Of Vornan’s motives we knew nothing. On the second day in Buenos Aires he again went into the throng. This time the mob was far greater than on the day before, and in a kind of obstinate insistence they surrounded Vornan, trying desperately to reach and touch him. We had to get him out of there, finally, with a scoop lowered from a copter. He was pale and shaken as he rid himself of the crowd shield. I had never seen Vornan look rattled before, but this crowd had done it. He eyed the shield skeptically and said, “Possibly there are dangers in this. How trustworthy is the shield?”
Kralick assured him that it was loaded with redundancy features that made it foolproof. Vornan looked doubtful. He turned away, trying to compose himself; it was actually refreshing to see a symptom of fear in him. I could hardly fault him for fearing that crowd, even with a shield.
We flew from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro in the early hours of November 19. I tried to sleep, but Kralick came to my compartment and woke me. Behind him stood Vornan. In Kralick’s hand was the coiled slimness of a crowd shield.
“Put this on,” he said.
“What for?”
“So you can learn how to use it. You’re going to wear it in Rio.”
My lingering sleepiness vanished. “Listen, Sandy, if you think I’m going to expose myself to those crowds—”
“Please,” said Vornan. “I want you beside me. Leo.”
Kralick said, “Vornan’s been feeling uneasy about the size of the mobs for the last few days, and he doesn’t want to go down there alone any more. He asked me if I could get you to accompany him. He wants only you.”
“It’s true, Leo,” Vornan said. “I can’t trust the others. With you beside me I’m not afraid.”
He was damnably persuasive. One glance, one plea, and I was ready to walk through millions of screaming cultists with him. I told him I’d do as he wished, and he touched his hand to mine and murmured his thanks softly but movingly. Then he went away. The moment he was gone, I saw the lunacy of it; and as Kralick pushed the crowd shield toward me, I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said. “Get Vornan. Tell him I changed my mind.”
“Come on, Leo. Nothing can happen to you.”
“If I don’t go out there, Vornan doesn’t go either?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then we’ve solved our problem,” I said. “I’ll refuse to put the shield on. Vornan won’t be able to mingle with the multitudes. We’ll cut him off from the source of his power. Isn’t that what we want?”
“No.”
“No?”
“We want Vornan to be able to reach the people. They love him. They need him. We don’t dare deny them their hero.”
“Give them their hero, then. But not with me next to him.”
“Don’t start that again. Leo. You’re the one he asked for. If Vornan doesn’t make an appearance in Rio, it’s going to screw up international relations and God knows what else. We can’t risk frustrating that mob by not producing him.”
“So I’m thrown to the wolves?”
“The shields are safe, Leo! Come on. Help us out one last time.”
The intensity of Kralick’s concern was compelling, and in the end I agreed to honor my promise to Vornan. As we rocketed eastward over the dwindling wilderness of the Amazon basin, twenty miles high, Kralick taught me how to use the crowd shield. By the time we began our arc of descent, I was an expert. Vornan was visibly pleased that I had agreed to accompany him. He spoke freely of the excitement he felt in the midst of a throng, and of the power he felt he exerted over those who clustered about him. I listened and said little. I studied him with care, recording in my mind the look of his face, the gleam of his smile, for I had the feeling that his visit to our medieval epoch might soon be drawing to its close.
The crowd at Rio exceeded anything we had seen before. Vornan was scheduled to make a public appearance on the beach; we rolled through the streets of the magnificent city, heading for the sea, and there was no beach in sight, only a sea of heads lining the shore, a jostling, shoving, incredibly dense mob that stretched from the white towers of the oceanfront buildings to the edge of the waves, and even out into the water. We were unable to penetrate that mass, and had to take to the air. By copter we traversed the length of the beach. Vornan glowed with pride. “For me,” he said softly. “They come here for me. Where is my speech machine?”
Kralick had furnished him with yet another gadget: a translator, rigged to turn Vornan’s words into fluent Portuguese. As we hovered over that forest of dark upraised arms, Vornan spoke, and his words boomed out into the bright summer air. I cannot vouch for the translation, but the words he used were eloquent and moving. He spoke of the world from which he came, telling of its serenity and harmony, describing its freedom from striving and strife. Each human being, he said, was unique and valued. He contrasted that with our own bleak, harried time. A mob such as he saw beneath him, he said, was inconceivable in his day, for only a shared hunger brings a mob together, and no hunger so clawing could exist there. Why, he asked, did we choose to live this way? Why not rid ourselves of our rigidities and our prides, cast away our dogmas and our idols, hurl down the barriers that fence each human heart? Let every man love his fellow man as a brother. Let false cravings be abolished. Let the desire for power perish. Let a new age of benevolence be ushered in.
These were not new sentiments. Other prophets had offered them. But he spoke with such monstrous sincerity and fervor that he seemed to be minting each sentimental clichй anew. Was this the Vornan who had laughed in the face of the world? Was this the Vornan who had used human beings as toys and tools? This pleading, cajoling, thrilling orator? This saint? I was close to tears myself as I listened to him. And the impact on those down on the beach — those following this on a global network — who could calculate that?
Vornan’s mastery was complete. His slim, deceptively boyish figure occupied the center of the world’s stage. We were his. With sincerity instead of mockery now his weapon, he had conquered all.
He finished speaking. To me he said, “Now let us go down among them, Leo.”
We put on our shields. I was at the edge of terror; and Vornan himself, peering over the lip of the copter’s hatch into that swirling madhouse below, seemed to falter a moment and draw back from the descent. But they were waiting. They cried out for him in love-thickened voices. For once the magnetism worked the other way; Vornan was drawn forward.
“Go first,” he told me. “Please.”
With suicidal bravado I seized the grips and let myself be swung down a hundred feet to the beach. A clearing opened for me. I touched ground and felt shifting sand at my feet. People rushed toward me; then, seeing that I was not their prophet, they halted. Some rebounded from my shield. I felt invulnerable, and my fear ebbed as I saw how the amber glow repelled those who came too close.
Now Vornan was descending. A low roar rumbled from ten thousand throats and rushed up the scale to become an intolerable shriek. They recognized him. He stood beside me, aglow with his own power, proud of himself, swollen with joy. I knew what he was thinking: for a nobody he had done pretty well for himself. It is given to few men to become gods in their own lifetimes.
“Walk beside me,” he said.
He lifted his arms and strode slowly forward, majestic, awesome. Like a lesser apostle I accompanied him. No one paid heed to me; but worshipers flung themselves at him, their faces distorted and transfigured, their eyes glassy. None could touch him. The wondrous field turned all away, so that there was not even the impact of collision. We walked ten feet, twenty, thirty. The crowd opened for us, then surged inward again, no one willing to accept the reality of the shield. Protected as I was, I felt the enormous pent-up strength of that mob. Perhaps a million Brazilians surrounded us; perhaps five million. This was Vornan’s grandest moment. On, on, on he moved, nodding, smiling, reaching forth his hand, graciously accepting the homage offered.
A gigantic black man stripped to the waist loomed
before him, shining with sweat, skin nearly purple. He stood for a moment outlined against the brilliant summer sky. “Vornan!” he shouted in a voice like thunder. “Vornan!” He stretched both his hands toward Vornan—
And seized his arm.
The image is engraved on my mind: that jet-black hand gripping the light-green fabric of Vornan’s garment. And Vornan turning, frowning, looking at the hand, suddenly realizing that his shield had ceased to protect him.
“Leo!”he screamed.
There was a terrible inward rush. I heard cries of ecstasy. The crowd was going wild.
Before me dangled the grips of the copter’s scoop. I seized them and was pulled aloft to safety. I looked down only after climbing aboard; I saw the formless surging of the mob on the beach, and shuddered.
There were several hundred fatalities. No trace of Vornan was ever discovered.
EIGHTEEN
It is over, now, and yet it is just beginning. I do not know if Vornan’s disappearance will steady us or destroy us. We may not know that for a while.
I have lived in Rio for six weeks, but in such isolation that I might as well have been on the Moon. When the others left, I remained. My apartment is a small one, just two rooms, not far from the beach where Vornan’s final act was played. I have not left my apartment in over a month. My food is delivered through the house data-channel; I take no exercise; I have no friends in this city. I cannot even understand the language.
Since the fifth of December I have occupied myself by dictating this memoir, which shortly will be done. I do not intend to seek publication. I have set down, as accurately as recollection permits, the whole story of Vornan-19’s stay among us, and of my involvement with him. I will seal the tape and have it placed in a vault, to be opened in not less than one hundred years. I have no wish to add to the flood of gospels now appearing; perhaps my testimony will be of some use a century hence, but I will not have it employed now to feed the fires that are raging in the world. I wish I could feel confident that by the time someone breaks my seal of silence, all this will have receded into oblivion. But I doubt that that will be the case.
So many ambiguities remain. Did Vornan perish in that mob or did he return to his own time? Was that black giant a courier come to fetch him? Or did Vornan transmit himself into the future at the instant his shield failed? I wonder. And why did the shield fail, anyway? Kralick had sworn that it was proof against all but deliberate sabotage. Did Kralick gimmick the shield out of fear of Vornan’s growing power? And did he then use me as the cat’s-paw in his conspiracy, persuading me to cooperate so that an uneasy Vornan would agree to put the flawed shield on and go into the crowd? If that is so, I am an accessory after the fact, I who pretend to abhor violence. But I am not sure that Vornan was murdered; I am not even sure that Vornan died. All I know beyond doubt is that he has gone from us.
I think he is dead. We could not risk Vornan’s further presence among us. The conspirators who slew Caesar felt they were performing a public service. With Vornan gone, the question remains: can we survive his departure?
We have written the proper climax for the myth. When a young god comes among us, we slay him. Now he surely is dismembered Osiris and murdered Tammuz and lamented Baldur. Now the hour of redemption and resurrection must follow, and I fear it. Vornan alive might have undone himself in time, revealing himself to the world as foolish, vain, ignorant, and amoral, a mingling of peacock and wolf. Vornan gone is another matter. He is beyond our control now that we have martyred him. Those who needed him will wait for his successor, for someone to fill the void now created. I do not think we will lack for successors. We are coming into an age of prophets. We are coming into an era of new gods. We are coming into a century of flame. I fear that I may live to see the Time of Sweeping of which Vornan spoke.
Enough. It is nearly midnight, and tonight is the thirty-first of December. At the stroke the century will turn, for all but the purists. There is revelry in the streets. There is dancing and singing. I hear coarse shouts and the dull boom of fireworks. The sky blazes with light. If there are any Apocalyptists left, they must await the next hour in dread or in bliss, dreaming of approaching doom. It will be the year 2000 before long. The sound of that is strange to me.
It is time to leave my apartment at last. I will go out into the streets, among the crowds, and celebrate the birth of the new year. I need no shield; I am in no danger now, except only the danger in which we all must live. Now the century dies. I will go out.
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The Masks of Time Page 25