Kemal sat glumly on the crest of the promontory, looking out to the northwest for a sail. Columbus was late.

And if he was late, all bets were off. It meant that some change had already been introduced, something that would delay him in Colba. Kemal might have been encouraged to think of this as proof that one of the others had successfully made the trip into the past, except that he was quite aware that the change might have been caused by him. The only influence that could reach from the island of Haiti to the island of Colba was the carrier virus -- and even though he had only been here for two months, that was plenty of time for the virus to have been spread to Colba by a raiding party in a seagoing canoe. The Spaniards must have contracted the virus.

Or worse. The gentle plague might have caused a change in behavior by the Indies. There might have been bloodshed, bad enough to make the Europeans head for home. Or Columbus might have been told something that led him to take a different route circling Haiti counterclockwise, for instance, instead of charting the north shore.

They had known that the virus could upset their plans, because it would move faster and farther than the time travelers could. Yet it was also the surest, most basic aspect of their plan. What if only one traveler got through, and then was killed immediately? Even so, the virus would be communicated to those who touched the body during the first few hours. If no other change could be introduced, this one might be enough -- to keep the Indies from being swept away in a tide of European diseases.

So it's a good thing, Kemal told himself. A good thing that Columbus is late, because it means that the virus is doing its work. We've already changed the world. We've already succeeded.

Only it didn't feel like success to him. Living on stored rations, hiding out here on this isolated promontory, watching for the sails, Kemal wanted to accomplish something more personal than being the carrier of a healing virus. Allah wills whatever happens, he knew, but he was not so pious that he could keep himself from wishing he could whisper a word or two in Allah's ear. A few pointed suggestions.

It wasn't until the third day that he saw a sail. Too early in the day. In the old version of history, Columbus had arrived later, which was why the Santa Maria wrecked, running against a submerged reef in the darkness. Now it wouldn't be dark. And even if it were, the currents and winds would not be the same. Kemal would have to destroy all three ships. Worse, without the the accident with the Santa Maria, there would be no reason for the Nina to drop anchor. Kemal would have to follow along the shore and watch for his opportunity. If it came.

If I fail, thought Kemal, the others may still succeed. If Hunahpu manages to preempt the Tlaxcalans and create a Zapotec-Tarascan empire that has abandoned or downplayed human sacrifice, then the Spanish won't have such an easy time of it. If Diko is somewhere in the highlands, she may be able to create a new proto-Christian religion and, conceivably, a unified Caribbean empire that the Spaniards will not easily crack. After all, Spanish success depended almost entirely upon the inability of the Indies to organize serious resistance. So even if Columbus gets back to Europe, history will still be different.

He could whisper all these reassuring things, but they tasted like ashes in his mouth. If I fail, America loses its fifty years of preparation before the Europeans come.

Two ships. Not three. That was a relief. Or was it? As long as history was changing, it might have been better for Columbus's fleet to stay together. Pinzўn had taken the Pinta away from the rest of the fleet, just as in the former history. But now who could guess whether Pinzўn would have his change of heart and sail back to Haiti to rejoin Columbus? This time he might simply go on eastward, arriving in Spain first and claiming all the credit for Columbus's discovery.

That's out of my hands, Kemal told himself. The Pinta will either come back or it will not. I have the Nina and the Santa Maria, and I must make sure that they, at least, never return to Spain.

Kemal watched until he could see that the ships were turning south, to round the Cape of San Nicolas. Would they take the same course they had followed in the prior history, sailing south a bit more, then turning back to chart the north coast of the island of Haiti? Nothing was predictable anymore, even if logic proclaimed that whatever reasons Columbus had for his actions in the other history, the same reasons would hold sway this time, too.

Kemal picked his way carefully down to the stand of trees near the water where he had concealed his inflatable boat. Unlike lifeboats, this one was not bright orange. Rather it was a greenish blue, designed to be invisible on the water. Kemal pulled on his wet suit, also greenish blue, and pulled the boat into the water. Then he loaded it with enough underwater charges to deal with both the Santa Maria and the Niha, should the opportunity present itself. Then he started up the engine and put out to sea.

It took him a half hour to be far enough from shore to be reasonably confident of being invisible to the keen-eyed watchers on the Spanish caravels. Only then did he sail westward far enough to see the Spanish sails. To his relief, they had dropped anchor off Cape San Nicolas and small boats were putting to shore. It might be December ninth rather than the sixth, but Columbus was making the same decisions he had made before. The weather was getting cold, for this part of the world, and Columbus would have the same problems getting through the channel between Tortuga and Haiti until the fourteenth of December. Perhaps Kemal would be better off if he put back to shore and waited for history to repeat itself.

Or perhaps not. Columbus would be anxious to sail east in order to beat Pinzўn back to Spain, and this time he might go out around Tortuga, tacking into the trade winds and completely avoiding the treacherous shore winds that would drive him onto the reefs. This might be Kemal's last chance.

But then, Cape San Nicolas was far from where Diko's tribe lived -- if in fact she had succeeded in becoming part of the village that had first called to the people of the future to save them. Why make things harder for her?

He would wait and watch.

At first when the Pinta started slipping farther and farther away, Cristoforo supposed that Pinzўn was avoiding some hazard in the water. Then, as the caravel drifted nearer the horizon, Cristoforo tried to believe what the men were telling him -- that the Pinta must be unable to read the signals that Cristoforo was sending. This was nonsense, of course. The Nina also lay to portside, and was having no trouble at all staying on course. By the time the Pinta dropped over the horizon, Cristoforo knew that Pinzўn had betrayed him, that the one-time pirate was now determined to sail direct for Spain and report to Their Majesties before Cristoforo could get there. Never mind that it would be Cristoforo who was recognized officially as the head of the expedition, or that the royal officials traveling with the expedition would report Pinzўn's perfidy -- it would be Pinzўn who would reap the first fame, Pinzўn whose name would live through history as the man who returned first to Europe from the westward route to the Orient.

Pinzўn had never sailed far enough south to know that this steady east wind gave way, in lower latitudes, to the steady west wind that Cristoforo had felt when he sailed in Portuguese vessels. So there was a good chance that if Cristoforo could just get far enough south, he could reach Spain long before Pinzўn, who would no doubt be tacking his way across the Atlantic, a slow proposition at best. There was a good chance that Pinzўn's progress would be so slow that he would have to give up and return to these islands to resupply his caravel.