The Big Time
Page 3
CHAPTER 3
Hell is the place for me. For to Hell go the fine churchmen, and the fine knights, killed in the tourney or in some grand war, the brave soldiers and the gallant gentlemen. With them will I go. There go also the fair gracious ladies who have lovers two or three beside their lord. There go the gold and the silver, the sables and ermine. There go the harpers and the minstrels and the kings of the earth.
--Aucassin
NINE FOR A PARTY
I exchanged my drink for a new one from another tray Beau was bringingaround. The gray of the Void was beginning to look real pleasant, likewarm thick mist with millions of tiny diamonds floating in it. Doc wassitting grandly at the bar with a steaming tumbler of tea--a chaser, Iguess, since he was just putting down a shot glass. Sid was talking toErich and laughing at the same time and I said to myself it begins tofeel like a party, but something's lacking.
It wasn't anything to do with the Major Maintainer; its telltale wasglowing a steady red like a nice little home fire amid the tight clusterof dials that included all the controls except the lonely andfrightening Introversion switch that was never touched. Then Maud'scouch curtains winked out and there were she and the Roman sittingquietly side by side.
He looked down at his shiny boots and the rest of his black duds like hewas just waking up and couldn't believe it all, and he said, "_Omniamutantur, nos et mutamur in illis_," and I raised my eyebrows at Beau,who was taking the tray back, and he did proud by old Vicksburg bytranslating: "All things change and we change with them."
Then Mark slowly looked around at us, and I can testify that a Romansmile is just as warm as any other nationality, and he finally said, "Weare nine, the proper number for a party. The couches, too. It is good."
Maud chuckled proudly and Erich shouted, "Welcome back from the Void,_Kamerad_," and then, because he's German and thinks all parties have tobe noisy and satirically pompous, he jumped on a couch and announced,"_Herren und Damen_, permit me to introduce the noblest Roman of themall, Marcus Vipsaius Niger, legate to Nero Claudius (called Germanicusin a former time stream) and who in 763 A.U.C. (Correct, Mark? It means10 A.D., you meatheads!) died bravely fighting the Parthians and theSnakes in the Battle of Alexandria. _Hoch, hoch, hoch!_"
* * * * *
We all swung our glasses and cheered with him and Sid yelled at Erich,"Keep your feet off the furniture, you unschooled rogue," and grinnedand boomed at all three hussars, "Take your ease, Recuperees," and Maudand Mark got their drinks, the Roman paining Beau by refusing Falernianwine in favor of scotch and soda, and right away everyone was talking amile a minute.
We had a lot to catch up on. There was the usual yak about the war--"TheSnakes are laying mine fields in the Void," "I don't believe it, how canyou mine nothing?"--and the shortages--bourbon, bobby pins, and thestabilitin that would have brought Mark out of it faster--and what hadbecome of people--"Marcia? Oh, she's not around any more," (She'd beencaught in a Change Gale and green and stinking in five seconds, but Iwasn't going to say that)--and Mark had to be told about Bruce's glove,which convulsed us all over again, and the Roman remembered a legionarywho had carried a gripe all the way to Octavius because he'daccidentally been issued the unbelievable luxury item sugar instead ofthe usual salt, and Erich asked Sid if he had any new Ghostgirls instock and Sid sucked his beard like the old goat he is. "Dost thou askme, lusty Allemand? Nay, there are several great beauties, amongst theman Austrian countess from Strauss's Vienna, and if it were not forsweetling here ... Mnnnn."
I poked a finger in Erich's chest between two of the bright buttons withtheir tiny death's heads. "You, my little von Hohenwald, are a menace tous real girls. You have too much of a thing about the unawakened, ghostkind."
He called me his little Demon and hugged me a bit too hard to prove itwasn't so, and then he suggested we show Bruce the Art Gallery. Ithought this was a real brilliant idea, but when I tried to argue himout of it, he got stubborn. Bruce and Lili were willing to do anythinganyone wanted them to, though not so willing to pay any attention whiledoing it. The saber cut was just a thin red line on his cheek; she'dwashed away all the dried blood.
The Gallery gets you, though. It's a bunch of paintings and sculpturesand especially odd knick-knacks, all made by Soldiers recuperating here,and a lot of them telling about the Change War from the stuff they'remade of--brass cartridges, flaked flint, bits of ancient pottery gluedinto futuristic shapes, mashed-up Incan gold rebeaten by a Martian,whorls of beady Lunan wire, a picture in tempera on a crinkle-crackedthick round of quartz that had filled a starship porthole, a Sumerianinscription chiseled into a brick from an atomic oven.
* * * * *
There are a lot of things in the Gallery and I can always find some Ihaven't ever seen before. It gets you, as I say, thinking about the guysthat made them and their thoughts and the far times and places they camefrom, and sometimes, when I'm feeling low, I'll come and look at them soI'll feel still lower and get inspired to kick myself back into a goodtemper. It's the only history of the Place there is and it doesn'tchange a great deal, because the things in it and the feelings that wentinto them resist the Change Winds better than anything else.
Right now, Erich's witty lecture was bouncing off the big ears I hideunder my pageboy bob and I was thinking how awful it is that for us thatthere's not only change but Change. You don't know from one minute tothe next whether a mood or idea you've got is really new or just wellingup into you because the past has been altered by the Spiders or Snakes.
Change Winds can blow not only death but anything short of it, down tothe featheriest fancy. They blow thousands of times faster than timemoves, but no one can say how much faster or how far one of them willtravel or what damage it'll do or how soon it'll damp out. The Big Timeisn't the little time.
And then, for the Demons, there's the fear that our personality willjust fade and someone else climb into the driver's seat and us not evenknow. Of course, we Demons are supposed to be able to remember throughChange and in spite of it; that's why we are Demons and not Ghosts likethe other Doublegangers, or merely Zombies or Unborn and nothing more,and as Beau truly said, there aren't any great men among us--and blamedfew of the masses, either--we're a rare sort of people and that's whythe Spiders have to Recruit us where they find us without caring aboutour previous knowledge and background, a Foreign Legion of time, astrange kind of folk, bright but always in the background, with built-innostalgia and cynicism, as adaptable as Centaurian shape-changers butwith memories as long as a Lunan's six arms, a kind of Change People,you might say, the cream of the damned.
But sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they areand if the whole past wasn't once entirely different from anything weremember, and we've forgotten that we forgot.
As I say, the Gallery gets you feeling real low, and so now I said tomyself, "Back to your lousy little commandant, kid," and gave myself astiff boot.
Erich was holding up a green bowl with gold dolphins or spaceships on itand saying, "And, to my mind, this proves that Etruscan art is derivedfrom Egyptian. Don't you agree, Bruce?"
Bruce looked up, all smiles from Lili, and said, "What was that, dearchap?"
* * * * *
Erich's forehead got dark as the Door and I was glad the hussars hadparked their sabers along with their shakos, but before he could evenget out a Jerry cussword, Doc breezed up in that plateau-state ofdrunkenness so like hypnotized sobriety, moving as if he were on adolly, ghosted the bowl out of Erich's hand, said, "A beautiful specimenof Middle Systemic Venusian. When Eightaitch finished it, he told me youcouldn't look at it and not feel the waves of the Northern VenusianShallows rippling around your hoofs. But it might look better inverted.I wonder. Who are you, young officer? _Nichevo_," and he carefully putthe bowl back on its shelf and rolled on.
It's a fact that D
oc knows the Art Gallery better than any of us, reallyby heart, he being the oldest inhabitant, though he maybe picked a badtime to show off his knowledge. Erich was going to take out after him,but I said, "Nix, _Kamerad_, remember gloves and sugar," and hecontented himself with complaining, "That _nichevo_--it's so gloomy andhopeless, _ungeheuerlich_. I tell you, _Liebchen_, they shouldn't haveRussians working for the Spiders, not even as Entertainers."
I grinned at him and squeezed his hand. "Not much entertainment in Docthese days, is there?" I agreed.
He grinned back at me a shade sheepishly and his face smoothed and hisblue eyes looked sweet again for a second and he said, "I shouldn't wantto claw out at people that way, Greta, but at times I am just a jealousold man," which is not entirely true, as he isn't a day overthirty-three, although his hair is nearly white.
Our lovers had drifted on a few steps until they were almost fading intothe Surgery screen. It was the last spot I would have picked for theformal preliminaries to a little British smooching, but Lili probablydidn't share my prejudices, though I remembered she'd told me she'dserved a brief hitch in an Arachnoid Field Hospital before beingtransferred to the Place.
But she couldn't have had anything like the experience I'd had during myshort and sour career as a Spider nurse, when I'd acquired my best-hatednightmare and flopped completely (jobwise, but on the floor, too) atseeing a doctor flick a switch and a being, badly injured but human,turn into a long cluster of glistening strange fruit--ugh, it alwaysmakes me want to toss my cookies and my buttons. And to think that dearold Daddy Anton wanted his Greta chile to be a doctor.
* * * * *
Well, I could see this wasn't getting me anywhere I wanted to go, andafter all there was a party going on.
Doc was babbling something at a great rate to Sid--I just hoped Docwouldn't get inspired to go into his animal imitations, which soundpretty fierce and once seriously offended some recuperating ETs.
Maud was demonstrating to Mark a 23rd Century two-step and Beau sat downat the piano and improvised softly on her rhythm.
As the deep-thrumming relaxing notes hit us, Erich's face brightened andhe dragged me over. Pleasantly soon I had my feet off the diamond-roughfloor, which we don't carpet because most of the ETs, the dear boys,like it hard, and I was shouldering back deep into the couch nearest thepiano, with cushions all around me and a fresh drink in my hand, whilemy Nazi boy friend was getting ready to discharge his _Weltschmerz_ assong, which didn't alarm me too much, as his baritone is passable.
Things felt real good, like the Maintainer was just idling to keep thePlace in existence and moored to the cosmos, not exerting itself at allor at most taking an occasional lazy paddle stroke. At times the Place'sloneliness can be happy and comfortable.
Then Beau raised an eyebrow at Erich, who nodded, and next thing theywere launched into a song we all know, though I've never found out whereit originally came from. This time it made me think of Lili, and Iwondered why--and why it's a tradition at Recuperation Stations to callthe new girl Lili, though in this case it happened to be her real name.
_Standing in the Doorway just outside of space, Winds of Change blow 'round you but don't touch your face; You smile as you whisper tenderly, "Please cross to me, Recuperee; The operation's over, come in and close the Door."_