Rovert Silverberg - Up The Line

There was a nasty moment of silence. A lot of shuffling of feet and clearing of throats took place.

“That’s not very gratifying to hear,” I said to Dajani.

Buonocore said, “Don’t let him upset you, kid. Like I told you, any Courier’s tourist is likely to gimmick his timer, and—”

“I don’t refer to the loss of the tourist,” said Dajani testily. “I refer to the fact that this idiot managed to duplicate himself while trying to edit the mistake!” He gargled wine. “I forgive him for the one, but not for the other.”

“The duplication is pretty ugly,” Buonocore admitted.

“It’s a serious thing,” said Kolettis.

“Bad karma,” Sam said. “No telling how we’ll cover that one up.”

“I can’t remember a case to match,” declared Pappas.

“A messy miscalculation,” Plastiras commented.

“Look,” I said, “the duplication was an accident. I was so much in a sweat to find Sauerabend that I didn’t stop to calculate the implications of—”

“We understand,” Sam said.

“It’s a natural error, when you’re under pressure,” said Jeff Monroe.

“Could have happened to anyone,” Buonocore told me.

“A shame. A damned shame,” murmured Pappas.

I started to feel less like an important member of a close-knit fraternity, and more like a pitied halfwit nephew who can’t help leaving little puddles of mess wherever he goes. The halfwit’s uncles were trying to clean up a particularly messy mess for him, and trying to keep the halfwit serene so he wouldn’t make a worse mess.

When I realized what the real attitude of these men toward me was, I felt like calling in the Time Patrol, confessing my timecrimes, and requesting eradication. My soul shriveled. My manhood withered. I, the copulator with empresses, the seducer of secluded noblewomen, the maker of smalltalk with emperors, I, the last of the Ducases, I, the strider across millennia, I, the brilliant Courier in the style of Metaxas, I… I, to these veteran Couriers here, was simply an upright mass of perambulating dreck. A faex that walks like a man. Which is the singular of faeces. Which is to say, a shit.

Metaxas, who had not spoken for fifteen minutes, said finally, “If those of you who are going are ready to go, I’ll get a chariot to take you into town.”

Kolettis shook his head. “We haven’t allotted eras yet. But it’ll take only a minute.”

There was a buzzing consultation over the chart. It was decided that Kolettis would cover 700-725, Plastiras 1150-1175, and I would inspect 725-745. Pappas had brought a plague suit with him and was going to make a survey of the plague years 745-747, just in case Sauerabend had looped into that proscribed period by accident.

I was surprised that they trusted me to make a time-jump all by myself, considering what they obviously thought of me. But I suppose they figured I couldn’t get into any worse trouble. Off we went to town in one of Metaxas’ chariots. Each of us carried a small but remark-ably accurate portrait of Conrad Sauerabend, painted on a varnished wooden plaque by a contemporary Byzantine artist hired by Metaxas. The artist had worked from a holophoto; I wonder what he’d made of that .

When we reached Constantinople proper, we split up and, one by one, timed off to the eras we were supposed to search. I materialized up the line in 725 and realized the little joke that had been played on me.

This was the beginning of the era of iconoclasm, when Emperor Leo III had first denounced the worship of painted images. At that time, most of the Byzantines were fervent iconodules — image-worshippers — and Leo set out to smash the cult of icons, first by speaking and preaching against them, then by destroying an image of Christ in the chapel of the Chalke, or Brazen House, in front of the Great Palace. After that things got worse; images and image-makers were persecuted, and Leo’s son issued a proclamation declaring, “There shall be rejected, removed and cursed out of the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material whatever by the evil art of painters.”

And in such an era I was supposed to walk around town holding a little painting of Conrad Sauerabend, asking people, “Have you seen this man anywhere?”

My painting wasn’t exactly an icon. Nobody who looked at it was likely to mistake Sauerabend for a saint. Even so, it caused a lot of trouble for me.

“Have you seen this man anywhere?” I asked, and took out the painting.

In the marketplace.

In the bathhouses.

On the steps of Haghia Sophia.

Outside the Great Palace.

“Have you seen this man anywhere?”

In the Hippodrome during a polo match.

At the annual distribution of free bread and fish to the poor on May 11, celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the city.

In front of the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus.

“I’m looking for this man whose portrait I have here.”

Half the time, I didn’t even manage to get the painting fully into the open. They’d see a man pulling an icon from his tunic, and they’d run away, screaming, “Iconodule dog! Worshipper of images!”

“But this isn’t — I’m only looking for — you mustn’t mistake this painting for — won’t you come back?”

I got pushed and shoved and expectorated upon. I got bullied by imperial guards and glowered at by iconoclastic priests. Several times I was invited to attend underground ceremonies of secret iconodules.

I didn’t get much information about Conrad Sauerabend.

Still, despite all the difficulties, there were always some people who looked at the painting. None of them had seen Sauerabend, although a few “thought” they had noticed someone resembling the man in the picture. I wasted two days tracking one of the supposed resemblers, and found no resemblance at all.

I kept on, jumping from year to year. I lurked at the fringes of tourist groups, thinking that Sauerabend might prefer to stick close to people of his own era.

Nothing. No clue.

Finally, footsore and discouraged, I hopped back down to 1105. At Metaxas’ place I found only Pappas, who looked even more weary and bedraggled than I did.

“It’s useless,” I said. “We aren’t going to find him. It’s like looking for — looking for—”

“A needle in a timestack,” Pappas said helpfully.

I had earned a little rest before I returned to that long night in 1204 and sent my alter ego here to continue the search. I bathed, slept, banged a garlicky slavegirl two or three times, and brooded. Kolettis returned: no luck. Plastiras came back: no luck. They went down the line to resume their Courier jobs. Gompers, Herschel, and Melamed, donating time from their current layoffs, appeared and immediately set out on the quest for Sauerabend. The more Couriers who volunteered to help me in my time of need, the worse I felt.

I decided to console myself in Pulcheria’s arms.

I mean, as long as I happened to be in the right era, and as long as Jud B had neglected to stop in to see her, it seemed only proper. We had had some sort of date. Just about the last thing Pulcheria had said to me after that night of nights was, “We’ll meet again two days hence, yes? I’ll arrange everything.”

How long ago had that been?

At least two weeks on the 1105 now-time basis, I figured. Maybe three.

She was supposed to have sent a message to me at Metaxas’, telling me where and how we could have our second meeting. In my concern with Sauerabend I had forgotten about that. Now I raced all around the villa, asking Metaxas’ butlers and his major domo if any messages had arrived from town for me.