The screen showed us shots of Apocalyptist pickets outside his hotel, and suddenly I understood why the hoax was succeeding. Vornan-19 did have something to offer a troubled world. Accept him, and one accepted the future. The Apocalyptists were attempting to deny the future. I watched them: the grotesque masks, the painted bodies, the wanton capers, the signs held high, crying, REJOICE! THE END IS NEAR! In fury they shook their fists at the hotel and cast sacks of living light at the building, so that trickles of gleaming red and blue pigment streamed down the weathered masonry. The man from the future was the nemesis of their cult. An epoch racked by fears of imminent extinction turned to him easily, naturally, and hopefully. In an apocalyptic age all wonders are welcome.
“Last night in Rome,” said the narrator, “Vornan-19 held his first live press conference. Thirty reporters representing the major global news services questioned him.”
Abruptly the screen dissolved into a swirl of colors, out of which came the replay of the news conference. Not a simulation this time. Vornan himself, live, appeared before my eyes for the first time.
I was shaken.
I can use no other word. In view of my later involvement with him, let me make it quite clear that at this time I regarded him as nothing but an ingenious fraud. I felt contempt for his pretensions and despised those who, for whatever motives, were choosing to play his silly game. Nevertheless my first sight of the purported visitor had a wholly unexpected impact. He peered outward from the screen, relaxed and poised, and the effect of his presence was something more than merely three-dimensional.
He was a slim man of less than middle height, with narrow sloping shoulders, a slender feminine neck, and a finely modeled head held proudly erect. The planes of his face were pronounced: sharp cheek-bones, angular temples, a strong chin, a prominent nose. His skull was slightly too large for his frame; it was high-vaulted, longer than it was broad, and the bone structure in back would have been of interest to a phrenologist, for his skull was curiously prolonged and ridged. Its unusual features, though, fell within the range of what one might expect to find on the streets of any large city.
His hair was close-cropped and gray. His eyes, too, were gray. He might have been of any age from thirty to sixty. His skin was unlined. He wore a pale blue tunic that had the simplicity of high style, and at his throat was a neatly gathered foulard, in cerise, providing the only touch of color about him. He looked cool, graceful, alert, intelligent, charming, and somewhat disdainful. I was reminded forcefully of a sleek bluepoint Siamese cat I had once known. He had the ambivalent sexuality of a superb tom, for there is something sinuously feminine even about most male cats, and Vornan projected that same quality, that well-groomed look of pantherish grace. I don’t mean to say that he was epicene in the sense of being sexless, but rather that he was androgynous, omnisexual, capable of finding and giving pleasure with anyone or anything. I stress the point that this was my instant impression, and not something that I am projecting backward out of what I later discovered about Vornan-19.
Character is defined mainly by the eyes and the mouth. Vornan’s power centered there. His lips were thin, his mouth somewhat too wide, his teeth flawless, his smile dazzling. He flashed the smile like a beacon, radiating an immense warmth and concern, and just as swiftly cut it off, so that the mouth became a nullity and the center of attention shifted to the chilly, penetrating eyes. Those were the two most conspicuous sides of Vornan’s personality: the instant capacity to demand and seize love, represented by the irresistible blaze of the smile; and the quick withdrawal to calculating aloofness, represented by the moonstone gleam of the eyes. Charlatan or not, he was plainly an extraordinary man, and despite my scorn for such charades as this, I felt impelled to watch him in action. The simulated version shown a few moments before, under interrogation by the bureaucrats, had had the same features, but the power was missing. The first instant’s view of the live Vornan carried an immediate magnetism absent from the computerized zombie.
The camera lingered on him for perhaps thirty seconds, long enough to register his curious ability to command attention. Then it panned around the room, showing the newsmen. Remote as I am from the heroes of the screen, I recognized at least half a dozen of them, and the fact that Vornan had been thought worthy of the time of the world’s star reporters was important in itself, testimony to the effect he had already had on the world while Jack and Shirley and I lazed in the desert. The camera continued around, revealing all the gimmicks of our gadgety era: the power core of the recording instruments, the dull snout of the computer input, the boom from which the sound equipment dangled, the grid of depth-sensors that kept the three dimensions of the telecast from wandering, and the small cesium laser that provided the spotlighting. Usually all these devices are carefully kept out of sight, but for this production they had been obtrusively thrust forward — props, one might say, to demonstrate that we medievals knew a thing or two.
The press conference began with a voice saying in clipped London tones, “Mr. Vornan, would you kindly describe your assertions concerning your presence here?”
“Certainly. I have come across time to gain insight into the life processes of early technological man. My starting point was the year you reckon as 2999. I propose to tour the centers of your civilization and carry back with me a full account for the delight and instruction of my contemporaries.”
He spoke smoothly and with no discernible hesitation. His English was scrubbed free of accent; it was the sort of English I have heard computers speaking, a speech cobbled together from chaste isolated phonemes and thus missing any regional taint. The robotic quality of his timbre and enunciation clearly conveyed the notion that this man was speaking a language he had learned in vacuo, from some sort of teaching machine; but of course a twentieth-century Finn or Basque or Uzbek who had learned English via tape would have sounded much the same way. Vornan’s voice itself was flexible and well modulated, pleasant to hear.
A questioner said, “How come you speak English?”
“It seemed the most useful medieval language for me to learn.”
“Isn’t it spoken in your time?”
“Only in a greatly altered form.”
“Tell us a little about the world of the future.”
Vornan smiled — the charm again — and said patiently. “What would you like to know?”
“The population.”
“I’m not sure. Several billions, at least.”
“Have you reached the stars yet?”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“How long do people live in 2999?”
“Until they die,” said Vornan amiably. “That is, until they choose to die.”
“What if they don’t so choose?”
“I suppose they’d keep on living. I’m really not sure.”
“What are the leading nations of 2999?”
“We have no nations. We have the Centrality, and then there are the decentralized settlements. That is all.”
“What’s the Centrality?”
“A voluntary association of citizens in a single area. A city, in a sense, but something more than a city.”
“Where is it?”
Vornan-19 frowned delicately. “On one of the major continents. I forget your names for the continents.”
Jack looked up at me. “Shall I turn it off? He’s obviously a phony. He can’t even fake the details convincingly!”
“No, leave it,” Shirley said. She seemed entranced. Jack tensed again, and I quickly said, “Yes, let’s watch a little more. It’s amusing.”