"Then I've got to get Cynthia's written permission."
"She'll give it to you. Just agree to send support money."
"You think she will? She'll let me go?"
"Of course," Gantro said.
"You actually think our wives will let us go," Ian Best said as he and Gantro herded the children into the Mercedes-Benz. "I'll bet you're right; Cynthia'd love to get rid of me. You know what she calls me, right in front of Walter? 'An aggressive coward,' and stuff like that. She has no respect for me."
"Our wives," Gantro said, "will let us go." But he knew better.
He looked back at the Facility manager, Mr. Sam B. Carpenter, and at the truck driver, Ferris, who, Carpenter had told the press and TV, was as of this date fired and was a new and inexperienced employee anyhow.
"No," he said. "They won't let us go. None of them will."
Clumsily, Ian Best fiddled with the complex mechanism that controlled the funky coal-burning engine. "Sure they'll let us go; look, they're just standing there. What can they do, after what you said on TV and what that one reporter wrote up for a feature story?"
"I don't mean them," Gantro said tonelessly.
"We could just run."
"We are caught," Gantro said. "Caught and can't get out. You ask Cynthia, though. It's worth a try."
"We'll never see Vancouver Island and the great ocean-going ferries steaming in and out of the fog, will we?" Ian Best said.
"Sure we will, eventually." But he knew it was a lie, an absolute lie, just like you know sometimes when you say something that for no rational reason you know is absolutely true.
They drove from the lot, out onto the public street.
"It feels good," Ian Best said, "to be free… right?" The three boys nodded, but Ed Gantro said nothing. Free, he thought. Free to go home. To be caught in a larger net, shoved into a greater truck than the metal mechanical one the County Facility uses.
"This is a great day," Ian Best said.
"Yes," Ed Gantro agreed. "A great day in which a noble and effective blow has been struck for all helpless things, anything of which you could say, 'It is alive.' "
Regarding him intently in the narrow trickly light, Ian Best said, "I don't want to go home; I want to take off for Canada now."
"We have to go home," Ed Gantro reminded him. "Temporarily, I mean. To wind things up. Legal matters, pick up what we need."
Ian Best, as he drove, said, "We'll never get there, to British Columbia and Vancouver Island and Stanley Park and English Bay and where they grow food and keep horses and where they have the ocean-going ferries."
"No, we won't," Ed Gantro said.
"Not now, not even later?"
"Not ever," Ed Gantro said.
"That's what I was afraid of," Best said and his voice broke and his driving got funny. "That's what I thought from the beginning."
They drove in silence, then, with nothing to say to each other. There was nothing left to say.
The Eye of the Sibyl
How is it that our ancient Roman Republic guards itself against those who would destroy it? We Romans, although only mortals like other mortals, draw on the help of beings enormously superior to ourselves. These wise and kind entities, who originate from worlds unknown to us, are ready to assist the Republic when it is in peril. When it is not in peril, they sink back out of sight – to return when we need them.
Take the case of the assassination of Julius Caesar: a case which apparently was closed when those who conspired to murder him were themselves murdered. But how did we Romans determine who had done this foul deed? And, more important, how did we bring these conspirators to justice? We had outside help; we had the assistance of the Cumean Sibyl who knows a thousand years ahead what will happen, and who gives us, in written form, her advice. All Romans are aware of the existence of the Sibylline Books. We open them whenever the need arises.
I myself, Philos Diktos of Tyana, have seen the Sibylline Books. Many leading Roman citizens, members of the Senate especially, have consulted them. But I have seen the Sibyl herself, and I of my own experience know something about her which few men know. Now that I am old – regretfully, but of the necessity which binds all mortal men – I am willing to confess that once, quite by accident I suppose, I in the course of my priestly duties saw how the Sibyl is capable of seeing down the corridors of time; I know what permits her to do this, as she developed out of the prior Greek Sibyl at Delphi, in that so highly venerated land, Greece.
Few men know this, and perhaps the Sibyl, reaching out through time to strike at me for speaking aloud, will silence me forever. It is quite possible, therefore, that before I can finish this scroll I will be found dead, my head split like one of those overripe melons from the Levant which we Romans prize so. In any case, being old, I will boldly say.
I had been quarreling with my wife that morning – I was not old then, and the dreadful murder of Julius Caesar had just taken place. At that time no one was sure who had done it. Treason against the State! Murder most ugly – a thousand knife wounds in the body of the man who had come to stabilize our quaking society… with the approval of the Sibyl, in her temple; we had seen the texts she had written to that effect. We knew that she had expected Caesar to bring his army across the river and into Rome, and to accept the crown of Caesar.
"You witless fool," my wife was saying to me that morning. "If the Sibyl were so wise as you think, she would have anticipated this assassination."
"Maybe she did," I answered.
"I think she's a fake," my wife Xantippe said to me, grimacing in that way she has, which is so repulsive. She is – I should say was – of a higher social class than I, and always made me conscious of it. "You priests make up those texts; you write them yourselves – you say what you think in such a vague way that any interpretation can be made of it. You're bilking the citizens, especially the well-to-do." By that she meant her own family.
I said hotly, leaping up from the breakfast table, "She is inspired; she is a prophetess – she knows the future. Evidently there was no way the assassination of our great leader, whom the people loved so, could be averted."
"The Sibyl is a hoax," my wife said, and started buttering yet another roll, in her usual greedy fashion.
"I have seen the great books -"
"How does she know the future?" my wife demanded. At that I had to admit I didn't know; I was crestfallen – I, a priest at Cumae, an employee of the Roman State. I felt humiliated.
"It's a money game," my wife was saying as I strode out the door. Even though it was only dawn – fair Aurora, the goddess of dawn, was showing that white light over the world, the light we regard as sacred, from which many of our inspired visions come – I made my way, on foot, to the lovely temple where I work.
No one else had arrived yet, except the armed guards loitering outside; they glanced at me in surprise to see me so early, then nodded as they recognized me. No one but a recognized priest of the temple at Cumae is allowed in; even Caesar himself must depend on us.
Entering, I passed by the great gas-filled vault in which the Sibyl's huge stone throne shone wetly in the half-gloom; only a few meager torches had been lit…
I halted and froze into silence, as I saw something never disclosed to me before. The Sibyl, her long black hair tied up in a tight knot, her arms covered, sat on her throne, leaning forward – and I saw, then, that she was not alone.
Two creatures stood before her, inside a round bubble. They resembled men but each of them had an additional – I am not sure even now what they had, but they were not mortals. They were gods. They had slits for eyes, without pupils. Instead of hands, they had claws like a crab has. Their mouths were only holes, and I realized that they, gods forbid, were mute. They seemed to be talking to the Sibyl but over a long string, at each end of which was a box. One of the creatures held the box to the side of his head, and the Sibyl listened to the box at her end. The box had numbers on it and buttons, and the string was in rolls and heaps, so that it could be extended.