Fool's Errand (by Lester del Rey)

In spite of the wind from the Mediterranean, six miles to the south, the university city of Montpellier reeked with the stench of people huddled together in careless filth; and the twilight softness could only partially conceal the dirt and lack of sanitation in the narrow, twisting streets. No one in this leading medical center of the sixteenth century had heard of germs, and no one cared.

But Roger Sidney, Professor of Paraphysics at a university that would not be built for another six centuries, both knew and cared. He shuddered, and his tall, thin figure wove carefully around some of the worst puddles, while his eyes were turned upward fearfully toward the windows above; one experience with a shower of slop from them had been more than enough. He pressed a kerchief to his nose, but his weary feet went on resolutely. Somewhere in this city was a man called Nostradamus, and Sidney had not dared seven centuries to give up the search because of even this degree of dirt and stench and inconvenience.

Nostradamus, the prophet, author of the cryptic Centuries] More important, though, was the original clear manuscript of prophecy from which the Centuries were distorted; sheer accident had led to the discovery of that in 1989, where Nostradamus had hidden it from too curious eyes, and it had long since proven accurate. If authentic, it was the only known conclusive proof of prophecy beyond the life-span of the prophet, and that was now important. The para-psychologists denied that authenticity, since their mathematics showed such prophecy to be impossible, and had even devised an elaborate theory of a joke by some far-future time-traveler to account for its accuracy. With equally sound proof of unlimited prophecy, the paraphysicists could not accept such a useless jest, though they had known for years that time travel was theoretically possible.

Now, if Nostradamus would accept the manuscript as being his, the controversy would be ended, and the paraphysicists could extend their mathematics with sureness that led on toward glorious, breathtaking possibilities. Somewhere, perhaps within a few feet, was the man who could settle the question conclusively, and somehow Sidney must find him—and soon!

But the little sign appeared at last, a faded blue rooster crowing over the legend: Le Coq Bleu. He turned down the steps into the tavern and felt momentary relief from the unpleasant world outside; mercifully, the straw on the floor had just been changed, and there was the smell of spitted fowls to remind him of his forgotten appetite. He let his eyes wander along the benches and tables, but they were filled, and he hesitated.

In a booth at the side, a slight young man had been eyeing his soiled finery carefully, and now he motioned with a careless hand. "Ho, stranger, I've room in this booth for another. And my stomach has room for a pot more of wine, if you'd ask it." The French was still strange to Sidney's ears, even after the years o_f preparations, but the somewhat impudent grin was common to all centuries of students.

He dropped onto the hard bench, feeling his legs shake with weariness from the long chase as he did so. The pressing urge for haste before his time ran out was still in him, but he tried to conceal it as he approached the single subject on his mind. By sheer willpower he mustered an answering smile and tossed a coin on the table. "And perhaps food to go with it, eh? You're a student at the university?"

"Your questions are as correct as the color of your money, stranger, and that is correct indeed." The youth was up with the coin in his fingers, to return in a few moments with two thick platters bearing roasted pullets and with a smiling, bowing landlord carrying a jug of red wine. Sidney grinned ruefully as his fingers made clutching motions at the table where there were no forks, then ripped off a leg and used his fingers as the other was doing. The wine was raw and a bit sour, though there was strength to it, and some relief.

But there was no time to be wasted, and he returned to the pressing questions uppermost in his mind. "As a student, then, perhaps you know one Michel de Notredame? After I located his lodgings, they told me he might be here . . . and I've come all the way from Paris to find him. If you can point him out or take me to him, I'll pay you well for your trouble."

"From Paris, eh?" Suspicion crept slowly into the eyes of the other. "Four hundred miles—a week to ten days of hard journey—to see an

obscure student? Stranger, your speech is odd, your clothes are strange, but that is fantastic! His relatives are poor and he is poorer. If this is some strange manner of pressing for his debts, you but waste your time; I'll have none of it. If you have other reasons, name them, and I'll think on it."

"Then you do know him?"

"By sight, but you'll not find him here, so save your glances. Well?"

Sidney pulled his eyes back, and his fingers shook with the eagerness that had carried him through the torture of that frantic chase from Paris after he'd learned of his mistake. But he fought again for reason and coolness and for some approach that would quiet the suspicion of the student. The truth was unbelievable, but he could think of nothing else that would ring true, and he was not adept at lies.

"I care nothing for his past—his debts, his sins, or his crimes. All I'm concerned with is his future, which will make your obscure friend the greatest man of this age. But it's a strange story, and you'd think me raving mad."

The other shrugged. "I've studied philosophy and medicine, and there's little left I can't believe. Your story interests me. Spin it well, and perhaps I'll take you to him, unless he should come here first— which I think most unlikely this evening. As to madness, I'm a bit mad myself. . . . Landlord, more wine!"

The student was far more interested in the wine than the story, and Sidney felt his upsurge of hope fading again. He'd found already how faint were his chances of tracking down any particular person in the maze of this city. And in another hour perhaps, or even at any minute, he might feel the surge and pull of the great machine in his home century, to go spinning back with his mission unfulfilled. Already his time was overdue! He narrowed his thoughts down, trying to find some quicker proof that might suffice if he could have the other. "Tell me—honestly in the name of God—how well do you know Michel de Notredame?"

"We share lodgings. Well enough."

"Then if my time grows too short and he does not come, perhaps you'll do. Here." He flipped his purse out on the table, filled with coins that had been matchlessly counterfeited by minters of the twenty-third century, and with others genuine to the time, received in change. "Take it—all—it's yours. Only believe me. Michel de Notredame, under the name of Nostradamus, will be the greatest of all prophets in the years to come. His name will be greater even than

that of her Majesty, Catherine de Medici. Can you believe that a man from the future might find a need to see him—and even find a way of coming back to do so? I did! I left the year of Grace 2211, intending to reach Paris in 1550. By error, it was 1528, and he was not there, but I knew he had been studying here, so here I am. Can you believe that, young man—for the contents of this purse?"

The other's hands had come up slowly to cross himself, then dropped, while his eyes turned from fear to distrust, and then to speculation. "For the money—why not? I've heard that warlocks could bring the long dead from the past by magic and the use of certain Names of Power; perchance a greater one might journey back himself. Black magic? And yet, your face has none of Satan's knowledge in it. How?"

"I can't tell you. There are no words yet. Call it science—or white magic. Not black." Sidney's fingers shook again in reaction from the disbelief he had expected; but he should have known that skepticism is a product of a science advanced enough to doubt, but not to accept what lies beyond its knowledge. He shook his head, remembering the long years of preparation and the work that had gone into his being here. He could never explain that, or the need behind it, when paraphysics and parapsychology would be meaningless words.

He could never tell of the immense, inconceivable power needed to bridge time from one of its loops to another, or of the struggle he and his colleagues had waged for three decades to be granted the use of such power. Now, it had surged out, carrying him in the tiny network of wires woven into these garments into the past; sometime soon, the return surge must flow back to return him. They had figured a week, and already ten desperate days were gone while he fled south on the fool's errand that must be made. Their calculations had erred as to the length of the time loop by twenty-two years, and he could not guess how that would affect the length of the power surge, but the return flow must surely have begun.

He caught himself up and went urgently on. "Notredame won fame in the court of Catherine for prophecy while living; when he died, he left verses called 'Centuries,' with tantalizing hints which some believed; and when his original manuscript was found, he won an undisputed place in all history. Now, we must know without the doubts that exist whether that manuscript was his; we must. Even a little evidence might decide, but... Do you know his writing?"

"I've seen it often enough. Stranger, your story begins to interest me, whatever truth lies in it. But as to prophecy, anyone will tell you it's no uncommon thing; the greatest astrologers in the world are in

France." The student filled his mug again and leaned back, shaking his head to clear it of wine fumes. "If this Nostradamus was an astrologer and you need astrologers, why not find others?"

Sidney shrugged it aside. "No matter, they would not help. He claimed to be an astrologer, of course, but ... But could you swear to his writing if you saw it? Here!" He thrust his hand into his clothes and brought out a parchment manuscript, to spread it quickly on the table. "This is an exact copy, down to the very texture of the parchment and smudges of ink upon it. Don't mind the contents; they no longer concern us, since we've passed the final date of specific forecasts. Only study the writing. It's a young man's script, and all else we have of his is from his later years. But you know his younger hand. Swear to me honestly, is it his?"

The youth bent his head over it, tracing with his finger, and running his other hand across reddened eyes. Sidney cursed the wine and the slowness of the man, but at last the other looked up, and something in the frantic desperation of Sidney's face seemed to settle his doubts, for his own turned suddenly serious.

"I don't know, stranger; it looks like it—and yet I never wrote such words, nor ever planned to."

"You . . . you—Notredame!"

"I am Michel de Notredame, a drunken fool to admit the fact even now, when you might be here on any—"

But Roger Sidney from 2211 was laughing, a wracking that shook him in convulsions, harshly soundless. One trembling finger pointed to the manuscript, then to the student, and the convulsive shaking redoubled. "A cycle—a closed cycle! And we—and that—that—" But he could not finish. Notredame swung his eyes about to see if others were noticing, but the tavern was emptied and the landlord was busy at the far end. He turned back, and suddenly crossed himself.

There was a glow about the stranger, a network of shining threads in his garments that might have been frozen lightning. It spread, misted, and was gone, while the bench where he had been was suddenly empty. Notredame was alone, and with slowly whitening face, he began to cross himself again, only to stop and snatch the purse and coins from the table where they lay and tuck them into his clothes. For a second, he hesitated, his now-sober eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

"Nostradamus," he muttered. "Nostradamus, astrologer to the court of the Queen. I like the sound of that."

His fingers picked up the manuscript, and he slipped swiftly out into the night.