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Havig bristled. “I’ve seen what prejudice, callousness, and stupidity bring about. The sins of the fathers are very truly visited on the Sons.”
Walls chose to ignore the absence of an honorific. Indeed, he smiled and grew soothing: “I know. I know. Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of colored men are fine, brave fellows-Zulus, for instance, or Apache Indians to take a different race, or Japs to take still another. Any travelers we may find among them will get their chance to occupy the same honored position as all our proven time agents do, as you will yourself, I’m sure. Shucks, I admire your Israelis, what I’ve heard about them. A mongrel people, racially no relation to the Hebrews of the Bible, but tough fighters and clever. No, I’m just talking about the need for everybody to keep his own identity and pride. And I’m only mad at those classes it’s fair to call niggers, redskins, Chinks, kikes, wops, you know what I mean. Plenty of pure-blooded whites among them, I’m sorry to say, who’ve either lost heart or have outright sold themselves to the enemy.”
Havig forced himself to remember that that basic attitude was common, even respectable in the Sachem’s birth-century. Why, Abraham Lincoln had spoken of the inborn inferiority of the Negro … He didn’t suppose Wallis ordered crucifixions.
“Sir,” he said with much care, “I suggest we avoid argument till we’ve made the terms of our thinking clear to each other. That may take a lot of effort. Meanwhile we can better discuss practical matters.”
“Right, right,” Wallis rumbled. “You’re a brain, Havig. A man of action, too, though maybe within limits. But I’ll be frank, brains are what we need most at this stage, especially if they have scientific training, realistic philosophies.” He waved the cigar. “Take that haul today from Jerusalem. Typical! The Brabanter and the Greek we can probably train up to be useful fighting men, scouts, auxiliaries on time expeditions, that sort of thing. But the rest—” He clicked his tongue. “I don’t know. Maybe, at most, ferrymen, fetching stuff from the past. And I can only hope the woman'll be a breeder.”
“What?” Havig started half out of his chair. It leaped inside him. “We can have children?”
“With each other, yes. In the course of a hundred years we’ve proved that.” Wallis guffawed. “Not with non-travelers, no, not ever. We’ve proved that even oftener. How’d you like a nice little servant girl to warm your bed tonight, hm? Or we have slaves, taken on raids — and don’t go moralistic on me. Their gangs would’ve done the same to us, and if we didn’t bring prisoners back here and tame them, rather than cut their throats, they and their brats would go on making trouble along our borders.” His mood had reverted to serious. “Quite a shortage of traveler women here, as you’d expect, and not all of them willing or able to become mothers. But those who do — The kids are ordinary, Havig. The gift is not inherited.”
Considering the hypothesis he had made (how far ago on his multiply twisted world line?), the younger man was unsurprised. If two such sets of chromosomes could interact to make a life, it must be because the resonances (?) which otherwise barred fertility were canceled out.
“Well, then, no use trying to breed a race from ourselves,” Wallis continued wistfully. “Oh, we do give our kids educations, preference, leadership jobs when they’re grown. I have to allow that, it being one thing which helps keep my agents loyal to me. But frankly, confidentially, I’m often hard put to find handsome-looking posts where somebody’s get can do no harm. Because the parents are time travelers, it doesn’t follow they’re not chuckle-heads fit only to bring forth more chuckle-heads. No, we’re a kind of aristocracy in these parts, I won’t deny, but we can’t keep it hereditary for very long. I wouldn’t want that anyway.”
Havig asked softly: “What do you want, sir?”
Wallis put aside his cigar and drink, as if his next words required the piety of folded hands on the desk before him. “To restore civilization. Why else did God make our kind?”
“But — in the future — I’ve glimpsed—”
“The Maurai Federation?” Fury flushed the wide countenance. A fist thudded down. “How much of it have you seen? Damn little, right? I’ve explored that epoch, Havig. You’ll be taken to learn for yourself. I tell you, they’re a bunch of Kanaka-white-nigger-Chink-Jap mongrels who’ll come to power — are starting to come to power while we sit here — for no other reason than that they were less hard-hit. They’ll work, and fight, and bribe, and co
He leaned back, breathed hard, swallowed his whiskey, and stated: “Well, they won’t succeed. For three-four centuries, yes, I’m afraid men will have to bear their yoke. But afterward — That’s what the Eyrie is for, Havig. To prepare an afterward.”
“I was born in 1853, upstate New York,” the Sachem related. “My father was a poor storekeeper and a strict Baptist. My mother — that’s her picture.” He indicated the gentle, ineffectual face upon the wall, and for an instant a tenderness broke through. “I was the last of seven children who lived. So Father hadn’t a lot of time or energy to spare for me, especially since the oldest boy was his favorite. Well, that taught me at an early age how to look out for myself and keep my mouth shut. Industry and thrift, too. I went to Pittsburgh when I was officially 17, knowing by then how much of the future was there. My older self had worked closer with me than I gather yours did. But then, I always knew I had a destiny.”
“How did you make your fortune, sir?” Havig inquired. He was interested as well as diplomatic.
“Well, my older self joined the Forty-niners in California. He didn’t try for more than a good stake, just enough to invest for a proper profit in sutlering when he skipped on to the War Between the States. Next he had me run over his time track, and when I came back to Pittsburgh the rest was easy. You can’t call ’em land speculations when you know what’s due to happen, right? I sold short at the proper point in ’73, and after the panic was in a position to buy up distressed property that would become valuable for coal and oil. Bought into railroads and steel mills, too, in spite of trouble from strikers and anarchists and suchlike trash. By 1880, my real age about thirty-five, I figured I’d made my pile and could go on to the work for which God had created me.”
Solemnly: “I’ve left my father’s faith. I guess most time travelers do. But I still believe in a God who every now and then calls a particular man to a destiny.”
And then Walls laughed till his belly jiggled and exclaimed:
“But my, oh, my, ain’t them highfalutin words for a plain old American! It’s not glamour and glory, Havig, except in the history books. It’s hard, grubby detail work, it’s patience and self-denial and being willing to learn from the mistakes more than the successes. You see how I’m not young any more, and my plans barely started to blossom, let alone bear fruit. The doing, though, the doing, that’s the thing, that’s to be alive!”
He held out his empty glass. “Refill this,” he said. “I don’t ordinarily drink much, but Lord, how I’ve wanted to talk to somebody both new and bright! We have several shrewd boys, like Krasicki, but they’re foreigners, except a couple of Americans who I’ve gotten so used to I can tell you beforehand what they’ll say to any remark of mine. Go on, pour for me, and yourself, and let’s chat awhile.”
Presently Havig could ask: “How did you make your first contacts, sir?”
“Why, I hired me a lot of agents, throughout most of the nineteenth century, and had them go around placing advertisements in papers and magazines and almanacs, or spreading a word of mouth. They didn’t say ‘time traveler,’ of course, nor know what I really wanted. That wording was very careful. Not that I made it myself. I’m no writer. Brains are what a man of action hires. I hunted around and found me a young Englishman in the ’90’s, starting out as an author, a gifted fellow even if he was kind of a socialist. I wanted somebody late in the period, to avoid, um-m, anticipations, you see? He got interested in my, ha, ‘hypothetical proposition,’ and for a few guineas wrote me some clever things. I offered him more money but he said he’d rather have the free use of that time travel idea instead.”