Up The Line by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Format: epub
Tags: sf
Published: 2010-10-28T22:00:00+00:00

“When do you show us the Turks come bustin’ in?” the Ohio real-estate-man kept asking. “I want to see those god-dam Turks wreck the place!”

“We’re moving toward it,” I told him.

First I gave them a look at Byzantium in the sunset years, under the dynasty of the Palaeologi. “Most of the empire is gone,” I said, as we dropped down the line into 1275. “The Byzantines think and build on a small scale now. Intimacy is the key word. This is the little Church of St. Mary of the Mongols, built for a bastard daughter of Michael VIII who for a short while was married to a Mongol khan. See the charm?

The simplicity?”

We glided on down the line to 1330 to look in on the Church of Our Savior in Chora. The tourists had already seen it down the line in Istanbul under its Turkish name, Kariye Camii; now they saw it in its pre-mosquified condi-tion, with all its stunning mosaics intact and new. “See, there,” I said. “There’s the Mary who married the Mongol. She’s still there down the line. And this—the early life and miracles of Christ—that one’s gone from our time, but you can see how superb it was here.”

The Sicilian shrink holographed the whole church; he was carrying a palm camera that the Time Service regards as permissible, since nobody up the line is likely to notice it or comprehend its function. His bowlegged tempie waddled around oohing at everything. The Ohio people looked bored, as I knew they would. No matter. I’d give them culture if I had to shove it up them.

“When do we see the Turks?” the Ohioans asked rest-lessly.

We skipped lithely over the Black Death years of 1347 and 1348. “I can’t take you there,” I said, when the protests came. “You’ve got to sign up for a special plague tour if you want to see any of the great epidemics.”

Mr. Ohio’s son-in-law grumbled, “We’ve had all our vaccinations.”

“But five billion people down the line in now-time are unprotected,” I explained. “You might pick up some contamination and bring it back with you, and start a world-wide epidemic. And then we’d have to edit your whole time-trip out of the flow of history to keep the disaster from happening. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Bafflement.

“Look, I’d take you there if I could,” I said. “But I can’t. It’s the law. Nobody can enter a plague era except under special supervision, which I’m not licensed to give.”

I brought them down in 1385 and showed them the withering of Constantinople, a shrunken population within the great walls, whole districts deserted, churches falling into ruins. The Turks were devouring the surrounding coun-tryside. I took my people up on the walls back of the Blach-ernae quarter and showed them the horsemen of the Turkish sultan prowling in the countryside beyond the city limits. My Ohio friend shook his fist at them. “Barbarian bastards!” he cried. “Scum of the earth!”

Down the line to 1398 we came. I showed them Anadolu Hisari, Sultan Beyazit’s fortress on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

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