Up the Line

by Robert Silverberg

  “It better be, buster! He’s there and I’m here!” Sam laughed. “A little thing like that shouldn’t upset you, man. You’re a Courier now, remember?”

  “Wait. Wait. Here’s what happened. I walked into the Covered Bazaar, see, and there you were in Moorish robes, and I let out this big whoop and ran up to you to say hello. And you didn’t know me, Sam! You started waving your scimitar, and cursing me out, and you told me in English to get the hell away from you, and—”

  “Well, hey, man, you know it’s against regulations to talk to other time-travelers when you’re up the line. Unless you set out from the same now-time as the other man, you’re supposed to ignore him even if you see through his cover. Fraternization is prohibited because—”

  “Yeah, sure, but it was me, Sam. I didn’t think you’d pull rules on me. You didn’t even know me, Sam!”

  “That’s obvious. But why are you so upset, kid?”

  “It was like you had amnesia. It scared me.”

  “But I couldn’t have known you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Sam began to laugh. “The Paradox of Discontinuity! Don’t tell me they never taught you that one!”

  “They said something about it, but I never paid much attention to a lot of that stuff, Sam.”

  “Well, pay attention now. You know what year it was I took that Istanbul trip?”

  “No.”

  “It was 2056, ’55, someplace back there. And I didn’t meet you until three or four years later—this spring, it was. So the Sam you found in 1559 never saw you before. Discontinuity, see? You were working from a now-time basis of 2059, and I was working from a basis of maybe ’55, and so you were a stranger to me, but I wasn’t a stranger to you. That’s one reason why Couriers aren’t supposed to talk to friends they run into by accident up the line.”

  I began to see.

  “I begin to see,” I said.

  “To me,” said Sam, “you were some dumb fresh kid trying to make trouble, maybe even a Time Patrol fink. I didn’t know you and I didn’t want anything to do with you. Now that I think about it a little, I remember something like that happening when I was there. Somebody from down the line bothering me in the bazaar. Funny that I never connected him with you, though!”

  “I had a fake beard on, up the line.”

  “That must have been it. Well, listen, are you all straightened out now?”

  “The Paradox of Discontinuity, Sam. Sure.”

  “You’ll remember to keep clear of old friends when you’re up the line?”

  “You bet. Christ, Sam, you really terrified me with that scimitar!”

  “Otherwise, how’s it going?”

  “Great,” I said. “It’s really great.”

  “Watch those paradoxes, kid,” Sam said, and blew me a kiss.

  Much relieved, I stepped out of the booth and went up the line to 1550 to watch them build the mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent.

  24.

  Themistoklis Metaxas was the chief Courier for my second time-tour of Byzantium. From the moment I met him I sensed that this man was going to play a major role in my destiny, and I was right.

  Metaxas was bantam-sized, maybe 1.5 meters tall. His skull was triangular, flat on top and pointed at the chin. His hair, thick and curly, was going gray. I guess he was about fifty years old. He had small glossy dark eyes, heavy brows, and a big sharp slab of a nose. He kept his lips curled inward so that he didn’t seem to have lips at all. There was no fat on him anywhere. He was unusually strong. His voice was low and compelling.

  Metaxas had charisma. Or should I call it chutzpah?

  A little of both, I think. For him the whole universe revolved around Themistoklis Metaxas; suns were born only that they might shed starlight on Themistoklis Metaxas; the Benchley Effect had been invented solely to enable Themistoklis Metaxas to walk through the ages. If he ever died, the cosmos would crumble.

  He had been one of the first Time Couriers ever hired, more than fifteen years ago. If he had cared to have the job, he could have been the head of the entire Courier Service by now, with a platoon of wanton secretaries and no need to battle fleas in old Byzantium. By choice, though, Metaxas remained a Courier on active duty, doing nothing but the Byzantium run. He practically regarded himself as a Byzantine citizen, and even spent his layoffs there, in a villa he had acquired in the suburbs of the early twelfth century.

  He was engaged on the side in a variety of small and large illegalities; they might be interrupted if he retired as a Courier, so he didn’t retire. The Time Patrol was terrified of him and let him have his own way in everything. Of course, Metaxas had more sense than to meddle with the past in any way that might cause serious changes in now-time, but aside from that his plunderings up the line were totally uninhibited.

  When I met him for the first time, he said to me, “You haven’t lived until you’ve laid one of your own ancestors.”

  25.

  It was a big group: twelve tourists, Metaxas, and me. They always loaded a few extras into his tours because he was such an unusually capable Courier and in such great demand. I tagged along as an assistant, soaking up experience against my first solo trip, which would be coming next time.

  Our dozen included three young and pretty single girls, Princeton co-eds making the Byzantium trip on gifts from their parents, who wanted them to learn something; two of the customary well-to-do middle-aged couples, one from Indianapolis and one from Milan; two youngish interior decorators, male and queer, from Beirut; a recently divorced response manipulator from New York, around forty-five and hungry for women; a puffy-faced little high-school teacher from Milwaukee, trying to improve his mind, and his wife; in short, the customary sampling.

  At the end of the first introductory session all three of the Princeton girls, both interior decorators, and the Indianapolis wife were visibly hungering to go to bed with Metaxas. Nobody paid much attention to me.

  “It will be different after the tour starts,” said Metaxas consolingly. “Several of the girls will become available to you. You do want the girls, don’t you?”

  He was right. On our first night up the line he picked one of the Princeton girls for himself, and the other two resigned themselves speedily to accepting the second best. For some reason, Metaxas chose a pugnosed redhead with splashy freckles and big feet. He left for me a long, cool, sleek brunette, so flawless in every way that she was obviously the product of one of the world’s finest helix men, and a cute, cheerful honey-blonde with warm eyes, smooth flesh, and the breasts of a twelve-year-old. I picked the brunette and regretted it; she came on in bed like something made of plastic. Toward dawn I traded her for the blonde and had a better time.

  Metaxas was a tremendous Courier. He knew everybody and everything, and maneuvered us into superb positions for the big events.

  “We are now,” he said, “in January, 532. The Emperor Justinian rules. His ambition is to conquer the world and govern it from Constantinople, but most of his great achievements lie ahead. The city, as you see, still looks much as it did in the last century. In front of you is the Great Palace; to the rear is the rebuilt Haghia Sophia of Theodosius II, following the old basilica plan, not yet reconstructed with the familiar domes. The city is tense; there will soon be civil disorder. Come this way.”

  Shivering in the cold, we followed Metaxas through the city, down byways and avenues I had not traveled when I came this way earlier with Capistrano. Never once on this trip did I catch sight of my other self or Capistrano or any of that group; one of Metaxas’ legendary skills was his ability to find new approaches to the standard scenes.

  Of course, he had to. At this moment there were fifty or a hundred Metaxases leading tours through Justinian’s city. As a matter of professional pride he wouldn’t want to intersect any of those other selves.

  “There are two factions in Constantinople now,” said Metaxas. “The Blues and the Greens, they are called. They consist of perhaps a thousand
men on each side, all troublemakers, and far more influential than their numbers indicate. The factions are something less than political parties, something more than mere supporters of sports teams, but they have characteristics of both. The Blues are more aristocratic; the Greens have links to the lower classes and the commercial strata. Each faction backs a team in the Hippodrome games, and each backs a certain course of governmental policies. Justinian has long been sympathetic to the Blues, and the Greens mistrust him. But as emperor he has tried to appear neutral. He would actually like to suppress both factions as threats to his power. Each night now the factions run wild in the streets. Look: those are the Blues.”

  Metaxas nodded at a cluster of insolent-looking bravos across the way: eight or nine idling men with long tumbles of thick hair to their shoulders, and festoons of beards and mustaches. They had cut back only the hair on the front of their heads. Their tunics were drawn in tight at the wrists, but flared out enormously from there to the shoulders; they wore gaudy capes and breeches and carried short two-edged swords. They looked brutal and dangerous.

  “Wait here,” said Metaxas, and went over to them.

  The Blues greeted him like an old friend. They clapped him on the back, laughed, shouted in glee. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I saw Metaxas grasping hands, talking quickly, articulately, confidently. One of the Blues offered him a flask of wine and he took a deep drink; then, hugging the man in mock tipsiness, Metaxas cunningly whisked the Blue’s sword from its sheath and pretended to run him through. The rowdies capered and applauded. Now Metaxas pointed at us; there were nods of agreement, oglings of the girls, winks, gestures. Finally we were summoned across the street.

  “Our friends invite us to the Hippodrome as their guests,” said Metaxas. “The races begin next week. Tonight we are permitted to join them in their revels.”

  I could hardly believe it. When I’d been here with Capistrano, we skulked about, keeping out of sight, for this was a time of rape and murder by night, and all laws ceased to function after dark. How did Metaxas dare to bring us so close to the criminals?

  He dared. And that night we roamed Constantinople, watching the Blues rob, ravish, and kill. For other citizens, death lay just around any corner; we were immune, privileged witnesses to the reign of terror. Metaxas presided over the nightmare prowl like a sawed-off Satan, cavorting with his Blue friends and even fingering one or two victims for them.

  In the morning it seemed like a dream. The phantoms of violence vanished with the night; by pale winter sunlight we inspected the city and listened to Metaxas’ historical commentary.

  “Justinian,” he said, “was a great conqueror, a great lawgiver, a great diplomat, and a great builder. This is history’s verdict. We also have the Secret History of Procopius, which says that Justinian was both a knave and a fool, and that his wife Theodora was a demonic whorish villainess. I know this Procopius: a good man, a clever writer, something of a puritan, a little too gullible. But he’s right about Justinian and Theodora. Justinian is a great man in the great things and a terribly evil man in the petty things. Theodora”—he spat—“is a whore among whores. She dances naked at dinners of state; she exhibits her body in public; she sleeps with her servants. I’ve heard she gives herself to dogs and donkeys, too. She’s every bit as depraved as Procopius claims.”

  Metaxas’ eyes twinkled. I knew without being told that he must have shared Theodora’s bed.

  Later that day he whispered, “I can arrange it for you. The risks are slight. Did you ever dream you could sleep with the Empress of Byzantium?”

  “The risks—”

  “What risks? You have your timer! You can get free! Listen to me, boy, she’s an acrobat! She wraps her heels around your ears. She consumes you. I can fix it up for you. The Empress of Byzantium! Justinian’s wife!”

  “Not this trip,” I blurted. “Some other time. I’m still too new at this business.”

  “You’re afraid of her.”

  “I’m not ready to fuck an empress just yet,” I said solemnly.

  “Everybody else does it!”

  “Couriers?”

  “Most of them.”

  “On my next trip,” I promised. The idea appalled me. I had to turn it off somehow. Metaxas misunderstood; I wasn’t shy, or afraid of being caught by Justinian, or anything like that; but I couldn’t bring myself to intersect with history that way. Traveling up the line was still fantasy for me; humping the celebrated monstress Theodora would make the fantasy all too real. Metaxas laughed at me, and for a while I think he felt contempt for me. But afterward he said, “It’s okay. Don’t let me rush you into things. When you’re ready for her, though, don’t miss her. I recommend her personally.”

  26.

  We stayed around for a couple of days to watch the early phases of the riots. The New Year’s Games were about to begin, and the Blues and Greens were growing more unruly. Their roughnecking was verging on anarchy; no one was safe in the streets after dark. Justinian worriedly ordered the factions to halt their maraudings, and various ringleaders were arrested. Seven were condemned to death, four by decapitation because they were caught carrying weapons, three by hanging on grounds of conspiracy.

  Metaxas took us to see the performance. One of the Blues survived his first hanging when the rope broke under his weight. The imperial guards put him up there again, and again the gallows couldn’t finish him, though the rope left fiery marks on his throat. So they put him aside for a while and strung up a Green, and bungled that job twice too; they were about to put the battered victims through a third hanging apiece when some outraged monks came boiling out of their monastery, grabbed the men in the midst of the confusion, and spirited them across the Golden Horn by rowboat to sanctuary in some church. Metaxas, who had seen all this before, cackled wildly at the fun. It seemed to me that his face peered at me from a thousand places in the crowd that had turned out for the executions.

  Then the racing season began at the Hippodrome, and we went as guests of Metaxas’ friendly gang of Blues. We had plenty of company; 100,000 Byzantines were in the stands. The tiers of marble seats were crowded far past capacity, but space had been saved for us.

  I hunted for myself in the stands, knowing that I sat somewhere else here with Capistrano and that tour; but in the crush I couldn’t catch a glimpse of myself. I saw plenty of Metaxas, though.

  The blonde Princetonian gasped when we got to our seats. “Look there!” she said. “The things from Istanbul!” Down the center of the arena was a row of familiar monuments, marking the boundary between the outward and inward courses of the track. The serpent column from Delphi, brought here by Constantine, was there, and the great obelisk of Thutmose III, stolen out of Egypt by the first Theodosius. The blonde remembered them from Istanbul down the line, where they still stand, though the Hippodrome itself is gone.

  “But where’s the third one?” she asked.

  Metaxas said softly, “The other obelisk has not yet been erected. Best not to talk about it.”

  It was the third day of the races—the fatal day. An ugly mood gripped this arena where emperors had been made and unmade. Yesterday and the day before, I knew, there had been nasty outcries when Justinian appeared in the imperial box; the crowd had yelled to him to free the imprisoned ringleaders of the factions, but he had ignored the shouts and let the races proceed. Today, January 13, Constantinople would erupt. Time-tourists love catastrophes; this would be a good one. I knew. I had seen it already.

  Below, officials were completing the preliminary rituals. Imperial guards, standards flying, paraded grandly. Those leaders of the Blues and Greens who were not in jail exchanged chilly ceremonial greetings. Now the mob stirred, and Justinian entered his box, a man of middle height, rather plump, with a round, florid face. Empress Theodora followed. She wore clinging, diaphanous silks, and she had rouged her nipples; they blazed through the fabric like beacons.

  Justinian mounted the steps of his box. The cries began: “
Free them! Let them out!” Serenely he lifted a fold of his purple robe and blessed the audience with the sign of the Cross, three times, once toward the center block of seats, then to the right, then to the left. The uproar grew. He threw a white kerchief down. Let the games begin! Theodora stretched and yawned and pulled up her robe to study the contours of her thighs. The stable doors burst open. Out came the first four chariots.

  They were quadrigas, four-horse vehicles; the audience forgot about politics as, wheel to wheel, the chariots went into action. Metaxas said pleasantly, “Theodora has been to bed with each of the drivers. I wonder which one is her favorite.” The empress looked profoundly bored. I had been surprised to find her here, the last time: I had thought that empresses were barred from the Hippodrome. As indeed they were, but Theodora made her own rules.

  The charioteers hustled down to the spina, the row of monuments, and came round and back up the course. A race ran seven rounds; seven ostrich eggs were set out on a stand, and as each round was completed one egg was removed. We watched two races. Then Metaxas said, “Let us shunt forward by one hour and get to the climax of this.” Only Metaxas would pull a bit like that: we adjusted all the timers and shunted, en masse, in casual disregard of the rules for public jumping. When we reappeared in the Hippodrome, the sixth race was about to begin.

  “Now starts the trouble,” said Metaxas happily.

  The race was run. But as the victor came forth to receive his crown, a booming voice bellowed from out of a group of Blues, “Long live the Greens and Blues!”

  An instant later, from the seats of the Greens, came the answering cry: “Long live the Blues and Greens!”

  “The factions are uniting against Justinian,” Metaxas said, quietly, schoolmasterishly. The chaos that was engulfing the stadium didn’t ruffle him.

  “Long live the Greens and Blues!”

  “Long live the Blues and Greens!”

  “Long live the Greens and Blues!”