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“Yes,” Havig said miserably. “Carelo, what should I do?”
“I think you are at a stage where the question is, What should I learn?”
“Carelo, I, I’m a single man trying to see a thousand years. I can’t! I just, well, feel this increasing doubt … that the Eyrie could possibly bring forth those machine aspects … Then what will?”
Keajimu touched him, a moth-wing gesture. “Be calm. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.”
“What’s right? Is the future a tyra
“As a practical politician, albeit retired,” Keajimu said with that sudden dryness which could always startle Havig out of a mood, “I suspect you are overlooking the more grisly possibilities. Plain despotism can be outlived. But we Maurai, in our concentration on biology, may have left a heritage worse than the pain it forestalls.”
“What?” Havig tensed on his straw mat.
“Edged metal may chop firewood or living flesh,” Keajimu declared. “Explosives may clear away rubble or inconvenient human beings. Drugs — well, I will tell you this is a problem that currently troubles our government in its most secret councils. We have chemicals which do more than soothe or stimulate. Under their influence, the subject comes to believe whatever he is told. In detail. As you do in a dream, supplying every necessary bit of color or sound, happiness or fear, past or future.”
“To what extent dare we administer these potions to our key troublemakers?”
“I am almost glad to learn that the hegemony of the Federation will go under before this issue becomes critical. The guilt ca
I sat alone over a book in my cottage in Senlac, November 1969. The night outside was brilliantly clear and ringingly cold. Frostflowers grew on my windowpanes.
A Mozart symphony lilted from a record player, and the words of Yeats were on my lap, and a finger or two of Scotch stood on the table by my easy chair, and sometimes a memory crossed my mind and smiled at me. It was a good hour for an old man.
Knuckles thumped the door. I said an uncharitable word, hauled my body up, constructed excuses while I crossed the rug. My temper didn’t improve when Fiddlesticks slipped between my ankles and nearly tripped me. I only kept the damn cat because he had been Kate’s. A kitten when she died, he was now near his ending — As I opened the door, winter flowed in around me. The ground beyond was not snow-covered, but it was frozen. Upon it stood a man who shivered in his inadequate topcoat. He was of medium height, slim, blond, sharp-featured. His age was hard to guess, though furrows were deep in his face.
Half a decade without sight of him had not dimmed my memories. “Jack!” I cried. A wave of faintness passed through me.
He entered, shut the door, said in a low and uneven voice, “Doc, you’ve got to help me. My wife is dying.”
12
“CHILLS AND FEVER, chest pain, cough, sticky reddish sputum yes, sounds like lobar pneumonia,” I nodded. “What’s scarier is that development of headache, backache, and stiff neck. Could be meningitis setting in.”
Seated on the edge of a chair, mouth writhing, Havig implored, “What to do? An antibiotic—”
“Yes, yes. I’m not enthusiastic about prescribing for a patient I’ll never see, and letting a layman give the treatment. I would definitely prefer to have her in an oxygen tent.”
“I could ferry—” he began, and slumped. “No. A big enough gas container weighs too much.”
“Well, she’s young,” I consoled him. “Probably streptomycin will do the trick.” I was on my feet, and patted his stooped back. “Relax, son. You’ve got time, seeing as how you can return to the instant you left her.”
“I’m not sure if I do,” he whispered; and this was when he told me everything that had happened.
In the course of it, fear struck me and I blurted my confession. More than a decade back, in conversation with a writer out California way, I had not been able to resist passing on those hints Havig had gotten about the Maurai epoch on his own early trips thence. The culture intrigued me, what tiny bit I knew; I thought this fellow, trained in speculation, might interpret some of the puzzles and paradoxes. Needless to say, the information was presented as sheer playing with ideas. But presented it was, and when he asked my permission to use it in some stories, I’d seen no reason not to agree.
“They were published,” I said miserably. “In fact, in one of them he even predicted what you’d discover later, that the Maurai would mount an undercover operation against an underground attempt to build a fusion generator. What if an Eyrie agent gets put on the track?”
“Do you have copies?” Havig demanded.
I did. He skimmed them. A measure of relief eased the lines in his countenance. “I don’t think we need worry,” he said. “He’s changed names and other items; as for the gaps in what you fed him, he’s guessed wrong more often than right. If anybody who knows the future should chance to read this, it’ll look at most like one of science fiction’s occasional close-to-target hits.” His laugh rattled. “Which are made on the shotgun principle, remember! … But I doubt anybody will. These stories never had wide circulation. They soon dropped into complete obscurity. Time agents wouldn’t try to scan the whole mass of what gets printed. Assuredly, Wallis’s kind of agents never would.”
After a moment: “In a way, this reassures me. I begin to think I’ve been over-anxious tonight. Since nothing untoward has happened thus far to you or your relative, it scarcely will. You’ve doubtless been checked up on, and dismissed as of no particular importance to my adult self. That’s a major reason I’ve let a long time pass since our last meeting, Doc — your safety. This other Anderson — why, I’ve never met him at all. He’s a co
Again a silence until, grimly: “They haven’t even tried to strike at me through my mother, or bait a trap with her. I suppose they figure that’s too obvious, or too risky in this era they aren’t familiar with — or too something-or-other — to be worthwhile. Stay discreet, and you should be okay. But you’ve got to help me!”
Night was grizzled with dawn when at last I asked: “Why come to me? Surely your Maurai have more advanced medicine.”
“Yeah. Too advanced. Nearly all of it preventive. They consider drugs as first aid. So, to the best of my knowledge, theirs are no better than yours for something like Xenia’s case.”
I rubbed my chin. The bristles were stiff and made a scratchy noise. “Always did suspect there’s a natural limit to chemotherapy,” I remarked. “Damn, I’d like to know what they do about virus diseases!”
Havig stirred stiffly. “Well, give me the ampoules and hypodermic and I’ll be on my way,” he said.
“Easy, easy,” I ordered. “Remember, I’m no longer in practice. I don’t keep high-powered materials around. We’ve got to wait till the pharmacy opens — no, you will not hop ahead to that minute! I want to do a bit of thinking and studying. A different antibiotic might be indicated; streptomycin can have side effects which you’d be unable to cope with. Then you need a little teaching. I’ll bet you’ve never made an injection, let alone nursed a convalescent. And first off, we both require a final dose of Scotch and a long snooze.”
“The Eyrie—”
“Relax,” I said again to the haggard man in whom I could see the despair-shattered boy. “You just got through deciding those bandits have lost interest in me. If they were onto your arrival at this point in time, they’d’ve been here to collar you already. Correct?”