Part 21 (1/2)
”I confess I am pleased that my propaganda for the League is usually welcomed, but I am a bit-disappointed-that my poetry is too. I half-expect to be clapped in irons and transported to a penal settlement for reading such seditious matter in public. Instead I am praised, applauded, holotaped. An ironic reward for a prophet.”
”Would you rather have lived and died in obscurity?” the drunken professor asked pugnaciously.
”What I would rather have done is beside the point, dear friend; I have had no choice. I did not ask for this position in life; it was thrust upon me by the Futurites-by powerful and frightened men, children of Urizen who feared the future so much that they destroyed the past. We have none of us lived our own lives these past twenty-two years. We have robbed ourselves and each other of the lives we might have had. Some, like me, know what those lives would have been; most can only speculate. But consider this: my precursor, the man whose poems I read and whose royalties I enjoy, died in 1827, at seventy, singing hymns at the top of his lungs. If the Intertemporal League fails, if there is war among the chronoplanes, I shall doubtless die much younger than that, and my last words will be: 'Which way, please, to the fallout shelter?' What consolation, then, to have seen my own death mask?”
The academics were silent for a moment; then the conversation turned to other topics. Near the end of the meal, Blake leaned across the table to Pierce.
”Are you free this afternoon, sir?”
”I am.”
”Perhaps we might spend a little time in private.”
”I would be honored.”
When they left the refectory, the snow had stopped and the sky was beginning to
clear. Blake and Pierce walked across the north edge of the campus, looking down the steep slopes to the Golden Gate Pa.s.s. Here, as on many chronoplanes, a road led through the Pa.s.s and out across the Dunes to the coast. But there was no great city under Mount Farallon here, only a fis.h.i.+ng village.
”You made quite a bit of history around here,” Blake remarked.
”That is one of the few drawbacks to living in Chrysopylae. The land here won't
change much in the next twenty thousand years. The river will change its course a little, the hills won't be as bare. But it looks very much here as it does on Ore.”
”Does that disturb you, sir?”
”It is hard to escape one's memories.”
”We seek escape only from prisons.” Blake smiled at him. ”You have all time to
roam in, and still the past holds you. Specters hold you.”
”Yes. I'm a true child of Urizen.”
They entered one of the university residences, a long two-story building. Pierce's apartment, on the first floor, was small, spare, and impersonal. He turned on the walls: the Mendocino cliffs on Ahania. The same surf broke against black rock that had broken in Judy's apartment, long ago.
”I could be donnish and offer you sherry, or would you prefer a very good vinho verde?”
”Vinho verde, by all means.” Blake made himself comfortable in a rocking chair. ”Thank you. Your health.”
”And yours... I believe you have more than one ulterior motive for your visit to Chrysopylae.” . ”I have. You said nothing at lunch about the new League.”
”I'm for it.”
”Would you like to go to work for it?”
Pierce's face grew smooth and impa.s.sive. He stroked his graying beard. ”What sort of work?”
”A special envoy, from the League to potential members. We very much need someone like you, Mr. Pierce. You're a Futurite who knows every chrono-plane, and almost every culture. You know scores of languages. Most citizens of the League are uncouth en-dos like myself, or unTrainable Backsliders from Earth.
We have little influence on the Futurite nations, and they are the ones who must join if the League is to survive.”
”If you need diplomats, you've got Metternich.”
”Bos.h.!.+ The fellow's an a.s.s.”
Pierce smiled. ”That is no disqualification.”
”It is for us. We are serious, Mr. Pierce. You Futurites have robbed us of our proper lives. We don't propose to let you rob us of our present ones as well.”
”Understood. But there are thousands of people at least as qualified as I am. Why
choose me?”
”There are no schools named after those thousands. There are no statues of them in the town squares.”
Pierce looked embarra.s.sed. ”If you think you can trade on my fame, I'm afraid