Debt of Ages

by Steve White

  “Artorius?!” This time, Tiraena’s voice rose above falsetto on the last syllable.

  “I know not what meaning the name of King Arthur holds for you, Tiraena, for your blood is of many nations and worlds. But for whatever it’s worth, you have his undying gratitude for the life of his grandson.”

  For the first time since Sarnac had known him, Tylar was dumbfounded to the point of being completely inarticulate. When he finally closed his mouth and opened it again, all that emerged was “But, but, but…”

  Artorius turned to the time traveler with a crocodilian grin and spoke very clearly and distinctly, like a man who’d been waiting for years to deliver a line. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely candid with you.”

  “So you’re really going to stay?” Sarnac had been surprised at first, but on reflection he couldn’t imagine why.

  Andreas nodded. They’d left him in this Gallic villa to recuperate from his wound while they’d gone to Britain. Now the two of them strolled through its courtyard in the unseasonably warm afternoon sun. His recovery was now complete, thanks to Tylars medical resources and Julia’s TLC. And his spirit was clearly as whole as his body.

  “Yes. The world I came from no longer exists, far in the future of this timeline. And I wouldn’t want to go back to it even if I could.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to get used to this world, though?” Sarnac asked, half-jokingly. “No electric lighting, no computers, no toilet paper…”

  Andreas smiled. “The only thing I’d really miss is advanced medicine, and Tylar’s agreed to supply me with some of that. Otherwise, I’ll not be losing anything that can compare with what I’ve found here.”

  “Oh, yeah: Julia. Great kid. I don’t imagine you two had any problem getting Ecdicius’ blessing.”

  “No. All he asked was that we go back to Italy with him before the wedding. That was fine with us—it’s not every couple who have their marriage solemnized by the pope! And,” he added, deadpan, “I think I’ll get over the loss of my estate in Bithynia.”

  He really does have a sense of humor, Sarnac realized. It was just overlaid by the concrete of his conditioning in the world he came from. And now that that world is receding into the realms of fading nightmare, it’s growing toward the sun like a flower through a cracked pavement.

  “But it’s not just Julia,” Andreas continued. “Its what I can do here. In my old world, all we had was a twilight struggle to hold back the night. But now I’m at this worlds dawn. I can make a difference to its future.”

  “Hmm? You mean you’re going to continue to work for Tylar?”

  “Indeed,” came the time traveler’s voice as he approached with Tiraena in tow. “As the son-in-law of the Augustus of the West, Andreas will be in a position to give the course of history an occasional nudge in the right direction over the coming years. Hell be in contact with Koreel, who’ll be staying on for a while in the Eastern Empire—which is going to be going through interesting times over the next few years. Wilhelmus and his, er, lady have been discredited by the total failure of their attempt to reconquer the West; I doubt if they’ll survive for long.”

  “So you plan to continue keeping an eye on this timeline, then?” Sarnac asked.

  “Certainly. From our perspective, it’s an absolutely unique research opportunity. A twentieth-century astronomer, long before the days of interstellar probes, remarked that humanity would never really know anything about its own planetary system until it was able to study some others. Something similar applies to the study of history. At the same time, we’ll have to guard against the temptation to intervene excessively.”

  “Yeah, I remember you telling me about the sensation of morally sanctioned interference with events. Quite a rush, I gathered.”

  “And you, as I recall, expressed concern that it might become habit-forming. I assure you that it won’t. The intervention we’ve just concluded was justified only by dire necessity. Now, this Earth must take care of itself; the fundamental responsibility of human beings for the consequences of their own actions must remain absolute. Any society that loses sight of that ceases to be viable— as the history of your own North American ancestors demonstrates, Robert. And,” Tylar continued briskly, “it goes without saying that our own timeline’s past remains sacrosanct; we must continue to safeguard it as we always have.”

  Tiraena spoke up. ‘Tylar, in that connection, Bob and I have been meaning to talk to you. Andreas, would you excuse us?”

  “Of course. I need to talk to Artorius anyway.” He departed with a wave, leaving the other three alone in the courtyard. Tylar seated himself on a bench and raised an interrogative eyebrow, waiting.

  Sarnac and Tiraena looked at each other awkwardly. The latter finally took the lead. ‘Tylar, we know you can’t allow us to keep our memories of all this, any more than you could last time. We haven’t let ourselves dwell on it, but we haven’t forgotten it either. So, since it’s about time for us to return to our own reality and our own era, we just wanted to say that… that…”

  “That there are no hard feelings,” Sarnac finished for her. “We understand that there’s no alternative, and we ve accepted that.”

  “An extremely commendable attitude. However, I’ve been doing some thinking myself.” Tylar gazed up at them over steepled fingers. “You’ve both done nobly in fulfilling an ethical obligation which you, Robert, never really understood; and in which you, Tiraena, didn’t share. So you have, I think, gone beyond paying your debt. Indeed, you’ve placed me in your debt—a debt which I believe I’ll pay by foregoing memory erasure on this occasion.”

  There was dead silence as the reality of what he’d said sank home. Sarnac finally broke it. “But… but you can’t, Tylar! I mean, if we go back to our own world knowing what we know now, it would change your history and wipe out the future that includes you. Wouldn’t it?”

  “I assure you that I’ve given these matters much thought. Consider: you really have no detailed knowledge of events in the remainder of your own lifetimes, do you? I’ve never told you, for example, who’s going to win the next election for Terra’s representative to the PHL Grand Council.”

  “But, Tylar,” Tiraena protested, “we know the answer to the greatest enigma of our age: how the human species appeared on Raehan thirty thousand years before spaceflight! We know there’s such a thing as time travel! We know time travelers from the remote future are policing history! We know…”

  “Yes,” Tylar interrupted gently. “You know a great many things. And I think you also know what the reaction would be if you were to announce your knowledge to the human race at large.” The silence returned. Tylar smiled. “You’re both intelligent people—too intelligent, I’m sure, to want to bring yourselves into disrepute.”

  “So,” Sarnac said slowly, “you’re saying we’re powerless to change history because nobody would believe us?”

  “That’s one way to put it.” Tylar stood up and regarded them gravely. “With this decision I am, let us say, pushing the envelope of my authority. But I believe I can justify it, when called upon to do so. You can make no practical use of this gift I’m making you. All you can do is cherish the knowledge that you were part of a legend you yourselves learned as children, and that you saved the future of an entire reality. That will have to be enough.” Then he smiled in his slightly befuddled way, and was again an ordinary middle-aged human. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, there are still a few matters which need my attention before we depart.”

  “I still wish we could have stayed for Andreas’ wedding,” Tiraena remarked.

  “Yeah. I’ll bet Sidonius pulled out all the stops for them.”

  Most of Sarnacs attention was on Loriima III, whose night side occluded more and more of the stars as they approached it.

  As Tylar had promised, the transitions between timelines had been less unpleasant when returning to the reality wherein they belonged. They’d likewise negotiated the temportal in the oute
r reaches of the solar system with ease, and Sarnac had been surprised by the lump that had formed in his throat when he’d sought out Sirius and found a blue-white star of apparent magnitude -1.43. Then had come the soul-shakingly brief voyage to Loriima, and yet another temportal transit. They emerged into the very night on which a Robert Sarnac whose memories had held a large hole had departed with a mysterious character calling himself Tylar. Now he had an embarrassing notion of how much it must have cost to have emplaced a temportal simply to get him back to that night. At least, no such expensive expedient would be required for Tiraena at Naeruil II; Tylar would simply take her there at a pseudo-velocity calculated to get her there on the night of her own departure.

  Tylar joined them. “We’re now stationary relative to the base, and within range,” he informed them. A portal blinked into ghostly existence. Within it, Sarnac recognized his office suite. “Shall we go?”

  They’d had time for extended goodbyes during the voyage. Now they exchanged a quick embrace. “Hey,” Sarnac said, “someday we should tell Claude and Liranni the unvarnished truth about all this. They’ll think their parents are crazy old coots!”

  “They already think that, Bob,” Tiraena informed him as gently as possible. She gave him another squeeze. ‘Take care. You’ve still got a war to attend to, you know.”

  “Huh! Piece of cake!” A final kiss, then he turned and stepped through the portal with Tylar.

  They were in the outer office. Tylar led the way into Sarnac’s inner sanctum. “You’ll find that only an insignificant amount of time has elapsed locally since your departure,” Tylar said. Then: “Well, I suppose that’s it.”

  Sarnac took a deep breath and asked the question for which he’d awaited this time when they’d be alone. “Tylar, are you a god?”

  There was a barely perceptible pause. “As you’ll recall,” the time traveler said mildly, “Tiraena asked me that question once, fifteen of your subjective years ago. You’ll also recall that I responded in the negative.”

  “I know,” Sarnac said flatly. “I also know you lie a lot.”

  Again, Tylar hesitated for such a brief instant that it was impossible to be certain he had hesitated at all. Then he spread his hands diffidently.

  “My dear fellow, does the answer really matter? Indeed, does the question itself not become meaningless if it has to be asked at all? I leave you with that thought.” He turned to go, then paused and faced Sarnac one last time. “I will answer your question to this extent: whatever I am, and whatever label you choose to apply to what I am, I emphatically am not the unknowable One, Who is as unknowable to me as to you.” His face broke into a mischievous grin that made it unrecognizable. “On this point, I am being entirely candid with you!” And Tylar was gone.

  Sarnac was left standing in the midnight dimness of his office of Loriima III. He glanced at the desk chrono—yes, it was the same date and time. Then he heard movement behind him. He whirled around, then relaxed at the sight of the figure in Fleet uniform.

  “Well, Artorius—or is it Captain Draco?” he drawled. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be with Tylar.”

  “Actually, Admiral, I asked him for an extended leave of absence, which he granted.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Well,” said the onetime High King of the Britons, “you did me a good turn, which I feel I should repay. And I’ve always hated to begin a job and not finish it. And… well, I have some ideas for the coming campaign against the Korvaasha. Its a bloody interesting tactical problem.” Sarnac smiled and draped an arm over the others shoulders. “Captain Draco, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  Historical Note

  It’s seldom advisable to take Tylar at his word, but his real-world biographical asides concerning Sidonius Apollinaris, Ecdicius, the Patriarch Acacius, and Pope Gelasius are accurate. The same is true of Cerdic of the West Saxons and his son Cynric, up to a point. The semi-historical Cerdic’s personal background is, of necessity, a matter of inference. That he was part-British can be taken as a given, in light of his name. That he was from the Saxon settlements on the lower Loire is speculation, albeit a reasonable one. His parentage as herein set forth is sheer fancy.

  Other fifth-century characters who actually lived include the British High King documented on the continent under the honorific “Riothamus” rather than his given name, and Constantine of the Dumnonii, although I’ve taken minor liberties with his dates. Many of the rest, including Gwenhwyvaer, Kai and Peredur—and, for that matter, Bedwyr and Balor—have some kind of basis in legend. The imperial couple Wilhelmus and Hilaria, and the eunuch Nicoles, are, of course, purely fictitious.

  I’ve followed a common practice by using “Saxon” as a catchall for the various tribes of Low German speakers— Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians—who migrated into Britain in the fifth century. It would be anachronistic to call them “English.” The Irish were actually called Scotti by the Romano-Britons. This doesn’t mean they came from Scotland, but rather that Scotland (Caledonia in the fifth century) was later named after them because some of them settled there, although Ireland, where most of them stayed, is of course not called “Scotland.” It’s all too confusing, and too Celtic. In these pages, the Irish are called the Irish. The tribal designation “Fomorian” is drawn from legend.

  As in Legacy, I’ve generally used modern place names (Chester, Bourges, Troyes) rather than ancient ones (Deva, Avaricum, Augustobona), accepting anachronism as the price of clarity. But whenever a modern name is jarringly inappropriate (France, Istanbul) and the ancient one is well-known (Gaul, Constantinople), I haven’t hesitated to opt for the latter. Likewise, years are given according to the present system of Anno Domini dating, which didn’t become standard until the sixth century.