Harry Turtledove The Best Time Travel Stories of the Twentieth Century

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Canopus Street and out to the harbor, and off to the tomb of Cleopatra at
the tip of long slender Cape Lochias. Everything was here and all
of it perfect, the
obelisks, the statues and marble colonnades, the courtyards and shrines and
groves, great Alexander himself in his coffin of crystal and gold: a splendid
gleaming pagan city. But there were oddities an unmistakable mosque near the
public gardens, and what seemed to be a Christian church not far from the
Library. And those ships in the harbor, with all those red sails and bristling
masts surely they were medieval, and late medieval at that. He had seen such
anachronisms in other places before.
Doubtless these people found them amusing. Life was a game for them. They
played at it unceasingly. Rome, Alexandria, Timbuctoo why not? Create an
Asgard of translucent bridges and shimmering ice-girt palaces, then grow weary
of it and take it away? Replace it with Mohenjo-daro? Why not? It
seemed to him a great pity to destroy those lofty Nordic
feasting-halls for the sake of building a squat, brutal, sun-baked city of
brown brick; but these people did not look at things the way he did. Their
cities were only temporary. Someone in Asgard had said that Timbuctoo would be
the next to go, with
Byzantium rising in its place. Well, why not? Why not? They could have
anything they liked. This was the fiftieth century, after all. The only rule
was that there could be no more than five cities at once. Limits, Gioia had
informed him solemnly when they first began to travel together, are very
important. But she did not know why, or did not care to say.
He stared out once more toward the sea.
He imagined a newborn city congealing suddenly out of mists, far across the
water: shining towers, great domed palaces, golden mosaics. That would be no
great effort for them. They could just summon it forth whole out of time, the
Emperor on his throne and the Emperor s drunken soldiery roistering in the
streets, the brazen clangor of the cathedral gong rolling through the Grand
Bazaar, dolphins leaping beyond the shoreside pavilions. Why not? They
had Timbuctoo. They had
Alexandria. Do you crave Constantinople? Then behold Constantinople! Or
Avalon, or Lyonesse, or Atlantis. They could have anything they liked.
It is pure Schopenhauer here: the world as will and imagination.
Yes! These slender dark-eyed people journeying tirelessly from miracle to
miracle. Why not Byzantium next? Yes! Why not?
That is no country for old men, he thought.
The young in one another s arms, the birds in the trees
yes! Yes! Anything they liked. They even had him. Suddenly he felt frightened.
Questions he had not asked for a long time burst through into his
consciousness.
Who am I? Why am I here?
Who is this woman beside me?
You re so quiet all of a sudden, Charles, said Gioia, who could not abide
silence for very long. Will you talk to me? I
want you to talk to me. Tell me what you re looking for out there.
He shrugged. Nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing in particular.
I could see you seeing something.
Byzantium, he said. I was imagining that I could look straight across the
water to Byzantium. I was trying to get a glimpse of the walls of
Constantinople.
Oh, but you wouldn t be able to see as far as that from here. Not really.
I know.
And anyway Byzantium doesn t exist.
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Not yet. But it will. Its time comes later on.
Does it? she said. Do you know that for a fact?
On good authority. I heard it in Asgard, he told her. But even if I hadn t,
Byzantium would be inevitable, don t you think? Its time would have to come.
How could we not do Byzantium, Gioia? We certainly will do Byzantium, sooner
or later. I know we will. It s only a matter of time. And we have all the time
in the world.
A shadow crossed her face. Do we? Do we?
He knew very little about himself, but he knew that he was not one of them.
That he knew. He knew that his name was
Charles Phillips and that before he had come to live among these people he had
lived in the year 1984, when there had been such things as computers and
television sets and baseball and jet planes, and the world was full of cities,
not merely five but thousands of them, New York and London and Johannesburg
and Paris and Liverpool and Bangkok and San Francisco and
Buenos Aires and a multitude of others, all at the same time. There had been
four and a half billion people in the world then; now he doubted that
there were as many as four and a half million. Nearly everything
had changed beyond comprehension. The moon still seemed the same, and the
sun; but at night he searched in vain for familiar constellations. He had no
idea how they had brought him from then to now, or why. It did no good to ask.
No one had any answers for him;
no one so much as appeared to understand what it was that he was trying to
learn. After a time he had stopped asking; after a time had had almost
entirely ceased wanting to know.
He and Gioia were climbing the Lighthouse. She scampered ahead, in a hurry as
always, and he came along behind her in his more stolid fashion. Scores of
other tourists, mostly in groups of two or three, were making their
way up the wide flagstone ramps, laughing, calling to one another. Some of
them, seeing him, stopped a moment, stared, pointed. He was used to that. He
was so much taller than any of them; he was plainly not one of them. When they
pointed at him he smiled.
Sometimes he nodded a little acknowledgment.
He could not find much of interest in the lowest level, a massive square
structure two hundred feet high built of huge marble blocks: within its cool
musty arcades were hundreds of small dark rooms, the offices of the
Lighthouse s keepers and mechanics, the barracks of the garrison, the stables
for the three hundred donkeys that carried the fuel to the lantern far above.
None of that appeared inviting to him. He forged onward without halting until
he emerged on the balcony that led to the next level. Here the Lighthouse grew
narrower and became octagonal: its face, granite now and handsomely fluted,
rose in a stunning sweep above him.
Gioia was waiting for him there. This is for you, she said, holding out a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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