In his Babylonian costume, he knew he looked ridiculous or even insane, but it was too chancy to have gone to the halfway house for proper preparation, and he planned to stay here only a few minutes. Moments after he materialized in the narrow, cobble-paved alleyway, his younger self appeared, decked out in natty Edwardian finery. He registered only the briefest quiver of amazement at the sight of another Reichenbach already there.
Reichenbach said, “I have to speak quickly. You will go out there, and near the Bank of Austria-Hungary you’ll meet the most wonderful woman you’ve ever known, and you’ll share with her the greatest joys you’ve ever tasted. And just as your love for her reaches its deepest strength, you’ll lose her to a rival—unless you cooperate with me to rid us of him before they meet.”
The eyes of the other Reichenbach narrowed. “Murder?”
“Removal. We’ll put him in the way of harm, and harm will come to him.”
“Is the woman such a marvel that the risks are worth it?”
“I swear it. I tell you, you’ll suffer pain beyond belief if he isn’t eliminated. Trust me. My welfare is your welfare, is this not so?”
“Of course.” But the other Reichenbach looked unconvinced. “Still, why must there be two of us caught up in this? It’s not yet my affair, after all.”
“It will be. He’s too slippery to tackle without help. I need you. And ultimately you’ll be grateful to me. Take it on faith.”
“And what if this is some elaborate game, and I’m the victim?”
“Damn it, this is no game! Our happiness is at stake—yours, mine. We’re both in this together. We’re closer than any twins could ever be, don’t you realize? You and me, different phases of the same person’s time-line, following the same path? Our destinies are linked. Help me now, or live forever with the torment of the consequences. Please help. Please.”
The other wavered. “You ask a great deal.”
“I offer a great deal,” Reichenbach said. “Look, there’s no more time for talking now. You have to get out there and meet Ilsabet before the Archduke’s assassination. Meet me in Paris, noon on the twenty-fifth of June, 1794, in the rue de Rivoli, outside the Hôtel de Ville.” He grasped the other’s arm and stared at him with all the intensity and conviction at his command. “Agreed?”
A last moment of hesitation.
“Agreed.”
Reichenbach touched his timer and disappeared.
In Babylon again he gathered his possessions and jaunted to the halfway house for the French Revolution. For a moment he dreaded running into his other self there, a malfeasance that would be hard to justify, but the place was too big for that; the Revolution and Terror spanned five years, and an immense service facility was needed to handle the tourist demand. Outfitted in the simple countryfolk clothes appropriate to the Revolutionary period, equipped with freshly implanted linguistic skills and proper Revolutionary rhetoric, disguised to blend with the citizenry, Reichenbach descended into the terrible heat of that bloody Parisian summer and quickly effected his rendezvous with himself.
The face he beheld was clearly his, and yet unfamiliar, for he was accustomed to his mirror image, but a mirror image is a reversed one, and now he saw himself as others saw him, and nothing looked quite right. This is what it must be like to have a twin, he thought. In a low hoarse voice he said, “She’s coming tomorrow to hear Robespierre’s final speech and then to see his execution. Our enemy is in Paris already, with rooms at the Hôtel Britannique, in the rue Guénégaud. I’ll track him down while you make contact with the Committee of Public Safety. I’ll bring him here; you arrange the trap and the denunciation; with any luck he’ll be hauled away in the same tumbrel that takes Robespierre to the guillotine. D’accord?”
“D’accord.” A radiance came into the other’s eyes. Softly he said, “You were right about Ilsabet. For such a woman, even this is justifiable.”
Reichenbach felt an unexpected pang. But to be jealous of himself was an absurdity. “Where have you been with her?”
“After Sarajevo, Nero’s Rome. She’s asleep there now, our third night: I intend to be gone only an instant. We go next to Shakespeare’s time, and then—”
“Yes, I know. Socrates, Magellan, Vasco da Gama. All the best still lies ahead for you. But first there’s work to do.”
Without great difficulty he found his way to the Hôtel Britannique, a modest place not far from the Pont-Neuf. The concierge, a palsied woman with a thin-lipped mouth fixed in an unchanging scowl, offered little aid until Reichenbach spoke of the Committee, the Law of Suspects, the dangers of refusing to cooperate with the Revolutionary Tribunal; then she was quick enough to admit that a dark man of great height with a beard of just the sort that Monsieur described was living on the fifth floor, a certain M. Stavanger. Reichenbach rented the adjoining room. He waited there an hour, then heard footsteps in the hallway, sounds next door.
He went out and knocked.
Stavanger peered blankly at him. “Yes?”
He has not yet met her, Reichenbach thought. He has not yet spoken with her, he has not yet touched her body, they have not yet gone to their damned operas together. And never will.
He said, “This is a wonderful place for a jaunt, isn’t it.”
“Who are you?”
“Reichenbach is my name. My friend and I saw you in the street, and she sent me up to speak with you.” He made a little self-deprecating gesture. “I often act as her—ah—go-between. She wishes to know if you’ll meet her this afternoon and perhaps enjoy a day or two of French history with her. Her name is Ilsabet, and I can testify that you’ll find her charming. Her particular interests are assassinations, architecture, and the first performances of great operas.”
Stavanger showed sudden alertness. “Opera is a great passion of mine,” he said. “Ordinarily I keep to myself when jaunting, but in this case—the possibilities—is she downstairs? Can you bring her to me?”
“Ah, no. She’s waiting in front of the Hôtel de Ville.”
“And wants me to come to her?”
Reichenbach nodded. “Certain protocols are important to her.”
Stavanger, after a moment’s consideration, said, “Take me to your Ilsabet then. But I make no promises. Is that understood?”
“Of course,” said Reichenbach.
The streets were almost empty at this hour. The miasma of the atmosphere in this heavy heat must be a factor in that, Reichenbach thought, and it was midday and the Parisians were at their déjeuner, but beyond that it seemed that the city was suffering a desolation of the spirit, a paralysis of energy under the impact of the monstrous bloodletting of recent months. He walked quickly, struggling to keep up with Stavanger’s long strides. As they approached the Hôtel de Ville, Reichenbach caught sight of his other self, and with him two or three men in Revolutionary costume. Good. Good. The other Reichenbach nodded. Everything was arranged. The challenge now was to keep Stavanger from going for his timer the moment he sensed he was in jeopardy.
“Where is she?” Stavanger asked.
“I left her speaking with that group of men,” Reichenbach said. The other Reichenbach stood with his face turned aside; a wise move. Now, though they had not rehearsed it, they moved as if parts of a single organism, the other Reichenbach pivoting, pointing, crying out, “I accuse that man of crimes against liberty,” while in the same instant Reichenbach stepped behind Stavanger, thrust his arms up past those of the taller man, reached into Stavanger’s loose tunic to wrench his timer into ruin with one quick twist, and held him firmly. Stavanger bellowed and tried to break free, but in a moment the street was full of men, who seized and overpowered him and dragged him away. Reichenbach, panting, sweating, looked in triumph toward his other self.
“Him too,” said the other Reichenbach.
Reichenbach blinked. “What?”
Too late. They had his arms; the other Reichenbach was groping for his timer, seizing, tearing. Reichenbach fought ferociously, but th
ey bore him to the ground and knelt on his chest.
Through a haze of fear and pain he heard the other saying, “This man is the proscribed aristocrat Charles St. Evremonde, called Darnay, enemy of the Republic, member of a family of Tyrants. I denounce him for having used his privileges in the oppression of the people.”
“He will face the Tribunal tonight,” said one of those kneeling on Reichenbach.
Reichenbach said in a shocked voice, “What are you doing?”
The other crouched close to him and replied in English. “We have been duplicated, you see. Why do you think there are rules against entering a time where one is already present? There’s room for only one of us back in realtime, is that not so? So, then, how can we both return?”
Reichenbach said, “That isn’t true!”
“Isn’t it? Are you sure? Do you really comprehend all the paradoxes?”
“Do you? How can you do this to me, when I—when I’m—”
“You disappoint me not seeing these intricacies. I would have expected more from one of us. But you must have been too muddled by jealousy to think straight. Do you imagine I dare run the risk of letting you jaunt around on the loose? Which of us is to have Ilsabet, after all?”
Already Reichenbach felt the blade hurtling toward his neck.
“Wait—wait—” he cried. “Look at him! His face is mine! We are brothers, twins! If I’m an aristocrat, what is he? I denounce him too! Seize him and try him with me!”
“There is indeed a strange resemblance between you two,” said one of those holding Reichenbach.
The other Reichenbach smiled. “We have often been taken for brothers, but there is no kinship between us. He is the aristocrat St. Evremonde, citizens. And I, I am only poor Sydney Carton, a person of no consequence or significance whatever, happy to have been of service to the people.” He bowed and walked away, and in a moment was gone.
Safe beside Ilsabet in Nero’s Rome, Reichenbach thought bitterly.
“Come. Up with him and bring him to trial,” someone called. “The Tribunal has no time to waste these days.”
A THOUSAND PACES ALONG THE VIA DOLOROSA
I am a reasonably honest man who tries not to tell lies except when it would be impolite to speak the truth; and so I am going to point out right here that this story is not science fiction, and really isn’t fantasy, either, though it seems to be from time to time. If the only kind of fiction you read is science fiction and fantasy, you may want to skip it—although I think it’s quite a good story, which is why I’ve included it in this book.
I wrote it in October, 1980, during the period of renewed creative vitality that followed my long dry spell of the mid-1970’s. I had returned to writing still thinking of myself primarily as a science-fiction writer, but there are more things for a writer to write about than robots and time machines and spaceships, and once in a while I like to venture into fiction that fits into no particular category. As was the case with this one: I wanted to set it in Jerusalem, one of the most fascinating places I have ever visited, and I wanted to deal in fictional form with the mysteries of psychedelic drugs, with which I had also had a little firsthand experience. Also I wanted finally to have a story published in Playboy, a magazine I had been reading since its first issue back in 1953. What people think of first when Playboy is mentioned is, of course, the photographs of naked ladies; but it has also published some extraordinarily distinguished short stories, stories by such writers as Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Updike, Ray Bradbury. Well, why not Robert Silverberg as well?
So I had my agent send this one to Playboy’s fiction editor, Alice K. Turner, who turned it down with one of the most fascinating rejection letters I’ve ever had. I didn’t agree with her reasoning, of course, but I had to admit that she had looked at the story very carefully and her objections to it were not arbitrary or trivial ones. We exchanged a few letters about a revision of the story; she gave me no guarantees, but was willing to see what I might do; in the end, she still didn’t want to publish the story, and I sold it to Twilight Zone, a magazine of that era that published horror stories of the Stephen King variety, something I have never written, but also was open to this kind of somewhat surreal psychologically-oriented fiction. It appeared in the July, 1981 issue.
In the course of my correspondence with Alice Turner over a story she didn’t buy, however, she mentioned that she would be coming to California in the spring of 1981, and suggested that we get together to discuss not only the art of the short story in general but the likelihood of my writing some for Playboy. And with that began one of the most interesting editor-writer relationships of my life.
——————
Hornkastle said to the dapper young Israeli, “When they eat the mushroom, do they think they see God?”
“Far more than that. The mushroom is their god. When they eat it, they become one with Him—they become Him. It is the pure agape,” Ben-Horin said, “the true Christian feast.”
Ben-Horin’s voice, light but firm, crisp and clipped, had a dizzying musical quality. A pounding began in Hornkastle’s forehead. Being with the Israeli made Hornkastle—a big man, some years older, nearly forty—feel thick and clumsy and slow. And what Ben-Horin was telling him about these Arab tribal rites stirred in him some mysterious hunger, some incomprehensible longing, that baffled and astounded him. He felt woozy. He suspected he might have had too much to drink. He looked up and across, out the big window of the hotel cocktail lounge. Off there to the west, Jerusalem was awesome in the late afternoon sunlight. The domes of the two great mosques, one gold and one silver, glittered like globules of molten metal. Hornkastle closed his eyes and put his drink to his lips and said, “Take me to these people.”
“Gently, gently. What they do is very illegal in Israel. And they are Arabs, besides—Christian Arabs, who live between worlds here, who are very cautious people at all times.”
“I want to go to them.”
“And eat their mushroom? And become one with their god?”
Hornkastle said hoarsely, “To study them. To understand them. You know this is my field.”
“You want to eat the mushroom,” said Ben-Horin.
Hornkastle shrugged. “Maybe.” To swallow God, to be possessed by Him, to entangle one’s identity with Him—why not? Why not? “How long before I can go to them?” he asked.
“Who knows? A week? Two? Everything here is conditional. The politics, the inflation rate—the weather, even. One takes everything into account. I promise you you’ll see them. Until Easter everything is crazy here—pilgrims, tourists, wandering ecstatics. It gets a little like Benares, almost. After Easter, all right? Can you stay that long?”
Hornkastle considered. He was on sabbatical. He had virtually fled Los Angeles, escaping from the wreckage of his life there. It didn’t matter when he went back, or if he ever did. But he was gripped with impatience. He said, “I’ll stay as long as possible. But please—soon…”
“We must wait for the right moment,” said Ben-Horin firmly. “Come, now. My wife is eager to meet you.”
They went out into the surprisingly chilly April air. With a lurch and a roar Ben-Horin’s tiny orange Datsun took off, down the hill, around the compact medieval splendor of the walled Old City, and through New Jerusalem. Ben-Horin was an outrageous driver, screeching through the streets like a racer in the Grand Prix, honking ferociously at his fellow motorists as if they were all retired Nazis. The Israelis must be the most belligerent drivers in the world, Hornkastle thought. Even a cool cosmopolitan type like Ben-Horin, professor of botany, connoisseur of rare fungi, turned into a lunatic behind the wheel. But that was all right. Life had been a roller coaster ride for Hornkastle for a couple of years now. One more round of loop-the-loop wasn’t going to bother him much. Not after three stiff jobs of arrack on the rocks. Not here. Not now.
Ben-Horin lived in a gray and blue high-rise, spectacularly situated on a hilltop near the university. It looked stu
nning from a distance, but once inside Hornkastle noticed that the stucco was cracking, the lobby tiles were starting to fall out, the elevator made disturbing groaning sounds. The Israeli ushered him into a tiny immaculate apartment. “My wife, Geula,” said Ben-Horin with a brusque little wave. “Thomas Hornkastle of the University of California, Los Angeles.”
She was a surprise: a big woman, an inch or two taller than Ben-Horin, probably twenty pounds heavier, with a ripe if not overripe look to her. It was hard to imagine these two as man and wife, for Ben-Horin was dry and precise and contained, and she was full of vitality—young and pretty, in a way, and overflowing with life. Her eyes were dark and glossy, and it seemed to Hornkastle that she was looking at him with outright interest. Probably a figment of the arrack, he decided.
He needed no more drinks, but he had never been good at refusing them, and soon she had a martini-like thing in his hand, something made with Dutch gin and too much vermouth. The conversation was quick, animated, impersonal. Perhaps that was the style here. Ben-Horin and his wife were both well informed about world affairs, though everything seemed to circle back to analyses of the impact of this event or that on Israel’s own situation. Possibly, Hornkastle thought, if you live in a very small country that has been surrounded by fanatical enemies for its entire life, you get fixated on local issues. He had been startled, at the international symposium where he had met Ben-Horin last December, to hear an Israeli historian expounding on the Vietnam war in terms of Israel and Syria. “If your government tells you to defend an outpost,” he had said, “you go and defend it. You don’t argue with your government about the morality of the thing!” With that sort of outlook even the rainfall in Uganda could become a significant domestic political issue.
Somehow he finished his martini and one after that, and then there was wine with dinner, a dry white wine from the Galilee. Hornkastle always drank a little too heavily, especially when he was traveling, but in the last few turbulent years it had started to be a problem, and the way the Ben-Horins kept him topped off could get troublesome. He knew he was on the edge of becoming sloppy, and worked hard at staying together. After a time he was just nodding and smiling while they talked, but suddenly—it was late, and now everyone was drinking a corrosive Israeli brandy—she wanted to know about his field of study. He did his best, but his voice sounded slurred even to him. Professor of experimental psychology, he said, here to investigate rumors of archaic cultist practices among the Arabs just south of Jerusalem. “Oh, the mushroom,” she said. “You have tried it in California, perhaps?”
The Palace at Midnight - 1980–82 - The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume Five Page 10
