There Will Be Time

“If she mainly stayed with you, however, there must have been a strong attraction on both sides,” I said.

“There was. I’ve tried, as near as my privacy fetish will let me, to tell you what held me to her. From Leonce’s side … hard to be sure. How well did we actually know each other? How well have any man and woman ever? — My learning and, yes, intelligence excited her. She had a fine mind, hit-or-miss educated but fine. And, I’ll be frank, I doubtless had the top job in the Eyrie. Then, too, I suppose we felt the attraction of opposites. She called me sweet and gentle — not patronizingly, because I did do pretty well in games and exercises, being from a better-nourished era than average — but I was no stark mountaineer or roughneck Renaissance mercenary.”

Again ghosts dwelt in his smile. “On the whole,” he said, “she gave me the second best part of my life, so far and I think probably forever. I’ll always be grateful to her, for that and for what followed.”

Havig’s suspicions developed slowly. He fought them. But piece by piece, the evidence accumulated that something was being withheld from him. It lay in the evasion of certain topics, the brushoff of certain questions, whether with Austin Caldwell’s embarrassment, or Coenraad van Heuvel’s brusque “I may not say what I have been told,” or Reuel Orrick’s changing the subject and proceeding to get weeping drunk, or the mild “In God’s good time all shall be revealed to you, my son” of Padre Diego the Inquisitor, or an obscene command to shut up from various warrior types.

He was not alone in this isolation. Of those others whom he approached about it, most were complaisant, whether from prudence or indifference. But young Jerry Je

So did Leonce, in more pungent words. Then after a moment she said: “Well, they can’t give us new ’uns ever’thing in a single chaw, can they?”

“Coenraad’s as new as I am,” he protested. “Newer than you …”

Her curiosity piqued, she found her own methods of investigation. They were not what you’d think. She could match a tough, woman-despising man-at-arms goblet for goblet till he was sodden and pliable, while her head remained ice-clear. She could trap a sober person by an adroit question; it helped having been a shaman. And she appalled Havig by whispering to him at night, amidst schoolgirl giggles, how she had done what was strictly forbidden without permission, slipped into different periods of the Eyrie’s existence to snoop, pry, and eavesdrop.

She concluded: “Near’s I can learn, ol’ Walls’s jus’ feared you an’ ’em like you might get mad at what some o’ the agents do in some times an’ places. Anyhow, till you’re more used to the idear.”

“I was arriving at the same notion myself,” Havig said bleakly. “I’ve seen what earlier ages are like, what personalities they breed. The travelers who respond to his come-ons, or make themselves conspicuous enough for his searchers to hear about, are apt to be the bold — which in most cases means the ruthless. Coming here doesn’t change them.”

“Seems like orders is, you got to be led slow to the truth. I s’pose I’m only kep’ from it ‘cause of bein’ by you.” She kissed him. “ ’S’kay, darlya.”

“You mean you’d condone robbery and—”

“Hush. We got to use who we can get. Maybe they do be rough. Your folk, they never were?”

Sickly, he remembered how … from Wounded Knee to My Lai, and before and after … he never disowned his nation. For where and when — if it had not abdicated all responsibility for the future-existed a better society?

(Denmark, maybe? Well, the Danes boasted about Viking ancestors, who were comfortably distant in time, but stayed notably silent about what happened during the slave uprising in the Virgin Islands, 1848, or less directly in Greenland. By 1950 or so, of course, they were free to relax into a smugness shared by the Swedes, who had not only traded with Hitler but let his troop trains roll through their land. And yet these were countries which did much good in the world.)

“‘Sides,” Leonce said candidly, “the weak go down, ’less they’re lucky an’ got somebody strong to guard ’em. An’ in the end, come the 01’ Man, we’re all weak.” She thought for a minute. “Could be,” she mused, “was I undyin’, I’d never kill more’n a spud, an’ it only for food. But I will die. I’m in the game too. So’re you, darlya. Let’s play for the best score we can make, hm?”

He pondered long upon that.

“But if nothing else,” he told me, and I heard his anguish, “I had to try and make certain the gold was worth more than the tailings.”

“Or the end could justify the means?” I responded. “Sure, I follow. To say it never does is a counsel of perfection. In the real world, you usually must choose the lesser evil. Speaking as an old doctor — no — well, yes, I’ll admit I’ve given my share of those shots which end the incurable pain; and sometimes the choice has been harder. Go on, please do.”

“I’d been promised a survey of the Maurai epoch,” he said, “so I could satisfy myself it was, at best, a transition period, whose leaders became tyrants and tried to freeze the world. So I could agree that, when the Maurai hegemony began to crumble-perhaps hastened by our subversion — we ought to intervene, seize power, help turn men back toward achievement and advancement.”

“Not openly, surely,” I objected. “That, the sudden mass appearance of time travelers, would produce headlines nobody could mistake.”

“True, true. We were to spend centuries building our strength in secret, till we were ready to act in disguise. It wasn’t made clear exactly what disguise; but it was admitted that information was still sparse, because of the usual difficulties. Besides, I heard long philosophical arguments from guys like Padre Diego, about free will and the rest. I thought the logic stank, but said nothing.”

“Had, urn, Leonce already been taken uptime?”

“Yes. That’s why she basically favored Wallis, in spite of her occasional naughtinesses. She told me about a world where progress had been made, more and more peaceful-looking for a long span of history. Except she could not agree this was necessarily progress. Granted, that world did have fleets of efficient sailing ships and electric-powered dirigibles, ocean ranches, solar energy screens charging accumulators, widescale use of bacterial fuel cells which ran off the wastes of living organisms, new developments in both theoretical and applied science, especially biology—”

He stopped for breath and I tried to inject a light note:

“Don’t tell me your pet Valkyrie used such terms!”

“No, no.” He continued earnest. “I’m anticipating what I saw or had explained to me. Her impressions were more general. But she had that huntress and sorceress knack of close observation. She was quite able to trace the basic course of events.”

“Which was?”

“Men did not go on to any fresh peak. Instead, what they reached was a plateau, where they stayed. The bio-technological culture didn’t improve further, it merely spread further. ”

“That was scarcely her ideal of the High Years restored, or Wallis’s of unlimited growth and accomplishment.”

“The tour skimmed fast through a later phase of what appeared to be retrogression and general violence. Eyrie agents don’t dare explore it in detail till they have a larger and stronger organization. Nor can they understand what lies beyond. It seems peaceful once more, but it’s not comprehensible. From the glimpse I had, I’m prepared to believe that.”

“What was it like?” I asked. “Can you tell me?”

“Very little.” His tone fell rough. “I haven’t time. Sound strange, coming from me? Well, it’s true. I’m a fugitive, remember.”

“I gather your trip uptime did not remove your skepticism about Wallis’s intentions,” I said, more calmly than I felt. “Why?”