Robert Silverberg - Sailing to Byzantium

“Oh, no,” Y’ang-Yeovil said quietly. “Why do you think you will age? Have you grown any older in all the time you have been here?”

Phillips was nonplussed. “Of course I have. I—I—”

“Have you?” Y’ang-Yeovil smiled. “Here. Look at yourself.” He did something intricate with his fingers and a shimmering zone of mirrorlike light appeared between them. Phillips stared at his reflection. A youthful face stared back at him. It was true, then. He had simply not thought about it. How many years had he spent in this world? The time had simply slipped by: a great deal of time, though he could not calculate how much. They did not seem to keep close count of it here, nor had he. But it must have been many years, he thought. All that endless travel up and down the globe—so many cities had come and gone—Rio, Rome, Asgard, those were the first three that came to mind—and there were others; he could hardly remember every one. Years. His face had not changed at all. Time had worked its harshness on Gioia, yes, but not on him.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why am I not aging?”

“Because you are not real,” said Y’ang-Yeovil. “Are you unaware of that?”

Phillips blinked. “Not—real?”

“Did you think you were lifted bodily out of your own time?” the little man asked. “Ah, no, no, there is no way for them to do such a thing. We are not actual time travelers: not you, not I, not any of the visitors. I thought you were aware of that. But perhaps your era is too early for a proper understanding of these things. We are very cleverly done, my friend. We are ingenious constructs, marvelously stuffed with the thoughts and attitudes and events of our own times. We are their finest achievement, you know: far more complex even than one of these cities. We are a step beyond the temporaries—more than a step, a great deal more. They do only what they are instructed to do, and their range is very narrow. They are nothing but machines, really. Whereas we are autonomous. We move about by our own will; we think, we talk, we even, so it seems, fall in love. But we will not age. How could we age? We are not real. We are mere artificial webworks of mental responses. We are mere illusions, done so well that we deceive even ourselves. You did not know that? Indeed, you did not know?”

He was airborne, touching destination buttons at random. Somehow he found himself heading back toward Timbuctoo. This city is closed. This is not a place any longer. It did not matter to him. Why should anything matter?

Fury and a choking sense of despair rose within him. I am software, Phillips thought. I am nothing but software.

Not real. Very cleverly done. An ingenious construct. A mere illusion.

No trace of Timbuctoo was visible from the air. He landed anyway. The gray sandy earth was smooth, unturned, as though there had never been anything there. A few robots were still about, handling whatever final chores were required in the shutting-down of a city. Two of them scuttled up to him. Huge bland gleaming silver-skinned insects, not friendly.

“There is no city here,” they said. “This is not a permissible place.”

“Permissible by whom?”

“There is no reason for you to be here.”

“There’s no reason for me to be anywhere,” Phillips said. The robots stirred, made uneasy humming sounds and ominous clicks, waved their antennae about. They seemed troubled, he thought. They seem to dislike my attitude. Perhaps I run some risk of being taken off to the home for unruly software for debugging. “I’m leaving now,” he told them. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” He backed away from them and climbed into his flitterflitter. He touched more destination buttons.

We move about by our own will. We think, we talk, we even fall in love.

He landed in Chang-an. This time there was no reception committee waiting for him at the Gate of Brilliant Virtue. The city seemed larger and more resplendent: new pagodas, new palaces. It felt like winter: a chilly cutting wind was blowing. The sky was cloudless and dazzlingly bright. At the steps of the Silver Terrace he encountered Francis Willoughby, a great hulking figure in magnificent brocaded robes, with two dainty little temporaries, pretty as jade statuettes, engulfed in his arms. “Miracles and wonders! The silly lunatic fellow is here, too!” Willoughby roared. “Look, look, we are come to far Cathay, you and I!”

We are nowhere, Phillips thought. We are mere illusions, done so well that we deceive even ourselves.

To Willoughby he said, “You look like an emperor in those robes, Francis.”

“Aye, like Prester John!” Willoughby cried. “Like Tamburlaine himself! Aye, am I not majestic?” He slapped Phillips gaily on the shoulder, a rough playful poke that spun him halfway about, coughing and wheezing. “We flew in the air, as the eagles do, as the demons do, as the angels do! Soared like angels! Like angels!” He came close, looming over Phillips. “I would have gone to England, but the wench Belilala said there was an enchantment on me that would keep me from England just now; and so we voyaged to Cathay. Tell me this, fellow, will you go witness for me when we see England again? Swear that all that has befallen us did in truth befall? For I fear they will say I am as mad as Marco Polo, when I tell them of flying to Cathay.”

“One madman backing another?” Phillips asked. “What can I tell you? You still think you’ll reach England, do you?” Rage rose to the surface in him, bubbling hot. “Ah, Francis, Francis, do you know your Shakespeare? Did you go to the plays? We aren’t real. We aren’t real. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, the two of us. That’s all we are. O brave new world! What England? Where? There’s no England. There’s no Francis Willoughby. There’s no Charles Phillips. What we are is—”

“Let him be, Charles,” a cool voice cut in.

He turned. Belilala, in the robes of an empress, coming down the steps of the Silver Terrace.

“I know the truth,” he said bitterly. “Y’ang-Yeovil told me. The visitor from the twenty-fifth century. I saw him in New Chicago.”

“Did you see Gioia there, too?” Belilala asked.

“Briefly. She looks much older.”

“Yes. I know. She was here recently.”

“And has gone on, I suppose?”

“To Mohenjo again, yes. Go after her, Charles. Leave poor Francis alone. I told her to wait for you. I told her that she needs you, and you need her.”

“Very kind of you. But what good is it, Belilala? I don’t even exist. And she’s going to die.”

“You exist. How can you doubt that you exist? You feel, don’t you? You suffer. You love. You love Gioia: is that not so? And you are loved by Gioia. Would Gioia love what is not real?”

“You think she loves me?”

“I know she does. Go to her, Charles. Go. I told her to wait for you in Mohenjo.”

Phillips nodded numbly. What was there to lose?

“Go to her,” said Belilala again. “Now.”

“Yes,” Phillips said. “I’ll go now.” He turned to Willoughby. “If ever we meet in London, friend, I’ll testify for you. Fear nothing. All will be well, Francis.”

He left them and set his course for Mohenjo-daro, half expecting to find the robots already tearing it down. Mohenjo-daro was still there, no lovelier than before. He went to the baths, thinking he might find Gioia there. She was not; but he came upon Nissandra, Stengard, Fenimon. “She has gone to Alexandria,” Fenimon told him. “She wants to see it one last time, before they close it.”

“They’re almost ready to open Constantinople,” Stengard explained. “The capital of Byzantium, you know, the great city by the Golden Horn. They’ll take Alexandria away, you understand, when Byzantium opens. They say it’s going to be marvelous. We’ll see you there for the opening, naturally?”