“Really?” she asked, surprised. “Didn’t you return to your place in New York in ’88 when you were through? I mean, you didn’t let it stand months vacant, did you?”
“I lent—officially, sublet—it to an operative who needed such a base for a task of her own. They’ve got rent control there in these decades, you know. Always guarantees slums, plus decent housing in such short supply that to become a new tenant you’ve got to show more money than is wise for a Patrol agent.”
“I see.”
Tamberly had stiffened a little. “Her,” she’s thinking.
It’s also unwise for a Patrol agent to explain too much. Especially in a case like this. “Messages to me from fellow members were robotically bucked on. If you’d called before yesterday—”
Whatever pique she felt had dissipated. Her gaze dropped to hands that caught each other in her lap. “I had no reason to, sir,” she said low. “You’d been awfully kind, generous, but … I didn’t want to get pushy.”
“Nor did I.” The great Unattached overawing the new recruit Unfair. Could be resented. “Though if I’d known so much time was going by for you—”
Much time indeed, less in lifespan measured by pulsebeats than in life lived, newnesses, strangenesses, troubles, triumphs, gaieties, griefs. And loves? Her form had grown fuller, Everard saw, not in fat but muscle. The bones stood out more strongly than before in a face that weather had often savaged. The real change was subtler. She had been a girl—a young woman, if today’s feminists insisted, but how very young. The girl in her had not died; he doubted she ever quite would. The person across from him remained youthfuclass="underline" yet wholly a woman. His own pulse stumbled.
He achieved a laugh. “Okay, let’s drop the Alphonse-Gastonette act,” he said. “And please remember, my name isn’t ‘sir.’ Here, by ourselves, we can relax. Wanda.”
She rallied fast. “Thanks, Manse. I kind of expected this.”
He drew pipe and tobacco pouch out of his pockets. “And this? If you don’t mind.”
“No, go ahead.” She smiled. “Since we are not in public.” Unspoken: Bad example, among people for whom smoking’s lethal. Patrol medicine heads off or heals anything that doesn’t kill us outright. You were born in 1924, Manse. You look about forty. But how much duration have you endured? What is your real age?
He didn’t wish to tell her. Not today. “I raised your file yesterday,” he said. ‘You’ve been doing a crackerjack job.”
She grew sober. Her eyes took level aim at him. “And will I in my future?”
“I didn’t ask for that information,” he replied fast. “Discourteous, unethical, and it wouldn’t have been given me unless I could show a damn valid reason. We don’t look into our tomorrows, nor into our friends’.”
“And nevertheless,” she murmured, “the information is there. Everything you or I will ever do—everything I’ll discover about the life of the past—is known to them uptime.”
“Hey, we’re talking English, not Temporal. The paradoxes—”
The tawny head nodded. “Oh, yes. The work has to be done. Has to have been done, somewhere along the line. No point in my doing it if I already knew; and the danger of setting up a cause-and-effect whirlpool—”
“Besides, neither the past nor the future is cast in concrete. That’s why the Patrol exists. Have we repeated enough indoctrination lecture?”
“I’m sorry. It’s still sometimes hard for me to, well, comprehend. I have to replay the basic principles in my mind. My work is … straightforward. Like going to an unexplored continent. Nothing to remind me of the problems you cope with.”
“Sure. I understand.” Everard tamped the pipe hard. “I have no doubt you’ll continue doing first-class work. Your superiors are more than pleased with what you’ve accomplished in Ber—uh—Beringia. Not just the verbal reports and audiovisuals and such, but—well, it’s out of my field, but they say you were finding the fundamental pattern of that natural history. You were making sense of it, in a way that contributes a lot to the total picture.”
She tensed on her chair. The question rang. “Then why have they pulled me out?”
He busied himself before applying fire. “Um, as I understand it, you’ve done as much as necessary in Beringia. When you’ve had your well-earned furlough, they’ll put you onto some other aspect of the Pleistocene.”
“I have not done enough. A hundred solid man-years would be too few.”
“I know, I know. But you know, or should, the outfit hasn’t got them to spare. We, the scientists uptime and the Patrol itself, we have to settle for broad general outlines and forget about the nesting habits of the cootie-banded bandicoot.”
She flushed. “You know, or should know, that isn’t what I mean,” she flung back. “I’m talking about the entire circumpolar migration of species, two-way traffic between Asia and America. It’s a unique phenomenon, an ecology in time as well as space. If I can, at the bare least, learn why the mammoth population of Beringia is, was, shrinking that early, when it still flourished on either side—But my project’s been terminated. And all I get is the same runaround you gave me. I’d hoped you wouldn’t.”
Spirit, Everard thought. Reluctant to wheedle the Unattached man, but ready to tell him off when he seems to deserve it “I’m sorry, Wanda,” he said. “That was not my intention.” After a comforting draught of smoke: “The fact is, those human newcomers change everything. Wasn’t that explained to you?”
“Yes. After a fashion.” She spoke softly again. “But would my investigations really mess things up? One person, going quietly around on the steppe, in the hills and woods, along the beaches? When I stayed with the Tulat, you know, the aborigines, nobody worried about it.”
Everard frowned at his pipe. “I’m not familiar with the details,” he admitted. “I boned up yesterday as much as I could in a short time, but that wasn’t a hell of a lot. However, it seems pretty clear, your Tulat aren’t important to the long-range course of events. They vanish, leaving no record, not even as much of a clear-cut trace as the Vinland or Roanoke colonies. The Paleo-Indians become the real pre-Columbian Americans. And at this earliest entry of theirs, who can tell what might make a critical difference, might upset the entire future?” He raised a hand. “Sure, sure. It’s extremely unlikely. Little waves and wrinkles in the continuum will almost certainly smooth out, get history back where it belongs. That’s true of your … Tulat. But as for the Paleo-Indians, at this stage, who can guarantee the situation is stable? Also, the Ancient American office wants their history observed as their cultures develop uncontam—freely.”
Tamberly clenched her fists. “Ralph Corwin is off to live among them!”
“Yeah. Well, he’s a pro at that sort of thing, a high-rated anthropologist. I checked out his record too. He’s got an excellent background, from his work with later generations. He’ll minimize his own effect on these people, while he learns enough about them to give him a handle on what really happened—same as you’ve worked to find out what really happened among the animals and plants.”
Everard roiled smoke around in his mouth, loosed it streaming from his lips. “That’s the basic problem, Wanda. The newcomers are bound to interact with the aborigines. It may be slightly, it may be heavily, but it will happen and could well prove very complicated. We can’t allow an extra anachronism on the scene. That could scramble events beyond any repair. Especially since you don’t have Corwin’s skills. Can’t you see?
“The upshot is, your ecological studies are valuable, but the human studies now take absolute priority. No reflection on you, but it became necessary to end your project. You’ll get another, and they’ll try to make sure you can carry it to completion.”