I sit in the booth and watch the Games. “You can get out of this,” he said to me a long time ago. “You can be anything that you want to; you can change things and make them different. The future lies within you; now with the convertor the past itself can be changed.” His touch was insistent, his hands sliding against me in the night added their own pressure and insistence, at that moment it seemed possible. God help me, he reached me at that time: I will never tell them this but he made it seem as if it were so. “Help me,” he said, “help me and together the two of us will control the world.”
“I do not want to control the world.”
“Yes you do. To live is to want control; you must control in order to live. If you did not have this there would be utter chaos and you would not survive at all. Go that one last step, admit what you want it to be.”
“It will be the same,” I said to him, “no matter what you tell me, you know that it will never be any different.”
“That is not so. Trust me. Believe in me.”
“Unauthorized use of the convertor is illegal. The penalties are terrible. You cannot—”
“Yes I can,” he said. “Let me worry about that too. Let me deal with them. They no longer know what is going on, you see. Control has passed from their hands which means that they are dead and now we may come alive. I will be able to use the convertor. Do you care for me?”
That he would call upon emotion at a time like this! But of course that was always his way; there was nothing he would not call upon if he felt that it would help him. This may for all I know form a definition of greatness. He might have been a great man. But now like me he is at this field watching the Games and there is no more power that he can exert to change them than could I. I must understand this. “Caring has nothing to do with it,” I said. I was always sensible in all of the spaces of our connection; perhaps this is what destroyed us. I do not know. “What you ask is impossible.”
“Trust me if you care.”
“Trust has nothing to do with this.”
“Trust has everything to do with it,” he said. I felt his sex upon me, lying against my thigh, then making the absent motions toward penetration and I felt myself clench inside. “Now,” he said, “now.”
I squeezed shut, turned, cast him off me. “No,” I said, “no I will not deal with it that way. You cannot use this against me.”
His breath was full against my shoulder for a long time but he said nothing. In the darkness I could see the little rectangular outlines of the grid coming up and realized yet again that we live within iron. They have made us metal; we are the Convertor, we are the machines. Then he said, “You are crazy.”
“No I am not.”
“You do not understand what you are. They have done this to you. Step away and see it; see it clearly and what you have become.”
“No,” I said. On the field most of them are down now; I can see in the wreckage of that collision only a very few of them still standing and they are severely damaged, bracing themselves against falling. “No,” I said to him then, “I cannot help you. I will not work with you. It is hopeless, don’t you see that?”
He broke contact; I felt weightless in the bed. “I should have known,” he said, “but I held out hope even until now. That makes me a fool.”
“Go away,” I said. “Go away from me, please.” It seemed to me at that moment as I considered our past with complete and total objectivity that everything, all of it, had passed between us in small, huddled spaces, that we had never really done anything, that we had not been outside of this enclosure for a moment, had never been able to partake of those spaces which he said were possible and I was sickened as one must always be at moments of true insight; it is too much to deal with those hollow platitudes which turn out, as in the case of everyone else, to be at the center of existence. “Please go away now.”
“I’ll go,” he said, “I’ll go and never come back. I thought you were different,” he said after a while; I could hear the rustling of the clothing of his rank settling around him once again, “I thought that somehow you would not be like any of the others—”
“You said therewere no others.”
“In a way there weren’t. In a way you don’t matter either. You could have helped me,” he said. “Everything could have been different, could be different yet. But you won’t. You won’t do anything. You’re like everybody else. Don’t worry,” he said then, “I’m going to leave. I’ll just have to do it myself, that’s all. I’ll do it myself and it will be only that much harder but that is the way it is going to be,” and he was gone. I lay there in the darkness for a while, trying to deduce whether or not it made any difference being alone, whether in his absence I would feel differently about what he had said but I found that it did not and after a while passed into a watchful, uneasy sleep.
The field is cleared. It is time for the survivors to be taken to the wards; it is time for the harriers to come through on their one sweep; soon the final events of the day will begin. And somewhere over there in that slash of color which I can see as blood against the grey of concrete, somewhere over there, at this moment, Scop is thinking of me.
PART THREE
No one wants this job but someone has to do it; that is the way I feel about it. No one is interested in taking the responsibility and putting up with the problems; everyone would rather be off fucking or at the Games but if it were not for us none of their little lives would be possible. This is something that I force myself to remember when things get too difficult and I feel the need to go over the edge myself. Someone has to do it and take pride in it as well because without pride where are you? We are making the whole damned system go. That’s all. That’s clear.
They brought up this greenshift before us; Scopolamine, Scop for short, forty-five years old, third level East. Scopolamine used to be a kind of drug, truth serum I believe, this Scop took his byline seriously. He was out to tell the truth. He was out to change the course of lives as if they had never been changed before.
Greenshift is crazy. That is why they put them there, over in the Easters. There is not a cycle which passes without serious trouble in the sector and almost always it is a greenshifter who is causing it. Perhaps it has something to do with the hydroponics labs themselves, chloryphyll in the skin or brain or some such but I do not regard this theory highly. They are crazy because they are crazy, that is all. You do not have to look any further than that for a total understanding of the situation.
He stood before us, having been brought in on some minor checkup of one sort or the other. Even before we could give him the readout, the standard stuff about the reasons for him being there and what he could choose to do he began to address us. “I demand the use of the Convertor,” he said. “I insist upon it; it is my right.”
Convertor-use, for researchers and certain kinds of dilettantes, of course, is purely within the province of the Temporal Board. We explained this to him very reasonably but Scop was having no part of it. He said in that casewe were the Temporal Board and could act upon the request on our own choosing. “Every man is entitled to the Board of his own choosing,” the greenshifter said, “and this is mine. May I have the convertor or not? I warn you that if it is not granted legally I will obtain it illegally so whatever you decide here does not matter. I am going to have my way whatever you decide but I would prefer to do it amicably.” Then he said something very strange which we passed by at the time but which turned out, at least as far as I understand it, to be the key to everything that happened. “We live in times that have come about because of murder,” he said, “and this is unspeakable, we cannot live that way. We must eradicate the murder and then we will live in different and better times.” I should have known right then that he was crazy and taken measures but what could I have done? What could I have done? I was only one of many and none of us (despite his insistences) was on the temporal board.
But none of this came up at the time. Greenshifters are not taken seriously; less so in routine cases of slackness and missed cycles such as this and we continued the interview as if this was nothing out of the ordinary, as if his case was completely routine which it seemed to be, which in fact it seems to be at this moment. There was no reason to apply unusual emphasis to what he had to say, we never had any cause to consider it for a moment. I will not take any blame and I resent, I might as well say this, I do resent the necessity for masking this statement. It should not be necessary. None of what you say happened had anything to do with any of us regardless of Scop’s insane accusations or whatever other sources you may have heard of.
The matter of advising the greenshifter was passed along to me. This also was right and proper; we work in ritual order and it was my turn. If it had not been my turn I would have said nothing and would even have had trouble in remembering him. There are so many of these routine appearances and they mean nothing. As it happened it was my turn to speak. “What do you mean based on murder?” I said merely as a way of establishing his confidence, of bridging a relationship. There are numerous little devices we have as a means of keeping our attention on what we are doing. It is not as easy as many think to be on the boards. It is quite a difficult and testing position as a matter of fact and we have gained less understanding and sympathy than I think is truly our right. “I don’t understand what you are saying.” For a man of forty-five his physical appearance was impressive. This is something that I do remember about him; that enabled me to recall him instantly or at least with very little effort when you brought up the subject. Otherwise I might not have remembered him at all. I hardly keep all of this in the forefront of my mind you know. This for me is a routine job which I do without pleasure out of the sad sense that someone must do it in order to keep the cooperative order but that does not mean that I have to have any affection for it, does it? I am not, after all, a Gamesman.
“I have made myself very clear in the papers on file.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “we do not review the preliminary papers in routine hearings such as these.” What else could I have told him? Should I have tried to give him the impression that he was more important than he was? Then I would have built his meglomania out of all proportion and I would have been judged guilty in another way. My position has got to be considered also. I think that it is fair and legitimate and will eventually be justified. “Perhaps,” I went on, “you would like to explain yourself in a little more detail.” I did not have to allow him this option. It was an unusual courtesy.
“No,” he said, “I will not explain myself; my conclusions are the same that you would come to if you thought about it for a while. I wish to use the convertor so that I may straighten out everything. I ask no help; I can do all of this myself.”
“That’s ridiculous. We cannot grant you use of the convertor. It does not fall within our purview. In any case you know that the past cannot be tampered with; you know the protectorate and the penalties.”
“Leave it to me,” he said standing there, holding his ground, quite unintimidated and I do not think that he is entitled to any credit for this, “you leave it to me to make the judgment as to protectorates and penalties.” He came up against the boards and grasped them, his fingers changing color under the pressure, the surfaces cutting into his hands in a way that must have been most painful. “Don’t you understand what is going on here?” he said, “don’t you realize that we are living not in a present but in a dream of waste, an extension of all the terrors of the past; don’t you realize that we live awash in blood?” I did not know what he was talking about. “Blood is everywhere; we are awash in it and we cannot bear this,” he said, “we must change the situation at the base; we must return and correct. Otherwise I tell you we will see the end of it in our time and that is the truth; I have seen it clearly.”
It is evident what kind of lunacy I was dealing with at this time. At least a transcription of the dialogue, as I recall it should furnish all the evidence (if evidence truly be necessary) of how unbalanced was his state and what there was to be done under the circumstances. My own handling of the situation was dignified, sensible and the only proper means of coming to terms at that time. If this is not clear then reference to the reports should make it so without the need for further discussion. I am making this statement under duress and under protest and despite the threats feel that my position is clear and that I am adequately protected under the codes.
“We are not the temporal board,” I said, “your objections have nothing to do with us at all, greenshifter. You will have to apply to them for an authorized use of the convertor for all the good that this will do because they will surely deny your request.”
“You are the temporal board,” he said, “you are appearing under disguise because you do not want the unpleasant and difficult publicity of having it known that the temporal board is meeting on simple matters in greenshift. But I know devices; I have plotted your cunning evasions and I know exactly what you are. I am not here for review as you claim but rather for the most intense observation and I want you to know that this is exactly how I feel so that there will be no doubt in your minds when I begin the adjustments that you were amply warned.”
“Let’s dispose of him,” someone said. I turned to find out who it was but the statement was not repeated and I met seven fierce, bland old faces to my right and left, none of them ready for statement. Sometimes I think that the random selection of these boards is really a poor way of managing the process; you get a lot of weak elders who are eligible only for senescence, death, removal, who pass out the useless final days of their lives in filling out the statutory requirements and now and then you meet a non-Elder who has psychopathic illusions that his functioning in board of review will somehow change his life to say nothing of those around him. I belong to neither class of course; I approach these duties as a responsibility which must be met and do so with unusual firmness and perspicacity, fairness and insight but I have never confused what we do with possessing any significance. Greenshift is full of small failures of conduct and absence of integration but they are at the crudest and least consequential level: who really cares about greenshifters anyway? Most of their lapses can be seen in terms of personal corruption, that is all. Raking my keen and intelligent eyes from right to left through the faces surrounding me it was impossible to see who had saidlet’sdisposeofhim; no one really wishing to admit to the statement but it did not matter, of course, any one of them could have said it . . . they might have said it as a body as a matter of fact. I was the only one on the panel with intelligence and acuity and what difference, after all, does any of that make? Intelligence and acuity is not necessary here. “We have to read the complaint,” the elder next to me said. At least his voice was distinct. “It isn’t fair if we don’t spell out the particulars.”
“I know what the complaint is,” Scop said, “it is specious.”
