“Can’t they go back locally?” she pleaded. “Can’t somebody hop back a week from now, just to tell him not to go, is that so much to ask? What kind of monsters made that law against it?”

“Ordinary men did,” said Everard. “If we once started doubling back to tinker with our personal pasts, we’d soon get so tangled up that none of us would exist.”

“But in a million years or more—there must be exceptions!”

Everard didn’t answer. He knew that there were. He knew also that Keith Denison’s case wouldn’t be one of them. The Patrol was not staffed by saints, but its people dared not corrupt their own law for their own ends. You took your losses like any other corps, and raised a glass to the memory of your dead, and you did not travel back to look upon them again while they had lived.

Presently Cynthia left him, returned to her drink and tossed it down. The yellow locks swirled past her face as she did. “I’m sorry,” she said. She got out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “I didn’t mean to bawl.”

“It’s okay.”

She stared at the floor. “You could try to help Keith. The regular agents have given up, but you could try.”

It was an appeal from which he had no recourse. “I could,” he told her. “I might not succeed. The existing records show that, if I tried, I failed. And any alteration of space-time is frowned on, even a trivial one like this.”

“It isn’t trivial to Keith,” she said.

“You know, Cyn,” he murmured, “you’re one of the few women that ever lived who’d have phrased it that way. Most would have said, It isn’t trivial to me.”

Her eyes captured his, and for a moment she stood very quiet. Then, whispering:

“I’m sorry, Manse. I didn’t realize… I thought, what with all the time that’s gone past for you, you would have—”

“What are you talking about?” he defended himself.

“Can’t the Patrol psychs do anything for you?” she asked. Her head drooped again. “I mean, if they can condition us so we just simply can’t tell anyone unauthorized that time travel exists… I should think it would also be possible to, to condition a person out of—”