Time Travel Omnibus Volume 1

by Anthology

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the king agreed to be baptized only after we had sentenced him to death. He was in the way, don’t you see? He was an obstacle to our power! So we had to get rid of him. He would never have led his people to the truth of his own free will. That was why we had to kill him. But we didn’t want to kill his soul as well as his body, so we said to him, Look, Atahuallpa, we’re going to put you to death, but if you let us baptize you we’ll strangle you quickly, and if you don’t we’ll bum you alive and it’ll be very slow. So of course he agreed to be baptized, and we strangled him. What choice was there for anybody? He had to die. He still didn’t believe the true faith, as we all well knew. Inside his head he was as big a heathen as ever. But he died a Christian all the same.”

  “A what?”

  “A Christian! A Christian! One who believes in Jesus Christ the Son of God.”

  “The son of God,” Socrates said, sounding puzzled. “And do Christians believe in God, too, or only his son?”

  “What a fool you are!”

  “I would not deny that.”

  “There is God the Father, and God the Son, and then there is the Holy Spirit.”

  “Ah,” said Socrates. “And which did your Atahuallpa believe in, then, when the strangler came for him?”

  “None of them.”

  “And yet he died a Christian? Without believing in any of your three gods? How is that?”

  “Because of the baptism,” said Pizarro in rising annoyance. “What does it matter what he believed? The priest sprinkled the water on him! The priest said the words! If the rite is properly performed, the soul is saved regardless of what the man understands or believes! How else could you baptize an infant? An infant understands nothing and believes nothing—but he becomes a Christian when the water touches him!”

  “Much of this is mysterious to me,” said Socrates. “But I see that you regard the king you killed as godly as well as wise, because he was washed by the water your gods require, and so you killed a good king who now lived in the embrace of your gods because of the baptism. Which seems wicked to me; and so this cannot be the place where the virtuous are sent after death, so it must be that I too was not virtuous, or else that I have misunderstood everything about this place and why we are in it.”

  “Damn you, are you trying to drive me crazy?” Pizarro roared, fumbling at the hilt of his sword. He drew it and waved it around in fury. “If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll cut you in thirds!”

  “Uh-oh,” Tanner said. “So much for the dialectical method.”

  Socrates said mildly, “It isn’t my intention to cause you any annoyance, my friend. I’m only trying to learn a few things.”

  “You are a fool!”

  “That is certainly true, as I have already acknowledged several times. Well, if you mean to strike me with your sword, go ahead. But I don’t think it’ll accomplish very much.”

  “Damn you,” Pizarro muttered. He stared at his sword and shook his head. “No. No, it won’t do any good, will it? It would go through you like air. But you’d just stand there and let me try to cut you down, and not even blink, right? Right?” He shook his head. “And yet you aren’t stupid. You argue like the shrewdest priest I’ve ever known.”

  “In truth I am stupid,” said Socrates. “I know very little at all. But I strive constantly to attain some understanding of the world, or at least to understand something of myself.”

  Pizarro glared at him. “No,” he said. “I won’t buy this false pride of yours. I have a little understanding of people myself, old man. I’m on to your game.”

  “What game is that, Pizarro?”

  “I can see your arrogance. I see that you believe you’re the wisest man in the world, and that it’s your mission to go around educating poor sword-waving fools like me. And you pose as a fool to disarm your adversaries before you humiliate them.”

  “Score one for Pizarro,” Richardson said. “He’s wise to Socrates’ little tricks, all right.”

  “Maybe he’s read some Plato,” Tanner suggested. “He was illiterate.”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  “Not guilty,” said Richardson. “He’s operating on peasant shrewdness alone, and you damned well know it.”

  “I wasn’t being serious,” Tanner said. He leaned forward, peering toward the holotank. “God, what an astonishing thing this is, listening to them going at it. They seem absolutely real.”

  “They are,” said Richardson.

  “No, Pizarro, I am not wise at all,” Socrates said. “But, stupid as I am, it may be that I am not the least wise man who ever lived.”

  “You think you’re wiser than I am, don’t you?”

  “How can I say? First tell me how wise you are.”

  “Wise enough to begin my life as a bastard tending pigs and finish it as Captain-General of Peru.”

  “Ah, then you must be very wise.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Yet you killed a wise king because he wasn’t wise enough to worship God the way you wished him to. Was that so wise of you, Pizarro? How did his people take it, when they found out that their king had been killed?”

  “They rose in rebellion against us. They destroyed their own temples and palaces, and hid their gold and silver from us, and burned their bridges, and fought us bitterly.”

  “Perhaps you could have made some better use of him by not killing him, do you think?”

  “In the long run we conquered them and made them Christians. It was what we intended to accomplish.”

  “But the same thing might have been accomplished in a wiser way?”

  “Perhaps,” said Pizarro grudgingly. “Still, we accomplished it. That’s the main thing, isn’t it? We did what we set out to do. If there was a better way, so be it. Angels do things perfectly. We were no angels, but we achieved what we came for, and so be it, Socrates. So be it.”

  “I’d call that one a draw,” said Tanner. “Agreed.”

  “It’s a terrific game they’re playing.”

  “I wonder who we can use to play it next,” said Richardson.

  “I wonder what we can do with this besides using it to play games,” said Tanner.

  “Let me tell you a story,” said Socrates. “The oracle at Delphi once said to a friend of mine. There is no man wiser than Socrates,’ but I doubted that very much, and it troubled me to hear the oracle saying something that I knew was so far from the truth. So I decided to look for a man who was obviously wiser than I was. There was a politician in Athens who was famous for his wisdom, and I went to him and questioned him about many things. After I had listened to him for a time, I came to see that though many people, and most of all he himself, thought that he was wise, yet he was not wise. He only imagined that he was wise. So I realized that I must be wiser than he. Neither of us knew anything that was really worthwhile, but he knew nothing and thought that he knew, whereas I neither knew anything nor thought that I did. At least on one point, then, I was wiser than he: I didn’t think that I knew what I didn’t know.”

  “Is this intended to mock me, Socrates?”

  “I feel only the deepest respect for you, friend Pizarro. But let me continue. I went to other wise men, and they, too, though sure of their wisdom, could never give me a clear answer to anything. Those whose reputations for wisdom were the highest seemed to have the least of it. I went to the great poets and playwrights. There was wisdom in their works, for the gods had inspired them, but that did not make them wise, though they thought that it had. I went to the stonemasons and pioneers and other craftsmen. They were wise in their own skills, but most of them seemed to think that that made them wise in everything, which did not appear to be the case. And so it went. I was unable to find anyone who showed true wisdom. So perhaps the oracle was right: that although I am an ignorant man, there is no man wiser than I am. But oracles often are right without their being much value in it, for I think that all she was saying wa
s that no man is wise at all, that wisdom is reserved for the gods. What do you say, Pizarro?”

  “I say that you are a great fool, and very ugly besides.”

  “You speak the truth. So, then, you are wise after all. And honest.”

  “Honest, you say? I won’t lay claim to that. Honesty’s a game for fools. I lied whenever I needed to. I cheated. I went back on my word. I’m not proud of that, mind you. It’s simply what you have to do to get on in the world. You think I wanted to tend pigs all my life? I wanted gold, Socrates! I wanted power over men! I wanted fame!”

  “And did you get those things?”

  “I got them all.”

  “And were they gratifying, Pizarro?”

  Pizarro gave Socrates a long look. Then he pursed his lips and spat.

  “They were worthless.”

  “Were they, do you think?”

  “Worthless, yes. I have no illusions about that. But still it was better to have had them than not.

  In the long run nothing has any meaning, old man. In the long run we’re all dead, the honest man and the villain, the king and the fool. Life’s a cheat. They tell us to strive, to conquer, to gain—and for what? What? For a few years of strutting around. Then it’s taken away, as if it had never been. A cheat, I say.” Pizarro paused. He stared at his hands as though he had never seen them before. “Did I say all that just now? Did I mean it?” He laughed. “Well, I suppose I did. Still, life is all there is, so you want as much of it as you can. Which means getting gold, and power, and fame. ”

  “Which you had. And apparently have no longer. Friend Pizarro, where are we now?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “So do I,” said Socrates soberly.

  “He’s real,” Richardson said. “They both are. The bugs are out of the system and we’ve got something spectacular here. Not only is this going to be of value to scholars, I think it’s also going to be a tremendous entertainment gimmick, Harry.”

  “It’s going to be much more than that,” said Tanner in a strange voice.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Tanner said. “But I’m definitely on to something big. It just began to hit me a couple of minutes ago, and it hasn’t really taken shape yet. But it’s something that might change the whole goddamned world.”

  Richardson looked amazed and bewildered. “What the hell are you talking about, Harry?”

  Tanner said, “A new way of settling political disputes, maybe. What would you say to a kind of combat-at-arms between one nation and another? Like a medieval tournament, so to speak. With each side using champions that we simulate for them—the greatest minds of all the past, brought back and placed in competition—” He shook his head. “Something like that. It needs a lot of working out, I know. But it’s got possibilities.”

  “A medieval tournament—combat-at-arms, using simulations? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Verbal combat. Not actual jousts, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I don’t see how—” Richardson began.

  “Neither do I, not yet. I wish I hadn’t even spoken of it. ”

  “But—”

  “Later, Lew. Later. Let me think about it a little while more.”

  “You don’t have any idea what this place is?” Pizarro said.

  “Not at all. But I certainly think this is no longer the world where we once dwelled. Are we dead, then? How can we say? You look alive to me.”

  “And you to me.”

  “Yet I think we are living some other kind of life. Here, give me your hand. Can you feel mine against yours?”

  “No. I can’t feel anything.”

  “Nor I. Yet I see two hands clasping. Two old men standing on a cloud, clasping hands.” Socrates laughed. “What a great rogue you are, Pizarro!”

  “Yes, of course. But do you know something, Socrates? You are, too. A windy old rogue. I like you. There were moments when you were driving me crazy with all your chatter, but you amused me, too. Were you really a soldier?”

  “When my city asked me, yes.”

  “For a soldier, you’re damned innocent about the way the world works, I have to say. But I guess I can teach you a thing or two.”

  “Will you?”

  “Gladly,” said Pizarro.

  “I would be in your debt,” Socrates said.

  “Take Atahuallpa,” Pizarro said. “How can I make you understand why I had to kill him? There weren’t even two hundred of us, and twenty-four millions of them, and his word was law, and once he was gone they’d have no one to command them. So of course we had to get rid of him if we wanted to conquer them. And so we did, and then they fell.”

  “How simple you make it seem.”

  “Simple is what it was. Listen, old man, he would have died sooner or later anyway, wouldn’t he? This way I made his death useful: to God, to the Church, to Spain. And to Francisco Pizarro. Can you understand that?”

  “I think so,” said Socrates. “But do you think King Atahuallpa did?”

  “Any king would understand such things.”

  “Then he should have killed you the moment you set foot in his land.”

  “Unless God meant us to conquer him, and allowed him to understand that. Yes. Yes, that must have been what happened.”

  “Perhaps he is in this place, too, and we could ask him,” said Socrates.

  Pizarro’s eyes brightened. “Mother of God, yes! A good idea! And if he didn’t understand, why, I’ll try to explain it to him. Maybe you’ll help me. You know how to talk, how to move words around and around. What do you say? Would you help me?”

  “If we meet him, I would like to talk with him,” Socrates said. “I would indeed like to know if he agrees with you on the subject of the usefulness of his being killed by you.”

  Grinning, Pizarro said, “Slippery, you are! But I like you. I like you very much. Come. Let’s go look for Atahuallpa.”

  ETCHED IN MOONLIGHT

  James Stephens

  1

  He waved his pipe at me angrily:

  “Words,” he said. “We are doped with words, and we go to sleep on them and snore about them. So with dream. We issue tomes about it, and we might as well issue writs for all the information we give.”

  I halted him there, for I respect science and love investigation.

  “Scientists don’t claim to give answers to the riddles of existence,” I expostulated, “their business is to gather and classify whatever facts are available, and when a sufficient number of these have been collected there is usually found among them an extra thing which makes examination possible.”

  “Hum!” said he.

  “The difficulty lies in getting all the facts, but when these are given much more is given; for if a question can be fully stated the answer is conveyed in the question.”

  “That’s it,” said he, “they don’t know enough, but there is a wide pretence . . .”

  “More a prophecy than a pretence. They really state that this or that thing is knowable. It is only that you live hurriedly, and you think everything else should be geared up to your number.”

  “And they are so geared, or they would not be visible and audible and tangible to me. But a ghost is geared differently to me; and I think that when I am asleep and dreaming I am geared differently to the person who is talking to you here.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Certainly. Look at the time it has taken you and I to chatter our mutual nonsense. In an instant of that time I could have had a dream; and, in its infinitesimal duration, all the adventures and excitements of twenty or forty years could take place in ample and leisurely sequence. Someone has measured dream, and has recorded that elaborate and complicated dreams covering years of time can take place while you would be saying knife.”

  “It was du Prell,” I said.

  “Whoever it was, I’ve seen a person awake and talking, but sleepy; noted that person halt for the beat of a word in his sentence,
and continue with the statement that he has had a horrible dream. It must have taken place in the blink of an eye. There is no doubt that while we are asleep a power is waking in us which is more amazing than any function we know of in waking life. It is lightning activity, lightning order, lightning intelligence; and that is not to be considered as rhetoric, but as sober statement. The proposition being, that in sleep the mind does actually move at the speed of lightning.”

  He went on more soberly:

  “Last night I had a dream, and in it twenty good years were lived through with all their days and nights in the proper places; and a whole chain of sequential incidents working from the most definite beginning to the most adequate end—and perhaps it all took place between the beginning and the ending of a yawn.”

  “Well, let us have the dream,” said I; “for it is clear that you are spoiling to tell it.”

  He devoted himself anew for a few moments to his pipe and to his thoughts, and, having arranged that both of these were in working order, he recommenced:

  “After all this you will naturally expect that something dramatic or astonishing should follow; but it is not surprise, not even interest that is the centre of my thought about this dream. The chief person in the dream was myself; that is certain. The feeling of identity was complete during the dream; but my self in the dream was as unlike my self sitting here as you and I are unlike each other. I had a different physique in the dream; for, while I am now rather dumpish and fair and moonfaced, I was, last night, long and lean as a rake, with a black thatch sprouting over a hatchet head. I was different mentally; my character was not the one I now recognise myself by; and I was capable of being intrigued by events and speculations in which the person sitting before you would not take the slightest interest.”

  He paused for a few seconds as though reviewing his memories; but, on a movement from me, he continued again, with many pauses, and with much snorings on his pipe, as tho’ he were drawing both encouragement and dubiety from it.

  “Of course I am romantically minded. We all are; the cat and the dog are. All life, and all that is in it, is romantic, for we and they and it are growing into a future that is all mystery out of a past not less mysterious; and the fear or hope that reaches to us from these extremes are facets of the romance which is life or consciousness, or whatever else we please to name it.