Insistence of Vision (28 page)

“Eight!”

“I mentioned other marriages. That is how we know your genes are the critical factor, since you were not especially helpful to the mothers in any other way. Yet, all eight achieved wonders.

“Again, it’s not really your fault, Alec. Twisted by your own past, you were merely a somewhat successful executive in this era, good at manipulating and defeating competitors, but also thwarted by those above you, who were put off by your drive and apparent amorality. At a root level, you have powerful leadership talents, inheritable traits that will prove crucial in our future. Your descendants will be mighty leaders, ambitious, innovative, demanding, and yet fair.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the point of this “joke” anymore. It was taking on a harshness that burned inside.

“What did you mean by twisted?”

“Our analysts believe your abilities—especially your sense of empathy for others—were stunted because of traumas you suffered while young.”

Ouch. I felt a wrench in my stomach. How the hell could this bitch know about——

I very nearly got up at that moment. Got up and walked away from the lure of their beauty, the fascination of their teasing game. I almost stood up to go home, to where I knew I was loved in spite of my faults. At least up until that night.
Stand… up!
I commanded my muscles and bones. But they betrayed me.

“Those childhood traumas twisted your gifts, turning you into a user of others. Unpleasant traits you fought to overcome, beginning with your playground experience—you always felt badly about being a bully, didn’t you? History gives you credit for that, Alec. And yet, you were never able to—”

“Hey, wait a second —”

The redhead injects with enthusiasm “—but what struck Special Projects HQ was how those very same traits ideally suit you for a special task! A role in saving all humanity.”

I blink. Doubt, anger, and disbelief welled up in me. None of this made sense, even as an elaborate practical joke. It came rushing back: Tony Pasquetto beating the crap out of me in fifth grade, my seething anger, a bile from that simmered on and on. I took it out on others, roiling with both pleasure and guilt. One word from these two and presto—back it came. And worse, much worse from my own parents, too caught up in their war against each other to see what collateral damage they were doing to me inside.

I made myself take a deep breath. “I . . . had some rough times as a kid, sure, but that doesn’t mean—”

The blonde’s hand slid higher up my thigh, threatening to drive away all rational thought.

“Let us persuade you.”

“Huh? Of what?”

“Of our purpose. Our resolve to make your decision obvious.”

“Yes,” the redhead added, leaning closer. “We are here to give you everything that you presently want. To fulfill your fantasies, such as they are.”

“And you figure I want more than a good exec job and a wife and home?”

“We know you. Better than you know yourself, Alec,” Red said with a slow, sly smile.

Struggling for some sense of control, I stretched, pretending nonchalance, knowing that I’m fooling no one.

“You ladies have got quite a line, I got to hand it to you.”

“You do not believe us,” the redhead said. “Of course, it is a fantastic tale.”

“It’s original, I’ll give you that.”

Blonde is all business. She leaned back, giving me a good long look at her perfectly proportioned body. “For now, let us see about collecting those samples you offered.”

5.

The rebels groveled very well. Heads smacked on marble, moans of supplication echoed, they even trotted forward some women to offer—probably their poor frightened wives. I yawned.

My Western Frontier Advisor whispered, urging me to put them all on spikes. “As an example to others!” he finished.

“Have you watched an impalement?” I answered. I had made that mistake the first time I went along with this joker. They put the pointed shaft up the victim’s bum and it takes the victim a full day to work down on it. I would still wake up in a sweat, years later, remembering their screams.

“Sire, for the good of the Kingdom—”

“Clemency is granted!” I said loudly. “One year at hard labor, helping to build the Great Library in Alec-Sandria, then back home on probation—and I better not hear of any more raided caravans! This rebellion stuff has got to stop. Get a life!”

Okay, not eloquent. But the expressions on their faces—and their wives’—made me feel like Abraham Lincoln. Sheesh, these ancient guys are easily pleased.

Not that I was always Mr. Nice Guy. Especially at the beginning, building a ragtag band of followers, then eventually taking over and ejecting the old Pharaoh. Had to show I was the kind of ruthless cutthroat that my growing army expected. Those first years were hungry, danger-packed, and tense, even with some modern tricks from the twenty-first century. And yet . . . it’s funny how finally taking power didn’t turn out to be as voluptuously satisfying as I thought it would be.

Who would have expected that I’m nowhere near the bully that I used to think I was?

The cries of gratitude from the rebels hardly faded away before the chief herald cried out. “Lo, the Priestess of Isis arrives!”

Damn! I had meant to slip away—

She came in at full swagger. And though she bowed low before me and uttered all the proper phrases, anyone could tell that she’s my equal here.

Some may even suspect the truth.

The gold bracelets were striking, the ivory headdress and ebony belt gave her authority, and the figure . . . well nobody else in 1400
b.c.
has anything like it.

But she was all business. How did I ever think she was so alluring, back in Mulligan’s?

“Lord of All the Lands, I approach you with supplications.”

Which meant work to do. With a sigh I sat back on my throne and answered in English.

“The usual?”

“I bring laws for you to proclaim. Matters that we discussed at our last monthly meeting. Regulations for fair trade in the Sinai. A better plan for Nile boats. Establishment of county and provincial fairs, for the open exchange of improvements. The apprenticeship and scholarship program for bright sons and daughters of the peasant class.”

Yeah, yeah. Half of the ideas were mine. I’m not a complete puppet. Still, I winced when I saw a crimson scroll under her belt. The weekly quota of heirs for me to sire.

Dammit, I bet she was planning an increase! What am I, a machine?

“Look, what’s the rush?” I mumbled. “We’ve already accomplished—”

“A great deal, proving that our estimates of your abilities were correct. You should trust—”

“Trust!” I laughed, without joy. “You tricked me! All of this, in order to—”

“In order to help guide society quickly toward a more advanced state, so that in three and a half millennia it will be capable of defeating a dire enemy from the stars.”

None of the guards, deputies and ass-kissers around the throne room understood us, of course. They assumed we were talking in the Language of the Gods.

“Do remember the Enemy, O great Pharaoh.”

I shivered. They had showed me a foe, all right—made me experience them in full. Not classic aliens or terrifying robo-devils, nothing you’d expect at all. They came from a world where smart mammals like us were herded. Not like cows, but more subtly. Symbiotic, they had mastered how to tap our deepest fears, using them against us. They ruled by immersing us in them. Imagine a chilly analytical engine, impersonally merciless as it uses you, only far worse to look at and impossible to look away from—because it’s always there, slimy, inside.

The blonde and the redhead made me experience that. They showed me how humanity was losing.

But on this new timeline, we’ll have an extra 3,000 years to get ready. Time enough, maybe, if we bypass the cruel stupidities and waste of the Assyrian and Roman and Ch’ing empires and all the dark ages between. If feudalism gets replaced by opportunity and science a whole lot earlier. Especially—they say—if that future has plenty of people with my traits. Traits that did me little good in my old life, but ones that would breed true, making great leaders in the future. Leaders not stunted the way I am—only good for simple tasks, like bullying primitives by the marshy borders of the Nile.

“One of your descendants invented the time beam,” they had told me that night – it seemed like ages ago – as if I was supposed to be proud. “She knew this attempt would be our only chance.”

“Well then, why not take
her
back in time? Or pick my son to be Pharaoh? He carries the same miracle genes, right? He’s better and wiser than me, too, ain’t that right? Anyway, if I leave, won’t they vanish?”

“It is hard to explain the subtleties of temporal dynamics,” the redhead had said. “All of your children made large contributions to our future. That timeline must continue to stand like a trellis for the new one to grow alongside. And it
will
continue to stand, even after you are removed.”

I think of myself as flexible-minded, but this made my head hurt. You can’t do time travel without a painful paradox, and the two savants in front of me were accommodating.

“But still . . . why me? Because that time beam had a …
fringe
… that appeared both in my era and here? I mean now?”

“That’s part of it. Also, we must borrow the least important element. One whose suite of actions—personal choices and conscious involvement—can be spared, and yet someone capable of exercising fierce power in a primitive era, then growing into the job. All of those reasons pointed to you.”

The least important element.
Brutally frank, those gals were, once they knew they had me. Their futuristic personality analyzer told them I’d be fine leading a nation of millions, though in my real world I never made it beyond middle management. I could satisfy harems, but not one modern wife.

Go figure.

6.

It really came home to me later that day, in the privacy of my seraglio.

Did you ever work in an ice cream shop? First week you gorge. Second week you peck a little. Third week . . . well, I was getting that third week feeling again, real bad.

A voluptuous lady of the Levant, soft like pillows. A stately and dignified Nubian, like warm ebony. A leering, silky submissive of the West and a skilled contortionist from the Far East. All of them were volunteers, of course, never coerced. That moralist, Isis, made sure of their enthusiasm before any came to me. (What did she do with the others? I wondered.)

I had done the research every other man only dreams about, and learned a daunting truth: there is only a finite range of women, as there is of men. Probably Casanova learned the same lesson. Who would’ve figured the polygynous drive for variety turns out to be satiable, even in a rutting fool like me?

Eventually, it palls.

And then, dammit, you start dreaming every night of someone who actually loved you, who chose you, as an equal, despite knowing all your faults.

I tried to shake off the mood. It would be unseemly for Pharaoh not to watch the Parade of Lovelies, then show that he still has what it takes to govern. Sighing, I proceeded to do my best.

Later, the Priestess of Isis arrived for another consultation, this time accompanied by her redheaded companion, now the Priestess of Karnak, proudly bringing the latest crop of infants to show off. Each one a gift for the ages, or so that pair of eugenic time warriors crooned.

And yet, once again I wondered. They’d told me that a chain beginning in the year 2015 would not be long enough to create a new civilization with sufficient power by 2200. But three thousand years might suffice. We were growing a parallel timeline, a vine climbing alongside the world I had known. One that would be strong enough to battle a terrible foe. Too much High Concept for me, I’m afraid. But one nagging doubt kept bothering me—

I have only their word for it that I joined the right side in their war.

Looking at my latest offspring, one baby after another whom I would barely know, I found myself wishing with a pang that I hadn’t missed so many of Bobby’s Little League games. That I had gone to see Rachel win the science fair.

Who knew they’d turn out to be geniuses?

And who cared about that? I just missed them.

Oh, the blonde and redheaded time agents played me right. They offered power, which I enjoyed at first— till I got responsible. They knew it would happen. . . .

“Hey,” I barked at both of them as they packed up their latest harvest of healthy, cooing princesses and princelings to depart. “I’m here running the Kingdom all day, begetting heirs all night, and meanwhile—what are you two doing in those temples of yours?”

The Priestess of Isis interrupted her inspection of a young heir. Her eyes became slits.

“We are organizing the women, Alec. Mind your own business.”

I sighed as they left, ruminating yet again on my fate. And especially on one awful irony.

Somewhere deep down, way back in my former life, I always expected to be
punished.
For my faults. For my failings.

Now, despite pleasures that would have stunned Hefner, I couldn’t escape feeling that way again. Exiled and condemned. Wishing… though I knew it was hopeless… for clemency.

A pardon.

For some way to go home.

“I could have done better,” I muttered. “If only they left me alone. Really. I would have changed.”

The pall lingered over me like a familiar cloud…

. . . till a nearby Grecian-primitive beauty gave me a slow, suggestive smile.

Ah, well. One endures.

Story Notes

The preceding story was created with my longtime collaborator Gregory Benford. Together, we wrote the deep-space novel Heart of the Comet. Of course, any collaboration results in a different “voice.”

Science fiction features more collaborations than any other genre. I believe one reason is that – for all our notorious authorial egos – we really do care above all about story.

Story towers above all other considerations. If teamwork can make it succeed, then ego gives way to teamwork!

Next comes a light-hearted piece – another collaboration with Greg – in which we channel one of the greatest, early masters of our art, putting him in a “mash-up” with another maestro of newborn science fiction.