The Masks of Time

SEVENTEEN

I had Kralick get Vornan and me out of there hours later. I did not explain anything to anyone. I merely said that it was necessary for us to leave. There were no farewells. We dressed and packed, and I drove with Vornan to Tucson, where Kralick’s men picked us up.

Looking back, I see how panicky my flight was. Perhaps I should have stayed with them. Perhaps I should have tried to help them rebuild themselves. But in that chaotic instant I felt I had to flee. The atmosphere of guilt was too stifling; the texture of interwoven shames was too tight. What had taken place between Vornan and Jack and what had taken place between Shirley and me were inextricably bound into the fabric of the catastrophe, as for that matter was what had not taken place between Shirley and Vornan. And I had brought the serpent among them. In the moment of crisis I had forfeited any moral advantage I might have had by yielding to my impulse and then by running away. I was the guilty one. I was responsible.

I may never see either of them again.

I know too much of their secret shame, and like one who has stumbled upon a file of yellowed correspondence belonging to some dear one, I feel that my unwanted knowledge falls now as a sword holding me apart from them. That may change. Already, nearly two months later, I see the episode in a different light. We all managed to look equally ugly and equally weak at once, all three of us, puppets spun about by Vornan’s artfully constructed whim; and that shared knowledge of our frailty may draw us together. I don’t know. I do know, though, that whatever Shirley and Jack had shared only with each other lies broken and trampled and beyond repair.

A montage of faces comes to me: Shirley flushed and dizzied in the grip of passion, eyes closed, mouth gaping. Shirley sickened and sullen afterward, slumping to the floor, crawling away from me like an injured insect. Jack coming up from the workshop, dazed and pale as if he had been the victim of a rape, walking carefully through a world made unreal. And Vornan looking complacent, cheerfully replete, quite satisfied with his work and even more pleased to discover what Shirley and I had done. I could not feel real anger toward him. He was still as much a beast of prey as ever, and had renounced nothing. He had rebuffed Shirley not out of some excess of conventionality but only because he was stalking a different quarry.

To Kralick I said nothing. He could tell that the Arizona interlude had been a disaster, but I gave him no details, and he pressed for none. We met in Phoenix; he had flown there from Washington when he got my message. The trip to South America, he said, had been hastily reinstated and we were due in Caracas the following Tuesday.

“Count me out,” I said. “I’ve had enough of Vornan. I’m resigning from the committee, Sandy.”

“Don’t.”

“I have to. It’s a personal matter. I’ve given you close to a year, but now I’ve got to pick up the pieces of my own life.”

“Give us one month more,” he pleaded. “It’s important. Have you been following the news, Leo?”

“Now and then.”

“The world is in the grip of a Vornan mania. It gets worse each day. Those two weeks or so he was off in the desert only inflamed it. Do you know, a false Vornan showed up in Buenos Aires on Sunday and proclaimed a Latin American empire? In just fifteen minutes he collected a mob of fifty thousand. The damage ran into the millions, and it could have been worse if a sniper hadn’t shot him.”

“Shothim? What for?”

Kralick shook his head. “Who knows? It was pure hysteria. The crowd tore the assassin to pieces. It took two days to convince everyone that it had been a fake Vornan. And then we’ve heard rumors of false Vornans in Karachi, Istanbul. Peking, Oslo. It’s that foul book Fields wrote. I could flay him.”

“What does this have to do with me, Sandy?”

“I need to have you beside Vornan. You’ve spent more time with him than anyone else. You know him well, and I think he knows you and trusts you. It may not be possible for anyone else to control him.”

“I have no way of controlling him,” I said, thinking of Jack and Shirley. “Isn’t that obvious by now?”

“But at least with you we have a chance. Leo, if Vornan ever harnesses the power that’s at his command, he’ll turn this world upside down. At a word from him, fifty million people would cut their own throats. You’ve been out of touch. You can’t comprehend how this is building. Maybe you can head him off if he starts to realize his own potential.”

“The way I headed him off when he wrecked Wesley Bruton’s villa, eh?”

“That was early in the game. We know better now, we don’t let Vornan near dangerous equipment. And what he did to Bruton’s place is just a sample of what he can do to the whole world.”

I laughed harshly. “In that case, why take risks? Have him killed.”

“For God’s sake, Leo—”

“I mean it. There are ways of arranging it. A big, clever Government bastard like you doesn’t need instructions in Machiavellianism. Get rid of Vornan while you still can, before he sets himself up as Emperor Vornan with a bodyguard of ten thousand. You take care of it and let me go back to my laboratory, Sandy.”

“Be serious. How—”

“I am serious. If you don’t want to assassinate him, try persuading him to go back where he belongs.”

“We can’t do that either.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“I told you,” said Kralick patiently. “Keep him on tour until he gets sick of it. Watch him all the time. Make sure he stays happy. Feed him all the women he can handle.”

“And men too,” I put in.

“Little boys, if we have to. We’re sitting on a megabomb, Leo, and we’re trying like hell to keep it from exploding. If you want to walk out on us at this point, go ahead. But when the explosion comes, you’re likely to feel it even in your ivory tower. What’s the answer now?”

“I’ll stick,” I said bitterly.

So I rejoined the traveling circus, and so it was that I was on hand for the final events of Vornan’s story. I had not expected Kralick to succeed in talking me into it. I had for at least a few hours believed I was quit of Vornan, whom I did not hate for what he had done to my friends, but whom I regarded as an ultimate peril. I had been quite serious in suggesting that Kralick have him destroyed. Now I found myself committed to accompany him once more; but now I chose to keep my distance from him even when I was with him, stifling the good fellowship that had begun to develop. Vornan knew why. I’m sure of that. He did not seem troubled by my new coolness toward him.

The crowds were immense. We had seen howling mobs before, but we had never seen mobs howling like these. At Caracas they estimated one hundred thousand turned out — all that could squeeze into the big downtown plaza — and we stared in amazement as they bellowed their delight in Spanish. Vornan appeared on a balcony to greet them; it was like a Pope delivering his blessing. They screamed for him to make a speech. We had no facilities for it, though, and Vornan merely smiled and waved. The sea of red-covered books churned madly. I did not know if they waved The New Revelation or The Newest Revelation, but it scarcely mattered.

He was interviewed that night on Venezuelan television. The network rigged a simultaneous-translation channel, for Vornan knew no Spanish. What message, he was asked, did he have for the people of Venezuela? “The world is pure and wonderful and beautiful.” Vornan replied solemnly. “Life is holy. You can shape a paradise while you yet live.” I was astonished. These pieties were out of character for our mischievous friend, unless this was the sign of some new malice in the making.

The crowds were even greater in Bogotб. Shrill cries echoed through the thin air of the plateau. Vornan spoke again, and again it was a sermon of platitudes. Kralick was worried. “He’s warming up for something,” he said to me. “He’s never talked like this before. He’s making a real effort to reach them directly, instead of letting them come to him.”

“Call off the tour, then,” I suggested.

“We can’t. We’re committed.”

“Forbid him to make speeches.”

“How?” he asked, and there was no answer.

Vornan himself seemed fascinated by the size of the throngs that came out to see him. These were no mere knots of curiosity seekers; these were giant hordes who knew that a strange god walked the earth, and longed for a glimpse. Clearly he felt his power over them now, and was beginning to exert it. I noticed, though, that he no longer exposed himself physically to the mobs. He seemed to fear harm, and drew back, keeping to balconies and within sealed cars.

“They’re crying for you to come down and walk among them,” I told him as we faced a roaring multitude in Lima. “Can’t you hear it, Vornan?”

“I wish I could do it,” he said.

“There’s nothing stopping you.”

“Yes. Yes. There are so many of them. There would be a stampede.”

“Put on a crowd shield,” Helen McIlwain suggested.

Vornan swung around. “What is that, please?”

“Politicians wear them. A crowd shield is an electronic sphere of force that surrounds the wearer. It’s designed specifically to protect public figures in mobs. If anyone gets too close, the shield delivers a mild shock. You’d be perfectly safe, Vornan.”

To Kralick he said, “Is this so? Can you get me such a shield?”

“I think it can be arranged,” Kralick said.

The next day, in Buenos Aires, the American Embassy delivered a shield to us. It had last been used by the President on his Latin American tour. An Embassy official demonstrated it, strapping on the electrodes, taping the power pack to his chest. “Try and come near me,” he said, beckoning. “Cluster around.”

We approached him. A gentle amber glow enveloped him. We pushed forward, and abruptly we began to strike an impenetrable barrier. There was nothing painful about the sensation, but in its subtle way it was thoroughly effective; we were thrown back, and it was impossible to come within three feet of the wearer. Vornan looked delighted. “Let me try it,” he said. The Embassy man put it on him and instructed him in its use. Vornan laughed and said, “All of you, crowd around me, now. Shove and push. Harder! Harder!” There was no touching him. Pleased, Vornan said, “Good. Now I can go among my people.”

Quietly, later, I said to Kralick, “Why did you let him have that thing?”

“He asked for it.”

“You could have told him they didn’t work well or something like that, Sandy. Isn’t there a possibility that the shield will conk out at a critical moment?”

“Not normally,” Kralick said. He picked up the shield, uncoiled it, and snapped back the panel to the rear of the power pack. “There’s only one weak spot in the circuitry, and that’s here, this integrated module. You can’t see it, really. It’s got a tendency to overload under certain circumstances and degenerate, causing a shield failure. But there’s a redundancy circuit that automatically cuts in, Leo, and takes over within a couple of microseconds. Actually there’s only one way a crowd shield can fail, and that’s if it’s deliberately sabotaged. Say, if someone jimmies the back-up circuit, and then the main module overloads. But I don’t know anyone who’d do a thing like that.”

“Except Vornan, perhaps.”

“Well, yes. Vornan’s capable of anything. But I hardly think he’ll want to play around with his own shield. For all intents he’ll be wholly safe wearing the shield.”

“Well, then,” I said, “aren’t you afraid of what will happen now that he can get out among the mobs and really lay the charisma on?”

“Yes,” said Kralick.

Buenos Aires was the scene of the greatest excitement over Vornan we had yet experienced. This was the city where a false Vornan had arisen, and the presence of the real one was electric to the Argentines. The broad, tree-lined Avenida 9 de Julio was packed from end to end, with only the obelisk in its center puncturing the mass of flesh. Through this chaotic, surging mob moved Vornan’s cavalcade. Vornan wore his crowd shield: the rest of us were not so protected, and huddled nervously within our armored vehicles. From time to time Vornan leaped out and strode into the crowd. The shield worked — no one could get close to him — but the mere fact that he was among them sent the crowd into ecstasies. They pushed up close, coming to the absolute limit of the electronic barrier and flattening themselves against it, while Vornan beamed and smiled and bowed. I said to Kralick, “We’re becoming accomplices to the madness. We should never have let this happen.”

Kralick gave me a crooked grin and told me to relax. But I could not relax. That night Vornan again allowed himself to be interviewed, and what he said was bluntly utopian. The world was badly in need of reform; too much power had concentrated in too few hands; an era of universal affluence was imminent, but it would take the cooperation of the enlightened masses to bring it about. “We were born from trash,” he said, “but we have the capacity to become gods. I know it can be done. In my time there is no disease, there is no poverty, there is no suffering. Death itself has been abolished. But must mankind wait a thousand years to enjoy these benefits? You must act now. Now.”

It seemed like a call to revolution.

As yet Vornan had put forth no specific program. He was uttering only generalized calls for a transformation of our society. But even that was far beyond the sly, oblique, flippant remarks he had customarily made in the early months of his stay. It was as if his capacity for troublemaking had been greatly enlarged; he recognized now that he could stir up infinitely more mischief by addressing himself to the mobs in the street than by poking fun at selected individuals. Kralick seemed as aware of this as I was; I did not understand why he allowed the tour to continue, why he saw to it that Vornan had access to communications channels. He seemed helpless to halt the course of events, helpless to interrupt the revolution that he himself had served to manufacture.

Of Vornan’s motives we knew nothing. On the second day in Buenos Aires he again went into the throng. This time the mob was far greater than on the day before, and in a kind of obstinate insistence they surrounded Vornan, trying desperately to reach and touch him. We had to get him out of there, finally, with a scoop lowered from a copter. He was pale and shaken as he rid himself of the crowd shield. I had never seen Vornan look rattled before, but this crowd had done it. He eyed the shield skeptically and said, “Possibly there are dangers in this. How trustworthy is the shield?”

Kralick assured him that it was loaded with redundancy features that made it foolproof. Vornan looked doubtful. He turned away, trying to compose himself; it was actually refreshing to see a symptom of fear in him. I could hardly fault him for fearing that crowd, even with a shield.

We flew from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro in the early hours of November 19. I tried to sleep, but Kralick came to my compartment and woke me. Behind him stood Vornan. In Kralick’s hand was the coiled slimness of a crowd shield.

“Put this on,” he said.

“What for?”

“So you can learn how to use it. You’re going to wear it in Rio.”

My lingering sleepiness vanished. “Listen, Sandy, if you think I’m going to expose myself to those crowds—”

“Please,” said Vornan. “I want you beside me. Leo.”

Kralick said, “Vornan’s been feeling uneasy about the size of the mobs for the last few days, and he doesn’t want to go down there alone any more. He asked me if I could get you to accompany him. He wants only you.”

“It’s true, Leo,” Vornan said. “I can’t trust the others. With you beside me I’m not afraid.”

He was damnably persuasive. One glance, one plea, and I was ready to walk through millions of screaming cultists with him. I told him I’d do as he wished, and he touched his hand to mine and murmured his thanks softly but movingly. Then he went away. The moment he was gone, I saw the lunacy of it; and as Kralick pushed the crowd shield toward me, I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said. “Get Vornan. Tell him I changed my mind.”

“Come on, Leo. Nothing can happen to you.”

“If I don’t go out there, Vornan doesn’t go either?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then we’ve solved our problem,” I said. “I’ll refuse to put the shield on. Vornan won’t be able to mingle with the multitudes. We’ll cut him off from the source of his power. Isn’t that what we want?”

“No.”

“No?”

“We want Vornan to be able to reach the people. They love him. They need him. We don’t dare deny them their hero.”

“Give them their hero, then. But not with me next to him.”

“Don’t start that again. Leo. You’re the one he asked for. If Vornan doesn’t make an appearance in Rio, it’s going to screw up international relations and God knows what else. We can’t risk frustrating that mob by not producing him.”

“So I’m thrown to the wolves?”

“The shields are safe, Leo! Come on. Help us out one last time.”

The intensity of Kralick’s concern was compelling, and in the end I agreed to honor my promise to Vornan. As we rocketed eastward over the dwindling wilderness of the Amazon basin, twenty miles high, Kralick taught me how to use the crowd shield. By the time we began our arc of descent, I was an expert. Vornan was visibly pleased that I had agreed to accompany him. He spoke freely of the excitement he felt in the midst of a throng, and of the power he felt he exerted over those who clustered about him. I listened and said little. I studied him with care, recording in my mind the look of his face, the gleam of his smile, for I had the feeling that his visit to our medieval epoch might soon be drawing to its close.

The crowd at Rio exceeded anything we had seen before. Vornan was scheduled to make a public appearance on the beach; we rolled through the streets of the magnificent city, heading for the sea, and there was no beach in sight, only a sea of heads lining the shore, a jostling, shoving, incredibly dense mob that stretched from the white towers of the oceanfront buildings to the edge of the waves, and even out into the water. We were unable to penetrate that mass, and had to take to the air. By copter we traversed the length of the beach. Vornan glowed with pride. “For me,” he said softly. “They come here for me. Where is my speech machine?”

Kralick had furnished him with yet another gadget: a translator, rigged to turn Vornan’s words into fluent Portuguese. As we hovered over that forest of dark upraised arms, Vornan spoke, and his words boomed out into the bright summer air. I cannot vouch for the translation, but the words he used were eloquent and moving. He spoke of the world from which he came, telling of its serenity and harmony, describing its freedom from striving and strife. Each human being, he said, was unique and valued. He contrasted that with our own bleak, harried time. A mob such as he saw beneath him, he said, was inconceivable in his day, for only a shared hunger brings a mob together, and no hunger so clawing could exist there. Why, he asked, did we choose to live this way? Why not rid ourselves of our rigidities and our prides, cast away our dogmas and our idols, hurl down the barriers that fence each human heart? Let every man love his fellow man as a brother. Let false cravings be abolished. Let the desire for power perish. Let a new age of benevolence be ushered in.

These were not new sentiments. Other prophets had offered them. But he spoke with such monstrous sincerity and fervor that he seemed to be minting each sentimental clichй anew. Was this the Vornan who had laughed in the face of the world? Was this the Vornan who had used human beings as toys and tools? This pleading, cajoling, thrilling orator? This saint? I was close to tears myself as I listened to him. And the impact on those down on the beach — those following this on a global network — who could calculate that?

Vornan’s mastery was complete. His slim, deceptively boyish figure occupied the center of the world’s stage. We were his. With sincerity instead of mockery now his weapon, he had conquered all.

He finished speaking. To me he said, “Now let us go down among them, Leo.”

We put on our shields. I was at the edge of terror; and Vornan himself, peering over the lip of the copter’s hatch into that swirling madhouse below, seemed to falter a moment and draw back from the descent. But they were waiting. They cried out for him in love-thickened voices. For once the magnetism worked the other way; Vornan was drawn forward.

“Go first,” he told me. “Please.”

With suicidal bravado I seized the grips and let myself be swung down a hundred feet to the beach. A clearing opened for me. I touched ground and felt shifting sand at my feet. People rushed toward me; then, seeing that I was not their prophet, they halted. Some rebounded from my shield. I felt invulnerable, and my fear ebbed as I saw how the amber glow repelled those who came too close.

Now Vornan was descending. A low roar rumbled from ten thousand throats and rushed up the scale to become an intolerable shriek. They recognized him. He stood beside me, aglow with his own power, proud of himself, swollen with joy. I knew what he was thinking: for a nobody he had done pretty well for himself. It is given to few men to become gods in their own lifetimes.

“Walk beside me,” he said.

He lifted his arms and strode slowly forward, majestic, awesome. Like a lesser apostle I accompanied him. No one paid heed to me; but worshipers flung themselves at him, their faces distorted and transfigured, their eyes glassy. None could touch him. The wondrous field turned all away, so that there was not even the impact of collision. We walked ten feet, twenty, thirty. The crowd opened for us, then surged inward again, no one willing to accept the reality of the shield. Protected as I was, I felt the enormous pent-up strength of that mob. Perhaps a million Brazilians surrounded us; perhaps five million. This was Vornan’s grandest moment. On, on, on he moved, nodding, smiling, reaching forth his hand, graciously accepting the homage offered.

A gigantic black man stripped to the waist loomed before him, shining with sweat, skin nearly purple. He stood for a moment outlined against the brilliant summer sky. “Vornan!” he shouted in a voice like thunder. “Vornan!” He stretched both his hands toward Vornan—

And seized his arm.

The image is engraved on my mind: that jet-black hand gripping the light-green fabric of Vornan’s garment. And Vornan turning, frowning, looking at the hand, suddenly realizing that his shield had ceased to protect him.

“Leo!”he screamed.

There was a terrible inward rush. I heard cries of ecstasy. The crowd was going wild.

Before me dangled the grips of the copter’s scoop. I seized them and was pulled aloft to safety. I looked down only after climbing aboard; I saw the formless surging of the mob on the beach, and shuddered.

There were several hundred fatalities. No trace of Vornan was ever discovered.