The Masks Of Time Part 12

"Yes. Yes. The tape." He produced a small recording cube, and fumbling a bit, managed to press it into the pickup slot of a playback unit. He thumbed for sonic and suddenly there flowed through the room a stream of soft, eroded sounds. I strained to hear. Vornan spoke liltingly, playfully, artfully, varying pitch and timbre, so that, his speech was close to song, and now and then a tantalizing fragment of a comprehensible word seemed to whirl past my ears. But I understood nothing. Kolff made steeples of his thick fingers, nodded and smiled, waved his shoe at some particularly critical moment, murmured now and then, "Yes? You see? Yousee?" but I saw not, neither did I hear: it was pure sound, now pearly, now azure, now deep turquoise, all of it mysterious, none of it intelligible. The cube whirled to its finish, and when it was over we sat silently, as if the melody of Vornan's words still lingered, and I knew that nothing had been proven, not to me, though Lloyd might choose to accept these sounds as the child of English. Solemnly Kolff rose and pocketed the cube. He turned to Helen McIlwain, whose features were transfigured as though she had attended some incredibly sacred rite. "Come," he said, and touched her bony wrist. "It is the time for sleeping, and not a night for sleeping alone. Come." They went together. I still heard Vornan's voice, gravely declaiming some lengthy pa.s.sage in a language centuries unborn, or possibly rattling off a skein of nonsense, and I felt lulled to dreaminess by the sound of the future or the sound of ingenious fraud.

TWELVE.

Our caravan moved westward from snowy Denver to a sunny welcome in California, but I did not remain with the others. A great restlessness had come over me, an impatience to get away from Vornan and Heyman and Kolff and the rest at least for a little while. I had been on this tour for over a month, now, and it was telling on me. So I asked Kralick for permission to take a brief leave of absence; he granted it and I headed south into Arizona, to the desert home of Jack and Shirley Bryant, with the understanding that I would rejoin the group a week later in Los Angeles.

It had been early January when I had last seen Jack and Shirley; now it was mid-February, so hardly any time had really pa.s.sed. Yet inwardly a great deal of time must have elapsed, for them and for me. I saw changes in them. Jack looked drawn and frayed, as though he had been sleeping poorly lately; his motions were nervous and jerky, and I was reminded of the old Jack, the pallid eastern boy who had come to my laboratory so many years ago. He had retrogressed. The calm of the desert had fled from him. Shirley too seemed to be under some kind of strain. The sheen of her golden hair was dulled, and her postures now were rigid ones; I saw trusses of taut muscles form again and again in her throat. Her response to tension was an overcompensating gaiety. She laughed too often and too loudly; her voice often rose unnaturally in pitch, becoming shrill, harsh, and vibrant. She seemed much older; if she had looked twenty-five in December instead of her proper thirty-odd, now she seemed at the brink of her forties. All this I noticed in the first few minutes of my arrival, when such alterations are the most conspicuous. But I said nothing of what I saw, and just as well, for the first words were Jack's: "You look tired, Leo. This business must have taken a lot out of you."

And Shirley: "Yes, poor Leo. All that silly traveling around. You need a good rest. Can't you contrive to stay here longer than a week?"

"Am I that much of a wreck?" I asked. "Is it so obvious?"

"A little Arizona sunshine will work wonders," Shirley said, and laughed in that dreadful new way of hers.

That first day we did little but soak up Arizona sunshine. We lay, the three of us, on their sun deck, and after these weeks of soggy eastern winter it was pure delight to feel the warmth on my bare skin. Tactful as always, neither of them brought up the subject of my recent activities that day; we sunned and dozed, chatted a little, and in the evening feasted on grilled steak and a fine bottle of Chambertin '88. As the chill of night swept down on the desert, we sprawled on the thick rug to listen to Mozart's dancing melodies, and all that I had done and seen in the last weeks sloughed away and became unreal to me.

In the morning I woke early, for my inner clock was confused by the crossing of time zones, and walked for a while in the desert. Jack was up when I returned. He sat at the edge of the dry wash, carving something from a bit of gnarled, greasy-looking wood. As I drew near, he blurted, "Leo, did you find out anything about-"

"No."

"-energy conversion."

I shook my head. "I've tried, Jack. But there's no way to learn anything from Vornan that he doesn't want to tell you. And he won't give hard data on anything. He's devilish about answering questions."

"I'm in knots, Leo. The possibility that something I've devised will wreck society-"

"Drop it, will you? You've penetrated a frontier, Jack. Publish your work and accept your n.o.bel, and to h.e.l.l with any misuse that posterity hands out. You've done pure research. Why crucify yourself over possible applications?"

"The men who developed the bomb must have said the same things," Jack murmured.

"Have any bombs been dropping lately? Meanwhile your house runs on a pocket reactor. You might be lighting wood fires if those old boys hadn't found out about nuclear fission."

"But their souls-theirsouls-"

I lost patience. "We revere their d.a.m.ned souls! They were scientists; they did their best and they got somewhere. And changed the world, sure, but they had to. There was a war then, you know? Civilization was endangered. They invented something that caused a lot of trouble, yeah, but it did a lot of good, too.

You haven't even invented anything. Equations. Basic principles. And here you sit pitying yourself because you think you've betrayed mankind! All you've done has been to use yourbrain, Jack, and if that's a betrayal of mankind in your philosophy, then you'd better-"

"All right, Leo," he said quietly. "I plead guilty to a charge of self-pity and voluntarily solicited martyrdom. Sentence me to death and then let's change the subject. What's your considered opinion of this man Vornan? Real? Fake? You've seen him at close range.

"I don't know."

"Good old Leo," he said savagely. "Always incisive! Always ready with the firm answer!"

"It isn't that simple, Jack. Have you been watching Vornan on the screens?"

"Yes."

"Then you know he's complex. A tricky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, the trickiest I've ever seen."

"But don't you have some intuitive feel, Leo, some immediate response, a yes or a no, true or false?"

"I have," I said.

"Keeping it a secret?"

I moistened my lips and scuffed at the sandy ground. "What I intuit is that Vornan-19 is what he says he is."

"A man from 2999?"

"A traveler out of the future," I said.

Behind me, Shirley laughed in a sharp crescendo. "That's wonderful, Leo! You've finally learned how to embrace the irrational!"

She had come up behind us, nude, a G.o.ddess of the morning, heart-stoppingly beautiful, her hair like a flag in the breeze. But her eyes were too brilliant, shining with that new fixed glitter.

"The irrational is a th.o.r.n.y mistress," I said. "I'm not happy to share my bed with her."

"Why do you think he's real?" Jack pressed.

I told him about the blood sample and about Lloyd Kolff's experience with Vornan's spoken language. I added some purely intuitive impressions I had gathered. Shirley seemed delighted. Jack pensive. He said finally, "You don't know a thing about the scientific background of his supposed means of time transport?"

"Zero. He isn't saying."

"Small wonder. He wouldn't want 2999 invaded by a bunch of hairy barbarians who've whipped up a time machine out of his description."

"Maybe that's it-a security matter," I said.

Jack closed his eyes. He rocked back and forth on his haunches. "If he's real, then the energy thing is real, and the possibility still exists that-"

"Cut it, Jack," I said fiercely. "Snap out!"

With an effort he interrupted his lamentations. Shirley tugged him to his feet. I said, "What's for breakfast?"

"What about brook trout, straight out of the freeze?"

"Good enough." I slapped her amiably on her firm rump to send her scampering into the house. Jack and I strolled after her. He was calmer now.

"I'd like to sit down myself and talk with this Vornan," Jack said. "Ten minutes, maybe. Could you arrange that?"

"I doubt it. Very few private interviews are being granted. The Government's keeping him on a tight rein-or trying to. And I'm afraid if you aren't a bishop or a holding-company president or a famous poet, you won't stand a chance. But it doesn't matter, Jack. He won't tell you what you want to know.

I'm sure of it."

"Still, I'd like to try to get it out of him. Keep it in mind."

I promised that I would, but I saw little chance of it. We managed to get into less problematical topics at breakfast. Afterward, Jack disappeared to finish something he was writing, and Shirley and I went to the sun deck. She was worried about Jack, she said; he was so totally obsessed with what the future might think of him. She did not know how to get him unwound. "It's nothing new, you understand. It's been going on ever since I've known him, since he was with you at the University. But since Vornan showed up, it's become fifty times as bad. He genuinely thinks now that his ma.n.u.script is going to reshuffle all of future history. He said last week that he wished the Apocalyptists were right: he wants the world to be blown up next January. He's sick, Leo."

"I see. But it's a sickness that he won't try to cure."

In a low voice, leaning close to me so that I could have put my lips to hers, she said, "Were you holding anything back from him? Tell me the truth. What did Vornan say about energy?"

"Nothing. I swear."

"And do you really believe he's-"

"Most of the time. I'm not convinced. You know, I've got scientific reservations."

"Aside from them?"

"I believe," I said.

We were silent. I let my eyes roam down the ridge of her spine to the blossoming of her hips. Beads of perspiration glittered on her upturned tawny b.u.t.tocks. Her toes were outstretched and pressed close in a little gesture of tension.

She said, "Jack wants to meet Vornan."

"I know."

"So do I. Let me confess it, Leo. I'm hungry for him."

"Most women are."

"I've never been unfaithful to Jack. But I would be, with Vornan. I'd tell Jack first, of course. But I'm drawn to him. Just seeing him on television, I want to touch him, to have him against me, in me. Am I shocking you, Leo?"

"Don't be silly."

"The comforting thing is that I know I'll never get the chance. There must be a million women ahead of me in line. Have you noticed, Leo, the hysteria that's building up over this man? It's almost a cult. It's killing off Apocalyptism practically overnight. Last fall everyone thought the world was about to end, and now everyone thinks we're going to fill up with tourists from the future. I watch the faces of the people on the screens, the ones who follow Vornan around, cheering, kneeling. He's like a messiah. Does any of this sound sensible to you?"

"All of it does. I'm not blind, Shirley. I've seen it up close."

"It frightens me."

"Me also."

"And when you say you think he's real-you, hardheaded old Leo Garfield-that's even more scary."

Shirley gave me the shrill giggle again. "Living out here on the edge of nowhere, I sometimes think the whole world's crazy except Jack and me."

"And lately you've had your doubts about Jack."

"Well, yes." Her hand covered mine. "Why should people be responding to Vornan like this?"

"Because there's never been anyone like him before."

"He's not the first charismatic figure to come along."

"He's the first one peddling this particular tale," I said. "And the first in the era of modern communications. The whole world can see him in three dimensions and natural color all the time. He gets to them. His eyes-his smile-the man's got a power, Shirley. You feel it through the screen. I feel it close up."

"What will happen, eventually?"

"Eventually he'll go back to 2999," I said lightly, "and write a best-seller about his primitive ancestors."

Shirley laughed hollowly and we let the conversation trickle to nothingness. Her words troubled me. Not that I was surprised to find she was drawn to Vornan, for she was far from alone in that; what upset me was her willingness to admit it to me. I resented becoming the confidant of her pa.s.sions. A woman admits her illicit desires to a harem eunuch, perhaps, or to another woman, but not to a man whom she realizes has suppressed designs of his own on her. Surely she knew that but for my respect for their marriage, I would have reached out for her long ago and would have been received willingly. So why tell me such things, knowing that they must hurt me? Did she think I would use my supposed influence to lure Vornan into her bed? That out of love for her I would play the panderer?

We lazed away the day. Toward late afternoon Jack came to me and said, "Maybe you aren't interested, but Vornan's on the screen. He's being interviewed in San Diego by a panel of theologians and philosophers and stuff. Do you want to watch?"

Not really, I thought. I had come here to escape from Vornan, and somehow no moment pa.s.sed without mention of him. But I failed to answer, and Shirley said yes. Jack activated the screen nearest us, and there was Vornan, big as life, radiating charm in three dimensions. The camera gave us a view of the panel: five distinguished experts in eschatology, some of whom I recognized. I spied the long nose and drooping brows of Milton Clayhorn, one of the pundits of our San Diego campus, the man who, they say, has been devoting his career to getting Christ out of Christianity. I saw the blunt features and time-freckled skin of Dr. Naomi Gersten, behind whose hooded eyes lurked six thousand years of Semitic anguish. The other three seemed familiar; I suspected they had been neatly chosen to represent each creed. We had come in late in the discussion, but as it turned out, just in time for the detonation of Vornan's megaton bomb.

"-no organized religious movement in your era whatever?" Clayhorn was saying. "A withering away of the church, so to speak?"

Vornan nodded curtly.

"But the religious idea itself," Clayhorn vociferated. "That can't be gone! There are certain eternal verities! Man must establish a relationship delineating the boundaries of the universe and the boundaries of his own soul. He-"

"Perhaps," Dr. Gersten said to Vornan in her small cracked voice, "you could tell us if you understand at all what we mean by religion, eh?"

"Certainly. A statement of human dependence on a more powerful external force," said Vornan, looking pleased with himself.

A furry-voiced moderator said, "I think that's an excellent formulation, don't you, Monsignor?"

I recognized now the long-chinned man in the turned-about collar: Meehan, a television priest, a figure of fair charisma himself, who spent a moment summoning resonance and said, "Yes, that's excellently put, in its fashion. It's refreshing to know that our guest comprehends the concept of religion, even if"-the Monsignor showed a momentary crack in his facade-"as he says, our present-day religions have ceased to play a meaningful role in the life of his times. I venture to say that perhaps Mr. Vornan is underestimating the strength of religion in his day, and possibly is, as so many individuals do today, projecting his personal lack of belief onto society as a whole. Might I have a comment on that?"

Vornan smiled. Something ominous sparkled in his eyes. I felt the clutch of fear. Using the eyes and the lips at once! He was cranking up the catapult for a blow that would smash the enemy walls. The panel members saw it too. Clayhorn cringed. Dr. Gersten seemed to vanish like a wary tortoise into the folds of her own neck. The famed Monsignor braced himself as if for the blade of the guillotine.

Vornan said mildly, "Shall I tell you what we have learned of man's relationship to the universe? We have discovered, you see, the manner by which life came into being on the earth, and our knowledge of the Creation has had its effect on our religious beliefs. I am not an archaeologist, please understand, and I can give no details beyond what I say here. But this is what we now know: Once, in the distant past, our planet was wholly lifeless. There was a sea covering nearly everything, with rocks here and there, and both sea and land were lacking even in the merest microbe. Then our planet was visited by explorers from another star. They did not land. They merely orbited our world and saw that it was without life, and thus of no interest to them. They paused only long enough to jettison certain garbage that had acc.u.mulated aboard their ship, and then journeyed elsewhere, while the garbage they had dumped descended through the atmosphere of the earth and found its way into the sea, introducing certain factors that created a chemical disturbance which set in motion the beginning of the process that resulted in the phenomenon known as"-the panel was in turmoil: the camera swung in mercilessly to reveal the grimaces, the scowls, the wild eyes, the stony jaws, the gaping lips-"life on earth."

THIRTEEN.

At the end of my week of reprieve I kissed Shirley good-bye, told Jack to go easy on himself, and sped off to Tucson to be podded to Los Angeles. I arrived there only hours after the rest of the team had come up the coast from San Diego. The impact of that interview with Vornan still reverberated through the land. Perhaps never before in human history had a major theological dogma been enunciated over television on a global hookup; certainly this one spread through the world even as the contamination of the primordial garbage had infected the sterile seas. Quietly, amiably, with great delicacy and restraint, Vornan had undermined the religious faith of four billion human beings. One had to admire his skill, surely.

Jack and Shirley and I had watched the unfolding of the reaction in cool fascination. Vornan had presented his belief as received fact, the result of careful investigation and of corroborative detail obtained from beings who had visited the world of his time. As usual, he offered no substructure of data, merely the bald, elliptical statement. But anyone who had swallowed the news that a man had come to us from 2999 would not have much difficulty swallowing that man's story of the Creation; all it took was flexible jaws. WORLD STARTED FROM GARBAGE, said the tapes the next day, and swiftly the concept moved into the public domain.

The Apocalyptists, who had been quiescent for a few weeks, came back to life. They led vigorous protest rallies through the cities of the world. The screen showed us their fixed faces, their gleaming eyes, their defiant banners. I learned something I had not suspected previously about this mushroom cult: it was a patchwork of disparate components, made up of the alienated, the rootless, the youthfully rebellious, and-amazingly the devout. In the midst of the orgies of the Apocalyptists, among all the scatological rites and exhibitionist fervor, were the shabby, slab-jawed Fundamentalists, the quintessence of American Gothic, deeply persuaded that the world would indeed shortly come to its finish. We saw these people now for the first time dominant in the Apocalyptist riots. They did not commit b.e.s.t.i.a.lities themselves, but they paraded among the fornicators, benevolently accepting the shamelessness as a sign of the approaching end. To these people Vornan was Antichrist and his creation-from-garbage dogma was thunderous blasphemy.

To others it was The Word. The inchoate band of Vornan-worshipers that had been taking form in every city now had not only a prophet but a creed. We are trash and the descendants of trash, and we must put aside all mystical self-exaltation and accept reality, these people said. There is no G.o.d, and Vornan is His prophet! When I came to Los Angeles I found both these conflicting groups in full panoply, and Vornan under heavy guard. Only with great difficulty did I manage to get back to our group. They had to fly me in by helicopter, putting me down on the roof of a hotel in downtown Los Angeles, while far below me the Apocalyptists capered and the worshipers of Vornan sought to abase themselves before their idol. Kralick led me to the edge of the roof and had me look down at the swirling, writhing ma.s.s in the streets.

"How long has this been going on?" I asked.