Don Miguel glanced at his friend Don Felipe, and received in return a look which said, "I'm out of my depth here." He turned back to the Jesuit.
"I -- I seem to have been over-hasty," he began, and got no further. Smiling, and looking as usual when he did so like a parchment-covered skull, Father Ramón shook his head.
"Save your apologies, my son. They're not justified. An intent to break the Treaty is perfectly conceivable, and it appears that this is what you've chanced upon. Let me clarify the situation in the terms which I think the judge of a Papal court would use." He raised one bony finger.
"Imprimis: the death of Roan Horse. He was an extemporate, was he not? His death in the past was due to causes whose prime origin lay in the present, because he was shot by another extemporate, and the effects began to be manifest at a moment in present time which was demonstrably later than the moment of his departure. It may also be later than the point from which the -- the poachers, as you graphically term them, departed to the past. This is not certain, but the evidence we now have indicates it."
"But Roan Horse was one of my best men!" Don Rodrigo burst out. "And they shot him down, in cold blood!"
"There are penalties for murder," said Father Ramón. "It is not, however, a crime with which the Treaty of Prague is concerned, and that is what we're presently discussing." Another finger went up.
"Secundo: there is a particular clause in the Treaty under which you, Don Rodrigo, are no doubt champing to frame an indictment. It states, in sum, that neither signatory to the agreement will act in such a way in past times as to cause a disadvantage to the other party discernible in present time. It makes no reference to hypothetical future disadvantage, and since mining operations have not even yet spread from this valley to the adjacent one where the poachers dug their shafts, it is only future disadvantage that's in question."
"Ridiculous!" fumed Don Rodrigo. "All right, they took their ore from shafts dug in the next valley, not in the one we're at present mining -- nonetheless, the mine manager says his men have frequently found that veins of ore stopped before they should have done, causing them to go back and dig fresh galleries when they ought to have been able to extend the existing ones for a long way yet. If that isn't 'disadvantage,' I don't know what is!" He leaned back and concluded with bad grace, "Much as it pains me to contradict an expert of your calibre, I feel you're overlooking something."
"Nothing," the Jesuit murmured. "Or rather, not I but the experts in disputation who have spent the better part of a century thrashing out possible interpretations of the Treaty." He lifted a third finger. "I say further that -- tertio disadvantage discernible in present time was not caused to us because it was not at the present time of discovery of these veins of ore that Don Miguel Navarro interpreted the facts to indicate previous interference."
Even Don Felipe gaped at the appalling casuistry of that remark. As for Don Miguel, he could not restrain himself from an explosive -- but fortunately wordless -- reaction. Father Ramón turned to him.
"I know what you're thinking, my son," he said. "You're wondering why, if this is so, we should not ourselves systematically go and rifle the prehistoric ages of the territory now occupied by the Confederacy, so as to render their lands poor and barren. I can answer that immediately. It wasn't done. And why should it be done? What profit is there in it? If we did it to them, they'd do it to us, and each would wind up with the other's resources at the cost of infinitely greater effort."
He switched his penetrating gaze back to Don Rodrigo. "What you've either forgotten or never realised, my son, is that the Treaty of Prague is unique. Alone among the agreements and covenants made between men or nations throughout history, the punishment for breaking it is laid down not by the men who drafted it, but by God who created the universe. And for that reason it is worse than foolish to expend your efforts on showing that a breach of it has been committed. It is very nearly sinful. Putting it bluntly: the Treaty of Prague can be broken, but -- must -- not!"
He marked each word of the last phrase with a tap of his bony fist on the table, and in rhythm with the sounds the colour in Don Rodrigo's cheeks heightened until it was vivid as a sunset. Seeing him blush, Don Arturo smiled for the first time that Don Miguel could remember since the terrible New Year's Eve of the current year.
To save himself from having to dwell on his private recollections of that dreadful night, Don Miguel said aloud, "But some action must be taken, nonetheless!"
"Indubitably," the Jesuit agreed. "May we hear your own proposals concerning it?"
Don Miguel stumbletongued. He said, "Why -- why, I have no definite plan. Indeed, I've been wondering whether our action may not be foreordained! Two Dogs suggested that we should step in and drive away the poachers at the point where their work had resulted in exactly the traces which he and his men discovered, and reflecting on the idea I began to suspect that a closed causative loop must exist which gives rise to precisely those traces we've found in the present."
"This is highly probable," agreed Father Ramón. "Evidently something prevented the poachers from exhausting the entire mineral resources of the area, and the likeliest explanation is that they were interrupted and compelled to abandon their work."
"In that case," Don Rodrigo said, "our course of action is plain. We must at once send back an armed party to effect this -- this compulsory abandonment of their mines."
"Not at all," Father Ramón countered. "We must go back, certainly -- but to speak with them, learn who they are, and instruct them to depart."
"Speak with them?" Don Rodrigo echoed scornfully. "But they shot down Roan Horse on his mere appearance!"
"I doubt if they will fire on an obvious extemporate. Especially if he wears the cloth."
That took a moment to sink in. Brother Vasco was the first to react. "Father, you're not thinking of going alone!" he exclaimed.
"No, indeed. By way of imprinting a little lesson on a certain party who has -- not for the first time -- acted too impulsively, I shall go in the company of . . . Don Miguel Navarro."
He did not switch his gaze to Don Miguel until he had finished speaking. The latter, not much relishing the prospect of facing the poachers under these circumstances, but resigned to the idea since it came from Father Ramón, gave a shrug.
"As you say, Father. It appears that I've started a panic which isn't justified by the legalities of the matter."
"Good." Father Ramón glanced at his watch, and stood up. "It's late, and after my journey I'm somewhat weary. Tomorrow I'll require the use of your time apparatus, and we'll settle the problem -- God willing -- once for all."
"What's been decided, Don Miguel?" came the soft question from Two Dogs. He was sitting out late on his verandah; on the floor at his feet Conchita, his serving-maid and mistress, was picking ethereal chords from her cuatro, a small four-stringed guitar. He had offered her to Don Miguel a couple of times when first the latter came to stay here, but that was so far from the customs of home he had refused automatically, and the offer had not been repeated. Subsequently he had looked again at Conchita, who was slim, berry-brown and graceful as a dancer, and regretted the fact. He would have welcomed the mere physical relief of her company as a key to the sleep which worry had so often denied him these past several weeks.
He sat down wearily in the guest-chair, and waited while Two Dogs dismissed Conchira with a gesture; she went like a shadow, silently. Then he said, "There's been no breach of the Treaty."
For a long moment Two Dogs did not comment. Finally he said in a tight, controlled voice, "How's that possible? Surely they don't doubt there's been interference with the past!"
"You're too practical a man to follow the casuistry of it." Don Miguel shut his eyes and rubbed at them to relieve their tiredness. "I can barely make it out myself. But what it comes down to is that instead of going back and driving the poachers away, we're simply going to pay them a -- a sort of social call, Father Ramón and myself. What good that will do, Lord kno
ws."
Two Dogs laughed harshly. He said, "Indeed you Europeans are strange beyond comprehension. There's no consistency in your behaviour! You travelled half a world from home, risked your lives, drove away my ancestors from their hunting-grounds for the sake of gold and silver -- and now, when someone is filching away what you spilled so much blood to secure, you say you're going to have a little chat with the thieves!"
Don Miguel was too fatigued to frame a reply. There was a short silence. At length Two Dogs rose to his feet.
"Well, I suppose it's a small consolation that your millstones won't be grinding us after all. I'll bid you good night, then, and wish you sharp wits in your discussion with the poachers. Though if it were up to me I'd counsel more substantial weapons."
VI
As Don Miguel had expected, the valley had changed so little in a thousand years that it was not incongruous to find a mining encampment when they walked over the brow of the hill behind which, to escape immediate observation, they had chosen to arrive. There had no doubt been earth movements; there were subtle differences in the outlines of some of the nearby slopes. But the identity of the landscape at the two time-points was unmistakable.
He felt a stir of admiration for the magnificently simple stage-management of Father Ramón's plan. When they emerged on the crest of the hill and let the poachers see them, the impact was instantaneous. Watchful guards raised guns to their shoulders -- checked -- and let the muzzles slowly fall again, within the space of a dozen heartbeats. Indians such as were to be expected at this moment of time would no doubt have been fired on to drive them away, as had happened to Roan Horse. But the sight of Father Ramón in his sombre habit and Don Miguel wearing -- at the Jesuit's insistence -- the jewelted collar and star of the Order of the Scythe and Hourglass conspicuously glittering on his plain shirt: this was a message to inform the poachers without words that their presence and their plans were known.
They waited, a light breeze touching their faces, while news of their arrival spread. Don Miguel had his first chance to study the tented settlement, the mouths of the galleries, the sluices and sedimentation troughs and all the rest of the equipment, so like the mine which Two Dogs managed that he had to keep forcibly reminding himself he was more than a thousand years from home.
Work stopped. Harsh barking orders brought men out of the mine galleries to blink in the sunlight. Overseers -- not a few of whom, Don Miguel was dismayed to see, wore the uniform of the Temporal College -- snapped at each other and their subordinates.
Still the newcomers waited on the crest of the hill, for fully five minutes in the baking sun of late summer, until at last a big, burly man detached himself from the ant-milling crowd and came to meet them, accompanied by two of the uniformed overseers.
"Good day, sirs," he said in heavily accented Spanish. "I do not have to inquire the reason for your presence. Permit me to present myself: the Margrave Friedrich von Feuerstein, High Brother of the Temporal College and Deputy Master of the Wenceslas Brigade. I presume your honour to be Father Ramón of the Society of Time?"
The Jesuit inclined his head. "We've met before. Though it seems you've forgotten the fact. In Rome, at the School of Casuistry. My class was departing as yours arrived."
"Indeed, of course!" the Margrave exclaimed, and extended his hand. "Strange that our acquaintance should be renewed here and now!"
Father Ramón ignored the proffered hand. He said, "No, it's far from strange. Are you in charge of this -- this venture ?"
The Margrave folded his arms across his chest and drew back a pace, scowling. He said, "Yes, I'm in charge. Why?"
Father Ramón reached inside his habit and produced a rolled parchment. With his bird-claw fingers he undid the fastening and shook it out; from its bottom a heavy red seal swung on a ribbon. He seemed suddenly to speak in a voice other than his own, holding the scroll up as though to read from it but looking all the time at the Margrave.
"This," he said, "is a copy of a Papal bull. Do I have to tell you that it is the bull De tenebris temporalibus ?"
The Margrave smiled. He was a large-jowled man with grey hair; the smile made plump hummocks of his cheeks, on the crest of each of which showed a red network of broken veins. He said, "I defy you to show cause for invoking that bull."
"I am not required to show cause." Father Ramón stared unblinkingly. "You have twelve hours, present time, in which to remove your men, your equipment and all traces of your presence here up to the point which we decree, on pain of summary excommunication by the powers vested in us under the aforesaid bull. I read!" He snapped the nail of a forefinger against the stiff parchment so that it sounded like a beaten drum, and still without looking away from the Margrave began to recite.
"De tenebris temporalibus et de itineribus per tempus leges instituendae sunt. Deus Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctus dicimus affirmamusque . . ."
The whole world seemed to hesitate to hear the rolling Latin syllables ring out through the hot still air.
Concerning the shades of time past and concerning journeys through time, laws are to be instituted. In the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost we say and affirm . . .
Don Miguel felt his lips move on the familiar words he had never before heard invoked.
"We say and affirm that the means of travelling in time is a gift bestowed by divine ordinance and therefore to be used only in accordance with divine law, subject to regnlation by bodies of upright, just and sober men, to conditions now or in the future,laid down by Papal decree, and to the expedient judgment of those agents now or in the future appointed by us for the enforcement of those conditions. Let there be agreements between nations and before God to employ the means of travelling in time for the benefit of humanity and the increase of human knowledge that we may the better comprehend and admire our Creator, and let there be penalties imposed upon those who for evil ends pervert and misuse this mystery."
The Margrave waited patiently until Father Ramón re-rolled the parchment with a crisp rustle, and then he said merely, "Tell me, Father -- where is this 'evil' you're alleging?"
"A thousand years hence, and you're its victim, sir."
The words in themselves meant nothing to Don Miguel -- and little enough, apparently, to the Margrave -- but the tone in which they were uttered held a ring of indefinable menace, and he shivered. Noting his reaction, Father Ramón gave a faint smile.
"Be easy in your mind, my son," he murmured, "it will be clear in a little while." And to the Margrave he added, "Is there somewhere we can speak in confidence?"
"Yes! Yes, in my pavilion below. I'll see we're not disturbed or overheard." The Margrave made to turn, but lingered for a long moment trying to read the expression on the Jesuit's face. Failing, he led the way down the slope. The two overseers demanded what they should tell their men, and he instructed them curtly to halt work until given further orders. It was plain that they were puzzled by this, but glad of a rest, for the heat was scorching.
"Now explain yourself!" the Margrave said, letting fall the door-flap of his ornately striped and scalloped pavilion. It bore the arms of the Temporal College: a silver clockface on black, with the order of the figures running in reverse around the dial.
"It seems to me you have more to explain than I," Father Ramón countered.
The Margrave shook his head vigorously and plumped into a chair. "You've invoked the bull. I can choose to co-operate, or I can choose to resist. Persuade me."
"As you wish." Father Ramón set his sharp elbows on the table separating them. "To begin with, contrary to what I imagine you're thinking, we're not here to complain about your pilfering a few tons of ore from ground which is to become Imperial territory by treaty with the Mohawk Nation several centuries from now. Right now there's probably a sounder legal claim for freebooter's rights in the ore than for Mohawk rights. They were nowhere near this part of the world -- I correct myself: they are nowhere near, and indeed I doubt they could be found to exist as a prece
dent tribal unit."
The Margrave was by this time unashamedly bewildered. He made to speak, but the Jesuit raised his hand.
"Hear me out! On the subject of the Mohawks, then: it's no secret that they're the Empire's uneasiest allies. But this doesn't imply that they're automatically friends of yours, does it?"
The Margrave's face set into an impassive mask, and he sat up very straight in his chair. Don Miguel attempted to look as though he knew what Father Ramón was talking about, but he was as confused now as the Margrave had been a moment earlier. What had the Empire-Mohawk alliance to do with this shameless temporal poaching?
"Now it's true that you're perilously close to a breach of the Treaty of Prague. If it weren't deliberately framed to be unbreakable in all foreseeable circumstances, you'd have broken it already. We want to keep the Treaty intact."
"Doubletalk," the Margrave said curtly, and Don Miguel found himself inclined to agree.
"Are you determined to act in breach of the Treaty of Prague?" snapped Father Ramón.