“Come off that!” Everard felt anger rise and rise within himself. “You must know better. It’s impossible. Bolivar hasn’t the cadre, the communications, the support. If he’s a hero to many, he’s at least got many others furious with him: like the Peruvians, after he detached Bolivia. He’ll cry on his deathbed that he ‘plowed the sea’ in all his efforts to build a stable society.
“If you meant it about unifying even part of the continent, you’d have tried earlier and elsewhere.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. The only chance. I’ve studied the situation. In 1821 San Martin was negotiating with the Spanish in Peru, and playing with the idea of setting up a monarchy under somebody like Don Carlos, King Ferdinand’s brother. It could have included the territories of Bolivia and Ecuador, maybe later Chile and Argentina, because it would have had the advantages Bolivar’s inner sphere lacks. But why am I telling you this, you bastard, except to prove I know you’re lying? You must have done your own homework.”
“What then do you suppose my real objective was?”
“Obvious. To make Bolivar overreach himself. He’s an idealist, a dreamer, as well as a warrior. If he pushes too hard, everything hereabouts will break up in a chaos that could well spread to the rest of South America. And there would be your chance for seizing power!”
Varagan shrugged, as a were-cat might have shrugged. “Concede me this much,” he said, “that such an empire would have had a certain dark magnificence.”
The hopper flashed into being and hovered twenty feet aloft. Its rider grinned and aimed the firearm he carried. From the saddle of his horse, Merau Varagan waved at his time-traveling self.
Everard never quite knew what happened next. Somehow he made it out of the stirrups and onto the ground. His horse screamed as an energy bolt struck. Smoke and a stench of seared flesh spurted forth. Even while the slain animal crumpled, Everard shot back from behind it.
The enemy hopper must veer. Everard skipped clear of the falling mass and maintained fire, upward and sideways. Varagan leaped from his own horse, behind the rock. Lightnings blazed and crackled. Everard’s free hand yanked forth his communicator and thumbed the Mayday spot.
The vehicle dropped, rearward of the crag. Displaced air made a popping noise. Wind blew away the stinging ozone.
A Patrol machine appeared. It was too late. Merau Varagan had already borne his earlier self away to an unknowable point of space-time.
Everard nodded heavily. “Yeah,” he finished, “that was his scheme, and it worked, God damn it. Reach an obvious landmark and note the time on his watch. That meant he’d know, later along his world line, where-when to go, in mounting his rescue operation.”
The Zorachs were appalled. “But, but a casual loop of that sort,” Chaim stammered, “didn’t he have any idea of the dangers?”
“Doubtless he did, including the possibility that he would make himself never have existed,” Everard replied. “But then, he’d been quite prepared to wipe out an entire future, in favor of a history where he could have ridden high. He’s totally fearless, the ultimate desperado. That was built into the genes of the Exaltationist princes.”
He sighed. “They lack loyalty, also. Varagan, and whatever associates he had left, made no attempt to save those we’d captured. They just vanished. We’ve been wary of their reappearance ever ‘since then,’ and this new caper does bear similarities to that one. But of course – time loop hazard again – I can’t go read whatever report I’ll have filed at the conclusion of the present affair. If it has a conclusion, and if I don’t.”
Yael patted his hand. “I’m sure you’ll prevail, Manse,” she said. “What happened next in South America?”
“Oh, once the bad counsel, which he hadn’t recognized was bad – once that stopped, Bolivar went back to his natural ways,” Everard told them. “He made a peaceful settlement with Paez and issued a general amnesty. More troubles broke out later, but he handled them capably and humanely, too, while fostering both the interests and the culture of his people. When he died, most of the great wealth he’d inherited was gone, because he’d never taken a centavo of public money for himself. A good ruler, one of the few that humankind will ever know.