The wrong end of time, p.6
The Wrong End Of Time, page 6
He realized abruptly that he was being stared at. By the young man Lora had insisted on pulling into the photograph with her, the lean black. the only black here. Blacks didn't make it to Lakonia, he'd been told.
The instant he met that dark gaze, it flicked away. But it left a dismayingly deep dent, for no apparent reason, in his hitherto impermeable composure.
(r)X
After that music began, and Sheklov had to circulate. Almost at once he had an alarming encounter with a TV producer named Ambow, who was eager for praise of some historical-drama series he had made. Sheklov, not having seen the show, had no opinion at first, but by the time Ambow found a more promising victim he had a very firm opinion indeed, The series was decadent bourgeois non-representational escapism of the worst conceivable kind. A man like Ambow couldn't possibly create anything better.
Indeed, this whole function had a curious quasi-historical air. The tunes being played, for example, dated back fifteen, even twenty-five years, and in the identical style of their originals. The clothes, too, struck him as subtly behind the times-what you might have seen at a Kremlin reception a decade ago. Growing more and more depressed, he drifted from one group to another, and heard lectures on the spics ("A billion bucks we spent on aid, and the Cubans put 'em in their pocket!"), on the gooks ("All those American boys who died trying to save them from the Reds!"), and the black Africans ("Can't trust anyone over there except the Boers, and I don't think we do enough for them!") . . .
1 didn't believe it, he thought. But it's true!
He wondered whether someone like Ambow, working with material from the past, recognized the analogies you could draw, one-for-one, with other places and other times. And concluded that if anyone did, he must prefer to ignore them. It made him desperately sad.
Eventually, passing the half-open door that led into the living-room of the Turnips' apartment, he heard a familiar sound.
“Well, well!” he murmured under his teeth. “Prokofievl”
He debated for a moment whether it was in character for Holtzer to like “The Love of Three Oranges,” and decided that that was irrelevant. Shrugging, he pushed open the door. Beyond, the lights were down to a dim glow, but he had been in here earlier today and thought he knew the layout well enough not to turn them up. He headed for a chair facing the player. It was not until he almost fell over an outstretched leg that he realized the room's long lounge, end-on to the door, was occupied by Lora and her dark-skinned friend. She was crawling all over him, but although his hands were inside her dress, fondling her back, he didn't seem to be acting very passionately. “Sorry” he murmured, and made to withdraw.
And backed straight into a tall, good-looking man with a shock of sleek gray hair, who in the same moment snapped the lights to full.
“Oh, Loral” he exclaimed. “Do you know what's become of your brother”
“Shit, piss, and damnation,” Lora said in a weary tone, and rolled off Danty, flinging her legs angrily to the floor. “No, I don't I'm not my brother's keeper, thank God”
The handsome man reddened, and Sheklov placed him; he'd been pointed out as a minister of religion. Powers? No, Powell, that was it: Maurice Powell.
“Hey, Don” Lora added, seeing that Shekldv was on the point of leaving the room. “Don't run off I”
Sheklov halted on the threshold. There was a pause. Eventually Powell gave an insincere grin and went out.
"Oh, that slug!" Lora said, falling back on the couch. Danty had twisted around into a sitting position and reached for a glass on a nearby table. "Put the lights down again, Don, and have a chair." "I don't want to interrupt " Sheklov began.
“Zip it!” she interrupted with a harsh laugh. “That's one of his lines Know what he did to me, last party he came to here? Walked right into my bedroom where I was making out with somebody, sat down, and started playing with himself while he watched Christ, he makes my skin crawl”
She seized and lit a cigarette from the table.
“Still, as long as he knows you're in here, he won't come back. Or with luck he'll find Peter. Made for each other, those two. . . , Shit, I forgot. Danty, this is Don Holtzer.”
“We almost met,” Danty said with a crooked grin. “In the pic with Prexy.”
“Yes, of course,” Lora muttered. “Jesus, Danty, how does that hit you?”
“Like dry ice.” Danty set his glass aside again. “You're from Canada, aren't you, Don?”
On edge for some indefinable reason-maybe because of the searching quality of the stare Danty had given him before-Sheklov nodded. “Yes, I'm in timber up there. Manitoba.”
That much was absolutely safe to say. There were scores of Canadian firms ready to give Russian agents cover, and he had a genuine deal to conclude.
“I'd like to go north some time,” Lora said. She realized that her left nipple was showing through one of the gaps in her dress, and tugged a lozenge of cloth back into place. “There's something rather cultural about Canada, I think.”
Sheklov blinked, experiencing the sensation of being displaced backward in time more acutely than ever. How long since kulturny ceased to be a fad-word Back There? Ten years? Twenty?
“What makes you say that?” he inquired, honestly curious.
“Well-uh-its links with European tradition. Speaking French there, for one thing.” Lora's answer had a seizing at-straws sound. “Mother's maid Estelle is from Montreal, and she speaks French. I think it's a romantic language.”
Obviously, having recovered from her annoyance at failing to get all the way with Danty, she was sliding into a regular role. Now she added in a wistful tone. “I've often dreamed of standing on the Champs-Elys&s and watching the sun go down behind the Arc de Triumphal”
“You'd have a long wait,” Danty said.
She glared at him. “Shit, you know what I mean!”
But Sheklov's nape had suddenly begun to prickle. Danty had uttered that statement with authority. And it was quite correct; if you were standing in the Champs-Elyses, the sun couldn't set behind the Arc de Triumphed. He said, before Lora could go on, “You've been there, have you?”
“How would I get a passport?” Danty grunted, and turned to his drink again.
Yet there had been assurance in his tone . . .
Still, Lora was talking again. “Have you traveled much, Don? It's easier for Canadians, isn't it?”
“Well, I guess so,” Sheklov said, mentally reviewing Holtzer's life-story. “But me, I haven't been around too much. We're one of the few countries left with a frontier, you know. Pushing north instead of west. That gives us a lot of elbow-room. So we-”
The door. which Powell had closed on leaving, slammed wide, and there in the opening was Peter. Obviously he had been drinking heavily; he was flushed and unsteady on his feet.
“Well, well” he exclaimed. “That's so sweet! My sister and her johnny reb snuggled up!”
“Zip your mouth. you reeky turd,” Lora said, and twisted on the couch so her back was towards her brother.
“Hey!” Sheklov exclaimed. half-rising. A look of instant fury had appeared on Peter's face, and he seemed about to launch himself bodily at Lora.
“Oh, fade away” she told him over her shoulder.
“Peter?” a richly resonant voice said from outside. Yes, it was Powell back again. “Ah, there you are” He touched the boy companionably on the arm, and left his hand there as Peter stepped back against him.
“I'm going to make you pay for that!” he snarled at Lora.
“Peter!” Powell reproved. “That's no way to talk to-”
“So how would you like to be called a reeky turd?”
“Oh, sticks and stones, you know, sticks and stones” Having located Peter again, Powell seemed to have had his good humor restored too. He eased the boy into a chair and sat on its arm, his hand still where he had first put it. “I must say the party's going splendidly, isn't it? Are you enjoying yourself, Lora?”
“In the company of my johnny reb, yes, thank you.”
“My dear girl!” Powell said, shocked. “That's not a terra to bandy around lightly, you know. To call someone a reb is to accuse him of being a wastrel, whose actions strike at the very foundations of our cherished heritage”
And Danty glanced up and nodded: mm-hm!
That threw Powell completely. He almost gaped for a moment, and then added, making a fast comeback, “Though we must not condemn too harshly. It's not for us to sit in judgment, after all.”
“Except on ourselves,” Danty murmured, and packed a dozen personal implications into the comment. Powell got them all. He tugged at his clerical collar as though it were suddenly too tight.
"Very true. I must remember that phrase. 'Sermons in stones . . .' And we're told that stony ground will be the
lot of some of our seed. Tell me, young man, are you lapsed from the brotherhood of your church?" "I guess so," Danty said indifferently.
“Shame! But we mustn't lose hope for you, must we? 'There is more joy in heaven-' And so on.”
Maliciously Danty said, “And so on-what?”
“'Over one sinner that repenteth,”' Powell answered automatically. Then he realized he was being needled. He rose.
“Pardon me,” he said with a half-bow. “I'm a longsuffering man, but I can't endure mockery of my Cloth. Come, Peter. I think I begin to understand your antipathy to your sister.”
The instant the door closed, Lora threw herself at Danty. “Oh, you're wonderful” she cried, and thrust her tongue into his ear. “I'll go find some more drinks-I want to wash away the taste of that slug Won't be long!”
And, rising, she added to Sheklov, “What's yours, Don? Whiskey? Rightly”
Left alone with Danty, Sheklov thought himself by main force back into the conservatively disapproving role that fitted his pose as a successful Canadian salesman, and said, “You told the minister you're a reb. I hope you were only -uh-needling him?”
Danty gave a shrug. “Well, I didn't invent the term, but I find it easy to put on.”
Sheklov's mind raced. How to strike a balance between ostensible conformity and real interest? Once again he recalled Bratcheslavsky, squatting on the floor in distant Alma-Ata; the old man had said, “Reb! That's a word to bear in mind. There's something going on. From here one can't find out exactly what. Official smog surrounds the reality. Maybe it's just another term for what we used to call stilyagf,'or jet-set. On the other hand, maybe not.”
He felt suddenly dizzy. Those dark eyes were boring into his again. Could the liquor-? No, of course not. It was far weaker than the 140-proof Polish vodka he . . .
From a very great distance a voice that was recognizably Danty's reached him. It was saying, “You want I should join the church Powell runs? Twenty million people watch his sermons every Sunday. That makes him a holy man?”
And then the appalling, incredible thing happened. He continued, " 'Those who are full of desires for self-gratification, regarding paradise as their highest goal, and are engaged in many intricate scriptural rites just to secure pleasure and power as the result of their deeds for their future incarnations-' "
And Sheklov went on with it. He couldn't help it. He couldn't help it. Cold terror raged through him at every funeral-bell syllable that he muttered, but he heard his own voice, out of control, inexorably finishing the quotation.
“'Whose discrimination is stolen away by the love of power and pleasure and who are thus deeply attached therein, for such people it is impossible to obtain either firm conviction or God-consciousness.”'
Sweat crawled on his palms. The last time he had heard that truth, it had been in another language, in Banaras, and Donald Holtzer had never been to India.
That was his cover blown to bits.
.x. Later, he got extremely drunk. His cover as Holtzer. was proof against that-it had been tried to the limit during training sessions-and anyway the same thing was happening to a lot of other people. starting with Prexy, who fell down at about eleven-thirty and had to be discreetly removed. Then there was a curious blurred interlude involving two women who claimed the right to go to bed with Turpin because their husbands were necking with each other. He didn't follow the logic of that, but it came to blows, and one of them departed with a swollen eye that would call for her best cosmetic skills tomorrow.
Yet everyone was shaking Turpin's hand, or kissing his wife, or both, with enormous warmth, and saying, “Marvelous party, Dick You must come to our place very soon!”
What's the standard o1 a “good party”? The fact that no one was taken to the hospital?
Danty and Lora had disappeared early. Something about a night-ride? He wasn't sure, but he hoped . . .
Do I? He struggled to think through the alcoholic haze, and concluded that he hoped yes. If they were drunk enough to crash into a bridge on the superway, that would rescue him from his terror. In this country for a matter of hours, and already betrayed by his own stupidity! He felt as though he had exposed himself on the street, knowing there was a policeman within shouting distance.
Ultimately, a little before the last guests left at one o'clock, he found his way to the room he'd been allotted -normally Peter's-and screamed at a group of three men and two women using the bed. They went away, spitting at him, and he collapsed.
And then he had to fight his hangover.
The maid Estelle came silently to him at nine with a remedy of some sort, a pill fizzing in a glass of water. Apparently it was the routine after-party treatment in the Turpin household. Five minutes later he felt a little better. He sat up in bed, sipping the coffee that she had also brought, and used the remote-control to turn down the TV. She had switched it on, without asking him, as she went out. He'd already noticed that these extraordinary people didn't seem to feel that a room was habitable unless either bland music or a TV image were included in the decor.
He postponed consideration of his self-revelation to Danty, because, on the one hand, the subject was too complex to analyze while he was hung over, and on the other, although he felt the sky had fallen on him he had not yet been hauled away to a cell.
Of course, by his standards this room could have done duty for one; it was larger by a bare meter in each direction than the bed . . . though there were closets built into the wall.
He shook his head incredulously. Two hundred thousand dollars That was what his briefing said Turpin had had to pay for this-this rabbit-hutch And his was only in the medium range. The most expensive apartments here had two extra rooms and a party-hall that didn't have to be shared, and set the buyer back twice as much. But you didn't aspire to that unless you were on the Energetics General Board or of staff rank in the armed forces. In this particular tower, Sheklov knew, the penthouse belonged to a four-star Air Force general.
How did a nation get into a mess like this?
So far he hadn't managed to explore this one city, let alone the surrounding country, but he had been thoroughly stuffed with data, and against the throbbing of his head he fought to organize what he recalled into some sort of relevance to his situation. Lots of glib catch-phrases came to mind, for example: “Human beings are subject to forces so ingrained in their thinking as to render them incapable of detached evaluation of their own behavior.”
Yery helpful. In other words: "All we learn from history"-or psychology, or anthropology, or ethnology-"is that we learn nothing from history"-or psychology, or . . .
Yes.
Still, these people had learned how to make a first-rate anti-hangover pill. He was already able to look directly at the brightly sunlit window of the room without narrowing
his eyes. No doubt of it, Lakonia offered some lovely views-those towers like a solemn crazy forest, the sparkling lake, the redwoods in the distance which, force grown or not, were splendid trees, rivaling anything he had seen in Siberia.
And their Chief Executive (nominal ruler) had been carried out, dead drunk, from the room adjacent . . .
Bewildered, he shook his head. It had to be an -illusion You couldn't possibly run a country this way
Liar, his conscience said. It's being done. So you can.
At which point his more orthodox attitudes overcame him: Yes, but look at the trouble it causes everyone else
He heaved an enormous sigh, told himself the hangover pill was perfect, superb, terrific, and finally managed to whip the crazy ringing nonsense inside his skull into some sort of pattern. It was a dismayingly random pattern-a mental counterpart of decadent non-representational art -but it had some expressionist overtones he found comforting because they indicated that he was at last beginning to feel, instead of just perceiving, the functionality of the extraordinary society he was visiting.
To begin with, this is NOT the Eastern Roman Empire. The hell with how many parallels you can drawl (Who am 1? Oh, that's not hard to define. I'm the discontented mercenary within the gates, who has taken sufficient pay In coin stamped with the Emperor's head-or rather, with the heads of Emperors, because they change their rulers like the weather!-to lie Indolent on the triclinium and open his mouth to the food offered by a domestic whore. Male or female.) POWI
A stab of pain lanced his forehead over his left eye; the hangover pill wasn't, obviously, a hundred per cent efficient. He gulped more coffee and wondered wistfully what would have become of America if it had socialized cannabis instead of alcohol.
Resuming: In that case, the hungry Huns at the gates of the Empire are-
“Oh, stop it!” he said aloud, and slapped his bare thigh. One didn't wear pajamas or night shorts here; according to his briefing, the mere possession of such garments was taken as proof of lack of confidence in one's ability to secure a partner for the night . . . of one sort or another. (He still didn't entirely believe the cover which, .Turpin had assured him, excused his overnight absence from home in order to collect a spy from the sea. The story was that Turpin now and then liked to sleep with a man, and because of his professional standing preferred to travel a long way from Lakonia to look for one. And never talked about where he had spent the night, and never asked what his wife had done while he was away.)
