Castelar took the object from him and hefted it. Easily a quarter pound, he reckoned. “Why should they?” he asked. “It’ll soon go to the smelter.”

  Bitterness: “True.” After a moment: “They will send a few pieces intact to the Emperor, for the sake of whatever interest he may have. I’ve been picking out the best, hoping Pizarro will listen to me and choose them. But mostly he won’t.”

  “What’s the difference? Everything is just as unsightly.”

  Gray eyes turned aloft to reproach the warrior. “I thought you might be a little wiser, a little able to understand that men have many ways of…praising God through the beauty they create. You have an education, no?”

  “Latin. Reading, writing, ciphering. A bit of history and astronomy. It’s largely dropped out of me, I fear.”

  “And you’ve traveled.”

  “I fought in France and Italy. Gained a smattering of those languages.”

  “I have the impression you’ve acquired Quechua too.”

  “A minim. Can’t let the natives play stupid, you know, or conspire in earshot.” Castelar felt himself under inquisition, mild but probing, and changed the subject. “You told me you record what you see. Where are your quill and paper?”

  “I have an excellent memory. As you observed, there is not much point in itemizing things that are to become ingots. But to make sure no curse, no witchcraft lingers—”

  Tanaquil had been sorting and arranging articles as he talked, ornaments, plates, vessels, figurines, grotesque in Castelar’s sight. When they were marshaled before him, he reached inside a pouch hung at his waist and drew forth a curiosum of his own. Castelar stooped and squinted for a better look. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A reliquary. It holds a finger bone of Saint Ippolito.”

  Castelar signed himself. Nonetheless he peered closer. “I’ve never seen its like.” It was a hand’s breadth in size, smoothly rounded, black save for a cross of nacreous material inset on top and, in front, two crystals more suggestive of lenses than of windows.

  “A rare piece,” the friar explained. “Left behind when the Moors departed Granada, later sanctified by these contents and the blessing of the Church. The bishop who entrusted it to me declared it has special efficacy against infidel magic. Captain Pizarro and Fray Valverde agreed it could be wise, and would certainly be harmless, if I subject each piece of Inca treasure to its influence.”

  He assumed a more comfortable position on the floor, selected a small gold image of a beast, revolved it in his left hand before the crystals of the reliquary, which he held in his right. His lips moved silently. When he had finished, he put the object down and went on to another.

  Castelar shifted from foot to foot.

  After a while Tanaquil chuckled and said, “I warned you this would prove tedious. I’ll be at it for hours. You may as well go to bed, Don Luis.”

  Castelar yawned. “I think you are right. Thank you for your courtesies.”

  A whoosh and thud brought him whirling around. For an instant he poised locked in unbelief.

  Over by the wall, a thing had appeared. A thing—massive, dully slick, perhaps of steel, with a pair of handles and two stirrupless saddles— He saw it clear, for light radiated from a baton the rearmost rider held. Both men wore form-fitting black. It made their hands and faces stand forth bone-white, unweathered, unnatural.

  The Friar sprang up. He yelled. The words were not Spanish.

  In that eyeblink of time, Castelar saw amazement on the aliens. Be they wizards or devils straight from hell, they were not all-powerful, not before God and His saints. Castelar’s sword whipped into his grasp. He plunged forward. “Santiago and at them!” he roared, the ancient battle cry of his people as they drove the Moors from Spain back to Africa. Make such a racket that the guards outside would hear and—

  The rider in front lifted a tube. It blinked. Castelar spun down into nothingness.

  15 April 1610

  M achu Picchu! was the immediate recognition as Stephen Tamberly awoke. And then: No. Not quite. Not as I’ve known it. When am I?

  He climbed to his feet. Clarity of mind and senses told him he had been knocked out by an electronic stunner, probably a twenty-fourth-century model or later. No surprise. The deadly shock had been the apparition of those men on a machine such as was not to be made for thousands of years after he was born.

  Around him lifted the peaks he knew, misty, tropically green even at their altitudes save for snow on the most remote. A condor hovered aloft. A blue-and-gold morning flooded the Urubamba gorge with light. But he saw no railway down there, no station, and the only road in sight was up here, built by engineers of the Incas.

  He stood on a platform that had been attached, with a descending ramp, to a high point on a wall above a ditch. Below him the city spread over acre upon acre; it clung, it soared, in buildings of dry-laid stone, staircases, terraces, plazas, as powerful as the mountains themselves. If those heights might almost have been from a Chinese painting, the human works might almost have been from medieval southern France; and yet not really, for they were too foreign, too imbued with their own spirit.

  A breeze blew cool. Its whittering was the single sound amidst the bloodbeat in his temples. Nothing stirred throughout the fastness. With the mind-speed of desperation, he saw that it had not long lain deserted. Weeds and shrubs were everywhere, but they and the weather had hardly begun the work of demolition. That didn’t reveal much, for it still had far to go when Hiram Bingham discovered the place in 1911. However, he spied structures almost intact which he remembered as ruins or not at all. Traces remained of wood and thatch roofs. And—

  And Tamberly was not alone. Luis Castelar crouched beside him, stupefaction fading out before a snarl. Men and women stood around, themselves tense. The timecycle rested near the platform edge.

  First Tamberly was aware of weapons aimed at him. Then he stared at the people. They were like none he had met in his wanderings. Their very alienness made them look somehow alike. Faces were finely chiseled, high in the cheekbones, thin in the noses, large in the eyes. Despite raven darkness of hair, skin was alabaster and irises were light, while men seemed never to have had any growth of beard. Bodies poised tall, slender, supple. Basic clothing for both sexes was a close-fitted one-piece garment with no visible seams or fastenings, and soft halfboots of the same lustrous black. Silver patterns, an Oriental-like tracery, ornamented most, and several persons added cloaks of flamboyant red, orange, or yellow. Wide belts held pockets and holsters. Hair fell to the shoulders, held in place by a simple headband, arabesqued fillet, or diamond-glittery coronet.

  They numbered about thirty. All seemed young—or ageless? Tamberly thought he perceived many years of lifespan behind them. It showed in both the pride and the alertness, above a feline self-composure.

  Castelar glared from side to side. He had been deprived of knife and sword. The latter flashed in the hand of a stranger. He tautened as if to attack. Tamberly caught him by the arm. “Peace, Don Luis,” he urged. “This is hopeless. Call on the saints if you wish, but stay quiet.”

  The Spaniard growled before he subsided. Tamberly felt him shiver beneath sleeve and skin. Somebody in the group said something in a language that purred and trilled. Another gestured, as if for silence, and stepped forward. The grace of the motion was such that one could say he flowed. Clearly, he dominated the rest. His features were aquiline, green-eyed. Full lips curved in a smile.

  “Greeting,” he said. “You are unexpected guests.”

  He used fluent Temporal, the common speech of the Time Patrol and many civilian travelers; and the machine was scarcely different from a Patrol runabout; but he must surely be an outlaw, an enemy.

  Breath shuddered into Tamberly. “What…year is this?” he mumbled. Peripherally, he noticed Castelar’s reactions when Fray Tanaquil replied in the unknown tongue—astonishment, dismay, grimness.

  “By the Gregorian calendar, which I suppose you are accustomed to, it is the fifteenth of April, 1610,” said the stranger. “I dare say you recognize the site, although your companion obviously does not.”

  Of course he doesn’t, passed through Tamberly. What the natives of a later day called Machu Picchu was built by the Inca Pachacutec as a holy city, a center for the Virgins of the Sun. It lost its purpose when the headquarters of resistance to the Spaniards became Vilcabamba, till they captured and killed Tupac Amaru, the last who bore the name of Inca before the Andean Resurgence of the twenty-second century. So nothing led the Conquistadores to find it, and it lay empty, forgotten by everyone but a few poor countryfolk, till 1911…He barely heard: “I suppose, likewise, you are an agent of the Time Patrol.”

  “Who are you?” Tamberly choked.

  “Let us discuss matters in a more convenient location,” said the man. “This is merely the place to which our scouts have returned.”

  Why? A timecycle could appear within seconds and centimeters of any point, any moment within its range—from here to Earth orbit, from now to the age of the dinosaurs, or, futureward, the age of the Danellians, though that was forbidden— Tamberly guessed these conspirators built this landing stage, exposed to outside eyes, in order to keep the local Indians frightened and therefore distant. Stories about magical comings and goings would die out in the course of generations, but Machu Picchu would remain shunned.

  Most of those who had been watching dispersed to whatever their business was. Four guards with drawn stunners walked behind the leader and prisoners. One also carried the sword, perhaps as a souvenir. By ramp, paths, and staircases they made their way down among the compounds of the city. Silence lay thick about them until the chieftain said, “Apparently your companion is just a soldier who happened to be with you.” At the American’s nod: “Well, then, we’ll put him aside while you and I talk. Yaron, Sarnir, you know his language. Interrogate him. Psychological means only, for the time being.”

  They had reached that structure which Tamberly, if he remembered aright, knew as the King’s Group. An outer wall marked off a small courtyard where another timecycle was parked. Curtains of nacreous iridescence shimmered in doorways and across the roofless tops of the buildings that bounded the rest of the open space. Those were force fields, Tamberly recognized, impervious to anything short of a nuclear blast.

  “In God’s name,” Castelar cried when a boot nudged him, “what is this? Tell me before I go mad!”

  “Easy, Don Luis, easy,” Tamberly answered fast. “We’re captives. You’ve seen what their weapons can do. Go as they command. Heaven may have mercy on us, but by ourselves we’re helpless.”

  The Spaniard clenched his jaws and went with the two assigned him, into a lesser unit. The leader’s group sought the largest. Barriers blinked out of existence to admit both parties. They stayed off, giving a look at stones and sky and freedom. Tamberly supposed that was to let fresh air in; the room he entered did not appear to have been used lately.

  Sunshine joined radiance from the canopy overhead to illuminate its windowlessness. The floor had been given a deep-blue covering that responded slightly to footfalls, like living muscles. A couple of chairs and a table bore halfway familiar shapes, though their darkly glowing material was new to him. He could not identify the things shelved in what might have been a cabinet.

  The guards took stance on either side of the entrance. One was male, one a woman no less steely. The leader settled into a chair and invited Tamberly to take the other. It fitted itself to his contours, to his every motion. The leader pointed at a carafe and glasses on the table. Those were enameled—made in Venice about now, Tamberly judged. Bought? Stolen? Looted? The man glided forward to fill two vessels. His master and Tamberly took them.

  Smiling, the leader lifted his goblet and murmured, “Your health.” The implication was: You’d better do whatever is necessary to keep it. The wine was a tart chablis type, so refreshing that Tamberly thought it might contain a stimulant. They had broad and subtle knowledge of human chemistry in his future.

  “Well, then,” the leader said. His tone continued mild. “You are obviously of the Patrol. That was a holographic recorder in your hand. And the Patrol would never permit any visitor out of time to prowl about a moment so critical, except its own.”

  Tamberly’s throat contracted. His tongue stiffened. It was the block laid in his mind during his training, a reflex to keep him from revealing to any unauthorized person, ever, that traffic went up and down the tiers of history. “Uh, uh—I—” Sweat sprang forth cold upon his skin.

  “My sympathies.” Did laughter run through the words? “I am quite aware of your conditioning. I also realize that it operates within the bounds of common sense. We being time travelers, you are free to discuss that subject, if not those details the Patrol prefers to keep secret. Will it help if I introduce myself? Merau Varagan. If you have heard of my race, it is probably under the name of the Exaltationists.”

  Tamberly recalled enough to make this an hour of nightmare. The thirty-first millennium was—is—will be—only Temporal grammar has the verbs and tenses to deal with these concepts—it is far earlier than the development of the first time machines, but chosen members of its civilization know about the travel, take part in it; some join the Patrol, like individuals in most milieus. Only…this era had its supermen, their genes created for adventurousness on the space frontier; and they came to chafe beneath the weight of that civilization of theirs, which to them was older than the Stone Age is to me; and they rebelled, and lost, and must flee; but they had learned the great fact, that timefaring exists, and had, incredibly, managed to seize some vehicles; and “since then” the Patrol has been on their track, lest they do worse mischief, but I know of no report that the Patrol “will” catch them…

  “I can’t tell you more than you’ve deduced,” he protested. “If you torture me to death, I can’t.”

  “When a man plays a dangerous game,” replied Merau Varagan, “he should prepare for contingencies. I admit we failed to anticipate your presence. We thought the treasure vault would be deserted at night, except for sentries outside. However, the possibility of an encounter with the Patrol has been very much on our minds. Raor, the kyradex.”

  Before Tamberly could wonder what that word meant, the woman was at his side. Horror surged through him as he divined her purpose. He started to rise, scramble free, get himself killed, anything.

  Her pistol blinked. It was set to less than knockout force. His sinews gave way, he flopped back onto his chair. Only its embrace kept him from sliding to the carpet.

  She sought the cabinet, returned with an object. It was a box and a sort of luminous helmet, joined by a cable. The hemisphere went over his head. Raor’s fingers danced across glow-spots that must be controls. Symbols appeared in the air. Meter readings? A humming took hold of Tamberly. It grew and grew until it was all there was, he was lost in it, he spun down into the darkness at its heart.

  Slowly he ascended. He regained use of his muscles and straightened in the seat. Relaxation pervaded him, though, like that which follows long sleep. He seemed detached from himself, an observer outside, emotionless. Yet he was totally awake. Every sensory detail stood forth, smells of his unwashed robe and body, mountain air coming sharp through the doorway, Varagan’s sardonic Caesar visage, Raor with the box in her hand, the weight of the helmet, a fly that sat on the wall as if to remind him he was as mortal as it.

  Varagan leaned back, crossed his legs, bridged his fingers, and said with weird courtesy, “Your name and origin, please.”

  “Stephen John Tamberly. Born in San Francisco, California, United States of America, June the twenty-third, 1937.”

  He answered fully and truthfully. He must. Or, rather, his memory, nerves, mouth must. The kyradex was the ultimate interrogator. He could not even feel the ghastliness of his condition. Deep underneath, something screamed, but his conscious mind had become a machine.

  “And when were you recruited into the Patrol?”

  “In 1968.” It had happened too gradually for him to give an exact date. A colleague introduced him to some friends, interesting sorts who, he understood afterward, sounded him out; eventually he agreed to take certain tests, allegedly as part of a psychological research project; afterward the situation was revealed to him; he was invited to enlist, and accepted with infinite eagerness, as they had known he would. Well, he was on the rebound from divorce. The decision would have been more difficult if he’d had to lead a double life constantly. Regardless, he knew he would have, for it gave him worlds to explore that until then had been only writings, ruins, shards, and dead bones.

  “What is your standing in the organization?”

  “I’m not in enforcement or rescue or anything of that sort. I’m a field historian. At home I was an anthropologist, had done work among the modem Quechua, then went into the archaeology of the region. That made me a natural choice for the Conquest period. I would have liked better to study the pre-Columbian societies, but of course that was impossible; I’d have been too conspicuous.”

  “I see. How long is your Patrol career thus far?”

  “About sixty years of lifespan.” You could run up centuries, doubling around in time. A tremendous perquisite of membership was the longevity process of an era futureward of his own. To be sure, that brought the pain of watching people you loved grow old and die, never knowing what you knew. To escape that, as a general thing you phased out of their lives, let them believe you’d moved away, made contact with them dwindle gradually to nothing. For they must not notice how the years did not gnaw you down like them.

  “Where and when did you depart on this latest mission of yours?”

  “From California in 1968.” He had maintained his old relationships longer than most agents did. His lifespan age might be ninety, his biological age thirty, but stress and sorrow told on a man, and in 1986 he could claim his calendrical age of fifty, though kinfolk often remarked how youthful he still looked. God knew there was grief aplenty in a Patrolman’s days, along with the adventure. You witnessed too much.