Time Patrol (74 page)

"Touché," said Everard wryly.

"Please," Helen Tamberly whispered.

"My apologies, señora." Vasquez gave her a bow from his chair. "I did not mean to tantalize you, only to explain why I could find out very little. Apparently the friar and a soldier went into the house where the hoard was kept one night. When they did not reappear by dawn, the guards grew nervous and opened the door. They were not inside. Every door had been watched. Sensational rumors flew. What I heard was through the Indies, and I could not query them either. Remember, I was a stranger among them, and they hardly ever traveled away from home. The upheaval in progress allowed me to concoct a story accounting for my presence in the city, but it would not have withstood examination, had anyone grown interested in me."

Everard puffed hard on his pipe. "Hm," he said around it, "I gather that Tamberly, as the friar, had access to each new load of treasure, to pray over it or whatever. Actually, he took holograms of the artwork, for future people's information and enjoyment. But what about that soldier?"

Vasquez shrugged. "I heard his name, Luis Castelar, and that he was a cavalry officer who had distinguished himself in the campaign. Some said he might have plotted to steal the wealth, but others replied that that was unthinkable of so honorable a knight, not to mention good-hearted Fray Tanaquil. Pizarro interrogated the sentries at length but, I heard, satisfied himself about their honesty. After all, the hoard was still there. When I left, the general idea was that sorcerers had been at work. Hysteria was building rapidly. It could have hideous consequences."

"Which are
not
in the history we learned," Everard growled. "How critical is that exact piece of space-time?"

"The Conquest as a whole, certainly vital, a key part of world events. This one episode—who knows? We have not ceased to exist, in spite of being uptime of it."

"Which doesn't mean we can't cease," said Everard roughly.
We can have never been, ourselves and the whole world that begot us. It's a perishing more absolute than death.
"The Patrol shall concentrate everything it can spare on that span of days or weeks. And proceed with extreme caution," he added to Helen Tamberly. "What could have happened? Have you any clues, Agent Vasquez?"

"I may have a slender one," the other man told them. "I suspect that somebody with a time vehicle had in mind hijacking the ransom."

"Yeah, that's a fair guess. One of Tamberly's assignments was to keep an eye on developments and let the Patrol know of anything suspicious."

"How could he before he returned uptime?" the woman wondered aloud.

"He left recorded messages in what looked like ordinary rocks, but which emitted identifying Y-radiation," Everard explained. "The agreed-on spots were checked, but nothing was there except brief, routine reports on what he'd been experiencing."

"I was taken from my real mission for this investigation," Vasquez went on. "My work was a generation earlier, in the reign of Huayna Capac, father of Atahualpa and Huáscar. We can't understand the Conquest without an understanding of the great and complex civilization that it destroyed." An imperium reaching from Ecuador deep into Chile, and from the Pacific seaboard to the headwaters of the Amazon. "And . . . it seems that strangers appeared at the court of that Inca in 1524, about a year before his death. They resembled Europeans and were taken to be such; the realm had heard rumors of men from afar. They left after a while, nobody knew where or how. But when I was called back uptime, I had begun to get intimations that they tried to persuade Huayna not to give Atahualpa such power that he could rival Huáscar. They failed; the old man was stubborn. But that the attempt was made is significant, no?"

Everard whistled. "God, yes! Did you get any hint as to who those visitors might have been?"

"No. Nothing worthwhile. That entire milieu is exceptionally hard to penetrate." Vasquez made a crooked smile. "Having defended the Spaniards against the charge of having been monsters, by sixteenth-century standards, I must say that the Inca state was not a nation of peaceful innocents. It was aggressively expanding in every possible direction. And it was totalitarian; it regulated life down to the last detail. Not unkindly; if you conformed, you were provided for. But woe betide you if you did not. The very nobles lacked any freedom worth mentioning. Only the Inca, the god-king, had that. You can see the difficulties an outsider confronts, regardless of whether he belongs to the same race. In Caxamalca I said I had been sent to report on my district to the bureaucracy. Before Pizarro upset the reign, I could never have made that story stick. As it was, all I got to hear was second- and third-hand gossip."

Everard nodded. Like practically everything in history, the Spanish Conquest was neither entirely bad nor entirely good. Cortes at least put an end to the grisly massacre-sacrifices of the Aztecs, and Pizarro opened the way for a concept of individual dignity and worth. Both invaders had Indian allies, who joined them for excellent reasons.

Well, a Patrolman had no business moralizing. His duty was to preserve what
was
, from end to end of time, and to stand by his comrades.

"Let's talk about whatever we can think of that might conceivably be of help," he proposed. "Mrs. Tamberly, we will not abandon your husband to his fate. Maybe we can't rescue him, but we're sure going to give it our best try."

Jenkins brought in tea.

30 October 1986

Mr. Everard is a surprise. His letters and then his phone calls from New York were, well, polite and kind of intellectual. Here he is in person, a big bruiser with a dented nose. How old is he, forty? Hard to tell. I'm sure he's knocked around a lot.

No matter his looks. (They could be might sexy if things took that turn. Which they won't. Doubtless for the best, damn it.) He's soft-spoken, with the same old-fashioned quality as his communications had.

Shake hands. "Glad to meet you, Miss Tamberly," the deep voice says. "It's kind of you to come here." Downtown hotel, the lobby.

"Well, it concerns my one and only uncle, doesn't it?" I toss back.

He nods. "I'd like to speak with you at length. Uh, would it be forward of me if I offered to stand you a drink? Or dinner? I'll be putting you to a certain amount of trouble."

Caution. "Thanks, but let's see how it goes. Right now, frankly, I'm too keyed up. Could we just walk for a while?"

"Why not? A beautiful day, and I haven't been in Palo Alto in years. Maybe we can go to the university and stroll around?"

Gorgeous weather for sure, Indian summer before the rains start in earnest. If it lasts we'll have smog. Right now, clear blue overhead, sunlight spilling down like a waterfall. The eucalyptuses on campus will be all silvery and pale green and pungent. In spite of the situation (oh, what has become of Uncle Steve?) I can't keep excitement down. Me, with a real live detective.

Turn left in the street. "What do you want, Mr. Everard?"

"To interview you, exactly as I told you. I'd like to draw you out about Dr. Tamberly. Something you say might give an inkling."

Good of that foundation to care, to hire this man. Well, naturally, they have an investment in Uncle Steve. He's doing that research down in South America, that he's never talked much about. Must be one dynamite book he means to write. Reflect credit on the foundation. Help justify its tax exemption. No, I shouldn't think that. Cheap cynicism is for sophomores.

"Why me, though? I mean, my dad's his brother. He'd know a lot more."

"Maybe. I do intend to see him and his wife. But the information given me says you're a special favorite of your uncle's. I've got a hunch he's revealed things about himself to you—nothing big, nothing you imagine is very special—but things that might give some insight into his character, some clue as to where he went."

Swallow hard. Six months, now, with never so much as a postcard. "Have they no idea at the foundation?"

"You asked me before," Everard reminds. "He always was an independent operator. Made it a condition of accepting the funds. Yes, he was bound for the Andes, but we hardly know more than that. It's a huge territory. The police authorities of the several possible countries haven't been able to tell us a thing."

This is hard to say. Melodrama. But. "Do you suspect . . . foul play?"

"We don't know, Miss Tamberly. We hope not. Maybe he took too long a chance and—Anyway, my job's to try understanding him." He smiles. It creases his face. "My notion of how to do that is to start by understanding the people he feels close to."

"He always was, you know, reserved. Quite a private guy."

"With a soft spot for you, however. Mind if I ask you a few questions about yourself, for openers?"

"Go ahead. I don't guarantee to answer them all."

"Nothing too personal. Let's see. You're in your senior year at Stanford, right? What's your major?"

"Biology."

"That's about as broad a word as 'physics,' isn't it?"

He's no dummy. "Well, I'm mainly interested in evolutionary transitions. Probably I'll go into paleontology."

"You plan on grad school, then?"

"Oh, yes. A Ph.D.'s the union card if you want to do science."

"You look more athletic than academic, if I may say so."

"Tennis, backpacking, sure, I like it outdoors, and fossicking for fossils is a great way to get paid for being there." Impulse. "I've got a summer job lined up. Tourist guide in the Galapagos Islands. The Lost World if ever there was a Lost World." Suddenly my eyes sting and blur. "Uncle Steve arranged it for me. He has friends in Ecuador."

"Sounds terrific. How's your Spanish?"

"Pretty good. We, my family, used to vacation a lot in Mexico. I still go now and then, and I've traveled in South America."

—He's been remarkably easy to talk with. "Comfortable as an old shoe," Dad would say. We sat on a campus bench, we had a beer in the union, he did end up taking me to dinner. Nothing fancy, nothing romantic. But worth cutting those classes for. I've told him an awful lot.

Funny how little he's managed to tell about himself.

I realize that as he says good night outside my apartment building. "You've been most helpful, Miss Tamberly. Maybe more than you know. I'll get hold of your parents tomorrow. Then back to New York, I suppose. Here." He takes out his wallet, extracts a small white oblong. "My card. If anything else should come to your mind, please phone me at once, collect." Dead seriousness: "Or if anything happens that seems the least peculiar. Please. This might be a tad dangerous, this business."

Uncle Steve involved with the CIA, or what? Suddenly the evening doesn't feel mild. "Okay. Good night, Mr. Everard." I snatch the card and hurry through the door.

11 May 2937 B.C.

"When I saw they were off guard and close together," Castelar said, "I called on Sant'Iago in my mind, and sprang. My kick took the first in the throat and he went to the floor. I whirled about and gave the second the heel of my hand below the nose, an upward blow,
thus.
" The movement was quick and savage. "He fell too. I retrieved my blade, made sure of them both, and came after you."

His tone was almost casual. Tamberly thought, in the daze dulling his brain, that the Exaltationists had made the common mistake of underestimating a man of a past era. This one was ignorant of nearly everything they knew, but his wits were fully equal to theirs. Thereon was laid a ferocity bred by centuries of war—not impersonal high-technological conflict but medieval combat, where you looked into your enemy's eyes and cut him down with your own hand.

"Were you not the least afraid of their . . . magic?" Tamberly mumbled.

Castelar shook his head. "I knew God was with me." He crossed himself, then sighed. "It was stupid of me to leave their guns behind. I will not fail like that again."

Despite the heat, Tamberly shivered.

He sat slumped in long grass beneath a noonday sun. Castelar stood above him, metal a-shine, hand on hilt, legs apart, like a colossus bestriding the world. The timecycle rested several yards off. Beyond, a stream flowed toward the sea, which was not visible here but which, he estimated from his glimpse aloft, lay twenty or thirty miles distant. Palm, chirimoya, and other vegetation told him they were "still" in tropical America. He had a vague recollection of chancing to give the temporal activator a harder thrust than the spatial.

Could he get up, make a break for it, beat the Spaniard to the machine and escape? Impossible. Were he in better shape, he would try. Like most field agents, he'd received training in martial arts. That might offset the other's cruder skills and greater strength. (Any cavalier spent his whole life in such physical activity that an Olympic champion would be flabby by comparison.) Now he was too weak, in body and mind alike. With the kyradex off his head, he had volition again. But it wasn't much use yet. He felt drained, sand in his synapses, lead in his eyelids, skull scooped hollow.

Castelar glowered downward. "Cease twisting words, sorcerer," he rapped. "It is for me to put you to the question."

Should I just keep mum and provoke him into killing me?
Tamberly wondered in his weariness.
I imagine he'd apply torture first, seeking to force my cooperation. But afterward he'd be stranded, made harmless. . . . No. He'd be sure to monkey with the vehicle. That could easily bring about his destruction; but if it didn't, what else could happen? I must keep my death in reserve till I'm certain it's the only thing I have to offer.

He lifted his gaze to the dark eagle visage and dragged forth: "I am no sorcerer. I merely have knowledge you don't, of various arts and devices. The Indies thought our musketeers commanded the lightning. It was simple gunpowder. A compass needle points north, but not by magic."
Though you don't understand the actual principle, do you?
"Likewise for weapons that stun without wounding, and for engines that overleap space and time."

Castelar nodded. "I had that feeling," he said slowly. "My captors whom I slew let words drop."