Two in Time

by Wilson Tucker

  “In late twenty-first-century America, things were barely get­ting started, The camp and sheds were inside a stockade and had been attacked more than once by, uh, natives or ma­rauders. From then we moved on uptime to when the Sachem had sent his expedition out to that Easter.”

  I do not know if my friend ever looked upon Jesus.

  7

  AFTER A HUNDRED-ODD YEARS, the establishment was consid­erable. Fertility was increasing in formerly tainted soil, thus letting population build up. Grainfields ripened across low hills, beneath a mild sky where summer clouds walked. Cultivation of timber had produced stands which made cupolas of darker green where birds nested and wind murmured. Roads were dirt, but laid out in a grid. Folk were about, busy. They had nothing except hand tools and animal-drawn machines; however, these were well-made. They looked much alike in their mostly home­spun blue trousers and jackets--both sexes--and their floppy straw hats and clumsy shoes: weather-beaten and work-gnarled like any pre-industrial peasants, hair hacked off below the ears, men bearded; they were small by the standards of our time, and many had poor teeth or none. Yet they were infinitely bet­ter off than their ancestors of the Judgment.

  They paused to salute the travelers, who rode on horseback from the airfield site, then immediately resumed their toil. An occasional pair of mounted soldiers, going by, drew sabers in a deferential but less servile gesture. They were uniformed in blue, wore steel helmets and breastplates, bore dagger at belt, bow and quiver and ax at croup, lance in rest with red pennon aflutter from the shaft, besides those swords.

  “You seem to keep tight control,” Havig said uneasily.

  “What else?” Krasicki snapped. “Most of the world, includ­ing most of this continent, is still in a state of barbarism or savagery, where man survives at all. We can’t manufacture what we can’t get the materials and machinery for. The Mong are on the plains west and south of us. They would come in like a tor­nado, did we let down our defenses. Our troopers aren’t over­seeing the workers, they’re guarding them against bandits. No, those people can thank the Eyrie for everything they do have.”

  The medieval-like pattern was repeated in town. Families did not occupy separate homes, they lived together near the strong­hold and worked the land collectively. But while it looked rea­sonably clean, which was a welcome difference from the Middle Ages, the place had none of the medieval charm. Brick rows flanking asphalted streets were as monotonous as anything in the Victorian Midlands. Havig supposed that was because the need for quick though stout construction had taken priority over individual choice, and the economic surplus remained too small to allow replacing these barracks with real houses. If not--But he ought to give the Sachem the benefit of the doubt, till he knew more ... He saw one picturesque feature, a wooden building in a style which seemed half Asian, gaudily painted. Krasicki told him it was a temple, where prayers were said to Yasu and sacrifices made to that Oktai whom the Mong had brought.

  “Give them their religion, make the priests cooperate, and you have them,” he added.

  Havig grimaced. “Where’s the gallows?”

  Krasicki gave him a startled glance. “We don’t hold public hangings. What do you think we are?” After a moment: “What milksop measures do you imagine can pull anybody through years like these?”

  The fortress loomed ahead. High, turreted brick walls en­closed several acres; a moat surrounded them in turn, fed by the river which watered this area. The architecture had the same stem functionality as that of the town. Flanking the gates, and up among the battlements, were heavy machine guns, doubtless salvaged from wreckage or brought piece by piece out of the past. Stuttering noises told Havig that a number of motor-driven generators were busy inside.

  Sentries presented arms. A trumpet blew. Drawbridge planks clattered, courtyard flagstones resounded beneath horsehoofs.

  Krasicki’s group reined in. A medley of people hastened from every direction, babbling their excitement. Most, livened, must be castle servants. Havig scarcely noticed. His attention was on one who thrust her way past them until she stood be­fore him.

  Enthusiasm blazed from her. He could barely follow the husky, accented voice: “Oktai’s tail! You did find ‘m!”

  She was nearly as tall as him, sturdily built, with broad shoul­ders and hips, comparatively small bust, long smooth limbs. Her face bore high cheekbones, blunt nose, large mouth, good teeth save that two were missing. (He would learn they had been knocked out in a fight.) Her hair, thick and mahogany, was not worn in today’s style, but waist-length, though now coiled in braids above barbarically large brass earrings. Her eyes were brown and slightly almond-some Indian or Asian blood-under the heavy brows; her skin, sun-tanned, was in a few places crossed by old scars. She wore a loose red tunic and kilt, laced boots, a Bowie knife, a revolver, a loaded car­tridge belt, and, on a chain around her neck, the articulated skull of a weasel.

  “Where ‘ey from? You, yon!” Her forefinger stabbed at Havig. “‘E High Years, no?” A whoop of laughter. “You got aplen’y for tell me, trailmate!”

  “The Sachem is waiting,” Krasicki reminded her.

  “‘Kay, I’ll wait alike, but not ‘e whole jokin’ day, you hear?” And when Havig had dismounted, she flung arms around him and kissed him full on the lips. She smelled of sunshine, leather, sweat, smoke, and woman. Thus did he meet Leonce of the Glacier Folk, the Skula of Wahorn.

  The office was the antechamber of a suite whose size and luxury it reflected. Oak paneling rose above a deep-gray, thick-piled carpet. Drapes by the windows were likewise furry and feelable: mink. Because of their massiveness, desk, chairs, and couch had been fashioned in this section of time; but the care lavished on them was in contrast to the austerity Havig had observed in other rooms opening on the hallways which took him here. Silver frames held some photographs. One was a period piece, a daguerreotype of a faded-looking woman in the dress of the middle nineteenth century. The rest were candid shots taken with an advanced camera, doubtless a miniature using a telescopic lens like his own. He recognized Cecil Rhodes, Bismarck, and a youthful Napoleon; he could not place the yellow-bearded man in a robe.

  From this fifth floor of the main keep, the view showed wide across that complex of lesser buildings, that bustle of activity, which was the Eyrie, and across the land it ruled. Afternoon light slanted in long hot bars. The generator noise was a muted pecking.

  “Let’s have music, eh?” Caleb Wallis flipped the switches of a molecular recorder from shortly before the Judgment. Notes boomed forth. He lowered the volume but said: “That’s right, a triumphal piece. Lord, I’m glad to have you, Havig!” The newcomer recognized the Entry of the Gods from Das Rhein­gold.

  The rest of his group, including their guides, had been dis­missed, not altogether untactfully, after a short interview had demonstrated what they were. “You’re different,” the Sachem said. “You’re the one in a hundred we need worst. Here, want a cigar?”

  “No, thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  Wallis stood for a moment before he said, emphatically rather than loudly, “I am the founder and master of this nation. We must have discipline, forms of respect. I’m called ‘sir.’”

  Havig regarded him. Wallis was of medium height, blocky and powerful despite the paunch of middle life. His face was ruddy, somewhat flat-nosed, tufty-browed; gingery-gray mutton-chop whiskers crossed upper lip and cheeks to join the hair which fringed his baldness. He wore a black uniform, silver buttons and insignia, goldwork on the collar, epaulets, ornate dagger, automatic pistol. But there was nothing ridiculous about him. He radiated assurance. His voice rolled deep and com­pelling, well-nigh hypnotic when he chose. His small pale eyes never wavered.

  “You realize,” Havig said at last, “this is all new and be­wildering to me ... sir.”

  “Sure! Sure!” Wallis beamed and slapped him on the back.

  “You’ll catch on fast. You’ll go far, my boy. No limit here, for a man who knows what he wants and has
the backbone to go after it. And you’re an American, too. An honest-to-God Amer­ican, from when our country was herself. Mighty few like that among us.”

  He lowered himself behind the desk. “Sit down. No, wait a minute, see my liquor cabinet? I’ll take two fingers of the bour­bon. You help yourself to what you like.”

  Havig wondered why no provision for ice and soda and the rest had been made. It should have been possible. He de­cided Wallis didn’t use such additions and didn’t care that others might.

  Seated in an armchair, a shot of rum between his fingers, he gazed at the Sachem and ventured: “I can go into detail about my biography, sir, but I think that could more usefully wait till I know what the Eyrie ... is.”

  “Right, right.” Wallis nodded his big head and puffed on the stogie. Its smoke was acrid. “However, let’s just get a few facts straight about you. Born in--1933, did you say? Ever let on to anybody what you are?” Havig checked the impulse to mention me. The knowledgeable questions snapped: “Went back as a young man to guide your childhood? Went on to improve your station in life, and then to search for other travelers?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you think of your era?”

  “Huh? Why, uh, well ... we’re in trouble. I’ve gone ahead and glimpsed what’s in store. Sir.”

  “Because of decay, Havig. You understand that, don’t you?” Intensity gathered like a thunderhead. “Civilized man turning against himself, first in war, later in moral sickness. The white man’s empires crumbling faster than Rome’s; the work of Clive, Bismarck, Rhodes, McKinley, Lyautey, all Indian fighters and Boers, everything that’d been won, cast out in a single genera­tion; pride of race and heritage gone; traitors-Bolsheviks and international Jews-in the seats of power, preaching to the or­dinary white man that the wave of the future was black. I’ve seen that, studying your century. You, living in it, have you seen?”

  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 connive to dominate the world, only so they can put bridle and saddle on the human race in general, the white race in particular, and stop progress forever. You’ll see! You’ll see!”

  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.”