The Shield of Time (2 page)

“He was the reason that she—” Everard’s protest trailed off. Within him shivered:
Who is this, really? What is he?

“Therefore we wish to know more about you,” Guion said. “Not prying into your personal lives, but hoping for a clue to what I can only, misleadingly, call the hyper-matrix of the continuum. Such knowledge may help us plan how to track down the last Exaltationists. They are desperate and revengeful, you know. We must.”

“I see,” Everard breathed.

A pulse beat through him. He scarcely heard Guion’s coda, “And beyond that necessity, perhaps, a larger meaning, a direction and an ending—” nor how Guion chopped it short, as though he had let slip out what should not. Everard was harking back, gazing forward, abruptly hound-eager, aware that what he needed was not surcease but the completion of the hunt.

Here, where the Bear stars wheeled too low, night struck cold into blood and bone. By day, mountains closed off every horizon with stone, snow, glaciers, clouds. A man’s mouth dried as he gasped his way over the ridges, rocks rattling from beneath his boots, for he could never draw one honest breath of air. And then there was fear of the rifle bullet or the knife after dark that would spill his bit of life out on this empty land.

To Yuri Alexeievitch Garshin, the captain appeared as an angel from his grandmother’s Heaven. It was on the third day since the ambush. He had tried to head northeast, generally down though it always seemed most of his steps were upward, the weight of the earth upon them. Somewhere yonder lay the camp. His sleeping bag gave him small rest; again and again terror snatched him back to a loneliness just as cruel. Careful with what field rations were in his kit, he took few bites at a time, and hunger pangs had now dulled. Nevertheless, little remained to him. He found plenty of water for his canteen, springs or the melt of remnant snowbanks, but had noth
ing to heat it. The samovar in his parents’ cottage was a half-remembered dream—the whole collective farm, larksong above ryefields, wildflowers to the world’s edge, he walking hand in hand with Yelena Borisovna. Here grew only lichen on rock, thinly strewn thorn scrub, pale clumps of grass. The one sound other than his footfalls, breath, pulsebeat was the wind. A large bird rode it, well aloft. Garshin didn’t know what kind it was. A vulture, waiting for him to die? No, surely the vultures feasted on his comrades—

A crag jutted from the slope ahead. He changed course to round it, wondering how much more that threw him off the proper track to his company. All at once he saw the man who stood beneath the mass.

Enemy!
He grabbed for the Kalashnikov slung at his shoulder. Then:
No. That’s a Soviet outfit.
A warm blind wave poured through him. His knees went soft.

When he could see again, the man had come close. His garb was clean, fresh-looking. Officer’s insignia glittered in the hard upland sunlight, yet a pack and bedroll rode on his back. He carried merely a sidearm, yet he strode unafraid and unwearied. Clearly he was no Afghan government soldier, wearing issue supplied by the ally. His body was stocky, muscular, the face beneath the helmet fair-skinned but broad in the cheekbones and a bit slanty in the eyes—
from somewhere around Lake Ladoga, perhaps,
Garshin thought weakly.

And I, I’m just serving out my hitch, just waiting out this miserable war till I can go home, if I live.
He made a Shalten salute.

The officer halted a meter or so off. He was a captain. “Well,” he asked, “what are you doing, private?” The Finnish eyes probed like a sunset wind. However, the tone was not unkindly and the Russian was Moscow’s, the dialect you oftenest heard after they drafted you, except that his was better educated than usual.

“P-p-please, sir—” Sudden, helpless trembling and stammering. “Yu. A. Garshin, private—” Somehow he identified his unit.

“So?”

“We were … a squad, sir—reconnaissance up the pass—Blasts, gunfire, men killed right and left—” Sergei’s skull a horrible spatter and his body flung bonelessly aside, then a crash, smoke and dust, you sprawled with ears ringing so loud that you couldn’t hear anything else and a medicine taste in your mouth. “I saw … the guerrillas … no, I saw, one man, a beard and turban, he laughed. They d-didn’t see me. I was behind a bush, I think, or they were too busy—bayoneting?”

Garshin had nothing to vomit but bile. It hurt his throat.

The captain stood over him till he was done and the headache that followed had lessened. “Take some water,” the captain advised. “Swish it around. Gargle. Spit. Then swallow, not too much.”

“Yes, sir.” Garshin obeyed. It helped. He tried to get up.

“Sit for a while,” said the captain. “You’ve been through a bad time. The
mujahedin
had rocket launchers as well as rapid-fire weapons. You crept away when they’d gone, eh?”

“Y-yes, sir. Not to desert or, or anything, but—”

“I know. There was nothing you could do on the spot. Rather, your duty was to return to base and report what had happened. You didn’t dare go straight back down the pass. That would have been reckless anyway. You slipped uphill. You were still dazed. When you recovered, you realized you were lost. Correct?”

“I think so.” Garshin raised his glance toward the form above him. It reared dark against the sky, as alien as the crag. He was regaining his wits. “What about you, sir?”

“I am on a special mission. You are not to mention me except as I order. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. But—” Garshin sat straighter. “Sir, you talk as if you know … a good deal about my squad.”

The captain nodded. “I came by a while afterward, and reconstructed what must have occurred. The rebels
were gone but the bodies were left, stripped of everything useful. I couldn’t bury them.”

He refrained from speaking of honored heroes. Garshin wasn’t sure whether he was grateful for that or not. It was amazing that an officer explained anything to an enlisted man.

“We can send a party to retrieve them,” Garshin said. “If my unit gets the news.”

“Of course. I will help. Do you feel better?” The captain offered his hand. Clinging to its strength, Garshin rose. He found himself reasonably steady on his feet.

The foreigner eyes searched him. Words hit slow, like the hammer of a careful workman. “As a matter of fact, Private Garshin, this is a fortunate encounter for both of us, and others besides. I can direct you to your base. You can take something along that badly needs taking, but which my mission doesn’t allow me time to deal with.”

Angel from Heaven indeed. Garshin snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”

“Excellent.” Still the captain looked at him. Afar, clouds eddied around two peaks, now hiding them, now baring their fangs. Underfoot, twigs snickered in the wind. “Tell me about yourself, boy. How old are you? Where from?”

“N-nineteen, sir. A kolkhoz near Shatsk.” Emboldened: “If that means anything to you, sir. The closest real city is Ryazan.”

Once more the captain nodded. “I see. Well, you seem both intelligent and faithful. I believe you will appreciate what I want of you. It is simply to deliver an object I discovered. But it may be quite an important object.” He hooked thumbs in his pack straps. “Here, help me with this.”

They got it off, set it on the ground, and hunkered above. He opened it and took forth a box. Meanwhile his unofficerlike talkativeness continued, though almost as if to himself, peering beyond anything Garshin could see:

“This is a very ancient land. History has forgotten all
the peoples who held it, came and went, fought and died, to and fro, century after century. We today are but the latest. Ours is not a popular war, at home or in the world at large. Never mind the rights or wrongs, it is hurting us in the same way their war in Vietnam hurt the Americans, when you were a kid. If we can retrieve a little honor out of it, a little credit, is that not good for the motherland? Is that not a patriotic service?”

The wind walked along Garshin’s backbone. “You talk like a professor, sir,” he whispered.

The other man shrugged. His tone flattened. “What I am in civilian life doesn’t matter. Let’s say I have an eye for certain things. I came on the scene of the ambush, and among the … objects that lay there, I saw this. The Afghans must not have noticed. They were in a hurry, and are primitive tribesmen. It must have lain a long time buried, till a rocket shellburst tossed it up. Some fragments were with it—pieces of metal and bone—but I couldn’t stop to do anything about those. Here. Take it.”

He laid the box in Garshin’s hands. It was about thirty centimeters long by ten square, gray-green with corrosion (bronze?) but preserved by the highland dryness for (how many?) centuries. The lid was wired shut and sealed by a blob of pitchy material that had formerly borne some kind of stamp. Traces of figures cast in the metal were visible.

“Careful!” the captain warned. “It’s fragile. Don’t tamper with it, whatever you do. The contents—documents, I suspect—might well crumble away, unless this is opened under strict controls by the proper scientists. Is that clear, Private Garshin?”

“Yes … yes, sir.”

“Tell your sergeant, immediately when you get back, that you must see the colonel, that it’s vital, that you have information for no ears less than his.”

Dismay. “But, sir, all I have to say is—”

“You have this to deliver, so it doesn’t get lost in the bureaucracy. Colonel Koltukhov isn’t a brainless regulation machine, like too many of his kind. He’ll under
stand, and do what is right. Simply tell him the truth and give him the casket. You won’t suffer for it, I promise you. He’ll want my name and more. Tell him I never told you because my own mission is so secret that anything I said would necessarily be a lie, but of course he is welcome to notify GRU or KGB and let them trace me. As for you, Private Garshin, you convey nothing except a little casket, of purely archaeological interest, which you might have stumbled upon as easily as I.” The captain laughed, though his eyes stayed altogether level.

Garshin swallowed. “I see. That’s an order, sir?”

“It is. And we’d better both get on with our business.” The captain reached into his pocket. “Take this compass. I have another. I’ll explain how to find your unit.” He pointed. “From here, bear north by northeast … so—

“—and when that peak
there
is exactly south-southwest—

“—and—

“Is this clear? I have a notepad, I will write it for you.

“—Good luck, boy.”

Garshin groped down the mountainside. He had wrapped the box in his bedroll. However slight the weight, he imagined he felt it on his back, like the weight of boots on his feet, the drag of the earth upon all. Behind and above, the captain stood, arms folded, watching him go. When Garshin glanced rearward, a last time, he saw sunlight from behind the helmet make a kind of halo, as if on an angel who guarded some place mysterious and forbidden.

The highway followed the right bank of the River Bactrus. Travelers were glad of that. Breezes off the water, shade cast by wayside mulberry or willow, every fleeting relief came as an event when summer’s heat lay over the land. Fields of wheat and barley, orchards and vineyards in among them, even the wild poppies and purple thistles seemed bleached by the light from a sky burned empty of clouds. Nonetheless it was a rich land, the stone houses small but many, clumped in villages or strewn on farmsteads. It had been long at peace. Manse Everard wished he didn’t know that that was about to change.

The caravan plodded doggedly south. Dust puffed up around the feet of the camels. Hipponicus had shifted his wares from mules to them after he left the mountains. Ill-smelling and foul-tempered, they did carry more per animal and fared better in those arid regions that his route would trayerse. They were a breed adapted to Central Asia, scruffy now that their winter coats were shed, but one-humped. The two-humped species had not yet
reached this country, from which it would take its later name. Harness creaked, metal jingled. No harness bells rang; they too were of the future.

Cheered by nearing the end of their weeks-long trek, the caravaneers chattered, japed, sang, waved at people they passed, sometimes shouted and whistled if a pretty girl was among them—or, for several, a pretty boy. They were mainly of Iranian stock, dark, slender, bearded, clad in flowing trousers, loose blouses or long coats, tall brimless hats. A couple of them were Levantine, with tunics, short hair, and shaven chins.

Hipponicus himself was a Hellene, like most present-day Bactrian aristocrats and bourgeoisie: a burly, middle-aged man with freckled face and thinning reddish hair under a flat cap. His forebears came from the Peloponnesus, where today was little of that Anatolian strain which would be prominent in the Greece of Everard’s time. On horseback, in front of the train, still he was hardly less grimy and sweaty than the rest. “No. Meander, I insist, you must stay with me,” he said. ‘I’ve already sent Clytius ahead, you know, and part of the word he carried is that my wife should prepare for a house guest. You wouldn’t make a liar of me would you? She’s got a sharp enough tongue as is, Nanno does.”

“You’re too kind,” Everard demurred. “Realty. You’ll be seeing important men in town, rich, educated, and I’m just a rough old soldier of fortune. I wouldn’t want to, uh, embarrass you.”

Hipponicus scanned his companion sideways. It had surely been difficult and expensive, finding a mount big enough for such a fellow. Otherwise Meander’s outfit was coarse and plain, apart from the sword at his hip. Nobody else bore arms any longer; the merchant had dismissed his hired guards when he reached territory reckoned safe. Meander was special.

“Listen,” Hipponicus said, “in my line of work it’s needful to be a pretty sharp judge of people. You’re bound to have learned a fair bit, knocking around the
world. More than you let on. I expect you’ll interest my associates too. Frankly, that won’t hurt me any when it comes to making some deals I have in mind.”

Everard grinned. It lightened the massive features, pale blue eyes beneath brown locks, nose dented in a long-ago fight about which he had said as little as he told of his past in general. “Well, I can give them plenty of whoppers,” he drawled.