"Andre." It was Chris again. "Andre."
Another soldier came down the stairs, and Marek swung his sword, which clanged against the winch, spitting sparks. The man hastily backed up, shouting and pushing the others.
"Andre, run for it," Chris said. "You have time."
Marek knew that was true. He could just make it. If he left now, the men couldn't raise the drawbridge before he had run across it and was out on the plain with the others. He knew they were out there, waiting for him. His friends. Waiting to go back.
As he turned to go down the stairs, his glance fell on the old man, still cowering in the corner. Marek wondered what it must be like to live your entire life in this world. To live and love, constantly on the edge, with disease and starvation and death and killing. To be alive in this world.
"Andre. Are you coming?"
"There's no time," Marek said.
"Andre."
He looked out on the plain and saw successive flashes of light. They were calling the machines. Getting ready to go.
The machines were there. They were all standing on their platforms. Cold vapor was drifting from the bases, curling across the dark grass.
Kate said, "Andre, come on."
There was a short silence. Then: "I'm not leaving," Marek said. "I'm staying here."
"Andre. You're not thinking right."
"Yes, I am."
She said, "Are you serious?"
Kate looked at the Professor. He just nodded slowly.
"All his life, he's wanted this."
Chris put the ceramic marker in the slot at his feet.
Marek watched from the window of the gatehouse.
"Hey, Andre." It was Chris.
"See you, Chris."
"Take care of yourself."
"Andre." It was Kate. "I don't know what to say."
"Good-bye, Kate."
Then he heard the Professor say: "Good-bye, Andre."
"Good-bye," Marek said.
Through his earpiece, he heard a recorded voice say, "Stand still - eyes open - deep breath - hold it. . . . Now!"
On the plain, he saw a brilliant flash of blue light. Then there was another, and another, diminishing in intensity, until there was nothing more.
Doniger strode back and forth across the darkened stage. In the auditorium, the three corporate executives sat silently, watching him.
"Sooner or later," he said, "the artifice of entertainment - constant, ceaseless entertainment - will drive people to seek authenticity. Authenticity will be the buzzword of the twenty-first century. And what is authentic? Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit. Anything that exists for its own sake, that assumes its own shape. And what is the most authentic of all? The past.
"The past is a world that already existed before Disney and Murdoch and British Telecom and Nissan and Sony and IBM and all the other shapers of the present. The past was here before they were. The past rose and fell without their intrusion and molding. The past is real. It's authentic. And this will make the past unbelievably attractive. Because the past is the only alternative to the corporate present.
"What will people do? They are already doing it. The fastest-growing segment of travel today is cultural tourism. People who want to visit not other places, but other times. People who want to immerse themselves in medieval walled cities, in vast Buddhist temples, Mayan pyramid cities, Egyptian necropolises. People who want to walk and be in the world of the past. The vanished world.
"And they don't want it to be fake. They don't want it to be made pretty, or cleaned up. They want it to be authentic. Who will guarantee that authenticity? Who will become the brand name of the past? ITC.
"I am about to show you," he said, "our plans for cultural tourism sites around the world. I will concentrate on one in France, but we have many others, as well. In every case, we turn over the site to the government of that country. But we own the surrounding territory, which means we will own the hotels and restaurants and shops, the entire apparatus of tourism. To say nothing of the books and films and guides and costumes and toys and all the rest. Tourists will spend ten dollars to get into the site. But they'll spend five hundred dollars in living expenses outside it. All that will be controlled by us." He smiled. "To make sure that it is executed tastefully, of course."
A graph came up behind him.
"We estimate that each site will generate in excess of two billion dollars a year, including merchandising. We estimate that total company revenues will exceed one hundred billion dollars annually by the second decade of the coming century. That is one reason for making your commitment to us.
"The other reason is more important. Under the guise of tourism, we are in effect building an intellectual brand name. Such brand names now exist for software, for example. But none exist for history. And yet history is the most powerful intellectual tool society possesses. Let us be clear. History is not a dispassionate record of dead events. Nor is it a playground for scholars to indulge their trivial disputes.
"The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us why the things we value are the things we should value. And it tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.
"The future lies in the past - in whoever controls the past. Such control has never before been possible. Now, it is. We at ITC want to assist our clients in the shaping of the world in which we all live and work and consume. And in doing so, I believe we will have your full and wholehearted support."