The Boat of a Million Years

XVI. Niche

The hotel was new and rather soulless, but it stood near Old Town, with a fine tenth-floor view of roofs and narrow streets climbing to the stones of the Citadel. That mass stood darkling athwart stars dimmed by lamps and lightful panes. On the west side, the comer suite overlooked modem Ankara, Ulus Square, the boulevard, radiance glaring and flashing, opulent storefronts, crowded sidewalks, hasty automobiles. Heat.of a day in late summer lingered, and the windows stood open to catch whatever coolness crept in off the river and hinterland. Height muffled traffic noise, even car horns, to an undertone hardly more loud than the large fan whining on its stand.

For the American patron and his dinner guest, room service had set an elegant table and carried up an excellent meal. Through most of it they had sparred with small talk. The language in which they could most readily converse turned out to be Greek. Now they were at the stage of cheese, coffee, and liqueurs.

Oktay Saygun leaned back, held his Drambuie to the light before he sipped, creased his jowls with a smile. He was a stocky, paunchy man, his nose the single impressive thing about him. While not shabby, his business suit had clearly been years in use and inexpensive when bought. “Ah,” he murmured, “delicious. You are a most knowledgeable gentleman, Kyrie McCready.”

“I am glad you enjoyed this,” replied the other. “I hope you feel more at ease with me.”

Saygun cocked his head in birdlike fashion, if the bird be a well-fed owl or parrot. David McCready was two or three centimeters taller than he, lean and timber. Though the dark hawk visage showed only geniality, the eyes—oddly Levantine for the name he bore—met his own and searched. “Did I give you the opposite impression?” Saygun asked. “I’m sorry. What a poor return for your hospitality. Not my intention at all, I assure you.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you. A telephone call, an invitation from a perfect stranger. I might want to lure you into some criminal scheme. Or I might be a foreign agent, a spy. These days they must swarm in every capital.”

Saygun chuckled. “Who would bother to subvert a little bureaucrat in the purely civilian archives? If anything, you would be the endangered one. Think. You have had your dealings with our bureaucracy. It is impossible not to, especially if one is a foreigner. Believe me, when we set our minds to it we can tangle, obstruct, and bring to a dead halt a herd of stampeding elephants.”

“Still, this is an uneasy time.”

Saygun turned grave. His look wandered out the window, nightward. “Indeed,” he said low. “An evil time. Herr Hitler was not content with engulfing Austria, was he? I fear Mister Chamberlain and Monsieur Daladier will let him work his will on Czechoslovakia too. And nearer home, the ambitions.of the Tsars live on in Red Russia.” He turned his attention back, took forth a handkerchief, wiped his narrow brow and sleeked down his black hair. “Pardon me. You Americans prefer optimism always, not so? Well, whatever happens, civilization will survive. It has thus far, no matter what changing guises it wears.”

“You are quite well-informed, Kyrie Saygun,” McCready said slowly. “And something of a philosopher, it seems.”

The Turk shrugged. “One reads the newspapers. One listens to the radio. The coffee shops have become a Babel of politics. I seek occasional relief hi old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring.”

He drained his glass. McCready refilled it and asked, “Cigar?”

“Why, yes, thank you very much. That humidor of yours appears to hold promise.”

McCready fetched two Havanas, a clipper which he offered first to his guest, and a lighter. As he settled himself again, his voice shivered the least bit. “May I get to my business now?”

“Certainly. You would have been welcome to do so earlier. I assumed you, wished to become acquainted. Or, if I may put it thus, to feel me out.”

McCready’s grin was wry. “You did the better job of that, on me.”

“Oh? I simply enjoyed a pleasant conversation with an interesting person. Everybody is fascinated by your wonderful country, and your career as a businessman has been remarkable.”

McCready started his visitor’s cigar for him and became occupied with his own. “We went on at length about me, when talk didn’t ramble over ordinary matters. The upshot was that scarcely anything got said about you.”

“There was nothing to say, really. I am as dull and insignificant a man as you will ever find. I cannot imagine you maintaining any interest in me.” Saygun drank smoke, rolled it around his tongue, exhaled luxuriously, chased it with a taste of liqueur. “However, at the moment I am glad. Pleasures like this seldom come to a minor official in a routine-bounded department of government. Turkey is a poor country, and President Ataturk was rather ruthless about corruption.”

McCready’s tobacco kindled less smoothly. “My friend, you are anything but dull. You’ve proved yourself very shrewd, very skillful at hiding whatever you want to hide. Well, it’s no great surprise. People in our situation who don’t have those qualities, or can’t acquire them, probably don’t last long.”

Beady eyes widened. “’Our’ situation? What might that be?”

“Still cautious, are you? Understandable. If you are what I hope, that’s an old, old habit. If not, then you are wondering whether I am a confidence man or a madman.”

“No, no. Please. Your newspaper advertisement last year attracted me. Enigmatic, but somehow ... genuine. Indeed, wonderfully phrased.”

“Thank you. Though composing it was largely the work of my partner. He has a gift for words.”

“I take it you placed the advertisement in many places around the world?” McCready nodded and Saygun continued: “I suppose not only the language but the text, the message, varied according to region. Here—how did it go?—Those who have lived so long that our forefathers are like brothers and comrades to them—yes, that appeals to a Near Easterner, a citizen of an ancient land. Yet the average person who chances to see it gets the impression that a scholar is interested in meeting old people who have studied and meditated upon history, with a view to exploring whatever wisdom may be theirs. Did many respond?”

“No. Most who did were not quite right in the head or tried to cadge money. You were the only one in this country whom my agent decided I might care to follow up.”

“It has taken you a considerable time. I had begun to think your organization was not serious, perhaps a hoax.”

“I had to study a number of reports. Most I discarded. Then I started off around the world. This is my third interview.”

“I gather an agent of yours met those who answered the advertisements everywhere that they were placed. Clearly, you have substantial resources, Kyrie McCready. For a purpose you have yet to reveal to me and, I daresay, have told none of the agents.”

The American nodded. “I gave them certain secret criteria to apply.” Peering through the smoke: “The most important was that a respondent look young and in good health, even though the call seemingly was for old people. I explained that I don’t want the fact publicized but I am searching for natural-born geniuses, with knowledge and insight far beyond their years, especially in history. With minds like that from different civilizations brought into contact, we may found a real science of it, beyond anything that thinkers like Spengler and Toynbee have proposed. The agents doubtless consider me a crackpot on this subject. However, I pay well.”

“I see. Have the previous two whom you met proven satisfactory?”

“You know that isn’t what I am really searching for,” McCready said.

Saygun laughed. “In the present case, that is just as well. I am no genius of any kind. No, a total mediocrity. And content with it, which shows I am doubly dull.” He paused. “But what about those other two?”

McCready chopped air with his cigar. “Damnation,” he exclaimed, “must we shilly-shally all night?”

Saygun leaned back in his chair. The broad face and small bland smile could be a visor over wariness, glee, anything. “God forbid I repay your generosity with discourtesy,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best if you took the lead and made a forthright statement.”

“I will!” McCready sat half crouched. “If I’m wrong about you, you won’t take me for merely eccentric, you’ll believe I’m a raving lunatic. In that case, I suggest you go home and never speak of this evening to anybody; because I’ll deny everything and you’ll be the one to look silly.” In haste: “That’s not a threat. For the convenience of us both, I request your silence.”

Saygun elevated his glass. “From your viewpoint, you are about to take a risk,” he replied. “I understand. I promise.” He drank as if in pledge.

McCready stood up. “What would you say,” he asked softly, “if I told you I am not an American by birth—that I was born in these parts, nearly three thousand years ago?”

Saygun gazed into his drink a while. The city mumbled. A drape stirred ever so slightly to the first night breath off the plateau of Anatolia. When he raised his eyes, he had gone expressionless. “I would call that a most unusual statement.”

“No miracles, no magic,” McCready said. “Somehow it happens. Once in ten million births, a hundred million, a billion? The loneliness— Yes, I am a Phoenician, from Tyre when Tyre was new.” He began pacing, to and fro on the carpet. “I’ve spent most of all that time seeking for others, any others like me.”

“Have you found them?”

McCready’s tone harshened. “Three certain, and of them a single one is still alive to my knowledge, my partner whom I mentioned. He’s tracked down two possibilities himself. As for the other two, we don’t age, you know, but we can be killed the same as anybody else.” Savagely, he ground his cigar out in an ashtray. “Like that.”

“Then I suppose the two you have spoken with on this journey, they were disappointments?”

McCready nodded. He slammed fist into palm. “They’re what I am officially after, highly intelligent and thoughtful ... young people. Maybe I can find a place for them, I do have my enterprises, but—“ He stopped on the floor, legs wide apart, and stared. “You’re taking this very calmly, aren’t you?”

“I admitted I am a dull person. Phlegmatic.”

“Which gives me reason to think you’re different from them. And my agent did make a quiet investigation. You could pass for a man in his twenties, but you’ve held your present job more than thirty years.”

“My friends remark on it. Not with much envy; I am no Adonis. Well, some individuals are slow to grow wrinkled and gray.”

“Friends— You’re neither sociable nor unsociable. Affable, but never intimate. Effective enough at your desk, promoted according to seniority, but unambitious; you do everything by the book. Unmarried. That’s uncommon in Turkey, but not unheard of, and nobody is interested enough in you to wonder seriously.”

“Your judgment is less than flattering.” Saygun didn’t sound offended. “Reasonably accurate, though. I have told you, I am content to be what I am.”

“An immortal?” McCready flung at him.

Saygun lifted a palm, cigar between fingers. “My dear sir, you leap to conclusions.”

“It fits, it fits. Listen, you can be honest with me! Or at least bear with me. I can show you evidence that’s convinced men more intelligent than either of us, if you’ll cooperate. And— How can you just sit there like that?”

Saygun shrugged.

“If nothing else, even if I’m wrong about you and you suppose I’m crazy, you ought to show some excitement,” McCready snapped. “A desire to escape, if nothing else. Or— But I think you are ageless yourself, you can join us and together we can— How old are you, anyway?”

Into the stillness that followed, Saygun said, a new steel in his tone: “Credit me with some brains, if you please. I have told you I read books. And I have had a year to consider what might lie behind that curious, evasive procedure of yours; and conceivably before then I have speculated about these matters. Would you mind taking your seat again? I prefer to talk in civilized wise.”

“My ... apologies.” First McCready went to the sideboard. He mixed a stiff Scotch and soda. “Would you like this?”

“No, thank you. Another Drambuie, if I may. Do you know, it never came to my attention before tonight. But then, only recently has Turkey become a modern, secular state. Marvelous stuff. I must lay some in before the next war makes it unobtainable.”

McCready overcame interior tumult and returned to the table. “What do you want to say?” he asked.

Saygun barely smiled. “Well,” he replied, “things were growing hectic, weren’t they? To be expected, no doubt, when you made such extraordinary claims. Not that I deny them, kyrie. I am no scientist, to decide what is and is not possible. Nor am I so rude as to call my host deluded, let alone a liar. But we should calm down. May I tell you a story?”

“By all means,” McCready rasped, and drank deep.

“Perhaps I can better label it a speculation,” Saygun said. “A flight of fancy, like some works of Mr. H. G. Wells. What if such-and-such were true? What consequences?”

“Go on.”

Saygun relaxed, smoked, sipped, let his voice amble. “Weft, now, shall we imagine a man bora rather long ago? For example, in Italy toward the end of the Roman Republic. Family of the equestrian class, undistinguished, its men seldom much interested in war or politics, seldom succeeding or failing greatly in commerce, often making careers in the civil service. The state and its conquered provinces had grown swiftly, enormously. There was need for clerks, registrars, annalists, archivists, every class of those workers who provide a government with its memory. Once Augustus had taken control, procedures were soon regularized, organization made firm, order and predictability instilled. For a peaceful man, the lower and median ranks of the civil service were a good place to be.”

McCready inhaled sharply. Saygun ignored it: “Next I would like to borrow your imaginative concept of the occasional person who never grows old. Since you have obviously considered every ramification, I need not spell out the difficulties that the years must bring to such a man. Perforce, when he reaches the normal retirement age, he gives up his position and moves away, telling his acquaintances that it will be to someplace with a mild climate and a low cost of living. Yet if he is entitled to a pension, he dares not draw it forever; and if pensions are not customary, he cannot live forever on savings, or even on investments. He must go back to work.

“Well, he seems youthful and he has experience. He re-enters the bureaucracy in a different city, under a different name, but quickly proves his worth and earns promotion from junior grade to about the middle of the hierarchy among the record-keepers. In due course he retires again. By then sufficient time has gone by that he can return to, say, Rome and start over.

“Thus it goes. I shan’t bore you with details, when you can readily visualize them. For example, sometimes he marries and raises a family, which is pleasant—or if it happens not to be, will pass, so all he needs is patience. This does complicate his little deceptions, hence he spends other periods in tranquil bachelorhood, varied by discreet indulgences. He is never in any danger of being found out. His position in the archives enables him to make cautious but’adequate insertions, deletions, emendations. Nothing to harm the state, nothing to enrich himself, no, never. He simply avoids military service and, in general, covers his tracks.” Saygun snickered. “Oh, now and then he might slip in something like a letter of recommendation for the young recruit he plans to become. Please remember, though, that he does do honest work. Whether he puts stylus to wax, pen to paper, nowadays types or dictates, he helps maintain the memory of the state.”

“I see,” McCready whispered. “But states come and go.”

“Civilization continues,” responded Saygun. “The Princi-pate hardens into the Empire and the Empire begins to crack like drying mud, but people go on getting bom and getting married, they ply their trades and die, always they pay taxes, and whoever rules must hold the records of this or he has no power over the life of the people. The usurper or the conqueror may strike off heads at the top, but he will scarcely touch the harmless drudges of the civil service. That would be like chopping off his own feet.”

“It has happened,” McCready said bleakly.

Saygun nodded. “True. Corruption rewards its favorites with jobs. However, certain jobs are not especially tempting, while at the same time their holders would be hard to dispense with. Then occasionally barbarians, fanatics, megalomaniacs attempt to make a clean sweep. They cause desolation. Nevertheless, more often than not, some continuity endures. Rome fell, but the Church preserved what it could.”

“I suppose, though,” McCready said, word by word, “this man ... you are imagining ... had moved to Constantinople.”

Saygun nodded. “Of course. With Constantine the Great himself, who necessarily expanded the government offices in his new capital and welcomed personnel willing to transfer. And the Roman Empire, in its Byzantine incarnation, lasted another thousand years.”

“After which—”

“Oh, there were difficult times, but one manages. Actually, my man was stationed in Anatolia when the Osmanlis overran it, and did not get back to Constantinople until they had taken it too and renamed it Istanbul. Meanwhile he had fitted into their order of things without many problems. Changed his religion, but surely you can sympathize with that, and with a certain recurring necessity that an immortal Muslim or Jew faces.” Saygun half grinned. “One wonders about possible women. Recurrent intactness?”

His mien went back to mock professorial: “Physically, this man would stay inconspicuous. The original Turks were not very unlike the people here, and soon melted into them the same as Hittites, Gauls, Greeks, Romans, countless nations had done before. The sultans reigned until after the World War. In name, at any rate; frequently not in fact. It made small difference to my man. He simply helped maintain the records.

“Likewise under the republic. I must confess I—my man prefers Istanbul and looks forward to his next period of working there. It is more interesting, and alive with ghosts. But you know that. However, by now Ankara has become quite liveable.”

“Is that all he wants?” McCready wondered. “Shuffling papers in an office, forever?”

“He is used to it,” Saygun explained. “Perhaps it actually has a trifle more social value than soaring hopes and high adventure. Naturally, I wanted to hear what you had to say, but—forgive me—the situation you describe is ill-suited to one of my temperament. Let me wish you every good fortune.

“May I have your card? Here is mine.” He reached in his pocket. McCready did likewise. They exchanged. “Thank you. We can, if you so desire, mail new cards to each other as occasion arises. The time may possibly come when we have reason to communicate. Meanwhile, absolute confidentiality on both sides, agreed?”

“Well, but listen—”

“Please. I detest disputes.” Saygun glanced at his watch. “My, my. Time flies, eh? I really must go. Thank you for an evening I will never forget.”

He rose. McCready did too and, helplessly, shook hands. Having bade goodnight, the bureaucrat, still relishing his cigar, departed. McCready stood in the hall door till the elevator bore him off, down into the city and its crowds of the anonymous.