The Masks Of Time Part 13

"Since nine this morning. We arrived at eleven. We could call in troops, but for the moment we'll just sit tight. The mob stretches from here to Pasadena, they say."

"That's impossible! We-"

"Look out there."

It was true. A ribbon of brightness wound through the streets, coiling past the sparkling towers of the city's reconstructed nucleus, weaving toward the distant stack of freeways and vanis.h.i.+ng somewhere to the east. I could hear cries, shouts, gurgles. I did not want to look any longer. It was a siege.

Vornan was greatly amused at the forces he had unleashed. I found him holding court in the customary suite on the hotel's eighty-fifth floor; about him were Kolff, Heyman, Helen, and Aster, a few media people, and a great deal of equipment. Fields was not there. I learned later that he was sulking, having made another pa.s.s at Aster the night before in San Diego. Vornan was speaking about California weather, I think, when I came in. He rose at once and glided to me, seizing my elbows and locking his eyes to mine.

"Leo, old man! How we've missed you!"

I was taken off stride by his chummy approach. But I managed to say, "I've been following your progress by screen, Vornan."

"You heard the San Diego interview?" Helen asked.

I nodded. Vornan seemed very pleased with himself. He waved vaguely toward the window and said, "There's a big mob out there. What do you think they want?"

"They're waiting for your next revelation," I told him.

"The gospel according to St. Vornan," Heyman muttered darkly.

From Kolff, later, I got confusing news. He had run Vornan's speech samples through the departmental computer at Columbia, with uncertain results. The computer was baffled by the structure of the language, and had sorted everything out into phonemes without coming to conclusions. Its a.n.a.lysis indicated the possibility that Kolff was right in thinking of the words as an evolved language, and also the possibility that Vornan had simply been mouthing noises at random, occasionally hitting on some combination of sounds that seemed to represent a futuristic version of a contemporary word. Kolff looked despondent.

In his first flush of enthusiasm he had released his evaluation of Vornan's talk to the media, and that had helped to fan the global hysteria; but now he was not at all sure that he had made the correct interpretation. "If I am wrong," he said, "I have destroyed myself, Leo. I have lent all my prestige to nonsense, and if that is so, I have no more prestige." He was shaking. He seemed to have lost twenty pounds in the few days since I had last seen him; pockets of loose skin dangled on his face.

"Why not run a recheck?" I asked. "Get Vornan to repeat what he taped for you before. Then feed both tapes to the computer and check the correlation function. If he was improvising gibberish the last time, he won't be able to duplicate it."

"My friend, that was my first thought."

"And?"

"He will not speak to me in his language again. He has lost interest in my researches. He refuses to utter a syllable."

"That sounds suspicious to me."

"Yes," said Kolff sadly. "Of course it is suspicious. I tell him that by doing this simple thing, he can destroy forever all doubts about his origin, and he says no. I tell him that by refusing, he is inviting us to regard him as an impostor, and he says he does not care. Is he bluffing? Is he a liar? Or does he genuinely not care? Leo, I am destroyed."

"You heard a linguistic pattern, didn't you, Lloyd?"

"Certainly I did. But it may have been only an illusion-a coincidental striking of sound values." He shook his head like a wounded walrus, muttered something in Persian or Pushtu, and went shuffling away, bowed, sagging. And I realized that Vornan had diabolically canceled out one of the major arguments for accepting him as genuine. Deliberately. Wantonly. He was toying with us . . . with all of us.

Dinner was served to us at the hotel that night. There was no question of our going outside, not with thousands of people in the streets about us. One of the networks screened a doc.u.mentary on Vornan's progress through the land, and we watched it. Vornan watched with us, although in the past he had not shown much interest in what the media had to say about him. In a way I wished he had not seen it. The doc.u.mentary concentrated on the impact he had had on ma.s.s emotions, and showed things I had not suspected: Adolescent girls in Illinois writhing in drug-induced ecstasy before a tridim photo of our visitor.

Africans lighting immense ceremonial bonfires in whose greasy blue smoke the image of Vornan was said to take form. A woman in Indiana who had collected tapes of every telecast dealing with the man from the future, and who was selling replicas of them mounted in special reliquaries. We saw a ma.s.sive westward movement under way; hordes of curiosity-seekers were spilling across the continent, hoping to catch up with Vornan as he moved about. The camera's eye descended into the swirling mobs we had been seeing so often, showing us the fixed faces of fanatics. These people wanted revelation from Vornan; they wanted prophecies; they wanted divine guidance. Excitement flickered like heat-lightning wherever he went. If Kolff ever let that cube of Vornan's speech get into public circulation, it would provoke a new manifestation of glossolalia, I realized-a wild outburst of speaking in tongues as holy babbling became the way to salvation once more. I was frightened. In the slower moments of the doc.u.mentary I stole glances at Vornan and saw him nodding in satisfaction, eminently pleased with the stir he was causing. He seemed to revel in the power that publicity and curiosity had placed in his hands.

Anything he might choose to say would be received with high interest, discussed and discussed again, and swiftly would harden into an article of faith accepted by millions. It has been given only to a very few men in history to have such power, and none of Vornan's charismatic predecessors had had his access to communications channels.

It terrified me. Up to now he had seemed wholly unconcerned by the world's response to him, as aloof as he had been the day he strolled naked up the Spanish Stairs while a Roman policeman shouted at him to halt. Now, though, a feedback was appearing. He watched his own doc.u.mentaries. Was he enjoying the confusion he engendered? Was he consciously planning new upheavals? Vornan acting in lighthearted innocence created chaos enough; Vornan motivated by deliberate malice could smash civilization. I had been scornful of him at first, and then amused by him. Now I was afraid of him.

Our gathering broke up early. I saw Fields speaking urgently to Aster; she shook her head, shrugged, and walked away from him, leaving him scowling. Vornan went up to him and touched him lightly on the shoulder. I have no idea what Vornan said to him, but Fields' expression was even darker afterward. He went out, trying to slam a slamproof door. Kolff and Helen left together. I lingered awhile for no particular reason. My room was next to Aster's, and we walked down the hall together. We stood awhile talking in front of her door. I had the odd impression that she was going to invite me in to spend the night; she seemed more animated than usual, eyelashes fluttering, delicate nostrils flaring. "Do you know how much longer we'll be on this tour?" she asked me. I told her that I didn't know. She was thinking of getting back to her laboratory, she said, but then she confessed wryly, "I'd leave right now except that I'm getting interested in this despite myself. Interested in Vornan. Leo, do you notice that he's changing?"

"How?"

"Becoming more aware of what's happening around him. He was so divorced from it at first, so alien.

Do you remember the time he asked me to take a shower with him?"

"I can't forget it."

"If it had been another man, I would have refused, of course. But Vornan was so blunt about it-the way a child would be. I knew he meant no harm. But now-now he seems to want touse people. He isn't just sightseeing any more. He's manipulating everyone. Very subtly."

I told her that I had thought all these thoughts too, during the television program a little earlier. Her eyes glowed; points of rosiness sprouted in her cheeks. She moistened her lips, and I waited for her to tell me that she and I had much in common and ought to know one another better; but all she said was, "I'm afraid, Leo. I wish he'd go back where he came from. He's going to make real trouble."

"Kralick and Company will prevent that."

"I wonder." She flashed a nervous smile. "Well, good night, Leo. Sleep well."

She was gone. I stared for a long moment at her closed door, and the stolen image of her slim body drifted up out of my memory bank. Aster had not had much physical appeal for me up till now; she hardly seemed a woman at all. Suddenly I understood what Morton Fields saw in her. I desired her fiercely. Was this, too, some of Vornan's mischief? I smiled. I was blaming him for everything now. My hand rested on the plate of Aster's door, and I debated asking her to admit me, but I entered my own room instead. I sealed the door, undressed, prepared myself for sleep. Sleep did not come. I went to the window to stare at the mobs, but the mobs had dissipated. It was past midnight. A slice of moon dangled over the sprawling city. I drew out a blank notepad and began to sketch some theorems that had drifted into my mind during dinner: a way of accounting for a double reversal of charge during time travel.

Problem: a.s.suming that time-reversal is possible, create a mathematical justification for conversion from matter to anti-matter to matter again before the completion of a journey. I worked quickly and for a while even convincingly. I came to the verge of picking up the phone and getting a data hookup with my computer so I could run some verifying mockups of the system. Then I saw the flaw near the beginning of my work, the stupid algebraic error, the failure to keep my signs straight. I crumpled the sheets and threw them away in disgust.

I heard a tapping at my door. A voice: "Leo? Leo, are you awake?"

I nudged the scanner beside my bed and got a dim image of my visitor. Vornan! Instantly I sprang up and unsealed the door. He was dressed in a thin green tunic as though to go out. His presence astonished me, for I knew that Kralick sealed him in his room each night, and at least in theory there was no way for Vornan to break that seal, which was supposed to protect him but which also imprisoned him. Yet he was here.

"Come in," I said. "Is anything wrong?"

"Not at all. Were you sleeping?"

"Working. Trying to calculate how your blasted time machine works, in fact."

He laughed lightly. "Poor Leo. You'll wear out your brain with all that thinking."

"If you really felt sorry for me, you'd give me a hint or two about it."

"I would if I could," he said. "But it's impossible. I'll explain why downstairs."

"Downstairs?"

"Yes. We're going out for a little walk. You'll accompany me, won't you, Leo?"

I gaped. "There's a riot going on outside. We'll be killed by the hysterical mob!"

"I think the mob has gone away," said Vornan. "Besides, I havethese." He extended his hand. In his palm lay two limp plastic masks of the sort we had worn at the Chicago brothel. "No one will recognize us. We'll stroll the streets of this wonderful city in disguise. I want to go out, Leo. I'm tired of official promenades. I feel like exploring again."

I wondered what to do. Call Kralick and have Vornan locked into his room again? That was the sensible response. Masks or not, it was rash to leave the hotel without a guard. But it would be a betrayal to turn Vornan in like that. Obviously he trusted me more than any of the others; perhaps there was even something he wished to tell me in confidence, beyond the range of Kralick's spy-pickups. I would have to take the risks in the hope of winning from him some nugget of valuable information.

"All right. I'll go with you."

"Quickly, then. If someone monitors your room-"

"What aboutyour room?"

He laughed smugly. "My room has been adjusted. Those who pry will think I am still in it. But if I am seen in here as well-get dressed, Leo."

I threw on some clothing and we left the room. I sealed it from the outside. In the hall lay three of Kralick's men, sound asleep; the green globe of an anesthetic balloon drifted in the air, and as its temperature-sensitive scanning plate picked up my thermals it homed in on me. Vornan lazily reached up for it, caught its trailing strand of plastic tape, and tugged it down to turn it off. He grinned conspiratorially at me. Then, like a boy running away from home, he darted across the hall, motioning to me to follow him. At a nudge a service door in the corridor opened, revealing a tumbletube for linens. Vornan beckoned me to enter.

"We'll land in the laundry room!" I protested.

"Don't be foolish. Leo. We'll get off before the last stop."

Mine not to reason why. I entered the tumbletube with him and down we caromed, flushed like debris to the depths of the building. A catchnet erupted across the tube unexpectedly and we bounced into it. I thought it was some kind of trap, but Vornan said simply, "It's a safety device to keep hotel employees from falling into the linen conveyor. I've been talking to the chambermaids, you see. Come on!" He stepped out of the net, which I suppose had been activated by ma.s.s-detectors along the sides of the tube, and we perched on a ledge of the chute while he opened a door. For a man who scarcely understood what a stock exchange was, he had a remarkably complete knowledge of the inner workings of this hotel. The catchnet withdrew into the tube wall the moment I was out of it; an instant later some soiled linens zoomed past us from above and vanished into the maw of the laundry pit somewhere far below. Vornan beckoned again. We went scrambling down a narrow pa.s.sageway lit from above by strips of cold light, and emerged finally in one of the hallways of the hotel. By a prosaic staircase we took ourselves to a sublobby and out unnoticed into the street.

All was quiet. We could see where the rioters had been. Stenciled slogans gleamed up from the sidewalk and glistened on the sides of buildings: THE END IS NEAR, PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER, stuff like that, the cla.s.sic billboard ruminations. Bits of clothing were scattered everywhere.

Mounds of foam told me that the riot had not been dispersed without effort. Here and there a few sleepers lay, stunned or drunk or simply resting; they must have crept out of the shadows after the police had cleared the area.

We donned our masks and moved silently through the mildness of the Los Angeles night. Here in the early hours of morning little was taking place in the downtown district; the towers all about us were hotels and office buildings, and the nightlife went elsewhere. We strolled at random. Occasionally an advert balloon dawdled through the sky a few hundred feet above us, flas.h.i.+ng its gaudy incitements. Two blocks from our hotel we paused to examine the window of a shop selling spy devices. Vornan seemed wholly absorbed. The shop was closed, of course, and yet as we lingered on a sensor plate embedded in the pavement a mellifluous voice told us the store hours and invited us to return in daytime. Two doors down we came to a sportsman's shop specializing in fis.h.i.+ng equipment. Our presence tripped another sidewalk trigger that yielded a sales talk aimed at deep-sea fishermen. "You've come to the right place," a mechanical voice proclaimed. "We carry a full line. Hydrophotometers, plankton samplers, mud penetrometers, light-scattering meters, tide recorders, hydrostatic actuators, radar buoys, clinometers, sludge detectors, liquid-level indicators-"

We moved on.

Vornan said, "I love your cities. The buildings are so tall-the merchants are so aggressive. We have no merchants, Leo."

"What do you do if you need a sludge detector or a plankton sampler?"

"They are available," he said simply. "I rarely need such things."

"Why have you told us so little about your time, Vornan?"

"Because I have come here to learn, not to teach."

"But you're not rushed for time. You could reciprocate. We're morbidly curious about the shape of things to come. And you've said so little. I have only the vaguest picture of your world."

"Tell me how it seems to you."

"Fewer people than we have today," I said. "Very sleek, very orderly. Gadgets kept in the background, yet anything at all available when needed. No wars. No nations. A simple, pleasant, happy world. It's hard for me to believe in it."

"You've described it well."

"But how did it come to get that way, Vornan? That's what we want to know! Look at the world you've been visiting. A hundred suspicious nations. Superbombs. Tension. Hunger and frustration.

Millions of hysterical people hunting for a receptacle for their faith. What happened? How did the world settle down?"

"A thousand years is a long time, Leo. Much can happen."

"Whatdid happen, though? Where did the present nations go? Tell me about the crises, the wars, the upheavals."

We halted under a lamppost. Instantly its photosensors detected us and stepped up the output of light.

Vornan said. "Suppose you tell me, Leo, about the organization, rise, and decline of the Holy Roman Empire."

"Where'd you hear about the Holy Roman Empire?"

"From Professor Heyman. Tell me what you know about the Empire, Leo."

"Why-next to nothing, I guess. It was some kind of European confederation seven or eight hundred years ago. And-and-"

"Exactly. You know nothing about it at all."

"I'm not claiming to be a practicing historian, Vornan."

"Neither am I," he said quietly. "Why do you think I should know anything more about the Time of Sweeping than you do about the Holy Roman Empire? It's ancient history to me. I never studied it. I had no interest in learning about it."

"But if you were planning to come back on a time trip, Vornan, you should have made it your business to study history the way you studied English."

"I needed English in order to communicate. I had no need of history. I am not here as a scholar, Leo.

Only as a tourist."

"And you know nothing of the science of your era either, I suppose?"

"Nothing at all," he said cheerfully.

"Whatdo you know? What do you do in 2999?"

"Nothing. Nothing."

"You have no profession?"

"I travel. I observe. I please myself."

"A member of the idle rich?"

"Yes, except we have no idle rich. I guess you'd call me idle, Leo. Idle and ignorant."

"And is everyone in 2999 idle and ignorant? Are work and scholars.h.i.+p and effort obsolete?"

"Oh. no, no, no," Vornan said. "We have many diligent souls. My somatic brother Lunn-31 is a collector of light impulses, a ranking authority. My good friend Mortel-91 is a connoisseur of gestures.

Pol-13, whose beauty you would appreciate, dances in the psychodrome. We have our artists, our poets, our learned ones. The celebrated Ekki-89 has labored fifty years on his revivification of the Years of Flame. Sator-11 has a.s.sembled a complete set of crystal images of the Seekers, all of his own making.

I am proud of them."

"And you, Vornan?"

"I am nothing. I do nothing. I am quite an ordinary man, Leo." There was a note in his voice I had not heard before, a throb that I took for sincerity. "I came here out of boredom, out of the l.u.s.t for diversion.

Others are possessed by their commitment to the endeavors of the spirit. I am an empty vessel, Leo. I can tell you no science, no history. My perceptions of beauty are rudimentary. I am ignorant. I am idle. I search the worlds for my pleasures, but they are shallow pleasures." Through the mask came the filtered gleam of his wondrous smile. "I am being quite honest with you, Leo. I hope this explains my failure to answer the questions of you and your friends. I am quite unsatisfactory, a man of many shortcomings.