Up the Line by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781596872783
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1969-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

31.

At the end of my layoff I reported for duty, and set out for the first time solo as a Time Courier.

I had six people to take on the one-week tour. They didn’t know it was my first solo. Protopopolos didn’t see any point in telling them, and I agreed. But I didn’t feel as though it were my first solo. I was full of Metaxian chutzpah. I emanated charisma. I feared nothing except fear itself.

At the preliminary meeting I told my six the rules of time-touring in crisp, staccato phrases. I invoked the dread menace of the Time Patrol as I warned against changing the past either carelessly or by design. I explained how they could best keep out of trouble. Then I handed out timers and set them.

“Here we go,” I said. “Up the line.”

Charisma. Chutzpah.

Jud Elliott, Time Courier, on his own!

Up the line!

“We have arrived,” I said, “in 1659 B.P., better known to you as the year 400. I’ve picked it as a typical early Byzantine time. The ruling emperor is Arcadius. You remember from now-time Istanbul that Haghia Sophia should be back there, and the mosque of Sultan Ahmed should be there. Well, of course, Sultan Ahmed and his mosque are currently a dozen centuries in the future, and the church behind us is the original Haghia Sophia, constructed forty years ago when the city was still very young. Four years from now it’ll burn down during a rebellion caused by the exiling of Bishop John Chrysostomos by Emperor Arcadius after he had criticized Arcadius’ wife Eudoxia. Let’s go inside. You see that the walls are of stone but the roof is wooden—”

My six tourists included a real-estate developer from Ohio, his wife, their gawky daughter and her husband, plus a Sicilian shrink and his bowlegged temporary wife: a typical assortment of prosperous citizens. They didn’t know a nave from a narthex, but I gave them a good look at the church, and then marched them through Arcadius’ Constantinople to set the background for what they’d see later. After two hours of this I jumped down the line to 408 to watch the baptism of little Theodosius again.

I caught sight of myself on the far side of the street, standing close to Capistrano. I didn’t wave. My other self did not appear to see me. I wondered if this present self of mine had been standing here that other time, when I was here with Capistrano. The intricacies of the Cumulative Paradox oppressed me. I banished them from mind.

“You see the ruins of the old Haghia Sophia,” I said. “It will be rebuilt under the auspices of this infant, the future Theodosius II, and opened to prayer on October, 10, 445—”

We shunted down the line to 445 and watched the ceremony of dedication.

There are two schools of thought about the proper way to conduct a time-tour. The Capistrano method is to take the tourists to four or five high spots a week, letting them spend plenty

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