Times Without Number (18 page)

On the evening of the day when suspicion turned to cruel certainty, Don
Miguel encountered his friend Two Dogs again. Head bowed, he was plodding
up the slope of the hill that separated the modern mining area from the
one established by the poachers and feeling as though the limping world
were using him for a crutch, when he heard his name called. Raising his
eyes, he saw the Mohawk waiting on the path ahead, face inscrutable,
prepared for any news.
"Well?" he said as Don Miguel approached.
"We found them," Don Miguel said. "At the summer of A.D. 984. They killed
a Mohawk Licentiate who showed himself to them. And they used a gun."
Two Dogs gave a slow nod. He said, "So your millstones are going to
grind again, and this time we shall be ground between them."
"What do you mean?" Don Miguel said. But he was too weary to be genuinely
interested in the reply.
"I should have thought it was obvious. Did you not imply that you've
found what you expected -- poachers from the Confederacy?"
"Yes, there isn't any doubt. They were seen, as I said. What's more,
they were overheard talking."
"In that case, it follows that there's been a breach of the Treaty of
Prague -- am I not correct?"
"It would appear so. I'm not an expert, though, and we're waiting for
Father Ramón himself now, who's supposed to be on the way from Londres,
so I won't commit myself."
There was a pause. At last the Mohawk said musingly, "You are a strange
people --- you really are! When it came to matters of honour and justice,
my ancestors didn't wait to consult some far-distant expert. We made our
own minds up and acted in accordance with the principles we believed in,
heedless of the consequences to ourselves. And I'd always been told that
this was also the hidalgo code, the reason why it was the Spanish among
all the competing European intruders who managed to form a successful
alliance with the Red Indians rather than the French or the Swedes."
"True enough." In spite of his tiredness, Don Miguel felt a stir of
interest provoked by the Mohawk's argument. Cultural analysis was
inevitably a subject he'd had to delve into deeply before completing
his training as a time-traveller.
"So why are you not acting to set right the injustice that's been done
to you?"
"Because it's not only ourselves we must consider," Don Miguel pointed
out. "This is a temporal matter. One ill-judged action might so deform
history that we ruled ourselves out of existence -- and you along with us."
"While admiring your scruples," Two Dogs murmured, "I still find your
behaviour puzzling. I've been reading up on matters connected with
time-travel recently, since this business broke out, and it seems to me
that you could wipe out the poachers, couldn't you, at the end of their
stay? I mean, when the changes their mining had wrought in the landscape
corresponded to what can be seen in the present day."
"Oh, possibly! In fact, that may well be the course we have to adopt
in the end. But . . ." Don Miguel shook his head unhappily. "We'd risk
creating a closed causative loop, you see, where a future action entailed
past consequences, and this is something so dangerous one dare not commit
oneself before examining every alternative."
Although if the alternative is the death of a king . . .
But he firmly suppressed recollection of that New Year's night when he
had had the truth of what he was now saying so fearfully demonstrated.
"If they're allowed to get away with it, though, surely these poachers
will be tempted to repeat what they've done? Elsewhere, I mean. The next
place you run across them may be in your coal-mines at home, or the Cornish
tin-mines, or some other place where you can ill afford to lose what you
have close to the heart of the Empire."
"But they won't be allowed to get away with it. A Papal interdict will
certainly follow concrete proof of their interference, and if necessary
the whole Confederacy could be put under ban."
"And this, you think, is a powerful enough weapon to dissuade men who've
already shown they're willing to tamper with the past? If they're unafraid
of material consequences due to meddling with history, are they likely
to be impressed by the threat of spiritual displeasures from one old
man sitting on a throne in Rome?"
"You're a hard-bitten sceptic, aren't you?" Don Miguel exclaimed.
"Are you . . .? No, I'm sorry; it's not something I'm entitled to ask."
"Ask what you Like." Two Dogs shrugged. "By my tradition, to call a man
a friend is to make him a brother, and a brother is permitted to know
anything about you."
Don Miguel still hesitated. Eventually he said, "Well, I was actually
going to ask whether you're not a believer."
Two Dogs gave a wry chuckle. "You are, I take it?" he countered, and
without waiting for the foregone reply continued, "As a matter of fact,
I am, but not a Catholic. Not even what you would regard as a Christian,
come to that. Oh, I was raised as one -- sent for the ordinary priestly
education of your European mission-schools -- and I was taught a lot of
facts about the world which our own tradition ignored or overlooked. But
there were so many contradictions that ultimately I was driven out of
the fold by my conscience."
Don Miguel had vaguely heard that there was a revival of pre-contact
faiths currently developing among the Mohawks -- correction, echoing Two
Dog's own words many weeks ago: among the Indians whom the Imperials
casually subsumed all under the one tribal name of "Mohawk." But this
was the first inkling he'd had that Two Dogs himself might belong
to this movement. He said, with great curiosity, "What were these --
these contradictions?"
"Oh! I couldn't reconcile your commitment to a Prince of Peace with what
you did in the way of massacring my ancestors -- nor could I reconcile
your ability to travel in time with your unwillingness to go back and
see for yourselves the true nature of the Saviour you worship."
That had, more than once, troubled Don Miguel also. He said with feigned
certainty, this time hearing Father Ramón in his memory. "But we have
visited the time of Jesus's ministry. A new Pope, for instance, is always
permitted to hear Christ speak following his accession, and over nearly
a hundred years the Church has survived any consequences. Whatever you
may think of Christ as a Son of God, surely it follows that he was a
very exceptional man."
"Perhaps. But exceptional in his day and his environment. I've been told
that my great-great grandfather. was the most skilful buffalo-hunter
his tribe had ever seen. Fine! Marvellous! But since you brought guns
to this country, who can live by killing buffalo? Admire him, I may --
but am I to imitate him now that the buffalo are rare to the point where
they have to be protected?"
Don Miguel found he had no immediate answer to that. He shrugged and
wiped his face, and at once Two Dogs was contrite. Stepping forward and
putting an arm around his friend's shoulders, he said, "But I'm being
cruel, keeping you out in the hot sun arguing about abstracts! Here,
we'll go and sit on my verandah for a while and drink a few glasses of
our local wine that you seem to enjoy so much, and talk about things
which don't involve the fate of the universe."
Don Miguel gave a wan smile. "That," he said feelingly, "would be a very
welcome relief."
V
Don Arturo Cortés came to the isolated valley, who still had the look of
a man haunted by the ghost of himself, and who had not been a friend of
Don Miguel's until he saw that ghost. Don Felipe Basso came, and said that
the Lady Kristina was sad at not having seen Don Miguel again but had had
to leave Londres suddenly upon her father being appointed Ambassador to
the Confederacy of the East; Father Ramón came, and unlike the other two
showed no sign of strain from his appalling journey, night and day from
New Madrid in the huge cushion-wheeled transcontinental express-wagon
which stopped only to change horses and pick up provisions.
Don Miguel saw the last relay of horses as they were led away from the
wagon. They looked ready for the knacker.
These three, the night of their arrival, forgathered with Don Miguel
and the two experts from New Madrid who had taken temporary charge of
the investigation until their seniors from Londres could reach the spot;
of these, one was an Inquisitor. They met in one of the huge marquees set
up by the Society's technicians just over the hill from the mines which
Two Dogs managed. There was a breeze at nightfall, and their shadows --
cast by riadng lamps on to the white canvas -- moved in eerie fashion
as they sat around their table.
Don Rodrigo Juarez had personally conducted the expedition to the year
984 on which the existence of the poachers had been proved. Though he
had been born and bred in New Castile rather than Europe, his reputation
stood high, and since what had happened last New Year to Don Arturo
Cortés, men had begun to speak of him, rather than Don Arturo, as Red
Bear's probable successor in the key post of Director of Fieldwork. Don
Rodrigo was aware of what was being said, and moreover was pleased to
find that Don Arturo did too; this -- to Don Miguel's way of thinking --
endowed his manner with an unpleasant smugness almost as nasty as Don
Arturo's former overweening arrogance.
But there was no time now for personal likes and dislikes. There was the
very structure of history to be underpinned.
"What we found," said Don Rodrigo, "left absolutely no room for doubt. We
saw the poachers at work, and we heard them talking among themselves. To
avoid anachronism we were clothed --
unclothed
, rather, ha-ha! -- like
Indians such as we know frequented California in those days. I called for
a volunteer to show himself at their encampment, and a Mohawk Licentiate
from New Castile, named Roan Horse, came forward. Without questioning him,
they shot him dead. I agree with Don Miguel Navarro: we have a crime far
greater than mere murder, foul though that may be. We have indubitably
a breach of the Treaty of Prague!"
He sat back, jutting out his jaw. He was a large man whose mother had been
Scots, and his gingery hair and lantern chin stemmed from her family.
All eyes turned to Father Ramón, who had been listening with total
concentration to Don Rodrigo's views. Keenest of all to hear the Jesuit's
opinion was Don Miguel; his mind was aching almost physically.
"Not proven," said Father Ramón at length.
"What?" All of them said it, except Don Felipe, who was keeping himself
to himself in such distinguished company.
"Not proven!" Father Ramón turned his bird-like head to regard them one
after the other. "For various reasons. Not the least compelling grounds
for withholding judgment can be found here: a breach of the Treaty is of
its nature an irremediable disaster to be avoided at all costs. Luckily
one has not yet been committed."
"But -- !" Don Rodrigo expostulated. Father Ramón's thin hand went up
to interrupt him.
"No, hear me out, if you please. Before leaving Londres I checked
your qualifications. They're admirable. But they omit one important
item. You've never attended the School of Casuistry in Rome; if you
had, you'd have gone through a gruelling course of disputation on this
very subject of a breach of the Treaty of Prague. Believe me, when the
Vatican's experts framed that Treaty, they did not do so in a hurry,
or in such a way as to leave loopholes."
"I'm not talking about sneaking through a loophole!" flared Don Rodrigo.
"I'm talking about poachers who've torn it up and spat on the shreds!"
Calmly Father Ramón stared him down. "You should know better than that,"
he said at length. "In your position you should. Don Miguel's reaction
is forgivable; in the ordinary course of his career he would not be due
to attend the School of Casuistry for another five years or so. Your
colleague, however, I'm also surprised at." He bent a frown on the
Inquisitor. "How say you, Brother Vasco?"
The man shifted on his hard bench. He said, "I'm reserving my judgment
until I can consult a text I needn't name. There's no copy nearer than
New Madrid, and I confess my memory of it has worn thin."
The Jesuit pursed his lips. After a moment he shrugged. "Well, there's no
need to prolong the argument, is there? Don Arturo, if I recall correctly,
has attended the School, and should by now be bursting with the right
solution."
They looked at Don Arturo, their heads moving as though pulled by strings,
and saw him pass his hand shakily across his face. "Solutions to the
present problem I have none, Father," he said. "But I know one thing
almost beyond doubt."
"Which is . . . ?" prompted Father Ramón.
"There hasn't been a breach of the Treaty of Prague because such a thing
is virtually inconceivable."
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.