"What would his crew have thought? They knew what weapons the Indians had."
Loris said, "The more mysterious it was to Drake's crew, the better. All we cared about was getting at Drake. And making sure that they should know that Drake died at the hands of a red man."
"But would they know?"
"My father had made certain that they would know him to be an Indian. He worked for months on his disguise. At least, so my mother and grandmother tell me. I, of course, was not born yet. He had a special workroom down below, with all sorts of tools and materials. He kept his preparations secret, even from his mother and wife. From everyone. In fact"--her brow wrinkled with uneasiness as she remembered--"he didn't put on his costume until he was back at Nova Albion, out of the time ship and away from them. He claimed it was dangerous to let even his family see him in advance."
"Why?" Parsons said.
"He didn't trust anyone. Not even Nixina. Or so they say. Doesn't that seem odd to you? Surely he must have trusted them; he must have trusted his mother. But--" Awkwardly, she went on, her brow furrowed. "Anyhow, he worked by himself down below, telling nobody anything. He's supposed to have gotten incoherent with rage if anybody asked him questions. And Jepthe says he several times accused her of trying to spy on him. He was sure that someone was watching him at work, trying to gain entrance into his workroom for some evil purpose. So of course he kept it locked; he even locked himself in while he worked. I know he believed that almost everyone was against him, especially the servants. He refused to have any."
The man had been virtually a paranoid, Parsons thought. But it would fit with the grand scheme, the sense of historic injustice and hate. How close the idealist, with his fanatical passion, was to the mentally disturbed.
"Anyhow," Loris said, "he intended finally to display himself. To be quite conspicuous as he killed Drake. So the crew would carry a report back to Elizabeth that the red men had weapons superior to the English."
To him, the logic was fuzzy. And yet, what did it matter? Details did not concern them; the overall scheme, dazzling them, led them on, not such picayune matters as the incongruity of a twenty-fifth century hand weapon used in the sixteenth century. And certainly the English would be impressed.
"Why can't you continue without Corith?" he said.
Loris said, "Because you know only one part of our program."
"And what's the other part?"
"Do you want to know? Does it matter?"
He said, "Tell me."
Beside him, the woman sighed, shivering in the night air. "I want to go in," she said. "The darkness . . . it depresses me. All right?"
Together, they left the balcony and entered Loris' apartment.
This was the first time that Parsons had been invited here. At the threshold he paused. Through a half-opened closet door he made out the indistinct shapes of a woman's clothing. Robes and gowns. Slippers. And, on the far side of the room, satin covers on the wide bed. Lush wine-colored drapes. Thick multicolored carpet which he knew at once had been pilfered from the Middle Eastern past. Someone had used the time dredge to its best advantage, furnishing the apartment in excellent taste.
Loris seated herself in an easy chair, and Parsons came up close behind her and put his hands on her warm, smooth shoulders. "Tell me the part I don't know," he said. "About your father."
Loris, her back to him, said, "You know that all the males are sterile." She raised her head, shaking her mane of black hair aside. "And you know that Corith is not. Otherwise, how could I exist?"
"True," he said.
"Nixina, my grandmother, was the Mother Superior at her time, decades ago. She managed to get him past the sterilization procedures; it was almost impossible because they're so careful. But she was able to, and in the records he was listed as sterilized. Under his hands her body trembled. "The women are not, as you know. So there was no difficulty in his mating with my mother, Jepthe. The union took place here, in secret. Then the zygote was taken, in cold-pack, to the great central Fountain and placed in the Soul Cube. Jepthe was the Mother Superior at that time, you understand. She kept the zygote separate until it had developed into a fetus . . . in fact, all along its trip to full embryo and at last birth."
"And this was done with the rest of your family?"
"Yes. My brother, Helmar. But--" Now she got up from the chair and moved away from him. "You see, they managed to sterilize all the males who came after Corith. He was the only one who escaped." Now she was silent.
Parsons said, "Then for further reproduction of your family, you're dependent on Corith."
The woman nodded.
"Including your own. If you choose to continue."
"Yes," she said. "But that's not important now."
"Why was it ever important? What did you mean to do with this family?"
Raising her head she confronted him proudly. "We're not like the others, Doctor. Nixina tells us that she's a full-blooded Iroquois Indian. We're practically pure. Couldn't you see?" She put her hand to her cheek. "Look at my face. My skin. Don't you think it's true?"
"Possibly," he said. "It would be almost impossible to verify, though. Such a claim as that--it sounds more mystical than practical."
"I prefer to believe it," she said. "Certainly it's spiritually true. We are the spiritual heirs, their blood brothers in any and all meaningful senses. Even if it's only a myth."
Parsons reached out and touched her jaw, the firm bone-line. She did not move back or protest.
"What are we going to do," she said, her face close to his, her breath stirring against his mouth, "is as follows. We intended to preempt your ancestors, Doctor. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. But if we had been successful, if we had been able to assassinate the white adventurers and pirates who came to the New World and established footholds, we would have installed our own stock--ourselves! What do you think of that?" A taunting smile appeared on her lips.
"Are you serious?" he said.
"Of course."
"You would have been the vanguard of civilization, then. Instead of the Elizabethans and Spanish gentry and Dutch traders."
Now, with deep seriousness, she said, "And it would not have been masters over slaves. The supremacy of one race over another. It would have been a natural relationship: the future guiding the past."
He thought, Yes, it would have been more humane. No tribes to be wiped out, no concentration camps--euphemistically referred to as "reservations." Too bad, he thought. He felt real regret.
"You're sorry," she said, peering at him. "And you're white. How odd." It seemed to disconcert her. "You don't identify with those conquerors, do you? And yet they built your civilization. We plucked you from the latter part of that world."
Parsons said, "I didn't burn witches, either. I have no sense of identification with many of those things. Are all whites alike?"
"No," she said. But she had become colder, now. The friendliness was gone. From beneath his hands she slipped away; all at once she had left him and was walking off.
Following her, he took hold of her, turned her toward him, and kissed her. Her eyes, dark and full, were fixed on him. But she did not try to draw away.
"You were protesting," she said, when he released her, "that we had kidnapped you away from your wife." She said it with hostility.
It was hard for him to defend himself. So he said nothing.
"Well," she said, "it's absurd anyhow. You'll be going back, wife or not."
"And you're full-blooded Indian and I'm white," he added ironically.
She said in a quiet voice, "Don't vilify me, Doctor. I'm not a fanatic. We're not contemptuous of you."
"Do you see me as a person?"
"Oh, you definitely bleed when cut," she said, laughing now but with no unkindness. At that, he had to smile too. Suddenly she threw her arms around him and hugged him with amazing vitality. "Well, Doctor," she said, "do you want to be my lover? Make up your mind."
Tightly, he said, "Reme
mber, I'm not sterile."
"That's no problem for me. I'm the Mother Superior. I have access to every part of the Fountain. We have our regular procedure; if I become pregnant I can introduce the zygote into the Soul Cube, and"--she made a gesture of resignation--"plop. Lost forever, into the race."
He said, "All right, then."
At once she tore herself away from him. "Who said you could be my lover? Did I give you permission? I was just curious." She retreated from him, her lovely face alive with glee. "You don't want a fat squaw, anyhow."
Moving quickly, he caught her. "Yes, I do," he said.
Later, as they lay together in the darkness, Loris whispered, "Is there anything else you want?"
Parsons had lit a cigarette. Smoking, meditating, he said, "Yes, there is."
Beside him, the woman rolled closer; pressing against him she said, "What is it?"
"I want to go back to see his death," he said.
"My father? Back to Nova Albion?" She sat up, brushing her long, untied hair back from her face.
"I want to be there," he said calmly.
In the dark he could feel her staring at him. And he could hear her breathing, the long, unsteady inhalations and then the rush with which she breathed out. "We weren't planning to try again," she murmured. Now she slid from the bed, and, in the gloom, padded barefoot in search of her robe. Outlined against the faint light from the window, she stood buttoning her robe around her and tying the sash.
"Let's try," he said.
She did not answer. But he knew, intuitively and with certitude, that they would.
Toward morning, as the first insipid gray appeared outside, filtering into the apartment through the drapes, he and Loris sat facing each other across a small glass-topped table on which were a stainless steel coffeepot, china cups and saucers, an overflowing ash tray. Her face fatigued, but still strong and vital, Loris said:
"You know, your willingness to do this--your desire to do this--makes me wonder about our whole plan." Smoke drifted from her lips; she set her cigarette down and began rubbing her throat. "I wonder if we're right. It's a little late to wonder that, isn't it?"
"A paradox," he said.
"Yes," she said. "We can only eradicate the whites by prevailing on a white to help us. But we recognized that when we first began scouting you."
"But at that time," he said, "you were making use of my special talent. Now--" What was it now? He thought, More the whole person. Myself as an individual, not as a doctor. The person, not the skill. Because I am doing this knowingly. Deliberately.With full awareness of what the issues are.
This is my choice.
"Let me ask you something," he said. "Suppose you are successful. Won't that alter history? Won't Drake's death wipe out all of us, as products of a process that includes Drake? You, me, every one of us."
Loris said, "You must understand that we are not ignorant of these massive paradoxes. Since my father's time there has been continual experimentation with the results of altering the past, seeing exactly how the historic process proceeds after a change--even a minute one--has been made. There is a general tendency for the vast, inertial flow to rectify itself. To seek a sort of level. It's almost impossible to affect the far future. Like rocks thrown in a river . . . a series of ripples that finally die. To do what we want, we must manage to assassinate fifteen or sixteen major historic figures. Even so, we do not end European civilization. We do not fundamentally alter it. There will still be telephones and motorcars and Voltaire--we presume."
"But you're not sure."
"How could we be? We have reason to believe that, generally, the same persons who now exist will exist after our plan works out. Their condition, their status, will be different. Looking backward, the conditions become more affected the closer you get to the original moment. The sixteenth century will be completely different. The seventeenth, not completely but very much so. The eighteenth, different but recognizable. Or so we hypostatize. We could be wrong. There's much guesswork in this maneuvering with history. But--" Her voice became firm. "We've been back many times, and so far we've been able to make no changes whatsoever. Our problem is not that we risk altering the present, but that we've been unable to alter anything at all."
"It's possible," Parsons said, "that it can't be altered. That the paradox obviates any meddling with the past--by definition."
"That may be. But we want to try." She pointed a coppery, tapered finger at him. "You must carry your paradox to its logical conclusion. If we obviate ourselves by succeeding in the past, then the agent that alters the past will have ceased to exist; hence, no alteration will have occurred. The worst that can happen is that we will wind up where we are now: unable to budge what has already occurred."
He had to admit that their reasoning was sound.
There was simply no complete theory about time, he realized. No hypothesis by which results could be anticipated.
Only experiment--and guesswork.
But, he thought, billions of human lives, complete civilizations, depend on how accurately these people have guessed. Wouldn't it be better not to risk further attempts to tamper? Shouldn't I, for the sake of centuries of human achievement and suffering, stay away from Nova Albion and 1579?
He had a theory, however. A theory that had entered his mind when he saw the plastic feathers of the arrow.
In fact, a theory that had come to mind when he had noticed something familiar in the engraving of Sir Francis Drake.
All the tampering had already been done. That was his theory. And, by going back, he would simply observe, not alter. The past had been tampered with up to the hilt, but none of them, not Loris, not even Corith, had recognized it.
The portrait of Drake, with the skin darkened, the beard and mustache removed, would have looked very much like a portrait of Al Stenog.
THIRTEEN
In the wheelchair, the ancient, tattered figure sat huddled in a heavy wool blanket. At first Nixina did not seem aware of him. He stood by the doorway, waiting. Then, at last, the eyes opened. Up from the depths swam a fragment of personality; he saw the consciousness there, in the expression. The coming to the surface, from sleep. For her, at her age, sleep was perpetual and natural; it ended only at unusual moments. And, before long, it would never end.
"Madam," he said.
Beside him, an armed attendant said, "Remember, she is deaf. Go closer and she'll be able to read your lips."
He did so.
"So you're going to try again," Nixina said, her voice a dry, rasping whisper.
"Yes," he said.
"Did you know," she whispered, "that I was along the other times?"
He could hardly believe it. Surely the strain--
"I intend to come this time," she told him. "It's my son, you recall." Her voice gained sudden vigor. "Don't you think if anyone can protect him, I can?"
There was nothing he could say to that.
"Helmar built me a special chair," she said, and in her tone he heard something that told him a great deal. He heard authority.
She had not always been old. Once she had been young, not blind and not deaf, and not infirm. This woman kept the rest of them going. She did not--and would never--permit them to stop. As long as she lived, she would keep them at her task. As she had kept her son at the task, until the moment of his death.
Now her voice sank back to the labored whisper. "So," she went on, "I'll be perfectly safe. I don't intend to interfere with what you're going to do." Plaintively, she asked, "Do you mind . . . can you tell me what you think you can do? They say you have a notion that you might do some good."
"I hope so," he said. "But I don't know." He became silent, then. There was nothing to tell her, actually. It was all vague.
The tired lips moved. "I will see my son alive," she said. "He starts down the cliff. There's that weapon in his hand; he goes down to kill that man--" Hate and loathing filled her voice. "That explorer." Smiling, she shut her eyes, and, imperceptibly, p
assed back into sleep. The energy, the authority, had ebbed away. It could not be sustained, now.
After a moment Parsons tiptoed away, and out of the room.
Outside, Loris met him. "She's an incredibly strong person," he murmured, still under her spell.
"You told her?" Loris said.
"There was damn little to tell her," he said, feeling futile. "Except that I want to go back."
"Does she intend to try to come this time?"
"Yes," he said.
"Then we'll have to let her. Nobody would go against her decision. You know her; you've felt her power." Loris raised her hands in bitter resignation. "You can't blame her. We all want to see him, I, Jepthe, the old lady . . . we get a second to see him in all his glory, running down the cliff with that gun. And then--" She shuddered.
Parsons thought, But it's hard to feel sorry for a man who had murder in mind. After all, Corith was on his way down to kill.
On the other hand, Drake had certainly sent a good number of heavily armored Spanish soldiers over the side to drown; weighed down, those men had had no chance. Drake, to them, was simply a pirate. And in a sense they were right.
"We've made good progress in getting ready," Loris said, as they walked together along the corridor. "We've had more experience, now." Her voice was heavy with despair. "Do you want to see?"
This time, he was permitted to descend to the subsurface levels. At last he had been let in on all that the Wolf Clan had; nothing was kept back.
"You'll have to go further than the rest of us," Loris said, as they stepped from the lift. "In the way of altering your appearance. Because of your white skin. Our problem is one of costume. And keeping our equipment out of sight."
Ahead of him stood a group of men and women wearing furs and moccasins. It was difficult to accept the fact that such primitive-looking people were spurious. With a shock he identified Helmar among the group. All of them, their faces somber, hair braided back, had an ominous, warlike cast, an air of anger and distrust about them. An illusion, he decided, produced by their costumes.