Anderson, Poul There Will Be Time

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hazard. It s why I avoid my mother.
That s okay, Jack. I attempted a laugh. Gives me an interesting hobby in my retirement.
Well, you will be all right, he insisted. I made sure.
Leonce drew a sharp breath. For a time nothing spoke ex-cept the soughing in the branches outside. A
cloud shadow came and went.
You mean, I said at last, you verified I ll live quietly till I die.
He nodded.
You know the date of that, I said.
He sat unmoving.
Well, don t tell me, I finished. Not that I m scared. How-ever, I d just as soon keep on enjoying
myself in the old-fashioned mortal style. I don t envy you--that you can lose a friend twice.
My teakettle whistled.
And so, I said after hours had gone by, you don t propose to stay passive? You mean to do
something about the Eyrie?
If we can, Havig said low.
Leonce, seated beside him, gripped his arm. What, though? she almost cried. I been uptime
myself-quick-like, but the place is bigger n ever, an I saw Cal Wallis step from an aircraft--they got
robotic factories built by then--an he was gettin old but he was there. Fingers crooked into talons.
Nobody d killed the bastard, not in that whole while.
I lumped my pipe. We had eaten, and sat among my books and pictures, and I d declared the sun
sufficiently near a non-existent yardarm that whiskey might be poured. But in those two remained no
simple enjoyment of a call paid on an old ac-quaintance, or for her a new one; this had faded, the
underlying grief and anger stood forth like stones.
You have no complete account of the Eyrie s future career, I said.
Well, we ve read Wallis s book and listened to his words, Havig answered. We don t believe he s
lying. His kind of ego-tist wouldn t, not on such a topic.
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You miss my point. I wagged my pipestem at them. The question is, Have you personally made a
year-by-year inspec-tion?
No, Leonce replied. Originally no reason to, an now too dangerous. Her gaze steadied on me. She
was a bright lass. You aimin at somethin , Doctor?
Maybe. I scratched a match and got my tobacco lit. The small hearthfire would be a comfort in my
hand. Jack, I ve spent a lot of thought on what you told me on your previous visit. That s natural. I have
the leisure to think and study and--You ve come back in the hope I might have an idea. True?
He nodded. Beneath his shirt he quivered.
I have no grand solution to your problems, I warned them. What I have done is ponder a remark you
made: that our free-dom lies in the unknown.
Go on! Leonce urged. She sat with fists clenched.
Well, I said between puffs, your latest account kind of reinforces my notion. That is, Wallis believes
his organization, modified but basically the thing he founded, he believes it will be in essential charge of
the post-Maurai world. What you ve discovered there doesn t make this seem any too plausible, hey?
Ergo, somewhere, somewhen is an inconsistency. And. . . for what happened in between, you do merely
have the word of Caleb Wallis, who is vainglorious and was born more than a hundred years ago.
What s his birth got to do with the matter? Havig de-manded.
Quite a bit, I said. Ours has been a bitter century. Hard lessons have been learned which Wallis s
generation never needed, never imagined. He may have heard about concepts like operations analysis,
but he doesn t use them, they aren t in his marrow.
Havig tensed.
Your chronolog gadget is an example of twentieth-century thinking, I continued. By the way, what
became of it?
The one I had got left in Pera when . . . when I was cap-tured, he replied. I imagine whoever
acquired the house later threw it out or broke it apart for junk. Or maybe feared it might be magical and
heaved it in the Horn. I ve had new ones made.
A thrill passed through me, and I began to understand Le-once the huntress a little. The men who took
you, even a fairly sophisticated man like that Krasicki, did not think to bring it along for examination, he
said. Which illustrates my point nicely. Look, Jack, every time traveler hits the bloody nuisance of
targeting on a desired moment. To you, it was a matter of course to consider the problem, decide what
would solve it--an instrument--and find a company which was able to accept your commission to invent
the thing for you.
I exhaled a blue plume. It never occurred to Wallis, I finished. To any of his gang. That approach
doesn t come natural to them.
Silence descended anew.
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Well, Havig said, I am the latest-born traveler they found prior to the Judgment.
Uh-huh, I nodded. Take advantage of that. You ve made a beginning, in your research beyond the
Maurai period. It may seem incredible to you that Wallis s people haven t done the same kind of
in-depth study. Remember, though, he s from a time when foresight was at a minimum--a time when
every-body assumed logging and strip-mining could go on forever. It was the century of Clerk Maxwell,
yes--I m thinking mainly of his work on what we call cybernetics--and Babbage and Peirce and Ricardo
and Clausewitz and a slew of other thinkers whom we re still living off of. But the seeds those minds
were plant-ing hadn t begun to sprout and flower. Anyhow, like many time travelers, it seems, Wallis
didn t stay around to share the ex-periences of his birth era. No, he had to skite off and become the
almighty superman.
Jack, from the painfully gathered learning of the race,you can profit.
Leonce seemed puzzled. Well, my philosophy was new to her too. The man had grown altogether
absorbed. What do you propose? he asked low.
Nothing specifically, I answered. Everything generally. Concentrate more on strategy than tactics.
Don t try to cam-paign by your lone selves against an organization; no, start a better outfit.
Where are the members coming from?
Everywhere and everywhen. Walls showed a degree of imagination in his recruiting efforts, but his
methods were crude, his outlook parochial. For instance, surely more trav-elers are present that day in
Jerusalem. His agents latched onto those who were obvious, and quit. There must be ways to at-tract the
notice of the rest.
Well ... m-m-m ... I had been giving thought to that myself. Havig cupped his chin. Like maybe
passing through the streets, singing lines from the Greek mass-
And the Latin. You can t afford grudges. I gripped rny pipe hard. Another point. Why must you stay
this secretive? Oh, yes, your uncle self was right, as far as he went. A child revealed to be a time
traveler would ve been in a fairly horrible bind. But you re not a child any longer.
Moreover, I gather, Wallis considers ordinary persons a lesser breed. He s labeled them commoners,
hasn t he? He keeps them in subordinate positions. All he s accomplished by that has been to wall their
brains off from him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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