Free The Shield of Time by Poul Anderson Page A

telephone hasn’t been invented yet.
    He slammed to a halt. His guts contracted. “Oh, heavens to Betsy,” he groaned, for no swear word sufficed.
Where was my brain? On vacation in Bermuda?
    At least it didn’t return absolutely too late.
He stepped aside, into the darkness under a wall, pressed himself against rough stucco, gnawed his lip and beat fist in palm.
    The night had grown coldly brilliant with stars and a gibbous moon had risen over the Eagle Tower. The street where Hipponicus dwelt would be equally illuminated. He would be clearly visible as he arrived, knockedon the door, waited for a slave porter to come unbar it and admit him.
    He glanced up. Vega glinted in Lyra. Nothing stirred but the trembling of the stars. A timecycle could hang unseeably high while its opticals brought the ground close and day-clear to the rider. A touch on a control, and it would instantly be down there. No lethal shot; a stun beam, the fallen man slung over a saddle, and off to interrogation with him.
    Sure. When she learned what had happened at the vihara, which she soon would, Raor could dispatch a comrade of hers downtime to lurk above the merchant’s dwelling until the fugitive showed up or the troopers came in ordinary wise. The Patrol had no vehicle anywhere close, and Everard had no way to call one in. Not that he would. Nabbing the rider wasn’t worth alarming the rest into flight.
    Maybe she won’t think of it. I almost didn’t.
    Everard gusted a sigh.
Too dicey. The Exaltationists may be crazy, but they aren’t stupid. If anything, their weakness is oversubtlety. I’m just going to have to let my outfit fall into their hands.
    What would they make of it? They might or might not have the equipment to probe its secrets. If they did, well, they wouldn’t discover anything they didn’t know already, except that Jack Holbrook was not a complete fool.
    Small consolation, when Manse Everard was completely disarmed.
    What to do? Depart the city before the Syrians reached it, strike out for the nearest Patrol station? Hundreds of miles, and he’d likeliest leave his bones along them, the scraps of knowledge he had gained blown away on a desert wind. If he did survive the journey, the corps couldn’t well hop him back to carry on where he’d left off. Nor could it spend more man-years on insinuating a different agent by the same kind of tortuous devices as for him. He’d used up all the good opportunities.
    That wouldn’t matter to Raor, if she faced this dilemma.
She’d double through time, annul her original attempt, and start on a fresh one. To hell with the possibility of generating a causal vortex, unforeseeable and uncontrollable consequences to the course of events. Chaos is what the Exaltationists want. Out of it they’ll make their kingdom.
    If I quit here, and somehow convey a warning to the Patrol, it can only come in force, an escadrille of timecycles swooping secretly into this night. Probably it can rescue Chandrakumar. Certainly it can put a stop to Raor’s plot. But she and her buddies will escape, to try again at a place and year we’ll know nothing about.
    Everard shrugged.
Not much choice for me, is there?
    He changed direction, toward the waterfront. According to his neural briefing, yonder lay several low-life taverns, any of which could provide a doss, a hidey-hole, and perhaps some more palaver about Theonis. Tomorrow—Tomorrow the king came home, the enemy at his heels.
    I
suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised at how things have worked out. Shalten and company crafted a fine scheme. But every officer knows, or should know, that in every action, the first casualty is your own battle plan.

1987 A.D.
    The house was in a bedroom community outside Oakland, where you encountered your neighbors as little as you chose. It was small, screened by pines and live oaks at the end of an uphill driveway. Entering, Everard found the interior cool, dim, anachronistic. Mahogany, marble, embroidered