Pastwatch: The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Read online

  His technique was simple: See what the monarchs want and need in order to further their effort to make of Spain a Christian kingdom, driving the unbeliever from any power or influence, and then interpret all the pertinent texts to show how scripture, Church tradition, and all the ancient writers were united in supporting the course that the monarchs had already determined to pursue. The funny thing -- or, when he was in another mood, the sad thing -- was that no one ever caught on to his method. When he invariably brought in scholarship that would support the cause of Christ and the monarchs of Spain, everyone assumed that this meant that the course the monarchs were pursuing was the right one, not that Talavera had been clever about manipulating the texts. It was as if they did not realize the texts could be manipulated.

  And yet they all manipulated and interpreted and transformed the ancient writings. Certainly Maldonado did it to defend his own elaborate preconceptions, and Deza just as much to attack them. But none of them seemed to know that this was what they were doing. They thought they were discovering truth.

  How many times Talavera had wished to speak to them with utter scorn. Here is the only truth that matters, he wanted to say: Spain is at war, purifying Iberia as a Christian land. The King has conducted this war deftly and patiently, and he will win, driving the last Moors from Iberia. The Queen is now setting into motion what England wisely did years ago: the expulsion of the Jews from her kingdom. (Not that the Jews were dangerous by intent -- Talavera had no sympathy with Torquemada's fanatical belief in the evil plots of the Jews. No, the Jews had to be expelled because as long as the weaker Christians could look around them and see unbelievers prospering, see them marrying and having children and living normal and decent lives, they would not be firm in their faith that only in Christ is there happiness. The Jews had to go, just as the Moors had to go.)

  And what had Colўn to do with this? Sailing west. So what? Even if he was right, what would it accomplish? Convert the heathen in a far-off land when Spain itself was not yet unified in its Christianity? That would be marvelous and well worth the effort -- as long as it didn't interfere in any way with the war against the Moors. So, while the others argued about the size of the Earth and the passability of the Ocean Sea, Talavera was always weighing far more important matters. What would the news of this expedition do to the prestige of the Crown? What would it cost and how would the diversion of such funds affect the war? Would supporting Colўn cause Aragon and Castile to draw closer together or farther apart? What do the King and Queen actually want to do? If Colўn were sent away, where would he go next and what would he do?

  Until today, the answers had all been clear enough. The King did not intend to spend one peso on anything but the war against the Moors, while the Queen very much wanted to support Colўn's expedition. That meant that any decision at all would be divisive. In the delicate balance between King and Queen, between Aragon and Castile, any decision on Colўn's expedition would cause one of them to think that power had drifted dangerously in the other direction, and suspicion and envy would increase.

  Therefore, regardless of all the arguments, Talavera was determined that no verdict would be reached until the situation changed. It was easy enough at first, but as the years passed and it became clear that Colўn had nothing new to offer, it became harder and harder to keep the issue alive. Fortunately, Colўn was the only other person involved in the process who seemed to understand it. Or if he didn't understand it, at least he cooperated with Talavera to this degree: He kept hinting that he knew more than he was telling. Veiled references to information he learned while in Lisbon or Madeira, mentions of proofs that had not yet been brought forward, this was what allowed Talavera to keep the examination open.

  When Maldonado (and Deza, for opposite reasons) wanted him to force Colўn to lay these great secrets on the table, to settle things once and for all, Talavera always agreed that it would be a great help if Colўn would do so, but one must understand that anything Colўn learned in Portugal must have been learned under sacred oath. If it was just a matter of fear of Portuguese reprisals, then no doubt Colўn would tell, for he was a brave man and not afraid of anything King John might do. But if it was a matter of honor, then how could they insist that he break his oath and tell? That would be the same as asking Colўn to damn himself to hell for all eternity, just to satisfy their curiosity. Therefore they must listen carefully to all that Colўn said, hoping that, clever scholars that they were, they could determine just what it was he could not tell them openly.

  And, by the grace of God, Colўn himself played along. Surely the others had all taken him aside, at one time or another, trying to pry from him the secrets that he would not tell. And in all these long years, Colўn had never given a hint of what his secret information was. Just as important, he had also never given a hint that there was no secret information.

  For a long time Talavera had not studied the arguments -- he had grasped those at the start and nothing important had been added in years. No, what Talavera studied was Colўn himself. At first he had assumed that Colўn was just another courtier on the make, but that impression was quickly dispelled. Colўn was absolutely, fanatically determined to sail west, and could not be distracted by any other sort of preferment. Gradually, though, Talavera had come to see that this voyage west was not an end in itself. Colўn had dreams. Not of personal wealth or fame, but rather dreams of power. Colўn wanted to accomplish something, and this westward voyage was the foundation of it. And what was it that Colўn wanted to do? Talavera had puzzled about this for months, for years.

  Today, at last, the answer had come. Departing from his usual scholarly bludgeoning, Maldonado had remarked, rather testily, that it was selfish of Colўn to try to distract the monarchs from their war with the Moors, and Colўn had suddenly erupted in anger. "A war with the Moors? For what, to drive them from Granada, from a small corner of this dry peninsula? With the wealth of the East we could drive the Turk from Constantinople, and from there it is only a short step to Armageddon and the liberation of the Holy Land! And you tell me that I must not do this, because it might interfere with the war against Granada? You might as well tell a matador that he cannot kill the bull because it might interfere with the effort to stomp on a mouse!"

  At once Colўn had regretted his remarks, and was quick to reassure everyone that he had nothing but the greatest enthusiasm for the great war against Granada. "Forgive me for letting my passion rule my mouth," said Colўn. "Never for a moment have I wished for anything but the victory of the Christian armies over the infidel in Granada."

  Talavera had immediately forgiven him and forbidden anyone to repeat Colўn's remarks. "We know that what you said was in zeal for the cause of Christ, wishing that we could accomplish even more than victory against Granada, not less."

  Colўn himself seemed relieved indeed to hear Talavera's words. It could have been the death of his petition right on the spot, if his remarks had been taken as disloyalty -- and the personal consequences could have been severe as well. The others had also nodded wisely. They had no wish to denounce Colўn. For one thing, it would hardly redound to their credit if it had taken them this many years to discover that Colўn was a traitor!

  What Colўn did not know, what none of them knew, was how deeply his words had touched Talavera's soul. A Crusade to liberate Constantinople! To break the power of the Turk! To plunge a knife into the heart of Islam! In a few sentences Colўn had forced Talavera to view his life's work in a new light. All these years that Talavera had devoted himself to the cause of Spain for Christ's sake, and now he realized that next to Colўn his own faith was childish. Colўn is right: If we serve Christ, why are we chasing mice when the great bull of Satan struts through the greatest Christian city?

  For the first time in years, Talavera realized that serving the King and Queen might not be identical to serving the cause of Christ. He realized that for the first time in his life he was in the presence of someone whose devotion to Christ might well b
e the match of his own. Such was my pride, thought Talavera, that it took me this many years to see it.

  And in those years, what have I done? I have kept Colўn trapped here, leading him on, keeping the question open year after year, all because making any kind of decision might weaken the relationship between Aragon and Castile. Yet what if it is Colўn, and not Ferdinand and Isabella, who understands what will best serve the cause of Christ? How does the purification of Spain compare to the liberation of all the ancient Christian lands? And with the power of Islam broken, what then would stop Christianity from spreading forth to fill the world?

  If only Colўn had come to us with a plan for Crusade instead of this strange voyage to the west. The man was eloquent, forceful, and there was something about him that made you want to be on his side. Talavera imagined him going from king to king, from court to court. He might well have been able to convince the monarchs of Europe to unite in common cause against the Turk.

  Instead, Colўn seemed sure that the only way to bring about such a Crusade was to establish a direct, quick connection with the great kingdoms of the East. Well, what if he was right? What if God had put this vision in his mind? Certainly it was nothing an intelligent man would have thought of on his own -- the most rational plan was to sail around Africa as the Portuguese were doing. But wasn't that, too, a species of madness? Weren't there ancient writers who had assumed that Africa extended all the way to the south pole, so there was no way to sail around it? Yet the Portuguese had persisted, finding again and again that no matter how far south they sailed, Africa was always there, extending even farther than they had imagined. Yet last year Dias at last returned with the good news -- they had rounded a cape and found that the coast ran to the east, not to the south; and then, after hundreds of miles, it definitely ran to the northeast and then the north. They had rounded Africa. And now the irrational persistence of the Portuguese was widely known to be rational after all.

  Couldn't Colўn's irrational plans turn out the same way? Only instead of a years-long voyage, his route to the Orient would bring wealth much faster. And his plan, instead of enriching a tiny useless country like Portugal, would lead eventually to the Church of Christ filling the entire world!

  So now, instead of thinking how to drag out the examination of Colўn, waiting for the desires of the monarchs to resolve themselves, Talavera sat in his austere chamber trying to think how to force the issue. One thing he certainly could not do was suddenly, after all these years and with no significant new arguments, announce that the committee was deciding in favor of Colўn. Maldonado and his supporters would protest directly to the King's men, and a power struggle would ensue. The Queen would almost certainly lose such an open struggle, since her support from the lords of her realm depended in large part on the fact that she was known to "think like a man." Disagreeing openly with the King would give the lie to that idea. Thus open support for Colўn would lead to division and probably would not lead to a voyage.

  No, Talavera thought, the one thing I cannot do is support Colўn. So what can I do?

  I can set him free. I can end the process and let him go on to another king, to another court. Talavera well knew that Colўn's friends had made discreet inquiries in the courts of France and England. Now that the Portuguese had achieved their quest for an African route to the East, they might be able to afford a small exploratory expedition toward the west. Certainly the Portuguese advantage in trading with the Orient will be envied by other kings. Colўn might well succeed somewhere. So whatever else happens, I must end his examination immediately.

  But could there not also be a way to end the examination and yet turn things to the advantage of Colўn's supporters?

  With a half-formed plan in mind, Talavera sent to the Queen a note bearing his request for a secret audience with her on the matter of Colўn.

  * * *

  Tagiri did not understand her own reaction to the news of success from the scientists working on time travel. She should be happy. She should be rejoicing to know that her great work could, physically, be accomplished. Yet ever since the meeting with the team of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers working on the time travel project, she had been upset, angry, frightened. The opposite of how she had expected she would feel.

  Yes, they said, we can send a living person into the past. But if we do so there is no chance, no chance whatsoever, that our present world will survive in any form. To send someone into the past to change it is the end of ourselves.

  They were so patient, trying to explain temporal physics to historians. "If our time is destroyed," Hassan asked, "then won't that also destroy the very people that we send back? If none of us are ever born, then the people we send won't have been born either, and therefore they could never have been sent. "

  No, explained the physicists, you're confusing causality with time. Time itself, as a phenomenon, is utterly linear and unidirectional. Each moment happens only once, and passes into the next moment. Our memories grasp this one-way flow of time, and in our minds we link it with causality. We know that if A causes B, then A must come before B. But there is nothing in the physics of time that requires this. Think of what your predecessors did. The machine they sent back in time was the product of a long causal network. Those causes were all real, and the machine actually existed. Sending it back in time did not undo any of the events that led to the creation of that machine. But in the moment that the machine caused Columbus to see his vision on that beach in Portugal, it began to transform the causal network so that it no longer led to the same place. All of those causes and effects really happened -- the ones leading to the creation of the machine, and the ones following from the machine's introduction into the fifteenth century.

  "But then you're saying that their future still exists," Hunahpu protested.

  That depends on how you define existence, they explained. As a part of the causal network leading to the present moment, yes, they continue to exist in the sense that any part of their causal network that led to the existence of their machine in our time is still having effects in the present world. But anything peripheral or irrelevant to that is now utterly without effect in our timestream. And anything in their history that the introduction of that machine in our history caused not to happen is utterly and irrevocably lost. We can't go back into our past and view it because it didn't happen.

  "But it did happen, because their machine exists."

  No, they said again. Causality can be recursive, but time cannot. Anything that the introduction of their machine caused not to happen, did not in fact happen in time. There is no moment of time in which those events exist. Therefore they cannot be seen or visited because the temporal loci which they occupied are now occupied by different moments. Two contradictory sets of events cannot occupy the same moment: You are only confused because you cannot separate causality from time. And that's perfectly natural, because time is rational. Causality is irrational. We've been playing speculative games with the mathematics of time for centuries, but we would never have seen this distinction between time and causality ourselves if we hadn't had to account for the machine from the future.

  "So what you're saying," Diko offered, "is that the other history still exists, but we just can't see it with our machines."

  That's not what we're saying, they replied with infinite patience. Anything that was not causally connected to the creation of that machine cannot be said to have ever existed at all. And anything that did lead to the creation of that machine and its introduction into our time exists only in the sense that unreal numbers exist.

  "But they did exist," Tagiri said, more passionately than she had expected. "They did."

  "They did not," said old Manjam, who had let his younger colleagues speak for him till now. "We mathematicians are quite comfortable with this -- we have never dwelt in the realm of reality. But of course your mind rebels against it because your mind exists in time. What you must understand is that causality is not real. It does not
exist in time. Moment A does not really cause Moment B in reality. Moment A exists, and then Moment B exists, and between them are Moments A.a through A.z, and between A.a and A.b there are A.aa through A.az. None of these moments actually touches any other moment. That is what reality is -- an infinite array of discreet moments unconnected with any other moment because each moment in time has no linear dimension. When the machine was introduced into our history, from that point forward a new infinite set of moments completely replaced the old infinite set of moments. There were no spare leftover moment-locations for the old moments to hang around in. And because there was no time for them, they didn't happen. But causality is unaffected by this. It isn't geometric. It has a completely different mathematics, one which does not fit well with concepts like space and time and certainly doesn't fit within anything that you could call 'real.' There is no space or time in which those events happened."

  "What does that mean?" said Hassan. "That if we send somebody back in time, they will suddenly cease to remember anything about the time they came from, because that time no longer exists?"

  "The person that you send back," said Manjam, "is a discrete event. He will have a brain, and that brain will contain memories that, when he accesses them, will give him certain information. This information will cause him to think he remembers a whole reality, a world and a history. But all that exists in reality is him and his brain. The causal network will only include those causal connections which led to the creation of his physical body, including his brain state, but any part of that causal network which is not part of the new reality cannot be said to exist in any way."