The Star Diaries (25 page)

Nevertheless these, ultimately, were trifling matters, of no great consequence; with Plato it was different; I am always overcome with pity when I read his story of the cave, in which one sits with one’s back to the world, seeing just its shadow on the wall. Is it so surprising that he should have felt the 27th century to be the only true reality, and the primitive age in which I had imprisoned him—a “gloomy cave”? And his doctrine of knowledge as naught but the “self-recollection” of that which once, “before life,” was known far
better,
is an allusion even more obvious.

Meanwhile things were going from bad to worse. I had to drop Kahn because he helped Napoleon escape from Elba; this time I chose Mongolia as the place of exile, for he was hopping mad and swore that I’d remember him; what trouble the man could cause me out in that wilderness I couldn’t imagine, and yet he kept his word. Seeing what the situation was, our designers tried to outdo each other in coming up with harebrained schemes. For example, to supply impoverished nations with masses of goods via giant time mains—but that would have stopped all progress. Or, again, to take a million or so enlightened citizens from our modern day and deposit them, like an army, in the Paleolithic; fine, only what was I supposed to do with the people already sitting there in their caves?

Reading these plans aroused my suspicions when I looked more closely at the 20th century. The means for mass annihilation, could they have been planted there? There were, I had heard, a couple of radicals at the Institute who wanted to twist time around in a circle, so that somewhere after the 21st century contemporaneity would merge with prehistory. In this way everything was to start out once more from the beginning, only better. A sick idea, bizarre, ridiculous, yet I saw what appeared to be the signs of preparations. Overgrowth demanded first the destruction of the existing civilization, a “return to Nature,” and indeed, from the middle of the 20th century on you had a marked increase in antisocial behavior, kidnappings, bombings, young people growing shaggier by the year, and all the erotica coarsened, became bestial, hordes of hairy rag-wearers rendered earsplitting homage not to the Sun, perhaps, but to certain stars and superstars, there were clamorous calls for the abolition of technology, of science, even those futurologists considered to be scientists proclaimed—but who put them up to it?!—impending doom, decline, the end, here and there you even had (already) caves being built, though they were called—possibly to avoid recognition—shelters.

I decided to concentrate on the centuries that followed, for this whole business smacked of revolution, i.e. revolving time around in the opposite direction, precisely on the principle of the circle, but just then I was invited to attend a special session of the Research Committee. My friends told me privately that I would be tried there. This however didn’t keep me from the performance of my duties. My final action was to settle the matter of a certain Adler, who while working as an inspection officer brought back with him from the 12th century a young girl he had carried off in broad daylight; overtaken in an open field before the gaping multitude, she was lifted up onto his chronocycle; they considered her a saint, and her abduction in time—as her Assumption, I should have gotten rid of Adler long before, he was a thorough brute, of an appearance unusually repulsive, looking like a gorilla with those deep-set eyes of his and the heavy jaw, but I didn’t want people to think me prejudiced. Now however I sent him packing, and quite a distance too, to be safe—about 65,000 years back; he became a prehistoric Casanova and begat the Neanderthals.

I showed up at the meeting with my head held high, for my conscience was clear. It went on for more than ten hours; I sat and listened to accusation after accusation. They charged me with acting arbitrarily, with riding roughshod over the scholars, with disregarding the opinions of the experts, with favoritism towards Greece, with the fall of Rome, with the Julius Caesar incident (that too was a lie: I hadn’t sent out any Brutus anywhere), with the Reichplatz affair, i.e. Cardinal Richelieu, with abuses in the MOIRA section and tempolice, with the popes and antipopes (actually, the “Dark Ages” were caused by Betterpart, who, with his predilection for the “iron hand” approach, had stuck so many informers in between the 8th and 9th centuries, that the result was mum’s-the-word and cultural stagnation).

The recital of the bill of indictment, drawn up in 7000 separate clauses, amounted to a public reading of a textbook on world history. I was taken to task for Otto Noy, for the burning bush, Sodom and Gomorrah, for the Vikings, for the wheels on the war wagons in Asia Minor, for
no
wheels on the war wagons in South America, for the Crusades, for the slaughter of the Albigenses, Berthold Schwarz and his powder (and where was I supposed to put him, in antiquity? so they could get to grapeshot all the sooner?)—and so forth, on and on. Nothing suited the honorable Committee now, neither the Reformation nor the Counter Reformation, and the very same people who once had come running to me with
exactly
those proposals, swearing to their salutary nature (Rosenbeisser practically got down on his knees for permission to start the Reformation), now sat there, the very picture of innocence.

When asked, at the end, if I had anything to say in my defense, I replied that I had no intention of defending myself. History would judge us. Still, I couldn’t resist one parting shot before relinquishing the floor. I observed, to wit, that whatever
progress
, whatever
good
the Past could show after the Project’s efforts, was entirely owing to
me.
I was referring here to the positive results of the mass banishment policy I had initiated. It was
I
whom mankind had to thank for Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Bosković, Leonardo da Vinci, Bosch, Spinoza, and those nameless thousands who sustained human creativity throughout the centuries. However bitter was the fate of the exiles, they had had it coming to them, and yet at the same time they were able, thanks to me, to pay off their debt to history, for they furthered history the best they could—but only
after
their removal from high positions in the Project! On the other hand if anyone wished to know what the
experts
of the Project had been up to meanwhile, he could take a look at Mars, Jupiter, Venus, at the butchered Moon, he could go and see Atlantis buried at the bottom of the Atlantic, he could count the victims of two great glacial epochs, of plagues, epidemics, pestilences, wars, religious fanaticisms—in short, he could examine General History, which after “improvement” had become nothing but a battleground of melioristic schemes, a
chaos,
an
unholy mess.
History was the
victim
of the Institute, of its constant intrigues, connivings, confusion, shortsightedness, improvisation, incompetence, and if it had been up to me, I would have sent the whole epoch-making batch of them off to where the brontosaurs roamed free.

I hardly need tell you that my words met with a somewhat
sour
reception. Though this was supposed to have been the final plea, several more worthy temporalists requested to be heard—men like I. G. Noramus, Stu Pitt, M. Taguele, and Rosenbeisser too was there, yes, his worthy colleagues had managed to fetch him all the way from Byzantium. Knowing
ahead of time
the outcome of the voting to relieve me of my directorship, they had staged a “death on the field of battle” for Julian the Apostate (363), so eager was he to be present at this spectacle. But before he could speak I raised a point of order, to ask since when did Byzantine emperors have the right to participate in the Institute’s proceedings. My question was ignored.

Rosenbeisser had come prepared, he must have received materials while still in Constantinople; the machination was as subtle as a ton of bricks, but they weren’t even trying to conceal it. He accused me of amateurism, of pretending to know
music,
and this, with my atrocious ear, had resulted in seriously perverting the development of theoretical physics. Here was how, according to the Herr Professor, it had happened: upon conducting a remote-control survey of the intelligence of all the children at the turn of the 19th century, our Hyperputer had come up with a list of young boys who in early manhood would be capable of deriving the equivalence of matter and energy, vital for releasing the power of the atom. These were, among others, Pierre Solitaire, Trofim Odnokamenyak, John Singlestone, Masanari Kotsumutobiushuyoto, Aristides Monolapides and Giovanni Unopetra—besides little Albie Einstein. I had been so bold as to show favoritism to the latter, for I liked the way he played the violin; years later, because of that, the bombs were dropped on Japan.

Rosenbeisser was twisting the facts so shamelessly, it took my breath away. Violin-playing had nothing to do with the case. No, the bastard was simply trying to shift his own blame onto me. The Hyperputer, running prognostic simulations of sequels to various events, had foreseen the atom bomb in Mussolini’s Italy for a theory of relativity from Unopetra, and a series of even worse catastrophes for the other lads. I selected Einstein because he was a good child; for that which developed afterwards with those atoms neither he nor I should have to answer. Indeed, I had acted against the advice of Rosenbeisser, who recommended “the prophylactic denuding of the Earth of children of preschool age” in order that atomic energy be released in the safe 21st century, and even introduced me to a chronolician who was ready to take on the job. Naturally I banished that dangerous man at once—Harrid or Herrot was his name—to Asia Minor, where he in fact committed a number of heinous acts; they figured in one of the articles of indictment. Yet what else could I have done with him? I had to send him
to some
time, didn’t I? But there’s no point in my trying to refute that mountain of trumped-up charges.

After the vote on my dismissal from the Project, Rosenbeisser ordered me to present myself forthwith at the office; I found him already sitting at my desk, as acting director. And whom do you think I saw there at his side? Why Goody, Gestirner, Astroianni, Starbuck, and the other deadwood too; Rosenbeisser had already managed to spring them from their respective centuries. As for himself, the stay in Byzantium had done him a world of good; lean and tan after his campaign against the Persians, he had brought back coins with his own profile stamped on them, gold brooches, signet rings, and a heap of finery, which he was in the process of showing to his cronies, but quickly stuck them in the drawer when I walked in, and puffed himself up, and sat back, and spoke with a drawl, through his teeth, without looking at me, like some sort of emperor. Barely able to keep from gloating in triumph, he told me haughtily that I was free to go home, provided I agreed to carry out a certain errand. Namely: I was, when I got back, to persuade Ijon Tichy, the Ijon Tichy who all this time had been staying at my house—to assume the directorship of THEOHIPPIP.

A sudden flash of understanding pierced my brain. It was only now that I realized why
I
of all people had been chosen to act as envoy to my selfsame
self!
The Hyperputer’s prognosis, after all, remained in force, therefore no one was better suited for the job of directing the Correction of the Past than I. So they weren’t doing this to be generous—as if they
cared
—but purely in their own self-interest; yes, of course, I. Tichy, who had originally talked me into this whole business, remained in the past and was living in my house. I understood, further, that the time loop would be closed only at the precise moment when I—
I,
this time—reached the library and, braking the chronocycle, knocked all the volumes off the shelf. The other Ijon would be in the kitchen, a skillet in his hand, caught off guard by my unexpected appearance, for I would now be playing the part of the
messenger from the future,
while he, the occupant of the house, would be the
recipient of the message.
The seeming paradox of the situation was a product of the inevitable relativity of time entailed by the mastering of chronomotive technology. The real perfidiousness of the plan devised by the Hyperputer lay in the fact that it had created a
double
loop in time: a little loop within a large. In the little loop, starting out, my duplicate and I went round and round until I finally agreed to leave for the future. But afterwards the large loop continued to remain open; this was the reason I hadn’t understood, at the time, just how
he
had landed up in that future he claimed to come from.

In the little loop I had been constantly the earlier, and he the later Ijon Tichy. But now the roles would be reversed, seeing that the times were switched around: this time I was coming to him
from the future
as an emissary; he, presently
the previous me,
would in. turn have to take command of the Project. In the final analysis, then, we were going to
change places in time.
The only thing I still couldn’t figure out was why he hadn’t let me in on this, back then in the kitchen, but suddenly that too was clear, for wasn’t Rosenbeisser making me promise, on my sacred word of honor, not to reveal a thing of what had happened in the Project?

And if I refused to give him my word, instead of a chronocycle I’d be handed a pension and couldn’t go anywhere. What was I to do? They knew, the devils, that I wouldn’t refuse. I
would
have, had the candidate for my position been any other man, but how can one possibly not trust, as a successor, one’s own self? So then, they had thought of even that eventuality in cooking up this clever little scheme of theirs!

Without honors, without fanfare, without so much as a single word of thanks, or any sort of sendoff ceremony, accompanied by the deathlike silence of my ex-colleagues, who only recently had been paying me nothing but compliments from morning till night, competing among themselves to regale my mental horizons with some new surprise, and who now all turned their backs as I walked past—I headed for the embarkation hall. Petty maliciousness had prompted my former subordinates to give me the most dilapidated chronocycle they could find. Now I knew why I would be unable to brake in time and unfailingly knock over all those bookshelves! But I was unruffled by this last of many indignities. And though the chronocycle shook dreadfully on the curves of time (these are the so-called turning points in history), for the stabilizers refused to work, I left the 27th century feeling no anger, no bitterness, thinking only of how the Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning would fare—under my successor.