The upshot was that the Vandals were routed, overrun, and forced to depart their lands. After scouring to and fro for several years beyond the River Danube, dangerous but wretched, they besought the Emperor Constantine for leave to settle in his realm. Not loth to have fresh warriors guarding his marches, he let them cross into Pannonia.
Meanwhile Dagobert found himself the leader of the Teurings, through his marriage, his inheritance, and the name he had won. He spent a time making them ready, and thereupon took them south.
Few stayed behind, so glittering was the hope. Among those who did were old Winnithar and Salvalindis. When the wagons had creaked away, the Wanderer sought those two out, one last time, and was kind to them, for the sake of what had been and of her who slept by the River Vistula.
1980
Manse Everard was not the officer who raked me over the coals for my recklessness, and barely agreed to let me continue in the mission – largely, he grumbled, at Herbert Ganz’s urging, because there was nobody to replace me. Everard had his reasons for holding back. Those eventually became evident, as did the fact he’d been studying my reports.
Between the fourth century and the twentieth, I’d passed about two years of personal lifespan since losing Jorith. My grief had dwindled to wistfulness – if only she could have had more of the life she loved and made lovely! – except once in a while when it rose in full force and struck again. In her quiet way, Laurie had helped me toward acceptance. Never before had I understood in full what a wonderful person she was.
I was at home on furlough, New York, 1932, when Everard called and asked for another conference. “Just a few questions, a couple hours’ bullshooting,” he said, “and afterward we can go out on the town. Your wife too, of course. Ever see Lola Montez in her heyday? I’ve got tickets, Paris, 1843.”
Winter had fallen uptime. Snow tumbled past the windows of his apartment, making a cave of white stillness for us. He gave me a toddy and inquired what I particularly liked in the way of music. We agreed on a koto performance, by a player in medieval Japan whose name the chronicles have forgotten but who was the finest that ever lived. Time travel has its rewards as well as its pains.
Everard made a production of stuffing and lighting his pipe. “You never filed an account of your relationship to Jorith,” he said in a tone almost casual. “It only came out in the course of the inquiry, after you’d sent for Mendoza. Why?”
“It was… personal,” I answered. “Didn’t see that it was anybody else’s business. Oh, they cautioned us about that sort of thing at the Academy, but regs don’t actually forbid it.”
Looking at his dark, bowed head, I had the eerie knowledge that he must have read everything I would write. He knew my personal future as I did not – as I would not until I had been through it. The rule is very seldom waived that keeps an agent from learning his or her destiny; a causal loop is the least undesirable thing that could all too easily result.
“Well, I don’t aim to repeat a scolding you’ve already had,” Everard said. “In fact, between the two of us, I feel that Coordinator Abdullah got needlessly stuffy. Operatives must have discretion, or they’d never get their jobs done, and plenty of them have sailed closer to the wind than you did.”
He spent a minute kindling his tobacco before he went on, through the blue haze: “However, I would like to ask you about a couple of details. More to get your reaction than on any deep philosophical grounds – though I admit to being curious, too. You see, on that basis, maybe I can give you a few useful procedural suggestions. I’m not a scientist myself, but I have kicked around history, prehistory, and even posthistory, quite a lot.”
“You have that,” I agreed with enormous respect. “Well, okay, for openers, the most obvious. Early on, you intervened in a war between Goths and Vandals. How do you justify that?”