The Dancer from Atlantis (11 page)

‘I’d enjoy that, my lord.’

The stable was the sole stone building, no doubt because horses were too valuable and loved to risk to fire. Not as big as
their twentieth-century counterparts, they nevertheless were mettlesome animals which whickered softly and nuzzled Theseus’
palm when he stroked them. ‘Hitch Stamper and Long-tail to the everyday chariot,’ he ordered the head groom. ‘No, don’t summon
a driver. I’ll take ’em.’

Two men could stand on the flat bed of the car, behind a bronze front and sides decorated with bas-reliefs. In war Theseus,
armored, would have kept his place behind a near-naked youth who had the reins, himself wielding spear and sword against enemy
infantry. Reid decided that was a skill which could only be acquired by training from babyhood. He had everything he could
do just hanging on in the unsprung conveyance.

Theseus flicked whip over the horses and they clattered out. The twin wheels squeaked and rumbled. Even lacking ball bearings,
it didn’t seem like much of a load for a pair of animals
to draw. Then Reid noticed the choking chest-strap harness. What if Oleg made a horse collar?

Athens clustered nearly to the top of steep, rocky Acropolis Hill. It was a fair-sized city by present-day standards; Reid
guessed at twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, though a floating population from the hinterland and foreign parts might
raise that figure. (He asked Theseus and got a quizzical stare. The Achaeans kept close track of many things, but counting
people had not occurred to them.) Much of the settled area lay outside the defensive walls, indicating rapid growth. Buildings
were adobe, flat-roofed, often three or four stories high, jammed along narrow, unpaved, crazily twisting streets. In those
lanes Reid did see hogs, competing with mongrels, mice, roaches, and clouds of flies for the offal tossed from houses.

‘Make way!’ Theseus trumpeted. ‘Make way!’

They parted for him, the warriors, craftsmen, merchants, mariners, innkeepers, shopkeepers, scribes, laborers, prostitutes,
housewives, children, hierophants, and Lord knew what whose movement and babble brought the city to life. Glimpses remained
with Reid: A woman, one hand supporting a water jug on her head, one lifting her skirts above the muck. A gaunt donkey, overburdened
with faggots, lashed forward by its countryman owner. A booth where a sandalmaker sat crying his wares. Another booth where
a typically intricate bargain had just been struck, payment to be made partly in kind and partly in an agreed-on weight of
metal. A coppersmith at work, shutting the whole world out of his head except for his hammer and the adze he was forging.
An open winehouse door and a drunken sailor telling lengthy lies about the perils he had survived. Two little boys, naked,
playing what looked remarkably like hopscotch. A portly burgher, apprentices around him to protect him from jostling. A squat,
dark, bearded man in robe and high-crowned brimless hat who must be from Asia Minor … no, here they simply called it Asia….

The chariot rattled by that plateau, where several wooden temples stood, which would later be known as the Areopagus. It passed
through a gateway in the city wall, whose roughly dressed stonework was inferior to the Mycenaen ruins Reid had once visited.
(Now he wondered how long after Pamela’s day it would be before Seattle or Chicago lay tumbled, in silence broken only by
crickets.) Beyond the ‘suburbs’ the horses came onto a rutted road and Theseus let them trot.

Reid dung to the rail. He hoped his knees wouldn’t be jolted backward or the teeth shaken out of his jaws.

Theseus noticed. He drew his beasts to a walk. They shimmied impatiently but obeyed. The prince looked around. ‘You’re not
used to this, are you?’ he asked.

‘No, my lord. We … travel otherwise in my country.’

‘Riding?’

‘Well, yes. And, uh, in wagons that have springs to absorb the shock.’ Reid was faintly surprised to learn, out of his knowledge,
that the Achaeans had a word for springs. Checking more closely, he found he had said ‘metal bowstaves.’

‘Hm,’ Theseus grunted. ‘Such must be costly. And don’t they soon wear out?’

‘We use iron, my lord. Iron’s both cheaper and stronger than bronze when you know how to obtain and work it. The ores are
far more plentiful than those of copper or tin.’

‘Yes, so Oleg told me yesterday when I examined his gear. Do you know the secret?’

‘I fear not, my lord. It’s no secret in my country, but it doesn’t happen to be my work. I, well, plan buildings.’

‘Might your companions know?’

‘Perhaps.’ Reid thought that, given a chance to experiment, he could probably reconstruct the process himself. The basic idea
was to apply a mechanical blast to your furnace, thus making the fire sufficiently hot to reduce the element, and afterward
to alloy and temper the product until it became steel. Oleg might well have dropped in on such an operation in his era and
observed equipment he could easily imitate.

They drove unspeaking for a while. At this pace it wasn’t hard to keep balanced, though impacts still ran up the shinbones.
The clatter of wheels was nearly lost in the noise of the wind, where it soughed among poplars lining the road. It cuffed
with chilly hands and sent cloaks flapping. A flight of crows beat against it. The sun made their blackness look polished,
until a cloud swept past and for a moment brilliance went out of the landscape. Smoke streamed flat from the roof of a peasant’s
clay house. Women stooped in his wheatfield, reaping it with sickles. The wind pressed their coarse brown gowns against their
flanks. Two men followed them, shocking; as they moved along, they would pick up their spears and shift those too.

Theseus half turned, reins negligently in his right hand, so
that his yellow eyes could rest on Reid. ‘Your tale is more eldritch than any I ever thought to hear,’ he said.

The American smiled wryly. ‘It is to me also.’

‘Borne on a whirlwind across the world, from lands so distant we’ve gotten no whisper about them, by the car of a magician
– do you truly believe that was sheer happenstance? That there’s no destiny in you?’

‘I … don’t … think there is, my lord.’

‘Diores tells me you four spoke oddly about having come out of time as well as space.’ The deep voice was level but unrelenting;
the free hand rested on a sword pommel. ‘What does that mean?’

Here it comes, Reid told himself. Though his tongue was somewhat dry, he got his rehearsed answer out steadily enough. ‘We’re
not sure either, my lord. Imagine how bewildered we were and are. And we’re confused as to reckoning. That’s natural, isn’t
it? Our countries have no common reign or event to count from. I wondered if perhaps the wizard’s wagon had crossed both miles
and years. It was only a wondering and I don’t really know.’

He dared not make an outright denial. Too many hints had been dropped or might be dropped. Theseus and Diores were no more
ignorant of the nature of time than Reid; everywhere and everywhen, mystery has the same size. The concept of chronokinesis
should not be unthinkable to them, who were used to oracles, prophets, and stories about predestined dooms.

Then why not tell them the whole truth? Because of Erissa.

Theseus’ tone roughened: ‘I’d be less worried if that Cretan didn’t share your bed.’

‘My lord,’ Reid protested, ‘she was swept along like the rest of us, by meaningless chance.’

‘Will you set her aside, then?’

‘No,’ Reid said, ‘I can’t,’ and wondered if that was not the bedrock fact. He added in haste, ‘Our sufferings have made a
bond between us. Surely you, my lord, wouldn’t forsake a comrade. And aren’t you at peace with Crete?’

‘In a way,’ Theseus answered. ‘For a while.’

He stood motionless, drawn into himself, until suddenly:

‘Hear me, my guest Duncan. I say nothing to your dishonor, but an outlander such as you is easily hoodwinked. Let me tell
you how things really are.

‘The reality is that Crete sits at this end of the Midworld
Sea like a spider in its web, and the Hellenic tribes grow weary of being flies trapped and bloodsucked. Every realm of us
in reach of a coastline must bend the knee, pay the tribute, send the hostages, keep no more ships than the Minos allows nor
carry out any venture the Minos disallows. We want our freedom.’

‘Forgive this outlander, my lord,’ Reid dared say, ‘but doesn’t the tribute – timber, grain, goods that set the Cretans free
to do other things than produce them, I suppose – doesn’t it buy you protection from piracy, and so help rather than hinder
you?’

Theseus snorted. ‘“Piracy” is what the Minos says it is. Why should our young men not be let blood themselves, and win their
fortunes off a Levantine tin ship or a Hittite town? Because it would inconvenience the Cretans in their trade relationships
with those places, that’s why.’ He paused. ‘More to the point, maybe, why should my father or I not be allowed to unite Attica?
Why should other Achaean kings not bring their own kinfolk together in like wise? It wouldn’t take much warring. But no, the
Minos prevents it by a net of treaties – to keep the “barbarians” divided and therefore weak,’ he fleered. The word he used
had the connotation of the English ‘backward natives.’

‘A balance of power—’ Reid attempted.

‘And the Minos holding the scales! Listen. Northward and eastward, in the mountains, are the real barbarians. They prowl the
marches like wolves. If we Achaeans cannot be brought together, in the end we’ll be invaded and overrun. What then of “preserving
civilization,” when the scrolls burn with the cities?

‘Civilization,’ Theseus continued after a moment. ‘Are we such oafs born that we can’t take our fair part in it? They were
Argives who decided the old priestly script of Crete was too cumbersome and devised a new one, so much better that now probably
half the clerks in Knossos are Argives.’

There was the answer to the riddle of Linear A and Linear B, Reid thought faintly. No conquest by Homeric Greeks – not yet
– simply adoption of a desirable foreign invention, like Europe taking numerals from the Arabs or wall paper from the Chinese
or kayaks from the Eskimos – or he himself, bound for Japan. Evidently quite a few Achaeans were resident in Knossos, and
no doubt in other Cretan towns. Scribes expert in Linear B
would naturally be hired from among them, and the scribes would naturally prefer to use their own language, which the script
best fitted.

A potential fifth column?

‘Not that I personally believe that’s any great thing,’ Theseus said. ‘Punching marks on clay tablets or scribbling on papyrus
is no fit work for a man.’

‘What is, my lord?’ Reid asked.

‘To plow, sow, reap, build, hunt, sail, make war, make love, make a strong home for his kin and an honored name for his descendants.
And for us who are kings, also to raise up and defend the kingdom.’

A horse shied. Theseus needed a minute with reins and whip to bring the team under control. Afterward he drove two-handed,
eyes straight before him, talking in a monotone that blew back over his shoulder:

‘Let me tell you the story. It’s no secret. Some fifty years ago the Kalydonians and certain allies launched an expedition
which fell on southern Crete and sacked a number of towns, harrying so well that these have not since been rebuilt. They could
do this because of secret preparations and because three weak, pleasure-loving Minoses in a row had neglected the navy. Crete’s
been well logged by now, you see, so ship timber must be imported as you guessed, at the expense of luxuries.

‘But a new admiral got command. Next year he whipped the Kalydonians with what vessels he had. A new Minos came to the throne
soon after and helped this Admiral Rheakles strengthen the fleet. They decided between them to bring under control all Achaeans
who had seaports and hence might threaten the Thalassocracy. This they did, partly by outright conquest, partly by playing
us off against each other.

‘Well, seven and twenty years ago, my father Aegeus sought to end his vassalage and unite Attica. He revolted. It was put
down. The Minos let him remain as under-king, to avoid a protracted war that might have spread, but laid harsh terms on him.
Among other conditions, every nine years, seven youths and seven maidens of our noblest families must go to Knossos, living
as hostages till the next lot arrives.’

‘What?’ Reid asked. ‘They’re not … sacrificed to the Minotaur?’

Theseus cast him a glance. ‘What’re you talking about? The Minotaur is the sacrifice. Don’t you see the cunning of the
scheme? The hostages leave here at their most impressionable age. They come home grown, ready to join our most important councils
and continue our most powerful houses – but dyed for life in Cretan colors.

‘Well. Even that far back, Diores was a shrewd adviser. Without him we’d have gotten worse peace terms than we did. Now my
father had no living sons, and my uncle’s were among the first hostages chosen, of course. Diores urged my father to go to
Troezen, at the end of the Argolis peninsula. Its king was his kinsman and an old ally. He agreed to the plan, that my father
should secretly beget an heir on a daughter of his. I was that heir.’

It wouldn’t be impossible to keep such an operation confidential, Reid reflected, in this world of tenuous communications
between realms often separated by trackless wildernesses.

‘I was raised in Troezen,’ Theseus said. ‘It also was tributary to Crete, but being poor, it rarely saw a Cretan. – Poor?
In manhood we were rich. Before the first beard bloomed on my cheeks I was helping clear bandits and roving beasts out of
the hinterlands.

‘Diores often came visiting. Five years back he brought me to Athens. I claimed the heirship; my Cretan-loving cousins denied
me it, my party’d kept their swords loose in the scabbards; and afterward the Minos could do nothing.’

Or would do nothing, Reid thought. Does an empire mainly interested in keeping peace along its borders and trade lanes ever
pay close attention to dynastic quarrels among the tribes it’s holding in check … until the day when, too late, it wishes
it had done so?