Knight Life ma-1 Page 6

  He had remembered being thunderstruck by the concept that Merlin had introduced to him, there in their office at the Camelot Building.

  "Is it possible," he had asked with naivety astounding in a man nearly a millennium old, "that there might be some people who won't vote for me?"

  Merlin stared at Arthur, looking so modern in the dress pants and shirt and yet so innocent of the world around him. What in the name of all the gods had he thrust the king into? he wondered. Maybe he should let him go back to the cave. But the boy wizard put the thought from his mind and concentrated on the issue at hand. "Yes." He laughed tersely. "There is an outside chance."

  "But who would not vote for me?"

  "People who would want to examine your record of past achievements, for one."

  "But my achievements are legend- Oh, I see." He slumped against his desk, his hands in his pockets. "I see the problem."

  "Yes. Understand, Arthur, in this form my power is a force to be reckoned with. I can conjure up credit cards. I can create things like Social Security numbers, drivers licenses-although for pity's sake take a few lessons first-and I can put records of your birth in Bethlehem ..."

  "How very messianic."

  "... Pennsylvania," Merlin continued. "I can conjure up a history of military service for you. I can, essentially, create an identity for you, Arthur Penn, but I cannot alter by sheer force of will the entire public consciousness. I can't make people like you. That will be your task."

  And now Arthur, with the words ringing in his ears, was starting to wonder whether it was a task he was up to.

  For the first time he turned and saw, really saw, the hustle and bustle of the area around him.

  It was a nippy day, but the sun was shining brightly. It was twelve-thirty, the height of the lunch hour. Furthermore it was a Wednesday, which meant many people were out looking to pick up matinee tickets to shows.

  Arthur was not prepared for it, for the pulse of the humanity around him. Every blessed one of the passing people was in a hurry, as if (although the comparison didn't occur to him) they had an inner spring mechanism unwinding at an incredible rate.

  It had not dawned on him at first that it had any direct bearing on him. Well, of course it did, he now realized. He couldn't expect people to stop in their tracks for him. He had to attempt to adapt himself to their speed. He had to be flexible, after all. The wise man-the civilized man-knew when to be firm and when to adapt.

  So he began to speak, faster and faster, and soon the words were tumbling one over the other, like cars piling high on a crashing locomotive.

  Hellomynameisarthurpennandiwould-Jikeyour ..." The only evidence that he was having any sort of effect at all was that now the people were walking faster to avoid hearing him.

  Abruptly he stopped talking. His lips thinned and his brow clouded. He looked across the street and noticed that in a traffic island there was a mob of people, all milling around in loosely formed lines. Reaching out, Arthur stopped the first passerby, a delivery boy carrying somebody's called-in lunch.

  "What is the purpose of that gathering?'' asked Arthur.

  "Look, asshole, I'm runnin' late and I can't- uuuhhnnnff!"

  Arthur had grabbed a handful of the boy's windbreaker, and despite the fact that he and the teenager were the same height, effortlessly lifted him into the air.

  The boy's eyes bugged out, not from lack of breath so much as from pure astonishment.

  "I will be ignored no Iongerl" thundered Arthur. But then he saw the lack of color in the boy's face, and immediately his anger lessened as he chided himself. "Is this what it has come to then, Pendragon? Threatening hapless errand boys?" With that he lowered the boy gently to the ground. "Art well, lad?"

  "My ..." He gulped once, afraid to say the wrong thing and set his captor off again. "My name's not Art. But I'm okay, yeah."

  "I have been at this for much of the day, and the paltry few signatures that I have accrued-blast their eyes!" He smashed a fist against a nearby wall. "That / should have to endure this just so that I can offer them my aid. The leadership I should be given by right I have to scrabble for . . . but that's no concern of yours, lad. However, I still await an answer to my original query-the purpose of yon gathering."

  "That's the TKTS line," said the boy, pronouncing each letter individually. "People stand there on line and can buy tickets for half price to-"

  And now Arthur exploded. "That they have time for? By Vortigern, they make time to await tickets for entertainment purposes and yet cannot spare as much as half a minute on topics that could alter the face of this city ... of this nation! Gods!"

  Without heed to the traffic around him, Arthur stormed across the street. Cars screeching to a halt mere inches from him did not even catch his notice. Horns blasting didn't faze him.

  He reached the TKTS mob and elbowed his way through, earning shouts and curses from his would-be constituency.

  Arthur found himself at the base of a statue that was labeled Father Patrick Duffy. With quick, sure movements he scaled it, and moments later was shoulder to shoulder with the fight-mg priest from World War I.

  A few people glanced at him and then turned away. The rest ignored him completely.

  His jaw dropped to somewhere around his ankles. This was it. He'd had it. He reached across, with one arm still wrapped around the statue, to his left hip.

  He felt it there-the pommel, and then the hilt of Excalibur. He had point-blank refused to go out onto the street without the comfortable weight of the enchanted sword by his side. So Merlin had added a further enchantment by rendering tre blade invisible as long as it remained in the scabbard.

  Arthur pulled on the sword and it slid from the scabbard with noiseless ease. Excalibur sparkled in the sun and Arthur thrilled to the weight, to the joy of it.

  "My arm is whole again," he whispered reverently. Then he swung the sword back, brought it around, and smacked the flat of the blade against the statue.

  The clang was on par with a Chinese gong.

  It finally got their attention.

  "All right," he shouted. With practiced smoothness he had already returned Excalibur to its sheath, returning it to invisibility as well. "I have had enough. Enough of this street-corner posturing! Enough of these games. By the gods you will listen. Turn away from the mindless frivolities with which you occupy yourselves and turn your attentions to where it will do some good. I am running for mayor of this city!" He saw their reactions and added, "Yes, that's what this is all about. I see it in your faces. This is why I want a moment of your precious time."

  "You don't have to get insulting," shouted someone in the crowd.

  Arthur laughed. "I? When every common grunge thinks nothing of treating me as if I were a nonentity, to be snubbed and ignored at their discretion? I merely call a halt to the insults that have been dealt me this day." He held up a clipboard, and the sheets of paper affixed to it rustled noisily in the breeze. "Do you see these?" Without pausing for a response he continued, "These are petitions. In this free society not just anyone can declare himself a candidate for office. I have to obtain ten thousand signatures, which actually means that I have to have twice that number, since it is generally assumed that half of you will be bloody liars. So I'm going to want every one of you to affix your signature to this most noble document. Is that clear?"

  The question came from the crowd. Arthur did not see who asked it. The only thing that he noticed was that the voice was slightly nasal, almost tremulous. But the question was cutting in its simplicity. "Why should we vote for you?"

  Arthur looked around. "What?"

  There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd at his bewilderment.

  "You haven't even told us your name!"

  "I am Arthur. Arthur Penn." He could have kicked himself for the brainless oversight.

  "Why should we vote for you, Arthur Penn?"

  Arthur would have felt more at ease if he could have found who in the world was addressing the que
stions to him. But it was an anonymous face, one he simply could not locate (although the voice was greatly disturbing to him). "Because..." he began, wishing frantically that Merlin had tutored him better. But then Merlin had not been aware that Arthur was going to take his first shot at addressing crowds at a completely impromptu political rally.

  At that moment Merlin was not too far away. At Bryant Park, behind the Forty-second Street Library, the wizard was watching an old drunk, watching as he rocked slowly back and forth against the cold, his coat pulled tightly around him.

  Merlin shook his head. "Pitiful. Simply pitiful." Hands buried deep in his New York Mets sweat jacket, Merlin walked over to the derelict and dropped down onto the cold stone step beside him. He wrinkled his nose at the stench.

  At first the drunk didn't even notice him, but was content to rub the bottle with his cracked and blistered hands. Eventually, however, he became aware of a presence next to him, and he turned bleary eyes on Merlin. It took him several moments to focus, and when he did, he snorted.

  He was a black man of indeterminate age. His wool cap obscured much of his head, although a few tufts of curly white hair stuck out. Much of his face was likewise hidden behind the turned-up collar of his coat. His eyes were bloodshot.

  "Youakid." Three words into one.

  After a moment of meeting his gaze, Merlin turned and ooked straight ahead. "Looks can be deceiving/' he observed.

  "You got money on you?"

  "No."

  "Parents care where y'are?"

  "No."

  "You a kid, all right. Ain't no doubt."

  Merlin winced. "Why must you talk like that? You're perfectly capable of proper grammar if you so desire."

  This time the drunk looked at him more carefully. "You're a smartass kid, besides," he finally concluded.

  "Probably." His rump becoming chilled by the cold stone, Merlin shifted his position and sat on his gloved hands. "My name is Merlin."

  His words were accompanied by little puffs of mist. The weather was turning even colder.

  "Merlin? Like the football player?"

  "More like the wizard, actually."

  The drunk proferred his almost empty bottle, wrapped in a brown paper bag. "You want some lifeblood, little wizard? Not much left, I'm sorry to say___"

  "It's full," said Merlin quietly.

  The drunk laughed, a wheezy, phlegm-filled laugh that became a hacking cough within moments. When the fit subsided he told Merlin, "If there's something I always know, little wizard, it's how much I got in this here-"

  He hesitated, because suddenly the bottle felt heavy. He slid the bag down and saw the top of the liquid sloshing about less than an inch from the mouth of the bottle. He shook his head. "Oookay."

  Merlin finally stood and stepped down two steps so that he was on eye level with the drunk.

  His thick brown hair blew in the wind. "Enjoy it, Percy." The drunk's eyes narrowed, but Merlin didn't pause. "It's the last you're going to be having for a time-ever, with any luck.

  We're going to sober you up and put you back in harness."

  Percy shook his head and waggled a finger. "I ain't no horse."

  "No. You're not. If you were a horse, we'd simply shoot you and put you out of your misery."

  "You ever learn not to talk to y'elders that way?"

  For the first time Merlin threw his head back and laughed. He himself did not like his laugh-it was far too squeaky and childish to suit him. But in this instance he could not help himself.

  "Percy," he said. "How old do you think I am?"

  He shrugged. "Dunno. Eight, nine, I guess. Sure not old enough to be- "

  "Eight or nine. Guess again. Guess a couple of hundred times that and you'll be on the right track. Percy, I'm going to tell you this because if you decide to stay in the gutter, no one will care what you say, and if you come now with me, you won't want to tell anybody. I am Merlin, Percy."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "The original Merlin. King Arthur's Merlin."

  Again Percy laughed, this time managing to stop before a coughing fit racked his lungs.

  "Don't gimme that. Merlin's an old man with a beard and a pointy hat. I seen pictures. You sure ain't no old man."

  "I was once." He wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his sweat jacket. "You will not find this simple to comprehend, Percy, but I live backward in time. In another fifteen centuries -by my reckoning, not yours-I shall be an old man. The price of immortality. It's difficult to maintain the form of an old man for an excessively long time, which is what would have been required had I aged as other men-had I been spawned as other men, Mary Stewart notwithstanding.

  But to age backward, to be forever becoming younger-I can maintain this body for decades, centuries to come. When I said fifteen centuries by my reckoning, I meant backward to the fifth century. Forward into the twenty-fifth century I shall be much as you see me now ... if not a tad younger.

  He held out a hand. "Come with me, Percy. Let's go somewhere and talk. We can use you."

  Slowly Percy shook his head. "You are without a doubt the smoothest talkin' little so-and-so I ever met. You really expect me to believe all that?"

  "Not at first," Merlin admitted. "But you will, you will."

  "No-"

  "Percy, look around you. Look at this place. The leaves are disappeared from the trees.

  Winter is hard upon us. All that's left for you to do is huddle and shiver on cold, uncaring stone stairs. And when the winds blow hard, the best you can hope for is to find shelter in that pile of garbage over there; human refuse blending in with the rest of the trash." He leaned forward, his small fists clenched and his voice pleading. "Woufcf you refuse belief in me, Percy, to cling to this pitiful reality?"

  His face almost vanished into his coat, Percy was silent for such a long time that Merlin almost thought he'd fallen asleep. In that case Merlin would have left him to rot. But finally Percy said, in a low and resigned voice, "It's my life, little wizard. Why not let me live it?"

  "Because it's not a life. And it's not living."

  Percy was silent.

  Merlin told him, "I need someone with your skills, Percy. You were among the best. I know what you were, Percy. Before the Grail."

  Percy looked up at him.

  "Come," said Merlin. "We'll talk."

  "Okay."

  They left the park together.

  "Are you Democrat or GOP?" came the whining voice again.

  Arthur felt terribly exposed and vulnerable, up high on the statue in Duffy Square. "I'm an independent," he called. "I subscribe to no party line save for the dictates of my conscience."

  There were shouts of "Whoa!" and the like from the crowd, and Arthur was unsure of the spirit in which they were made. He waved tentatively.

  "How do you stand on the issues?"

  Arthur visored his eyes. "Would you mind stepping forward, please, so I can see who I am addressing?"

  The crowd parted slightly, and Arthur finally spotted him.

  Their gazes locked. They analyzed each other, scrutinized carefully. Arthur wasn't quite sure what to make of him. He was about Arthur's height, but slimmer. His black hair was receding and came to a widow's peak on his forehead, giving him a satanic look. To further the image he wore a Vandyke beard that came to a neat point. His eyes were foxlike. And he immediately said, "How do you feel about capital punishment?"

  Arthur recalled that this was a topic of some controversy. In the newspaper headlines that very day there had been news of the legislature once again waffling on how best to approach the touchy subject. On the one hand there was that part of the electorate who felt that they did not want people capable of taking a life without compunction walking the streets. The alarming number of murders by those who had been tried and convicted earlier and were now free was setting a great many people on edge.

  But another sizable group felt that the state had no right to take a life, and that it made those who condoned capital puni
shment no better than the criminals they were condemning. Just put them away in jail for life. But jails were overcrowded and life was really only twenty-five years....

  Arthur realized they were waiting for an answer, and only one seemed practical, and civilized, to him.

  * There was a time," he said, "not so long ago at that, when merely insulting the aggrieved party was enough to warrant death on the field of honor. Certainly that is a bit extreme nowadays." He was pleased at the laughter this prompted. "I do favor allowing the death penalty in instances of murder." This got applause from some, frowns from others. That was expected. This, however, they would not be expecting. "However, I do not feel that it should be up to the state to decree whether a man live or die."

  The crowd looked puzzled, and someone-a girl with an NYU sweatshirt-called, "Well, then, who?"

  "The injured party," he said.

  There was silence of disbelief.

  "You mean the victim?" asked the girl.

  Arthur laughed loudly, and several others, uncertain, joined in. "Hardly," he said. "The problem with the criminal justice system is that it ignores the wants and desires of the people, leaving the matter to lawyers and their tricks of the trade, and the judges."

  There were a number of nods of approval, and murmurs that did not sound the least bit hostile. The bearded man who had posed the question watched carefully with his ferretlike eyes as Arthur warmed to his topic. "Now I'm not advocating a return to trial by combat, because then the aggrieved party doesn't win-rather, the party with the biggest sword. The justice system is the sword arm of the injured. But when it comes to actually deciding upon death, it should be the survivors of the victim who actually make the determination, not a judge whose life had not been permanently affected."

  A sharp wind came up and he clutched more tightly onto the statue for fear of being blown off. Then the wind switched about, carrying his words out to all the crowd-a crowd that had grown considerably beyond merely those people waiting for tickets.

  And his voice rang out, strong and clear. "If a woman has her husband taken from her, it should be up to her to decide whether the man who did the deed should live to see another sun or not, for it is the woman, not the judge and not the state, who must come home to an empty bed!"