details of living, and he would have to forget his quest.
He sighed and rose. The sun broke over the land.
He soon had company. Nevertheless he walked as an outsider.
(“If anything does change man,” he said, “it’s science and technology. Just think about the fact — while it lasts — that parents need not take for granted some of their babies will die. You get a completely different concept of what a child is.” He must have seen the memory of Nora flit across my face, for he laid a hand on my shoulder and said: “I’m sorry, Doc. Shouldn’t have mentioned that. And never ask me to take a camera back to her, or a shot of penicillin, because I’ve tried altering the known past and something always happens to stop me …
Think of electric bulbs, or even candles. When the best you’ve got is a flickering wick in a bowl of oil, you’re pretty well tied to daylight. The simple freedom to stay awake late isn’t really that simple. It has all sorts of subtle but far-reaching effects on the psyche.”)
Folk were up at dawn, tending livestock, hoeing weeds, stoking fires, cooking and cleaning, against the Sabbath tomorrow. Bearded men in ragged gowns whipped starveling donkeys, overloaded with merchandise, toward the city. Children, hardly begun to walk, scattered grain for poultry; a little older, they shooed gaunt stray dogs from the lambs. When he reached pavement, Havig was jostled: by caravaneers from afar, sheikhs, priests, hideous beggars, farmers, artisans, a belated and very drunken harlot, a couple of Anatolian traders, or whatever they were, in cylindrical hats, accompanying a man in a Grecian tunic, and then the harsh cry to make way and tramp-tramp-tramp, quickstep and metal, a Roman squad returning from night patrol.
I’ve seen photographs which he took on different occasions, and can well imagine this scene. It was less gaudy than you may suppose, who live in an age of aniline dyes and fluorescents. Fabrics were subdued brown, gray, blue, ci