The Canopy Of Time Part 5

You understand I was not inclined to listen properly, but it was not a fair trial. It had a mistrustful and furtive haste about it. Judge, counsel and jury all took care to be as brief and explicit as possible. I said nothing, but I knew why; everyone wanted to get back to the dances.

So it was not very long before the judge stood up and p.r.o.nounced sentence: "Alexander Abel Ybo, this court finds you guilty of murdering Parowen Scryban for the second time."

I could have laughed out loud. I nearly did.

He went on: "You are therefore condemned to suffer death by strangulation for the second time, which sen-tence will be carried out within the next week."

Round the court ran a murmur of excitement.

In a way, even I felt satisfied. It had been an unusual case: few are the people who care to risk facing death a second time; for the first time you die makes the prospect worse, not better. For just a minute, the court was still, then it cleared with almost indecent haste. In a little while, only I was left there.

I, Alex Abel Ybo-or approximately he-came care-fully down out of the prisoner's box and limped the length of the dusty room to the door. As I went, I looked at my hands. They weren't trembling.

n.o.body bothered to keep a check on me. They knew they could pick me up whenever they were ready to execute sentence. I was unmistakable in Union and I had nowhere to go. I was the man with the club foot who could not dance; n.o.body could mistake me for anyone else. Only I could do that.

Outside in the dark sunlight, that wonderful woman stood waiting for me with her husband, waiting on the court steps. The sight of her began to bring back life and hurt to my veins. I raised my hand to her as my custom was.

"We've come to take you home, Alex," Husband said, stepping towards me.

"I haven't got a home," I said, addressing her.

"I meant our home," he informed me.

"Elucidation accepted," I said. "Take me away, take me away, take me away, Charlemagne. And let me sleep."

"You need a sleep after all you have been through," he said. Why, he sounded nearly sympathetic.

Sometimes I called him Charlemagne because I have a historical cast of mind, sometimes just Charley.

Or Cheeps, or Jags, or Jaggers, or anything, as the mood took me. He seemed to forgive me. Perhaps he even liked it-I don't know. Personal magnetism takes you a long way; it has taken me so far I don't even have to remember names.

They stopped a pa.s.sing taxi and we all climbed in. It was a tumbril, they tell me. You know, French?

Circa seventeen-eighty, something-back before the centuries got silted up with big wars. Husband sat one side, Wife the other, each holding one of my arms, as if they thought I should get violent. I let them do it, although the idea amused me.

"Hallo, friends!" I said ironically. Sometimes I called them "parents", or "disciples", or sometimes "patients". Anything. "You look as if you have aged," I said.

The wonderful woman was crying slightly.

"Look at her!" I said to Husband. "She's lovely when she cries, that I swear. I could have married her, you know, if I had not been dedicated. Tell him, you won-derful creature, tell him how I turned you down!"

Through her sobbing, she said, "Alex said he had more important things to do than s.e.x."

"So you've got me to thank for Perdita!" I told him. "It was a big sacrifice, but I'm happy to see you happy." Often now I called her Perdita. It seemed to fit her. He laughed at what I had said, and then we were all laugh-ing. Yes, it was good to be alive; I knew I made them feel good to be alive. They were loyal. I had to give them something-I had no gold and silver.

The tumbril stopped outside Charley's place-the Husband Residence, I'd better say. Oh, the things I've called that place! Someone should have recorded them all. It was one of those inverted beehive houses: just room for a door and an elevator on the ground floor, but the fifth floor could hold a ballroom.

Topply, topply. Up we went to the fifth. There was no sixth floor; had there been, I should have gone up there, the way I felt. I asked for it anyhow, just to see the wonderful woman brighten up. She liked me to joke, even when I wasn't in a joking mood. I could tell she still loved me so much it hurt her.

"Now for a miracle, ye pampered jades," I said, stepp-ing forth, clumping into the living room.

I seized an empty vase from a low shelf and spat into it. Ah, the old cunning was still there! It filled at once with wine, sweet and b.l.o.o.d.y-looking. I sipped and found it good.

"Go on and taste it, Perdy!" I told her.

Wonderful W. turned her head sadly away. She would not touch that vase. I could have eaten every single strand of hair on her head, but she seemed unable to see the wine. I really believe she could not see that wine.

"Please don't go through all that again, Alex," she implored me wearily. Little faith, you see-the old, old story. (Remind me to tell you a new one I heard the other day.) I put my behind on one chair and my bad foot on another and sulked.

They came and stood by me ... not too close. "Come nearer," I coaxed, looking up under my eye-brows and pretending to growl at them. "I won't hurt you. I only murder Parowen Scryban, remember?"

"We've got to talk to you about that," Husband said desperately. I thought he looked as if he had aged.

"I think you look as if you have aged, Perdita," I said. Often I called him Perdita too; why, man, they some-times looked so worried you couldn't tell them apart.

"I cannot live for ever, Alex," he replied. "Now try and concentrate about this killing will you?"

I waved a hand and tried to belch. At times I can belch! like a sinking s.h.i.+p.

"We do all we can to help you, Alex," he said. I heard him although my eyes were shut; can you do that? "But we can only keep you out of trouble if you co-operate. It's the dancing that does it; nothing else betrays you like dancing. You've got to promise you'll stay away from it In fact, we want you to promise that you'll let us restrain you. To keep you away from the dancing. Something about that dancing. . . ."

He was going on and on, and I could still hear him. But other things were happening. That word "dancing" got in the way of all his other words. It started a sort of flutter under my eyelids. I crept my hand out and took the wonderful woman's hand, so soft and lovely, and listened to that word "dancing"

dancing. It brought its own rhythm, bouncing about like an eyeball inside my head. The rhythm grew louder, he was shouting. I sat up suddenly, opening my eyes. W. woman was on the floor, very pale.

"You squeezed too hard, boy," she whispered.

I could see that her little hand was the only red thing she had.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I really wonder you two don't throw me out for good!" I couldn't help it, I just started laughing. I like laughing. I can laugh even when nothing's funny. Even when I saw their faces, I still kept laughing like mad.

"Stop it!" Husband said. For a moment he looked as if he would have hit me. But I was laughing so much I did not recognize him. It must have done them good to see me enjoying myself; they both needed a fillip, I could tell.

"If you stop laughing, I'll take you down to the club," he said, greasily bribing.

I stopped. I always know when to stop. With all humility, that is a great natural gift.

"The club's the place for me," I said. "I've already got a club foot-I'm half-way there! Verily, verily, I say unto you let's go."

I stood up.

"Lead on, my loyal supporters, my liege lords," I ordered.

"You and I will go alone, Alex," Husband said. "The wonderful woman will stay here. She really ought to go to bed."

"What's in it for her?" I joked. Then I followed him to the elevator. He knows I don't like staying in any one place for long.

When I got to the club, I knew, I would want to be somewhere else. That's the worst of having a mission: it makes you terribly restless. Sometimes I am so restless I could die. Ordinary people just don't know what the word means. I could have married her if I had been ordinary. They call it destiny.

But the club was good.

We walked there. I limped there. I made sure I limped badly.

The club had a timescreen. That, I must admit, was my only interest in the club. I don't care for women.

Or men. Not living women or men. I only enjoy them when they are back in time.

This night-I nearly said "this particular night", but there was nothing particularly particular about it-the timescreen had been turned roughly a hundred and sixty centuries back into the past. I guess it was Colour War stuff they were viewing by the women's dresses and the many underground shots. A large crowd of people were looking in as Perdita Caesar and I entered, so I started to pretend he had never seen one of the wall screens before. You know me: Laughter Inc.

"The tele-eyes which are projected back over history consume a fabulous amount of power every second," I told him loudly in a voice which suggested I had swal-lowed a poker. "It makes them very expensive, especially as the further you go back, the more power you use. It means private citizens cannot afford screens and tele-eyes, just as once they could not afford their own private cinemas. This club is fortunately very rich. Its members sleep in gold leaf at nights."

Several people were glancing round at me already. Caesar was shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

"The tele-eyes get more and more short-sighted; these days they cannot get a picture further than about twenty-three thousand years back," I told him. "We can see my namesake Alexander the Great, but not the men who put up the early pyramids, owing to the limitations of science. Science, as you know, is a system for taking away with one hand while giving with the other."

He could not answer cleverly. I went on: "It also proves impossible, in these degenerate days, due to the aforesaid limitations, to send human beings further back in time than one week. And that costs so much that only governments can do it. As you may have heard, nothing can be sent ahead into time-there's no future in it!"

I had to laugh at that. It was funny, and quite spon-taneous.

Many people were calling out to me, and Caesar Borgia was dragging at my arm, trying to make me be quiet.

"I wouldn't spoil anyone's fun!" I shouted. "You lot get on with your watching; I'll get on with my speech."

But I did not want to talk to a lot of feather-bedders like them. So I sat down without saying another word, Boy Borgia collapsing beside me with a sigh of relief. Suddenly I felt very, very sad. Life just is not what it was; once on a time, I could have married this husband's wife.

"Physically, you can go back only one week," I whispered, "optically, twenty-three hundred centuries.

It's very sad."

It was very sad. The people on the screen were also sad. They lived in a bad time and appeared to be getting little pleasure from it. I tried to weep for them but failed because at the moment they seemed just animated his-tory. I saw them as period pieces, stuck there some generations before reading and writing had died out altogether and the fetters of literacy fell for ever from the world. Little any of them cared for the patterns of history, which are far more important than any sort of literacy ever invented.

"I've had an idea I want to tell you about, Cheezer," I said. It was a good idea.

"Can't it wait?" he asked. "I'd like to see this scan. It's all about the Afro-Chinese Allegiance."

"I must tell you before I forget."

"Come on," he said resignedly, getting up.

"You are too loyal to me," I complained. "Yom spoil me. I'll speak to St. Peter about it, verily I will"

As meek as you like, I followed him into an ante-room, He drew himself a drink from an automatic man in one corner. He was trembling. I did not tremble, although at the back of my mind lurked many things to tremble about.

"Go on then, say whatever in h.e.l.l you want to say," he told me, shading his eyes with his hand. I have seen him use that trick before; he did it after I killed Parowen Scryban the first time, I remember. There's nothing wrong with my memory, except in patches.

"I had this idea," I said, trying to recall it. "This idea -oh, yes. History. I got the idea looking at those twenty-second century people. Mythology is the key to every-thing, isn't it? I mean, a man builds his life on a set of myths, doesn't he-any man in any period? Well, in our world, the world we've inherited, those accepted myths were religious for centuries until about the nine-teenth. By then, a majority of Europeans were literate, or within reach of it, and then for several centuries the myths became literary ones: tragedy was no longer the difference between grace and nature but between art and reality. That's a large-size idea, no, Squeezer?"

Julius dropped his hand. He was interested. I could see he wondered what was coming next. I hardly knew myself.

"Then mechanical aids-television, computers, scan-ners of every type-abolished literacy," I said.

"Into the vacuum came the timescreens, if I may speak capsule-wise. Our mythologies are now historical: tragedy has become simply a failure to see the future."

I beamed at him and bowed, not letting him know I was beyond tragedy. He just sat there. He said nothing. Sometimes such terrible boredom descends on me that I can hardly fight against it.

"Is my reasoning sound?" I asked. (Two women looked into the room, saw me, and left again hurriedly.

They must have sensed I did not want them, otherwise they would have come to me; I am young and handsome -I am not thirty-three yet.) "You could always reason well," Marcus Aurelius Marconi said, "but it just never leads anywhere. G.o.d, I'm so tired."

This bit of reasoning leads somewhere. I beg you to believe it, Holy Roman," I said, flopping on my knees before him. "It's the state Solite philosophy I've really been telling you about. That's why although they keep the death penalty for serious crimes-like murdering a b.a.s.t.a.r.d called Parowen Scryban-they go back in time the next day and call off the execution. They believe you should die for your crime, you see? But more deeply they believe every man should face his true future. They've-we've all seen too many premature deaths on the time- screens. Romans, Khmers, Celts, Incas, English, Israelis.

Every race. Individuals-all dying too soon, failing to fulfil"

Oh, I admit it, I was crying on his knees by then, although bravely disguising it by barking like a dog: a Great Dane. Hamlet. Not in our stars but in ourselves. (I've watched W.S. write that bit.) I was crying at last to think the police would come without fail within the next week to snuff me out, and then resurrect me again, according to my sentence. I was remembering what it was like last time. I was always remembering. They took so long about it.

They took so long. Though I struggled, I could not move; those police know how to hold a man. My wind-pipe was blocked, as sentence of court demanded. No oxygen for me, no O for A. A. Ybo.

And then, it seemed, the boxes sailed in. Starting with! small ones, they grew bigger. They were black boxes, all of them. Faster they came, and faster, inside me and out. I'm telling you how it felt, my G.o.d!

And they blocked the whole, whole universe, black and red, red on black. With my lungs really crammed tight with boxes, out of the world I went. Dead!

Into limbo I went, I descended into h.e.l.l.

I don't say nothing happened, but I could not grasp what was happening there, and I was unable to partici-pate. Then I was alive again.

It was abruptly the day before the strangulation once more, and the government agent had come back in time and rescued me, so that from one point of view I was not strangled. But I still remembered it happening, and the boxes, and limbo. Don't talk to me about paradoxes. The government expended several billion megavolts sending that man back for me, and those megavolts account for all paradoxes. I was dead and then alive again.

Now I was sentenced to undergo it all once more. No wonder there was little crime nowadays: the threat of that horrible experience held many a likely criminal back. But I had to kill Parowen Scryban; just so long as they went back and resurrected him after I had finished with him, I had to go and do it again. Call it a moral obligation. No one understands. It is as if I were living in a world of my own.

"Get up, get up! You're biting my ankles."

Where had I heard that voice before? At last I could no longer ignore it. Whenever I try to think, voices interrupt. I stopped chewing whatever I was chewing, unblocked my eyes and sat up. This was just a room; I had been in rooms before. A man was standing over me; I did not recognize him. He was just a man.

"You look as if you have aged," I told him.

"I can't live for ever, thank G.o.d," he said. "Now get up and let's get you home. You're going to bed."

"What home?" I asked. "What bed? Who in the gentle name of anyone may you be?"

He looked sick.

"Just call me Adam," he said sickly.

I recognized him then and went with him. We had been in some sort of a club; he never told me why. I still don't know why we went to that club.

The house he took me to was shaped like a beehive upside-down, and I walked there like a drunk. A club-footed drunk.

This wonderful stranger took me up in an elevator to a soft bed. He undressed me and put me in that soft bed as gently as if I had been his son. I am really impressed by the kindness strangers show me; personal magnetism, I suppose.