father
There must be more to life than just living.”
—Gully Foyle
PROLOGUE
Scop. (1995–?) A bitter man with bitter eyes and a bitter mouth set bitterly underneath a bitter forehead that leaked bitterness, glowed with pain. “No more,” Scop said bitterly, little flights of saliva dazzling their way free from his tongue, dribbling their absent way down his pointed chin to hang suspended in the stop-time an inch above his highly polished, almost fluorescent shoes. “No more of this at all,” and wrenched himself, springing the lever, forced himself back then to 1963 where most bitterly—
He stood on a Grassy Knoll with an enormous box camera dressed as a tourist of the time snapping photographs of the Presidential motorcade. (They would never quite figure him out in the investigations but no matter.) It passed by him slowly, lumpish in the Dallas midday, motorcycles front and back, the President waving. Across the way another photographer crouched: Abraham Zapruder. Scop smiled and caught the President clearly in frame open to one tenth aperture just as the first bullet hit twitching back the head. The President screamed (only Scop could hear it but there it was). The President’s mouth opened as if he were attempting to ingest the bullet but before the manufacturer’s toy camera could get that impossible expression the necessary second bullet hit the occipital zones causing fragmentation. Bitterly Scop launched himself out of there clutching his camera, moved to 1965 in Arlington where he caught a splendid snap of Rockwell’s brains blown out in a parking lot, then shunted hurriedly to 1968. Time was running out. He checked into a strategically located motel mutteringohdoexcuse as he pushed his way past businessmen to the swimming pool, ducked under a deck chair, got himself situated not a moment too soon to see the Reverend come strolling into the kind evening light of the balcony and got one, two, three, four angles of the death mask, then whisked to the mosque too late for Malcolm’s death but time enough for a lovely portrait of his widow screaming. Bitterly. 1995, the very year in which Scop was born was the last on this swing; he waited out two hours in the public square playing a rented lute and making believe that his camera was alive; onlookers thought him gently crazy but when the Premier was shot in the temple in the motorcade they thought differently. Scop supposed. He had no way of being sure of this of course and with eight exquisite freeze-frames he was already gone.
Back to bitter 1963 and the Grassy Knoll. Terrible times then, slaughter of the infra-structure but there was nothing to be said, event was immutable: you moved on. Sentiment called however; pilgrimage had its role even at the cost of pain. Motorcade on the way again. Two tourists stood behind Scop, women in their early fifties, long-lived for those times, dressed in sunsuits. “Boy get away from me,” one of them said and Scop said something unprintable in a foreign language, did not move, looked for the motorcade. Where was Zapruder anyway? “Didn’t you listen?” the second woman said, “don’t you listen to anything, are you crazy?” and moved deliberately to step on his toe but Scop saidfarafara in the old tongue and hit her a soft but stunning blow behind the ear, kicked the other unconscious with cunning toes on the spinal regions and then, feeling his failure, knowing his bitterness, winked back to the Time of Origin where he made the necessary adjustments that would compensate for their nonentity, altered lines of flux so that their descendants would be transferred without penalty to others of the nineteenth generation and then returning to the exact spot but three seconds earlier dragged the women away from Grassy Knoll with surprising strength, thirty whole seconds before the motorcade passed.
No one noticed him of course. They were interested only in the events of the day which were clearly Zapruder’s; no one had noticed Scop because Scop, originally, had never been there. Behind a hedge he committed rough, quick, unspeakable sexual acts upon the women from vague compulsion and then leapt to the time span suddenly opening, felt it devouring him fleshily. He returned to embarkation. “Enough,” he said to the machines against their quick strokes and bird beat, “There must be no more of this. These assassinations . . . these assassinations were horrible.” He had every right to be truly bitter. “It could have been different,” he said.
Melodramatically Scop fell to his knees, engineering now for remorse. “Forgive me,” he said, “forgive me for this,” and then the bitterness overwhelmed to say nothing of the cries of rage of the Temporals as they, having deduced his mission, caught and seized him, shunted him away, four channels diverted to find himself sealed and decked. But not unconscious, oh no. Not unconscious. Bitterly, he considered his failure.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
SCOP’S FAILURE: If he had not lost it would have been another way, perhaps like this: Scop would have appeared before the old man robed and cloaked at the proper hour, standing deferential yet radiating assurance in the hall of interviews and would have shown his photographs, unfurled them, tripped them one by one like playing cards from his fist, showing them to the astonished Master who would have clutched his own garments withdrawing. “What is the meaning of this? where have we obtained this blasphemy?” the old man would have shrieked.
“Through mastery of the temporal,” Scop would have said, “capturing one by one the frozen moments in which our history itself pivoted. Kennedy dead, the kings asssassinated. Here at the moment of impact we can see the gong of civilization struck.”
“What you have done is illegal. Witness may be allowed under certain circumstance but photographs never,” the Master would have said, leaning forward, scuttling the photographs, hiding them in his robes. “You have broken all of the codes; you are asked to submit at once, no delay, to questioning,” he says. “You will explain why this was done and how you have circumvented the codes.”
“It is of no matter. I have duplicates.” Suddenly Scop leans forward, seizes the Temporal Master by the ribbons of his own clothing and pulls the old man closer to him, a faint, fine quiver like that of the machine goes through his hands, a faint, dense sweetish odor penetrates Scop’s nostrils, he becomes aware as if for the first time of the acute mortality and vulnerability of the Master and this dismays him because he has not up until now really concerned himself with that problem, being more involved—let us face it—with the reordering of all existence. “We live in a time stream based upon astonishment and disaster, created by a series of accidents, based upon pain and brutality which sends us lurching inch by inch in pain toward a future we cannot divine,” he says rather floridly, makes florid gestures with his hands upon the Master’s robe, with equal floridity although perhaps some self-awareness wipes his forehead. “Look at these pictures and you will see the proof inviolable. Don’t turn away!” he shrieks to the Master whose old eyes indeed do turn inward and who begins to breathe steamily through his mouth exhaling fumes of cabbage, onion, incense and the other mysterious materials which Scop imagines the Masters to eat, “You’ve got to face it, you’ve got to face the truth, our world is based on murder,” and indeed as he shakes and shakes the old man (becoming more aware of his vulnerability on the instant and by that knowledge also understanding his own power in a world he never made) he can feel the insight driven into him, some spike into the consciousness of the diseased but necessarily gallant old man whose eyes flutter open with that knowledge and the Master says, “Why I do see this, I see it indeed! You’re perfectly right: how can an evolution predicated upon the murder of saints lead to anything but barbarism?” and he begins to laugh. Scop laughs also, the two of them laugh hopelessly in the dim clamp of the enclosure while joy fills Scop’s heart for he knows that he has made his case to the Master and that all will be changed. The lines will be changed, the dead will walk again, the enormously complicated task of switching over will begin and within his lifetime if not within the next decade Scop will see a world of truth and justice in which the lives of the saints, perpetuated to their natural end, gave impetus to the era of benevolence which follows. “Thank you,” the old man says, “thank you for helping me to see this. How unreasonable we were to have thought that this could go on, Scop.”Scop , he says again, murmuring it, the ritual of naming and places his hand on Scop’s head now, the translucent fingers shaking and Scop feels vague warmth, light, distension . . . he feels joined through the ritual of the naming in some indefinable fashion which will weld him and the Master together for all time, may lead for all he knows, to his own initiation as Master some day . . . but as this moment flows over him, as he revels in the understanding that he has, almost single-handedly brought the era of barbarism to a close the photographs wink and dazzle before him, they seem to blend and flow together in the murky light and then there are cries, cries all around him, the sounds of the trespassers coming into the hall to seize him with enormous hands and as they drag him away Scop realizes—or then again he tries to avert the realization—that none of this has truly happened and that what he has taken to be resolution is nothing more than a construction, he never got through to the Master, the Master never listened to him, the Master refused to agree . . . and they tear him from there, he protesting, screaming for his evidentiary photographs but they take him far to a safe place and there he is wrapped layer between layer of stasis while they decide, oh how he hopes that they will decide soon! what they will do with or to him.
CHAPTER II
GETTING THE DALLAS BLUES: Bitterly he ponders his choices. He can present his arguments and be humiliated or he can fail to present his arguments and be humiliated. He decides upon the former course and selects the guise of a rotund appointments secretary on whose appearance he has been able to do a fine mock-up through access to the secret files. As is his custom he is permitted to make direct entrance to the President’s quarters before nine where he finds the President in his nightshirt, ruffling his hair and looking unhappily out the window. “I don’t like this city,” the President says mildly enough. “Every time I come here I get the blues. Getting the Dallas blues,” the President adds pointlessly and turns, walks past the disguised Scop and toward a closet. “Now what shall I wear today?” he says, and begins to riffle clothing. “The blue? Or the black? Of course it doesn’t matter.”
“I would suggest that you leave at once,” Scop says.
“I think the black would be better. But then again I look most dashing in blue. It is very difficult to make these decisions because they make me feel like a frivolous person. But occasions of state are frivolous,” the President adds mildly, “we really must remember that. At the heart this is a ceremonial position.” Humming he takes out the blue and ponders it at extension length. “I might as well,” he says. “And they’ll probably give me thathat at the breakfast but then again—blues for the blue, don’t you think that’s right?”
Abruptly Scop’s control breaks. More and more this has been happening to him; he has tried to slide his way into situations crosswise, moving laterally toward cautious alignment, reminding himself that results are best obtained through indirection but under the circumstances it is impossible to continue this way. Bitterness seizes him. “Leave Dallas!” he shouts, “you must leave this town at once; it is absolutely disastrous for you to extend your stay. You must go, flee, the streets are choked with assassins, at this very moment—” and then he breaks off, tormented, stricken, he has broken the code of information. Whatever he had in mind he had never planned to do this. The President looks at him bleakly and then strokes the fabric of the blue suit, tosses it casually on the bed, parts his robe to reveal himself naked but for his underclothing; a strongly built man, his body reassembled leaving only residual effects from previous injuries. “That’s all well and good,” he says, “but we’ve got only half an hour to be downtown so we’d better hurry.”
Scop cries out but no one comes.
CHAPTER III
ALIENATION THEORY: As he has done before but never so desperately he placed himself between the woman’s thighs, balanced, inserted, then began in an absent but energetic manner to mime the strokes of generation. He has never been able to comport himself successfully under pressure but this does not excuse him from the obligation to try. He closes his eyes, manufactures images, thinks bitterly that it is not fair that over and again he must go through this without climax before he can proceed but then again he is merely situated within the framework: he has not created it. None of it is his responsibility. After a time when he judges that he has moved sufficiently and that his sincerity cannot be questioned and that it could not be said that he has not tried to do his part he rolls off her, draws up his knees in the darkness and looks at the ceiling waiting for her to speak. She must speak first; there is no way around this. The rules for this part are even more explicit than for the rest: written out. He has checked the list before entering the bleak little simulation of an apartment which she has taken. Finally she says, “What are you trying to do?”
“Save the universe of course,” Scop says.
“But why must you save the universe? Would it not be enough to save yourself?”
“We are intertwined!” Scop says. He rolls to his stomach, poises on palms, slowly lifts himself until he thinks he can see knowing that he does not the eyes of the Masters watching him coolly through the prism. “I am the universe and the universe is myself; when I cease to be the universe will wink out of existence.” His detumescent little organ, puppy like, flaps agreement underneath him. “Everybody understands that,” Scop says.
“But I do not. You must explain it to me.”
Yes. He must explain it to her. There is no way around this Scop knows; he must make sense of this to her. This much, at least, is owed for past favors and if he cannot make her understand how can he possibly approach the more diffuse and less sophisticated Masters, many of whom have no conception of the seriousness of the issues involved? “Be reasonable,” he says, “remember that you are the framing consciousness and that the universe may exist only as refined through your perceptions. But then consider,” he adds, “consider how those perceptions are granted by history, the vast and creaking engines of history at all times lending to these little flickers and glimmers of light the only frame they will ever know . . . and then ask yourself—”
“I am getting very bored,” she says. He feels her fingers moving absently on his organ: the woman will not give up. Either she is insatiable (which he doubts) or she will not accept the humble realities of his condition. “Why don’t you try to fuck me again?”
“Because I can’t fuck you,” Scop says bitterly, “I can’t fuck, all that I can do is devolve—”
“Then why do you try so hard?” she says pinching him, “if you do so poorly? Isn’t it painful for you?”
“Of course it’s painful. Everything is painful. Life is painful, death is painful, likewise the darkness and all motions of passage. Still, I participate.”
Her fingernails dig in deeply. “I don’t know,” she says, “I don’t think you so much participate as complain. Why must you complain all the time? Don’t you know how tiresome it is,” she says, “don’t you know how tiresome you are?” and her pressure sends little cylinders of anguish through Scop, “thisis pain,” she says to him knowledgeably, “the other part is merely inconvenience,” and he sees what she is saying, he sees her point, Scop is not (despite his monomania) at all a stupid man and he is willing to accept the doubtful realities of his condition to say nothing of the temporal nature of all that he does. He knows that he will not live for a long time and that when he dies his death is permanent; he does not need explication on the permanent of death. “Please stop that,” he says mildly enough, “you’re hurting me,” and then yanks himself from her quickly, she tries to hang on, he feels her little nails digging into his sex and it is all that Scop can do not to scream but he does not scream of course having long been sealed off from even physical sensation: he will not react, he is a machine, he will not show feeling, he is a mechanism and so he merely lies on the bed extended thinking of all the forces of the universe impinging upon him as unnecessarily she tweaks him again and again, a circumstance which he knows will be repeated.
CHAPTER IV
GRASSY KNOLL: “Excuse me,” he said to Abraham Zapruder. “Might I ask you for the time?”
Zapruder shrugs, adjusts his camera, looks at his watch. “It’s noon,” he says. He is an old man, slightly dishevelled but kindly. He is here to take pictures of the motorcade which he hopes his grandchildren will enjoy. “Another few minutes,” Zapruder says, “I hope that the exposures are correct. The day is beautiful but the weather here is so treacherous and there might be cloud cover.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Scop said. “I am sure that the weather will be fine.” He shifted his stance slightly, letting his eyes roll down the thoroughfare where in the distance he thought he could hear the sound of engines but then again it might merely have been heightened apprehension. He and Zapruder after all are old friends, although they have never spoken he has studied the charts and films so closely, dug through the biographical materials with such assiduousness that he sometimes feels that he knows Zapruder more intimately than anyone with whom he has actually dealt to say nothing of the Masters. Of course he must maintain perspective on this, Scop has realized; Zapruder does not have a reciprocal sense of intimacy. For that matter Abraham Zapruder has been dead for seventy years. Carefully, sneakily, Scop inserts a finger underneath the strap holding the camera to Zapruder’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?” the old man says. He is a grandfather, a retired toy manufacturer who warms himself on pleasant fall days by planning expeditions for his grandchildren, zoos he can take them to, pictures he can bring home but nevertheless he is no fool. Alertness cascades through his attentive old eyes. “Why are you touching my strap?”
Scop withdrew his finger, cursing the devilish cleverness of the old man, uncertain now but angry within his own uncertainty. In the distance he could see the first flourishes of the motorcade which was now no more than five minutes from this point. It was time for determined measures yet Scop somehow could not summon the will.
“If you will excuse me,” Zapruder says, “you are in a position which is somewhat blocking my light. If you would be good enough to move—” He beams upon Scop, defenseless, benevolent, a grandfather whose films will be transferred down the alleys of all the decades and will someday form the Master’s justification for their hideous and illegal acts. “I wish to get set up,” Zapruder says, “if you will merely—”
