Pastwatch

by Orson Scott Card

  “On the contrary. We do know that slavery—commerce in human beings—was not discovered in the one place where the Derku had no influence,” said Kemal. He paused.

  “America,” said Diko.

  “America,” said Kemal. “And in the place where people weren’t conceived of as property, what did they have?”

  “There was plenty of bondage in America,” said Tagiri.

  “Of those other kinds. But humans as property, humans with a cash value—it wasn’t there. And that’s one of the things you love best about your idea of stopping Columbus. Preserve the one place on earth where slavery never developed. Am I right?”

  “That’s not the primary reason for looking at Columbus,” said Tagiri.

  “I think you need to look again,” said Kemal. “Because slavery was a direct replacement for human sacrifice. Are you actually telling me that you prefer the torture and murder of captives, as the Mayas and Iroquois and Aztecs and Caribs practiced it? Do you find that more civilized? After all, those deaths were offered to the gods.”

  “You will never make me believe that there was a one-for-one trade, slavery for human sacrifice.”

  “I don’t care whether you believe it,” said Kemal. “Just admit the possibility. Just admit that there are some things worse than slavery. Just admit that maybe your set of values is as arbitrary as any other culture’s values, and to try to revise history in order to make your values triumph in the past as well as the present is pure—”

  “Cultural imperialism,” said Hassan. “Kemal, we have this argument ourselves every week or so. And if we were proposing to go back and stop that Derku woman from inventing slavery, your point would be well taken. But we aren’t trying to do anything of the kind. Kemal, we aren’t sure we want to do anything! We’re just trying to find out what’s possible.”

  “That’s so disingenuous it’s laughable. You’ve known from the beginning that it was Columbus you were going after. Columbus you were going to stop. And yet you seem to forget that along with the evil that European ascendancy brought to the world, you will also be throwing away the good. Useful medicine. Productive agriculture. Clean water. Cheap power. The industry that gives us the leisure to have this meeting. And don’t dare to tell me that all the goods of our modern world would have been invented anyway. Nothing is inevitable. You’re throwing away too much.”

  Tagiri covered her face with her hands. “I know,” she said.

  Kemal had expected argument. Hadn’t she been sniping at him all along? He found himself speechless, for a moment.

  Tagiri took her hands away from her face, but still she looked at her lap. “Any change would have a cost. And yet not changing also has a cost. But it’s not my decision. We will lay all our arguments before the world.” She lifted her face, to look at Kemal. “It’s easy for you to be sure that we should not do it,” she said. “You haven’t looked into their faces. You’re a scientist.”

  He had to laugh. “I’m not a scientist, Tagiri. I’m just another one like you—somebody who gets an idea in his head sometimes and can’t let it go.”

  “That’s right,” said Tagiri. “I can’t let it go. Somehow, when we’re through with all our research, if we have a machine that lets us touch the past, then there’ll be something we can do that’s worth doing, something that will answer the . . . hunger . . . of an old woman who dreamed.”

  “The prayer, you mean,” said Kemal.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly. “The prayer. There is something we can do to make things better. Somehow.”

  “I see that I’m not dealing with science, then.”

  “No, Kemal, you’re not, and I’ve never said so.” She smiled ruefully. “I was shaped, you see. I was given the charge to look at the past as if I were an artist. To see if it could be given a new shape. A better shape. If it can’t, then I’ll do nothing. But if it can . . .”

  Kemal was not expecting such frankness. He had come expecting to find a group of people committed to a course of madness. What he found instead was a commitment, yes, but no course, and therefore no madness. “A better shape,” he said. “That really comes down to three questions, doesn’t it. First is whether the shape is better or not—a question that’s impossible to answer except with the heart, but at least you have the sense not to trust your own desires. And the second question is whether it’s technically possible—whether we can devise a way to change the past. That’s up to the physicists and mathematicians and engineers.”

  “And the third question?” asked Hassan.

  “Whether you can determine exactly what change or changes must be made in order to get exactly the result you want. I mean, what are you going to do, send an abortifacient back and slip it into Columbus’s mother’s wine?”

  “No,” said Tagiri. “We’re trying to save lives, not murder a great man.”

  “Besides,” said Hassan, “as you said, we don’t want to stop Columbus if by doing so we’d make the world worse. It’s the most impossible part of the whole problem—how can we guess what would have happened without Columbus’s discovery of America? That’s something the TruSite II still can’t show us. What might have happened.”

  Kemal looked around at the people who had gathered for this meeting, and he realized that he had been completely wrong about them. These people were even more determined than he was to avoid doing anything foolish.

  “That’s an interesting problem,” he said.

  “It’s an impossible one,” said Hassan. “I don’t know how happy this will make you, Kemal, but you gave us our only hope.”

  “How did I do that?”

  “Your analysis of Naog,” said Hassan. “If there’s anyone who was like Columbus in all of history, it was him. He changed history by the sheer force of his will. The only reason his ark was built at all was because of his grim determination. Then because his boat carried him through the flood, he became a figure of legend. And because his father was a victim of the Derku’s brief return to human sacrifice just before the flood, he told everyone who would listen that cities were evil, that human sacrifice was an unforgivable crime, that God had destroyed a world because of their sins.”

  “If only he had told people slavery was evil, too,” said Diko.

  “He told them the opposite,” said Kemal. “He was a living example of how beneficial slavery could be—because he kept with him his whole life the three slaves who built his boat for him, and everyone who came to meet the great Naog saw how his greatness depended on his ownership of these three devoted men.” Turning to Hassan, Kemal added, “I don’t see how Naog’s example inspired you with any kind of hope.”

  “Because one man, alone, reshaped the world,” said Hassan. “And you were able to see exactly where he turned onto the path that led to those changes. You found that moment where he stood on the shore of the new channel that was being carved into the Bab al Mandab, and he looked up at the shelf of the old coastline and realized what was going to happen.”

  “It was easy to find,” said Kemal. “He immediately started for home, and to his wife he explained exactly what he had thought of and when he had thought of it.”

  “Yes, well, it was certainly clearer than anything we’ve found with Columbus,” said Hassan. “But it gives us the hope that perhaps we can find such a moment. The event, the thought that turned him west. Diko found the moment when he determined on being a great man. But we haven’t found the point where he became so unrelentingly monomaniacal about a westward voyage. Yet because of Naog, we still have hope that someday we’ll find it.”

  “But I have found it, Father,” said Diko.

  Everyone turned to her. She seemed flustered. “Or at least I think I have. But it’s very strange. I was working on it last night. It’s so silly, isn’t it? I thought—wouldn’t it be wonderful if I found it while . . . while Kemal was here. And then I did. I think.”

  No one said anything for a long moment. Until Kemal rose to his feet and said, “What are we doi
ng here, then? Show us!”

  5

  _____

  Vision

  It was more than Cristoforo could have hoped for, to be included on the Spinola convoy to Flanders. True, it was just the sort of opportunity that he had been preparing for all his life till now, begging his way onto any ship that would carry him until he knew the coast of Liguria better than he knew the lumps in his own mattress. And hadn’t he turned his “observational” trip to Chios into a commercial triumph? Not that he had come back rich, of course, but starting with relatively little he had traded in mastic until he came home with a hefty purse—and then had wit enough to contribute much of it, quite publicly, to the Church. And he did it in the name of Nicoló Spinola.

  Spinola sent for him, of course, and Cristoforo was the picture of gratitude. “I know that you gave me no duties in Chios, my lord, but it was nevertheless you who allowed me to join the voyage, and at no charge. The tiny sums I was able to earn in Chios were not worth offering to you—you give more to your servants when they go to market to buy the day’s food for your household.” A ludicrous exaggeration, they would both know. “But when I gave them to Christ, I couldn’t pretend that the money, meager as it was, came from me, when it came entirely from your kindness.”

  Spinola laughed. “You’re very good at this,” he said. “Practice a little more, so it doesn’t sound memorized, and speeches like that will make your fortune, I promise you.”

  Cristoforo thought that he meant he had failed, until Spinola invited him to take part in a commercial convoy to Flanders and England. Five ships, sailing together for safety, and one of them devoted to a cargo that Cristoforo himself was in charge of trading. It was a serious responsibility, a good-sized chunk of the Spinola fortune, but Cristoforo had prepared himself well. What he hadn’t done himself, he had watched others do with a close eye to detail. He knew how to supervise the loading of the ship and how to drive a hard bargain without making enemies. He knew how to talk to the captain, how to remain at once aloof and yet affable with the men, how to judge from the wind and the sky and the sea how much progress they would make. Even though he had actually done very little of the work of a sailor, he knew what all the jobs were, from watching, and he knew whether the jobs were being done well. When he was young, and they were not yet suspicious that he might get them in trouble, the sailors had let him watch them work. He had even learned to swim, which most sailors never bothered to do, because he had thought as a child that this was one of the requirements of life at sea. By the time the ship set sail, Cristoforo felt himself completely in control.

  They even called him “Signor Colombo.” That hadn’t happened much before. His father was only rarely called “signor,” despite the fact that in recent years Cristoforo’s earnings had allowed Domenico Colombo to prosper, moving the weaving shop to larger quarters and wearing finer clothing and riding a horse like a gentleman and buying a few small houses outside the city walls so he could play the landlord. So the title was certainly not one that came readily to one of Cristoforo’s birth. On this voyage, however, it was not just the sailors but also the captain himself who gave Colombo the courtesy title. It was a sign of how far he had come, this basic respect—but not as important a sign as having the trust of the Spinolas.

  The voyage wasn’t easy, even at the outset. The seas weren’t rough, but they weren’t placid, either. Cristoforo noticed with secret enjoyment that he was the only one of the commercial agents who wasn’t sick. Instead he passed the time as he did on all his voyages—poring over the charts with the navigator or conversing with the captain, pumping them for all the information they knew, for everything they could teach him. Though he knew his destiny lay to the east, he also knew that he would someday have a ship—a fleet—that might need to voyage through every known sea. Liguria he knew; the voyage to Chios, his first open-sea journey, his first that ever lost sight of land, his first that relied on navigation and calculation, had given him a glimpse of eastern seas. And now he would see the west, going through the straits of Gibraltar and then veering north, coasting Portugal, crossing the Bay of Biscay—names he had heard of only in sailors’ lore and brag. The gentlemen—the other gentlemen—might puke their way across the Mediterranean, but Cristoforo would use every moment, preparing himself, until at last he was ready to be the servant in the hands of God who would . . .

  He dared not think of it, or God would know the awful presumption, the deadly pride that he concealed within his heart.

  Not that God didn’t already know, of course. But at least God also knew that Christoforo did his best not to let his pride possess him. Thy will, O Lord, not mine be done. If I am the one to lead thy triumphant armies and navies on a mighty crusade to liberate Constantinople, drive the Muslims from Europe, and once again raise the Christian banner in Jerusalem, then so be it. But if not, I will do any task thou hast in mind for me, great or humble. I will be ready. I am thy true servant.

  What a hypocrite I am, thought Cristoforo. To pretend that my motives are pure. I laid my purse from Chios into the bishop’s own hands—but then used it to advance my cause with Nicoló Spinola. And even then, it wasn’t the whole purse. I’m wearing a good part of it; a gentleman has to have the right clothes or people don’t call him Signor. And much more of it went to Father, to buy houses and dress Mother like a lady. Hardly the perfect offering of faith. Do I want to become rich and influential in order to serve God? Or do I serve God in hopes that it will make me rich and influential?

  Such were the doubts that plagued him, between his dreams and plans. Most of the time, though, he spent pumping the captain and the navigator or studying the charts or staring at the coasts they passed, making his own maps and calculations, as if he were the first ever to see this place.

  “There are plenty of charts of the Andalusian coast,” said the navigator.

  “I know,” said Cristoforo. “But I learn more by charting them myself than I ever would by studying them. And I have the charts to check against my own maps.”

  The truth was that the charts were full of errors. Either that or some supernatural power had moved the capes and bays, the beaches and promontories of the Iberian coast, so that now and then there was an inlet that wasn’t shown on any chart. “Were these charts made by pirates?” he asked the captain one day. “They seem designed to make sure that a corsair can dodge out to engage us in battle without any warning.”

  The captain laughed. “They are Moorish charts, or so I’ve heard. And the copyists aren’t always perfect. They miss a feature now and then. What do they know, sitting at their tables, far from any sea? We follow the charts generally and learn where the mistakes are. If we sailed these coasts all the time, as the Spanish sailors do, then we’d rarely need these charts at all. And they aren’t about to issue corrected charts, because they have no wish to help the ships of other nations to sail safely here. Every nation guards its charts. So keep to your mapmaking, Signor Colombo. Someday your charts may have value to Genova. If this voyage is a success, there’ll be others.”

  There was no reason to think it would not be a success, until two days after they passed through the straits of Gibraltar, when a cry went up: “Sails! Corsairs!”

  Cristoforo rushed to the gunwale, where shortly the sails became visible. The pirates were not Moorish, by the look of them. And they had not been daunted by the five merchant ships sailing together. Why should they? The pirates had five corsairs of their own.

  “I don’t like this,” said the captain.

  “We’re evenly matched, aren’t we?” asked Cristoforo.

  “Hardly,” said the captain. “We’re loaded with cargo; they’re not. They know these waters; we don’t. And they’re used to bloody-handed fighting. What do we have? Sword-bearing gentlemen and sailors who are terrified of battle on the open sea.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Cristoforo, “God will fight on the side of just men.”

  The captain gave him a withering look. “I don’t k
now that we’re any more righteous than others who’ve had their throats slit. No, we’ll outrun them if we can, or if we can’t, we’ll make them pay so dear that they’ll give up and leave us. What are you good for, in a battle?”

  “Not much,” said Cristoforo. It would do no good to promise more than he could deliver. The captain deserved to know whom he could and could not count on. “I carry the sword for the respect of it.”

  “Well, these pirates will respect the blade only if it’s well blooded. Have you an arm for throwing?”

  “Rocks, as a boy,” said Cristoforo.

  “Good enough for me. If things look bad, then this is our last hope—we’ll have pots filled with oil. We set them afire and hurl them onto the pirate ships. They can’t very well fight us if their decks are afire.”

  “They have to be awfully close, then, don’t they?”

  “As I said—we only use these pots if things look bad.”

  “What’s to keep the flames from spreading to our own ships, if theirs are in flames?”

  The captain looked coldly at him. “As I said—we want to make our fleet a worthless conquest for them.” He looked again at the corsairs’ sails, which were well behind them and farther off the coast. “They want to pinch us against the shore,” he said. “If we can make it to Cape St. Vincent, where we can turn north, then we’ll lose them. Till then they’ll try to intercept us as we tack outward, or run us aground on the shoreward tack.”

  “Then let’s tack outward now,” said Cristoforo. “Let’s establish ourselves as far from shore as possible.”

  The captain sighed. “The wisest course, my friend, but the sailors won’t stand for it. They don’t like being out of sight of land if there’s a fight.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they can’t swim. Their best hope is to ride some flotsam in, if we do badly.”