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.These people were not stiff Englishmen or Americans; no, they windmilled their arms, theyshaped the air with their palms, backslapped, jigged, clapped hand to dagger in affront and almostinstantly were good-humored again.And the smells! The sweet sweat of horses, the sour sweat of men;smoke, fragrant from cedar or pungent from dried dung; new-baked bread; leeks and garlic and rancidgrease; everywhere the droppings and passings of animals, often the ammonia of a compost heap; abreath of musk and attar of roses, as a veiled woman went by borne in a litter; a wagonload of freshlumber; saddle leather warming beneath the sun--Havig never praised this day when nails were beatenthrough living bodies; but nothing of what he inhaled made him choke, or hurt his eyes, or gave himemphysema or cancer.The gates of Jerusalem stood open.His pulse beat high. And then he was found.It happened all at once.Fingers touched his back.He turned and saw a stocky, wide-faced person, nottall, clad similarly to him but also beardless, short-haired, and fair-skinned.Perspiration sheened upon the stranger s countenance.He braced himself against the streaming andshoving of the crowd and said through its racket: Es tu peregrinator temporis? The accent was thick-eighteenth-century Polish, it would turn out--but Havig had a considerable masteryof classical as well as later Latin, and understood. Are you a time traveler? For a moment he could not reply.Reality whirled about him.Here was the end of his search.Or theirs.His height was unusual in this place, and he had left his head bare to show the barbering and the Nordicfeatures.Unlike the majority of communities in history, Herodian Jerusalem was sufficiently cosmopolitanto let foreigners in; but his hope had been that others like him would guess he was a stranger in time aswell as in space, or he might spy one of them.And now his hope was fulfilled.His first thought, before the joy began, was an uneasy idea that this man looked far too tough.They sat in the tavern which was their rendezvous and talked: Waclaw Krasicki who left Warsaw in1738, Juan Men-doza who left Tijuana in 1924, and the pilgrims they had found.These were Jack Havig.And Coenraad van Leuven, a man--at-arms from thirteenth-century Brabant,who had drawn his sword and tried to rescue the Savior as the cross was being carried towardGolgotha, and was urged back by Krasicki one second before a Roman blade would have spilled hisguts, and now sat stunned by the question: How do you know that per-son really was your Lord? Anda gray-bearded Orthodox monk who spoke only Croatian (?) but seemed to be named Boris and fromthe seventeenth century.And a thin, stringy-haired, pockmarked woman who hunched glaze-eyed in herrobe and cowl and muttered in a language that nobody could identify. This isall? Havig asked unbelieving. Well, we have several more agents in town, Krasicki an-swered.Their conversation was in English,when the Ameri-can s origin was known. We re to meet Monday evening, and then again right after,hm, Pentecost.I suppose they ll turn up a few more travelers.But on the whole, yes, it seems like we llmake less of a haul than we expected. Havig looked around.The shop was open-fronted.Cus-tomers sat crosslegged on shabby rugs, thestreet and its traffic before them, while they drank out of clay cups which a boy filled from a wineskin.Jerusalem clamored past.On Good Friday!Krasicki wasn t bothered.He had mentioned leaving his backward city, country, and time for the FrenchEnlightenment; in a whisper, he had labeled his partner Mendoza as a gangster.( Mercenary was whathe said, but the connotation was plain.) It s nothing to me if a Jewish carpenter who suffers from delirium is executed, he told Havig.With a nudge: Nor to you, eh? We seem to have gotten onereasonable recruit, at any rate. In fact, that was not the American s attitude.He avoided argument by asking: Are time travelers reallyso few? Krasicki shrugged. Who knows? At least they can t easily come here.It makes sense.You boarded aflying machine and arrived in hours.But think of the difficulties, the downright impossibility of the trip, inmost eras.We read about medieval pilgrims.But how many were they, really, in proportion topopu-lation? How many died on the way? Also, I suppose, we ll fall to find some time travelers becausethey don t want to be found--or, maybe, it s never occurred to them that others of their kind are insearch-and their disguises will be too good for us. Havig stared at him, and at imperturbable Juan Mendoza, three-quarters-drunk Coenraad, filthyrosary-clicking Boris, un-known crazy woman, and thought:Sure.Why should the gift fall exclusivelyon my type? Why didn t I expect it s given at random, to a complete cross-section of humanity?And I ve seen what most humanity is like.And what makes me imagine I m anything special? We can t spend too many man-hours hunting, either, Krasicki said. We are so few in the Eyrie. Hepatted Havig s knee. Mother of God, how glad the Sachem will be that at least we found you! A third-century Syrian hermit and a second-century B.C.Ionian adventurer were gathered by two moreteams.Report was given of another woman--she seemed to be a Coptic Chris-tian--who vanished whenapproached. A rotten harvest, Krasicki grumbled. However-- And he led the way, first to the stop afterPentecost, which yielded naught, then to the twenty-first century.Dust drifted across desert.in Jerusalem nothing human re-mained except bones and shaped stones.Butan aircraft waited, needle-nosed, stubby-winged, nuclear-powered, taken by Eyrie men from a hangarwhose guardians had had no chance to throw this war vessel into action before the death was upon them. We flew across the Atlantic, Havig would tell me. Head-quarters was in.what had been.Wisconsin.Yes, they let me fetch my chronolog from where I d hidden it, though I pleaded languagedifficulties to avoid telling them what it was.They themselves had had to cast about to zero in on thetarget date
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