PART TWO



CHAPTER I


ELAINE KOZCIOUSKOS: Disguise is not easy. The old features will show up no matter how cunning the plasticine; I know this and know too that to live in mask is to live as a child, convinced that the motions of flight are in themselves concealment. They are not. One learns this and many other things as one grows older.

One must always be the same and those who would know you in one way will know you another. Nevertheless when I am called in and ordered to the Grassy Knoll where I will impersonate a tourist I do not have the will to resist. They promise me that the disguise will be strong, that Scop himself will be mesmerized by the cunning alteration. How am I to tell them that a long time ago Scop and I were lovers and that even if the face conceals the body will, bit by bit, yield its familiar messages? I cannot of course. Our relationship was illicit; confession would be utterly destructive. Beyond that, I have no choice. My gradient does not allow me refusal; a fact of which they are all too aware.

So I tell them I will go and they say that they are satisfied. They are always satisfied in agreement; that is all they have ever sought from the beginning. Not submission, not unending power, not total control . . . merely the agreement of those they consider their subjects to a direct proposal. This is little enough; I would hardly oppose them even if Scop and I had been lovers. I did not care for him a great deal. Our relationship was one which came out of pain and which ended in perceived hopelessness. Listening to them talk to me it is possible to feel that he may have forgotten my body. Only the administrators in themselves matter, I think. Only they are imperishable.

We are not. Certainly the flesh is mortal; a discovery which must be made when one has reached my stage of life. I do not deny it. Nevertheless, willing to go on for all of my mortality, I take myself to the Grassy Knoll in the most intricate plasticene and given the superficial characteristics of a tourist of this time I blend among the rest of them so easily that it is hard for me to be aware, so deep do I find myself in the role, that the man talking to me in an impassioned way is Scop until suddenly I am hurtled behind the bushes and he begins to shout at me in his strange cracked voice. “Now,” he is saying, “you must return with me now.”

I shrug, trying to preserve my composure. This is what was urged from the first, that I do not betray emotional distress of a primary nature. Most of my panic can be masked as the under­standable terror which a tourist of this time would feel being dragged off by an individual such as Scop. Have I said that he is extremely unstable and presents a bizarre appearance? I do not think that I have made this clear but it is so and the temporal garb of course makes him appear even less rational. Scop is not an unattractive person in some of his moods and given real un­derstanding and patience can respond in a convincing imitation of sanity but there is little question but that to most of us, let alone tourists of the nineteen-sixties he is a preposterous and menacing figure. “Please leave me alone,” I say. I think that I have also neglected to mention that another woman standing next to me who Scop has misidentified as being my companion has been knocked unconscious and left in place by one stirring and lunatically energetic blow. Haste, Scop had once confided to me in bed-conversation, makes waste but one would hardly know that he believes this from his conduct at the Knoll. “Away with me,” he says, wrapping an arm around me in a close, trembling embrace and I feel the little ridges of his body trembling. People are not looking at us but instead are fixated upon the approaching motorcade which by all calculations is no more than five minutes distant. They must be forgiven for they know not what they do, etc., I think, and let out a low, piercing shriek, not because I am in terror because things are going exactly as I was advised, but simply to encourage Scop into believing that he has control of the situation. I am acting as Elaine Kozciouskos would in this situation. He does not, in embrace, recognize my body. “Now,” he says, and hurtles me into the machine.

“No,” I say, “no,” but of course he has joined me and we are already plunging out of time, toward what I take to be the objec­tive present. Jammed against one another in the enclosure, barely able to fend buttocks from one another there is a horrid intimacy underlying the mutual antagonism; I am seized with the urge to reach out, touch him by the elbow and confide my true identity to say nothing of the plans of the Temporals. It would make us collaborators. But their choice was sound; I could no more estab­lish communion with Scop than I could sincerely beg for release on the Knoll; what happened between us happened a long time ago and now we must be enemies. We are spat out of the enclo­sure and I find myself in his detestable cubicle. He stumbles out behind me, pulls the door closed, urges me toward the bed. “Now,” he says, “we are going to do it now.” His eyes are glazed with familiar urgency. His hands began to slash at me, little hammers undoing my clothing. “Now,” he says. He is overcome by the urge to copulate. I am told that this would be so, that this is exactly the effect that his plans would have upon him, still it is surprising. I have never seen him this way. Scop was not a passionate man. Our relationship was not characterized by physical passion. It in­terlocked on other levels. “Come here, you bitch,” he says when I am naked. “Get under me now.” His face is alight with necessity; truly he is transfigured. It is curiosity as much as duty that causes me to slide rapidly beneath him. I cannot wait to see if there is any change in his performance.

There is not any change in his performance but I do not wish to engage in graphic description. There is no need to dwell upon aspects of the sexual act; they are boring and monolithic the Temporals assure me and the functions of generation have nothing to do with the personality. They offer no insight. They are merely impressed in a kind of universality upon all of us. If purposes were to be served by description of what it is like to copulate under adverse circumstances I would put them down because I am unswerving in my verbal honesty (this is another reason I was chosen) but it is not. In addition, the temporals are embarrassed as well they should be by explicit description of sexual congress. They yearn for it themselves yet it is all behind them. I would not wish to give them pain and will in fact strike these passages when the report is handed on.

After we are done he rolls from me, stares at the ceiling mum­bling.Tristesse . He sighs heavily as if about to speak, then grum­bles quietly and says nothing, waits, starts to sigh again, actually turns toward me with his mouth open and then turns away, shak­ing his head as if in disgust.

Has he deduced my identity? In the penetration of my body has he learned who I am? Impossible and yet it might be. There is little to be done about this of course. If he knows, he knows; it cannot be changed. I simulate a terrified patience and wait him out. Eventually he will speak. The ways of the Temporals are de­vious I think: how is my smuggled relationship with him going to misdirect Scop from what seems to be a very careful and well thought out scheme to put the Temporals out of business? What do they have in mind? Or then again do they have nothing in mind and are the reports about the Temporals true at the core, that is that they do not know anything that is going on, that circumstances are utterly out of their control? “I bet you’re fright­ened,” Scop says.

I do not think that this requires an answer. Haste to verify would implicate on a different level. So I say nothing.

“Are you frightened?”

I shrug, not an easy gesture while lying on one’s back. My breasts bobble. They are the plasticene breasts of a fifty-year-old woman; do I dare to say that he has found them attractive? I inspect them without interest in the work of technicians. “Of course I’m frightened.”

“Do you know where you are?”

He will not catch me that way. “Of course not,” I say.

“Or what has happened?”

“No again.”

He groans, moves on the bed, then abandons that slight collision of thighs which had lent warmth to our conversation. “Your President was killed not ten minutes after you were ab­ducted.”

“Really?” I say keeping my voice level. Absence of affect, I have been advised, will work every time. Denial is a stress-reaction; it need never be questioned. “That’s hard to believe.”

“But it’s true,” he says, “that’s the reason that I was there you know.”

“There? For what?”

“To try to prevent the assassination. I’m a visitor from the future. As a matter of fact this is the future that you’re in right now.”

“How interesting,” I say. “I never would have suspected that if you hadn’t told me.”

“Well, how would you know?” he says, “you’ve hardly had an opportunity to be about outside and I’m afraid that this is going to be denied you in any case. But the reason that I’ve gone back there is to try and change the present. We live in a very brutal period here in twenty-forty.”

“Twenty-forty? Is that where we are now, where you’re from?”

“Exactly,” he says and considers me with his strange, insight­ful eyes. Never, never have I been able to forget that stare of his, even before all of this happened. “You’re very intelligent.”

“Not really,” I say, afraid that I will misdirect him, that he will begin to question me intensely rather than to offer insight into his own motivations, that material which it is my duty to impart, “not intelligent at all. Why do you want to change the present?”

He shrugs, blinks his eyes, shifts on his hips. “Did I say that? I shouldn’t have said that; it doesn’t matter. It’s really not impor­tant.”

“You said that this was a brutal period.”

“Well,” he says, “well, every period in human history is brutal. I don’t want to convey more of a revulsion toward the situation than is strictly speaking necessary.” He seems to be abstracted, discombobulated although then again firm characteristical judgements with this person are not easy. I should know. I above all others should know this. “Get dressed,” he says, “I’ll take you back.”

“Back where?”

“Where you came from.”

“Why did you bring me here to begin with if you were only going to take me back?”

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hear any more questions from you. Do you want to go back or don’t you?”

“Well of course I want to go back.”

“Then put on your clothing,” he says and bounds from the bed, strides toward the mirror pounding his thighs vigorously, “don’t ask questions. You should be overjoyed to get back; after all you were abducted to say nothing of being in a state of terror, weren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me the truth now.”

“I was terrified,” I say sincerely. “I still am. I don’t know whether I’ll get out of this alive or not. Are you really going to turn me back to where I was?”

“Where else?”

“What about the President?”

He pauses in his ritual; in the mirror I can see his face twist, become sullen. “What does that matter to you? Why must you ask so many questions?”

“I won’t ask any more.”

“Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think that I like to do this? I have no choice; I’m merely following the codes to the best of my ability.”

“Of course you are,” I say. “I understand that.”

“I don’t have to put up with your insults and slights. This is my society, not yours. You have nothing to say about this; it’s only my generosity that is allowing you to get out of this.”

It was his homicidal mania which forced our relationship to an end in the first place. Now it all comes back to me. I reach casually for my dress at the side of the bed, imagine what it would be like to be killed by Scop in role. Would he rip chunks off my body later to see the true identity of the corpse; would he feel remorse? Or would his pleasure merely be deepened by knowing that it is me who he has destroyed? “Yes,” I say, “yes, I am sorry, you’re right,” and spring off the bed and begin to dress and before he can ponder further the significance of what he has said I am dressed and standing before him. “Get dressed,” I say to him, “take me back,” and his little pubis seems to dimple as if with accusa­tion, “I want to return,” I say, “take me, you promised, you prom­ised that I could go back, I didn’t make you, it was your decision,” and sullenly he begins to put on his clothes, simple garments for traveling, nothing in them to indicate at all the depth and sincerity of his passion and then he is dressed and before me, moving quickly from the room. “Take me back,” I shriek, “I refuse to stay here alone,” and run after him and he brushes me away and says, “Deal with yourself; do what you will. I don’t have to do anything for you,” and blunders his way out of the room and I try to follow him but he turns to slap me down with quick force, one absent blow across the head and I fall to my knees sinking, sinking, and he is gone from there; oh no, this is not what I wanted, this is not the way that they said it would be, they did not say that it would be anything like this at all nor that there would be endan­germent, I was merely being enlisted to try and avert a serious crime but—