Up the Line (Gateway Essentials) by Silverberg Robert

Author:Silverberg, Robert [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-THREE

I don’t think I was quite the equal of Metaxas as a Courier, but I gave my people a respectable view of Byzantium. I did a damned good job, especially for a first try.

We shunted through all the highlights and some of the lowlights. I showed them the baptism of Constantine the pisser; the smashing of the icons under Leo III; the invasion by the Bulgars in 813; the trees of gilded bronze in the Magnaura Hall of Theophilus; the debaucheries of Michael the Drunkard; the arrival of the First Crusade in 1096 and 1097; the much more disastrous arrival of the Fourth Crusade in 1204; the reconquest of Constantinople by the Byzantines in 1261, and the coronation of Michael VIII; in short, all that counted.

My people loved it. Like most time-tourists, they particularly loved the riots, insurrections, rebellions, sieges, massacres, invasions, and fires.

‘When do you show us the Turks come bustin’ in?’ the Ohio real-estate-man kept asking. ‘I want to see those goddam 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 gilded 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 condition, 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 temple 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 restlessly.

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 worldwide epidemic.

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