As Time Goes By Page 20

  But Sally’s wrist looked just as bad. The drying scum near her lips attested to that. As he moved her head gently away from the puddle, she moaned.

  It took him ten minutes to crawl over to the table and return with a bottle of wine. They’d brought no water. He sprinkled some on her forehead, then held it to her lips. She came around, fainted, came around again.

  Sally had made it about halfway down to the road when she ran into some picnickers. The jeep came at three, and at four they were both in the orthopedic ward at Rockland State.

  Fletcher was still dopey with anesthetic and delayed shock. As he told the reporter what had happened, the little man nearly drooled. Their episode had occurred on Saturday. When they were released from the hospital and sent home on Wednesday, their story was still up on page four. On the front porch was a yellow plastic wastebasket full of unopened telegrams and letters.

  They hadn’t had much privacy at the hospital. So after Sally had made the coffee she sat down opposite Fletcher at the kitchen table and asked, “How’ve you been?”

  “Okay. Still a little disoriented, maybe.”

  “Yes.” She stared into her cup. “Fletch, I guess the first time we went through that, I fell?”

  Fletcher nodded. “I’d never have made it to you, the old way.” He stared down at the cast on his leg. “Ten years of mine, for all of yours. I’d do it again.”

  “It wasn’t cheap,” she said.

  “No, it wasn’t cheap.”

  They made love that night. Fletcher had been worried about that, and found his fears justified to some extent. Ten years made a difference. But Sally held him long afterward and cried a little, which was the best with her. He fell asleep feeling reassured for then, but knowing what was to come.

  Fletcher dyed his hair and had some minor facial surgery done to smooth out his eyes and throat. He gained ten pounds. He looked pretty much like the Fletcher of thirty-six. A certain amount of romance was attached to his reputation now, and when he changed jobs his salary almost doubled.

  His broken left leg never healed solidly, though, and for all intents and purposes he was back to where he’d started. He and Sally remained childless right up until their divorce two years later. She was later married to David Schenk, but Fletcher remained alone.

  So Little and So Light

  INTRODUCTION

  Here’s a story of another time patrol and one of their agents, on the trail of a rebel who’s back then, recklessly changing the course of history. But when she found him, he seemed to know more about her than she herself knew.

  # # #

  Sarah A. Hoyt won the Prometheus Award for her novel Darkship Thieves, published by Baen, and has authored Darkship Renegades (nominated for the following year’s Prometheus Award) and A Few Good Men, two more novels set in the same universe, with more in the works. She has written numerous short stories and novels in a number of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical novels and historical mysteries, many under a number of pseudonyms, and has been published—among other places—in Analog, Asimov’s and Amazing. For Baen, she has also written three books in her popular shape-shifter fantasy series, Draw One in the Dark, Gentleman Takes a Chance, and Noah’s Boy. Her According to Hoyt is one of the most interesting blogs on the internet. Originally from Portugal, she lives in Colorado with her husband, two sons and the surfeit of cats necessary to a die-hard Heinlein fan.

  So Little and So Light

  by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I landed with a stumble at the foot of Calbeck Hill in England in 1066, during the Battle of Hastings when the English routed the Normans for good and all out of England.

  The landing was rough, as it sometimes is. I half fell and my feet squelched as I instinctively spread them apart seeking for purchase in the marshy ground. No one saw me appear. The human mind is very good at censoring out the impossible.

  I was dressed as a man. Not difficult for a woman of the twenty-third century transported back to the eleventh. More likely to pass as a man than as a woman. Wearing the uniform of a housecarl—a professional soldier—in woolen tunic, and trousers, with a straw padded surcoat under the chain mail hauberk, my breasts, never all that noticeable, were wholly invisible. The conical hat with face shield hid my features and my lack of beard. And the kite-shaped shield, the battle ax in my hand made sure no one got very close to me.

  The man next to me made a sound at my stumble, something like, “Hey there, watch it,” but then turned forward.

  Forward, as all the history books had taught, the forces of William the Bastard fled our side, their mounted cavalry decamping in ground that had never been suited for cavalry. As a trainee time-Hunter, in history of war, I’d heard all about the mistakes William had made. Still, wasn’t prepared to see them enacted before my eyes.

  Few Breachers make it for battles and confrontations. The romantic mind that thinks the past a better place always goes for parades, for grand events, for triumph and celebration. But this was not a common Breacher. He’d been, before his transgression, a Satrap, a member of a good family, of an hierarchy unbroken for ten generations. And a director of the Time Corps.

  Ahead of me, Harold’s forces were moving and presently we too started running, chasing the Normans as they fled. Before I’d arrived, already half the forces had abandoned the safety of Caldebeck Hill for the plain where the Normans were fleeing. I joined in the pursuit, excited to finally be in an event we’d studied so often.

  For a while it was all a blur as I met the enemy, and had to counter their sword thrusts with my ax blows.

  It used to be, back in the beginning, that people were afraid of time travel. They thought any misstep, any foot laid wrong, any butterfly trampled, made us all Breachers and changed history forever.

  We’ve found of course that history is more elastic than that. It takes willful intent and major changes to make history take a different course.

  So I lay about with my ax and a clear conscience. It’s hard to explain without believing in predestination, but I couldn’t kill anyone who hadn’t died. Not in a chaotic event like battle.

  And to me they weren’t quite real, these men I fought.

  What was real was the tracker and the time-tagger. The arrows and flashes, in lights, atop my shield, could pass by mere play of light, but I knew what they told me.

  The Breacher was here. Very close.

  And then the man facing me spoke, in Panlanguage, in a soft throaty voice that barely rose above a whisper, “Ah, Hunter. You’ve found me.” A chuckle. “But too late.”

  I looked up and for a moment caught a glimpse of the Norman whose heavy sword knocked my ax blow aside. An impression of red hair, of soft red beard, of laughing blue eyes shining from either side of his helmet’s nose-piece.

  I was so stunned at Panlanguage and at the smile on his eyes that I lowered my ax. He could have killed me then, but he didn’t. He only laughed, and then vanished, the bone scales of his armor making a sound as a soft rain while the time-current grabbed him and pulled.

  I came to myself as another Norman rushed towards me, and I pushed at the pendant at my neck, the aten that disguised my retrieval mechanism, and which would have become inactive in the absence of the nanites in my living blood, so if I died or lost it, no one could use it.

  There was the time current grabbing me like invisible claws, and pulling me, with force that made my teeth rattle.

  And then I was in the mission room.

  “You failed,” Alvin Windham said, even as I dropped my helm and weapon, and started tearing out of the sweat-soaked, uncomfortable clothes.

  I undressed completely, and went into the delousing room, saying to the room in general, knowing the pickups would relay the words to Time Command Center, “It was a bloody battle. And he faced me directly, instead of running. And he spoke to me in Panlanguage.”

  I got out of the delousing room, my body stinging from the short shower of the disinfecting/cleansing solution
. The Hunters called it delousing, but I knew it was something else, including inoculating against any virus, any bacteria, anything of the time that might hitch a ride back to the real, present world.

  It used to be believed that nothing could attach in the short times a Hunter spent in the past, and then someone who had spent a day in ancient Egypt had brought back the first epidemic flu and killed half of the Hunters. Now we deloused.

  The room I entered as I left the delousing was a dressing room, circular, with pegs on the wall. On one of the pegs hung my everyday clothes: short tunic and leggings in a fabric that neither scratched nor clung to your body with sweat. I wanted them so badly. I wanted nothing better than to put them on, to walk out the door into the world where I didn’t have to find a dangerous maniac bent on destroying history.

  But then I read the words emblazoned around the room, “Time Hunter Corps. Saving the past for the future,” and I stayed naked, ready to put on whatever clothes I needed for wherever the Breacher had gone now.

  Alvin stood in front of me, in his dark brown uniform, the clipboard in his hands. “We’re not faulting you, understand! This is not a common Breacher and this is why we chose you to catch him. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.” He frowned slightly. “The problem is that he could be anywhere. This is not a home-made time jumper. He stole our best.”

  I grunted understanding and pulled back at my shoulder-length dark hair and glowered at Alvin. “How did I fail?” I’m nothing special to look at, and he’d seen me—and every other Hunter—naked too often for it to occasion any surprise or any appreciation. Not that there was much to appreciate, as I was no fashion plate. Few Hunters are. Too memorable can kill you when you’re back in the past, and we can only take so many legends of the beautiful fairy up the hill.

  But he noticed my frown.

  He shook his head a little. “We are not quite sure how, but we think he got the ear of William the Bastard. He must have been in the time and place for years, without us seeing it. He must have confounded our tracers. And he . . . he advised William on the use of archers, on the use of ambush. The retreat was a deception. Your momentary comrades were ambushed and massacred.”

  “The Normans won England?” I said. “But that—”

  “For now,” Alvin said. “For now. Inside the command we don’t change, of course, so we know the truth, and once history settles we will change it again. Ten years. Twenty. But first we need to catch him. We think he’s trying to create so many break points, so much instability that we can’t repair it; that even within Time Command Center the memories change.”

  “Can that happen?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “We’d think not. But Seth is a Cowden. Not only was he an expert in time and time-disruptions, but his family have been time-experts forever. He might know something we don’t.” Alvin consulted something on his clipboard. “Ah, there. We found him again.”

  # # #

  We were sliding down the Nile on a boat filled with dancers and servers. I was in the boat of Queen Nefertiti, principal wife of the great innovating pharaoh Akhenaten. Above us the stars shone on a velvet sky. I wore a linen dress with precise pleats, and a wig, having taken the part of a serving lady in the throng of the followers of the queen. Not a real server, but one of the daughters of provincial nobles sent to the court with the pretext of attending the queen and the real aim of perhaps finding an advantageous alliance.

  All night my jewelry—the heavy lapis-lazuli looking necklace around my neck—had been communicating through slight shakes that the Breacher was near. But how near?

  We were headed for the Heb-Sed of Akhenaten. He had many, having started in the third year of his reign with the Heb-Sed normally reserved by other pharaohs to celebrate thirty years in power.

  It was generally acknowledged among historians that it had been such a bold move in celebrating the Heb-Sed, the festival of the tail, that had helped Akhenaten establish a monotheistic religion. And it had been that monotheistic religion that helped consolidate the Egyptian Empire under his son, Tutankhaten, and his sons’ sons.

  Such a strong empire had Egypt founded that neither Greece nor Rome could dislodge it and little by little their confusing polytheism had been subsumed into the worship of Aten, which in turn had propelled the world into the new era.

  Twice during the night, someone had touched me where my back was bare and I’d felt the necklace vibrate. But every time I turned around, I saw only Egyptians. Not the Breacher. And I doubted the tall, redheaded man I’d seen at Hastings could have disappeared in this dark crowd, even if he’d worn a wig.

  Presently the boat docked where the preparations had been made for the Pharaoh to run the ritual course and do the dance that would prove both his ability to still rule the country and to have the approval of the gods to do so.

  His boat had already docked and his retinue had disappeared past a series of refreshment tents set up to receive him. I had to wait until the Queen and her close attendants left the boat. From where I stood I could see her exquisite profile as she stood.

  Near me a voice said, “You, girl,” and thrust a linen cushion fringed in gold at me. “Carry this.”

  I took it. I hadn’t had time to establish an identity. Even my command of Egyptian was limited. My goal was not to intrigue, nor to carry on a careful subversion, but to find the Breacher, to neutralize him, to take him back with him or kill him, if I could not take him back for judgment.

  Judgment of Breachers was always preferable, but in this case it might not be possible. The Breacher was far too clever and at any rate, if he died before being dragged to the twenty-third century, it would spare his powerful family embarrassment.

  On my turn I processed off the boat, holding the cushion to my chest, as though it were precious, which it was, since I’d be severely punished, I was sure, if I lost one of the Queen’s possessions. Worse than displeasing one of the Satraps.

  We processed past the refreshment tables, and to stand under an awning while the priests pinned a tail to the king, since Heb-Sed or the festival of the tail related to an obscure wolf god. Akhenaten had said the wolf god didn’t exist, that all power belonged to Aten. But he still wore the tail.

  Just before the run, he stumbled, as though he’d lost balance, and I thought that the sun must be exceptionally hot. After all, Akhenaten was supposed to reign another fifteen years.

  A finger caressed my dress at the top. A voice said, speaking throatily in Panlanguage, so that anyone hearing him would think he was making mere, random noises, “He will be dead within the year.”

  I jumped and tried to turn around, but couldn’t. Somehow the cushion—and I couldn’t imagine how—was holding me in position, holding me turned forward.

  “That is right,” he said. “That cushion is a neutralizing device for your necklace and it has . . . other effects. You will neither be able to let go of it nor to turn, till I let you.”

  I cleared my throat. I wanted to shout, but instead, I spoke in a whisper too, the whisper that prevented us from disturbing those around us. It was no part of the mission of a Time Hunter to create time disturbances. And I would not. “You are mad, Seth Cowden.”

  He took a deep breath. His finger continued to trace the width of my shoulders, the dip between my shoulder blades. “Perhaps I am, Lady . . . what is your name? Your real name, not the assumed Egyptian one?”

  “Iset,” I said. “Iset Creuly. But I am not a lady. Not from a Satrap family.”

  “Ah,” he said. “No. You wouldn’t be. They don’t risk their daughters in these runs.”

  “I was sent because I’ve dealt with difficult Breachers before. If you return and turn yourself in,” I said, “we’ll make accommodations.”

  This time it was a soft laugh that answered me, “Don’t lie to me, Lady Creuly. There are no accommodations for a Breacher who has succeeded. Oh . . .” He paused and seemed to think. “I suppose my family will make sure my death is painless.”

  I sh
ould have told him that he could escape death, that he would be considered mentally disturbed and not fully in control. Surely he was mentally disturbed. Had to be. Why else would someone of a Satrap family run into the past to change it?

  But I knew he had been in command, and probably knew the truth better than I did. He was right. Crimes such as his couldn’t be forgiven, not even in the Satrap families. And at any rate Akhenaten had stumbled again and I made an involuntary exclamation, lost in the sounds of those around me.

  “I wonder,” he said, in the tone of a man who dreamed, “What your name was originally. And also why they made such a beautiful woman a Hunter. I thought they chose for lack of memorability?”

  I opened my mouth to protest that I was unmemorable, but he only said, “Goodbye, Iset. I wonder what that will be when I next see you. Iset is such a perfect name upon the tongue. Little Isis, a perfect miniature goddess.” He laughed softly. “No matter. Akhenaten is done. I have been in his court for years, slowly poisoning all his family in a way undetectable. Even Tutankhaten, soon to become Tutankhamun, will die young and without descendants. If my calculations are right, Greece and Rome will supplant them and some other religion will give the world names that we can only imagine. And perhaps—”

  I couldn’t breathe. I wished to believe he was bluffing, but something told me he wasn’t. I wished to believe his finger on my skin was an imposition and a boorish trespass, but I felt it was both the taunt of a man who knows in the end he’s doomed and the indulgence of a man who found me beautiful. Which was strange and miraculous both.

  “Perhaps?” I said, curtly, trying to make him stop tracing arabesques on my skin with his fingertip.

  “Perhaps we’ll meet again, Iset Creuly. In a freer world.”

  I stood in the hall of Greenwich Palace, outside the queen’s bedroom. This time I had been there for three months, and managed to establish myself as Mary Wingfield, a relation to the Wingfields of Kimbolton Castle.