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or bad? even be meaningful to you? I haven t tried to explore beyond the early stages of the Maurai
Federation. It ll be the work of years to understand that much.
He was actually more interested in bygone eras, which to him were every bit as alive as today or
tomorrow. Those he could study beforehand-in more detail than you might think, unless you re a
professional historiographer-and thus prepare himself to move around with considerable freedom.
Besides, while the past had ghastlinesses enough, nothing, not the Black Death or the burning of heretics
or the Middle Passage or the Albigensian Crusade, nothing in his mind matched the Judg-ment. That s
when the whole planet almost goes under, he said. I imagine my fellow time travelers generally avoid it.
I m likeliest to find them in happier, or less unhappy, eras.
Given these activities, he was biologically about thirty when at last he succeeded. This was in Jerusalem,
on the day of the Crucifixion.
6
HE TOLD ME of his plan in 1964. As far as practicable, his pol-icy was to skip intervals of the
twentieth century equal to those he spent elsewhen, so that his real and calendar ages wouldn t get too
much out of step. I hadn t seen him for a while. He no longer dwelt in Senlac, but made his headquarters
in New York--a post office box in the present, a sumptuous apartment in the 1890 s, financed by the
sale of gold he bought after this was again made legal and carried downtime. He did come back for visits,
though. Kate found that touching. I did too, but I knew besides what need he had of me, his only
confidant.
Why ... you re right! I exclaimed. The moment you d expect every traveler, at least in Christendom,
to head for. Why haven t you done it before?
Less simple than you suppose, Doc, he replied. That s a long haul, to a most thoroughly alien
territory. And how certain is the date, anyway? Or even the fact?
I blinked. You mean you ve never considered seeking the historical Christ? I know you re not religious,
but surely the mystery around him--
Doc, what he was, or if he was, makes only an academic difference. What counts is what people
through the ages have believed. My life expectancy isn t enough for me to do the pure research I d like.
In fact, I m overdue to put fun and games aside. I ve seen too much human misery. Time travel has got to
have some real value; it s got to be made to help. He barely smiled. You know I m no saint. But I do
have to live in my own head.
He flew from New York to Israel in 1969, while the Jews were in firm control of Jerusalem and a visitor
could move around freely. From his hotel he walked out Jericho Road, carrying a handbag, till he found
an orange grove which offered concealment. There he sprang back to the previous midnight and made his
preparations.
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The Arab costume he had bought at a tourist shop would pass in Biblical times. A knife, more eating tool
than weapon, was sheathed at his hip; being able to blink out of bad situa-tions, he seldom took a
firearm. A leather purse held phrase book (specially compiled, for pay, by an American graduate
student), food, drinking cup, Halazone tablets, soap, flea re-pellent, antibiotic, and money. That last was
several coins of the Roman period, plus a small ingot he could exchange if need be.
Having stowed his modern clothes in the bag, he drew forth his last item of equipment. He called it a
chronolog. It was designed and built to his specifications in 1980, to take ad-vantage of the superb
solid-state electronics then available. The engineers who made it had perhaps required less ingenuity than
Havig had put into his cover story.
I have seen the apparatus. It s contained in a green crackle-finish box with a carrying handle, about 24
by 12 by 6 inches. When the lid is opened, you can fold out an optical instrument vaguely suggestive of a
sextant, and you can set the controls and read the meters. Beneath these lies a miniature but most
sophisticated computer, running off a nickel-cadmium battery. The weight is about five pounds, which
edges near half the limit of what a traveler can pack through time and helps ex-plain Havig s reluctance to
carry a gun. Other items are gen-erally more useful. But none approaches in value the chronolog.
Imagine. He projects himself backward or forward to a chosen moment. How does he know when he
has arrived? On a short hop, he can count days, estimate the hour by sun or stars if a clock isn t on the
spot. But a thousand years hold a third of a million dawns; and the chances are that many of them won t
be identifiable, because of stormy weather or the temporary existence of a building or some similar
accident.
Havig took his readings. The night was clear, sufficiently cold for his breath to smoke; Jerusalem s lights
hazed the sky northward, but elsewhere the country lay still and dark save for outlying houses and
passing cars; constellations wheeled bril-liant overhead. He placed the moon and two planets in relation
to them, set the precise Greenwich time and geographical lo-cations on appropriate dim-glowing dials,
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