Time Patrol

by Poul Anderson

  He came out on the edge of a high, wet bank. A brook roiled valleyward below him. They'd see he had come this far, but it would be a toss-up which way he splashed in the streambed . . . which should it be, anyhow? . . . the mud was cold and slippery on his skin as he scrambled down. Better go upstream. That would bring him closer to his scooter, and Harpagus might assume it more likely he'd try to double back to the King.

  Stones bruised his feet and the water numbed them. The trees made a wall above either bank, so that he was roofed by a narrow strip of sky whose blue deepened momentarily. High up there floated an eagle. The air grew colder. But he had one piece of luck: the brook twisted like a snake in delirium and he had quickly slipped and stumbled his way from sight of his entry point. I'll go on a mile or so, he thought, and maybe there'll be an overhanging branch I can grab so I won't leave an outgoing trail. Slow minutes passed.

  So I get to the scooter, he thought, and go upstairs and ask my chiefs for help. I know damn well they aren't going to give me any. Why not sacrifice one man to insure their own existence and everything they care about? Therefore Keith is stuck here, with thirteen years to go till the barbarians cut him down. But Cynthia will still be young in thirteen years, and after so long a nightmare of exile and knowing her man's time to die, she'd be cut off, an alien in an interdicted era, alone in the frightened court of mad Cambyses II. . . . No, I've got to keep the truth from her, keep her at home, thinking Keith is dead. He'd want it that way himself. And after a year or two she'd be happy again; I could teach her to be happy.

  He had stopped noticing how the rocks smashed at his thinly shod feet, how his body pitched and staggered or how noisy the water was. But then he came around a bend and saw the Persians.

  There were two of them, wading downstream. Evidently his capture meant enough to overcome their religious prejudice against defiling a river. Two more walked above, threading between the trees on either bank. One of the latter was Harpagus. Their long swords hissed from the scabbards.

  "Stop!" called the Chiliarch. "Halt, Greek! Yield!"

  Everard stood death-still. The water purled about his ankles. The pair who splashed to meet him were unreal down here in a well of shadow, their faces blotted out so that he saw only white clothes and a shimmer along curved blades. It hit him in the belly: the pursuers had seen his trail down into the brook. So they split up, half in each direction, running faster on solid ground than he could move in the bed. Having gone beyond his possible range, they started working their way back, more slowly when they were bound to the stream's course but quite certain of their quarry.

  "Take him alive," reminded Harpagus. "Hamstring him if you must, but take him alive."

  Everard snarled and turned toward that bank. "Okay, buster, you asked for it," he said in English. The two men in the water yelled and began to run. One tripped and went on his face. The man opposite tobogganed down the slope on his backside.

  The mud was slippery. Everard chopped the lower edge of his shield into it and toiled up. Harpagus moved coolly to await him. As he came near, the old noble's blade whirred, striking from above. Everard rolled his head and caught the blow on his helmet, which bonged. The edge slid down a cheekpiece and cut his right shoulder, but not badly. He felt only a sting and then was too busy to feel anything.

  He didn't expect to win out. But he would make them kill him, and pay for the privilege.

  He came onto grass and raised his shield just in time to protect his eyes. Harpagus probed for the knees. Everard beat that aside with his own short sword. The Median saber whistled. But at close quarters a lightly armed Asian hadn't a chance against the hoplite, as history was to prove a couple of generations hence. By God, thought Everard, if only I had cuirass and greaves, I might be able to take all four of 'em! He used his big shield with skill, put it in front of every blow and thrust, and always worked near to get beneath the longer blade and into Harpagus's defenseless guts.

  The Chiliarch grinned tautly through tangled gray whiskers and skipped away. A play for time, of course. It succeeded. The other three men climbed the bank, shouted and rushed. It was a disorderly attack. Superb fighters as individuals, the Persians had never developed the mass discipline of Europe, on which they would break themselves at Marathon and Gaugamela. But four against unarmored one was impossible odds.

  Everard got his back to a tree bole. The first man came in recklessly, sword clashing on the Greek shield. Everard's blade darted from behind the bronze oblong. There was a soft, somehow heavy resistance. He knew that feeling from other days, pulled his weapon out and stepped quickly aside. The Persian sat down, spilling out his life. He groaned once, saw he was a dead man, and raised his face toward the sky.

  His mates were already at Everard, one to a side. Overhanging boughs made lassos useless; they would have to do battle. The Patrolman held off the left-hand blade with his shield. That exposed his right ribs, but since his opponents were ordered not to kill he could afford it. The right-hand man slashed at Everard's ankles. Everard sprang in the air and the sword hissed under his feet. The left-hand attacked, stabbed low. Everard sensed a dull shock and saw steel in his calf. He jerked free. A sunset ray came between bunched needles and touched the blood, making it an impossibly brilliant red. Everard felt that leg buckle under him.

  "So, so," cried Harpagus, hovering ten feet away. "Chop him!"

  Everard growled above his shield rim: "A task your jackal leader has no courage to attempt for himself, after I drove him back with his tail between his legs!"

  It was calculated. The attack on him stopped a bare instant. He reeled forward. "If you Persians must be the dogs of a Mede," he croaked, "can you not choose a Mede who is a man, rather than this creature which betrayed its king and now runs from a single Greek?"

  Even this far west and this long ago, an Oriental could not lose face in such a manner. Not that Harpagus had ever been a coward; Everard knew how unfair his taunts were. But the Chiliarch spat a curse and dashed at him. Everard had a moment's glimpse of eyes wild in a sunken hook-nosed face. He lumbered lopsidedly forward. The two Persians hesitated for a second more. That was long enough for Everard and Harpagus to meet. The Median blade rose and fell, bounced off Greek helmet and shield, snaked sideways for another leg cut. A loose white tunic flapped before Everard's gaze. He hunched shoulders and drove his sword in.

  He withdrew it with the cruel professional twist which assures a mortal wound, pivoted on his right heel, and caught a blow on his shield. For a minute he and one Persian traded fury. At the edge of an eye, he saw the other circling about to get behind him. Well, he thought in a remote way, he had killed the one man dangerous to Cynthia. . . .

  "Hold! Halt!"

  The call was a weak flutter in the air, less loud than the mountain stream, but the warriors stepped back and lowered their weapons. Even the dying Persian took his eyes from heaven.

  Harpagus struggled to sit up, in a puddle of his own blood. His skin was turned gray. "No . . . hold," he whispered. "Wait. There is a purpose here. Mithras would not have struck me down unless. . . ."

  He beckoned, a somehow lordly gesture. Everard dropped his sword, limped over and knelt by Harpagus. The Mede sank bank into his arms.

  "You are from the King's homeland," he rasped in the bloody beard. "Do not deny that. But know . . . Aurvagaush the son of Khshayavarsha . . . is no traitor." The thin form stiffened itself, imperious, as if ordering death to wait upon its pleasure. "I knew there were powers—of heaven, of hell, I know not which to this day—powers behind the King's advent. I used them, I used him, not for myself, but because I had sworn loyalty to my own king, Astyages, and he needed a . . . a Cyrus . . . lest the realm be torn asunder. Afterward, by his cruelty, Astyages forfeited my oath. But I was still a Mede. I saw in Cyrus the only hope—the best hope—of Media. For he has been a good king to us also—we are honored in his domains second only to the Persians. . . . Do you understand, you from the King's home?" Dim eyes rolled about, trying to see i
nto Everard's but without enough control. "I wanted to capture you—to force your engine and its use from you, and then to kill you . . . yes . . . but not for my own gain. It was for the realm's. I feared you would take the King home, as I know he has longed to go. And what would become of us? Be merciful, as you too must hope for mercy."

  "I shall," said Everard. "The King will remain."

  "It is well," sighed Harpagus. "I believe you speak the truth . . . I dare not believe otherwise . . . Then I have atoned?" he asked in a thin anxious voice. "For the murder I did at my old king's behest—that I laid a helpless infant upon the mountainside and watched him die—have I atoned, King's countryman? For it was that prince's death . . . which brought the land close to ruin . . . but I found another Cyrus! I saved us! Have I atoned?"

  "You have," said Everard, and wondered how much absolution it lay in his power to give.

  Harpagus closed his eyes. "Then leave me," he said, like the fading echo of a command.

  Everard laid him upon the earth and hobbled away. The two Persians knelt by their master, performing certain rites. The third man returned to his own contemplations. Everard sat down under a tree, tore a strip from his cloak and bandaged his hurts. The leg cut would need attention. Somehow he must get to the scooter. That wouldn't be fun, but he could manage it and then a Patrol doctor could repair him in a few hours with a medical science future to his home era. He'd go to some branch office in an obscure milieu, because there'd be too many questions in the twentieth century.

  And he couldn't afford that. If his superiors knew what he planned, they would probably forbid it.

  The answer had come to him not as a blinding revelation, but as a tired consciousness of knowledge which he might well have had subconsciously for a long time. He leaned back, getting his breath. The other four Persians arrived and were told what had happened. All of them ignored Everard, except for glances where terror struggled with pride, and made furtive signs against evil. The lifted their dead chief and their dying companion and bore them into the forest. Darkness thickened. Somewhere an owl hooted.

  9

  The Great King sat up in bed. He had heard a noise beyond the curtains.

  Cassandane, the Queen, stirred invisibly. One slim hand touched his face. "What is it, sun of my heaven?" she asked.

  "I do not know." He fumbled for the sword which lay always beneath his pillow. "Nothing."

  Her palm slipped down over his breast. "No, it is much," she whispered, suddenly shaken. "Your heart goes like a war drum."

  "Stay there." He trod out past the drapes.

  Moonlight streamed from a deep-purple sky, through an arched window to the floor. It glanced almost blindingly off a bronze mirror. The air was cold upon bare skin.

  A thing of dark metal, whose rider gripped two handlebars and touched tiny controls on a panel, drifted like another shadow. It landed on the carpet without a sound and the rider got off. He was a burly man in Grecian tunic and helmet. "Keith," he breathed.

  "Manse!" Denison stepped into the moonlight. "You came!"

  "Tell me more," snorted Everard sarcastically. "Think anybody will hear us? I don't believe I was noticed. Materialized directly over the roof and floated slowly down on antigrav."

  "There are guards just outside the door," said Denison, "but they won't come in unless I strike that gong, or yell."

  "Good. Put on some clothes."

  Denison dropped his sword. He stood rigid for an instant, then it blazed from him: "You've got a way out?"

  "Maybe. Maybe." Everard looked away from the other man, drummed fingers on his machine's control panel. "Look, Keith," he said at last, "I've an idea which might or might not work. I'll need your help to carry it out. If it does work, you can go home. The front office will accept a fait accompli and wink at any broken regulations. But if it fails, you'll have to come back to this very night and live out your life as Cyrus. Can you do that?"

  Denison shivered with more than chill. Very low: "I think so."

  "I'm stronger than you are," said Everard roughly, "and I'll have the only weapons. If necessary, I'll shanghai you back here. Please don't make me."

  Denison drew a long breath. "I won't."

  "Then let's hope the Norns cooperate. Come on, get dressed. I'll explain as we go. Kiss this year good-bye, and trust it isn't 'So long'—because if my notion pans out, neither you nor anyone else will ever see it again."

  Denison, who had half turned to the garments thrown in a corner for a slave to replace before dawn, stopped. "What?" he said.

  "We're going to try rewriting history," said Everard. "Or maybe to restore the history which was there in the first place. I don't know. Come on, hop to it!"

  "But—"

  "Quick, man, quick! D'you realize I came back to the same day as I left you, that at this moment I'm crawling through the mountains with one leg stabbed open, just to save you that extra time? Get moving!"

  Decision closed upon Denison. His face was in darkness, but he spoke very low and clear: "I've got one personal good-bye to say."

  "What?"

  "Cassandane. She's been my wife here for, God, for fourteen years! She's borne me three children, and nursed me through two fevers and a hundred fits of despair, and once when the Medes were at our gates she led the women of Pasargadae out to rally us and we won. . . . Give me five minutes, Manse."

  "All right, all right. Though it'll take more than that to send a eunuch to her room and—"

  "She's here."

  Denison vanished behind the bed curtains.

  Everard stood for a moment as if struck. You expected me to come tonight, he thought, and you hoped I'd be able to take you back to Cynthia. So you sent for Cassandane.

  And then, when his fingertips had begun to hurt from the tightness of his grip on the sword hilt: Oh, shut up, Everard, you smug self-righteous whelp.

  Presently Denison came back. He did not speak as he put on his clothes and mounted the rear seat on the scooter. Everard space-hopped, an instantaneous jump; the room vanished and moonlight flooded the hills far below. A cold gust searched around the men in the sky.

  "Now for Ecbatana." Everard turned on his dashlight and adjusted controls according to notes scribbled on the pilot pad.

  "Ec—Oh, you mean Hagmatan? The old Median capital?" Denison sounded astonished. "But it's only a summer residence now."

  "I mean Ecbatana thirty-six years ago," said Everard.

  "Huh?"

  "Look, all the scientific historians in the future are convinced that the story of Cyrus's childhood as told by Herodotus and the Persians is pure fable. Well, maybe they were right all along. Maybe your experiences here have been only one of those little quirks in space-time which the Patrol tries to eliminate."

  "I see," said Denison slowly.

  "You were at Astyages's court pretty often when you were his vassal, I suppose. Okay, you guide me. We want the old guy himself, preferably alone at night."

  "Sixteen years was a long time," said Denison.

  "Hm?"

  "If you're trying to change the past anyway, why use me at this point? Come get me when I'd been Cyrus only one year, long enough to be familiar with Ecbatana but—"

  "Sorry, no. I don't dare. We're steering close enough to the wind as is. Lord knows what a secondary loop in the world lines could lead to. Even if we got away with it, the Patrol would send us both to the exile planet for taking that kind of chance."

  "Well . . . yes. I see your point."

  "Also," said Everard, "you're not a suicidal type. Would you actually want the you of this instant never to have existed? Think for a minute precisely what that implies."

  He completed his settings. The man behind him shuddered. "Mithras!" said Denison. "You're right. Let's not talk about it."

  "Here goes, then." Everard threw the main switch.

  He hung over a walled city on an unfamiliar plain. Though this was also a moonlit night, the city was only a black huddle to his eyes. He reached into
the saddlebags. "Here," he said. "Let's put on these costumes. I had the boys in the Middle Mohenjodaro office fix 'em up to my specs. Their situation is such that they often need this type of disguise for themselves."

  Air whistled darkly as the hopper slanted earthward. Denison reached an arm past Everard to point. "That's the palace. The royal bedchamber is over on the east side. . . ."

  It was a heavier, less graceful building than its Persian successor in Pasargadae. Everard glimpsed a pair of winged bulls, white in an autumnal garden, left over from the Assyrians. He saw that the windows before him were too narrow for entrance, swore, and aimed at the nearest doorway. A pair of mounted sentries looked up, saw what was coming, and shrieked. Their horses reared, throwing them. Everard's machine splintered the door. One more miracle wasn't going to affect history, especially when such things were believed in as devoutly as vitamin pills at home, and possibly with more reason. Lamps guided him down a corridor where slaves and guards squalled their terror. At the royal bedroom he drew his sword and knocked with the pommel. "Take over, Keith," he said. "You know the Median version of Aryan."

  "Open, Astyages!" roared Denison. "Open to the messengers of Ahuramazda!"

  Somewhat to Everard's surprise, the man within obeyed. Astyages was as brave as most of his people. But when the king—a thickset, hardfaced person in early middle age—saw two beings, luminously robed, halos around their heads and fountaining wings of light on their backs, seated on an iron throne in midair, he fell prostrate.

  Everard heard Denison thunder in the best tent-meeting style, using a dialect he could barely follow: