The wind cried, the sea growled nearer.
Tamberly had never seen Everard so shaken. Somehow the word he used was right: “Rabbi, was this, this thing we went through, was it truly an accident, a quirk in the flux, that we, we had to straighten out?”
“It was. Komozino explained matters to you correctly, as far as you and she are capable of comprehension.” More toward Tamberly: “Think, if you wish, of diffraction, waves reinforcing here and canceling there to make rainbow rings. It is incessant, but normally on the human level it is imperceptible. When it chanced to converge powerfully on Lorenzo de Conti, yes, then that became like a kind of fate. Do not let it overawe you that you, exercising your free will, have overcome doom itself.”
She, with her background, though she knew not what she confronted, begged, “Sensei, tell me. Is that the meaning?”
A smile, a gentleness beneath which lay steel and lightning: “Yes. In a reality forever liable to chaos, the Patrol is the stabilizing element, holding time to a single course. Perhaps it is not the best course, but we are no gods to impose anything different when we know that it does at last take us beyond what our animal selves could have imagined. In truth, left untended, events would inevitably move toward the worse. A cosmos of random changes must be senseless, ultimately self-destructive. In it could be no freedom.
“Has the universe therefore brought forth sentience, in order to protect and give purpose to its own existence? That is not an answerable question.
“But take heart. Reality is. You are among those who guard it.”
A hand lifted. “Blessing.”
Everard and Tamberly stood alone.
They knew not whether she crept into his arms or he into hers. For a long time while they were in the salt wind and the warmth of each other. Finally she dared ask, “Was that?” and he answered, “Yes, surely. A Danellian. I’ve only met one a single time before, and that was only for a minute. You’ve been honored, Wanda. Never forget.”
“I shan’t. I have back—what I need to live by and live for.”
They separated and were another while silent, moveless, beside the ocean. Then she tossed her head, laughed aloud, and cried, “Hey, boy, let’s get down off this high horse. We are mere humans, aren’t we? How about we enjoy it?”
His mirth, a little defensive still but not wholly, joined hers. “Yes, right, I’m hungry as a bear.” All at once shy: “What’d you like to do after lunch?”
Quite steadily, she told him: “Phone home to say I’ll be gone a few days. Buy toothbrushes and stuff. Winter or no, this is a lovely coast, Manse. Let me show you.”
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Also by Poul Anderson
SCIENCE FICTION
The Psychotechnic League
1. Star Ways (also known as The Peregrine) (1956)
2. The Snows of Ganymede (1958)
3. Virgin Planet (1959)
4. Cold Victory (1982)
5. Starship (1982)
Polesotechnic League
1. Trader to the Stars (1964)
2. The Trouble Twisters (features David Falkayn, not Van Rijn) (1966)
3. Satan’s World (1969)
4. The Earth Book of Stormgate (1978)
5. The Man Who Counts (revised and edited version of War of the Wing-Men) (1958)
6. Mirkheim (1977)
7. The People of the Wind
Terran Empire period of Dominic Flandry
1. Ensign Flandry (1966)
2. A Circus of Hells (1970)
3. The Rebel Worlds (1969)
4. The Day of Their Return (1973)
5. Agent of the Terran Empire (1965
6. Flandry of Terra (1965)
7. A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (1974)
8. A Stone in Heaven (1979)
9. The Game of Empire (1985)
10. The Long Night
11. Let the Spacemen Beware (1963)
Time Patrol
1. The Shield of Time (1990)
2. Time Patrol (2006).
History of Rustum
1. Orbit Unlimited (1961)
2. New America (1982)]
Maurai
1. Maurai and Kith (1982
2. Orion Shall Rise (1983)
Kith
Starfarers (1998)
Harvest of Stars
1. Harvest of Stars (1993)
2. The Stars Are Also Fire (1994)
3. Harvest the Fire (1995)
4. The Fleet of Stars (1997)
Hoka (with Gordon R. Dickson)
1. Earthman’s Burden (1957)
2. Star Prince Charlie (1975)
3. Hoka! (1983)
Operation Otherworld
1. Operation Chaos (1971)
2. Operation Luna (1999)
Other SF
Vault of the Ages (1952)
Brain Wave (1954)
Question and Answer (also known as Planet of No Return) (1954)
No World of Their Own (1955)
The Long Way Home (1958)
War of Two Worlds (1959)
The Enemy Stars (1959)
The High Crusade (1960)
Twilight World (1961)
After Doomsday (1962)
The Makeshift Rocket (1962)
Shield (1962)
Three Worlds to Conquer (1964)
The Corridors of Time (1965)
The Star Fox (1965)
World Without Stars (1966)
Tau Zero (1970)
The Byworlder (1971)
The Dancer from Atlantis (1971)
There Will Be Time (1972)
Fire Time (1974)
The Winter of the World (1975)
The Avatar (1978)
The Boat of a Million Years (1989)
The Saturn Game (1989)
The Longest Voyage (1991)
Genesis (2000)
For Love and Glory (2003)
FANTASY
King of Ys (with Karen Anderson)
1. Roma Mater (1986)
2. Gallicenae (1987)
3. Dahut (1987)
4. The Dog and the Wolf (1988)
Other Fantasy
Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953)
The Broken Sword (1954, revised in 1971)
Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (1973)
A Midsummer Tempest (1974)
The Merman’s Children (1979)
The Devil’s Game (1980)
War of the Gods (1997)
Mother of Kings (2001)
Dedication
TO FELICE AND BLAKE
Poul Anderson
Poul William Anderson (1926 – 2001) was born in Pennsylvania to Scandinavian parents. His family lived for a time in Denmark but moved back to the United States after the outbreak of the Second World War. They settled in Minnesota, where Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota.
Anderson began writing while still an undergraduate and published his first story in 1947. He was active throughout the second half of the twentieth century, producing such classic works as the Dominic Flandry books and The High Crusade, and winning multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. He has served as President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. In 1998 he was named an SFWA Grand Master. He collaborated regularly with wife, Karen, and their daughter is married to noted SF writer Greg Bear. Poul Anderson died in July 2001.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Trigonier Trust 1990
All rights reserved.
The right of Poul Anderson to be identified as the author
; of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10892 9
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
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The Shield of Time Page 41
