“I answered that question at the inquiry, sir… Manse. I knew better than to kill anybody, since my own life was never in jeopardy. I helped organize, I collected intelligence, I inspired fear in the enemy – flying around on antigrav, throwing illusions, projecting subsonic beams. If anything, by making them panic, I saved lives on both sides. But my essential reason was that I’d spent a lot of effort – Patrol effort – establishing a base in the society I was supposed to study, and the Vandals threatened to destroy that base.” “You weren’t afraid of touching off a change in uptime events?”
“No. Oh, perhaps I should have thought it over more carefully, and gotten expert opinions, before acting. But it did look like almost a textbook case. That was merely a large-scale raid the Vandals were mounting. Nowhere did history record it. The outcome either way was insignificant… except to individuals, certain of whom were important to my mission as well as me. And as for the lives of those individuals – and the line of descent that I started myself, back yonder – why, those are minor statistical fluctuations in the gene pool. They soon average out.”
Everard scowled. “You’re giving me the standard arguments, Carl, same as you did the board of inquiry. They got you off the hook there. But don’t bother today. What I’m trying to make you know, not in your forebrain but in your marrow, is that reality never conforms very well to the textbooks, and sometimes it doesn’t conform at all.”
“I believe I am beginning to see that.” My humility was genuine. “In the lives I’ve been following downtime. We have no right to take people over, do we?”
Everard smiled, and I felt free to savor a long draught from my glass. “Good. Let’s drop generalities and get into the details of what you’re actually after. For instance, you gave your Goths things they’d never have had without you. The physical presents are not to worry about; those’ll rust or rot or be lost quickly enough. But accounts of the world and stories from foreign cultures.”
“I had to make myself interesting, didn’t I? Why else should they recite old, familiar stuff for me?”
“M-m, yeah, sure. But look, wouldn’t whatever you told them get into their folklore, alter the very matter you went to study?”
I allowed myself a chuckle. “No. There I did have a psychosocial calculation run in advance, and used it for a guide. Turns out that societies of this kind have highly selective collective memories. Remember, they’re illiterate, and they live in a mental world where marvels are commonplace.
What I said about, say, the Romans merely added detail to information they already had from travelers; and those details would shortly be garbled down to the general noise level of their concepts of Rome. As for more exotic material, well, what was somebody like Cuchulainn but one more foredoomed hero, such as they’d heard scores of yarns about? What was the Han Empire but one more fabulous country beyond the horizon? My immediate listeners were impressed; but afterward they passed it on to others, who merged everything into their existing sagas.”
Everard nodded. “M-m-m-hm.” He smoked for a bit. Abruptly: “What about yourself? You’re not a clutch of words; you’re a concrete and enigmatic person who keeps appearing among them. You propose to do it for generations. Are you setting up in business as a god?”
That was the hard question, for which I’d spent considerable time preparing. I let another swallow of my drink glow down my throat and warm my stomach before I replied, slowly: “Yes, I’m afraid so. Not that I intended it or want it, but it does seem to have happened.”
Everard scarcely stirred. Lazily as a lion, he drawled, “And you maintain that doesn’t make a historical difference?”
“I do. Please listen. I’ve never claimed to be a god, or demanded divine prerogatives, or anything like that. Nor do I propose to. It’s just come about. In the nature of the case, I arrived alone, dressed like a wayfarer but not like a bum. I carried a spear because that’s the normal weapon for a man on foot. Being of the twentieth century, I’m taller than the average for the fourth, even among Nordic types. My hair and beard are gray. I told stories, described distant places, and, yes, I did fly through the air and strike terror into enemies -It couldn’t be helped. But I did not, repeat not establish a new god. I merely fitted an image they’d long worshipped, and in the course of time, a generation or so, they came to assume I must be him.”