Hot Times in Magma City, 1990-95

by Robert Silverberg

  “An impulse.”

  “An impulse, yes. A simple irrational impulse. You’ve never had one of those, have you? No—no, of course not. Who am I asking? Roger Lehman, the human computer. Of course you haven’t.”

  “That isn’t true and you damned well know it. You like to think of me as some sort of android, some kind of mechanical man, but in fact I’m every bit as human as you are, and maybe a little more so.” In his agitation he snatched up one of his astronomical instruments, a little gleaming armillary disk from whose center a hippopotamus image yawned, and ran his long tapering fingers around its edges. “Remember, I was the one who originally wanted to have a little talk with him, to find out, at least, what might be going on down the line. You said you shouldn’t do it, and you were right. And then you did it. An impulse. Christ, an impulse! Well, I have impulses too, whatever you may think. But even so I still have enough sense not to jump out of a third-floor window simply because I happen to be on the third floor. And enough sense not to say the one thing I shouldn’t be saying to the one person I shouldn’t be saying it to.”

  “If I seriously thought that it could have done any harm—”

  “You don’t think it can?”

  “He’s here alone. I’ve got him in custody. He can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do. We’ve got complete control of the situation. Really we do.”

  “I suppose,” Lehman said grudgingly. He wandered around the room, fingering his charts and instruments. He rubbed his hands over the bits of gold and lapis-lazuli embedded in the wall. He picked up three long tight rolls of sacred papyri that he used in his divinations and set them fussily down again in slightly different places. “How do you think they were able to trace us?” he asked.

  “How would I know? Something with their computers, I guess. Calculating probable trajectories. Maybe they took a guess. Or a bunch of guesses. You know they sweat a lot whenever any mission goes astray. So they sweated the computers until they came up with a hypothetical location where we might have landed. And sent this kid to check it out.”

  “And what happens now?”

  “We go to talk to him. You and me both.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think we owe it to him. There’s no sense pretending any longer, is there? He’s here, and he knows I’m here, and he’s probably guessed that you’re here too. He’s Service, Roger. We can’t simply leave him in the dark, now. We’ve got to make him understand the way this has to be handled.”

  “I don’t agree. I think the best thing for us is just to keep away from him. I wish you hadn’t said anything to him in the first place.”

  “It’s too late for that. I have. Anyway, he’s probably got news from people we knew in Home Era. Carrying messages, even.”

  “That’s exactly what worries me.”

  “Don’t you want to hear anything about—”

  Lehman gave her a wild-eyed stare. “Elaine, those people are thirty-five centuries in the future. I want to keep them there.” He sounded almost desperate about it.

  “Last week you were hot to hear the gossip,” she said.

  “That was last week. I’ve had a week to think about things. I don’t want to stir all that old stuff up again. Let it stay where it is. And let us stay where we are. I’m not going to go near him.”

  His lower lip was quivering. He seemed actually afraid, she thought. Where had granite-faced Senmut-Ptah gone?

  She said, “We can’t simply stonewall him. We can’t. We owe him at least the opportunity to talk to us.”

  “Why? We don’t owe him anything.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Roger. He’s a human being. He came here with the intention of helping us.”

  “I’m aware of that. But—”

  “No buts. Come on with me. Right now. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. I can guarantee that.”

  “You’re a terrible woman.”

  “Yes. I know that. Listen, do you remember how it was for us when we first landed here? Helpless, bewildered, hopelessly lost in time, dressed like a couple of Romans fifteen centuries out of place, unable to read or write Egyptian, not speaking a word of the language, not the first inkling of it, hardly knowing anything about this civilization except what we learned in high school? Wondering how the hell we were going to survive? You remember how frightening that was?”

  “We survived, though. We did more than survive.”

  “Because we were good. We were adaptable, we were versatile, we were clever. Even so, we went through two years of hell before we started to make things happen for us. You remember? I certainly do. Life as a temple whore? You didn’t have to do that, at least, but you had your bad times too, plenty of them.”

  “So? What does that have to do with—”

  “This kid is here now, up against some of the same things we were. And the only two people in the world that he has anything in common with choose to turn their backs on him. I hate that.”

  “What are you, in love with him?”

  “I feel sorry for him.”

  “We didn’t ask him to come here.”

  “It was lousy of me just to dump him out on the streets to shift for himself in the City of the Dead. It’s going to be lousy of us to tell him that he’s wasted his time coming here, that we don’t want to be rescued, thank you very much but no deal. How would you feel if you came charging in to be somebody’s savior and got told something like that?” She shook her head firmly. “We have to go to see him.”

  “You’re suddenly so soft-hearted. You surprise me.”

  “Do I?” she said. “And here I was thinking you were the soft-hearted one. Secretly, behind the grim façade.”

  “How discerning you are. But I still don’t want to see him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t.”

  She moved closer to him.

  “We have to. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Well—”

  “Do you think he’s a magician? A hypnotist? He’s just a kid, and we’ve got him locked safely away besides. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Come with me.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Roger.”

  “Well—”

  “Come. Now.”

  She led him, still grumbling, out of the building, past the temple of Amenhotep II and the pylons of Tuthmosis I and Tuthmosis III, down the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes and into the Precinct of Mut. The storeroom where she had parked Davis for safe-keeping was partly below-ground, a cool, clammy-walled crypt not very different from a dungeon. When they entered it, Davis was sitting huddled on the straw-covered floor next to a shattered statue in pink granite of some forgotten king that had been tossed into the room for storage two or three or five hundred years earlier. The Egyptians never threw anything away.

  He looked up and glared balefully at her.

  “This is Roger Lehman,” she said. “Roger, I want you to meet Edward Davis.”

  “It’s about fucking time,” Davis said.

  Lehman extended his hand in a tentative, uncertain way. Davis ignored it.

  “You look a whole lot older than I expected,” Davis said. “I would never have recognized you. Especially in that cockeyed costume.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You expect me to be polite?” Davis asked bitterly. “Why? What the hell kind of fucking reception did you people give me? You think it was fun, falling across three and a half thousand years? Have you forgotten what that feels like? And then what happens to me when I get here? First she ships me across the river to be an embalmer’s apprentice. After which she throws me in this hole in the ground when I come back over. What am I, your enemy? Don’t you two stupid monkeys realize that I’m here to goddamn rescue you?”

  “There’s a lot you don’t understand,” Sandburg said.

  “Damn right there is. I’d like you to tell me—”

  “Wait,” Lehman said. Sandburg shot him an irritated look and sta
rted to speak, but he held up his hand to silence her. To Davis he said, “Talk to us about this rescue plan of yours, first. What’s the arrangement?”

  “I’m on a thirty-day mission. We don’t need the full thirty, now that I’ve found you so fast, but we’ve got to wait it out anyway, right? On the thirtieth day they’ll drop the jump field into an alleyway just north of Luxor Temple. It’s the one I landed in, with a graffito on the wall pronouncing a curse on some wine-merchant who screwed one of his customers. The field arrives at noon sharp, but of course we’re there waiting for it a couple of hours before that. The rainbow lights up, the three of us step inside, away we go. Back home in a flash. You don’t know how hard they’ve been working, trying to locate you two.”

  “They couldn’t have been in much of a hurry,” Lehman said. “Did Elaine tell you we’ve been here fifteen years?”

  “In the Home Era time-line you’ve only been missing for a year and a half. And they’ve been running calculations non-stop most of that time. I’m sorry we couldn’t match up the displacement factors any better, but you’ve got to understand it was really just a stab in the dark sending me to the year they did. We had a twenty-year probability window to deal with.”

  “I’m sure they did their best,” Sandburg said. “And you too. We appreciate your coming here.”

  “Then why did you send me to—”

  She held up her hand. “You don’t understand the situation, Edward.”

  “Damned right I don’t.”

  “There are certain factors that we have to explain. You see, we don’t actually—”

  “Wait a second, Elaine,” Lehman said sharply.

  “Roger, I—”

  “Wait a second.”

  It was his priest-voice again, his stony Senmut-Ptah voice. Sandburg peered at him in astonishment. His face was flushed, his eyes were strangely glossy.

  He said, “Before you tell him anything, we need to have a discussion, Elaine. You and I.”

  She looked at him blankly. “What’s to discuss?”

  “Come outside and I’ll tell you.”

  “What the hell is this all about?”

  “Outside,” Lehman said. “I have to insist.”

  She gave him a glance of cool appraisal. But he was unreadable.

  “Whatever you say, O Senmut-Ptah.”

  EIGHT

  They stood in the darkness of the garden of the Precinct of Mut. Torches flickered in the distance. Somewhere, far away, the priests of Amon were chanting the evening prayer. From another direction came a more raucous sound: sailors singing down by the riverfront.

  Lehman’s long, gaunt figure towered above her. Lines of strain were evident in his face. It had taken on the same strange expression that had come over him the week before, the night when she had first told him of the arrival of a member of the Service in Thebes.

  “Well?” she said, perhaps a little too harshly.

  “Let me think how to put this, Elaine.”

  “Put what?”

  He made a despairing gesture. “Wait, will you? Let me think.”

  “Think, then.”

  She paced in a fretful circle around him. A dim figure appeared on the pylon of a distant temple and unhurriedly began to take in the pennants for the night. Some dark-winged nocturnal bird fluttered by just overhead, stirring faint currents in the warm air.

  Lehman said finally, speaking as though every word were very expensive, “What I need to tell you, Elaine, is that I’m half inclined to go back with him. More than half.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  He looked abashed, uncomfortable. “Now do you see why I told you I didn’t want to see him? You yourself pointed out last week that there were risks in talking to him, that it could stir up troublesome old memories. Well, it has.” Lehman touched his hand to his forehead. “If you only knew how I’ve been churning inside since he got here. Every day it’s gotten a little worse. We should have simply kept clear of him, the way we had always planned to do if anyone came. But no. No. Bad enough that he stumbled right into you first thing. You still had the option of keeping your mouth shut. No, you had to spill everything, didn’t you? And now—now—” He scowled at her. “I was wavering even then, last week.”

  “I know you were. I saw it. We talked about it.”

  “I was able to put the idea away then. But now—”

  “Just seeing him, that was enough to make you want to go back down the line? Why, Roger? Why?”

  Lehman was silent again for a time. He scuffed at the ground with his sandaled foot. A young priest appeared from somewhere, staggering under the jeweled and gilded image of a cobra taller than he was, and came stumbling toward Lehman as though wanting to ask him some question about it. Lehman waved the boy away with a curt, furious gesture.

  Then in a remote voice he said, “Because I’m starting to think that maybe we should. We’ve done all right for ourselves here, sure, but how long can our luck hold out? For one thing, consider the health angle. I don’t mean the exotic diseases they have here: I assume our immunizations will continue to hold out. I’m just talking about the normal aging process. We have to keep in mind that this is a primitive country in many ways, especially where it comes to medicine, and we’re starting to get older. It won’t be easy for us here when the medical problems begin—the big ones, the little ones, the medium ones. You want someone to help you get through your menopause with powdered scarab and a tincture of goose turds and a prayer to Thoth?”

  “I’m doing all right so far.”

  “And if you develop a lump in one of your breasts?”

  “They have surgeons here. It isn’t all goose turds and powdered beetles. Why this sudden burst of hypochondria, Roger?”

  “I’m just being realistic.”

  “Well, so am I. I don’t know what you’re worrying about. This is a clean, healthy place, if you happen to belong to the privileged classes, and we do. We’ve kept ourselves in good condition the whole time we’ve been here and we’re in terrific shape right now with no sign of problems ahead and we’re going to have really beautiful mummies. What other reasons do you have for going home?”

  “I don’t know. Homesickness? Curiosity about what’s been happening back there? Maybe I’ve just had enough of Egypt, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t.”

  “So you want to stay?”

  “Of course I do. That hasn’t changed. This is where I want to be, Roger. This is the time and the place that I prefer. I have a good life in a tremendously fascinating period of history and I’m waited on hand and foot and I don’t have to put up with any of the shit of the modern world. I like it here. I thought you did too.”

  “I did,” he said. “I do. For so many reasons. But—”

  “But now you want to go home.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then go,” she said disgustedly. “If that’s what you think you want.”

  “Without you?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked startled. “Do you mean that, Elaine?”

  “If they ask where I am, just don’t say anything. Tell them you simply don’t know what happened to me when we overshot Rome. You came out of the jump field and discovered that you weren’t in Rome at all, that you were stranded on your own in Thebes, and there you stayed, shifting for yourself, until this Davis came and got you.”

  “I can’t do that. You know what their debriefings are like. Anyway, he’d tell them.”

  “Even if I asked him not to?”

  “Why would he want to lie for you, Elaine?”

  “Maybe he would, if I asked him very nicely. Or maybe he wouldn’t. But in any case, you’ve just said that you’d tell them where I am.”

  “I’d have to. Whether or not I wanted to.”

  “Then I don’t want you going back, Roger.” Her tone was cold and quiet.

  “But—”

  “I don’t. I won’t let you do it.”

&nb
sp; “Won’t let me?” he repeated.

  “That’s right. Not if you’d give me away. And I see now that that’s exactly what you’d do. So I’m not going to let you leave here.”

  “How could you stop me?”

  She reached out. Her hand rested lightly on his bony wrist. She rubbed her fingertips back and forth over his skin.

  Softly she said, “Maybe I’m putting it too strongly. You know I couldn’t stop you if you were really determined to go. But I don’t want you to go. Please. Please, Roger? What I want is for you to stay here with me. I don’t want to be left by myself here.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “No. No, I won’t do that.” She leaned close to him. “Don’t go, Roger.”

  He stared at her, mesmerized.

  “We can be wonderful together,” she said, smiling up at him. “We were. We can be again. I’ll see to that, I promise you. It’ll be the way it was for us in the beginning.”

  He looked skeptical. “Will it, now?”

  “I promise. But stay. There’s nothing for you back there. You’re homesick? For what? You want to rejoin the Service? Hop when they tell you to? Let them ship you around to a lot of strange places? The glory of the Time Service! What glory? It’s just a job, and a damned hard one. You don’t want that any more, do you, Roger? Or maybe they’d give you a desk job. And a nice little one-room apartment with a view of the Potomac, and in ten years you can have your pension and move to Arizona and sit on your porch and watch the cactus grow until you get old. No, listen to me: You want to stay here. This is the right place for us. You’ve said it a million times. You have a life here, a damned good one. Your estate, your slaves, your chariot, your observatory, your—all of it. You don’t want to go back there and be Roger Lehman again. There’s nothing for you in that. You very much prefer being Senmut-Ptah. Don’t you? Don’t you, Roger? Tell me the truth.”