Up The Line

31.

At the end of my layoff I reported for duty, and set out for the first time solo as a Time Courier.

I had six people to take on the one-week tour. They didn’t know it was my first solo. Protopopolos didn’t see any point in telling them, and I agreed. But I didn’t feel as though it were my first solo. I was full of Metaxian chutzpah. I emanated charisma. I feared nothing except fear itself.

At the preliminary meeting I told my six the rules of time-touring in crisp, staccato phrases. I invoked the dread menace of the Time Patrol as I warned against changing the past either carelessly or by design. I explained how they could best keep out of trouble. Then I handed out timers and set them.

“Here we go,” I said. “Up the line.”

Charisma. Chutzpah.

Jud Elliott, Time Courier, on his own!

Up the line!

“We have arrived,” I said, “in 1659B.P., better known to you as the year 400. I’ve picked it as a typical early Byzantine time. The ruling emperor is Arcadius. You remember from now-time Istanbul that Haghia Sophia should be back there, and the mosque of Sultan Ahmed should be there. Well, of course, Sultan Ahmed and his mosque are currently a dozen centuries in the future, and the church behind us is the original Haghia Sophia, constructed forty years ago when the city was still very young. Four years from now it’ll burn down during a rebellion caused by the exiling of Bishop John Chrysostomos by Emperor Arcadius after he had criticized Arcadius’ wife Eudoxia. Let’s go inside. You see that the walls are of stone but the roof is wooden—”

My six tourists included a real-estate developer from Ohio, his wife, their gawky daughter and her husband, plus a Sicilian shrink and his bowlegged temporary wife: a typical assortment of prosperous citizens. They didn’t know a nave from a narthex, but I gave them a good look at the church, and then marched them through Arcadius’ Constantinople to set the background for what they’d see later. After two hours of this I jumped down the line to 408 to watch the baptism of little Theodosius again.

I caught sight of myself on the far side of the street, standing close to Capistrano. I didn’t wave. My other self did not appear to see me. I wondered if this present self of mine had been standing here that other time, when I was here with Capistrano. The intricacies of the Cumulative Paradox oppressed me. I banished them from mind.

“You see the ruins of the old Haghia Sophia,” I said. “It will be rebuilt under the auspices of this infant, the future Theodosius II, and opened to prayer on October, 10, 445—”

We shunted down the line to 445 and watched the ceremony of dedication.

There are two schools of thought about the proper way to conduct a time-tour. The Capistrano method is to take the tourists to four or five high spots a week, letting them spend plenty of time in taverns, inns, back alleys, and market-places, and moving in such a leisurely way that the flavor of each period soaks in deeply. The Metaxas method is to construct an elaborate mosaic of events, hitting the same high spots but also twenty or thirty or forty lesser events, spending half an hour here and two hours there. I had experienced both methods and I preferred Metaxas’ approach. The serious student of Byzantium wants depth, not breadth; but these folk were not serious students. Better to make a pageant of Byzantium for them, hurry them breathless through the eras, show them riots and coronations, chariot races, the rise and fall of monuments and kings.

And so I took my people from time to time in imitation of my idol Metaxas. I gave them a full day in early Byzantium, as Capistrano would have done, but I split it into six shunts. We ended our day’s work in 537, in the city Justinian had built on the charred ruin of the one destroyed by the rioting Blues and Greens.

“We’ve come to December 27,” I said. “Justinian will inaugurate the new Haghia Sophia today. You see how much larger the cathedral is than the ones that preceded it — a gigantic building, one of the wonders of the world. Justinian has poured the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars into it.”

“Is this the one they have in Istanbul now?” asked Mr. Real Estate’s son-in-law doubtfully.

“Basically, yes. Except that you don’t see any minarets here — the Moslems tacked those on, of course, after they turned the place into a mosque — and the gothic buttresses haven’t been built yet, either. Also the great dome here is not the one you’re familiar with. This one is slightly flatter and wider than the present one. It turned out that the architect’s calculations of thrust were wrong, and half the dome will collapse in 558 after weakening of the arches by earthquakes. You’ll see that tomorrow. Look, here comes Justinian.”

A little earlier that day I had shown them the harried Justinian of 532 attempting to cope with the Nika riots. The emperor who now appeared, riding in a chariot drawn by four immense black horses, looked a good deal more than five years older, far more plump and florid of face, but he also seemed vastly more sure of himself, a figure of total command. As well he should be, having surmounted the tremendous challenge to his power that the riots presented, and having rebuilt the city into something uniquely glorious.

Senators and dukes lined the approach; we remained respectfully to one side, amid the commoners. Priests, deacons, deaconesses, subdeacons, and cantors awaited the imperial procession, all in costly robes. Hymns in the ancient mode rose to heaven. The Patriarch Menos appeared at the colossal imperial door of the cathedral; Justinian dismounted; the patriarch and the emperor, hand in hand, entered the building, followed by the high officials of state.

“According to a tenth-century chronicle,” I said, “Justinian was overcome by emotion when he entered his new Haghia Sophia. Rushing to the apse, he gave thanks to God who had allowed him to achieve such a building, and cried out, ‘O Solomon, I have surpassed thee.’ The Time Service thought it might be interesting for visitors to this era to hear this famous line, and so some years back we planted an Ear just beside the altar.” I reached into my robes. “I’ve brought along a pickup speaker which will transmit Justinian’s words to us as he nears the apse. Listen.”

I switched on the speaker. At this moment, any number of other Couriers in the crowd were doing the same thing. A time will come when so many of us are clustered in this moment that Justinian’s voice, amplified by a thousand tiny speakers, will boom majestically across the whole city.

From the speaker in my palm came the sound of footsteps.

“The emperor is walking down the aisle,” I said.

The footsteps halted abruptly. Justinian’s words came to us — his first exclamation upon entering the architectural masterpiece of the ages.

Thick-voiced with rage, the emperor bellowed, “Look up there, you sodomitic simpleton! Find me the motherhumper who left that scaffold hanging in the dome! I want his balls in an alabaster vase before mass begins!” Then he sneezed in imperial wrath.

I said to my six tourists, “The development of time-travel has made it necessary for us to revise many of our most inspiring anecdotes in the light of new evidence.”