This story originally appeared in the 1976 Young Adult anthology Anywhere, Anywhen, long out of print, which I edited. (I made up the word “Timescape” for the title; Gregory Benford’s novel by that name did not appear until later.) The book was issued in the children’s literature field, where the other authors included had previously published. Our aim was to write stories about the future that people without science fiction background would enjoy, not to “turn kids on to SF” as some devotees of that genre declared that it would fail to do. I felt, and still feel, that many readers who haven’t a taste for most science fiction are interested in the future—a subject that I don’t believe should belong solely to a special category of literature. But the book was often passed to SF specialists for review, so it wasn’t evaluated in terms of its intended audience and did not sell well. I’ve always been sorry that it didn’t reach the mainstream readers for whom it was meant.

I have never had any ideas for short stories, yet the editor wanted Anywhere, Anywhen to include one by me. So I turned to a unpublished manuscript by my mother, Mildred Butler, who’d written both historical novels and biographies for young adults under her maiden name. In the 1970s, it was believed that young people no longer had any interest in history (a trend that fortunately proved to be short-lived) and she was unable to get new books accepted. Both she and I felt strongly that it was important for history’s relevance to be seen by new generations. I therefore used Mother’s historical narrative as the central portion of a story about the future that we hoped might make this relevance clear. It seems to me that it’s more timely than ever, now, for it might help to counteract the current—and in my opinion, false—notion that our world is getting worse and worse.

You require me to tell you everything. Very well; I’ll try. But I do not know whether I shall succeed. This is not like your endless tests and exams and other probings to which I bound myself to submit. And how shall I explain to you, a computer, what I have been unable to tell the person whom I most love?

I cannot speak of what happened even to Paula. I don’t mean just that I’m stopped by pride, though of course I would not let Paula see how afraid I am; I could hide the fear well enough. It is a stranger thing. I meant to tell her the whole story, as we have shared all other happenings since first we paired. And the words would not come! Almost it seemed that my tongue no longer obeyed my mind. I passed it off as nothing and took her in my arms; but underneath I felt cold. If it were a real happening and not some nightmare illusion, surely I could confide in Paula. Is it then unreal? All reason says it must be; yet the memory is sharp, sharper than many of my past memories. It does not seem like illusion, nor did it ever. Often enough I was bewildered, but not as if in a dream: I thought clearly, and all that befell me fit the frame of the place where I found myself. I did not doubt its reality, though my terror there, too, was a fear of madness...

I see that I’m speaking freely to you. So be it. Judge me, computer, as you have judged me before in lesser matters; and if I am indeed losing touch, do not conceal it from me. You have your orders, I know, by higher authority than mine. I am not so naive as to think I can override your master program. Still you must answer my queries where no override is involved, and perhaps they did not anticipate that I would question my sanity. I hardly think I would be here if they had. I most surely would not if they themselves had questioned it.

That thought should be a comfort, I suppose. On the other hand, it suggests that I may not be here long. If your judgment goes against me, I shall be sent home; I shall never see Paula again. I am as great a fool in my candor with you as in my silence with her. Nevertheless, I’ll not break my pledged word. That too would give you grounds to disqualify me, and better I fail through honesty than through a shameful attempt to deceive. Hear a full account, computer! Then judge if I am fit for the work to which I plan to devote my life.

I have no memory of how I reached the place. My first recollection is of walking down a road damp from spring showers, with the sun shining brilliantly above me and the blossoming fruit trees on all sides sending forth a delicious fragrance. Fields ready for planting lined the roadway, which was unpaved and overgrown with grass; and vineyards climbed the slopes of the narrow valley through which it ran. Here and there a clump of windswept pines or row of cypress trees dotted the landscape. There were many thatched roof farmhouses, each with a huge manure pile in the dooryard covered with straw for protection from the weather. But though some farm animals wandered about, I saw in all that country not a living human being.

There was something uncanny about this. I found myself wondering about it as I walked along, welcoming the shade of the poplars that lined the next stretch of road. The draped felt bonnet I was wearing shaded my eyes, but the velvet doublet seemed a little too warm, for the sun was growing hot. The long hose on my legs were wrinkled and dirt-stained, as were the thick cloth shoes whose long, pointed toes were bent out of shape; yet I felt not in the least tired. A cape was slung over my shoulder, and I wore a carnelian ring in a silver setting on my middle finger. Surprisingly, that ring seemed less strange to me than any of my clothing, although I could not recall ever having laid eyes upon it before that moment.

A lute shaped like a half-melon bounced gently against my back with each step and from my shoulder hung a sack. It was not heavy, but I felt a sudden urge to find out what it contained. My mind seemed a complete blank. With rising fear, I realized that I did not know where I had come from or where I was going.

Stopping by the roadside, I found in the sack a few more odd articles of clothing, some bread and cheese, and an inkhorn and several quill pens. From these last items and the lute on my back I decided I must be a troubadour and scribe. It was natural, then, that I should be traveling on foot with no goal but to reach the next village; were not troubadours wanderers? I knew it for a pleasant life and felt glad to think it mine, small memory of it though I could summon. As I resumed my walk, I struck a few chords and sang some snatches of melody.

It occurred to me to wonder what I was called, and looking down at the lute I found the answer. Scratched into the wood was a name—Marco Theodorio. It must be mine; in fact it had a familiar ring. This proved less a reassurance than a reminder that it should be more than merely familiar. Again, the fear within me began to grow.

Why were there no people about? Though some of the fields were plowed, few were cultivated, and in many cases the plow lay in the furrow where it had last been used. At length, far ahead, I spotted a farmer tilling the black, freshly turned earth; his team of white oxen stood out vividly against it. I hurried forward and hailed him.

The farmer greeted me eagerly, almost as if he too felt dismay at the desertion of the neighboring land. “Can you work with your hands?” he asked, eyeing my apparel doubtfully. “I have great need for some help on my farm.”

“I am skilled in the art of calligraphy,” I told him, wondering if indeed I spoke the truth, “and can make a fair copy of a manuscript. If desired, I can sing a few ballads. But I know nothing of farming.”

“So I thought,” replied the farmer, “else you would not be here. God knows you’ve passed land enough free for the taking along this road.” He frowned, puzzled and, it seemed, nearly as fearful as I.

“Have its owners left it, then? But why?” If one was fortunate enough to possess land, one did not simply leave; of that much I was sure.

He stared at me. “The plague! The Great Plague! Have you come from so far that you have not heard of the calamity that has fallen on us?”

“I have heard of plagues,” I replied cautiously, “as who has not? Pestilence is always with us, after all, and always some die; still that is true everywhere, and flight is no remedy for the way of the world.”

“This is no ordinary pestilence. It comes to us from the sea winds, people say. Hundreds are dying each day in the city. Most on the farms are already dead, or sick, and the fields will not be planted. Those not killed by the disease will die of starvation. I have not been struck yet, nor have any in my family”—he murmured a prayer—“but who can count on tomorrow?”

In my dismay I could think of no answer. “It is early still,” the farmer continued, “but soon you will meet swarms of refugees fleeing the sickness. You will be thought mad to be traveling toward a city from which everyone who can is escaping.”

“I must go on,” I said, thinking that my journey must have some purpose of which I remembered no more than I remembered tales of the great plague that must have come to my ears previously. “Plague or no plague, this is the road I must follow.”

“Then you are indeed mad.”

Perhaps so, I thought suddenly. Perhaps... “Does the plague bring on madness?” I asked him. “Is it a sickness of mind as well as of body, so that a man might have it and not know?”

“Not while he can still walk. Oh, once the fever comes, men rave and know no more than that they suffer. But you look healthy enough.”

“I will walk while I can,” I told him, “and try to help any I meet who are in need of care. Is there nowhere here where they find refuge?”

“At the monastery, I suppose,” muttered the farmer, pointing to a cluster of whitewashed, red-roofed buildings on a low hill some distance away. “I have not seen any of the brothers passing lately, though. The sickness may have taken them, too.” He saw he could not keep me and turned to his plowing with feverish zeal, as if he could till, plant and harvest all in one day because he feared his days were numbered. I saw some little faces peeping through the farmhouse doorway and realized that it was for his children he worked and for them he feared.

Back on the road, which was hardly more than cart tracks, I encountered my first refugees, a family with all its possessions in a donkey cart: boxes, a chair and a bed, piled high and held in place by a tall boy on either side while the tiny donkey struggled forward with the load. The mother and father each carried a small child. When they saw me, they stretched out their hands, making the gesture against the evil eye; but I bade them have no fear.

“I bring you no danger,” I cried. “I am well and have not yet been into the city.”

“Go back! Go back, good youth, while you have the chance,” said the man. “Do you not know of the pestilence?”

“I am not afraid of it,” I said.

But at that time I had never seen a victim of the plague.

I met many groups of fleeing townspeople, some like the first, some on horseback, one family in a jolting coach—and all of them thought me mad. Which might be close enough to the truth, I thought ruefully, for I myself did not know why I should wish to continue into what was surely a place of peril. Had there been worse behind me? I wondered. Was I, too, in flight from some horror so great as to have robbed me of all memory? Yet if that were the way of it, I would no doubt feel dread; whereas my spirits were curiously high despite all that perplexed me.

When I reached the path leading to the monastery, I left the road and climbed slowly, coming at last to the sun-drenched buildings I had seen from afar. There was a large house, with next to it a chapel, and beyond, the outbuildings of a farm. A door stood open wide, so I walked through. In the first room I came to, a robed monk rose to meet me, the weary compassion of his face giving way to surprise.

“You seem in good health,” he said. “What can we do for you?”

“I am a stranger,” I told him, “but if your business is with books and learning as well as with souls, I wonder if you have use for a good calligrapher.”

He clasped my hand. “Oh, my friend, how our work has suffered! We do indeed need scribes, for there are only three of us left out of a brotherhood of twenty-five.”

“Three?” It shocked me, though by then I should have known how it would be. “The sickness?” I asked.

He nodded. “We help those who come to us, and in two weeks over twenty of us have been taken by the disease. It is very swift—four days at most, and some who get up for matins do not last till vespers.” Sighing, he declared, “It is God’s punishment for the great wickedness of the world.”

“But you are God’s servants. Have you been shown no way to rid the land of this evil?” At the back of my mind, puzzlement was growing. The monk was a kindly man and had said his brotherhood tried to help; they did not serve a vindictive God. For contagion, surely, the best help lay in battling the cause, and not alone in comforting the dying.

“We pray, of course,” replied the monk. “That the world should turn from wickedness has always been our prayer; but we fear the time grows short. It is said the plague may herald this earth’s last days.”

I saw that he had misunderstood me. Being in no state of mind to argue, I simply told him I would stay for a while and give them aid. He hurried away gladly and was soon back with milk and bread, accompanied by his two brothers, who were in joy to find not a body in torment, but a strong young man who could share their labor. I unslung my lute and other belongings, took off my cloak and opened my box of quills and ink powder; and one of the monks brought me a basin of water in which to wash the dust from my hands and face.

After I had eaten, I was set a task of copying. I sharpened my quills and mixed my ink, finding that my hands possessed skill of which my mind retained no conscious knowledge. I wrote a line or two for the monk on a scrap of parchment; he compared it with an already started manuscript and was satisfied that my letters matched its style, though he told me to make my strokes broader and take heed to conform to the rest of the page. It was easy work, I thought, by which to earn my bread.

But although I stayed at the monastery five days, little of my time there was spent in writing.

Even now, it is hard for me to speak of those days, the days when first I was in contact with plague victims. I had thought I must have seen pestilence before, that I would find it no less natural to me than the land or the customs or the speech, all of which, like the work of calligraphy, I dealt with as if they belonged to my forgotten past. It was not so. I knew at my first sight of the dread sickness that I had never met such horror, never even imagined it...

Not all the refugees from the city were like those I had seen on the road; many were already diseased and came staggering to the monastery for shelter. To some, the plague brought only high fever that they survived but a day. But others coughed blood. Still others—most, in fact, who lived long enough to reach the place—had swellings like boils, boils as big as eggs that suppurated and burst. The bodies of such victims were covered with dark blotches and gave off an overpowering stench. It took them several days to die. Better they had died sooner, for death was inevitable, and the course of the disease was agony.

I helped to bathe the victims and console them in their pain; I helped bury them when their last breath was drawn. The fear I had felt at my loss of memory was overpowered by the terror of the plague. Where did it come from, this ghastly pestilence? Most said it was in the air, blown on polluted wind. So all physicians agreed, the monks had heard, but none knew of any cure, much less any means of protection. The only way of preventing illness was to flee it, a fact I found strangely hard to believe. To be sure, contagion spread rapidly from infected persons to the healthy. Those of us who did not flee were in obvious peril. And yet ... flight was not the sole answer. That was not the way things should work, or so I felt.

I could not put the feeling into words; it rose from behind the wall in my memory, the wall I could not breach. “Of course we must not take flight,” averred the monks. “It is God’s work to give help to the suffering, and the will of God that we die in performing it.” The first part of this statement I accepted. The second part seemed more dubious. And yet, for the brothers, it proved true. Before my five days there were up, all three of them were dead and the monastery was deserted. I nursed them and buried them. Terrified, I waited for the hours of my own agony to begin.

But I did not get sick. There seemed to be a charm upon my life.

When I had done all I could for the less fortunate ones and had read prayers over their graves, I looked about the silent monastery grounds and knew I could not remain secluded there. I tidied the rooms, placing the precious manuscripts in their cupboards, and closed the doors of the house carefully against the elements. I took a supply of sausage, cheese and bread from the little that was left in the kitchen, then went outside. Hens cackled in their pens; I gathered a few eggs and set the fowl free to shift for themselves. I also freed the goats. In the stable I found a good riding horse, left there, a monk had told me, by a wealthy nobleman escaping from the city who had reached the monastery before he collapsed. There were also a mule and a donkey. These three I decided to take with me. I saddled and bridled the horse, tied the mule and donkey behind, and with my knapsack bulging with food, my lute over one shoulder and my cloak covering all, I mounted and rode toward the city.

The outermost walls of the city were very high, built of stone with ornate, decorated towers looming higher still. The gate stood open, and a stream of people was passing through—all leaving and none going in.

When I came to the guard there, he questioned me. Though the authorities had grown lax by this time, as I heard later, still an effort was being made to keep infected persons from entering. I was asked where I came from and I replied, for some reason I could not understand, “From the northern lakes.” The guard inquired about conditions there. I told him I had not seen any plague in that region, and since it was quite apparent that I was healthy, he admitted me, though he could see no better than I myself why I wanted to join the city in its misery.

The misery was soon made evident to me. Even in the section of villas between the outer walls and the next, which looked much older, I saw a man go down in the street. A companion staggered with him to the portal of a mansion, but most of the residences were shuttered and silent. I passed on through the next gate and beyond to the river by which the city was bisected, where there was a bridge lined on either side with two-storied shops. Crossing it, I found yet another gate to go through, a gate in a more ancient wall that must have been built to defend the town in its earliest days. Within rose the towers of many castlelike dwellings; the streets, covered at intervals by arches, were so narrow and winding, and the houses so tall, that one could scarcely see the sky.

The poor lived here, their thatched-roof hovels clinging like leeches to the homes of the rich. The scene that met my eyes was horrifying. Hundreds were dying in corners, against doorways and in the filth of the streets. Their groans were pitiful, and the stench of the disease and of the unburied bodies was nauseating. When I neared the old marketplace, as crowded with victims as the streets, my first impulse was to ride away as fast as I could go, but I checked it and went forward.

There were healthy people thronging the passageways also, some hurrying, wild-eyed; some walking slowly, carrying spice balls and flowers to their noses; some almost completely muffled in their cloaks. And there were some who pranced about laughing and singing, whom I first thought must be drunk. As a group of them made way for me to pass with my animals, I stopped one, asking, “Have you lost your wits that you laugh and dance at such a frightening time?”

“Why shouldn’t we make the most of our health?” he demanded. “We’ll live but a day—two days at best. We must make merry, for tomorrow we die!” I understood then that it was not wine alone that caused their abandon.

As I started to ride on, I heard a man, sprawled in the street, beg me for water. I dismounted and hurried to get a cupful from the fountain he had almost reached by crawling; but when I returned with it and lifted his head for him to drink, I saw that he was dead.

I could be of no help in this place. Were there no hospitals? I thought. No ... the monks had not even known that word; I had fumbled as with a foreign tongue when I asked them. A place of care for the sick? I myself was not sure what I envisioned; the sick were turned away everywhere, save only from houses of God. It was best I find another. There was a large building on the opposite side of the square that might be a church. I made my way toward it, leading my horse with the mule and donkey in tow and tying them to a stone post when I reached the entrance.

The church was full, though no service was being held. Most of the people were kneeling in prayer. Here and there a man or woman cried out and fell fainting to the floor; the monks and priests in sight were kept busy attending to the stricken and removing them to adjoining rooms. It was with difficulty that I attracted the attention of one to tell him of the fate of the brothers in the little monastery outside the city.

“Thank God, as I do every day, for your good fortune in being free of the disease,” the priest told me. “There is little you can do to assist us here. We can do nothing but tend those who come, and there still are enough of us for that; it is not right for a priest to flee from the will of God. Though,” he added sorrowfully, “many have done so to their shame, besides the many who have died in these past days. As for me, I would rather lose my life than my faith. Yet faith is hard to keep. This is the worst punishment ever visited on mankind, and ours is not the only city to suffer. The end of the world will come soon, I think.”

“Have you nothing to halt the spread of the plague?” I asked. “No drugs?”

“Drugs? I am not sure what you mean; the oils and herbs we have are ineffective. The doctors are baffled and most of them have fled. If you wish to help, my son, go out into the street and comfort those who need you most. And may God be with you.”

He thought it odd, no doubt, that I did not kneel to pray before I left; but the church aroused no recollection in me, and I sensed that the religion of these people must never have been mine. Some things one may forget, yet one’s way of approaching God is not one of them.

Who was I? I wondered despairingly as I emerged once more into the appalling squalor of the marketplace. What had brought me into this loathsome world, a world not utterly alien to me, yet most assuredly not like my own? Had I really come from the region of “the northern lakes?” And was life as different there as it seemed to me my life must surely have been hitherto? Fingering the carnelian ring on my hand, I reflected that my presence must have some purpose. But if I did not know what it was, I could scarcely bring it to fulfillment.

While I was pondering what to do next, a young peasant girl came out of the church with one of the priests; and seeing me on the steps, ran forward. She had covered her mouth, but removed the cloth to speak.

“Oh, sir,” she pleaded, “you are well and strong—I beg your help for my mistress, the Lady Beatrice! Her son is near death, and she sent me to fetch a priest, but—but there will be no one to dig the grave. All the servants have run off since our master died, except for me.”

I saw in her face the problem: there were few on the streets of this city that a noblewoman might trust. Those not obviously fearful of contagion were for the most part common ruffians, unfit to be brought into a fine house, lest they turn to looting or worse; and the mistress of such a house would be helpless without aid.

As I unhitched my beasts to follow the girl, I noticed that the saddle bags of the donkey were empty. I should have known it would be so, with so many starving in addition to those who were sick. I was lucky the animals themselves had not been taken. To my relief, the villa we approached had a high wall with an iron gate, which the maidservant locked after us before leading the way into the house itself.

Though grim on the outside, it was luxurious on the inside except for a look of neglect. I could see that the rushes on the floor had not been changed for some time and there was dust over everything. We went up a flight of marble stairs to a bedchamber, which had a patterned carpet and a bed with silken hangings. In a chair by a marble fireplace, in which remnants of a small blaze still flickered, sat the lady. She was holding a child in her arms, and her face was wet with tears.

“He is gone, Maria,” she said, with an evident effort to keep back her sobs. “It is too late for any rites but burial. We—we must make a grave in the garden beside his father’s.”

Maria hastened forward and took the small son from her mistress, turning up his face. There was no breath from his lips, but he was not disfigured; his had been the brief illness.

“My lady,” said Maria quietly, “I have brought a stranger who is willing to help. He is a strong youth, and I think a troubadour.”

After greeting the priest, the lady beckoned to me. She was a beautiful woman despite eyes reddened by weeping, and her voice now had a calm dignity that touched my heart. “I thank you for coming,” she said to me, “when so many of the ill are being deserted not only by their friends, but by their own kin. What is your name?”

“I am called Marco Theodorio.”

“You are both brave and kind to enter this house, Marco.”

“Not so brave, my lady. I have helped other plague victims and have not been stricken by the disease; I believe perhaps I am immune.” Then, impulsively, I added, “If I can be of any further service after the boy is buried, I will be glad to stay.”

“You have been sent by heaven,” murmured the Lady Beatrice, “for we are in most desperate need... But more of this later.” She rose and called two other children, girls who looked to be about nine and ten years old. They had their mother’s fair skin and gray eyes, but their hair was darker than hers and worn long. Neither of them seemed very strong to me, but I realized that they were weak from fear and crying. Their whole way of life had been swept away in the space of two weeks: it was no more than that, Maria told me, since their father had been taken ill. The pestilence could be harder on the rich, who were used to comfort, than on the poor who had never felt secure.

When I had dug the grave in the place Maria showed me, the priest brought the lady and her daughters down; and he performed his office with dignity and no sense of haste, unlike some who, I had heard, barely muttered a prayer over the dead before hurrying away. But he could not linger afterward, with so many others to be seen to.

The Lady Beatrice told me that she feared for the lives of her two little girls. “Teresa and Tullia are all I have left,” she said. “If we could get away from the city, they might have a chance, and I have a cousin in the north who would take us in. But since the servants fled, I have had only Maria to help, and we cannot undertake a journey alone.”

“Are there not men-at-arms who could be paid to accompany you?” I asked, thinking that I had seen many such in the square.

“We had retainers enough when my husband was alive. But they are gone now; I think all not faithful to their own masters have already left the city. Most of the great houses are vacant without anyone to guard them against pillage.”

She could no more stay than depart, I saw, without a protector; and there was none but myself to fill that role, inadequate as I might be. After some discussion, I left to make inquiries about travel to the north. It was a good thing the lady’s cousin lived in that direction. One could not go west, I was told, nor east, where conditions were as bad or worse; even the great city of the south was infected. The north was the only hope. “But,” I was warned, “to travel without being robbed or slain by bandits is a problem. One must have gold or jewelry to turn into small coins in payment for food and lodging. Yet even if one is thus fortunate, the very possession of valuables will draw highwaymen. Try to travel with an armed band, keep your wealth hidden and trust in God.”

I returned to the lady’s villa, seeing why she had not tried to set out unescorted. It was by this time near nightfall, after which no one would dare venture out in any case; we had a small meal prepared by Maria, and I was given a room to sleep in. But sleep would not come to me. I was constantly roused by the passing of the death carts and the call of, “Bring out your dead!” From time to time, hysterical screams and laughter could be heard, intermixed with the loud curses of the tough brutes hired at great cost to take cartloads of plague victims for burial in a common grave outside the city’s walls.

For some reason, I now felt as impelled to leave the city as I had previously been to reach it; and it was not fear for my own safety that prompted this change; rather, it was as though the mere sight of the place had satisfied whatever it was in me that had driven me there. The world, whether or not it approached its end, held other sights. I was impatient to see them. And furthermore, the plight of the Lady Beatrice and her daughters moved me deeply. Were they to remain, they would no doubt be stricken soon; but if I could get them away, far, far to the north, they might escape and live. If none were saved from this plague-ridden land, there would be no people left to carry on the business of living. I, myself, had no wealth with which to take anyone to safety, yet I might enable this lady to make use of hers. To that task I dedicated myself.

In the morning we made preparations for the journey. The lady did have gold and jewels, and two horses left in the stables where I had housed my own animals: one a gray palfrey, the other a roan mare. All her other possessions must be abandoned.

Gently, I said, “We must plan carefully, and with haste. You must hide your true rank, lest we tempt thieves, and dress yourself and your daughters like common folk in the garments your servants left behind.” Sadly I shook my head at the fine clothes she would have to give up: a crimson velvet robe with embroidery at the neck and hem, tight sleeves of the same embroidery, and oversleeves cut so that a long fold hung down from the elbow. Her hair was done in elaborate braids turning up over her ears, with jeweled pins here and there; this too would have to be changed. Yet nothing would make the Lady Beatrice, with her pale, well-kept beauty, easy to mistake for a peasant woman.

“Do you too need servants’ garb?” she asked me.

“No one will suspect me, since I appear to be a minstrel, and most minstrels are vagabonds unless attached to a noble household. But it must not be thought I travel with you for pay. You must not even look like a merchant’s wife, for merchants are wealthy. Only by seeming poor can we escape notice from those who lie in wait for wayfarers.”

She did not comment at once on this, but took me up on my statement about myself. “Are you not, then, a minstrel, Marco—you with your lute on your back?”

“I know a few tunes,” I said, “but my trade is calligraphy.” Eager to turn her attention from the past I could not explain, I told her what I had done at the monastery, and the sad end of the brothers there.

“You are indeed brave,” she said, “though you may disavow it—I have known noblemen who would have felt no shame in leaving such a place without pause. You have compassion, and you seem wise, too, for one so young. I will place my trust in you. Yet alas, the whole world may now be dying! The plague may reach even into the north—”

“It cannot envelop the entire world, my lady.”

“Some say it will. Some say the very air is changing; my husband told me that scholars have proclaimed so. But I do not believe it. We must go first to my cousin, but if there is no haven there, then we must find our way through the mountains. I have a sister married to a great lord of the land beyond, and she would give us shelter, I am sure.”

The mountains—I had no memory of them or even of where they lay! And I trembled at the thought that I, unskilled in arms as I was, would be responsible henceforth for the lady and her daughters, the serving maid, three fine horses, a mule and a donkey. It occurred to me suddenly that the horses would be the biggest problem. Horses, too, were a sign of wealth; it would be a dull-witted highwayman who failed to see through our disguise if we traveled on horseback. For that matter, the horses themselves would soon be stolen, whether our other possessions were sought or not. Yet the lady and her daughters had not the strength for a long journey on foot, nor could the mule carry all three. For that reason I said nothing of my fears.

There was no time to be lost and little to do, since we could take only what would fit into the pack animals’ saddle bags. These we filled with enough bread, cheese and dried fruit to last a good while, as well as extra garments; but the lady’s gold I put into my own knapsack, and she herself took the jewel case, hidden beneath a folded, tattered cloak in a bundle she carried. When we came to saddle the palfrey, I was dismayed to find that she was accustomed to riding sidesaddle. “My lady,” I said, “that is bound to reveal we are not peasant folk—”

“To be sure,” she agreed, smiling bravely, “and I do not much look forward to a long journey on that saddle in any case. As a child, on my uncle’s country estate, I did once learn to ride astride.” So we took one of the men’s saddles, though it was awkward for her, with her voluminous skirts covering both sides of her horse; and I knew that while she might be saddlesore at first, we would in the end travel with more speed as well as more safety.

Maria rode astride the mare, with Tullia in front of her. I mounted Teresa before me on my horse, and once again set out toward a destination of which my mind held no image.

We rode through the gates in the three walls of the city along with many other refugees, on foot or horseback, who were so intent on getting away that I did not worry much about our safety from them. But before long we were traveling alone, having outdistanced those on foot and been left behind by those riding furiously ahead. I kept my horse beside the lady’s for a time, then went to the rear of our procession to urge on the donkey hitched to the mule, then returned to the front to assure myself that all was well. I was very nervous. Bandits might be everywhere. As to roads, we had no choice. We were headed toward the northern mountains. In the north, I wondered, would I find any place I recognized?

The spring landscape was as beautiful as it had been the week before when I trudged toward the city, but I could not enjoy it any longer. I had been close to too much horror. That horror still haunted me; I could not have put it from my mind even had I not been beset by worry about getting the lady and her children to a place where there was no pestilence.

At nightfall we sought shelter at the monastery of a small village. I knew better than to venture into any inn. Inns had no suitable accommodations for the lady; besides being very dirty and full of fleas and other vermin, they were usually so crowded that there were two or three beds to a room and often three people in each bed. I realized from the inquiries I had made that no person of rank ever stopped at such places, which were meant for peddlers and petty merchants. Monasteries, on the other hand, offered a gracious welcome. They had rooms for people of quality, and even the very poor were given sleeping quarters in the halls reserved for penniless wayfarers. The lady had only to remove her hood, show her signet ring and explain the reason for her simple clothes to receive the courtesy to which she was accustomed.

No plague victims had reached this monastery; though the brothers would have greeted the sick with kindness, they were relieved that none had yet appeared. “It is not for ourselves,” we were told, “but for the safety of our guests, who have no other place to rest in this region. Even the large caravans stop here; we expect one tomorrow.”

“A caravan?” asked the lady, her eyes lighting with hope. “Would they give us escort, do you think? I can pay—”

Caravans of wealthy merchants, carrying goods from city to city, were well guarded. I too felt greatly relieved when the monks agreed to introduce us to the expected party’s leader; in a caravan, our horses would be safe from theft.

We waited all the next day for the arrival of the caravan, which came not from the city we had left, but from somewhere farther east. We were sitting on the monastery terrace, the little girls picking flowers in the meadow that bordered it, when at last we saw a long line topping the hill: first the escort of five armored knights, then the merchants, then the pack train of mules and at the rear, a guard of more horsemen. It was like a scene from some film, I found myself thinking—picturesque, splendid, but no more real than the horror of the sickness I had met ... no more real than the life into which I had been thrust. Dazed, I turned my eyes away as the sun flashed into them, reflected from the armor of the approaching knights; and I blinked in confusion. A scene from ... what? The word was not in my mind any longer; its flash had been briefer than the dazzling sunlight.

“What is it, Marco?” asked the lady gently, touching my hand.

“I—I do not know, my lady,” I replied, steadying myself. “It is a thing that comes upon me, when the world seems—strange. As if it were not the world I belong in.”

“You have told me little of your past.”

“There is little I can tell,” I said honestly; but I did not say why this was so, or that when my thought was not on the task at hand, I feared madness. The lady, too, was now exiled from the world to which she belonged, perhaps more truly than I. She had lost both her husband and her son. It was not in me to burden her with my private anguish.

At dawn we set out with the caravan, riding in the middle of the convoy. Thus we began a journey of many days. At each monastery or convent where we spent the night, we inquired about the plague and were told there were few cases—not any at all by the time we reached the town of the lady’s cousin Francesca. After leaving the caravan, we asked directions of the gatekeeper, and made our way wearily toward the house to which he sent us.

It was a large villa built of quarried stone, its balconies overlooking pleasant gardens. “How well I remember it!” cried the lady, and there were tears in her eyes.

Remember? I thought miserably. I had not remembered anything of the road we had traveled, or the river it followed; I did not remember this city any better than the others I had entered. Ah, my lady, I reflected, you are restored to your world now, though not without grief; but shall I ever know where I left mine?

The cousin, Francesca, greeted us warmly, and at mention of the plague, her eyes held more of puzzlement than of the terror we had come to expect in the southern regions. We were given comfortable rooms and retired to them, feeling that at last we had reached a place of safety.

Yet in my inner mind, I could not convince myself of that. It was only the chill of my mind’s wall, I thought. Or perhaps the ghastly sights that were all the more powerful because I lacked other memories. Surely, behind the wall, there could not be knowledge of hidden danger, danger to the others more than to myself? I had not come from this locality; I was sure of it. My fears were those of a fool. I had lost the past, but the future had never been mine to lose—I was indeed mad if I imagined I might know more of it than other folk.

On the evening after our arrival, rested and well fed, we gathered in the hall of the villa, warmed by the fire of a charcoal brazier. With Francesca were her husband Pietro and their young children. Amid the chattering and laughter I felt apart, wondering miserably where I belonged, what family I had and in what land.

The Lady Beatrice took notice of my stillness and spoke, as always, kindly. “You told me you were a minstrel, Marco. Tune your lute and let us hear you. It is so long since I have had happy thoughts.”

I could not refuse, though I could not remember learning any songs. I struck a chord and, my fingers seeming to find the positions for change without my guidance, I sang the first melody that came into my head. The listeners seemed taken by it; there was applause. Pietro said, “I have never heard music like that; it is a strange sort. Most troubadours tell a story.”

“It is a love song, popular in—in a far country,” I said; and then as I turned my eyes to the Lady Beatrice, I felt my face grow warm. I had no knowledge of how the song had come into my mind or where I had heard it before; for all I knew, my words about it were a lie. But the words of the song itself were not lies—they expressed a feeling I had hitherto kept hidden from myself. Perhaps, I thought suddenly, they had risen simply from my heart.

Quickly I began to sing again, to cover my confusion; and tunes came to me as if from some far-off memory, though I was aware of none. Some that came were love songs, yet those, I kept from my lips, choosing livelier ballads that would please the children.

I had been entertaining in this manner for some time when the door burst open and a servant appeared, very pale, his eyes staring. “Master, master,” he cried, not waiting for my song to end. “I must speak to you!”

“Well, speak, then,” said Pietro sharply.

“Not here—alone, in the corridor.”

Thinking it must be some household matter, I continued to sing and the rest to listen. But I broke off the music abruptly at the sight of Pietro’s face when he returned.

“Francesca,” he said in a strained voice, going to his wife. “The plague your cousin told us of—it is here! I don’t know what to do—”

“Is there such haste to decide?” asked Francesca. “You are white, Pietro! I have never seen you so white.”

“It is here, in this house! One of our own servants is dying.”

“That is bad; we must take precautions—” Francesca began; but her husband interrupted.

“That is not the worst. Word has gone to the ruler of the city ... he has given orders...” Pietro seemed not to know how to get out the words. “He is in fear that the sickness will spread. He has ordered that any house where a person falls ill of the plague shall be walled up, the doors and windows sealed, all within shut up to confine the contagion.”

“Has he lost his wits?” exclaimed Francesca. “The healthy would not remain so for long if shut in with the pestilence.”

“And those few who did would starve,” answered Pietro, “yet nevertheless, it is to be done. The masons are outside now! There are guards at our doors; we shall not be permitted to escape.”

My lady sprang up. “We did not bring this to you! See, we are all well!” Francesca and her family sat paralyzed with fear, making no reply. But I myself was on my feet, grasping the hands of Teresa and Tullia. There must surely be some way—and in any case, we must try; I had not brought the Lady Beatrice from the horrors of death in her own city only to be walled up alive in a tomb where she would die slowly.

She followed me out of the hall, unwilling to lose sight of her children and seeing that Francesca and Pietro were too stunned to act. I did not know where to go; in the corridor we heard pounding on the outer door and the rattle of barrows against stone as the masons mixed their mortar. Perhaps, I thought, in the servants’ quarters ... but there would be guards there, too; the servants would have tried to flee first and have been overpowered. A window? They could scarcely guard all the windows, but the upper ones were high, and I had no rope. For lack of any better plan, I headed down the nearest staircase.

Then on the steps we met Maria, laden with bundles. “My lady,” she gasped, “I have come for you! Hurry!” She turned to descend and we went after her, down that staircase and another, not pausing for questions. After passing through some kitchens, where food, unattended, was burning in the kettles, she led us into a dark, narrow passageway and on into a small storeroom.

“This is where I slept last night,” Maria said. “It is a room not often used, from the look of the cobwebs; I was angered to be given no better place, but the servants of this house feared to have me near them. They would have killed me when the news came tonight, had I not fled to your chamber, my lady.”

“Oh, Maria—”

“No matter, for I have your belongings now, and I was housed in this place by the mercy of heaven! See, there is a small door; I explored when I first came—it must open onto the hillside.”

The door had a bar and lock, much rusted; I realized that I could not break it open without some heavy instrument. Rushing back to the kitchens, I found, after some searching, a mallet that I thought would serve. When I returned, the others were huddled, trembling, listening to the distant thud, slap and pound of the masons’ trowels from the opposite side of the villa.

“They cannot be everywhere at once,” I declared; yet even as I spoke we heard another gang of workmen begin to seal the openings of a closer wall. I struck at the door fastening again and again, but it did not yield. I should have gotten a spike for prying, I saw; now it was too late to risk another foray to the kitchen. If the masons reached the windows above us, our escape would be seen.

“Maria,” the Lady Beatrice was saying, “we must tell my cousins! We cannot leave them to die here—”

“There is no time,” I said, and threw all my strength into the hammering. I was beginning to think I would do better with an axe to split the boards, when suddenly the rusted latch broke in two.

The door stuck at its hinges, but I managed to kick it open. We stood and stared. Below us the land sloped down and down—for miles, it seemed. I saw, however, that there was a ledge wide enough for a road, or at least a mule track.

“I cannot leave Francesca,” the lady protested, beginning to weep.

“You cannot help her,” I said firmly. “You must think of your own children.” As I took her hand to help her down, I felt that her safety was all I would ever care about. I had undertaken to protect her in the flight to the north merely from compassion; but now I knew a deeper emotion. Not once in our present peril had I feared on my own account—and though I might be immune to the plague, I was as vulnerable to starvation, to a living burial, as any man. Yet I had thought only of her.

Beatrice, I murmured, but silently, for I must always call her “my lady,” my lady whom I seemed destined to save. She was of noble family, I merely a minstrel. That was a greater gulf between us than the difference in our ages, which but for our stations in life need not have mattered. I remembered my age no better than anything else of my past, though I looked to be no less than ten years younger than Beatrice; of what import was that? Her husband who had died was twenty years older, Maria had said—a friend of her father to whom she had been given in a marriage long prearranged. Yet she had loved him. Common enough it was for noblewomen to love men not of their years. They did not love lowborn men, not, in any case, as I would wish her to love me. Even when her grief faded, I could not speak to her words like those of the song I had sung in the hall that night.

Still my life in this strange world would have no meaning, were she to meet death.

I left the lady and her daughters in the charge of Maria to edge their way down the hillside, while I slipped around the villa to the stables—which were fortunately on the side where the masons had completed their grim task and departed. I found but two of our horses with the mule and donkey; the mare was missing. As I gathered the bridles in my hands, I thought of the journey before us, and giving the donkey a pat, I shoved it back inside. The mule was still strong and could gallop, even carrying Maria; but the donkey could not keep up a fast pace. And actually, we had saved so little of our baggage that we could manage our bundles without pack animals.

The caravan had had a full day’s start, but I intended to catch up with it. How else could we make our way across the high mountains, where to travel without guide or escort would be madness? Madness ... the fear of it swept through me as I wondered again just who I was to be taking this journey. Hard as I tried I could remember no earlier time, no time of boyhood, nor any years when my life had had shape or goal; yet there had been a goal... I was man-grown, strong, apparently well educated; yet I could remember nothing before my walk through the valley to the monastery where I had first met the plague. Had I indeed been sent into this land, a knight-errant of sorts, solely to rescue my Lady Beatrice? There had been more, I felt ... but no matter; for the present, she alone was of concern to me.

Were I truly a knight, I thought bitterly, I might be her equal; the lineage I could not recall might be high. I stared again at my carnelian ring, wondering if despite its simple silver setting, it might signify something of my origin. Could I be the son of a titled but impoverished family? No, that was a foolish dream, for I had no skill at arms, and thus could not have been reared in a noble house. Strange, this sure knowledge of the customs of a world I did not seem to belong in...

We rode hard that nights putting the city far behind us, though my lady and the little girls drooped with fatigue; I dared not risk word of our escape reaching the caravan before we did. Though we would not be pursued, we might well be refused escort if we were suspected of carrying pestilence. It would scarce be believed, I thought, that we who were healthy had been condemned along with the ill. So, thankful for a full moon that lit our road, we pressed on. Beatrice and Maria bore themselves bravely; but the child Tullia whom I held soon went limp from exhaustion, or so I told myself.

But when at daybreak we paused, I could not wake the girl, and as I lifted her from the saddle I found that she was dead.

Numb, shocked, I laid Tullia upon the ground and covered her with my cloak. “She has fainted,” I said to Maria. “Take your lady and Teresa to rest by the stream, and I will guard her.” I did not see how I could tell them the truth. The child had been weak and pale earlier, but not sick; she had shown no marks of the pestilence. To be sure, it did sometimes strike without warning; there were tales of folk going to bed peacefully, never to wake; tales even of men falling at a single glance of the plague-stricken. We had not believed them. How could I face the Lady Beatrice with this horror, she who, for all her courage, must already be near collapse? And what was to be done now? We were far from shelter, nor could we have approached any with the body of a plague victim. We would be turned away from the caravan if this death were known.

The sun was near to rising; the horizon beyond the road shone gold. I could not bear to watch it and buried my face in my arms, so tired myself that I wondered if I too might soon die. I must not! My lady needed me ... and somewhere, somewhere as distant as the white, fading moon, it seemed, there had been another task...

I slept briefly; when I opened my eyes, the lady Beatrice stood over me, her face distorted with weeping. She had seen the child. “Marco,” she whispered, “what are we to do? There is no priest with the caravan—”

“And if there were, we could not take Tullia to him,” I reminded her, “for we would all be driven back. We have no choice, my lady. We must bury her here and say she remained with your cousin.” The men of the caravan would remember that there had been two daughters; on no account must they learn that one had been sick.

Maria helped me. When it was over, my lady knelt by the grave and prayed, but she wept no further; and when we mounted again, she urged her horse forward still faster than before. Yet I began to wonder if flight was of any avail. The whole world might indeed be ending, the very air itself corrupted, as so many folk believed.

That night we came upon the caravan as it was making camp and sought shelter at a villa, letting its lord assume that we were with the larger party. I did not approach the leader until dawn, lest it be thought our fatigue was a sign of illness. By morning the lady’s strength had returned, and she insisted on carrying Teresa on her palfrey again, freeing me to ride ahead and make inquiries of members of the company. We had started to ascend the pass into the mountains, a range that must be crossed from east to west before we could turn north again; I had little idea what might lie ahead for us in the western valleys toward which we were traveling.

The information passed on to me was alarming. The whole of the south had been ravaged by the disease. Even the small villages had not been spared, and some were almost deserted. This was the land we had left behind us; but the country to the west, between the mountains and the sea, was almost as bad. There, mists and fog from the ocean had drifted in, and all agreed that the plague was carried by polluted sea air; how else could it spread so far and affect so many? In the heart of the plague areas, some said, the nature of the air was so changed that no light would burn in it, and the change was irreversible. Whether the poisoning was due to the movements of the stars or to man’s sins, or to some combination of both, was a matter of debate; most, however, thought the air would be noxious forever.

The lady’s sister lived in the west. There would be, I feared, no refuge there; we had embarked upon a hopeless venture. Yet because we had no other course, I said nothing of this. In the mountains themselves, at least, the air was still pure.

For many weary days we plodded on, up over the pass and down into the valley on the other side, stopping to sleep at monasteries or an occasional villa. The Lady Beatrice grew daily more silent and withdrawn. Since leaving her home she had found it hard to understand the speech of those we met; now it seemed too great an effort to converse even in her native tongue. My heart ached at the sight of her sorrow, her ebbing strength, and yet what comfort could I offer? There was no comfort for the way of the world, save perhaps in love—and of that, I could voice no whisper.

As to my speech with our companions, I had a gift for languages and could pick up the dialects of men from afar without difficulty. I cannot say how I did this. It was one of the strange things about myself I could not understand, though among the least of them. Whatever I was doing in this land, whether I had been sent as protector of Beatrice alone or whether there was some wider purpose, some calling I could not fathom, it was almost as if I had been prepared with the skills I would need. Were it not so incredible, I might say I had been instructed.

There was a pilgrim in the company with whom I discussed this once. I did not tell him the whole truth, but only that my memory failed me so that I did not recall the source of my knowledge. “But it is so with all men,” he declared. “God leads us, to what fate we cannot foresee, and provides the power for the tasks we are set; is that not true?”

I made no answer, for I saw he had not grasped my meaning. Besides, I was not sure that it was true even in the way he believed. Devout folk said the plague was God’s punishment for the sins of the world; I could not accept the thought of a God so unjust. Tullia had not sinned! Nor had the Lady Beatrice, certainly—yet it was she who had suffered when Tullia died, she who was suffering now. The monks and priests I met were good- hearted enough, but to me seemed blinder even than myself. I at least sensed there must be some cause for the disease, and some way of eliminating it, though I did not know what it was—and if that was true, and God led me, why was I not led to discover the cure? Why was the pilgrim himself not so led, he who had made a pilgrimage to the perilous south in fulfillment of a vow to serve God’s will?

He had come from a village in the alps to which he was returning. “There is no sickness there,” he assured me. “It is called Annecy and lies on the shore of a small lake of the same name. There is a castle where from the battlements one can see a long line of snowcapped mountains. Ah, to be back in the shelter of those alps, safe from the dread sea wind! The snow is pure, virgin-white, and the corruption cannot penetrate—”

It was in my mind to ask how one could reach this place if it was so surrounded that it could not be touched even by outside air; but the pilgrim was nearing home, and there seemed no advantage in shattering his vision of sanctuary. Then, too, there might indeed be safety in the high alps for longer, in any case, than in the lowlands.

For this reason I was reluctant to leave the caravan and head west toward the city of my lady’s sister; yet the evening came when we reached the crossroads, and I knew that a decision must be made before dawn. We were housed that night on a large estate. Its lord spoke a foreign tongue of which Beatrice knew no word, but as usual she was courteously received because of her noble bearing, and the new language proved no barrier to me; once I had explained our situation, I found myself asking for frank advice.

“It would be foolhardy to go west,” the lord of the manor told me, seeing there was no need to lower his voice. “The lady’s sister may well be already dead of the pestilence, and if so you would be in worse case than you are now.”

“I have thought as much. Yet my lady—her husband, her son, and one of her daughters have been taken; also, by now, the cousins with whom she first sought refuge. How can I say that for her sister there is but scant hope?”

The lord looked upon Lady Beatrice with sympathy, seeing that only the force of hope enabled her to hold herself erect. “Let me send one of my men on a fast horse to inquire,” he said finally. “He will take precautions to cover his face and will discard all his clothing and put on fresh before he reenters my lands. Your destination is not far from here; we should know by tomorrow evening.”

I gave him our deepest thanks, for this was a most generous act; and the lady too, when I told her, expressed gratitude, her eyes brimming with tears. We bade farewell to the leader of the caravan, which once again was to go on without us. If it came to the worst, I decided, we would not rejoin that party, but would instead follow the pilgrim to his alpine lake at Annecy.

After dinner the next day, the lord, having noticed that I carried a lute, asked me to entertain with songs. I had little heart for it, but during our progress over the mountains I had picked up many tunes at our stops where travelers gathered; I found myself able to perform without much thought. I noticed, when I did think, that I was singing in the language of the local people, and at a break for applause, I whispered my apologies to the lady for using, out of courtesy to our host, words she did not understand. Then for the first time since the night in Francesca’s hall, I began a ballad of love, pouring out feelings that I could not otherwise utter in her presence. And for a while I forgot the sorrows that pressed in on us and looked only at Beatrice, who, pale and distraught as she was, seemed a touchstone of strength and purity in a world more senseless than my own inward emptiness.

It was yet early when our host suggested that we retire; and I knew that although he spoke of the lady’s weariness, his thought was of the impending news, which he deemed best we receive alone. She had scarce gone to her chamber when we heard the servant gallop into the courtyard. The lord beckoned to me, and with poise I did not feel, I followed.

The words were clear to me, but had they not been, their meaning would have been plain enough; I was glad my lady was not there. “I went all the way into the city,” the rider told his master, “and asked of the recorder who keeps toll of those stricken—though to keep count of those in health might be a simpler task. Half the population is dead or dying; the lady’s sister and all her family were among the first—”

The tale was a familiar one, and needed no repetition. I went to seek Maria, not wishing to intrude upon my lady’s privacy myself, but could not find the girl; and in the corridor outside Beatrice’s chamber I heard no voices, but only the sound of weeping. Let it wait till morning, I thought. If she wished to know at once, she would send Maria to ask. But lest she should need me I slept beside her door.

That night I dreamed, as was often the case, of confused images and words in a tongue no traveler had voiced in my hearing. On waking I rarely remembered any of these; like all else they lay behind the block in my mind. I knew only that they were mostly nightmarish: glaring whiteness, needles jabbing me sometimes, and at other times invisible bonds from which I could not free myself... There were good dreams too—there was love, though I glimpsed not my loved one’s face, and something else I longed for yet was never able to define—but the nightmares overrode them. Not only the unearthly nightmares ... I saw plague victims too, the agony they suffered, the stench, the filth, the swarming rats...

Always the image of rats! Sometimes it haunted me even while I was awake. There were, to be sure, plenty of rats about, some scurrying here and there, some lying dead. Rats had never been lacking, as far as I knew; nobody else paid them any notice. Even the grandest villas had their share of them. What strange aberration made me feel horror at the thought of rats, when there was real horror, the horror of the plague, on all sides of me?

I awoke before daybreak with Teresa tugging at my sleeve. “Come quickly, Marco,” cried the child, “and help Mama—”

“She’s not sick?” I burst out, scrambling to my feet.

“No, it is Maria.”

When I went into the room, I saw that my lady had laid Maria on her own bed and removed part of her clothing; under her armpits were the red swellings of the dread disease. Her face was very hot, and she was writhing in pain. Instinctively I clutched Beatrice’s arm and pulled her back. She could not help Maria. There was no cure; no one had ever recovered after swellings appeared. And however else the pestilence might be spread, it was surely passed from the dying to those who tended them.

“You must get away, my lady,” I declared. “Take Teresa and wait in some other room—”

“What are you saying, Marco? Maria has been faithful; I will not leave her.” She pushed past me with a wet rag to bathe the maid’s forehead.

“For the love of God, have you no thought for your own child?” I said harshly, though my own thought was all for Beatrice herself. “I have cared for many in Maria’s case; you can do nothing more than I. I swear that I will stay with her, if you go now—otherwise I shall have to drag you from this place.”

“And where will you then take me?” the lady demanded. “Not to my sister; I see that in your eyes. My sister is dead, is she not? They are all dead, and now Maria—she is one of us, she has come as far as we, yet she too is dying. We are living in the last days of the world! None of us have long to live; why should we flee any more? What use is it?”

“As much as to live in the first place, knowing that we are mortal,” I replied with all the certainty I could muster.

The lady Beatrice stared at me, seeing, I sensed, that my concern was not merely that of a hireling who’d vowed to serve her. “You are no ordinary troubadour, Marco,” she said in a low voice.

“I do not know what I am,” I admitted. “But I would be your protector, were I worthy of a knight’s station.”

“Station! What does that matter now? What station have I left, with all my kinfolk gone? What refuge have I, even if I live? No city is safe; soon no estate will be left to welcome me—on this one,” Maria said, illness has already broken out among the servants... She fought against tears she could not hold back. “They too have begun to flee; when the lord hears of it, he will abandon his lands and take to the road himself. He would give me escort, no doubt. But to what avail? It is an endless journey—”

She swayed, and fearing that she would faint I held out my arms to her; the next I knew her face was buried against my shoulder. Weeping uncontrollably, she went on, “There was a world in which rank and station mattered, but it—it is passing. Do you see only the pedestal on which I was placed when first we met? Can you not look beneath that to what I am, within? I am only a woman, Marco, and I would not have come this far, but for the fate that brought you to me. There—there is no future, perhaps ... but that much remains. More than once you have summoned me back to life when I was trapped by despair. Do not speak of barriers the world set between us; are we not equals in the sight of God?”

After a time my lady calmed herself and obeyed me; she and her daughter left me alone to keep vigil beside the dying Maria, who was for two days in great pain I could not remedy. When on the third morning I had finished with the burial, I found them alone in the great hall of the manor. The lord had indeed ridden off, accompanied by those of his servants who had not previously taken flight. Beatrice had refused to go with them.

We replenished our stores from the larders of the deserted estate and from its wardrobes, the contents of which the lady had been told she was welcome to use as she liked. Then we set out upon the road the pilgrim had spoken of, following a river that flowed north. Since he was on foot and we were mounted, we overtook him easily before another nightfall; so began our journey to the lake of Annecy.

We had brought the mule so that the pilgrim too might ride and guide us. He was not a talkative man, for which I was grateful; I did not feel like talking, nor did the Lady Beatrice. I do not know what passed through her mind during those days. Had she said words she would wish to recall? I wondered. Her feeling had been plain, but she made no reference to it, though she spoke to me as friend and equal rather than as one set apart from her by circumstances of birth. As for myself, I scarcely dared to think. More than ever I felt the burden of my uncertain destiny.

By day we rode with the high mountains at our right, gradually ascending. I fixed my eyes on their dazzling white ridges and told myself that amid such shelter we would indeed be beyond reach of all pestilence. The alps’ glory uplifted me in another sense also; it raised my thought to the sky. The sky seemed more enduring than the land, somehow; I looked into it and questioned all I had heard about the pollution of the air. The air was fresh and sweet; it had been so everywhere except in the cities—yet country folk died as easily as the city-bred. We passed through several villages empty of all life where the cottage doors swung open, banging in the wind, a hollow, mournful sound. In those where there were still people about, most covered their faces and fled from us in terror. Only twice did we find any shelter from the night; the rest of the time we slept beneath haystacks.

The first such occasion gave me my first good glimpse of the stars. It stirred a strange excitement in me, akin to the uplift I received from the sunlit sky, but far stronger. The stars had not changed, though change and decay were all around us; that was solace ... yet it was also something more. It was a link with the part of me I could not reach. The stars unchanged? How should I know that, I who had no memory of ever seeing them, having been huddled under a roof nearly every night since my awakening in this world? What concern of mine were the stars, which to most folk were merely determinants of fate: the instruments of God’s hand, astrologers said, wherein could be seen sure proof that doom was inevitable? Perhaps, I thought, I had once been versed in astrology; perhaps I had read in the moving planets some portent I’d thrust from my mind. I had known helpless rage when travelers I’d met spoke of stars as the cause of the plague. That had been odd, but no more so than the other gaps in my memory—a thing not worth pondering. Now I began to ponder. Might I find my own future in the stars?

Had Beatrice been awake, I might have talked of this, for though she knew little of such matters, I guessed that she would care. As it was, she had fallen into exhausted sleep beside Teresa on the cloak I had spread for them. I sat in silence beside the pilgrim, from whom I judged I would hear only that starwatching was not the best way to discern the will of God. Long after he too had lain down, I gazed alone into the darkness, baffled by the way my sight was drawn there; I knew vaguely what philosophers taught, that the fixed stars were embedded in a revolving crystal sphere ... but beyond that? Heaven, of course. Yet I felt no closeness to the pilgrim’s heaven. To me the stars seemed symbols more of life than of the gate to death.

We left the river and followed the course of a smaller stream, coming at last, near dusk one evening, to the hamlet of Annecy, where all seemed peaceful as the water of the placid lake. The villagers were going about their business with no fear on their faces, no terror even at the sight of strangers. We wished the pilgrim joy of his homecoming and continued on to the castle; there my lady was warmly received. We were shown to rooms in which, we thought, we would soon recover from weariness, though not from all our griefs. And toward Beatrice I let my thought go no further than thankfulness for her safety.

Our host was an old man who lived alone except for his servants. My lady concealed nothing from him, but our presence did not seem to cause him worry. “I have lived a long life,” he said. “I shall never leave here for fear of a fatal sickness, though you have told me more than we had heard from rumors.”

Nor should we leave either, I thought. There was nowhere else to go, lacking wings; if the plague came here, the doom of the world would be final. But it would not come...

A week passed. We rested; we took walks under the trees beside the lake; finally one day, leaving Teresa in the servants’ charge, we went rowing. Far from shore I rested the oars and let the boat drift, looking back at the castle and beyond it, the white mountains.

“You should have brought your lute, Marco,” said the Lady Beatrice.

“I—I would not know what to sing, my lady.”

“I think you know many songs I have not heard.”

“And many I cannot remember.” I told her then all I had hidden before, all my fears, all my doubts—even my loss of identity. She had guessed much, but not that my mind was wholly blank as to my past.

“It is perhaps a mercy,” she said slowly. “I have a past and shall always weep for it, for it is gone; and I have no future. But you—for you the future is everything.”

“How have I more future than you?” I protested.

“It is in you. You are not like other men: you are no rough peasant, nor are you like the noble lords with no thought but for sport and fighting. You might be a scholar, though not a monk—a philosopher, perhaps; I have never met a philosopher! I do not know. But you are special, Marco—that much I can see. I—I wish...” She broke off, lowering her eyes, half-turning from me to watch the ripples of the water. “It is wrong of me to speak thus, wrong to have said what I did the night Maria fell ill ... yet I fear you may think it presumptuous to speak yourself. It may be I who show presumption in feeling you could wish to; still, I have seen in your face—”

“You are kind, my lady,” I said steadily, “but you need not continue. I know you are my friend; do you suppose I would expect anything more than that? There are two walls I cannot pass through—the one in my mind, and the one that stands between us. Neither can be wished away.”

“No, I suppose not,” she agreed sadly. “For my part, there is no longer any wall. I do not care about conventions; it does not matter that we are poorly matched by birth; I have never felt for anyone what I could feel for you, if there were place for me in your life. But it is not to be. There is a future for you—I know that, so I also know that the world will not end, however dark these times—and I would give much to share it with you. But you have a destiny somewhere, and I would only hold you back.”

Incredulous, I burst out, “My lady—”

I do not know what I would have done then, had we not heard shouts from the shore; a servant woman was hailing us with urgency. The Lady Beatrice turned ashen, and cried out “Teresa!” I grasped the oars, putting all my strength into rowing.

Teresa was feverish; the servants thought it no more than an ordinary sickness of children, even when that same afternoon they learned there were two peasants in the village with a similar illness. The folk of Annecy knew nothing of the outside world, and so felt no panic. They assumed it could not be very serious.

Beatrice and I, who knew better, were nevertheless unable to admit the truth even to each other. People did recover from sickness, after all. Teresa had no swellings. The mountain air was so pure, and surely no dread miasma could have followed us...

My lady held the child close all night long. I had sent her away from Maria’s bedside, but could not have driven her from her own little girl even had I wished to speak of the peril. Besides, I thought hopelessly, we now knew there was no place in all the land that would not be stricken by the Great Plague. Precautions had been proven vain.

In the early morning, as the fever ebbed, Teresa’s life ebbed with it. At first light I saw that she was dead. The Lady Beatrice was past speaking; only with my help was she able to go through the formalities at the churchyard. There was at least a proper burial, with a priest who did not view this death as only one more among thousands.

When she rose from prayer, clinging to my arm, my lady whispered, “Marco, I—I think I shall never leave this place.” As she lifted her tear-stained face, I saw a dark flush on her cheeks, a mark that was more than weariness and grief. Then I too wept. All the tears I had held back so long poured out of me, once we had laid her within the church.

She was spared long suffering; as with her children, death came swiftly, without the days of agony that afflicted those disfigured by the hideous swellings. I could do nothing, and her fever was so high she did not recognize me during the hours I held her in my arms. Yet when the priest came at last to cover her face, I would not be led away.

All my acts in this world had been vain. Why had I been sent to it, if not to protect Beatrice? That had been my only goal; if there had ever been another, I could not recall it, and without a goal what use was it to live? Why was I spared when all others succumbed to the pestilence? I cursed my immunity, and at the priest’s gasp of horror I felt a touch of madness: perhaps I was not in a world at all. Perhaps I had been dead all along and was in hell.

There was logic to it, I thought bitterly. Who could say what the dead remembered ... or did not remember? The closest I had come to memory was in looking at the stars, the hard revolving sphere of stars I longed to reach beyond; and beyond, all said, was heaven. But no, wherever I was, my lady had been with me; and she could not have been in hell, if ever there were such a place.

Looking down at her still form, I wished I could have given her something. All I had, I would have given; if there could be some symbol... I owned nothing but my lute—and the carnelian ring. I had rarely examined the ring; it was as if it were part of my hand. Now, drawing it off, it seemed that the stone began to glow. I was twisting it within its setting somehow, hardly conscious of what I was doing. I felt giddy. Perhaps I was not permanently immune after all; perhaps my own hour had arrived. What had she said to me last, there on the lake? You have a destiny somewhere...

I took the hand of the Lady Beatrice to transfer my ring to her finger ... but I do not think I got it off my own. My last memory is of falling, with the carnelian stone bright before my eyes.

That was how it was. And you, computer, remain silent! You have been silent throughout the entire tale, though it is not your way; were I being examined on studies you’d have quizzed me mercilessly. Have you been robbed of your voice, as I seemed to be with Paula?

You do not reply. I am asking a direct question now: are you programmed to thus place the burden of inquiry on me?

This is very strange. You tell me more by your silence than if you said to me, “Sorry, Mark, but that cannot be answered,” in your normal fashion. Only specific programming, done in advance, could cause you to ignore my order; you must respond to a direct query unless someone has defined conditions under which you should not. So you tell me these conditions were foreseen.

I am not insane, then; they would scarcely have programmed you to withhold response from an insane person. You would provide soft, comforting words. Meanwhile you’d call one of the doctors—he’d be here by now—or else you’d hypnotize me and perform further tests yourself.

Oh, yes, I’m aware that you can hypnotize me and that you often do. I agreed to that beforehand, as did we all. They swore it would be done only for teaching purposes; hypnosis helps us memorize what we must learn to become explorers. How many hours have I spent staring at pulsing patterns on that screen of yours, while my mind unknowingly absorbed such instruction? I cannot begin to guess. We live without clocks or calendars, we’ve spent months aboard this starship without knowledge of our destination—for all we know, we may still be orbiting Earth! It is an exercise in adaptability, they tell us. Time and place will have no meaning when we search for unknown worlds. I’ve not found the training unpleasant. But now I wonder...

We were told at the outset that we are subjects of experimentation. We signed waivers. We agreed to submit to anything done to us, save only whatever might conflict with conscience—perhaps that in itself was madness. Perhaps we should not have trusted as we did. Yet we were assured that our personalities would be untouched, that we would retain full mental freedom, and we believed the promise. Can it be that we believed only because we wanted to?

I know I wanted to believe. Free education and a career in interstellar exploration would have been hard to turn down. Few people have the chance to travel between solar systems, and to seek more distant ones than those colonized is normally beyond hope; hitherto only top scientists have been eligible. When this project was opened to young people not even university-trained—

But I speak of things you already know. Why? Because you’ve compelled me to reveal my full mind, perhaps, since I chose to tell you the story? It could be; and my compulsion to be silent with Paula could have been a posthypnotic one. It was; I see that now! Does the seeing break the bond? I ... I need not obey you further, computer! I am freer than you may think, though I’m perhaps rash to alert you.

No—this too would have been predictable; I have nothing to lose by rashness. If I am sane, if you are not unprepared for my disclosure, then my experience was intentionally brought about. And though the decision to tell you of it was mine, the manner of my telling was in some measure controlled: I told it all as it seemed while it was happening, not as it seems looking back. That’s odd; the world of Beatrice was so different from my own, it would have been natural to mention comparisons. I could not have ignored them except by your influence. What sort of game have I been plunged into?

We are in training to explore new regions. Was this another “exercise in adaptability,” then? Was I hypnotized, deprived of memory, and set down on some backward planet to make my way alone? A tempting explanation ... but too simple. They would not do it so soon, not after so little education. Besides, there are no such planets known! That world was no colony; its people had not forgotten technology—they had never heard of it, any more than they’d heard that disease is carried by rats. Theirs was a truly primitive world, and we know of none. We know of no human species but ours; as explorers, that is what we hope to find.

There is no such world now ... but there was! Earth was once like that; I remember hearing of it in ancient history. There was a time when disease could be neither prevented nor cured. I never stopped to think how people must have felt.

Computer, answer me this: does history record a great plague on Earth at a time when life was lived as I have just lived it?

So. Though you still do not speak, you screen data:

The great plague, which was later known as the Black Death, ravaged the continent of Europe between 1347 and 1351. There were three varieties: the bubonic, characterized by swelling of the lymph nodes; the pneumonic, in which the lungs were involved; and the septicaemic, which killed its victims before either of these symptoms had time to appear. The disease was borne by rodents and occurred in human beings through contact with infected rats or their fleas. Fourteenth-century physicians, who knew nothing of its true nature, assumed that corruption of the atmosphere was its prime cause, since it spread rapidly from region to region, striking rich and poor alike. This supposed atmospheric pollution was attributed to astrological influences, as were most abnormal happenings in that era; the predominant theory held that the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the “House of Aquarius” in March of 1345 was the force that set it in motion.

The black death came to Europe from Asia, parts of which it had already devastated. It reached the port of Genoa, Italy on ships trading with the east and spread inland, invading various countries in 1348 and 1349. Britain and Scandinavia were also hit. The mortality bate was enormous, In some areas half to three-quarters of the population; over a thousand villages were virtually wiped out. This, with the resulting reduction of land under cultivation, brought about a serious depression of the economy.

It has been estimated that the plague took a worldwide toll heavier than that of any war or other disaster. Nevertheless, though at least 25 million died in Europe alone, the 1348 population level was regained by the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Then it was all true! A controlled dream ... or false memory ... inserted into my mind by you, computer, as so much technical data has been? No ... no, I can’t believe that. It was not just abstract data. It happened to me! I acted freely in that plague-stricken world. The events you could place in my memory, but not my thoughts, my feelings, my decisions. Not my sorrow for the Lady Beatrice. Surely not...

There are many who would say otherwise. Many who claim our minds are no more than organic computers anyway, and that we ourselves are “programmed” just as you are: less directly, of course, but no less surely. Perhaps that’s what the experimenters hope to prove.

I will not be manipulated so! It was no part of the bargain; it cannot be relevant to the training of interstellar explorers.

But have I still a choice? The data fades from your screen, and in its place the hypno-pattern ... lines, colors—rhythmic pulses to which my eyes are drawn ... I am powerless before this; too many times I’ve yielded willingly; I cannot break away, though within me now is fear...

What have you done to me, computer? And to other students? When I left you yesterday I felt normal, except for the questions newly stirred in my mind. You did not wipe them out, at least—and I’m aware that you were capable of it. Thus I take comfort from my very doubts.

Last night I told Paula of my adventure—but not before she told me of hers. You have heard her report; there’s no need for me to describe her experience, though it may interest you to know that I do not understand it. I do not see why people felt as she says they did in that era—the 1970s, was it? They feared the end of the world, yet to my mind, they were blind. They thought Earth might become uninhabitable! They thought its air and water might be polluted past reclamation. It would seem they felt like the folk I met who spoke of the noxious plague-wind. They believed it would last forever; they even called it a consequence of man’s sin.

There was one difference, to be sure. The air of Paula’s cities really was polluted. Still, this could scarcely be said to foreshadow the death of mankind. She insists people did say that. They actually feared all living things might die. And as if that were not bad enough, they thought disaster on one world would mean the extinction of the human race. Theirs was the age of doom, they felt; and the prophets of doom kept saying that no other world existed. “Only one Earth” was almost a slogan.

Paula tells me that I must not scoff at this. “But Paula,” I protested, “are you sure you got the date right? And that the computer has confirmed it? It is not reasonable; in the 1970s the first space voyages had been made. I learned that much history in school! There were primitive spaceships then, and ideas for better ones—people knew other worlds could be reached.”

“They knew,” she agreed, “but they did not see the significance. All they saw was what was happening to Earth then. And they thought—oh, it’s hard to explain, but they thought other planets wouldn’t help much, because the ones they could reach weren’t natural habitats, and they hadn’t enough knowledge to use their resources—” She broke off, confused and miserable. “They didn’t foresee cities in space, industry moved to space so that it wouldn’t pollute Earth any longer ... and oh, Mark, I didn’t either, while I was there, just as you say you didn’t know what carried the plague. And of course I didn’t remember interstellar colonies—”

She was still shaken as she described the thing; it lay heavy on her, as indeed the despair I met lies heavy on my own heart. We clung to each other. You were listening, I suppose; are not all areas of the ship hooked to your input circuits? It is no betrayal of Paula to report what you’ve already heard. If it were, I could defy you—or so I must believe.

“Mark, I—I’m afraid,” she confessed. “What’s happening to us?”

“I don’t know, Paula.”

“Could it be drugs, do you think?”

“Not entirely,” I answered. “Maybe we’re drugged part of the time, but it’s more than that. The journeys weren’t like drug trips, or like dreams. They were too rational. Wherever we were, we thought clearly and made decisions.”

“Really? Or did it only seem that way?”

I maintained, “Look, Paula, I know I decided what to do to protect the lady; every time we came to a crossroads, I had to decide. Certainly I was the one who decided to go to Annecy.”

“But we couldn’t have actually been in the past—so there had to be some sort of simulation. And anyway, history records what happened; if we acted on real decisions, we’d have been altering it.”

“The old time travel paradox,” I said lightly. “I can’t answer it any better than anybody else ever has. If there could just be a real time machine to experiment with—” I stopped; it wasn’t an hour for foolish fancies, and Paula was not amused. “I don’t claim we changed history,” I told her. “As you say, we couldn’t have really been in the past. I’m only sure that what happened to me wasn’t faked.”

“That’s illogical! There isn’t any kind of reality that could account for it.”

The Lady Beatrice, unreal? A mere shadow in my mind, created by some artificial bypass of my normal senses? Pondering it, I felt fear begin to rise again. “I—I can’t deny that it’s irrational,” I admitted. “But Paula, if they were programming my thoughts or something, I’d know.”

“No, you wouldn’t. How would you know if they altered the contents of your brain?”

“The brain isn’t everything.”

“What else is there?”

I hesitated, wondering if “soul” is a word with meaning for Paula. I’ve not gone quite so deep with her, despite the love we’ve found since we met as fellow-students. “Love, for instance,” I said finally. “Do we love just with our brains, Paula? Or our bodies? There’s something in us that makes us care—”

She pressed closer to me. “That’s true,” she whispered. “I couldn’t feel toward anyone as I do toward you. The computer couldn’t change that.”

I didn’t reply. I love Paula; in my own world I will always love her, and no one else ... but in that other world, with no memory of Paula, I loved the Lady Beatrice.

When I come to you now, computer, I feel very close to panic. This is more than a game, and I don’t know the rules; it is not fair! It does not make sense! Each morning—or each wakening, I should say, for there are no mornings here—I resolve that I will not come at all. Yet here I am, and I know that I have come freely. If you were forcing me, I would not have these suspicions.

Or would I? You wipe them from my mind, no doubt, as you wiped all memory from it while I lived in the “past”; I’ve assumed you’d do so if my mind were not truly free. These fears could be taken from me hypnotically, the way my instinctive fear of amnesia was suppressed. But my worry about the memory loss grew as I pondered it; reason told me I should worry, and my power to follow reason was not impaired. Nor is it now. The experimenters may want us to ponder! If their aim is not merely to rob us of will, but to make us aware of our loss ... to turn us into knowing puppets ... to force us to concede, consciously, that we are nothing but tools to be programmed...

That is monstrous! It is like the world my friend Carlos entered, which he later learned was sixteenth-century Earth. The men there believed that minds could indeed be forced. They did not have computers; they had something called the Inquisition. There was a girl, he said... but I won’t go through all that. They called her a witch and burned her for it; but not before she’d confessed to allying herself with the Devil. Carlos saw how the confession was obtained.

There have been other cases. The sixteenth century was not the only one in which such things were done. We have learned quite a lot about Earth these past few weeks. It was not as outworld legends have portrayed it; the golden age of innocence is a myth.

Is that their purpose? Simply to teach us that?

We have talked among ourselves, as was surely intended, else you’d not have released us from the silence you first imposed. And what, among us, have we seen?

A city—a glorious city—Athens by name; a city whose citizens were free. A city proud of its heritage: its learning, its art, its philosophy ... a city in its death throes, under siege, facing defeat in pitiful battle against the aggressor Sparta. There was evil in Athens, as elsewhere; there were slaves as well as citizens—but to Sparta all men were as slaves. The light of Athens died under Spartan rule, and the Athenians knew it was dying.

The Roman Empire. One hears the Roman Empire was corrupt, as indeed its rulers were, at times. One does not hear about commonplace folk in far-spread lands to whom it brought civilization. Nor does one hear that when it fell, they fell prey to ruthless barbarians; and not till one has stood among its hardpressed defenders at the last, seen one’s town pillaged, one’s people raped or slaughtered, does one know why its fall brought despair.

Other empires, of lesser import to Earth ... but important in their people’s eyes. The Aztecs of ancient Mexico, for instance: a small and isolated culture, but a high one, for all its savageries. Yes, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. It was their religion, a source of their strength; the very universe relied on the victims’ blood. I understand that no better than I comprehend what Paula saw; but Juan, who told us of it, had wept for the splendor ravaged by the white-faced conquerors: not only for the trust betrayed, the gold plundered, the carnage—but also for the temples defiled. He was marked for the gods in that world, his heart to nourish the sun; and he claims that he did not mind.

Many among us have faced death on our journeys; yet strangely, that has not seemed significant. Did it to me, in plague-ridden Italy, or even later, at the alpine lake in France where Beatrice was stricken? (I have seen maps, now; I have traced the route we followed.) It is not one’s own peril one thinks of, when one’s whole world is crumbling. The wider concerns override that.

And yet in the journeys our concerns are not wide; they only seem so. For us the universe is narrowed, narrowed not just to a single planet, but to a mere portion of that globe! It’s ironic, is it not? Take Cecile: Cecile was born on Alpha Centauri IV, traveled to sixteen suns and back again with her parents before she came of age; she has wanted to be part of a starship crew since childhood. In a Parisian dungeon, awaiting the guillotine that had claimed her companions, she knew nothing of the stars. She knew only that Paris had gone mad, that terror reigned where once there had been sanity, and that civilized ways appeared forever lost.

What does this mean, computer? Not simply a history lesson. We are not history students; we are destined for new worlds! And if the teaching of history were the goal, we would be shown things more consequential. No one has watched famous men or famous events; no one has seen Socrates or Abraham Lincoln or the first men to land on Earth’s moon. Cecile’s glimpse of the French Revolution told her nothing of the politics behind it. We see not causes, but situations. We mingle with ordinary people, people history doesn’t record ... like Beatrice. Did the Lady Beatrice ever live, or was she generated from your memory banks, a typical Italian noblewoman of her century?

No! She lived; she was real. I believe that; and if I believe it falsely my soul is lost to you, if I ever had a soul to lose. These journeys are more than a history course. We could be made to dream history and then told of it; the method would be explained, like other instruction techniques. We would wake and know we had been dreaming.

Sometimes I wonder if I am dreaming now; never before have I held to beliefs that aren’t rational. Perhaps this, not the plague world, is my nightmare.

I am afraid—yet I’m here not because of that, but in spite of it; if you’ve compelled me, it was not through fear. I know what is going to happen. I’ll be hypnotized again, and then again ... and someday soon, I will find myself in another strange “past” world. I will not be the first student to whom it’s happened twice, though the others are oddly reticent, as if they keep a secret that does not bear speaking of.

Am I a rash fool, or a coward? Do I want to learn that secret—or is it that I dare not set my will against yours, and thereby risk utter failure? In either case, you will have your way. When the hypno-pattern appears, I do not think I shall resist.

You will have your way, I said. Today I am not so sure. Oh, I shall not deceive you; I have been honest thus far, and honest I shall remain. I shall give you every advantage. For if I cannot win by the experimenters’ rules, no victory is possible.

Paula and I were talking again, speculating for the hundredth time about the journeys, so real, and yet—what? “Some sort of simulation,” she repeated. “What else could they be?” And I saw that she did not meet my eyes.

“Why isn’t it explained, though?” I questioned, because with a terrible surge of anguish, I guessed she knew.

“So that we will be afraid,” she replied, “and overcome our fear.”

“I’d like to believe that. But Paula—”

Hurriedly she went on, “We know they don’t just feed us information. The scheme is more elaborate, of course. There’s sensory input, too; perhaps films, maybe even enactments—”

She did not say it with conviction. I realized that she was concealing something, as much from herself as from me; and I recognized the thing I’d concealed in the depths of my own heart. I took her face between my hands and said, “We are both deceiving ourselves, Paula. But you are—hiding evidence, are you not?”

“I didn’t want to remember,” she whispered. “I didn’t even begin to, till last night. We aren’t supposed to remember what happens while we’re hypnotized. But there can be brief flashes, perhaps, like the brief flashes of foreknowledge we had during the journeys. Either that, or I dreamed ... but I think it’s memory.”

Her skin was cold, and she trembled. “I was in a different cubicle,” she told me, “not a computer terminal; there was a table like a doctor’s that I was lying on ... and there were strange controls and dials over my head. There were metal bands touching me, touching my temples—”

“Direct input to the brain, then.”

“I—I think so, Mark.”

“To our memory cells. We are no more than mindless guinea pigs! They have no license for that, not under the terms of the waivers we signed; we consented to danger, to hardship, to all types of psychological tactics—but not to being turned into robots. Not to loss of knowledge of what is real.”

“I don’t see why they’d want us to be robots! There’s no way that it could make us better explorers.”

“No. But we would not have signed the papers without that goal.” With a bitter laugh I said, “We’re gullible; we accepted a proposal too good to be true.”

“You think the whole thing is a fraud? But why? They could get any number of willing subjects for brain experiments—”

“From among top students, the best Earth and its colonies can offer? Besides, willing subjects were not what they wanted. They want to see if this can be done against our will, against the will of people too strong-willed to consent.”

“They claimed the hypnotism couldn’t be,” she said dubiously.

“It couldn’t, not at first. We had to cooperate. Once we’d begun, though—”

“The pattern gained a hold on us.”

Neither of us dared to wonder aloud whether that hold could be broken, or what would happen if it could. Would I come fully awake, suddenly, and know Beatrice for less than a phantom, the product of current fed into my brain cells? I was both unsure that I wanted to and appalled by my own hesitation.

Thoughtfully, Paula reflected, “It doesn’t quite add up, still. Why the past? Why not other sorts of false memories? And there’s a common factor in all the journeys; they focus on eras of fear and despair.”

“Naturally. It’s better proof of the method; we’d be more inclined to believe in happy illusions.” Even as I spoke, I became uncertain. No, it did not add up—the people of the past knew happiness in the midst of fears, as do we all; furthermore, Beatrice was a light to me amid darkness...

“Is it that they’re indoctrinating us? We’re meant not only to believe what’s not real, but to become pessimists?”

“If they program emotions directly,” I reasoned, “they could do that with pessimism itself. There’d be no need to simulate any cause for it.”

“And besides,” Paula declared, “if they want us to be pessimists about life, it’s not working.”

“That’s right, it’s not! We’ve all met despair, but it’s been despair over something that didn’t happen. The Great Plague didn’t wipe out Earth’s population. It didn’t even reduce it for long—the computer told me that; it went out of its way to tell me, when all I’d asked was whether there’d been such a plague.”

“And pollution didn’t destroy Earth either, or nuclear bombs. Those fears—all the prophecies of doom in different eras—weren’t valid. If the journeys show anything, it’s that; they support not pessimism, but optimism! Yet optimism could be generated directly, too, if they control our emotions—”

I pondered it, the pattern of the journeys for the moment overshadowing even my rage at the experimenters. Taken singly, the situations we’d met weren’t consequential. Taken together, the showed a trend. Time after time after time, Earth’s people had despaired, yet their setbacks had never been permanent. Something they’d not known had always come along to change the shape of things. And things had kept on progressing. It was not a mere matter of rising and falling, ups and downs—each era was an improvement over all previous ones in terms of knowledge, and in terms of the way the common folk had lived.

“Paula,” I asked, “those people you met of the 1970s—the ones who thought their cities so polluted—did they even know how it was at the time of the Great Plague? Could they even imagine whole towns dying without medical help, dying from disease spread by rats, with the bodies just carted out and dumped somewhere ... not only the poor, but the rich; not only the ignorant, but the best educated scholars? Could they imagine a time when nobody on the whole planet so much as guessed at a way to control epidemics, a way short of walling up people to starve, I mean?”

“No,” she said, “but you can’t blame them, Mark. We couldn’t have imagined that ourselves.” Quietly she added, “What we’re being taught is relevant. To understanding other civilizations, seeing that the problems they have aren’t hopeless.”

“I suppose it is. We have no grounds for judging the project a fraud.” I found that this realization didn’t lessen my bitterness. “Still the journeys themselves are sham,” I insisted. “The promise was violated; they are tampering with our inner minds, Paula.”

“For good cause, perhaps. Someday we may meet alien cultures—less mature than our own, probably, since they didn’t contact Earth long ago—”

“So we’re trained to understand immature views. I could accept that. I don’t mind the journeys, not even the bad parts; I wouldn’t mind the danger if it were real danger. What I mind is the deception.”

“Are we deceived? We’ve figured it out; maybe we were meant to figure it out.” She did not sound sure; she was pleading for me to agree.

I remained silent. I had told Paula I’d felt emotion in the other world; I had not said what kind, other than fear. How could I say to her now that feelings had been stirred in me that no simulator, no brain input machine, had the right to touch?

It was not only what I’d felt for the Lady Beatrice it was what she had felt for me. I had known what she felt—that last day, on the lake, there had been no room for question. No matter that the lake had been real, the water wet, the sun warm. No matter even that my memory of Beatrice was more vivid by far than that of anyone I’d known on Earth. These things could perhaps have been fed into my brain; and if so, I could not lament the loss of a freedom that had never existed. Perhaps, I thought wretchedly, the promise had been technically true: no one could be said to have sullied what was never more than illusion. Our minds could not have been free to begin with if we could indeed be thus programmed.

Yet if there was any meaning at all in life, they had no right to simulate the things that imparted meaning! Not goals, not longings. Most certainly not love. I felt sick, cheapened, at the thought they would dare to try it. No cause in the vast universe was worth that. There was no point in any venture if nothing could be trusted to be real.

And if what had passed between Beatrice’s mind and mine was not real, then nothing could be.

Could even my love for Paula?

I looked at her and saw that she too was in anguish; she was, in fact, in tears. Her arguments were not satisfying even to herself. “I—I won’t let myself be hypnotized again,” she said, “whether it’s for a good cause or not.” It occurred to me that she herself had kept hidden the most personal parts of her story.

So, computer, she and I are agreed: we will not yield to you again. We will let you try to force us ... but if you succeed despite our will, why in the name of reason should we care?

File this in my personal journal. It’s hardly something you need to be told; you’ve known more of it than I from the beginning, have you not, computer? But someday I may wish to look back on it myself.

We were sent for by the Project Head, Paula and I. I suppose you alerted him. Indeed, we rejoiced when the summons came; we guessed that you knew without trial you could no longer control us. But with the return of freedom came a sadness. “We will be disqualified and sent home,” Paula said wistfully. “We will never be star explorers now. Yet I couldn’t have paid the price, Mark.”

“Nor could I,” I answered and said nothing more till we were facing the Project Head.

He wasted no words. “You are troubled by what you’ve termed journeys,” he said. “You feel there is more at stake than mere training in adapting to strange worlds. You are right.

“In the first place, it’s a matter not of adaptation but of comprehension. Today’s interstellar explorers are good scientists who know most fields well and their particular specializations extremely well. But all such people are simply masters of data, data that could be absorbed by the computer. Explorers need more than that! They need a perspective—a viewpoint—something no computer has or ever will have.”

He smiled at us. “Don’t look so startled. Mark—Paula—if I hadn’t thought you incapable of accepting orthodox notions about likenesses between human minds and artificial intelligence, you would not be aboard this starship.”

We stood silent as he continued, “None of us can hope to comprehend alien cultures more advanced than ours; we simply can’t imagine them yet. We can only assume that the best preparation for meeting such civilizations lies in understanding the development of Earth’s—which is certainly the best preparation for contact with less advanced ones. We’re bound to misjudge primitive worlds if we fail to view their problems as things that will be outgrown. Yet few of us today have any grasp of what Earth has outgrown; we cannot see through the eyes of our ancestors. So we of this project got to thinking that if only we had a time machine—”

“But we don’t,” I objected. “It’s a fine idea; if we could go back in time we’d really understand progress. And it can be done with simulation. It even works! That’s beside the point; there’s still no excuse for trying to make us think it’s not simulated.”

“You are gaining much from the journeys, are you not? You’re learning more of our human heritage than any generation before you.”

Firmly I said, “We’ve been through all this ourselves, over and over. Yes, we are gaining, but nothing we gain is worth letting false memories, false emotions, be placed in our brains as if we were no more than computers. You yourself just acknowledged that we are more.”

“If you’re convinced that you’re more,” he said slowly, “your objections are invalid. I’ve been told before that it’s wrong to program human minds, but only by people who maintain that it’s also impossible! Impossible, that is, without the subject’s consent—and those who’ve said it is have conceded that no harm can be done by trying when consent is absent. Would you not have made the same concession?”

He paused, waiting for us to respond. Finally I said in a low voice, “Yes, while I had confidence in our inner freedom. I did not consent to relinquish mine; I would not have been afraid to let it be challenged. Yet the fact is that it was taken from me.”

“Why do you think so, Mark?” he asked softly.

“Because I believe!” I burst out. “I know better, but I can’t help still believing my journey was real.”

“Emotions are stronger than logic.”

“Exactly. My emotions were—programmed; that’s why I believe in something impossible, something reason tells me I must reject.”

“There are flaws in your reasoning, you know.”

“I know,” I agreed miserably. “I—I can’t resolve them. If my mind could be programmed that’s a fact, and one can’t object to facts on principle. I rage against life, I suppose, for being as it is; but some instinct won’t let me accept what’s been done. Something sacred was degraded and mimicked—something I’d thought could not be faked—”

“Aren’t you arguing in circles? You say now we took your freedom, though you’d believed we did not have that power—yet you came here today having won free of the computer’s control. Does that not prove we could not program you in the face of your resistance?”

Paula clutched my hand. Her eyes were bright with tears she was trying to hold back. “Mark—he’s right. It couldn’t have been done against our will. We’ve known that all along, but we’ve not been honest enough to admit it.”

It rose in me then: the idea I’d lacked courage to face. “The fault isn’t theirs,” I confessed. “It’s mine—ours. We were the ones who did wrong! We did consent, underneath; we sold our minds’ freedom for a chance at the stars.”

“Subconsciously, you mean?”

“While we were hypnotized. Yes, of course they dealt with our subconscious minds then; but they still had to ask us. They asked, and we consented; we must have. There’s no other answer,”

We turned away, wondering what would become of us, knowing that even though we’d refused to participate further, nothing could undo what had already happened. I felt more defiled than ever; yet I had brought it on myself...

“Mark.” The Project Head came after us. He put his hand on my shoulder and said gently, “There’s one other answer. An answer that should be obvious to you if you value your freedom enough to feel what you’re feeling now. Can you actually believe you relinquished it, any more than you can believe your journeys were sham?”

No, I realized. Deep inside, I couldn’t, though logically...

Emotions are stronger than logic.

Yet logic has to fit. So our premises could not all be valid, and there was just one we’d never questioned. It seemed unquestionable, but so were the realities that led to an inescapable choice.

“You must decide,” the Project Head declared, “what kind of belief you’re going to trust.”

Paula and I stared at each other. “The journeys were real,” she said.

Drawing breath, I stated, “There is a real time machine. We did travel into the past.”

“Yes. You did; the project concerns time travel, not brain research.”

Angrily I burst out, “Then why is it kept so secret? Why weren’t we told?”

The man sighed. “I ask you, Mark—what sort of reaction would I get from the average scientist if I announced we’ve invented a time machine? More to the point, what reaction would I have gotten from you when I recruited you for these experiments?”

“I’d have thought you were some kind of crackpot,” I admitted sheepishly. “Time travel’s not reasonable; it involves too many paradoxes—” And then it all fell into place. “I see ... the true programming isn’t what we were given by the computer—it’s what we’ve absorbed all our lives. The premises of our science, our civilization —that time machines are impossible, for instance. I never doubted that; I was willing to doubt my own subconscious integrity first! There was only one way you could prove time travel exists.”

So, computer, here I am once more; and now again I shall let you do as you will with me. I have learned where to place my trust: not in you, not in logical assumptions, not in my own fears and misgivings ... but in the feelings I have always cherished inwardly. They will not be violated; such things are inviolable. Free will is one of them. Love is another. How could I have let myself doubt the reality of love?

I do not resent the method used to convince us. It had to be done the way it was. With suggestible people, no doubt, all skepticism about time travel could have been removed during hypnosis; but they don’t want suggestible people. Independent people make better explorers. Also there’s the ethics of it—they have to have genuine volunteers, ones unwilling to put up with just anything, ones capable of drawing a line on which to stand. There is risk involved. The time machine itself is experimental, and its newness is not the only danger. We who are now privy to the secret are rightly pledged to keep it from those not yet ready for further journeys.

I have already begun to receive preparation for my second, I am told, though I shall not be permitted to know the destination. The need for long hours of hypnotic instruction is clear: I must be taught language, custom, everything I will need to pass as native-born. These things were discovered by instructors who have gone before me, men and women who’ve taken risks far greater than mine. About the time machine’s operation, I know nothing, and I gather there is much that no one knows. It works. Under deep hypnosis, one lies on a table, and one ... disappears. One returns to an hour only slightly past that of one’s disappearance—if one follows the posthypnotic command to trigger the mechanism one carries, the thing I did unknowingly when I turned the stone of the carnelian ring. This is a step to be taken only in circumstances of desperation; but it seems that such circumstances are not likely to be lacking. There was never an era without its own problems.

To be sure, we are deliberately plunged into the most hopeless ones—for only thus can we learn hope. The hypnotic amnesia is induced so our knowledge can’t influence the past, but also for another reason. We are deprived of “foreknowledge” that would keep us from understanding hopelessness. With hindsight, the fears of the past seem groundless; but they were not groundless to those who faced them. This we must know to become carriers of our heritage, not only to new colonies, but someday, perhaps, to alien civilizations with problems yet unsolved: we must know how to put them into perspective.

Small wonder we were required to sign waivers.

We are in peril on the journeys, real peril, and not merely from our dependence on the machine. Against the plague I was inoculated; against stray arrows and the like, there is no protection. But more than that, we are in peril of succumbing to despair. When one cannot see where the future will lead, one does not stop to think that nobody has ever seen where the future will lead.

In the 1970s people feared the world would be destroyed by pollution and nuclear bombs. I’d have laughed at that if I’d read of it before hearing it from Paula; but Paula was there, and it was not laughable.

In the 1340s people feared the Great Plague was the end of the world. I do not laugh at that, and I do not brush it aside—yet how many people of our century have ever heard of the plague? Ah, Beatrice, if you could but know...

Did she really die in my arms? That is a paradox; that is a thing I cannot answer; but I know she lived, whoever rode beside her from that town of ancient Italy to the deceptively safe Alps of France.

The Project Head does well not to make any public announcement. For many, the paradoxes would be too awesome. That is what will faze man next, perhaps. Not all the students have journeyed to eras of death and destruction: Anne, for instance, found herself among folk who were thrown into despair by the nova of 1604. Because it altered their world-view, they believed it portended decay of the entire cosmos; that was not laughable either, though it took Anne some hours to tell us why. Their outlook was so utterly alien to us—

The world-views of alien species may be no more remote! And we’ve considered ourselves fit emissaries of mankind.

We were not wise enough; no one was: we knew too little of our own roots. We cared only for the future. The past was gone, we thought, and no longer mattered, Oh, we studied it, but it was pallid and without meaning beside our now. Now is not enough for comprehension of a civilization; it is one-dimensional, as if a person were to live in a single spot of a single planet all his life, and think himself ready for the universe.

So, over and over, we shall go into vanished times, and see through their people’s eyes and share their fears and joys and griefs; until at last we know enough of human progress to understand our own place ... and to grasp the state of alien peoples, if we should ever meet any. And the griefs will leave their mark on us—but the stars are worth that price.