Robert Silverberg - The Time Hoppers

Tired, Brogg got quickly under the molecular bath and cleansed himself of the day’s grime. He programmed dinner. Then he selected a book. He was pursuing a fascinating theme in his favourite subject, Roman history: Tiberius’s handling of the rebellion of Sejanus. The interplay of character was irresistible: Sejanus, the sly favourite of the sinister old Caesar, overreaching himself at last and being cast down from the heights of power by Tiberius, the Capri-dwelling old goat.

Easily, Brogg drifted into contemplation of those distant and violent events.

If I had been Sejanus, he thought, how would I have handled the situation? More tactfully, no doubt. I would never have provoked the old boy that way. Brogg smiled. If he had been Sejanus, he knew, he would ultimately have come to hold the throne in his own name. On the other hand—

On the other hand, he was not Sejanus. He was Stanley Brogg of the Secretariat of Crime. More’s the pity, Brogg thought. But we must make do with what we have.

Night was closing in like a clamped fist. Quellen changed his clothes after a leisurely shower that used up nearly his entire week’s quota of washing water. He dressed in clothes that were a bit on the gaudy side, in sullen rebellion against the sort of evening that Judith was going to inflict on him. The people who came to these communions of social regurgitation tended to be drab, consciously so. He despised their puritanical austerity. And so he donned a tunic shot through with iridescent threads, gleaming red and violet and azure as he shifted the angles of refraction.

He did not eat dinner. That would be an unpardonable faux pas, in view of this evening’s planned ceremony. Still, he needed to keep his glucose level up after the tensions of the day. A few tablets took care of that. Refreshed, Quellen sealed his apartment and went out. He was meeting Judith at the communion. Afterwards, perhaps, he might go home with her. She lived alone since she had joined him in Class Seven. It would be an act of good citizenship, Quellen knew, to marry her and combine their living quarters. Quellen was not prepared to be so patriotic just yet.

The cult session was being held, Judith had informed him, at the Class Four home of a certain Brose Cashdan, an administrator of the intercontinental stat nexus. It was interesting to Quellen that a transportation tycoon like Cashdan would get involved in such a cult. Of course, the cult of social regurgitation wasn’t on the proscribed list. It might be aesthetically distasteful, but it wasn’t subversive like some of the others. Still, Quellen’s experience with high administrators had taught him that they tended to be guardians of the status quo. Maybe Cashdan was different. In any case, Quellen was curious about the house. He had not seen many Class Four homes.

Brose Cashdan’s villa lay just within the inner zone of the Appalachia stat radius. That meant that Quellen could not reach it by the instantaneous transmission of the stat, but had to take a quickboat. A pity, that; it was a waste of half an hour. He programmed his course northward. The screen within the quickboat gave him a simulated view of what was below: the Hudson River, silvery and serpentine in the moonlight, and then the furry hills of the Adirondack Forest Preserve, a thousand acres of unspoiled wilderness in the middle of the sprawl of the city, and finally the floodlit glitter of the landing ramp. Local transport took Quellen speedily to Cashdan’s place. He was a little late, he knew, but it did not bother him.

It was quite a villa. Quellen was not prepared for such opulence. Of course, Cashdan was required to live in just one location, unlike the Class Two people who could have several homes in scattered parts of the world. Still, it was a magnificent establishment, constructed mainly of glass with axial poles of some spongy, tough-looking synthetic. There were at least six rooms, a small garden (!), and a rooftop landing stage. Even from the air the place had a warm, inviting glow. Quellen stepped into the vestibule, peering ahead in hopes of catching sight of Judith.

A portly, sixtyish man with a starched white tunic came out to greet him. Diagonally across the tunic was emblazoned the golden sash of power.

“I’m Brose Cashdan,” the man said. His voice was deep, the voice of authority. Quellen could see this man making brisk decisions all day long and scarcely bothering to get a recommend from a High Government official.

“Joseph Quellen. I was invited by—”

“Judith da Silva. Of course. Judith’s inside. Welcome, Mr Quellen. We’re honoured that you’ve chosen to join us. Come in. Come in.”

Cashdan managed to sound ingratiating and commanding at the same time. He propelled Quellen into an inner room twenty feet long and at least thirty feet in width, carpeted wall-to-wall with some grey foamy substance that possibly had a degree of pseudolife. There was certainly nothing austere or drab about this shining palatial residence.

Eight or nine people sat clustered on the floor in the very middle of the room. Judith was among them. To Quellen’s surprise, Judith had not chosen to dress in the piously self-effacing manner that most communicants of this cult preferred. Obviously this upper-class gathering had different norms. She was wearing a highly immodest sprayon dress, blue with green undertones. A strip of fabric passed between her breasts, which otherwise were bare, and wound about her hips and loins. Her nakedness was covered, more or less, but since the covering was nothing but pigment she might just as well have come nude. Quellen understood that such extreme fashions were permissible only in sophisticated circles where the mode was Class Six or better. It was a trifle pushy, then, for Judith, a Class Seven, to expose herself this way. Quellen sensed that he and Judith might well be the only Sevens in the room. He smiled at Judith. She had small breasts, the desirable kind to have these days, and she had called attention to them by pigmenting her nipples.

Beside her sat a thick-bodied, practically neckless man with a clipped blue-stained beard, moist lips, and a placid expression. He was flanked by another woman, somewhat older than Judith, who wore a sprayon rig not much more modest than hers. On Judith it looked good; but not on this other one, who had unfashionably bulging breasts and plump haunches. She simpered at Quellen, who rudely stared at her tastelessly exposed body.

The rest had a prosperous, earnestly intellectual look—mainly men, some of them a trifle on the epicene side, all of them well dressed and clearly high on the slope. Judith, rising to her feet, made the introductions. Quellen let most of the names glide past without sticking in his consciousness. The neckless man with the blue beard, he noted, was Dr Richard Galuber, Judith’s frood. The fleshy damsel was Mrs Galuber. Interesting. Quellen hadn’t known that the frood was married. He had long suspected that Judith was his mistress through some shameful reverse transference. Maybe so; but would Galuber bring his wife to meet his mistress at such a session? Quellen wasn’t sure. Froods were often devious in their motivations, and for all Quellen knew Galuber was out to score some obscure therapeutic point on his wife by hauling her along.

Outside the group, Judith said, “I’m so glad you came, Joe.

I was afraid you’d back out.”

“I promised I’d come, didn’t I?”

“Yes, I know. But you’ve got a tendency to withdraw from potentially hostile social experiences.”

Quellen was annoyed. “There you go, frooding me again! Stop it, Judith. I came, didn’t I?”

“Of course you did.” Her smile was suddenly warm, authentically so. “I’m happy that you did. I didn’t mean to impugn you. Come meet Dr Galuber.”