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urgent call from my trust company and had to argue over assorted tedious details. Returning to Senlac, I
found my mother had made her final break with Birkelund and needed my presence. I looked at those
two innocent babies he and she had brought into this world, and got the message.
 does God intervene, do you think?
 No, no, no. I suppose it s simply a logical impossibility to change the past, same as it s logically
impossible for a uni-formly colored spot to be both red and green. And every in-stant in time is the past
of infinitely many other instants. That figures.
 The patternis. Our occasional attempts to break it, and our failures, are part ofit.
 Then we re nothing except puppets?
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 I didn t say that, Doc. In fact, I can t believe we are. Seems to me, our free wills must be a part of the
grand design too. But we d better take care to stay within the area of unknownness, which is where our
freedom lies.
 Could this be analogous to, well, drugs? I wondered.  A man might deliberately, freely take a chemical
which grabbed hold of his mind. But then, while its effects lasted, he would not be free.
 Maybe, maybe. Havig stirred in his chair, peered out into night, took another small swallow of
whiskey.  Look, we may not have time for these philosophical musings. Wallis s hounds are after me. If
not in full cry, surely at any rate alert for any spoor of me. They know something of my biography. They
can find out more, and make spot checks if nothing else.
 Is that why you avoided me, these past years of my life? I asked.
 Yes. Now he laid a comforting hand on me.  While Kate lived--You understand?
I nodded dumbly.
 What I did, he said, hastening on to dry detail,  was return to that selfsame date of 1965, in New
York, the last one I could be reasonably sure of. From there I backtracked, laying a groundwork. It took
a while. I had to make sure that what I did would be so hard to trace that Wallis wouldn t assign the
necessary man-years to the task. I worked through Swiss banks, several series of dummies, et cetera.
The upshot was that John Havig s fortune got widely distributed, in the names of a num-ber of people
and corporations who in effect are me. John Havig himself, publicity-shy playboy, explained to his hired
financiers that this was because--never mind. A song and dance which sounded enough like a tax-fraud
scheme, though actually it wasn t, that they were glad to wash their hands of me and to know nothing
important.
 John Havig, you recall, thereupon quietly dropped out of circulation. Since he had no intimates in the
twentieth century, apart from his mother and his old hometown doctor, only these would ever miss him or
wonder much; and it was easy to drop them an occasional reassuring letter.
 Postcards to me, mainly, I said.  You had me wondering, all right. After a pause:  Where were you?
 Having covered my tracks as well as might be, he an-swered,  I went back to Constantinople.
In the burnt-out husk of New Rome, order was presently re-stored. At first, if nothing else, troops
needed water and food, for which labor and some kind of civil government were needed, which meant
that the dwellers could no longer be har-ried like vermin. Later, Baldwin of Flanders, lord over that
fragment of the Empire which became his portion and included the city, desired to get more use than that
out of his subjects. He was soon captured in war against the Bulgarians and died a prisoner, but the
attitude of his brother and successor Henry I was the same. A Latin king could oppress the Greeks,
squeeze them, humiliate them, tax them to poverty, dragoon them into his corvées or his armies. But for
this he must allow them a measure of security in their work and their lives.
Though Xenia was a guest, the nunnery was strict. She met Havig in a chilly brick-walled gloom, under
the disapproving gaze of a sister. Robed in rough brown wool, coifed, veiled, she was forbidden to touch
her male visitor, let alone seek his arms, no matter how generous a benefaction he had brought along. But
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he saw her Ravenna eyes; and the garments could not hide how she had begun to grow and fill out; nor
could every tone in her voice be flattened, which brought back to him the birds on countryside days with
her and her father-- Oh, Hauk, darling Hauk! Shrinking back, drawing the cross, starting to genuflect
and hesitating a-tremble:  I ... I beg your pardon, your forgiveness, B-b-blessed One.
The old nun frowned and took a step toward them. Havig waved wildly.  No, no, Xenia! he exclaimed.
 I m as mortal as you are. I swear it. Strange things did happen, that day last year. Maybe I can explain
them to you later. Believe me, though, my dear, I ve never been anything more than a man.
She wept awhile at that, not in disappointment.  I, I, I m so g-glad. I mean, you ... you ll go to Heaven
when you die, but-- But today he was not among her stiff stern Byzantine saints.
 How is your mother? Havig asked. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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