Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (19 page)

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Jelling. I get so damned fouled up with my linguistics. Fouled? Is that right? Or do they say—”

“Hey!” Addyer cried in anguish.

“They say it, but only in private these years. Not before strangers.”

“Oh, yes. I remember. Who was that gentleman who just left?”

“Peters.”

“From Athens?”

“That’s right.”

“Didn’t like it, eh?”

“Not much. Seems the Peripatetics didn’t have plumbing.”

“Yes. You begin to hanker for a modern bathroom after a while. Where do I get some clothes … or don’t they wear clothes this century?”

“No, that’s a hundred years forward. Go see my wife. She’s in the outfitting room in the barn. That’s the big red building.”

The tall lighthouse-man Addyer had first seen in the farmyard suddenly manifested himself behind the girl. He was now dressed and moving at normal speed. He stared at the girl; she stared at him. “Splem!” they both cried. They embraced and kissed shoulders.

“St’u my rock-ribbering rib-rockery to heart the hearts two,” the man said.

“Heart’s too, argal, too heart,” the girl laughed.

“Eh? Then you st’u too.”

They embraced again and left.

“What was that? Future talk?” Addyer asked. “Shorthand?”

“Shorthand?” Jelling exclaimed in a surprised tone. “Don’t you know rhetoric when you hear it? That was thirtieth-century rhetoric, man. We don’t talk anything else up there. Prosthesis, Diastole, Epergesis, Metabasis, Hendiadys … And we’re all born scanning.”

“You don’t have to sound so stuck up,” Addyer muttered enviously. “I could scan too if I tried.”

“You’d find it damned inconvenient trying at your time of life.”

“What difference would that make?”

“It would make a big difference,” Jelling said, “because you’d find that living is the sum of conveniences. You might think plumbing is pretty unimportant compared to ancient Greek philosophers. Lots of people do. But the fact is, we already know the philosophy. After a while you get tired of seeing the great men and listening to them expound the material you already know. You begin to miss the conveniences and familiar patterns you used to take for granted.”

“That,” said Addyer, “is a superficial attitude.”

“You think so? Try living in the past by candlelight, without central heating, without refrigeration, canned foods, elementary drugs… . Or, future-wise, try living with Berganlicks, the Twenty-Two Commandments. Duodecimal calendars and currency, or try speaking in meter, planning and scanning each sentence before you talk … and damned for a contemptible illiterate if you forget yourself and speak spontaneously in your own tongue.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Addyer said. “I’ll bet there are times where I could be very happy. I’ve thought about it for years, and I—”

“Tcha!” Jelling snorted. “The great illusion. Name one.”

“The American Revolution.”

“Pfui! No sanitation. No medicine. Cholera in Philadelphia. Malaria in New York. No anesthesia. The death penalty “for hundreds of small crimes and petty infractions. None of the books and music you like best. None of the jobs or professions for which you’ve been trained. Try again.”

“The Victorian Age.”

“How are your teeth and eyes? In good shape? They’d better be. We can’t send your inlays and spectacles back with you. How are your ethics? In bad shape? They’d better be, or you’d starve in that cutthroat era. How do you feel about class distinctions? They were pretty strong in those days. What’s your religion? You’d better not be a Jew or Catholic or Quaker or Moravian or any minority. What’s your politics? If you’re a reactionary today, the same opinions would make you a dangerous radical a hundred years ago. I don’t think you’d be happy.”

“I’d be safe.”

“Not unless you were rich; and we can’t send money back. Only the flesh. No, Addyer, the poor died at the average age of forty in those days … worked out, worn out. Only the privileged survived, and you wouldn’t be one of the privileged.”

“Not with my superior knowledge?”

Jelling nodded wearily. “I knew
that
would come up sooner or later. What superior knowledge? Your hazy recollection of science and invention? Don’t be a damned fool, Addyer. You enjoy your technology without the faintest idea of how it works.”

“It wouldn’t have to be hazy recollection. I could prepare.”

“What, for instance?”

“Oh … say, the radio. I could make a fortune inventing the radio.”

Jelling smiled. “You couldn’t invent radio until you’d first invented the hundred allied technical discoveries that went into it. You’d have to create an entire new industrial world. You’d have to discover the vacuum rectifier and create an industry to manufacture it; the self-heterodyne circuit, the nonradiating neutrodyne receiver and so forth. You’d have to develop electric power production and transmission and alternating current. You’d have to—but why belabor the obvious? Could you invent internal combustion before the development of fuel oils?”

“My God!” Addyer groaned.

“And another thing,” Jelling went on grimly. “I’ve been talking about technological tools, but language is a tool, too; the tool of communication. Did you ever realize that all the studying you might do could never teach you how a language was really used centuries ago? Do you know how the Romans pronounced Latin? Do you know the Greek dialects? Could you learn to speak and think in Gaelic, seventeenth-century Flemish, Old Low German? Never. You’d be a deaf-mute.”

“I never thought about it that way,” Addyer said slowly.

“Escapists never do. All they’re looking for is a vague excuse to run away.”

“What about books? I could memorize a great book and—”

“And what? Go back far enough into the past to anticipate the real author? You’d be anticipating the public, too. A book doesn’t become great until the public’s ready to understand it. It doesn’t become profitable until the public’s ready to buy it.”

“What about going forward into the future?” Addyer asked.

“I’ve already told you. It’s the same problem only in reverse. Could a medieval man survive in the twentieth century? Could he stay alive in street traffic? Drive cars? Speak the language? Think in the language? Adapt to the tempo, ideas, and coordinations you take for granted? Never. Could someone from the twenty-fifth century adapt to the thirtieth? Never.”

“Well, then,” Addyer said angrily, “if the past and future are so uncomfortable, what are those people traveling around for?”

“They’re not traveling,” Jelling said. “They’re running.”

“From what?”

“Their own time.”

“Why?”

“They don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“Do you like yours? Does any neurotic?”

“Where are they going?”

“Anyplace but where they belong. They keep looking for the Golden Age. Tramps! Time-stiffs! Never satisfied. Always searching, shifting … bumming through the centuries. Pfui! Half the panhandlers you meet are probably time-bums stuck in the wrong century.”

“And those people coming here … they think
this
is a Golden Age?”

“They do.”

“They’re crazy,” Addyer protested. “Have they seen the ruins? The radiation? The war? The anxiety? The hysteria?”

“Sure. That’s what appeals to them. Don’t ask me why. Think of it this way: You like the American Colonial period, yes?”

“Among others.”

“Well, if you told Mr. George Washington the reasons why you liked his time, you’d probably be naming everything he hated about it.”

“But that’s not a fair comparison. This is the worst age in all history.”

Jelling waved his hand. “That’s how it looks to you. Everybody says that in every generation; but take my word for it, no matter when you live and how you live, there’s always somebody else somewhere else who thinks you live in the Golden Age.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Addyer said.

Jelling looked at him steadily for a moment. “You will be,” he said sorrowfully. “I’ve got bad news for you, Addyer. We can’t let you remain. You’ll talk and make trouble, and our secret’s got to be kept. We’ll have to send you out one-way.”

“I can talk wherever I go.”

“But nobody’ll pay attention to you outside your own time. You won’t make sense. You’ll be an eccentric … a lunatic … a foreigner … safe.”

“What if I come back?”

“You won’t be able to get back without a visa, and I’m not tattooing any visa on you. You won’t be the first we’ve had to transport, if that’s any consolation to you. There was a Jap, I remember—”

“Then you’re going to send me somewhere in time? Permanently?”

“That’s right. I’m really very sorry.”

“To the future or the past?”

“You can take your choice. Think it over while you’re getting undressed.”

“You don’t have to act so mournful,” Addyer said. “It’s a great adventure. A high adventure. It’s something I’ve always dreamed.”

“That’s right. It’s going to be wonderful.”

“I could refuse,” Addyer said nervously.

Jelling shook his head. “We’d only drug you and send you anyway. It might as well be your choice.”

“It’s a choice I’m delighted to make.”

“Sure. That’s the spirit, Addyer.”

“Everybody says I was born a hundred years too soon.”

“Everybody generally says that … unless they say you were born a hundred years too late.”

“Some people say that too.”

“Well, think it over. It’s a permanent move. Which would you prefer … the phonetic future or the poetic past?”

Very slowly Addyer began to undress as he undressed each night when he began the prelude to his customary fantasy. But now his dreams were faced with fulfillment and the moment of decision terrified him. He was a little blue and rather unsteady on his legs when he stepped to the copper disc in the center of the floor. In answer to Jelling’s inquiry he muttered his choice. Then he turned argent in the aura of an incandescent glow and disappeared from his time forever.

Where did he go? You know. I know. Addyer knows. Addyer traveled to the land of Our pet fantasy. He escaped into the refuge that is Our refuge, to the time of Our dreams; and in practically no time at all he realized that he had in truth departed from the only time for himself.

Through the vistas of the years every age but our own seems glamorous and golden. We yearn for the yesterdays and tomorrows, never realizing that we are faced with Hobson’s Choice … that today, bitter or sweet, anxious or calm, is the only day for us. The dream of time is the traitor, and we are all accomplices to the betrayal of ourselves.

Can you spare price of one coffee, honorable sir? No, sir, I am not panhandling organism. I am starveling Japanese transient stranded in this so-miserable year. Honorable sir! I beg in tears for holy charity. Will you donate to this destitute person one ticket to township of Lyonesse? I want to beg on knees for visa. I want to go back to year 1945 again. I want to be in Hiroshima again. I want to go home
.

W
hat Macy hated about the man was the fact that he squeaked. Macy didn’t know if it was the shoes, but he suspected the clothes. In the back room of his tavern, under the poster that asked: WHO FEARS MENTION THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE? Macy inspected the stranger. He was tall, slender, and very dainty. Although he was young, he was almost bald. There was fuzz on top of his head and over his eyebrows. Then he reached into his jacket for a wallet, and Macy made up his mind. It was the clothes that squeaked.

“MQ, Mr. Macy,” the stranger said in a staccato voice. “Very good. For rental of this back room included exclusive utility for one chronos—”

“One whatos?” Macy asked nervously.

“Chronos. The incorrect word? Oh yes. Excuse me. One hour.”

“You’re a foreigner,” Macy said. “What’s your name? I bet it’s Russian.”

“No. Not foreign,” the stranger answered. His frightening eyes whipped around the back room. “Identify me as Boyne.”

“Boyne!” Macy echoed incredulously.

“MQ. Boyne.” Mr. Boyne opened a wallet shaped like an accordion, ran his fingers through various colored papers and coins, then withdrew a hundred-dollar bill. He jabbed it at Macy and said: “Rental fee for one hour. As agreed. One hundred dollars. Take it and go.”

Impelled by the thrust of Boyne’s eyes, Macy took the bill and staggered out to the bar. Over his shoulder he quavered: “What’ll you drink?”

“Drink? Alcohol? Pfui!” Boyne answered.

He turned and darted to the telephone booth, reached under the pay phone and located the lead-in wire. From a side pocket he withdrew a small glittering box and clipped it to the wire. He tucked it out of sight, then lifted the receiver.

“Coordinates West 73-58-15,” he said rapidly. “North 40-45-20. Disband sigma. You’re ghosting …” After a pause, he continued: “Stet. Stet! Transmission clear. I want a fix on Knight. Oliver Wilson Knight. Probability to four significant figures. You have the coordinates… . 99.9807? MQ. Stand by____”

Boyne poked his head out of the booth and peered toward the tavern door. He waited with steely concentration until a young man and a pretty girl entered. Then he ducked back to the phone. “Probability fulfilled. Oliver Wilson Knight in contact. MQ. Luck my Para.” He hung up and was sitting under the poster as the couple wandered toward the back room.

The young man was about twenty-six, of medium height, and inclined to be stocky. His suit was rumpled, his seal-brown hair was rumpled, and his friendly face was crinkled by good-natured creases. The girl had black hair, soft blue eyes, and a small private smile. They walked arm in arm and liked to collide gently when they thought no one was looking. At this moment they collided with Mr. Macy.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Knight,” Macy said. “You and the young lady can’t sit back there this afternoon. The premises have been rented.”

Their faces fell. Boyne called: “Quite all right, Mr. Macy. All correct. Happy to entertain Mr. Knight and friend as guests.”