Up The Line

34.

I figured I had also earned the right to spend my layoff at Metaxas’ villa in 1105. No longer a pest, a driveling apprentice, I was a full member of the brotherhood of Time Couriers. And one of the best in the business, in my opinion. I didn’t have to fear that I’d be unwelcome at Metaxas’ place.

Checking the assignment board, I found that Metaxas, like myself, had just finished a tour. That meant he’d be at his villa. I picked up a fresh outfit of Byzantine clothes, requisitioned a pouch of gold bezants, and got ready to jump to 1105.

Then I remembered the Paradox of Discontinuity.

I didn’t know when in 1105 I was supposed to arrive. And I had to allow for Metaxas’ now-time basis up there. In now-time for me it was currently November, 2059. Metaxas had just jumped up the line to some point in 1105 that corresponded, for him, to November of 2059. Suppose that point was in July, 1105. If, not knowing that, I shunted back to — say — March, 1105, the Metaxas I’d find wouldn’t know me at all. I’d be just some uninvited snot barging in on the party. If I jumped to — say — June, 1105, I’d be the young new-comer, not yet a proven quantity, whom Metaxas had just taken out on a training trip. And if I jumped to — say — October, 1105, I’d meet a Metaxas who was three months ahead of me on a now-time basis, and who therefore knew details of my own future. That would be the Paradox of Discontinuity in the other direction, and I wasn’t eager to experience it; it’s dangerous and a little frightening to run into someone who has lived through a period that you haven’t reached yet, and no Time Serviceman enjoys it.

I needed help.

I went to Spiros Protopopolos and said, “Metaxas invited me to visit him during my layoff, but I don’t know when he is.”

Cautiously Protopopolos said, “Why do you think I know? He doesn’t confide in me.”

“I thought he might have left some record with you of his now-time basis.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I wondered if I had made some hideous blunder. Bulling ahead, I winked and said, “Youknow where Metaxas is now. And maybe you know when, too. Come on, Proto. I’m in on the story. You don’t need to be cagey with me.”

He went into the next room and consulted Plastiras and Herschel. They must have vouched for me. Protopopolos, returning, whispered in my ear, “August 17, 1105. Say hello for me.”

I thanked him and got on my way.

Metaxas lived in the suburbs, outside the walls of Constantinople. Land was cheap out there in the early twelfth century, thanks to such disturbances as the invasion of the marauding Patzinak barbarians in 1090 and the arrival of the disorderly rabble of Crusaders six years later. The settlers outside the walls had suffered badly then. Many fine estates had gone on the market. Metaxas had bought in 1095, when the landowners were still in shock over their injuries at the hands of the Patzinaks and were starting to worry about the next set of invaders.

He had one advantage denied to the sellers: he had already looked down the line and seen how stable things would be in the years just ahead, under Alexius I Comnenus. He knew that the countryside in which his villa was set would be spared from harm all during the twelfth century.

I crossed into Old Istanbul and cabbed out to the ruins of the city wall, and beyond it for about five kilometers. Naturally, this wasn’t any suburban countryside in now-time, but just a gray sprawling extension of the modern city.

When I figured I was the proper distance out of town, I thumbed the plate and dismissed my cab. Then I took up a position on the sidewalk, checking things out for my jump. Some kids saw me in my Byzantine costume and came over to watch, knowing that I must be going to go back in time. They called gaily to me in Turkish, maybe asking me to take them along.

One angelically grimy little boy said in recognizable French, “I hope they cut your head off.”

Children are so sweetly frank, aren’t they? And so charmingly hostile, in all eras.

I set my timer, gestured obscenely at my well-wisher, and went up the line.

The gray buildings vanished. The November bleakness gave way to the sunny glow of August. The air I breathed was suddenly fresh and fragrant. I stood beside a broad cobbled road running between two green meadows. A modest chariot drawn by two horses came clopping up and halted before me.

A lean young man in simple country clothes leaned out and said, “Sir, Metaxas has sent me to fetch you to him.”

“But — he wasn’t expecting—”

I shut up fast, before I said something out of line. Obviously Metaxas was expecting me. Had I hit the Paradox of Discontinuity, somehow?

Shrugging, I climbed up into the chariot.

As we rode into the west, my driver nodded to the acres of grapevines to the left of the road and the groves of fig trees to the right. “All this,” he said proudly, “belongs to Metaxas. Have you ever been here before?”

“No, never,” I said.

“He is a great man, my master. He is a friend to the poor and an ally to the mighty. Everyone respects him. Emperor Alexius himself was here last month.”

I felt queasy about that. Bad enough that Metaxas had carved out a now-time identity for himself ten centuries up the line; what would the Time Patrol say about his hobnobbing with emperors? Giving advice, no doubt; altering the future by his foreknowledge of events; cementing himself into the historical matrix of this era as a valued adviser to royalty! Could anyone match him for gall?

Figs and grapes gave way to fields of wheat. “This, too, belongs to Metaxas,” said the driver.

I had pictured Metaxas living in some comfortable little villa on a hectare or two of land, with a garden in front and perhaps a vegetable plot in the rear. I hadn’t realized that he was a major landowner on such a scale.

We passed grazing cattle, and a mill worked by plodding oxen, and a pond no doubt well stocked with fish, and then we came to a double row of cypress trees that guarded a side road branching from the main highway, and took that road, and a splendid villa appeared, and at its entrance waited Metaxas, garbed in raiment suitable for the companion of an emperor.

“Jud!” he cried, and we embraced. “My friend! My brother! Jud, they tell me about the tour you led! Magnificent! Your tourists, they never stopped praising you?”

“Who told you?”

“Kolettis and Pappas. They’re here. Come in, come in, come in! Wine for my guest! A change of robes for him! Come in, Jud, come in!”