“Oh, never mind details. I don’t remember them well myself any more. Essentially, Bolivar, who was a Venezuelan by birth, made a march from Lima to Bogota. Only took him a couple of months, which was fast in those days over that terrain. Arriving, he assumed martial-law presidential powers, and moved on into Venezuela against Paez. Bloodshed was becoming heavy there.
“Meanwhile Patrol agents, monitoring the history, turned up indications that all was not kosher. (Um-m, pardon me.) Bolivar wasn’t behaving quite like the selfless humanitarian that his biographers, by and large, described. He’d acquired a friend from… somewhere… whom he trusted. This man’s advice had, on occasion, been brilliant. Yet it seemed as if he might be turning into Bolivar’s evil genius. And the biographies never mentioned him….
“I was among the Unattached operatives dispatched to investigate. This was because I, before ever hearing of the Patrol, had kicked around some in those boonies. That gave me a slight special sense for what to do. I could never pass myself off as a Latin American, but I could be a Yankee soldier of fortune, in part starry-eyed over the liberation, in part hoping somehow to cash in on it – and, mainly, though macho enough, free of the kind of arrogance that would have put those proud people off.
“It’s a long and generally tedious story. Believe me, my friends, 99 percent of an operation in the field amounts to patient collection of dull and usually irrelevant facts, in between interminable periods of hurry-up-and-wait. Let’s say that, aided by a good deal of luck, I managed to infiltrate, make my connections, pass out my bribes, gather my informers and my evidence. At last there was no reasonable doubt. This obscurely originating Blasco Lopez had to be from the future.
“I called in our troops and we raided the house where he was staying in Bogota. Most of those we collared were harmless local people, hired as servants, though what they had to tell proved useful. Lopez’s mistress, accompanying him, turned out to be his associate. She told us a lot more, in exchange for comfortable accommodations when she’d go to the exile planet. But the ringleader himself had broken free and escaped.
“One man on horseback, headed for the Cordillera Oriental that rises beyond the town – one man like ten thousand genuine Creoles – we couldn’t go after him on time hoppers. The search could too damn easily get too damn noticeable. Who knew what effect that might have? The conspirators had already made the timestream unstable….
“I grabbed a horse, a couple of remounts, some jerky and vitamin pills for myself, and set off in pursuit.”
Wind boomed hollowly down the mountainside. Grass and low, scattered shrubs trembled beneath its chill. Up ahead, they gave way to naked rock. Right, left, behind, peaks reared into a blue bleakness. A condor wheeled huge, on watch for any death. Snowfields on the heights above glowed beneath a declining sun.
A musket cracked. At its distance, the noise it made was tiny, though echoes flew. Everard heard the bullet buzz. Close! He hunched down in the saddle and spurred his steed onward.
Varagan can’t really expect to drop me at this range, passed through him. What, then? Does he hope I’ll slow down? If so, if he gains a little on me, what use is that to him? What goal has he got?
His enemy still led him by half a mile, but Everard could see how yonder animal lurched along, exhausted. To get on Varagan’s trail had taken some while, going from this peon to that sheepherder and asking if a man of the given description had ridden by. However, Varagan had only the single horse, which he must spare if it was not to collapse under him. After Everard found the traces, a wilderness-trained eye had readily been able to follow them, and the pace of the hunt picked up.
It was also known that Varagan had fled bearing no more than a muzzle-loader. He’d been spending powder and balls pretty freely ever since the Patrolman hove in view. Since he was a fast recharger and an excellent shot, it did have its delaying effect. But what refuge was in these wastes? Varagan appeared to be making for a particular crag. It was conspicuous, not only high but its shape suggestive of a castle tower. It was no fortress, though. If Varagan took shelter behind it, Everard could use the blaster he carried to bring the rock molten down upon his head.