Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel Page B

for girls and tourists rode Moses's Snake and the Deluge Waterslide. Beyond, under the moon, fields and olive orchards spread to the south. A flock of sleeping sheep lay scattered across the hill opposite like dirty white ottomans. But any sound they might make was drowned out by the roar of tinny music from the park.
    Afraid to look at her, but feeling bold, Owen tried to explain the thicket of his emotions. "Genevieve, I know I’ve only known you a day, but there’s something that I need to say to you.”
    "You're drunk, Owen."
    "Not so much that I don't know what I feel. I--"
    She put her hand on his lips. "Come on! While we stand here there are people in this city having fun."
    Owen let her lead him away past the amphitheater and into the Second Quarter. She seemed to know where she was going. A neon sign above the entrance to the club read "Adam's Garden."
    The club was a Hellenized residence turned into a restaurant. Walls between the inside rooms and the central courtyard had been ripped out, and a low stage had been set up in place of a fountain in the middle. Though the club was electrified, the lighting was still provided by smoking oil lamps on iron stands. The place was crowded with historicals, Romans, Syrians, Greeks, a scattering of tourists from the future. A four piece band of historicals on electrified lute, pipe, bass and harmonica played some queer variation of twentieth century blues. Just as Gen and Owen were being served their drinks, the teen-aged historical playing the harmonica, locks greased into a pompadour, wearing a hideous polyester jumpsuit, stepped to a microphone and began to sing,

    "There's two kind of woman,
    there's two kind of man,
    there's two kind of romance
    since time began:
    there's the real true love,
    and that good old jive;
    one tries to kill you,
    one helps to keep you alive.
    I don't know what kind of blues I've got."

    Eyes squinted shut, head cocked sideways, he slid into a discordant harp solo. Owen had never heard the song before, but he knew there was something twisted in the boy's performance of it. The boy did not know how ludicrous he looked. He probably thought he was making himself into a modern man by adopting the time travelers' clothes and music and language. Instead he had made himself into a joke. Despite the champagne and the evening and the woman beside him, Owen felt a wave of sadness.
    The song ended and a few patrons applauded. "Isn't this flagrant?" Gen asked him.
    "It's a car wreck between the 21st and first centuries. He's singing in the ruins of his own culture, and doesn't know it."
    "But it's a music that never existed before, could not have existed before the invention of time travel."
    "Doesn't it bother you a little?" Owen said. "Once these people had their own future."
    "A lot of that future was misery. For all we know that boy--his name is Samuel--might not be alive without us."
    "You know him?"
    "I ran into him in the street earlier today."
    Owen tried to judge the smile on her face. Was she pulling his leg? "Well, I'll bet you he can't read the words stenciled on his shirt. He doesn't understand the song he's singing. It's from another world."
    "He sings it well."
    "If we weren't here he'd be singing his own song, not something written two thousand years after he was born."
    "Culture is miscegenation," Gen said. "That's how progress happens. Monocultures are vulnerable; they're too easily destroyed."
    "Is rape better than virginity?"
    "Those aren't the only options. Those are the extremes."
    "This situation is extreme."
    "We come from an extreme age," Gen said.
    "The people we're exploiting think the age we come from is heaven. All that boy wants is to get to our time. He doesn't know he'd be fatally out of place there, and the things that he otherwise would have happily devoted his life to--his family, his work, his god--are devalued into nothing."
    "Maybe," Gen said, "but in 70 AD this city would have been sacked and destroyed by the Romans.