He lies there for what feels like hours. They took his watch away when they tied his wrists together, and in any case he wouldn’t be able to see it with this hood on, but he knows that the day is moving along and in a matter of hours the interface between the Empire and Chicago is going to close. So even if they don’t behead him, he’s going to be stranded here, the dumbest fate a crosser can experience. The ropes that encircle his wrists start to chafe his skin, and he feels nauseated by the increasingly stale, moist air within the hood covering his face.
Eventually he dozes: sleeps, even. Then he wakes suddenly, muddleheaded, not knowing where he is at first, feeling a little feverish, and starving, besides; he’s been cooped up in here, he figures, twelve or eighteen hours, or even longer than that. The interface certainly has closed by now. Stranded. Stranded. You goddamned idiot, he thinks.
Footsteps, finally. People coming. A lot of them.
They pull him to his feet, yank the hood off, untie his wrists. He sees that he’s in a big square stone room with a high ceiling and no windows. On all sides of him stand guardsmen in terrific Arabian Nights uniforms: golden turbans, baggy scarlet pantaloons, purple silk sashes, blousy green tunics with great flaring shoulder pads. Each of them carries a scimitar big enough to cut an ox in half at a single stroke. Right before him is a trio of cold-eyed older men in the crimson robes of court officials.
They’ve brought him a hard crust of bread and some peppery gruel. He gobbles it as if it’s five-star-quality stuff. Then the chilliest-looking of the officials pokes him in the belly with an ornate wooden staff and says, “Where are you from?”
“Ireland,” Mulreany says, improvising quickly. Ireland’s a long way away. They probably don’t know much more about it here than they do about Mars.
The interrogator is unfazed. “Speak to me in the language of your country, then,” he says calmly.
Mulreany is utterly innocent of Gaelic. But he suspects that they are too. “Erin go bragh!” he says. “Sean Connery! Eamon de Valera! Up the rebels, macushlah!”
There are frowns, and then a lengthy whispered conference among the three officials. Mulreany is unable to catch a single word of it. Then the hood is roughly pulled down over his head and everybody leaves, and once more he is left alone for a long hungry time that feels like about a day and a half. Finally he hears footsteps again, and the same bunch returns, but this time they have with them a huge wild-eyed man with long, flowing yellow hair who is wearing rawhide leggings and a bulky woolen cloak fastened across the breast by a big metal brooch made of interlocked flaring loops. He looks very foreign indeed.
“Here is a countryman of yours,” the chilly-faced court official informs Mulreany. “Speak with him. Tell him where in Ireland you are from, and name your lineage.”
Mulreany, frowning, ponders what to do. After a time the newcomer unleashes a string of crackling gibberish, utterly incomprehensible to Mulreany, and folds his arms and waits for a reply.
“Shannon yer shillelagh, me leprechaun,” Mulreany offers earnestly, appealing to the Irishman with his eyes for mercy and understanding. “God bless St. Paddy! Faith and begorrah, is it known t’ye where they’d be selling the Guinness in this town?”
Looking not at all amused, the other says in thick-tongued Greek, “This man is no Irishman,” and goes stalking out.
They threaten him with torture if he won’t tell them where he really comes from. He’s cooked either way, it seems. Tell the truth and go to the block, or keep his mouth shut and have it opened for him by methods he’d rather not think about. But he knows his imperial law. The Emperor in person is the final court of appeal for all high crimes. Mulreany demands then and there to be taken before His Majesty for judgment.
“We will do that,” says the frosty-faced one. “As soon as you admit that you’re from Chicago.”
“What if I don’t?”
He makes disagreeable racking gestures.
“But you’ll take me to him if I do?”
“Most certainly we will. But only if you swear you are from Chicago. If you are not from Chicago, you die.”
If you are not from Chicago you die? It doesn’t make any sense. But what does he have to lose? One way they’ll rack him for sure, the other there’s at least a chance. It’s worth the gamble.
“I am from Chicago, yes,” Mulreany says.
They let him wash himself up and give him some more bread and gruel, and then they take him to the throne room, which is about nine miles long and six miles high, with dozens of the ferocious Arabian Nights guardsmen everywhere and cloth-of-gold on the walls and thick red carpeting on the floor. Two of the guardsmen shove him forward to the middle of the great room, and there, studying him with an intent frown as though he is looking at the Ambassador from Mars, is the Emperor Basil III.
Mulreany has never seen an emperor before. Or wanted to. He comes over twice a year, does his business, goes back where he came from. It’s merchants and craftsmen he comes here to see, not emperors. But there’s no doubt in his mind that this is His Nibs. The emperor is a trim, compact little man who looks to be about ninety-nine years old; his skin has the texture of fine vellum, and his expression is mild and benign, except for his eyes, which are dark and glossy and burn with the sort of fire that it takes to maintain yourself as absolute tyrant of a great empire for forty or fifty years. He is dressed surprisingly simply, in a white silk tunic and flaring green trousers, but there is a golden circlet on his brow and he wears on his chest a many-sided gold pendant, suspended from a heavy chain of the same metal, that bears the unmistakable crossed-thunderbolt symbol of the imperial dynasty inlaid upon it in lapis lazuli. Standing just to his right is a burly florid-looking man of about forty, imposing and almost regal of presence, garbed in an absurdly splendid black robe trimmed with ermine. Dangling from his hand, as casually as if it were a tennis racquet, is the great scepter of the realm, a thick rod of jade bound in gold, which, as Mulreany is aware, marks this man as the High Thekanotis of the Empire, that is to say, the prime minister, the grand vizier, the second-in-command.
There is a long, long, long silence. Then finally the Emperor says, in a thin, faint voice that seems to come from ten thousand miles away, “Well, are you a sorcerer or aren’t you?”
Mulreany draws a deep breath. “Not at all, Your Majesty. A merchant is what I am, nothing but a merchant.”
“Would you put your right hand on the holy altar and say that?”
“Absolutely, Your Majesty.”
“He denies that he is a sorcerer,” the Emperor says pleasantly to the High Thekanotis. “Make note of that.” There is another great silence. Then the Emperor gives Mulreany a quick lopsided smile and says, “Why does the sorcery-fire come so often and take the city away?”
“I don’t know,” Mulreany says. “It just does.”
“And when it does, people like you step through the sorcery-fires and move among us bringing the magical things to sell.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. That’s so.” Why pretend otherwise?
“Where do you come from?”
“Chicago,” Mulreany says. “Chicago, Illinois.”
“Chicago,” the Emperor repeats. “What do you know of this place?” he asks the High Thekanotis. The High Thekanotis scowls. Shrugs. It’s obvious that he finds this whole event irritating and is already eager to ship Mulreany off to the executioner. But the Emperor’s curiosity must be satisfied. “Tell me about your Chicago. Is it a great city?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“In what part of the world is it to be found?”
“America,” says Mulreany. “In northern Illinois.” What the hell, he has nothing to lose. “On the shore of Lake Michigan. We have Wisconsin to the north of us and Indiana to the east.”
“Ah,” the Emperor says, smiling as if that makes everything much clearer. “And what is this Chicago like? Describe it for me.”
“Well,” Mulreany says, “it has, oh, two or three million p
eople. Maybe even more.” The Emperor blinks in surprise and the High Thekanotis glares with such ferocity that Mulreany wonders whether he has made a slip of the tongue and used the word for billion instead. But three million would be amazing enough, he decides. The imperial capital is one of the biggest cities of this era and its population is probably around half a million, tops. “We have some of the tallest buildings in the world, like the Sears Tower, which I think is 110 stories high, and the Marina Towers, which are pretty big too, and some others. We have great restaurants, any kind of food you might want. The Art Institute is a really fine museum and the Museum of Science and Industry is pretty special too.”
He pauses, wondering what else to say. As long as he keeps talking they aren’t going to cut his head off. Does the Emperor want to hear about the dinosaurs at the Field Museum? The Aquarium? The Planetarium? He might be impressed by some statistics about O’Hare Airport, but Mulreany isn’t sure he has the vocabulary for that. Then he notices that the Emperor is starting to look a little strange—turning pale, rocking weirdly back and forth on the balls of his feet. His eyes have taken on a really odd look, a mixture of profound cunning and utter wackiness.
“You must take me there,” the Emperor says, whispering fiercely. “When you return to your city, take me with you and show me everything. Everything.”
The High Thekanotis makes a choking sound and his florid face turns an even brighter red. Mulreany is aghast, too. No imperial citizen has ever come across into Chicago, not even one. They are all terrified of the sorcery-fire, and they have no way of seeing beyond the interface anyway to know that there’s another city out there.
But is the old man serious? The old man is crazy, Mulreany reminds himself.
“It would be an honor and a privilege, Your Majesty,” he says grandly, “to show you Chicago someday. I would greatly enjoy the opportunity.”
“Not someday,” says the Emperor Basil III. “Now.”
“Now,” Mulreany echoes. An unexpected twist. The Emperor doesn’t want to chop off the heads of the sorcerers he has sent his police to round up; the Emperor just wants one to give him a guided tour of Chicago. This afternoon, say. Mulreany smiles and bows. “Certainly, Your Majesty. Whatever Your Majesty wishes.” He wonders how the old Emperor would react to his first glimpse of the downtown skyscrapers. He wonders what sort of greeting Chicago would give the Emperor. The whole thing is nutty, of course. But for him it’s a plausible way out. He continues to smile. “We can leave immediately, if you desire, Your Majesty.”
The High Thekanotis seems about to have a stroke. His chest heaves, his face puffs up furiously, he brandishes the jade scepter like a battle-axe.
But it’s the Emperor who keels over instead. The excitement of the prospect of his trip across the line has done him in. He turns very pale and puts his hands to his chest and utters a little dry rasping sound, and his eyes roll up in his head, and he pitches forward head first so rapidly that two of the guardsmen are just barely able to catch him before he hits the stone floor.
The room goes berserk. The guardsmen start moaning and chanting; court officials come running in from all directions; the Emperor, who seems to be in the grip of some sort of seizure, arches his back, slaps his hands against the floor, stamps his feet, babbles wild nonsensical syllables.
Mulreany, watching in astonishment, feels the High Thekanotis’s powerful hand encircling his forearm.
“Go,” the grand vizier tells him. “Get yourself out of here, and never come back. Out now, before the Emperor returns to consciousness and sees you again. Now.” The vizier shakes his head. “Chicago! He would visit Chicago! Madness! Madness!”
Mulreany doesn’t need a second invitation. A couple of guardsmen grab him under the arms and hustle him from the room and down the hall and through the palace’s endless hallways and, at long last, out through an immense arch into the broad plaza in front of the building.
It’s the middle of the day. The fifty-two-hour visitation is long over; the gateway between the eras is shut.
Go, the High Thekanotis said. But where? Afghanistan?
And then, to his amazement, Mulreany sees the interface still glowing in the sky down at the eastern end of town. So there must have been another match-up with Chicago while he was in the imperial hoosegow. He can get across after all, back to good old Chi. The Loop, the Bears, the Water Tower, Charlie Trotter’s, everything. Sprinting as if six demons are on his tail, he rushes toward the waterfront, jostling people out of his way. He’ll be coming back empty-handed this trip, but at least he’ll be coming back.
He reaches the Street of the Eastern Sun. Rushes out onto one of the wharves, plunges joyously into the golden light of the interface.
And comes out in a lovely green forest, the biggest trees he’s ever seen this side of California. Everything is wonderfully silent. He hears the chirping of birds, the twittering of insects.
Oh, shit, he thinks. Where the hell is Chicago?
He looks back, bewildered. The interface line is gone, and so is the imperial capital. There’s nothing here but trees. Nothing. Nothing. He walks for half an hour, heading east into the sun, and still he sees only this tremendous virgin forest, until at last he stumbles forward out of the woods and discovers himself to be at the shore of a gigantic lake, and then the awful truth strikes him with the impact of a tidal wave.
Of course. It’s an era mismatch.
The interface must have closed right on schedule, and opened again a little while afterward, but this time the Empire had lined itself up against some other sector of the time stream very distant from his own. Just as the Empire that arrives in his Chicago is the one of Basil III sometimes and sometimes the one of Miklos and sometimes the one of Kartouf the Hapless, so too does the Empire of Basil’s time line itself up sometimes with Chicago-1990, and sometimes Chicago-1996, and sometimes Chicago-2013—
And sometimes, probably, the one of 1400 A.D. Or of 1400 B.C., not that it makes much difference. Before 1833, there wasn’t any city at all here beside Lake Michigan.
A mismatch, then. He has heard rumors of such things occurring. One of those little thousand-to-one glitches that hardly ever actually happen, and that you assume never will happen to you. But this one has. He’s known a few crossers who didn’t come back. Schmucks, he always figured. Now it’s his turn to be the schmuck. Mulreany wonders what it’s going to be like living on nuts and berries, and trying to kill a deer if he feels like having a little protein. It’s goddamned embarrassing, is what it is.
But he’s an optimist at heart. There’s cause for hope, right? Right? Sooner or later, he tells himself, the golden light will glow in the sky again behind him, and the Empire will return, and he’ll go through the interface to the glorious city beyond, and eventually, after skulking around in it for a while, waiting for the right Chicago to come along, he’ll go back across and find his way home.
Sooner or later, yes.
Or maybe not.
THE SECOND SHIELD
And this is the story that wandered up out of my unruly imagination while I was trying to puzzle my way out of the Copperfield-Playboy dilemma in February of 1995. I wrote it with a swiftness that surprised me in the early days of that month, Alice Turner bought it in her usual lightning-fast way, and it appeared in Playboy’s December 1995 issue.
It is, of course, full of all sorts of metaphorical stuff about the artist’s anguished struggles with his public and with himself, and I’m afraid that there are some distinctly autobiographical passages scattered here and there in it. If I were a literary critic, I would point to those passages here and analyze them closely. But I don’t have to do that. I wrote the story. Let somebody else look after the analysis.
——————
In the night, despite the unsettling trouble that was brewing with the client from Miami, the blustering and the importuning and the implied or even outright threats, Beckerman managed to dream satisfactorily after all. He dreamed a little f
reestanding staircase of alabaster and malachite that pivoted in the middle and went back down itself through some other dimension like something out of an Escher print; he dreamed an attenuated, one-legged bronze statuette with three skinny arms and a funny spiral topknot, Giacometti meets Dr. Seuss, so to speak. He dreamed a squat, puckery-skinned, cast-iron froggy thing with bulging ivory eyeballs that periodically opened its huge mouth and emitted little soprano squeaks. Everything a bit on the bizarre side, even for Beckerman; he had a tendency to go over the edge a little when things got tense. The three pieces were arrayed in a neat row by the side of his bed when he woke, just before noon. It was, he thought, a fine batch of work.
He didn’t take the time just yet to give the latest products a close inspection. His shower came first, and then breakfast—a whole grapefruit and half of another one, nearly a dozen sausages, a platter of scrambled eggs, half a loaf of bread, a couple of bottles of beer. He had woken drenched with sweat, as he always was these mornings: stinking acrid sweat, clammy and thick, the sweat of an artisan who has been going at it full throttle for many hours. Beckerman’s work took a lot out of him. He worked every bit as hard as any sculptor who hammered away at marble slabs or one who wrestled with heavy iron struts, except that he worked lying down with his eyes closed, and no actual physical labor was involved. Good productive dreams like these could burn up five or six pounds’ worth of energy in a single night. It was all Beckerman could do to keep his weight up, despite a constantly ravenous appetite. At best he was a slender man, but a busy season of work would reduce him to skin and bones, and his clothes would hang from his gaunt limbs like rags flapping in the wind.
Hot Times in Magma City, 1990-95 Page 39
