The Shield of Time by Poul Anderson Read Free Book Online Page B

superb listening post, a principal reliance of the historical study project.
    Everard sought it the morning after his arrival. The sanctuary-cum-hostel was a modest adobe building, a former tenement, in Ion’s Lane off the Street of the Weavers, distinguished from the neighbors crammed wall to wall against it largely by motifs painted on the whitewash, lotus, jewel, flame. When he knocked, a brown man in a yellow robe opened the door and gave benigngreeting. Everard inquired about Chandrakumar of Pa-taliputra. He learned that the esteemed philosopher did indeed live here, but was off on his accustomed Socratic argufying, unless he had settled down someplace to meditate. He should return by evening.
    “Thank you,” said Everard aloud, and
Damn!
to himself. Not that the news ought to surprise him. He’d had no way to make an advance appointment. Chandra-kumar’s job was to learn what the meager chronicles that survived had omitted, not only details of politics but economics, social structure, cultural activity, multifarious and ever-mutable everyday life. You did that largely by mingling.
    Everard wandered away. Maybe he’d come upon his man. Or he might find some clues on his own. Partly he wished he weren’t so conspicuous, towering above the average of this time and place, with features more suggestive of a barbarian Gaul than of a Greek or even an Illyrian. (A German would have been closer still, but nobody in Asia had ever heard of Angles, Saxons, or any of that lot.) A detective did best when he could fade into his background. On the other hand, curiosity about him should make it easy to strike up conversations; and the Exaltationists should have no reason to suspect the Patrol was on their trail.
    If the Exaltationists were here. Quite possibly they had never winded the bait set out for them, or had been too wary to go after it.
    Anyway, as for his appearance, no one else with equivalent ability and experience had been available for the groundside part of the operation. The joke was well-worn among English-speaking members of the Patrol, that their corps was chronically overextended. You used whomever and whatever came to hand.
    The streets seethed. Beneath its permanent reeks, the air stank of anxiety-sweat. Criers were going about, announcing the imminent return of glorious King Euthydemus and his army. They did not say it was in defeat, but the populace already had a good idea.
    Nobody panicked. Men and women continued their ordinary work or their emergency preparations. They spoke little or not at all about the thoughts that crawled in them, siege, hunger, epidemic, sack. That would have been like clawing at one’s flesh. Besides, most people in the ancient world were more or less fatalistic. Events to come might work out for the better instead of the worst. Undoubtedly many a mind was occupied with schemes to make an extra profit from the situation.
    Still, talk was apt to be loud, gestures jerky, laughter shrill. Foodstuffs disappeared from the bazaars as hoarders grabbed what had not gone into the royal storehouses. Fortune-tellers, charm vendors, and shrines did land-office business. Everard had no difficulty making acquaintances. On the contrary, he never bought a drink for himself. Men panted for any fresh word from outside.
    In streets, marketplace arcades, wineshops, foodshops, a public bath where he took refuge for a while, he fielded questions as noncommittally and kindly as he was able. What he got in exchange was scant. Nobody knew anything about “Areconians.” That was to be expected; but only three or four said they had seen a person of such appearance, and they were vague about it. Maybe someone was correct, but it had been an individual belonging in this milieu, a stray tribesman from afar who happened to fit an imperfectly understood description. Maybe memory was at fault. Maybe the respondent simply told Meander what he supposed Meander wanted to hear; that was an immemorial Oriental