The Bird of Time Read online

  The Bird of Time

  George Alec Effinger

  For their advice and encouragement over the years, this book is for Robert Silverberg and Edward L. Ferman and Shawna McCarthy.

  The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophecy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

  —Eric Hoffer

  "Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn't going to be any war!”

  —Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara

  Gone With the Wind

  You can't sort jam and marbles.

  —Walt Kelly

  CHAPTER ONE

  BEARS BITTER FRUIT

  You know the shock of utter terror just as you're about to hand over a large sum of money for something you're no longer sure you really want. Hartstein felt it. He felt it in his stomach, and he felt his hand give a peculiar reluctant quiver as he gave his card to the man behind the counter.

  The man smiled, not pleasantly. He was dressed in the uniform of the Agency, the silver-and-blue tunic with the leatherneck collar. There were five rows of ribbons on his breast, signifying one thing and another, all mysterious and unknown to Hartstein. The man was evidently a hardened veteran of the Agency; it seemed odd to Hartstein to see him behind the counter, like a travel agent or an airline ticket clerk. “Second thoughts?” said the Agency man.

  “Well,” said Hartstein, “no.” He wasn't going to let this veteran see that the notion of a vacation in time made him just a little uneasy. It did, but not enough to make him change his mind. Really, it was the expense that staggered Hartstein more than the danger. But possibly, down underneath, buried successfully beneath rocky strata of more mundane worries, there was the tickling fear that he might be one of the 2 percent that never came back.

  Hartstein was a young man, recently graduated from college in Mississippi, about to begin a new life as an employee in a doughnut shop, who had been given a large sum of money by his grandparents with the stipulation that he spend it broadening his horizons, by traveling either to Europe or into the past. “I'd love to go back in time,” he explained to his father. “Europe will always be there."

  Mr. Hartstein considered his son's urgency about the past, which, as far as he could see, would also always be there. “You're going to have a great future in doughnuts, son,” he said.

  And so, Hartstein was standing at the Agency counter in the lobby of the Agency Building right in the middle of Agency Plaza downtown. “Any luggage?” asked the uniformed man.

  “Uh huh.” Hartstein indicated a molded plastic suitcase he had brought with him, with extra shirts and socks, camera and film, and whatever else he thought he'd need.

  “They didn't have molded plastic suitcases in ancient times,” said the Agent.

  “Oh,” said Hartstein, “that's right.” He looked confused.

  “Don't worry. We'll provide you with everything you'll need, costume, appropriate accessories, money, and so forth. We'll make sure your hairstyle and facial hair conform to the local fashion. We'll give you a quick ESB knowledge of language, customs, and background. You won't have to worry about a thing."

  “I'm not,” said Hartstein in an uncertain voice. “Worried, I mean.” He looked at a framed quotation hanging on the wall behind the agent:

  When great causes are on the move in the world, we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

  —Sir Winston Churchill

  It made Hartstein feel better; that was what it was there for.

  “Good,” said the man in the uniform, “you're my kind of man.” And he smiled again, no more pleasantly than the first time. “Now don't tell me, let me guess. You're either the Library at Alexandria or Catherine the Great."

  Hartstein was astonished. “The Library,” he said. “How did you know?"

  “You college boys are all alike. Okay, take this receipt up to the ninth floor, Room 972. They'll give you all the introductory material. You can travel any time you like, just give us twenty-four hours’ notice. You come in, take your ESB session, get outfitted, and we push you through the screen for your day in the past. You don't—"

  “Can I go today?"

  “What?"

  Hartstein swallowed. “Can I do it today?” he said.

  The Agent shrugged. “Sure, of course. In a hurry? The Library isn't going anywhere."

  “It's going to burn to the ground, isn't it?"

  The uniformed man gave Hartstein a long, disdainful look. “They promised to hold off on that until after you leave,” he said.

  “Oh, good."

  The man handed the receipt across the counter. “Take that upstairs. Good luck. Next?"

  Room 972 was a large room; there was a counter across the front of it, and many desks and cubicles dividing the vast space to the rear. It looked like the kind of place you went to when the Internal Revenue Service wants to ask you a few questions. Hartstein's stomach began to grumble again. He told himself that there was no reason for anxiety, but he couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom. Doom he had chosen and paid for himself, with his grandparents’ money.

  “May I help you?” asked a young woman. She seemed very bored. She was dressed in the same silver-and-blue uniform, but on hers, there were no campaign ribbons. The cut of the tunic was less severe as well, permitting the general public to evaluate certain of her characteristics.

  When Hartstein's eyes turned from the bustling activity around him to this attractive Agent, he lost some of his fear. “I'd like to go to the—"

  “The Library, I know. Yellow slip, please.” He gave the receipt to her. “When did you want to go?"

  “I'd like to do it today, if I could."

  She looked up at him and cracked her chewing gum. One eyebrow went up just a bit. “In a hurry?” she said.

  Hartstein shrugged. There was a framed quotation at this counter, too:

  The Bird of Time has but a little way

  To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the wing.

  —The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

  The lines didn't mean a damn thing to Hartstein.

  “Today,” said the Agent, “let's see.” She consulted several clipboards and a large, black, vinyl-bound notebook. “Well, you're in luck. There's no real problem with that. It's, what? it's almost eleven o'clock. So, we can have you ready by two o'clock. You realize that you will have exactly twenty-four hours in the past, no more and no less. So if you go through at two, then you'll be back tomorrow at two. Right?"

  “I understand,” said Hartstein.

  “And you took care of everything downstairs? Uh huh, it's all here on the voucher. So, is there anything you'd like to change? This is your last chance."

  Hartstein wasn't crazy about the way she phrased that remark. “My last chance?” he said.

  She looked up at the ceiling impatiently. “You can't be yelling ‘Wait a minute, I forgot something’ when they're pushing you through the screen. If you don't want to go to the Library, if you'd rather, say, go to see them assassinate Julius Caesar, you'd better do it now. We don't want to have to listen to your kvetching when you get back."

  The idea of Julius Caesar and Brutus and Mark Antony's funeral oration and all that sounded very attractive to Hartstein, and he considered it for a moment.

  “But if I were you,” said the Agent, “I'd stick. You can spend all day in the Library. Caesar's down and dead in a minute, and then everybody goes to have lunch. The rest of the day
you might as well be window-shopping in the Agency gift shop, for all the excitement there is."

  “You're right. I'll just hang with my original plan."

  “Good boy,” said the young woman. “Take the voucher through the swinging gate, follow the yellow line on the floor, and see Sergeant Brannick. Have a good time in Alexandria.” Like nightfall in the jungle, boredom reappeared with terrible suddenness on her ordinary face.

  “Through the swinging gate,” she said. She pushed a button and a buzzer sounded. Hartstein went through the gate and followed the yellow line. It went through a small village of polished desks until it came to an end abruptly, at the battered oak station of Sergeant Brannick.

  “Voucher, please,” said the sergeant. He was a large man, as large as the Agent who had sold Hartstein the ticket. He wore the Agency uniform, decorated with as many ribbons as the man downstairs had had. It seemed just as odd to Hartstein that Brannick would be employed here, handling the routing of tourists. Didn't the Agency need its experienced personnel in the field, patrolling the freeways of time, fighting the unimaginable crimes that temporal terrorists would certainly be plotting against the sleeping citizens of the present? “Voucher, please,” said Brannick more loudly.

  “Sorry,” said Hartstein. He gave the man the yellow slip, now bent into a tiny, neat square. “Will the Library be crowded full of other people from the present when I get there?"

  Brannick's eyes narrowed. “You won't see anybody there except the locals,” he said.

  “Oh? Why is that? Why isn't the place crammed like sardines with us by now?"

  “Because ‘The Past’ is an objective concept, and it doesn't exist like that. Just like that necklace you have on. Subjectively it's a chain, although objectively it's only a collection of links. The past doesn't work that way. It isn't really a long line of links extending from ‘then’ until ‘now.’”

  “Oh, I see,” said Hartstein, even though he didn't have the slightest idea what Brannick was talking about. He didn't want to annoy the man. “I've done a lot of thinking about moving around in time and what it could mean and what terrible things could happen and all the awful accidents that might occur if you weren't careful and all that."

  A visible change came over Sergeant Brannick. “You have? The time business interests you?” he asked, his voice suddenly hearty and full of hollow buddiness.

  “Uh huh. What do you mean, no such thing as the past? Where am I going, then?"

  “No objective past, I said. There's definitely a past, all right. You're going to Alexandria and you're going to see the Library. While you're in town, by the way, why don't you run up to Pharos and see the lighthouse? It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, you know, and it was still standing where you're going. But tell me, you think that time travel is more exciting than, oh, spending a few days in Las Vegas?"

  “I think so. I could have gone to Europe, but I decided to go back instead."

  “No problem,” said Brannick. “Like I said, we'll talk tomorrow. Give my regards to Cleopatra."

  The doctor made Hartstein strip and stand with his toes on the yellow line. Then he told the young man to do all sorts of undignified things, some of which Hartstein couldn't believe had any diagnostic value. “Your injection,” said the doctor in a tired voice.

  “I've had all my shots and boosters,” said Hartstein. “In school."

  The doctor shook his head. “We have to inoculate you against things back there that don't even exist today. You'd have no protection at all against some of those diseases. You'd come back in such bad shape, in a week you'd look like Dorian Gray's painting."

  “Like what?"

  The doctor waved a hand. “Hold still,” he said.

  The yellow line took Hartstein to the ESB section. The procedure itself was quick, painless, and pleasant. He was given a mild sedative, which had him drifting in a warm, secure dream in a few minutes. He wasn't sure exactly how the knowledge was put into his mind; all he knew was that the letters stood for Electrical Stimulation of the Brain. It sounded like a sinister process, but it had been used on Hartstein a dozen times since childhood, during his education. It was a routine procedure; he was no more afraid of it than he was of other forms of medical editing. He lay back on the molded couch and put the intangible contents of his mind in the care of the ESB trainee who took his voucher. An hour later Hartstein had been processed. He took back the yellow slip and set out along the line once more. He tried to draw on his new knowledge of Egyptian language and social behavior, but nothing came. He worried that perhaps the ESB treatment hadn't stuck, or that some kind of mistake had been made. He recalled, however, that he had had the same experience following his other ESB sessions. When he got to Alexandria, when he needed the knowledge, it would be there.

  The last station was the costume department. A young man in a tight-fitting Agency uniform told Hartstein to have a seat. “It won't take long, God knows,” said the costumer. “It isn't as if you're going to feudal France or someplace interesting.” He gave a wistful sigh. “I've always wanted to work upstairs, you know. Fitting people for the Renaissance. Can you imagine the materials, the fashions? Maybe someday. Well, for now, here's yours.” He handed Hartstein a large sealed plastic bag.

  “This is it?” Hartstein asked dubiously. He tossed the bag in one hand. It weighed very little.

  The young man shrugged. “It's hot there, I guess."

  Hartstein opened the bag. “Do I have to try it on here?"

  The Agent closed his eyes in exasperation. “One size fits all,” he said in a dull voice. “Oh, Lord, why me?"

  Inside the bag was a white cotton skirt and some jewelry. “No sandals?” asked Hartstein.

  The young man massaged his forehead in supreme weariness. He shook his head.

  “No robe? I go around bare-chested?"

  The young man nodded. “You get a headdress, though. One of those bath-towel things."

  “Wow,” said Hartstein without enthusiasm. He examined the jewelry: there was a gold bracelet with a large golden scarab, which was inlaid with lapis lazuli; there was an elaborate golden necklace with a lapis moon riding in a golden boat; there were two beautiful earrings, made of gold with cloisonné falcons, their wings arching to form perfect circles, inlaid with quartz, faience, and colored glass; there was a heavy gold ring depicting some Egyptian god or other. The priceless jewelry contrasted with the simple, rough cotton skirt. “Is this real gold?” asked Hartstein.

  “Certainly is. You can't get out of this building without giving it back. And we can always get more of that jewelry anytime we want, just by going to Ancient Egypt and getting it. Let me help you with that skirt."

  “That's all right,” said Hartstein, “I can manage. But what am I supposed to be?"

  The uniformed man scratched his wispy beard. “A scribe, I suppose, or a valuable slave in a wealthy household. I don't know. I've never been there myself."

  “Well, in History 110 we had a couple of weeks about Egypt, and I've seen this before.” Hartstein held up the lunar pectoral. “This is one of the King Tut treasures."

  “They all are, honey."

  Hartstein stared for a moment, not understanding. “But how am I going to get away with wearing all of this pharaoh's stuff, walking around the streets pretending I'm just a middle-class country boy with a yen to read the classics? And anyway, I'm going to about 50 B.C., and King Tut lived almost fifteen hundred years before that. All of this stuff, the skirt and the jewelry, is an anachronism. And the headdress too. Where I'm going, they'll all be influenced by the Greek occupation and the Romans."

  The costumer yawned. “No, they won't."

  “They won't? Why not?"

  “They just won't, that's all. Wait until you get back there and then take a look around. Just remember, sweetheart, that the past isn't always the way you expect it to be, from reading books. How dreary that would be."

  Hartstein was having more misgivings. “You can
help me with the earrings,” he said. “Did they have screw bases during the reign of the Ptolemies?"

  “No, of course not, but do you want me to pierce your ears instead?"

  Hartstein shook his head.

  “Then just shut up and hold still."

  The transmission screen itself wasn't very impressive. Hartstein had heard about it since childhood, had even seen pictures of it, yet he had a mental image that included more adventure and excitement than did the real thing. He waited on a worn green-painted bench for twenty minutes while a couple of dozen other people ducked through on their way to various eras. Some of the destinations were easy to guess, because of the travelers’ costumes: one fat, bald man in the October of his years wore the skins of some mottled animal and carried a crude stone hatchet; two teenage girls traveling together wore Agency-issue outfits that disguised them as flower children of the 1960s; a tall, thin man with a loud voice and a permanent sneer wore the toga of a Roman senator. It gave Hartstein a feeling of being backstage at the community theater as he glanced around the waiting room and catalogued the cultures and centuries represented by the panorama of styles. And, he reminded himself, they all came from plastic-wrapped packages in the Agency warehouse. The most complex courtier's costume must have seen constant use, worn and cleaned and stored away again like a rented dinner jacket after prom night.

  “Mr. Hartstein?” called a woman. He got up and went to the screen. “Mr. Hartstein? Your voucher, please. Thank you. Okay, we're going to put you through to Alexandria now. You will arrive early in the morning of May 15, 48 B.C., a full year before the Library will burn during Julius Caesar's siege of the city. Are you ready?"

  Hartstein swallowed. He felt very nervous. His stomach was sending him sterner messages than ever. “I feel like a fool, dressed like this,” he said.

  The Agent had probably heard that sentiment many times. She did not reply. She grasped him by the arm and led him to the flickering screen. Hartstein saw that here, too, there was a framed sentiment: