Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (46 page)

"About as much of a friend as he's got in the world," I told him, "which isn't saying much."

And all the time I was trying to figure it out. But the more I figured, the more confused I got. The paradoxes in the thing. How could Morniel Mathaway become famous five hundred years from now by painting pictures that he first saw in a book published five hundred years from now? Who painted the pictures? Morniel Mathaway? The book said so, and with the book in his possession, he would certainly do them. But he'd be copying them out of the book. So who painted the original pictures?

Mr. Glescu looked worriedly at his forefinger. "I'm running out of time—practically none left!"

He sped up the stairs, with me behind him. When we burst into the studio, I braced myself for the argument over the book. I wasn't too happy about it, because I liked Mr. Glescu.

The book wasn't there; the bed was empty. And two other things weren't there—the time machine and Morniel Mathaway.

"He left in it!" Mr. Glescu gasped. "He
stranded
me here! He must have figured out that getting inside and closing the door made it return!"

"Yeah, he's a great figurer," I said bitterly. This I hadn't bargained for. This I wouldn't have helped to bring about. "And he'll probably figure out a very plausible story to tell the people in your time to explain how the whole thing happened. Why should he work his head off in the twentieth century when he can be an outstanding, hero-worshipped celebrity in the twenty-fifth?"

"But what will happen if they ask him to paint merely
one
picture—"

"He'll probably tell them he's already done his work and feels he can no longer add anything of importance to it. He'll no doubt end up giving lectures on himself. Don't worry, he'll make out. It's you I'm worried about. You're stuck here. Are they likely to send a rescue party after you?"

Mr. Glescu shook his head miserably. "Every scholar who wins the award has to sign a waiver of responsibility, in case he doesn't return. The machine may be used only once in fifty years—and by that time, some other scholar will claim and be given the right to witness the storming of the Bastille, the birth of Gautama Buddha or something of the sort. No, I'm
stuck
here, as you phrased it. Is it very bad, living in this period?"

I slapped him on the shoulder. I was feeling very guilty. "Not so bad. Of course, you'll need a social security card, and I don't know how you go about getting one at your age. And possibly—I don't know for sure—the FBI or immigration authorities may want to question you, since you're an illegal alien, kind of."

He looked appalled. "Oh, dear! That's quite bad enough!"

And then I got the idea. "No, it needn't be. Tell you what. Morniel has a social security card—he had a job a couple of years ago. And he keeps his birth certificate in that bureau drawer along with other personal papers. Why don't you just assume his identity?
He'll
never show you up as an imposter!"

"Do you think I could? Won't I be—won't his friends—his relatives—"

"Parents both dead, no relatives I ever heard about. And I told you I'm the closest thing to a friend he's got." I examined Mr. Glescu thoughtfully. "You could get away with it. Maybe grow a beard and dye it blond. Things like that. Naturally, the big problem would be earning a living. Being a specialist on Mathaway and the art movements that derived from him wouldn't get you fed an awful lot right now."

He grabbed at me. "I could paint! I've always dreamed of being a painter! I don't have much talent, but there are all sorts of artistic novelties I know about, all kinds of graphic innovations that don't exist in your time. Surely that would be enough—even without talent—to make a living for me on some third- or fourth-rate level!"

It was. It certainly was. But not on the third- or fourth-rate level. On the first. Mr. Glescu-Morniel Mathaway is the finest painter alive today. And the unhappiest.

"What's the matter with these people?" he asked me wildly after his last exhibition. "Praising me like that! I don't have an ounce of real talent in me; all my work,
all
, is completely derivative. I've tried to do something,
anything
, that was completely my own, but I'm so steeped in Mathaway that I just can't seem to make my own personality come through. And those idiotic critics go on raving about me—and the work isn't even my own!"

"Then whose is it?" I wanted to know.

"Mathaway's, of course," he said bitterly. "We thought there couldn't be a time paradox—I wish you could read all the scientific papers on the subject; they fill whole libraries—because it isn't possible, the time specialists argue, for a painting, say, to be copied from a future reproduction and so have no original artist. But that's what I'm doing! I'm copying from that book by memory!"

I wish I could tell him the truth—he's such a nice guy, especially compared to the real fake of a Mathaway, and he suffers so much.

But I can't.

You see, he's deliberately trying not to copy those paintings. He's working so hard at it that he refuses to think about that book or even discuss it. I finally got him to recently, for a few sentences, and you know what? He doesn't actually remember it, except pretty hazily!

Of course he wouldn't—he's the real Morniel Mathaway and there is no paradox. But if I ever told him that he was actually painting the pictures instead of merely copying them from memory, he'd lose whatever little self-confidence he has. So I have to let him think he's a phony when he's nothing of the sort.

"Forget it," I go on telling him. "A buck's a buck."

Body or soul, often both, I was an inhabitant of New York's Greenwich Village from the late '40s to the middle '60s, the period in which I wrote most of these stories. I knew twenty or thirty versions of Morniel Mathaway, all of them as convinced (they claimed) of their own greatness; a lot of them far more predatory than my fictional character here.

Two of the most decent and most promising had been friends of mine since high school, Harold Paris and Irving Amen. I have always believed that one of the pair would be celebrated as a master for at least a couple of centuries.

And he—I won't identify him any further—was the talented original of Morniel, up to and including the remark about Picasso and Rouault. He was also, when much older, one of the originals of Mr. Glescu.

Let me add here that when I first knew these two guys back at Abraham Lincoln High School, although I already planned on being a writer, I lived with a far greater affinity for painting. If you had asked me then to choose between being Shakespeare and Rembrandt or Jonathan Swift and Paul Cezanne, I would have ground my teeth and pulled at my hair and finally come down in each case on the side of the painter.

But over the years I had to learn that whatever talent I was granted lies with literature and not at all with art. So much for the other model for Mr. Glescu.

Alas.

Written 1954——Published 1955

The cry was in a deep voice, a breathless, badly frightened voice. Hoarse and urgent, it rose above the roar of the distant mob, above the rattle of traffic; it flung itself into the spacious office on the third floor of the Embassy and demanded immediate attention.

His Excellency, the Ambassador from 2219 AD—the sole occupant of that office—was a man of relaxed bearing and a wonderfully calm face. His eyes transmitted the unvarying message that all things were essentially simple—and could be further simplified. It was, therefore, quite remarkable how that cry from the grounds below made him look suddenly uncertain.

He rose and moved to the window with unaccustomed haste. A tall, bearded man, whose clothes were torn and whose body was badly bruised, had just leaped onto the Embassy lawn from the surrounding high fence. The bearded man pointed the forefingers of both hands at the third-floor office of the Ambassador from 2219 AD and shrieked again:

"Sanctuary!"

There was an answering shriek from the mob cascading down the street toward him. The bearded man looked over his shoulder once, then dashed forward across the lawn. His feet could be heard pounding up the steps of the Embassy. Downstairs, a heavy door slammed behind him.

The Ambassador from 2219 AD bit his lip. Well, the fellow had made it. Now
his
problems began.

He turned a dial on his wrist communicator. "All Embassy personnel," he said. "Attention! This is the Ambassador speaking. Bolt and barricade all street doors immediately! Barricade all windows on the street level that are not protected by bars. All female personnel and the fugitive who has just entered will be sent up to the second floor. Havemeyer, take charge of the first floor. Bruce, take charge of the second floor—and keep the fugitive under careful guard. Dodson, report to me."

He turned the dial another notch. "Police Department? This is the Ambassador from 2219 AD. A fugitive has just entered the building, requesting sanctuary. From the looks of the mob behind him, I'd say that your normal detail down here will be inadequate to protect us. You will have to send reinforcements."

The policeman's snort was as much anger as surprise. "
You're
giving sanctuary to Henry Groppus and you want us to protect you? Listen, I
live
in this time! It's as much as my life is worth to—"

"It's as much as your job is worth if a riot detail isn't down here in two minutes. Two minutes, I said. It is now precisely twenty-seven minutes past six o'clock."

"But listen!" The voice from the dial seemed almost hysterical. "That's Henry
Groppus
you have in there. Do you know what he
did
?"

"At the moment, that's not relevant. If his request for asylum isn't honored, he will be returned to the proper authorities. I am asking protection for the Embassy from 2219 AD, for its property and personnel, which, like all Embassies and their staffs, enjoy extraterritorial status and immunity. It's your responsibility to see that we get it."

The Ambassador clicked off and drew a deep breath. His calm was returning and once more his eyes announced that all complex matters could be refined down to simple ones—and handled.

As he turned to the window again, Dodson, his First Secretary, came in and stood respectfully at his shoulder.

Together, they stared down at the mob, the relaxed, observant older man and the slender, alert young one who split his gaze between the scene below and his chief.

As far as the eye could see, in all directions, the street was the color of the yelling mob. It had pushed right up against the fence, so hard and so tight that those in front were unable to climb it as they had intended, but were jammed, screaming their agony, into the iron bars.

"The police detail on duty, sir," Dodson said in a low voice. "They weren't able to hold them back for more than a few seconds. But they gave us time we needed. Everything downstairs should be secure, sir."

The Ambassador grunted.

Now the fence was giving way. It bent slowly, steadily inward, like a black flower closing. And then it was down here and the mob spilled over it, down there and a thick wave of mob washed across the lawn, down everywhere, mob over it everywhere, mob rushing toward the building in which they stood, mob maddened and swirling all about them and breaking thunderously against the walls.

For just a moment, Dodson was looking contemptuously down through the window. "2119 AD!"

The Ambassador grunted again. The grunt could be taken any one of several ways.

The frenzied, directionless noise from below abruptly changed in quality. It became steady, rhythmical. At the peak of each pulsation, there was an enormous thump. After a while, the thumps were followed by a ripping sound.

"Sir!" Havemeyer's voice came in suddenly on the wrist communicator. "The front door's beginning to give way. All right if we move up to the second floor?"

"By all means. And as soon as you're up there, you and Bruce see to it that the doors, front and rear, are barricaded. Then I want you to stand by the destructive fuses on the Embassy files. If the mob breaks into the second floor, see to it that the files go."

"Right, sir."

"Do you think, sir, that there's any chance—" Dodson had begun, when the sound of a dozen sirens made them look up.

The riot squad was coming down from the sky on flying platforms, two men to a platform. Soupy yellow stuff flowed out of the nozzles of the canisters each policeman carried, flowed out and bubbled into the mob.

The Ambassador looked at his watch. "One minute and fifty seconds," he said comfortably. Then he went back to his desk.

Dodson stood at the window, watching the mob stumble back across the Embassy lawn in chokes and gasps. Above all, he was fascinated by the number of individuals who, in the midst of their choking, stopped and turned and shook their fists at the building behind them.

When he could tear himself away, he described them to his chief.

"They evidently feel pretty strongly, sir," he suggested. "This is no ordinary mob."

"No, it's no ordinary mob. And Groppus is no ordinary criminal. Send him in. Tell Havemeyer and Bruce to start straightening up the place. I want an itemized statement on all damage to be forwarded to the Secretary of State before five o'clock."

"Yes, sir." Dodson paused near the door. "You know, sir, the staff received him inside as something of a hero."

The Ambassador looked up, his calm eyes slightly intent. "Of course they did. How did you feel about him, Dodson—criminal or hero?"

The secretary's face went immediately blank as his burgeoning diplomat's mind tried to blunt the question. "Well, of course, sir, he's both—both criminal and hero."

"Yes, but which is he chiefly? Take a stand, Dodson. How did
you
feel about him? Off the record, naturally."

"Well, sir," the young man began, then hesitated. "I think the dictum that applies here is
When in Rome...
We are, in effect, in Rome. Therefore, Henry Groppus should undoubtedly be considered a criminal."

"Yes," the Ambassador said thoughtfully. "In Rome. All right, send him in, send him in."