The Year of the Ransom

25 May 1987

Soft light. Fine china, silverware, glass. I don’t know if Ernie’s is the top restaurant in San Francisco—matter of taste, that—but it’s sure in the top ten. Except Manse has said he’d like to take me back to the nineteen-seventies, before the owners of the Mingei-Ya retired.

He raises his sherry. “To the future,” he says.

I do the same. “And the past.” Clink. Magnificent stuff.

“We can talk now.” When he smiles, his face kind of creases and isn’t homely at all. “I’m sorry we couldn’t earlier, aside from my calling to let you know your uncle’s okay and invite you to dinner, but I’ve been hopping around like a flea on a griddle, tying up loose ends in this case.”

Tease him. “Couldn’t you have done it and then ducked back several hours to let me off the hook?”

He goes serious. Oh, a lot of unspoken sorrow in his voice. “No. That would have cut things too close. We’re allowed our pleasure jaunts in the Patrol, but not when they’d tangle events.”

“Aw, Manse, I was kidding.” Reach across the linen, pat his hand. “I’m getting a great meal out of this, am I not?” And a slinky dress on me, and my hair brushed just so.

“You’ve earned it,” he says, more relieved than a big tough guy who’s rambled from end to end of space-time reality ought to be.

Enough of this, for the time being. Too much to ask. “What about Uncle Steve? You told me how he released himself, but not where he is.”

Manse chuckles. “That’s hardly relevant, is it? A debriefing center somewhere and somewhen. He’ll spend a long furlough with his wife in London before returning to duty. I’m sure he’ll visit you and the rest of his kin. Be patient.”

“And . . . afterward?”

“Well, we do have to terminate matters in a way that leaves the time structure intact. We’ll put Fray Estebán Tanaquil and Don Luis Castelar in that treasure house in Cajamarca, 1533, a minute or two after the Exaltationists bore them away. They’ll exit on foot, and that will be that.”

Frown. “Uh, you mentioned before that the guards got worried, looked inside, and found nobody. It caused a nasty sensation. Can you change that?”

He beams. “Smart lady! Excellent question. Yes, in such cases, when the past has been deformed, the Patrol does annul the events that flow from it. We restore the ‘original’ history, so to speak. As nearly as possible, anyhow.”

Concern, oddly hurtful. “Luis, though. After what he’s been through.”

Manse takes a sip, twirls his glass between his fingers, stares into the amber it holds. “We considered inviting him to enroll, but his values are incompatible with ours. He will receive secrecy conditioning. It’s harmless in itself, but makes a person unable to reveal anything about time travel. If he tries, and he will, his throat squeezes shut and his tongue locks on him. He’ll soon stop trying.”

Shake my head. “For him, terrible.”

Manse stays calm. He’s like a mountain, small shy flowers scattered around, but underneath them, that rock mass. “Would you rather we killed him, or wiped his memories and left him mindless? In spite of the woe he gave us, we bear no grudge.”

“He does!”

“Uh-huh. He doesn’t attack your uncle in the treasury, because Fray Tanaquil opens the door at once and tells the sentries that he’s done. However, it wouldn’t be wise keeping Fray Tanaquil around. In the morning he wanders off, as if to take a stroll while he meditates, and nobody sees him again. The soldiers miss him, he was such a nice fellow, and search, and fail, and decide at last that he came to grief in some unknown way. Don Luis tells them he knows nothing.” Manse sighs. “We’ll have to write off the holography project. Well, maybe someone can go to those objects when they were in their rightful places. We’ll plant new agents to monitor the rest of Pizarro’s career. Your uncle will get a different assignment. He may well elect to go into administration, as his wife wishes he would.”

I take a gently molten swallow from my glass. “What will—what became of Luis?”

He looks at me closely. “You do care about him, don’t you?”

Heat in my cheeks. “Not in any, you know, romantic way. I wouldn’t have him off the Christmas tree. But he’s a person I’ve known.”

He smiles afresh. “I see. Well, that’s another thing I’ve been looking into this day. We keep tabs on Don Luis Castelar for the remainder of his life, just in case.

“He adapts fast. Continues as an officer of Pizarro’s, distinguishes himself at Cuzco and in the fight against Almagro.” With what inward-bitten grimness. “Finally, when the country is divvied up among the conquerors, he becomes a large landowner. By the way, he’s one of those few Spaniards who tried to get a reasonably square deal for the Indians. Later, when his wife has died, he takes holy orders and ends as a monk. He’s had children by her, whose descendants flourish. Among them is a woman who marries a sea captain from North America. Yes, Wanda, the man you had that runaround with is your ancestor.”

Whew!

Recover after a minute. “Time travel indeed.” All the ages open to wandering.

We ought to study our menus. But.

Be still, my heart, or whatever that foolish phrase is. I lean forward. Somehow I’m not afraid, not when he’s looking at me like that. Only, my words stumble, while little cold lightnings run along my backbone. “Wh-wh-what about me, Manse? I know the secret too.”

“Ah, yes,” he says. How gently. “Typical of you, I think, that first you asked about the others. Well, you have your role to play out. We’ll return you to your Galapagos island, dressed in the same clothes as then, a few minutes afterward. You’ll rejoin your friends, finish your jaunt, fly from Baltra to that madhouse known as Guayaquil International Airport, and so home to California.”

And then? Then?

“What happens next is for you to decide,” he goes on. “You can take the conditioning. Not that we don’t trust you, but the rule is firm. I repeat, it’s painless and does no harm, and since I’m positive you’d never willingly betray us, it should make no noticeable difference. You can proceed with your twentieth-century life. Whenever you and your Uncle Steve get together privately, you’ll be able to talk freely with him.”

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. “Have I got any other choice?”

“Sure. You can become a time traveler yourself. You’d be a valuable recruit.”

Unbelievable. Me? And yet I expected this. And yet. “I, I, I wonder how good a policewoman I’d make.”

“Probably not very,” I hear across the radiance. “You’re too independent. But the Patrol’s responsible for prehistoric as well as historic eras. That requires a knowledge of the environment, which requires field scientists. How’d you like to do your paleontology with living animals?”

Okay, okay, I disgrace myself. I jump to my feet and violate the peace of Ernie’s with a war—whoop. Manse laughs.

Mammoths and cave bears and dodos, oh, my!