And Malenkov, heir to the mantle of Stalin and ruler of all the Russian
people and their hundreds of millions of satellite subjects fell on his
knees and cried, "It speaks! It speaks!"
Many hundreds of miles distant, in an unimportant place called
Afghanistan, Domique Hadrien waited impatiently and with growing alarm
for word from his daughter. He had chosen Afghanistan precisely for
its unimportance. Although he knew Laniq was a capable girl, their
adversaries were shrewd, merciless men possessed of a megalomania which
would readily lead to acts of violence. Domique Hadrien decided to wait
one day longer and then send his most experienced time-traveler after
Laniq.
* * * * *
The trail led to Ur of the Chaldees, to ancient Sumeria, to Babylonia,
the cradle of civilization. Always Tedor arrived too late, always the
angry little pip darting about on his chronoscreen indicated Laniq
Hadrien was one step ahead of him.
But it was not until he left Second Dynasty Egypt that he noticed
another pip on the screen. He was following Laniq, but so was someone
else. Another saucer-shaped craft plied the time streams in their
wake, making all the stops they made, starting up again when they
did. Experimentally, Tedor thrust his own conveyor forward in time
until he'd passed the girl and left her decades behind him. The second
conveyor became a frenzied pip on the screen, plummeting through the
years with him.
The second conveyor did not follow Laniq Hadrien. It followed Tedor.
He considered it and got nowhere. It failed to make sense. In the
first place, privately owned time-craft were rare, belonging only
to the few rich people who could afford them, to members of Laniq
Hadrien's organization or to Time Agents. The century coaches carried
most traffic through time, and no century coach would go off the
well-traveled trails to follow Tedor.
One of the Hadrien woman's people? Perhaps, but he wouldn't have
immediately accelerated through time to chase Tedor, not if he were
trailing the woman for protection. A rich man on a pleasure jaunt?
Hardly likely. Certainly not another Time Agent! Tedor scowled and
turned his attention back to the girl. Laniq was landing.
Quickly, Tedor checked the time-charts, plugged in a hypnosleep spool,
fastened the electrodes to his temples, drugged himself, and within
an hour learned thoroughly the Attic Greek spoken by the denizens of
the Fifth Century who had rubbed shoulders in the Agora with Socrates,
Alcibiades and Pericles, five hundred years before Christ was born and
some generations before Attica and its Athens were to feel the grim
tread of the Macedonian phalanxes then of the Roman legions. Tedor ran
the microfilm projector, found the pictures he sought, fed them into
the slot of the matter duplicator and soon donned the mantle and tunic,
the sandals and head band of an Athenian gentleman.
He stepped outside into a grove of plane trees, found Laniq Hadrien's
craft a hundred yards away but saw nothing of the third conveyor.
Shrugging, he set out upon the road to Athens, wondering how many
minutes he was behind the girl. Other citizens walked the road with
Tedor, some chatting aimlessly with him, others strolling by in polite
silence because he had selected the garment of a high-ranking citizen
and they were beneath his station.
The slave at the gate, an immense bronze man, skin and hair slick with
olive oil, looked up from where he'd been resting his chin on the haft
of his spear when Tedor asked, "Did you see an unescorted woman come
through this gate?"
"Yes sir." The voice was deep, metallic of timbre. "A lone woman is
unusual on these avenues, as you of course know." Women were second
class citizens in Athens, remaining in their homes except on rare
intervals and never venturing out alone unless they were so old and so
ugly no men would care to look at them. "Further," the slave went on,
"this girl carried a strange black box which she pointed at me. I heard
a clicking sound and wondered what kind of magic might dwell within it."
"You have nothing to fear," Tedor assured him. So Laniq Hadrien was
taking pictures. "Which way did the woman go?"
"She asked the direction of the Agora. Again, most peculiar, as who
does not know the location of the marketplace in Athens?"
* * * * *
Tedor thanked him and set off at a fast pace down one of the mean
streets radiating from the gate. He reached the Agora merely by
following the crowds and wended his way through the crowded marketplace
with the shouts of the fish, bread, wine and honey-mongers on all
sides of him.
The tradesmen jockeyed their pushcarts around for more advantageous
positions; the slaves ran nimbly about the Agora on nameless errands;
the gentlemen of leisure, garbed in embroidered tunics and mantles of
white, red, purple and black, sauntered without hurry under the shade
of the adjacent _stoas_, servants following behind them or preceding
them like schools of pilot fish.
It was a hot day, the bright sun scorching everything and engendering
an odor in the fish-carts which made the fish-mongers decidedly
unpopular. Twice Tedor spotted Laniq ahead of him in tunic and mantle
but with her hair free, snapping pictures with her camera, but each
time the crowds swirled in ahead of him and he lost her.
The third time he shouted her name and she ran. He took off after
her and tripped over something, stumbling against a fish-cart and
overturning it. The vendor was an ugly old man with warts all over
his face and a raspy voice. He threw a steady torrent of invective at
Tedor, and in all these generations the meanings hadn't changed even if
the sounds had. Tedor kept running, for he lacked Athenian money to pay
the fish vendor. But by then he had lost Laniq Hadrien once more.
Her trail led him through all the stalls of the Agora but he did not
see her again. He began to realize it would be foolish to remain in
Athens any longer for fear he might lose her entirely when he became
aware someone was following him. The man maintained two dozen paces
distance between them. The man hurried when he hurried, slowed when he
did. Tedor stopped, then turned swiftly and sprinted toward the mantled
figure.
"All right," he said, gathering up a fistful of the mantle and holding
the man. "Why were you following me?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. It's a free city."
"For citizens, it is," said Tedor harshly. "Whose son are you?" To say
whose son you were was the equivalent of telling a man your name, since
surnames were as yet unknown in Athens. Tedor suspected his follower,
like Laniq and himself, did not belong in Athens.
He admired the man's poise. A vague suggestion of uneasiness crept over
his eyes like a film, then he smiled and said, "I am Posicles, son of
Posicles."
The slight pause was enough, however. "Get this straight," Tedor told
him. "You'll deny any understanding of what I'm saying, but listen to
me; I'm leaving Athens, I'm leaving Greece, I'm leaving this century. I
don't want you following me. Is that clear?"
"Clearly, the Mysteries have befuddled your mind, my friend."
"If I see you again anyplace else I'm going to kill you. You live now
only because I'm not altogether certain. Is _that_ clear?"
"It is clear you are possessed."
Yes, the man had poise. Abruptly, Tedor struck him back-handed across
the face and listened to him curse. It was an old trick, but like most
old tricks, it worked. The man cursed fluently in Tedor's own language.
"Well, well, well," Tedor said. The man bolted and ran.
Tedor retraced his steps toward the gate, hoping he'd return to the
grove of plane trees ahead of Laniq Hadrien.
* * * * *
By the light of a crescent moon, Laniq found her conveyor, entered it,
switched on a night light she knew would be swallowed by the darkness
outside.
Stripping the mantle from her body, she walked to a cabinet and found
her own clothing--shorts and blouse and sandals. Dropping her Grecian
tunic to the floor she stood naked for a moment then climbed into her
shorts.
Someone cleared his throat.
Laniq jumped as if she had been struck, plunged the room into darkness
and remained absolutely silent. The room--the main cabin of the
conveyor--measured twelve by twelve feet. There were cabinets, files,
boxes, furniture. Ample place to hide. And someone--a man--was hiding
there. A Grecian would have been frightened by the conveyor in all
probability. Then had she been followed?
"Put on a light," a voice said.
Laniq gritted her teeth. She had no weapon, but even if she did, a wild
shot might damage the conveyor's controls. "I'm not dressed," she told
the darkness meaninglessly.
"Put the light on and get into the center of the room where I can see
you. I'm carrying an atomic pistol and I won't hesitate to use it. I
have another conveyor, you don't. If yours is damaged I won't care. I'm
going to count to three."
Laniq found her blouse and began fumbling with the zipper.
"One."
Laniq got the blouse over her shoulder.
"Two."
Struggling to close the zipper now, Laniq groped for the light,
found it, switched it on. She clambered into the center of the room,
stumbling over something and falling flat. She sat up, groggy, unable
to fasten the zipper and feeling every inch a helpless woman fighting
against a cunning, ruthless foe in the time-stream.
"That's better."
Laniq looked around, saw no one. She finally managed to fasten the
zipper. She sat there, staring. "Well, where are you?"
Silence.
She was on the point of getting up and looking around despite the
warning, when the conveyor door opened. She stared, mouth agape. A man
entered the conveyor, nodded curtly at her and said, "Stay put." He
waved an atomic pistol for emphasis, and since he had just come from
outside and no anachronistic weapons were permitted outside conveyors,
he was either a Century Agent or one of the monopolist's men.
Either way, Laniq was raging. He had fooled her with an obvious trick.
Not wanting to be taken by surprise himself, he had merely planted an
amplifier in her conveyor, waited till she entered, then addressed her
from the safety of his own craft. He hadn't entered her conveyor until
he was reasonably certain she would listen to him.
"Where are we going?" Laniq demanded as he set the controls, his back
to her.
"Home to our own time," he said, and turned to face her.
* * * * *
With despair, she recognized the man she had struck in the dead Agent's
apartment.
"Wait. Please." Laniq pleaded.
"What for? I've come over twenty-thousand years looking for you. I
swore to find you ever since the night you killed my apprentice."
"Then you _are_ an Agent."
"What did you think I was, Miss Hadrien?"
"Well, we were advised Fornswitthe and a man named Barwan had returned
from the twentieth century with a report that would help our cause.
Since there was a chance it would uncover this monopolist my father has
been talking about--uh, you know my father?"
"I know all about him."
"Anyway, we were watching Fornswitthe's place. It was left unguarded
for not more than an hour, but that was enough. I returned in time to
see you standing over Fornswitthe's body and ... say! If you're not one
of them, if you _are_ an Agent, you must be Barwan."
Tedor nodded, continued adjusting the controls.
"Wait, Barwan. If you came twenty-thousand years, then give me ten
minutes."
"You didn't give Fornswitthe any kind of a chance," Tedor said
bitterly.
"I thought _you_ killed him!" she insisted. "But tell me, what did you
find in the twentieth century?"
"That's none of your business."
"It is my business. If the Agents are going to sit by and let the
biggest case of time-tinkering go on right in front of their noses,
it's got to be someone's business. I take it you know my father's
theory. All the most powerful dictators through history have not worked
alone. Someone in our own time--we don't know who--has been helping
them. If he could control the most powerful rulers in history, he
could control the entire time-stream from the dawn of civilization
to our own age. Labor, raw material, armies--all the world would be
under his control. You found something in the twentieth century which
substantiates that."
"Maybe," said Tedor.
"Maybe nothing. You found the Russians were getting outside aid--from
our century."
"Even if I did--all right, I did--1955 is still the crucial year. I'm
no different from anyone else. I can't enter 1955."
"Not in a time-conveyor, you can't. But you could set yourself down in
the latter part of '54 and simply wait for '55 to roll around."