George Alec Effinger - The Bird of Time

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The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

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The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

Other works by George Alec Effinger also available in e-

reads editions

Dirty Tricks

The Nick of Time

What Entropy Means to Me

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

For their advice and encouragement over the years, this book

is for Robert Silverberg and Edward L. Ferman and Shawna

McCarthy.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape

the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not

only prophecy and make their prophecies come true, but they

can also lie and make their lies come true.

—Eric Hoffer

"Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk's spoiling all the

fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream.

Besides, there isn't going to be any war!”

—Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara

Gone With the Wind

You can't sort jam and marbles.

—Walt Kelly

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

CHAPTER ONE

BEARS BITTER FRUIT

You know the shock of utter terror just as you're about to

hand over a large sum of money for something you're no

longer sure you really want. Hartstein felt it. He felt it in his

stomach, and he felt his hand give a peculiar reluctant quiver

as he gave his card to the man behind the counter.

The man smiled, not pleasantly. He was dressed in the

uniform of the Agency, the silver-and-blue tunic with the

leatherneck collar. There were five rows of ribbons on his

breast, signifying one thing and another, all mysterious and

unknown to Hartstein. The man was evidently a hardened

veteran of the Agency; it seemed odd to Hartstein to see him

behind the counter, like a travel agent or an airline ticket

clerk. “Second thoughts?” said the Agency man.

“Well,” said Hartstein, “no.” He wasn't going to let this

veteran see that the notion of a vacation in time made him

just a little uneasy. It did, but not enough to make him

change his mind. Really, it was the expense that staggered

Hartstein more than the danger. But possibly, down

underneath, buried successfully beneath rocky strata of more

mundane worries, there was the tickling fear that he might be

one of the 2 percent that never came back.

Hartstein was a young man, recently graduated from

college in Mississippi, about to begin a new life as an

employee in a doughnut shop, who had been given a large

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

sum of money by his grandparents with the stipulation that

he spend it broadening his horizons, by traveling either to

Europe or into the past. “I'd love to go back in time,” he

explained to his father. “Europe will always be there.”

Mr. Hartstein considered his son's urgency about the past,

which, as far as he could see, would also always be there.

“You're going to have a great future in doughnuts, son,” he

said.

And so, Hartstein was standing at the Agency counter in

the lobby of the Agency Building right in the middle of Agency

Plaza downtown. “Any luggage?” asked the uniformed man.

“Uh huh.” Hartstein indicated a molded plastic suitcase he

had brought with him, with extra shirts and socks, camera

and film, and whatever else he thought he'd need.

“They didn't have molded plastic suitcases in ancient

times,” said the Agent.

“Oh,” said Hartstein, “that's right.” He looked confused.

“Don't worry. We'll provide you with everything you'll

need, costume, appropriate accessories, money, and so forth.

We'll make sure your hairstyle and facial hair conform to the

local fashion. We'll give you a quick ESB knowledge of

language, customs, and background. You won't have to worry

about a thing.”

“I'm not,” said Hartstein in an uncertain voice. “Worried, I

mean.” He looked at a framed quotation hanging on the wall

behind the agent:

When great causes are on the move in the

world, we learn that we are spirits, not

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

animals, and that something is going on in

space and time, and beyond space and time,

which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

—Sir Winston Churchill

It made Hartstein feel better; that was what it was there

for.

“Good,” said the man in the uniform, “you're my kind of

man.” And he smiled again, no more pleasantly than the first

time. “Now don't tell me, let me guess. You're either the

Library at Alexandria or Catherine the Great.”

Hartstein was astonished. “The Library,” he said. “How did

you know?”

“You college boys are all alike. Okay, take this receipt up

to the ninth floor, Room 972. They'll give you all the

introductory material. You can travel any time you like, just

give us twenty-four hours’ notice. You come in, take your ESB

session, get outfitted, and we push you through the screen

for your day in the past. You don't—”

“Can I go today?”

“What?”

Hartstein swallowed. “Can I do it today?” he said.

The Agent shrugged. “Sure, of course. In a hurry? The

Library isn't going anywhere.”

“It's going to burn to the ground, isn't it?”

The uniformed man gave Hartstein a long, disdainful look.

“They promised to hold off on that until after you leave,” he

said.

“Oh, good.”

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

The man handed the receipt across the counter. “Take that

upstairs. Good luck. Next?”

Room 972 was a large room; there was a counter across

the front of it, and many desks and cubicles dividing the vast

space to the rear. It looked like the kind of place you went to

when the Internal Revenue Service wants to ask you a few

questions. Hartstein's stomach began to grumble again. He

told himself that there was no reason for anxiety, but he

couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom. Doom he had

chosen and paid for himself, with his grandparents’ money.

“May I help you?” asked a young woman. She seemed

very bored. She was dressed in the same silver-and-blue

uniform, but on hers, there were no campaign ribbons. The

cut of the tunic was less severe as well, permitting the

general public to evaluate certain of her characteristics.

When Hartstein's eyes turned from the bustling activity

around him to this attractive Agent, he lost some of his fear.

“I'd like to go to the—”

“The Library, I know. Yellow slip, please.” He gave the

receipt to her. “When did you want to go?”

“I'd like to do it today, if I could.”

She looked up at him and cracked her chewing gum. One

eyebrow went up just a bit. “In a hurry?” she said.

Hartstein shrugged. There was a framed quotation at this

counter, too:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the wing.

—The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

The lines didn't mean a damn thing to Hartstein.

“Today,” said the Agent, “let's see.” She consulted several

clipboards and a large, black, vinyl-bound notebook. “Well,

you're in luck. There's no real problem with that. It's, what?

it's almost eleven o'clock. So, we can have you ready by two

o'clock. You realize that you will have exactly twenty-four

hours in the past, no more and no less. So if you go through

at two, then you'll be back tomorrow at two. Right?”

“I understand,” said Hartstein.

“And you took care of everything downstairs? Uh huh, it's

all here on the voucher. So, is there anything you'd like to

change? This is your last chance.”

Hartstein wasn't crazy about the way she phrased that

remark. “My last chance?” he said.

She looked up at the ceiling impatiently. “You can't be

yelling ‘Wait a minute, I forgot something’ when they're

pushing you through the screen. If you don't want to go to

the Library, if you'd rather, say, go to see them assassinate

Julius Caesar, you'd better do it now. We don't want to have

to listen to your kvetching when you get back.”

The idea of Julius Caesar and Brutus and Mark Antony's

funeral oration and all that sounded very attractive to

Hartstein, and he considered it for a moment.

“But if I were you,” said the Agent, “I'd stick. You can

spend all day in the Library. Caesar's down and dead in a

minute, and then everybody goes to have lunch. The rest of

the day you might as well be window-shopping in the Agency

gift shop, for all the excitement there is.”

The Bird of Time

by George Alec Effinger

“You're right. I'll just hang with my original plan.”

“Good boy,” said the young woman. “Take the voucher

through the swinging gate, follow the yellow line on the floor,

and see Sergeant Brannick. Have a good time in Alexandria.”

Like nightfall in the jungle, boredom reappeared with terrible

suddenness on her ordinary face.

“Through the swinging gate,” she said. She pushed a

button and a buzzer sounded. Hartstein went through the

gate and followed the yellow line. It went through a small

village of polished desks until it came to an end abruptly, at

the battered oak station of Sergeant Brannick.

“Voucher, please,” said the sergeant. He was a large man,

as large as the Agent who had sold Hartstein the ticket. He

wore the Agency uniform, decorated with as many ribbons as

the man downstairs had had. It seemed just as odd to

Hartstein that Brannick would be employed here, handling the

routing of tourists. Didn't the Agency need its experienced

personnel in the field, patrolling the freeways of time, fighting

the unimaginable crimes that temporal terrorists would

certainly be plotting against the sleeping citizens of the

present? “Voucher, please,” said Brannick more loudly.

“Sorry,” said Hartstein. He gave the man the yellow slip,

now bent into a tiny, neat square. “Will the Library be

crowded full of other people from the present when I get

there?”

Brannick's eyes narrowed. “You won't see anybody there

except the locals,” he said.

“Oh? Why is that? Why isn't the place crammed like

sardines with us by now?”

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