On January 18, Justinian was bold enough to appear publicly in the Hippodrome to call for peace. He was hissed down by the Greens and fled as stone-throwing began. We saw a worthless prince named Hypatius proclaimed as emperor by the rebels in the Square of Constantine; we saw General Belisarius march through the smoldering city in defense of Justinian; we saw the butchery of the insurgents.
We saw everything. I understood why Metaxas was the most coveted of Couriers. Capistrano had done his best to give his people an exciting show, but he had wasted too much time in the early phases. Metaxas, leaping brilliantly over hours and days, unveiled the entire catastrophe for us, and brought us at last to the morning when order was restored and a shaken Justinian rode through the charred ruins of Constantinople. By a red dawn we saw the clouds of ash still dancing in the air. Justinian studied the blackened hull of Haghia Sophia, and we studied Justinian.
Metaxas said, “He is planning the new cathedral. He will make it the greatest shrine since Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Come: we have seen enough destruction. Now let us see the birth of beauty. Down the line, all of you! Five years and ten months down the line, and behold Haghia Sophia!”
27.
On your next layoff,” said Metaxas, “visit me at my villa. I live there now in 1105. It is a good time to be in Byzantium; Alexius Comnenus rules and rules wisely. I’ll have a lusty wench ready for you, and plenty of wine. You’ll come?”
I was lost in admiration for the sharp-faced little man. We were nearing the end of our tour, with only the Turkish Conquest yet to do, and he had revealed to me in a stunning way the difference between an inspired Courier and a merely competent one.
Only a lifetime of dedication to the task could achieve such results, could provide such a show.
Metaxas hadn’t just taken us to the standard highlights. He had shown us any number of minor events, splicing us in for an hour here, two hours there, creating for us a glorious mosaic of Byzantine history that dimmed the luster of the mosaics of Haghia Sophia. Other Couriers made a dozen stops, perhaps; Metaxas made more than fifty.
He had a special fondness for the foolish emperors. We had listened to a speech of Michael II, the Stammerer, and we had watched the antics of Michael III, the Drunkard, and we had attended the baptism of the fifth Constantine, who had the misfortune to soil the font and was known for the rest of his life as Constantine Copronymus, Constantine the Pisser. Metaxas was completely at home in Byzantium in any one of a thousand years. Coolly, easily, confidently, he ranged through the eras.
The villa he maintained was a mark of his confidence and his audacity. No other Courier had ever dared to create a second identity for himself up the line, spending all his holidays as a citizen of the past. Metaxas ran his villa on a now-time basis; when he had to leave it for two weeks to run a tour, he took care to return to it two weeks after his departure. He never overlapped himself, never let himself go to it at a time when he was already in residence; there was only one Metaxas permitted to use it, and that was the now-time Metaxas. He had bought the villa ten years ago in his double now-time: 2049 down the line, 1095 in Byzantium. And he had maintained his basis with precision; it was ten years later for him in both places. I promised to visit him in 1105. It would be an honor, I said.
He grinned and said, “I’ll introduce you to my great-great-multi-great-grandmother when you come, too. She’s a terrific lay. You remember what I told you about screwing your own ancestors? There’s nothing finer!”
I was stunned. “Does she know who you are?”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Metaxas. “Would I break the first rule of the Time Service? Would I even hint to anyone up the line that I came from the future? Would I? Even Themistoklis Metaxas abides by that rule!”
Like the moody Capistrano, Metaxas had devoted much effort to hunting out his ancestors. His motives were altogether different, though. Capistrano was plotting an elaborate suicide, but Metaxas was obsessed with transtemporal incest.
“Isn’t it risky?” I asked.
“Just take your pills and you’re safe, and so is she.”
“I mean the Time Patrol—”
“You make sure they don’t find out,” said Metaxas. “That way it isn’t risky.”
“If you happen to get her pregnant, you might become your own ancestor.”
“Groovy,” said Metaxas.
“But—”
“People don’t get people pregnant by accident any more, boy. Of course,” he added, “some day I might want to knock her up on purpose.”
I felt the time-winds blowing up a gale.
I said, “You’re talking anarchy!”
“Nihilism, to be more accurate. Look here, Jud, look at this book. I’ve got all my female ancestors listed, hundreds of them, from the nineteenth century back to the tenth. Nobody else in the world has a book like this except maybe some snotty ex-kings and queens, and even they don’t have it this complete.”
“There’s Capistrano,” I said.
“He goes back only to the fourteenth century! Anyway, he’s sick in the head. You know why he does his genealogies?”
“Yes.”
“He’s pretty sick, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said. “But tell me, why are you so eager to sleep with your own ancestors?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Really.”
Metaxas said, “My father was a cold, hateful man. He beat his children every morning before breakfast for exercise. His father was a cold, hateful man. He forced his children to live like slaves. His father — I come from a long line of tyrannical authoritarian dictatorial males. I despise them all. It is my form of rebellion against the father-image. I go on and on through the past, seducing the wives and sisters and daughters of these men whom I loathe. Thus I puncture their icy smugness.”
“In that case, then, to be perfectly consistent, you must have — your own mother — begun with—”
“I draw the line at abominations,” said Metaxas.
“I see.”
“But my grandmother, yes! And several great-grandmothers! And on and on and on!” His eyes glowed. It was a divine mission with him. “I have ploughed through twenty, thirty generations already, and I will keep on for thirty more!” Metaxas laughed his shrill, satanic laugh. “Besides,” he said, “I enjoy a good lay as much as the next man. Others seduce at random; Metaxas seduces systematically! It gives meaning and structure to my life. This interests you, eh?”
“Well—”
“It is life’s most intense joy, what I do.”
I pictured a row of naked women lying side by side, reaching off to infinity. Every one of them had the wedge-shaped head and sharp features of Themistoklis Metaxas. And Metaxas was moving patiently up the line, pausing to stick it into this one, and the one next to her, and the next, and the next, and in his tireless fashion he balled right up the line until the spread-legged women grew hairy and chinless, the womenfolk of Pithecanthropus erectus, and there was Metaxas erectus still jazzing his way back to the beginning of time. Bravo, Metaxas! Bravo!
“Why don’t you try it sometime?” he asked.
“Well—”
“They tell me you are of Greek descent.”
“On my mother’s side, yes.”