Up the Line Read online

“Victory!”

  “Victory!”

  “Victory!”

  And the one word, “Victory!” became a mighty cry from thousands of throats. “Nika! Nika! Victory!”

  Theodora laughed. Justinian, scowling, conferred with officers of his imperial guard. Greens and Blues marched from the Hippodrome, followed by a happy, screaming mob bent on destruction. We hung back, keeping a judicious distance; I caught sight of other equally cautious little groups of spectators, and knew they were no Byzantines.

  Torches flared in the streets. The imperial prison was aflame. The prisoners were free, the jailers were burning. Justinian’s own guard, afraid to interfere, looked on soberly. The rioters piled faggots against the gate of the Great Palace, across the plaza from the Hippodrome. Soon the palace was on fire. Theodosius’ Haghia Sophia was aflame; bearded priests, waving precious icons, appeared on its blazing roof and toppled back into the inferno. The senate house caught fire. It was a glorious orgy of destruction. Whenever snarling rioters approached us, we adjusted timers and shunted down the line, taking care to jump no more than ten or fifteen minutes at a hop, so that we wouldn’t reappear right inside some fire that hadn’t been set when we shunted.

  “Nika! Nika!”

  Constantinople’s sky was black with oily smoke, and flames danced on the horizon. Metaxas, his wedge-shaped face smudged and sooty, his eyes glinting with excitement, seemed constantly on the verge of breaking away from us and going to join the destroyers.

  “The firemen themselves are looting,” he called to us. “And look—the Blues burn the houses of the Greens, and the Greens burn the houses of the Blues!”

  A tremendous exodus was under way, as terrified citizens streamed toward the docks and begged the boatmen to ferry them to the Asian side. Unharmed, invulnerable, we moved through the holocaust, witnessing the walls of the old Haghia Sophia collapse, watching flames sweep the Great Palace, observing the behavior of the looters and the arsonists and the rapists who paused in fire-spattered alleys to pump some screaming silk-clad noblewoman full of proletarian jissom.

  Metaxas skillfully edited the riots for us; he had timed everything dozens of visits ago, and he knew exactly which highlights to hit.

  “Now we shunt forward six hours and forty minutes.” he said.

  “Now we jump three hours and eight minutes.”

  “Now we jump an hour and a half.”

  “Now we jump two days.”

  We saw everything that mattered. With the city still aflame, Justinian sent bishops and priests forth bearing sacred relics, a piece of the True Cross, the rod of Moses, the horn of Abraham’s ram, the bones of martyrs; the frightened clerics paraded bravely about, asking for a miracle, but no miracles came, only cascades of brickbats and stones. A general led forty guardsmen out to protect the holy men. “That is the famous Belisarius,” said Metaxas. Messages came from the emperor, announcing the deposing of unpopular officials; but churches were sacked, the imperial library given the torch, the baths of Zeuxippus were destroyed.

  On January 18, Justinian was bold enough to appear publicly in the Hippodrome to call for peace. He was hissed down by the Greens and fled as stone-throwing began. We saw a worthless prince named Hypatius proclaimed as emperor by the rebels in the Square of Constantine; we saw General Belisarius march through the smoldering city in defense of Justinian; we saw the butchery of the insurgents.

  We saw everything. I understood why Metaxas was the most coveted of Couriers. Capistrano had done his best to give his people an exciting show, but he had wasted too much time in the early phases. Metaxas, leaping brilliantly over hours and days, unveiled the entire catastrophe for us, and brought us at last to the morning when order was restored and a shaken Justinian rode through the charred ruins of Constantinople. By a red dawn we saw the clouds of ash still dancing in the air. Justinian studied the blackened hull of Haghia Sophia, and we studied Justinian.

  Metaxas said, “He is planning the new cathedral. He will make it the greatest shrine since Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Come: we have seen enough destruction. Now let us see the birth of beauty. Down the line, all of you! Five years and ten months down the line, and behold Haghia Sophia!”

  27.

  “On your next layoff,” said Metaxas, “visit me at my villa. I live there now in 1105. It is a good time to be in Byzantium; Alexius Comnenus rules and rules wisely. I’ll have a lusty wench ready for you, and plenty of wine. You’ll come?”

  I was lost in admiration for the sharp-faced little man. We were nearing the end of our tour, with only the Turkish Conquest yet to do, and he had revealed to me in a stunning way the difference between an inspired Courier and a merely competent one.

  Only a lifetime of dedication to the task could achieve such results, could provide such a show.

  Metaxas hadn’t just taken us to the standard highlights. He had shown us any number of minor events, splicing us in for an hour here, two hours there, creating for us a glorious mosaic of Byzantine history that dimmed the luster of the mosaics of Haghia Sophia. Other Couriers made a dozen stops, perhaps; Metaxas made more than fifty.

  He had a special fondness for the foolish emperors. We had listened to a speech of Michael II, the Stammerer, and we had watched the antics of Michael III, the Drunkard, and we had attended the baptism of the fifth Constantine, who had the misfortune to soil the font and was known for the rest of his life as Constantine Copronymus, Constantine the Pisser. Metaxas was completely at home in Byzantium in any one of a thousand years. Coolly, easily, confidently, he ranged through the eras.

  The villa he maintained was a mark of his confidence and his audacity. No other Courier had ever dared to create a second identity for himself up the line, spending all his holidays as a citizen of the past. Metaxas ran his villa on a now-time basis; when he had to leave it for two weeks to run a tour, he took care to return to it two weeks after his departure. He never overlapped himself, never let himself go to it at a time when he was already in residence; there was only one Metaxas permitted to use it, and that was the now-time Metaxas. He had bought the villa ten years ago in his double now-time: 2049 down the line, 1095 in Byzantium. And he had maintained his basis with precision; it was ten years later for him in both places. I promised to visit him in 1105. It would be an honor, I said.

  He grinned and said, “I’ll introduce you to my great-great-multi-great-grandmother when you come, too. She’s a terrific lay. You remember what I told you about screwing your own ancestors? There’s nothing finer!”

  I was stunned. “Does she know who you are?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” said Metaxas. “Would I break the first rule of the Time Service? Would I even hint to anyone up the line that I came from the future? Would I? Even Themistoklis Metaxas abides by that rule!”

  Like the moody Capistrano, Metaxas had devoted much effort to hunting out his ancestors. His motives were altogether different, though. Capistrano was plotting an elaborate suicide, but Metaxas was obsessed with transtemporal incest.

  “Isn’t it risky?” I asked.

  “Just take your pills and you’re safe, and so is she.”

  “I mean the Time Patrol—”

  “You make sure they don’t find out,” said Metaxas. “That way it isn’t risky.”

  “If you happen to get her pregnant, you might become your own ancestor.”

  “Groovy,” said Metaxas.

  “But—”

  “People don’t get people pregnant by accident any more, boy. Of course,” he added, “some day I might want to knock her up on purpose.”

  I felt the time-winds blowing up a gale.

  I said, “You’re talking anarchy!”

  “Nihilism, to be more accurate. Look here, Jud, look at this book. I’ve got all my female ancestors listed, hundreds of them, from the nineteenth century back to the tenth. Nobody else in the world has a book like this except maybe some snotty ex-kings and queens, and even they don’t have it this complete.”

>   “There’s Capistrano,” I said.

  “He goes back only to the fourteenth century! Anyway, he’s sick in the head. You know why he does his genealogies?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s pretty sick, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But tell me, why are you so eager to sleep with your own ancestors?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Really.”

  Metaxas said, “My father was a cold, hateful man. He beat his children every morning before breakfast for exercise. His father was a cold, hateful man. He forced his children to live like slaves. His father—I come from a long line of tyrannical authoritarian dictatorial males. I despise them all. It is my form of rebellion against the father-image. I go on and on through the past, seducing the wives and sisters and daughters of these men whom I loathe. Thus I puncture their icy smugness.”

  “In that case, then, to be perfectly consistent, you must have—your own mother—begun with—”

  “I draw the line at abominations,” said Metaxas.

  “I see.”

  “But my grandmother, yes! And several great-grandmothers! And on and on and on!” His eyes glowed. It was a divine mission with him. “I have ploughed through twenty, thirty generations already, and I will keep on for thirty more!” Metaxas laughed his shrill, satanic laugh. “Besides,” he said, “I enjoy a good lay as much as the next man. Others seduce at random; Metaxas seduces systematically! It gives meaning and structure to my life. This interests you, eh?”

  “Well—”

  “It is life’s most intense joy, what I do.”

  I pictured a row of naked women lying side by side, reaching off to infinity. Every one of them had the wedge-shaped head and sharp features of Themistoklis Metaxas. And Metaxas was moving patiently up the line, pausing to stick it into this one, and the one next to her, and the next, and the next, and in his tireless fashion he balled right up the line until the spread-legged women grew hairy and chinless, the womenfolk of Pithecanthropus erectus, and there was Metaxas erectus still jazzing his way back to the beginning of time. Bravo, Metaxas! Bravo!

  “Why don’t you try it sometime?” he asked.

  “Well—”

  “They tell me you are of Greek descent.”

  “On my mother’s side, yes.”

  “Then probably your ancestors lived right here in Constantinople. No Greek worth anything would have lived in Greece itself at this time. At this very moment a luscious ancestress of yours is in this very city!”

  “Well—”

  “Find her!” cried Metaxas. “Fuck her! It is joy! It is ecstasy! Defy space and time! Stick your finger in God’s eye!”

  “I’m not sure I really want to,” I said. But I did.

  28.

  As I say, Metaxas transformed my life. He changed my destinies in many ways, not all of them good. But one good thing he did for me was to give me confidence. His charisma and his chutzpah both rubbed off on me. I learned arrogance from Metaxas.

  Up until this point I had been a modest and self-effacing young man, at least while I was around my elders. Especially in my Time Service aspect I had been unpushy and callow. I did a lot of forelock-tugging and no doubt came across even more naive than I really was. I acted this way because I was young and had a lot to learn, not only about myself, which everybody does, but also about the workings of the Time Service. So far I had met a lot of men who were older, smarter, slicker, and more corrupt than myself, and I had treated them with deference: Sam, Dajani, Jeff Monroe, Sid Buonocore, Capistrano. But now I was with Metaxas, who was the oldest, smartest, slickest and most corrupt of them all, and he imparted momentum to me, so that I stopped orbiting other men and took up a trajectory of my own.

  Later I found out that this is one of Metaxas’ functions in the Time Service. He takes moist-eyed young Couriers-in-training and fills them full of the swagger they need to be successful operators in their own right.

  When I got back from my tour with Metaxas I no longer feared my first solo as a Courier. I was ready to go. Metaxas had showed me how a Courier can be a kind of artist, assembling a portrait of the past for his clients, and that was what I wanted to be. The risks and responsibilities didn’t trouble me now.

  Protopopolos said, “When you come back from your layoff, you’ll take six people out on the one-week tour.”

  “I’ll skip the layoff. I’m ready to leave right now!”

  “Well, your tourists aren’t. Anyway, the law says you’ve got to rest between trips. So rest. I’ll see you back here in two weeks, Jud.”

  So I had a holiday against my will. I was tempted to accept Metaxas’ invitation to his villa in 1105, but it occurred to me that maybe Metaxas had had enough of my company for a while. Then I toyed with the idea of signing up with a time-tour to Hastings or Waterloo or even back to the Crucifixion to count the Dajanis. But I passed that up, too. Now that I was on the threshold of leading a tour myself, I didn’t want to have to be led by somebody else, not just at the moment. I needed to be more secure in my new-found confidence before I dropped down under some other Courier’s leadership again.

  I dithered around in now-time Istanbul for three days, doing nothing special. Mainly I hung around the Time Service headquarters, playing stochastic chess with Kolettis and Melamed, who also happened to be off duty at this time. On the fourth day I hopped a shortshot for Athens. I didn’t know why I was going there until I got there.

  I was up on the Acropolis when I realized what my mission was. I was wandering around the ruins, fending off the peddlers of hologram slides and the guided-tour hucksters, when an advert globe came drifting toward me. It hovered about four feet away from me at eye level, radiating a flickering green glow designed to compel my attention, and said, “Good afternoon. We hope you’re enjoying your visit to twenty-first-century Athens. Now that you’ve seen the picturesque ruins, how would you like to see the Parthenon as it really looked? See the Greece of Socrates and Aristophanes? Your local Time Service office is on Aeolou Street, just opposite the Central Post Office, and—”

  Half an hour later I checked in at the Aeolou Street headquarters, identified myself as a Courier on vacation, and outfitted myself for a shunt up the line.

  Not to the Greece of Socrates and Aristophanes, though.

  I was heading for the Greece of the prosaic year 1997, when Konstantin Passilidis was elected mayor of Sparta.

  Konstantin Passilidis was my mother’s father. I was about to start tracing my ancestral seed back to its sprouting place.

  Dressed in the stark, itchy clothes of the late twentieth century, and carrying crisp and colorful obsolete banknotes, I shunted back sixty years and caught the first pod from Athens to Sparta. Pod service was brand new in Greece in 1997, and I was in mortal terror of a phaseout all the way down, but the alignment held true and I got to Sparta in one piece.

  Sparta was remarkably hideous.

  The present Sparta is not, of course, a linear descendant of the old militaristic place that caused so much trouble for Athens. That Sparta faded away gradually, and vanished altogether in medieval times. The new Sparta was founded in the early nineteenth century on the old site. In Grandfather Passilidis’ heyday it was a city of about 80,000 people, having grown rapidly after the installation of Greece’s first fusion-power plant there in the 1980’s.

  It consisted of hundreds of identical apartment houses of gray brick, arranged in perfectly straight rows. Every one of them was ten stories high, decked with lemon-colored balconies on every floor, and about as appealing as a jail. At one end of this barracks-like city was the shining dome of the power plant; at the other was a downtown section of taverns, banks, and municipal offices. It was quite charming, if you find brutality charming.

  I got off the pod and walked downtown. There weren’t any master information outputs to be seen on the streets—I guess the network hadn’t yet gone into operation here—but I had no trouble finding Mayor Passilidis. I stop
ped at a tavern for a quick ouzo and said, “Where can I find Mayor Passilidis?” and a dozen friendly Spartans escorted me to City Hall.

  His receptionist was a dark-haired girl of about twenty with big breasts and a faint mustache. Her Minoan Revival bodice was neatly calculated to distract a man’s attention from the shortcomings of her face. Wiggling those pink-tipped meaty globes at me, she said huskily, “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to see Mayor Passilidis. I’m from an American newspaper. We’re doing an article on Greece’s ten most dynamic young men, and we feel that Mr. Passilidis—”

  It didn’t sound convincing even to me. I stood there studying the beads of sweat on the white mounds of her bosom, waiting for her to turn me away. But she bought the story unhesitatingly, and with a minimum of delay I was escorted into His Honor’s office.

  “A pleasure to have you here,” my grandfather said in perfect English. “Won’t you sit down? Can I get you a martini, maybe? Or if you’d prefer a weed—”

  I froze. I panicked. I didn’t even take his hand when he offered it to me.

  The sight of Konstantin Passilidis terrified me.

  I had never seen my grandfather before, of course. He was gunned down by an Abolitionist hoodlum in 2010, long before I was born—one of the many victims of the Year of Assassins.

  Time-travel had never seemed so frighteningly real to me as it did right now. Justinian in the imperial box at the Hippodrome was nothing at all compared to Konstantin Passilidis greeting me in his office in Sparta.

  He was in his early thirties, a boy wonder of his time. His hair was dark and curly, just beginning to gray at the fringes, and he wore a little clipped mustache and a ring in his left ear. What terrified me so much was our physical resemblance. He could have been my older brother.

  After an endless moment I snapped out of my freeze. He was a little puzzled, I guess, but he courteously offered me refreshment again, and I declined, telling him I didn’t indulge, and somehow I found enough poise to launch my “interview” of him.