Columbus struggled back up to his knees. "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," he murmured.

"I have sent a woman to you, to nurse you back to health. When your strength is restored to you, you must begin your mission in my name. Tell no one that I have spoken to you -- it is not my will that you perish like the prophets of old, and if you say that I have spoken to you the priests will surely burn you as a heretic. You must persuade others to help you undertake this great voyage for its own sake, and not because I have commanded it. I care not whether they do it for gold or for fame or for love of me, just so they fulfill this mission. Just so you fulfill it. You. Carry out my mission."

The image faded, and was gone. Almost weeping with exhaustion and glorious hope, Cristoforo -- no, he was Columbus now, God had called him Columbus, his name in Latin, the language of the Church -- Columbus waited in the sand. And, as the vision had promised, within minutes a woman came and, seeing him, immediately ran for help. Before night had fully come, he was being carried in the strong arms of fishermen to the village of Lagos, where gentle hands put wine to his lips and took his salt- and sand-caked clothing from him and bathed the salt from his chafed skin. Thus am I newly baptized, thought Columbus, born again on the mission of the Holy Trinity.

He uttered no word of what had transpired on the beach, but already his mind churned with thoughts of what he had to do. The great kingdoms of the east -- immediately he thought of the tales of Marco Polo, of the Indies, of Cathay, of Cipango. Only to reach them he would not sail east, nor south along the coast of Africa as the Portuguese were said to be doing. No, he would sail west. But how would he get a ship? Not in Genova. Not after the ship he had been entrusted with was sunk. Besides, the ships of Genova were not fast enough, and they wallowed too low in the open water of the ocean.

God had brought him to the Portuguese shore, and the Portuguese were the great sailors, the daring explorers of the world. Would he not be the viceroy of kings? He would find a way to win the sponsorship of the King of Portugal. And if not him, then another king, or some other man and not a king at all. He would succeed, for God was with him.

Diko stopped the playback. "Do you want to see it again?" she asked.

"We'll want to see it many times," said Tagiri. "But not at this moment."

"That was not God," said Kemal.

"I hope not," said Hassan. "I didn't like seeing that Christian trinity. I found it -- disappointing."

"Show this anywhere in the Muslim world," said Kemal, "and the rioting would not stop until every Pastwatch installation within their reach was destroyed."

"As you said, Kemal," said Tagiri, "it was not God. Because this vision was not visible to Columbus alone. All the other great visions of history have been utterly subjective. This one we saw, but not on the Tempoview. Only the TruSite Il was able to detect it, and we already know that when the TruSite Il is used, it can cause people in the past to see those who are watching."

"One of us? That message was sent by Pastwatch?" asked Kemal, already angry at the thought of one of them meddling with history.

"Not one of us," said Diko. "We live in the world in which Columbus sailed west and brought Europe to destroy or dominate all of America. In the hours since I saw this, I realized: This vision created our time. We already know that Columbus's voyage changed everything. Not just because he reached the West Indies, but because when he returned he was full of absolutely believable stories of things he had not seen. Of gold, of great kingdoms. And now we now why. He had sailed west at the command of God, and God had told him he would find these things. So he had to report finding them, he had to believe that gold and great kingdoms were there to be found, even though he had no evidence for them, because God had told him they were there."

"If not one of us, then who did this?" asked Hassan.

Kemal laughed nastily. "It was one of us, obviously. Or rather, one of you."

"Are you saying we created this as a hoax?" said Tagiri.

"Not at all," said Kemal. "But look at you. You are the people in Pastwatch who are determined to reach back into the past and make things better. So let's say that in another version of history, another group within a previous iteration of Pastwatch discovered they could change the past, and they did it. Let's say that they decided that the most terrible event in all of history was the last crusade, the one led by the son of a Genovese weaver. Why not? In that history, Columbus turned his unrelenting ambition toward the goal he had right before this vision. He comes to shore and interprets his survival as God's favor. He pursues the crusade to liberate Constantinople with the same charm, the same relentlessness that we have seen in him on his other mission. Eventually he leads an army in a bloody war against the Turk. What if he wins? What if he destroys the Seljuk Turks, and then sweeps on into all the Muslim lands, wreaking blood and carnage in the normal European Christian manner? The great Muslim civilization might be destroyed, and with it who knows what treasures of knowledge. What if Columbus's crusade was seen as the worst event in all of history -- and the people of Pastwatch decided, as you have, that they must make things better? The result is our history. The devastation of the Americas. And the world is dominated by Europe all the same."

The others looked at him, unable to think of anything to say.

"Who is to say that the change these people made didn't end up with a worse result than the events they tried to avoid?" Kemal grinned at them wickedly. "The arrogance of those who wish to play God. And that's exactly what they did, isn't it? They played God. The Trinity, to be exact. The dove was such a nice touch. Yes, by all means, look at this scene a thousand times. And every time you see those poor actors pretending to be the Trinity, fooling Columbus into turning away from his crusade and embarking on a westward voyage that devastated a world, I hope you see yourselves. It was people just like you who caused all that suffering."

Hassan took a step toward Kemal, but Tagiri interposed herself between them. "Perhaps you're right, Kemal," she said. "But perhaps not. For one thing, I don't think their purpose was just to turn Columbus away from his crusade. For that, all they would have needed to do was command him to abandon the idea. And they said that if he failed, the consequences would be terrible for Christianity. A far cry from trying to undo the Christian conquest of the Muslim world."

"They could easily have been lying," said Kemal. "Telling him what they thought he needed to hear to get him to act as they wanted."

"Perhaps," said Tagiri. "But I think they were doing something else. There was something else that would have happened if Columbus had not received this vision. And we must find out what it was."

"How can we find out what would have happened?" asked Diko.

Tagiri smiled nastily at Kemal. "I know one man of unflagging persistence and great wisdom and quick judgment. He is just the man to undertake the project of determining what it was that this vision was meant to avoid, or what it was meant to accomplish. For some reason the people of that other future determined to send Columbus west. Someone must head the project of finding out why. And you, Kemal, you're doing nothing productive at all, are you? Your great days are behind you, and now you're reduced to going about telling other people that their dreams are not worth accomplishing."

For a moment it seemed that Kemal might strike her, so cruel was her assessment of him. But he did not raise his hand, and after a long moment he turned and left the room.