City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis (7 page)

“Why now do you interfere?” he asked. Her skin was soft, untouched by any scar or plague. Since the bombardments, he had not seen many women with unblemished skin.

She put her other hand gently on his rough fingers, and gazed at him with wide eyes. “Set your weapon on its timer.” she said. “Then take my hand and come with me into my land, beyond all history. At the Museum of Man, the arts and sciences of every age are gathered, the bravest of men, the most beautiful of women, the greatest of philosophers, and the most lucid of all poets. Our medicine can restore your vanished youth; it is a country of the young, where aging is unknown, and death by accident is undone before it can occur. In the twilight of all time, sorrow is unknown to us, and all those wise and great and glorious enough to join our company have been called up from the abyss of history. You will sit in our feast-hall, to eat whatever meats or breads delight you, or drink our sweet and endless wine. A place has been reserved for you, next to the seats of Brian Boru, Alfred the Great, and Charlemagne. We feast and know no lack, we who can change time to restore drained goblets back to fullness, or resurrect the slaughtered beast to roast again. For us, only for us, the flame of a blown-out candle can be unblown, and brightly burn again.”

He released her wrist. She saw his expression remained cold and unmoved.

Grief made her voice grow shrill, but no less lovely. She knelt, and clasped her shaking hands around his waist. “Come away with me, I pray you, Owen! I offer what all men have dreamed in vain! Our joys do not pall, cannot grow stale and wearisome like other joys, for we can change unhappy days not ever to have been! All great men, except for those who died in public places, in the witness of many eyes, are gathered there. All these great men, your peers, will cheer your coming to our halls. You shall hear the thousand poems, each grander than the last, which Dante and which Homer have composed in all the many centuries since they have dwelt among us, or sample the deep wisdom Aristotle has deduced in his thousand years of subtlest debate with Gotuma, Lao Tsu, Descartes, and John Locke.”

“What chance have I to open fire, and survive? To gather up my scattered people, and lead them once again against a foe, which, if my bullets find their aim, will be, for now, leaderless and demoralized? What chance?”

She rose slowly and shook her head. “None. I was told to tell you, you have none.”

“But you cannot know for certain. You know only that, in the version of the history you know, I did not fire, but went away with you.”

She bowed her head and whispered a half-silent “Yes.” But then she raised her head again. Her eyes now shone with unwept tears, and now she raised her hand to brush her straying hair aside. “But come with me, not because you must, but because I ask. Give up your world; you have lost it. You have failed. I have been promised that, should I return with you, a great love would grow between us. We are destined. Is this ruined land so fair that you will not renounce it for eternal youth, and eternal love?”

“Renounce your world instead, and stay with me. Teach me all the secrets of your age, and we will sweep my enemies away with the irresistible weapons of the future. No? Because if you change the past, you cannot return to find the future that you knew, can you.”

“It is so,” she said.

“You will not renounce your world for love? Just so. Nor will I mine. Now stand away, my dear. Before the sun is set, I mean to fire.”

She whirled away from him in a shimmer of pale fabric, and strode to stand where she had been when first he saw her. Now she spoke in anger: “You cannot resist my will in this! I need but step a moment back ago, and play this scene again, until I find the right words, or what wiles or arguments I must, to bend your stiff neck and persuade you from your folly. Foolish man! Foolish and vain man! You have done nothing to defy me! I shall make it never to have been, until finally you must change your mind!”

Now he smiled. “Let my other versions worry what they shall do. I am myself; I shall concern myself with me. But I suspect I am not the first of me who has declined your sweet temptation; I deem that you have played this scene before, for I cannot think that any words or promises could ever stay me from my resolve.”

She hid her hands behind her face and wept.

“Be comforted. If I were not the man you so admire, then, perhaps, I would depart with you. But if you love me for my bravery, then do not seek to rob me of this last brave, and final, act.”

She said from behind her hands, “It may be that you will survive but the future that will come of that shall not have me in it.”

And with those words, she vanished like a dream.

The sun was sinking downward into night. Against the bloody glimmer of its final rays, the flagship which held his enemies rose above the waves in gloomy silhouette. Now he raised his weapon to his shoulder, took careful aim, and depressed the trigger. There came a clap of thunder.

And because he knew not what might come next, his mind was utterly at peace.

When her fiancée told her he was a Time Warden, at first, she laughed. Then, she wondered if he was mad.

She sat in a summer dress of silvery white, atop a little wall overlooking the brook. He stood with one foot on the wall, leaning forward, elbow on knee, moodily watching the fallen cherry blossoms float on the rippling water passing. Slim white trees stood to either side of the crystalline stream.

Upstream, uphill, the fountainworks in the wide gardens poured into the stream in little waterfalls. White peacocks walked among the rosebushes and statues. Beyond, atop the green hill, commanding a pleasant prospect, an ancient mansion loomed, columns and windows gleaming bright beneath dark roofs of slate.

“Lee,” she finally said, “I don't care what you believe or who you think you might be. Those beliefs don't affect who you are. Or who I am, or who I want to be. And I want to be Mrs. Catherine Asteria.”

“I tell you, I can step from this age into another, or fly through the aeons with the speed of dreams. It's a power whose temptation I sometimes can resist…”

“Lee, I don't see that it matters.”

“Oh, it matters. To others if not to you,” he said. “For I have brothers who can do the same; some of them are my enemies. Our heritage is passed in the blood. Any child you bear me might likewise have this curse of timelessness.”

“Curse?”

“There is always a danger to time traveling, a temptation to change the past again and again, until one goes too far. It is addicting…”

Lelantos Ophion Asteria was a handsome man. Gold was his hair, and green his eyes. His face was gold as well, tanned by wind and sun.

She said warmly, “We've been seeing each other ever since Mont Blanc. I've seen you under pressure, during emergencies, during snowstorms, when we were cut off from the other climbers. I've seen how you act, how you think. That's what I fell in love with.”

He shook his head. “Hear me out. You may not be so quick to marry me if you knew all.”

“I know enough,” she said firmly. “Do you think I haven't thought about this? Suppose you were a member of a cult or some weird religion. I'd still marry you. Because all these months could not have been an act. And if your beliefs don't change how you act, what you are, then I'll live with them. I'll love them, because they're yours. But I don't have to believe them.”

He reached down with one hand and she placed her slim hand in his. Fondly he smiled as he squeezed her fingers.

Catherine said, “My brother-in-law believes in ghosts and says he's seen them. My sister doesn't and she hasn't. They're happy.”

“She might not be, if she were haunted.”

“What are you saying?”

He straightened up. “Our family has a marriage custom. A test… Before we marry, you must spend a night in the library of Ophion House, in the museum room.”

She turned her head away, looked down at her shoes.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“I know that rich men have to be suspicious of women who want to marry them. Maybe sometimes they put on weird acts, or stage strange effects to scare off the insincere. If you have something like that planned, don't bother. If you don't know me well enough by now, Lee, if you don't trust my motives, then we can call it off.”

He reached out and gently put his hands on her shoulders. She rose to her feet, but kept her head turned away. With one finger on her chin, he tilted her averted face up toward him.

Smiling down into her eyes, he said, “I have something wonderful to show you, my dear, my love. Come along.”

He put his long, buff-colored coat around her shoulders. “But it's not cold today.”

“Not today,” he said, and he took her by the hand and led her up the hill.

At first they passed the trees which lined the stream, and when they came among the trees, autumn colors were blooming among the leaves. And with their next few steps, they trod upon a multi-colored carpet of fallen leaves, and bare branches overhead swayed in wintry winds.

When they reached the gardens, he picked her up, so that her slim white shoes would not be wetted by the snow. The fountains were clogged with ice, the marble goddesses and heroes were pale with frost, and the dry grape arbors had icicles depending from the lattice work. She shivered against his chest.

He put her down once they had circled the main house, and little shoots of spring grass were shooting up amidst the profuse beds and congregations of Maytime flowers.

By the time they approached the main door, the grass was green and long, the sun was hot, and the elms and oaks had gone from buds to thick and verdant summer leaves.

A double row of oaks lined the drive leading to the main doors of Ophion House. Lelantos gently pushed Catherine into hiding behind a tree, and pressed close behind her, his arms to either side of her, supporting her. She was nearly fainting, and stood grasping the tree for support, staring at the house.

She saw that his Roadster stood idling in the circle before the doors, festooned with ribbons and flowers, with long strands tied to the rear bumper trailing shoes and cans. On the stairs of the portico, a noisy, cheerful crowd stood facing the doors, men dressed in handsome black tuxedos, women garbed in silks and satins, with flowers woven in their hair.

“It is now a year later,” he breathed in her ear. “I wanted you to see our wedding day.”

A great cheer went up from the house, and the women threw rice into the air as the bride and groom appeared at the door.

Catherine clutched the bark to the oak, and her breath caught in her throat. “That's me!”

“That's you. Run forward now, and you might catch the bouquet.”

But Catherine did not move. “Oh,” she sighed, “Oh my… I look so happy. Look at how I'm laughing! Look at my dress! It's gorgeous! I want a dress just like that for my wedding!”

Her face flushed with joy, standing on tip-toes, the bride smiled and waved toward the oak trees as if she knew they were there, as a lacey white veil, sheer as smoke, floated around her flower-crowned head. The bridegroom winked in their direction. Then the crowd swirled in around the newly-married pair, shouting with good cheer.

The couple fled the pelting rice, laughing, and leapt into the waiting Roadster. With a humming roar, the machine whirled down the lane between the trees, a cloud of dust speeding away behind it.

The noise of the crowd faded away like the sound of an old newsreel. Lelantos walked toward the house, drawing an amazed Catherine drifting, eyes wide, behind him. By the time they reached the lowest step, it was dusk, and the crowd had vanished. When they reached the door, the stars were gleaming cold in the dark above, and the hall clock was whirring and ringing midnight.

“How can this be possible?” Catherine breathed softly.

“All men can reach with their minds into the past and future, with memory and imagination. My family was forced to learn how to bring ourselves along as well.”

“Forced?”

“We come from a future of fire. The smoke of the burning has blotted out the sun, moon, and stars. It is a time of darkness; the streams and seas are turned to blood. Earthquakes swallow islands into the ocean and throw down mountains. Mankind has died in plague and poison, or burnt, or choked, or starved, or drowned or been buried alive. The first father and mother of my family, Lif and Lifrasir, the last of all mankind, escaped death by fleeing down the corridors of Time. We don't know why. Perhaps the moment when there was no future left at all allowed the past to open up her gates. The pair fled to the farthest future, after time itself had ceased, exhausted, and discovered the empty towers of Metachronopolis, the golden City Beyond Time. New names were given them, Chronos and Rhea, when they mounted the diamond thrones and donned the robes of pallid mist. They opened the mirrored gates of splendor into the creation reborn.”

She looked around at the summer night, at the rustling trees and the silent statues in the moonlight. “I thought things would blur and flicker when we time-traveled.”

“I only stepped on the same hour each day as we came up the hill.”

“And what year is it now?”

“It is midnight of our wedding day; as we came up stairs, I only took strides measuring an hour. The house is empty; all have gone to celebrate.”

“But why didn't things jump when we went from one hour to the next? I didn't see the stars spin, or the clouds whip past.”

“Nature admits of no discontinuities, no gaps. The force of Time will always mend itself, to make things appear as likely and as near to right as they may be.”

“And if you go back and shoot your father before you were born?”

“I would never shoot my father. He owes me money.”

“No, seriously.”

“Time would conspire to supply you with a father as near to yours as it might do. Even his name might stay the same. You have encountered odd and inexplicable coincidences? These are the scars of time, the ripples of my brothers as they pass among you. Where time cannot make a clean and even compensation for some paradox, unlikely coincidences attempt to supply the deficit. If they can. If they can.”