Everard's match cast a loud scrit across the silence that followed. He rolled smoke over his tongue and cradled the rough wood in his hand. "Don't count on it," he said. "Besides, good field historians are scarce. Good people of every kind are. You may not be fully aware of how undermanned we are in the corps. Your sort make it possible for his sort to operate. And mine. Normally we came home safe."
Patrol work was anything but bravado and derring-do. It depended on exact knowledge. Agents like Steve collected most of that on the spot, but they too required the patient labor of those like Helen, who collated the reports. Thus, observers in Ionia brought back immensely more information than those chronicles and relics that survived into the nineteenth century had ever contained; but they could not do her job, which was to put it all together, interpret, arrange, and prepare briefings for the next expeditions.
"Someday he must find something safer." She blushed. "I refuse to start a family until he does."
"Oh, I'm sure he'll move into an administrative post in due course," Everard answered. If we can save him. "He'll have gotten far too much experience for us to let him go on grubbing around. Instead, he'll direct the efforts of newer people. Um, that may well require his assuming a Spanish colonial persona for a few decades. It'd be easiest if you could join him."
"What an adventure! I should adapt. We didn't plan on remaining Victorians forever."
"And you've ruled out twentieth-century America. Hm, what about his ties there?"
"He comes from an old California family. It has distant Peruvian connections. A great-grandfather of his was a sea captain who married a young lady in Lima and brought her home with him. Perhaps that helped interest him in early Peru. I suppose you know he became an anthropologist, later practiced archaeology down there. He has a married brother in San Francisco. His own first marriage ended in divorce, shortly before he enlisted in the Patrol. That was—will be—in 1968. Subsequently he resigned his professorship and told everyone he had a grant from a learned institution, which would enable him to do independent research. This explains his frequent prolonged absences. He does still keep bachelor quarters, so as to remain in touch with kin and friends, and has no plans at present to phase out of their lives. At last he must, and knows it, but—" She smiled. "He has talked about seeing his favorite niece get married and have a baby. He says he wants to enjoy being a granduncle."
Everard ignored the scrambled tenses. It was inevitable when you spoke any language but Temporal. "Favorite niece, eh?" he murmured. "That kind of person is often useful, apt to know a lot and tell it freely without getting suspicious. What do you know about her?"
"Her name is Wanda, and she was born in 1965. The last several mentions of her that Stephen made to me, she was, m-m, a student of biology at a place called Stanford University. As a matter of fact, he scheduled his departure on this last mission from California rather than London so he could first see his relatives there in, oh, yes, 1986."
"I had better interview her."
A knock sounded on the door. "Come in," the woman called.
The maid entered. "There is a person who asks to see you, missus," she announced. "Mr. Basscase, he says is his name." With frosty disapprovaclass="underline" "A gentleman of color."
"That's the other agent," Everard muttered to his hostess. "Earlier than I expected."
"Send him in," she directed.
Julio Vasquez did indeed look out of place: short, stocky, bronze of skin, black of hair, with wide features and arched nose. He was almost pure native Andean, though born in the twenty-second century, Everard knew. Still, this neighborhood had doubtless grown somewhat accustomed to exotic visitors. Not only was London the center of a planet-wide empire, York Place divided Baker Street.
Helen Tamberly received the newcomer graciously, and now she did send for tea. The Patrol had cured her of any Victorian racism. Necessarily, the language became Temporal, for she had no Spanish (or Quechua!) and English was not important enough in Vasquez's life, either before or after he joined the Patrol, for him to acquire more than some stock phrases.
"I have learned very little," he said. "It was an especially difficult undertaking, the more so on such short notice. To the Spaniards I was merely another Indian. How could I approach one, let alone make inquiries of him? I could have been flogged for insolence, or killed out of hand."
"The Conquistadores were a bunch of bas—of hellhounds, all right," Everard remarked. "As I recall, after Atahualpa's ransom was in, Pizarro didn't let him go. No, he put him before a kangaroo court on a bunch of trumped-up charges and sentenced him to death. To be burned alive, wasn't it?"
"It was commuted to strangling when he accepted baptism," Vasquez said, "and a number of the Spanish, including Pizarro himself, felt guilty about the matter afterward. They had been afraid Atahualpa, set free, would stir up a revolt against them. Their later puppet Inca, Manco, did." He paused. "Yes, the Conquest was ghastly, slaughters, lootings, enslavements. But, my friends, you were taught history in anglophone schools, and Spain was for centuries England's rival. Propaganda from that conflict has endured. The truth is that the Spaniards, Inquisition and all, were no worse than anyone else of that era, and better than many. Some, such as Cortes himself, and even Torquemada, tried to get a measure of justice for the natives. It is worth remembering that those populations survived throughout most of Latin America, on ancestral soil, whereas the English, with their yanqui and Canadian successors, made a nearly clean sweep."
"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?"