“But it’s true,” he says, “that’s the reason that I was there you know.”
“There? For what?”
“To try to prevent the assassination. I’m a visitor from the future. As a matter of fact this is the future that you’re in right now.”
“How interesting,” I say. “I never would have suspected that if you hadn’t told me.”
“Well, how would you know?” he says, “you’ve hardly had an opportunity to be about outside and I’m afraid that this is going to be denied you in any case. But the reason that I’ve gone back there is to try and change the present. We live in a very brutal period here in twenty-forty.”
“Twenty-forty? Is that where we are now, where you’re from?”
“Exactly,” he says and considers me with his strange, insightful eyes. Never, never have I been able to forget that stare of his, even before all of this happened. “You’re very intelligent.”
“Not really,” I say, afraid that I will misdirect him, that he will begin to question me intensely rather than to offer insight into his own motivations, that material which it is my duty to impart, “not intelligent at all. Why do you want to change the present?”
He shrugs, blinks his eyes, shifts on his hips. “Did I say that? I shouldn’t have said that; it doesn’t matter. It’s really not important.”
“You said that this was a brutal period.”
“Well,” he says, “well, every period in human history is brutal. I don’t want to convey more of a revulsion toward the situation than is strictly speaking necessary.” He seems to be abstracted, discombobulated although then again firm characteristical judgements with this person are not easy. I should know. I above all others should know this. “Get dressed,” he says, “I’ll take you back.”
“Back where?”
“Where you came from.”
“Why did you bring me here to begin with if you were only going to take me back?”
“That doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hear any more questions from you. Do you want to go back or don’t you?”
“Well of course I want to go back.”
“Then put on your clothing,” he says and bounds from the bed, strides toward the mirror pounding his thighs vigorously, “don’t ask questions. You should be overjoyed to get back; after all you were abducted to say nothing of being in a state of terror, weren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me the truth now.”
“I was terrified,” I say sincerely. “I still am. I don’t know whether I’ll get out of this alive or not. Are you really going to turn me back to where I was?”
“Where else?”
“What about the President?”
He pauses in his ritual; in the mirror I can see his face twist, become sullen. “What does that matter to you? Why must you ask so many questions?”
“I won’t ask any more.”
“Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think that I like to do this? I have no choice; I’m merely following the codes to the best of my ability.”
“Of course you are,” I say. “I understand that.”
“I don’t have to put up with your insults and slights. This is my society, not yours. You have nothing to say about this; it’s only my generosity that is allowing you to get out of this.”
It was his homicidal mania which forced our relationship to an end in the first place. Now it all comes back to me. I reach casually for my dress at the side of the bed, imagine what it would be like to be killed by Scop in role. Would he rip chunks off my body later to see the true identity of the corpse; would he feel remorse? Or would his pleasure merely be deepened by knowing that it is me who he has destroyed? “Yes,” I say, “yes, I am sorry, you’re right,” and spring off the bed and begin to dress and before he can ponder further the significance of what he has said I am dressed and standing before him. “Get dressed,” I say to him, “take me back,” and his little pubis seems to dimple as if with accusation, “I want to return,” I say, “take me, you promised, you promised that I could go back, I didn’t make you, it was your decision,” and sullenly he begins to put on his clothes, simple garments for traveling, nothing in them to indicate at all the depth and sincerity of his passion and then he is dressed and before me, moving quickly from the room. “Take me back,” I shriek, “I refuse to stay here alone,” and run after him and he brushes me away and says, “Deal with yourself; do what you will. I don’t have to do anything for you,” and blunders his way out of the room and I try to follow him but he turns to slap me down with quick force, one absent blow across the head and I fall to my knees sinking, sinking, and he is gone from there; oh no, this is not what I wanted, this is not the way that they said it would be, they did not say that it would be anything like this at all nor that there would be endangerment, I was merely being enlisted to try and avert a serious crime but—
CHAPTER II
THE TEMPORALS:—I should have known better, should have known otherwise. I should have known that they lie to us, will always lie if it suits their purposes. They are interested in nothing but the maintenance of their tyranny, their tyranny locked closely to the nature of the times, and they will do anything to keep the status quo unlike the brave if hopeless little revolutionaries like Scop who do what they can, but always against the grain of the system. After he has left me I return to his cubicle. There is nothing else to do. My dress is ragged and my hair is askew; truly I am disgusted by my appearance. They have made me ugly and they say that this was necessary in order to deceive him but they did not have to make me ugly. I know that now. They did it out of spite.
Knowing my ugliness makes me weep and I raise my hands to tear off the huge chunks of plasticene. I do not care what happens to me as long as I can be restored to myself. But with my hands on my cheeks I pause before the first damage has been done to my appearance and find myself staring as if transfixed at the walls considering what I have become, what they have done to me. There is a kind of justice in this; I may even have deserved it but justice or not if I tear off the plasticene I am done for. If he returns to this cubicle and finds me here and understands what has been done not only I but many will die. I am convinced as to the utter sincerity of his passion. So I let my hands fall from my face and sit there for a time, consciously blanking my mind so that I will think of nothing, so that no estimation of the proceedings will come to me; in that way it is as if, momentarily at any rate, I am free and beyond all of them. Then I hear noises in the corridor and when I look up one of the Masters is staring at me. They must have checked me through to here by a monitoring device implanted; either that or they are watching his cubicle at all times. “What happened?” the Temporal says. I have never seen him before, I think, but then again, they all look very much the same to me and I have never been sensitive to individual differences. They all speak to the same interest anyway. “I demand to know what happened,” he says.
“Come in and close the door. Don’t shout in the corridors like a fool; do you want to be heard?”
He looks at me with close interest, then steps inside, robes casting little furls and shadows to the floor, reaches behind him to take the knob and eases the door shut. “Why are you showing defiance?”
“I am not showing defiance. I advised you to come in.”
“You are wholly within our power. You do this assignment on our behalf; you have no rights or conditions in this whatsoever.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What happened? You are ordered to tell me at once.”
I shrug and say, “I will tell you nothing. You cannot make me.”
“Are you mad?”
“Get out of here. I do not wish to be monitored.”
