Knight Life

by Peter David

  “I’m … I’m not sure. It’s going to be pretty hectic for us, too hectic to make social plans.”

  “Oh.” Buddy looked crestfallen, but he brightened up. “Well, I’ll give you a call, okay?” He smiled ingratiatingly.

  “Okay,” said Harold gamely. “You bet.”

  Harold quickly handed back the signed petition, and then they walked at double-time down the street. Buddy watched them go, and when they were almost out of earshot he screamed, “Are we talking dinner or just coffee and cake here?”

  He shrugged when he got no response, and looked down proudly at his first signature. Only a few thousand more and he could knock off for the day. Then he reached into his beard and moaned. “Crud! The sons of bitches took my pen.” He shook his head in disillusionment. “You just can’t trust anyone these days. There’s freaks everywhere.”

  PROFESSOR BERTRAM SOTHERBY, noted geologist, was emerging from the depths of the New York University subway stop on the BMT when a shadowy figure materialized in front of him. In one hand was a switchblade. In the other was a clipboard.

  “Hello,” growled Elvis. “I’d like your support for Arthur Penn, who would like to run as an independent for mayor of New York City. Sign this or I’ll cut your fucking heart out.”

  Elvis collected 117 signatures. Before lunch. Without breaking a sweat.

  UP IN DUFFY Square, in the heart of the Broadway theater district, Arthur Penn stood on a street corner near a Howard Johnson’s, feeling extremely forlorn. About a block away, Gwen was likewise working on canvassing passersby.

  A likely looking pair of elderly women approached him, and he started to say, in a very chatty and personable manner, “Hello, my name is Arthur Penn, and I would like your support in my candidacy for mayor ...” which was more or less the phrasing that Merlin had told him to use. But the two women picked up their pace and stared straight ahead. His voice trailed off as Arthur realized with a shock that they were not only ignoring him, but they were pointedly ignoring him. Then he thought that perhaps he was judging them too harshly, that maybe they simply had not heard him. The elderly were notorious for being hard of hearing. Yes, that may very well be it.

  So the next time a youngish, businessman-looking sort approached him, he began his approach again of “Hello, my name is …” But again he got no further than stating his raison d’être before this chap, too, was out of earshot.

  No. It was not possible. People of any age could never be so unspeakably rude as to ignore someone who was pointblank addressing them. Could they?

  Arthur checked his appearance in the reflection in the display window of the Howard Johnson’s. No, his suit was well cut and smart, his grooming immaculate. He presented, to anyone who bothered to look, the perfect image of an educated and intelligent individual, not a threat or someone to be overlooked. It started to sink in to him that everything Merlin had said to him very early this morning, before he’d gone out canvassing, had been absolutely correct.

  He exchanged a look down the block with Gwen, who was clearly feeling equally frustrated. She shrugged and gestured vaguely at the people bustling around them. For the first time he turned and saw, really saw, the raw, almost manic energy of the area around him. It was a nippy day, but the sun was shining brightly. It was twelve thirty, the height of the lunch hour. Furthermore, it was a Wednesday, which meant many people were out looking to pick up matinee show tickets. Arthur was not prepared for it, for the pulse of the humanity around him. Every blessed one of the passing people was in a hurry, as if they had an inner spring mechanism unwinding at an incredible rate.

  It had not dawned on him at first that it had any direct bearing on him, but now he realized the error, the short-sightedness of his thinking. He couldn’t expect people to stop in their tracks for him. He had to attempt to adapt himself to their speed. He had to be flexible, after all. The wise man—the civilized man—knew when to be firm and when to adapt. So he began to speak, faster and faster, and soon the words were tumbling one over the other, like cars piling high on a crashing locomotive.

  “Hello my name is arthur pennandi would like your …” One syllable after another, indecipherable and incomprehensible, and the only result it had was to prompt people to move even faster than before—a feat he would not have previously thought possible. Some of them would cast glances at him that ranged from pitying to contemptuous to outright bewilderment.

  Abruptly he stopped talking. His lips thinned and his brow clouded. He looked across the street and noticed that there was a traffic island, a solitary oasis in the sea of cars that stretched as far as he could see in either direction. On the island there was a mob of people, all milling around in loosely formed lines. Reaching out, Arthur stopped the first passerby, a delivery boy carrying somebody’s called-in lunch. There was a spreading wet spot on the bag, which indicated that whatever was inside was leaking, which meant that the boy was in a hurry. Arthur almost let him pass on that basis, but then realized that everyone in the damned city seemed to have a reason for hurrying, and he might as well stop the first person that seemed worthwhile. So he did, snagging the confused boy by the arm. Before the delivery boy could ask what was going on, Arthur was pointing to the crowd across the way and asking, “What is the purpose of that gathering?”

  The delivery boy rallied. “Look, asshole, I’m runnin’ late and I can’t—uuuhhnnnff!” That final, startled gasp came as a result of Arthur grabbing a handful of the boy’s windbreaker. Despite the fact that he and the teenager were the same height, Arthur effortlessly lifted him into the air. The boy’s eyes bugged out, not from lack of breath so much as from pure astonishment. The lunch he was carrying was sitting inside a cardboard cover from a Hammermill paper box, and Arthur caught it as it slipped from his fingers. His gaze, however, did not waver from the startled young delivery chap. And at first, when he spoke, it was with a voice like thunder, for the one-time king of the Britons was not accustomed to being ignored, and couldn’t say he liked it much. What he could say was, “I will be ignored no longer!”

  He saw out the corner of his eye Gwen’s reaction to what he was doing, and then he noticed the lack of color in the boy’s face, and immediately his anger lessened as he mentally chided himself, Is this what it has come to then, Pendragon? Threatening hapless errand boys? Arthur felt something he had not experienced in years: shame. Certainly it was a feeling he’d known from his youth, with even distressing regularity, as Merlin would teach young Wart lessons about all manner of things. And more often than not, those lessons were very deep and very profound and very painful. They were, he thought at the time, the worst time of his entire life. How he missed them.

  He lowered the boy gently to the ground. “Art well, lad?”

  “My ...” He gulped once, afraid to say the wrong thing and set his captor off again. “My name’s not Art. But I’m okay, yeah.”

  And now Gwen was at his side. “Arthur,” she said (initially having addressed him as “Mr. Penn” until he had insisted on the use of his first name) “are you all right?”

  Arthur let out a sigh, but his anger was still quite evident. “I have been at this for much of the day, and the paltry few signatures that I have accrued—blast their eyes!” He smashed a fist against a nearby wall. The wall did not show any signs of yielding. Arthur’s fist, on the other hand, had newly acquired bruises that would be there for days.

  “That’s not going to help,” she said urgently, taking his fist in her hands and examining it for signs of damage. The delivery boy had, by this point, scampered. But Arthur wasn’t paying attention to that; he was too busy ranting. “That I should have to endure this just so that I can offer them my aid. The leadership I should be given by right I have to scrabble for ...”

  “By right?” She laughed reflexively, but then saw the hurt in his eyes and said, a bit more gently this time, “Arthur ... in this life, nothing’s given to you. Even the stuff you think you have a right to, sooner or later you wind up fighting for
it.”

  “I suppose,” he sighed.

  “What was up with the boy just then?”

  “Up? Oh ... I was just trying to determine the purpose of yon gath—of that gathering over there.”

  “That’s the TKTS line,” said Gwen, pronouncing each letter individually. “People stand there on line and can buy tickets for half price to—”

  Arthur had been doing a slow burn all day, and even as he was inwardly surprised at the vehemence of his reaction, he nevertheless exploded. “That they have time for? By Vortigern, they make time to await tickets for entertainment purposes and yet cannot spare half a minute on topics that could alter the face of this city ... of this nation! Gods!”

  “Arthur!” said Gwen, but he was no longer paying attention to her. Without heeding the traffic around him, he stormed across the street. Cars screeching to a halt mere inches from him did not even catch his notice. Horns blasting didn’t faze him. He reached the TKTS mob and elbowed his way through, earning shouts and curses from his would-be constituency. In an abstract way, he knew that he wasn’t doing himself any favors by alienating those very people whose vote he was hoping to capture, but at that moment he was more interested in recapturing his own pride.

  Arthur found himself at the base of a statue that was labeled Father Patrick Duffy. With quick, sure movements he scaled it, and moments later was shoulder-to-shoulder with the fighting priest from World War I. A few people glanced at him and then turned away. The rest ignored him completely.

  At that point, he was almost accustomed to being ignored, which was a fine state of affairs for someone who—a mere millennia or so ago—had entire regiments of knights snapping to attention at his every passing comment. With one arm still wrapped around the statue, he reached across his body to his left hip. He felt it there: the pommel, and then the hilt of Excalibur. He had flatly refused to go out onto the street without the comfortable weight of the enchanted sword by his side. So Merlin had added a further enchantment, rendering the blade invisible as long as it remained in the scabbard.

  Now, though, was not the time to keep his weapon concealed. Arthur pulled on the sword and it slid from the scabbard with ease. Excalibur sparkled in the sun, and Arthur thrilled to the weight, to the joy of it. No one was paying any attention to him, with the exception of Gwen, and she was momentarily distracted since she was busy trying to cross the street without being run over.

  “My arm is whole again,” he whispered reverently. Then he swung the sword back, brought it around, and smacked the flat of the blade against the statue. The resulting clang was on par with a Chinese gong, and although it nearly deafened Arthur himself, it also served to get the attention of everyone within a block’s radius.

  “All right,” he shouted. With practiced smoothness he had already returned Excalibur to its sheath, returning it to invisibility as well. “I have had enough. Enough of this street corner posturing and mindless games. By the gods you will attend my words. Rip your minds for a few minutes from mindless frivolities and ant-like natterings! I am running for mayor of this city!” He saw their reactions and added, “Yes, that’s what this is all about. I see it in your faces. This is why I want a moment of your precious time.”

  “Screw you,” called someone. And someone else shouted, “Who told you to get up there and be insulting?”

  Arthur laughed. “I? When I am treated as if I was a nonentity, to be snubbed and ignored at their discretion? I merely call a halt to the insults that have been dealt me this day.” He held up a clipboard, and the sheets of paper affixed to it rustled noisily in the breeze. “Do you see these?” Without pausing for a response he continued, “These are petitions. In this free society not just anyone can declare himself a candidate for office. I have to obtain ten thousand signatures, which actually means that I have to have twice that number, since it is generally assumed that half of you will be bloody liars. So I’m going to want every one of you to affix your signature to this most noble document. Is that clear?”

  And suddenly a strong, clear female voice—Gwen’s voice—called, “Why should we vote for you?”

  Arthur was caught completely off guard. Gwen was now standing a few feet away, and he stared at her in utter befuddlement. Why in the world would she be challenging him? “What?” was all he managed to get out. There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd at his bewilderment. He was garnering attention, but he couldn’t exactly say he liked the way it was happening. He was going from being ignored to being considered a joke. That was hardly an improvement.

  “You haven’t even told us your name!” It was Gwen again, and there was something in her voice other than mockery, if mockery had ever been her intent. It was ... it was prompting. She was ... prompting him ...

  Of course. Oh, of course.

  “I am Arthur. Arthur Penn.” He could have kicked himself for the brainless oversight. Quickly, though, he rallied, and continued, “If you wish to make your mark on history, no matter what else you fail to accomplish, know this: Sign your name here, and someday you will be able to balance your grandchildren on your knees and say, ‘Yes, I mattered. I accomplished something, because I helped Arthur Penn become Mayor of New York.’”

  “Why should we vote for you, Arthur Penn?” said Gwen, and now he fully understood. She was serving as a sort of patsy in the crowd, one who would put forward questions that would allow him to grab people’s attention, speak of things that might be of interest to them.

  Except that it couldn’t all remain in Gwen’s control, for now someone else shouted, “Yeah, you get up there, call us ants and stuff. Who are you, hot shit?”

  “Why should we vote for you?” Gwen said again, with even more urgency in her voice, trying to get a usable answer out of him.

  “Because ...” he began, wishing frantically that Merlin had tutored him better. But then Merlin had not been aware that Arthur was going to take his first shot at addressing crowds at a completely impromptu political rally.

  AT THAT MOMENT Merlin was not too far away. At Bryant Park, behind the Forty-second Street Library, the wizard was watching an old drunk, watching as he rocked slowly back and forth against the cold, his coat pulled tightly around him.

  Merlin shook his head. “Pitiful. Simply pitiful.” Hands buried deep in his New York Mets sweat jacket, Merlin walked over to the derelict and dropped down onto the cold stone step beside him. He wrinkled his nose at the stench. At first the drunk didn’t even notice him, but was content to rub the bottle with his cracked and blistered hands. Eventually, however, he became aware of a presence next to him, and he turned bleary eyes on Merlin. It took him several moments to focus, and when he did, he snorted.

  He was a black man of indeterminate age. His wool cap obscured much of his head, although a few tufts of curly white hair stuck out. Much of his face was likewise hidden behind the turned up collar of his coat. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “You a kid.” Three words into one.

  After a moment of meeting his gaze, Merlin turned and looked straight ahead. “Looks can be deceiving,” he observed.

  “You got money on you?”

  “No.”

  “Parents care where y’are?”

  Again he shook his head, although feeling somewhat amused at the question. “No,” he said again.

  The black man snorted. “You a kid, all right. Ain’t no doubt.”

  Merlin winced. “Why must you talk like that? You’re perfectly capable of proper grammar if you so desire.”

  This time the drunk looked at him more carefully. “You’re a smartass kid, besides,” he finally concluded.

  “Probably.” His bottom becoming chilled by the cold stone, Merlin shifted his position and sat on his gloved hands. “My name is Merlin. The wizard.”

  At this, the drunk snorted. “Believe it or not, kiddo ... I knew Merlin. I worked with Merlin. And you’re no Merlin. Although I’ll say this for you ... you’ve got enough sass to be him, sure as anything.” The drunk proffe
red his almost empty bottle, wrapped in a brown paper bag. “You want some lifeblood, little wizard? Not much left, I’m sorry to say.”

  “It’s full,” said Merlin quietly.

  The drunk laughed, a wheezy, phlegm-filled laugh that became a hacking cough within moments. When the fit subsided he told Merlin, “If there’s something I always know, little wizard, it’s how much I got in this here—”

  He hesitated, because suddenly the bottle felt heavy. He slid the bag down and saw the top of the liquid sloshing about less than an inch from the mouth of the bottle. Then, ever so slowly, he refocused his eyes, as if seeing the mage for the first time.

  “You little shite,” he said slowly. “Where the hell have you been?”

  At this Merlin truly did laugh, out loud. He stepped down two steps so that he was on eye level with the drunk. His thick brown hair blew in the wind. “Enjoy it, Percival. Or do you prefer ‘Parsifal,’ as in the old times?”

  The drunk’s eyes narrowed. “Percival is fine,” he said slowly.

  “Either way,” continued Merlin, “it’s the last drink you’re going to be having for a time—ever, with any luck. We’re going to sober you up and put you back in harness.”

  “After all this time ... now you come to me? Talk about putting me in harness like I’m some kind of beast of burden? A horse?”

  “No. If you were a horse, we’d simply shoot you and put you out of your misery.”

  “What the hell happened to you?” Percival was looking at him wonderingly. “I mean, I know what happened to me ... but what happened to you?”

  He wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his sweat jacket. “You will not find this simple to comprehend, Percival, but I live backward in time. In another fifteen centuries—by my reckoning, not yours—I shall be an old man. The price of immortality. It’s difficult to maintain the form of an old man for an excessively long time, which is what would have been required had I aged as other men—had I been spawned as other men, Mary Stewart notwithstanding. But to age backward, to be forever becoming younger—I can maintain this body for decades, centuries to come. When I said fifteen centuries by my reckoning, I meant backward to the fifth century. Forward into the twenty-fifth century I shall be much as you see me now ... if not a tad younger.” He saw the blank look in Percival’s face, and didn’t wonder at the puzzlement there. There was really no point in dwelling on it to excess. He held out a hand. “Come with me, Percival. Let’s go somewhere and talk. We can use you.”