Time Patrol (76 page)

Plastic.

Final touch. Practical joke. 'Tain't funny, God. Got to laugh anyway. Whoop. Howl.

"Be calm, señorita. I tell you, while you behave wisely you have nothing to fear. I will protect you."

That pig! I'm no ultrafeminist, but when a kidnapper starts patronizing me, too much. The laughter rattles down to silence. Rise. Brace muscles. They shiver a bit.

Somehow, regardless, I am no longer afraid. Coldly furious. At the same time, more aware than ever before. He stands in front of me as sharp as if a lightning flash lit him up. Not a big man; thin; but remember that strength of his. Hispanic features, all right, of the pure European kind, tanned practically black. Not in costume. Those clothes are faded, mended, grubby; vegetable dyes. Unwashed, like himself. Smell powerful but he doesn't really stink, it's an outdoor kind of odor. The ridged helmet, sweeping down to guard his neck, and the cuirass are tarnished. I see scratches in the steel. From battle? Sword hung at his left hip. Sheath at the right meant for a knife. It being gone, he must have butchered the tortoise and cut a skewer for roasting it with the sword. Firewood he could break off these parched branches. Yonder, a fire drill he made. Sinew for cord. He's been here a while.

Whisper "Where is here?"

"Another island of the same archipelago. You know it as Santa Cruz. That is five hundred years hence. Today is one hundred years before the discovery."

Breathe slow and deep. Heart, take it easy. I've read my share of science fiction. Time travel. Only, a Spanish Conquistador!

"
When
are you from?"

"I told you. About a century in the future. I fared with the brothers Pizarro and we overthrew the pagan king of Peru."

"No. I shouldn't understand you." Wrong, Wanda. I remember. Uncle Steve told me once. If I met a sixteenth-century Englishman, I'd have a devil of a time. Spelling didn't change (won't change) too much, but pronunciation did. Spanish is a more stable language.

Uncle Steve!

Cool it. Speak steadily. Can't quite. Look this man in the eyes, at least. "You mentioned my kinsman just before you . . . laid violent hands on me."

He sounds exasperated. "I did no more than was necessary. Yes, if you are indeed Wanda Tamberly, I know your father's brother." He peers like a cat at a mouse hole. "The name he used among us was Estebán Tanaquil."

Uncle Steve a time traveler too? I can't help it, dizziness rushes through me.

I shake myself free of it. Don Luis Et Cetera sees I'm bewildered. Or else he knew I'd be. I think he wants to push things along, keep me off balance. Says, "I warned you he is in danger. That is true. He is my hostage, left in a wilderness where starvation will soon take him off, unless wild beasts do so first. It is for you to earn his ransom."

22 May 1987

Blink. We're there. Like a blow to the solar plexus. I almost fall off. Grab his waist. Face burrows into roughness of his cloak.

Calm, lassie. He told you to expect this . . . transition. He's awed. Hasty in the wind, "
Ave Maria gratiae plena—
" It's cold up here in heaven. No moon, but stars everywhere. Riding lights of a plane, blink, blink, blink.

The Peninsula tremendous, a sprawled galaxy, half a mile underneath us. White, yellow, red, green, blue, shining blood-flow of cars, from San Jose to San Francisco. Hulks of black to the left where the hills rise. Shimmering darkness to the right, the Bay, fire-streaked by the bridges. Towns glimpsed, clusters of sparks, on the far shore. About ten o'clock of a Friday evening.

How often have I seen this before? From airliners. A space-time bike hanging aloft, me in the buddy seat behind a man born almost five centuries ago, that's something else.

He masters himself. The sheer lion courage of him—except a lion wouldn't charge headlong into the unknown, the way those guys did after Columbus showed them half a world to plunder. "Is this the realm of Morgana la Hada?" he breathes.

"No, it's where I live, those are lamps you see, lamps in the streets and houses and . . . on the wagons. They move by themselves, the wagons, without horses. Yonder goes a flying vessel. But it can't skip from place to place and year to year like this one."

A superwoman wouldn't babble facts. She'd feed him a line, mislead him, use his ignorance to trap him somehow. Yeah, "somehow," that's the catch. I'm just me, and he's a superman, or pretty close to it. Natural selection, back in his day. If you weren't physically tough, you didn't live to have kids. And a peasant could be stupid, might even do better if he was, but not a military officer who didn't have a Pentagon to plan his moves for him. Also, those hours of questioning on Santa Cruz Island (which I, Wanda May Tamberly, am the first woman ever to walk on) have beaten me down. He never laid a hand on me, but he kept at it and kept at it. Eroded the resistance out of me. My main thought right now is that I'd better cooperate. Otherwise he could too easily make some blunder that'd kill us both and leave Uncle Steve stranded.

"I have thought the saints might dwell in such a blaze of glory," Luis murmurs. The cities he knew went blackout after dark. You needed a lantern to find your way. If it was a fine city, it put stepping stones down the middle of the sidewalkless streets, to keep you above the horse droppings and garbage.

He turns tactical. "Can we descend unseen?"

"If you're careful. Go slowly as I guide you." I recognize the Stanford campus, a mostly unlighted patch. Lean forward against him, left hand holding onto the cloak. These are well-designed seats; my knees will keep me in place. That's a mighty long drop, though. Reach right arm past his side. Point. "Toward there."

The machine tilts forward. We slant down. My nose fills with the scents of him. I've already noticed: pungent rather than sour, yes, very macho.

Got to admire him. A hero, on his own terms. Can't stop a sneaking wish that he'll get away with his desperate caper.

Whoa, girl. That's a pitfall. You've heard about kidnapped people, even tortured people, developing sympathy with their captors. Don't you be a Patty Hearst.

Still, damn it, what Luis has done is fantastic. Brains as well as bravery. Think back. Try, while we chase through the air, try to get straight in your mind what he told you, what you saw, what you figured out.

Hard to. He admitted a lot of confusion himself. Mainly he hews to his faith in the Trinity and the warlike saints. He'll succeed, dedicating his victories to them, and become greater than the Holy Roman Emperor; or he'll die in the attempt and go to Paradise, all sins forgiven because what he did was in the cause of Christendom. Catholic Christendom.

Time travel for real. Some kind of
guarda del tiempo
, and Uncle Steve works for it. (Oh, Uncle Steve, while we laughed and chatted and went on family picnics and watched TV and played chess or tennis, this was behind your eyes.) Some kind of bandits or pirates also running loose through history, and isn't that a terrifying thought? Luis escaped from them, has this machine, has me, for his wild purposes.

How he got at me—wrung the basic information out of Uncle Steve. I'm afraid to imagine how, though he claims he didn't do any permanent damage. Flitted to the Galapagos, established camp before the islands were discovered. Made cautious reconnaissance trips into the twentieth century, 1987 to be exact. He knew I'd be around then, and I was the one person he had any hope of . . . using.

The campsite's in the arboretum behind Darwin Station. He could safely leave the machine there for a few hours at a stretch, especially in the early morning or late afternoon and at night. Walk into town or around the area, minus his armor. Clothes look funny, but he's careful to approach only working-class locals, and they're used to crazy tourists. Wheedle some, browbeat some, maybe bribe some. I got the impression he stole money. Ruthless. Anyhow, a few shrewd inquiries, at well-spaced intervals. Found out things about this era. Found out things about me. Once he knew I'd gone off on terminal leave, and roughly where, he could hover too high for us to see, watch through that magnifying screen he showed me, wait for an opportunity, swoop. And here we are.

He
will
do these things, come September. This is Memorial Day weekend. He wanted me to bring him to my home at a time when nobody would disturb us. Mainly me. (What's it like, meeting yourself in the living flesh?) I'm with Dad and Mom and Suzy in San Francisco. Tomorrow we're bound for Yosemite. Won't be back till Monday evening.

Him and me in my apartment. The other three units are vacant, I know, students also away for the holiday.

Well, I dare hope he'll continue "respecting my honor." He did make that nasty crack about me dressing like a man
o una puta.
Thank—well, be glad I had the wit to get up indignant and tell him this is respectable ladies' garb where I come from. He apologized, sort of. Said I was a white woman, in spite of being a heretic. Indian women's feelings didn't count, of course.

What will he do next? What does he want of me? I don't know. Probably he isn't sure either, yet. If I got the same chance he's got, how would I use it? It's a godlike power. Hard to stay sensible with those controls between your hands.

"Turn right. Slowly, now."

We've flown above University Avenue, across Middlefield, and yonder's the Plaza; my street's that-a-way. Yep. "Halt." We stop. I look past his shoulder at the square building, ten feet below us and twenty ahead. The windows glimmer blind.

"I have rooms in that upper story."

"Have you space for the chariot?"

Gulp. "Well, yes, in the largest chamber. A few feet"—how many, damn it?—"about three feet behind those panes at the very corner." I'm guessing the Spanish foot of his day is not too different from the English foot of mine.

Evidently not. He leans forward, peers, gauges. My pulse gallops. Sweat prickles my skin. He means to make a quantum jump through space (no, not really through space. Around it?) and appear in my living room. What if we come out in the middle of something?

Oh, he's experimented, in his Galapagos retreat. The nerve that that took! He's made discoveries. He tried to explain them to me. As near as I can follow it, put in twentieth-century words, you pass directly from one set of space-time coordinates to another. Maybe it's through a "wormhole"—vague recollection of articles in
Scientific American, Science News, Analog
—and for a moment your dimensions equal zero; then as you expand into your destination volume, you displace whatever matter is there. Air molecules, obviously. Luis found out that if a small solid object is in the way, it gets pushed aside. A big object, and the machine, with you aboard, settles beside it, off the exact spot you punched for. Probably mutual displacement. Action equals reaction. Agreed, Sir Isaac?

There must be limits. Suppose he gets it badly wrong and we end up in the wall. Splintering studs, nails shoved through my guts, stucco and plaster like cannonball, and a ten- or twelve-foot drop to the ground on this heavy thing.

"Saint James be with us," he says. I feel his motions. Whoops!

We're here, inches above the floor. He sets us down. We're here.

Street glow dim through the windows. Get off. Knees weak. Start. Stop—his grip on my arm like jaws. "Halt," he commands.

"I only want to give us better light."

"I will make quite sure of that, my lady." He comes along. When I flick the switch and everything turns bright, he gasps. His fingers close bruisingly hard. "Ow!" He lets go and stares around him.

Must have seen electric bulbs on Santa Cruz. But Puerto Ayora's a poor little village, and I don't suppose he peeped into the station personnel's quarters. Try to look at this through his eyes. Difficult. I take it all for granted. How much can he actually
see
, as alien as it is to him?

Bike fills most of the rug. Crowds my desk, the sofa, the entertainment cabinet and bookshelf. It knocked two chairs over. Fourth wall, door open on the short hall. Bathroom and broom closet to the left, bedroom and clothes closet to the right, kitchen at the end, those doors closed. Cubbyholes. And I'll bet nobody less than a merchant prince lived like this in the sixteenth century.

What immediately astounds him: "So many books? You cannot be a cleric."

Why, I doubt if I have a hundred, texts included. And Gutenberg was before Columbus, wasn't he?

"How poorly bound they are." That seems to renew his confidence. I suppose books were still scarce and expensive. And no paperbacks.

He shakes his head at a couple of magazines; the covers must seem downright garish. Harshness again. "You will show me these lodgings."

I do, explaining things as best I can. He has glimpsed (will glimpse) faucets and flush toilets in Puerto Ayora. "How I wish for a bath," I sigh. Give me a hot shower and clean clothes, you can keep your Paradise, Don Luis.

"Presently, if you like. However, it shall be in my sight, like all else you do."

"What? Even the, uh, even that?"

He's embarrassed but determined. "I regret this, my lady, and will keep my face averted, save that I must see enough to be certain you make ready no trick. For I believe yours to be a valiant soul, and you have mysteries and devices that I do not fathom at your beck."

Ha. If only I did keep a .45 under my lingerie. At that, I've a bit of trouble convincing him the upright vacuum cleaner isn't a gun. He makes me lug it into the living room and demonstrate. A grin turns him human. "Give me a charwoman," he says. "She doesn't howl like a mad wolf."

We leave it where it is and return down the hall. In the kitchen-dinette, he admires the pilot-lighted gas range. Tell him, "I need a sandwich—food—and a beer. What about you? Tepid water and half-cooked tortoise for days."

"Do you offer me hospitality?" He sounds amazed.

"Call it that."

He ponders. "No. My thanks, but I cannot in conscience eat your salt."

Funny how touching that is. "Old-fashioned, aren't you? If I remember rightly, the Borgias were in business in your time. Or was that earlier? Well, let us agree we're opponents who've sat down to negotiate."