I promised Lazarus a clop in the head and followed the only available route. It remained gloomy but always with a light a little farther ahead. Shortly, five minutes or less, it ended in a small, comfortable lounge, well-lighted from nowhere. A brassy uninflected voice said, "Please sit down. You will be called."
I sat down in an easy chair and laid my cane aside. A small table by it held magazines and a newspaper. I glanced at each one, looking for anachronisms, but found none. The periodicals were all ones that I recalled as available in Iowa in the seventies;
they carried dates of July 2177 or earlier. The newspaper was the Grinnell Herald-Register, dated Friday, June 27, 2177.
I started to put it down, as the Herald-Register is not exactly exciting. Uncle subscribed to a daily printout from Des Moines and, of course, the Kansas City Star, but our local paper was good only for campus notes, local notices, and the sort of "news" and "society" items that are published to display as many local names as possible.
But an ad caught my eye: On Sunday, July twentieth, one night only, at Des Moines Municipal Opera House, the Halifax Ballet Theater will present Midsummer Night's Dream, with the sensational new star Luanna Pauline as Titania.
I read it twice... and promised myself that I would take Hazel to see it. It would be a special anniversary: I had met Mistress Gwendolyn Novak at Golden Rule's Day One Ball, Neil Armstrong Day, July twentieth a year ago (never mind that silly time loop) and this would make a delightful reprise of the gala eve of our wedding day (without, this time, some unmannerly oaf crashing our party and dying at our table).
Would a one-gravity performance be disappointing after having seen the Queen of Fairies cutting didoes high in the air? No, this was a sentimental journey; it would not matter. Besides, Luanna Pauline had made (would make, will make) her reputation dancing in one gravity-it would be a fascinating contrast. We could go backstage and tell her that we saw her dance Titania at one-third gravity in the Circus Room of Golden Rule. Oh, certainly-when Golden Rule does not yet exist for another three years! I began to understand why the Code had limitations on loose talk.
Never mind. On Neil Armstrong Day I would gift my beautiful bride with this sentimental celebration.
While I was looking at the Herald-Register, an abstract design on the wall changed to a motto in glowing letters: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Billion While I watched, it changed to: A Paradox Can Be Paradoctored Then: The Early Worm Has a Death Wish Followed by: Don't Try TOO Hard; You Might Succeed
I was trying to figure out that last one when it suddenly changed to "Why Are You Staring at a Blank Wall?"-and it was a blank wall. Then on it appeared, large, the World Snake, and, inside the circle it made by its nauseating way of eating, letters were chasing themselves. Then they leveled out into a straight line:
Making Order Out of Chaos Then under that:
THE CIRCLE OF OUROBOROS
This was displaced by another archway; that brassy voice said: "Please enter."
I grabbed my cane and went through the archway and found myself translated to the exact center of a large circular room. There is such a thing as too much service.
There were a dozen-odd people seated around the room on a dais about a meter high-a theater in the round, with me in the leading role... in the sense in which an insect pinned to the stage of a microscope is the star of the show. That brassy voice said, "State your full name."
"Richard Colin Ames Campbell. What is this? A trial?"
"Yes, in one sense."
"You can adjourn court right now; I'm not having any. If anyone is on trial, it is all of you-as I want nothing from you but you seem to want something from me. It is up to you to convince me, not the other way around. Keep that clear in your mind."
I turned slowly around, looking over my "judges." I found a friendly face, Hilda Burroughs, and felt enormously better. She threw me a kiss; I caught it and ate it. But I was enormously surprised, too. I would expect to find this tiny beauty at any gathering requiring elegance and grace... but not as a member of a group that had been represented to me as being the most powerful council in all history and any universe.
Then I recognized another face: Lazarus. He nodded; I returned his nod. He said, "Please don't be impatient. Colonel. Allow protocol to proceed."
I said, "Protocol is either useful or it should be abolished. I am standing and all of you are seated. That is protocol establishing dominance. And you can stuff it! If I don't have a chair in ten seconds I am leaving. Your chair will do."
That invisible robot with the brassy voice placed an upholstered easy chair back of my knees so fast that I had no excuse to leave. I sank back into it and put my cane across my knees. "Comfortable?" Lazarus inquired.
"Yes, thank you." "Good. The next item is protocol, too-introductions. I do not think you will find it objectionable."
The brassy voice started in again, naming members-"Companions"-of the Circle of Ouroboros, governing body of the omniversal Time Corps. Each time one was named, my chair faced that companion. But I felt no movement.
"Master Mobyas Toras, for Barsoom, time line one, coded
'John Carter.'"
"Barsoom"? Poppycock! But I found myself standing up and bowing in answer to a gentle smile and a gesture suggesting a blessing. He was ancient, and hardly more than skin and bones. He wore a sword but I felt sure that he had not wielded one in generations. He was huddled in a heavy silk wrap much like that worn by Buddhist priests. His skin was polished mahogany, more strongly red than any North American "redskin"-in short he looked exactly like the fictional descriptions in the tales of Barsoom... a result easy to achieve with makeup, a couple of meters of cloth, and a prop sword.
So why did I stand up? (Because Aunt Abby had striped my calves for any failure whatever in politeness to my elders?
Nonsense. I knew that he was authentic when I laid eyes on him. That my conviction was preposterous did not alter it.)
"Her Wisdom Star, Arbiter of the Ninety Universes, composite time lines, code 'Cyrano.'"
Her Wisdom smiled at me and I wiggled like a puppy. I'm no judge of wisdom but I am certain that males with high blood pressure and any history of cardiac problems or T.I.A. should not be too close to her. Star, Mrs. Gordon, is as tall or taller than I, weighs more and all of it muscle but her breasts and that slight layer that smooths female body lines. She was wearing too little for Poweshiek County, quite a lot for Boondock.
Star may not be the most beautiful woman in all her many universes but she may be the sexiest-in a sultry. Girl Scout fashion. Just walking through a room she is in should change a boy into a man.
"Woodrow Wilson Smith, Senior of the Howard Families, time line two, code 'Leslie LeCroix.'" Lazarus and I again exchanged nods.
"Dr. Jubal Harshaw, time line three, code 'Neil Ann-strong.'"
Dr. Harshaw raised his hand in a half salute and smiled; I answered the same way-and made a note to buttonhole him, back in Boondock perhaps, about the many legends of the "Man from Mars." How much was truth, how much was fiction?
"Dr. Hilda Mac Burroughs, time line four, code 'Ballox O'Malley.'" Hilda and I exchanged smiles.
"Commander Ted Smith, time line five, code 'DuQuesne.'" Commander Smith was a square-jawed athlete with ice-blue eyes. He was dressed in an undecorated gray uniform, carrying a bolstered hand gun, and wearing a bejeweled heavy bracelet.
"Captain John Sterling, time line six, code "Neil Armstrong alternate time line.'" I looked at my boyhood hero and considered the possibility that I was asleep and having a vivid dream. Hazel had told me and told me again that the hero of her space opera was real... but not even the repeated use of the code phrase "Operation Galactic Overlord" had convinced me... and now here he was: the foe of the Overlord.