CHAPTER VI
THE BURNING, THE BURNING: So I go before them and they ask what is going wrong. Why is there no progress? Why does the same thing seem to be happening over and again? Is there no way out of this? Their patience is not unlimited they point out and if there is no real progress they will have to take sterner and more desperate measures, measures which will certainly be cataclysmic and will involve much suffering, torture and death. Not only that but I will be taken off the assignment with all that is implied. No longer will I be eligible for privileges, never again will I be able to participate in the place of honors during the Games. Have I no shame? they wish to know. What is happening? Cannot I even give them an explanation of what is going on?
To all of this I say very little. There is really nothing to be said. What can I say? All my life, I feel as I stand before them in these rooms, watching their faces as dull and blank as board far above me, all of my life I have in one sense or another been appearing before committees of the elders and demanded to justify my tasks, my existence. I can no longer go through these rites. It would be easy for me to point out that I was drafted for these ceremonies, did not volunteer and that it was with very little hope that I was sent on my way. Only later on were their expectations, probably based upon the vast amount of activity between Scop and myself. In the viewers it must have looked, from the frenetic tone of our relationship, as if I was making progress. But I was making no progress whatsoever. I try to point this out to them in a desultory fashion but there is little enthusiasm in my arguments nor much attention in their response. I cannot say that I blame them. Over and over again we have gone through this; at a certain point weariness must set in. There is a time to give up, to admit that nothing can be done, no changes effected but they seem to be incapable of this and so, in a way, do I. We must go on and on, posturing against one another through all the confrontations which are ordained and at the end . . . at the very end of it there will be absolutely nothing, no more than it is now. I try to explain this too, there is nothing which I would hold back, but their attention is intermittent.
When I am done, it does not take long but the subjective feeling of passage is very intense and I am calling of course on all the other times that I have been in this room, there is a long, dim silence during which they grumble at one another and re-adjust their positions. The pause goes on so long that I think that I am finished and will be permitted to leave but as I edge myself out of the booth, moving toward the exits, I am retained by a shout from one of them and return to the chair with the feeling that all gestures and efforts will return me once again to this moment: sealed within this interview. “We do not think that you are performing satisfactorily,” he says to me. “This is not what you were sent for.”
“I did the best that I could.”
“Your best is not sufficient. This man is extremely dangerous; he must be blocked. You know the consequences.”
I do. I do know the consequences. I have heard them outlined again and again and emotional response has been squeezed out; I no longer feel that these remonstrations, much less my tasks, are consequential. Perhaps this has been the real difficulty, the true cause of my failure. But I do not say any of this. There must come a time, there must come a time to all of us, even Scop, when the premises of a situation are accepted and no longer battled, when one is sealed within the limitations of role. I cannot say this to them of course. There is really nothing that I can say to them. I sit in solemn silence in the dull dark dock and the moments ooze by and they can see from the expression of my face if not my failure to talk that I will no longer try to excuse myself. Finally the leader leans all the way over, looks all the way down and says very gently, “What do you propose to do?”
I shrug. I cannot say that I propose to do nothing because that is not exactly the truth. There is another truth but I cannot get close to it. “Tell me child,” he says and there is a tone of emotional connection in his voice which comes very close to moving me. “This is not easy for any of us you know. We are aware of your pain; we have our own. We are merely trying to do the best that we can and that means a severity.”
“Leave me alone,” I say. Lights wink among the shadows above; the ceiling seems to be broken and through little chinks I can see the sky if I desired. Everything is falling apart; the great hall is in poor repair. Deterioration accelerates and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it; we must face the fact that the devices of the civilization no longer work for us. “Leave me alone and let me do what I must.”
“But if you cannot affect him—”
“I am trying. No one can affect him; you asked me to do this because you thought that I might be able to make a difference. At least let me work in my own way.”
“But,” he says, “but you are making no progress—”
“Let me judge that.”
“This cannot go on indefinitely. The tension increases, the time-cycle can be abused only so many times before there is an overwhelming expansion-and-dilation—”
They know nothing of technology. They know nothing of technology whatsoever and yet they will invoke its jargon for the purpose of reproof, this being one of the oldest devises of their repression. I cannot tell them this either of course. In a sense I can tell them nothing. “I will do what I can,” I say, “I will not abuse the constructs if I feel that progress is not being made.”
“I do not understand this,” an elderly member from the side says, leaning his ruined, misshapen head toward the amplifiers. “I do not know what you are talking about. All of this nonsense. The past cannot be changed. The past is simply and finally the past. The present which we occupy can only become the future never a different present. I think this is ridiculous. It—”
Two other members, coming from their seats in abrupt but uncoordinated gestures—all of them are quite old, none of them limber—come to his side and drag him away from the speaker. He fights them, limbs flailing helplessly and gives out little squeaks of anguish which do not seem to move the others as they press him against his chair. There is a long, hollow silence while he is held rigid, pressure to his wrists and then the elder says, “We will forget this.”
“Of course.”
“We will forget this nonsense. The assumptions upon which temporal rearrangements operate are quite clear and have long been established. You know the dangers.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Your time is very limited. If you do not begin to achieve satisfactory results quite shortly we are going to have to bring these experiments to an end. You know what will happen then.”
“Yes, I know what will happen then.”
“You have been warned,” the elder says rather dramatically. “Due warning has been given. You will have absolutely no one to blame but yourself. The consequences will be drastic and all of it will be your responsibility. You cannot evade the penalties.”
“Yes,” I say, “yes,” and it is quite enough, Scop’s patience and his is not the only that has been drained; I stand shakily by my chair feeling within me the strange and gathering light of anger and underneath that as they rise to file away, even the one who has shouted at me, now unconscious, lolling in their grasp, underneath that the burning: ah, the burning.