The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1)

by Paul Levinson

  "Very true," Ampharete said. "But Heron no doubt has a plan for that..." She looked in the direction of Heron's sleeping form...

  They reached Piraeus in pastel dawn light. The sky and the sea were a single milky shell...

  * * *

  [Athens, 404 BC]

  Heron directed their landing to what he reckoned was a "reasonably safe place -- very few of them, hereabouts, these days."

  Alcibiades looked around, grimly. Ampharete excused herself for a few minutes.

  "Spartans and other agents of the Thirty are everywhere," Heron said to Alcibiades. "We need to be very careful."

  "I hate them," Alcibiades said, from the depths of his being. "The mass of people -- I feel both ways about them -- I love them and hate them. But the Thirty are stupidity enthroned. That is far more dangerous than democratic stupidity."

  "It may interest you to know that both the people and the Thirty mirror your feelings about them, exactly. The people of Athens are not sure about you. The Thirty are sure -- that is why they want you killed."

  Alcibiades nodded.

  "But, if it is any comfort, the Thirty will not last much longer. Democracy with all of its warts will soon be back here -- and you will live to see that, perhaps even go on to play a role in that, now that we have saved you."

  "Are you not concerned that my presence in Athens, after my reported death, can distort history?" Alcibiades asked.

  Heron regarded him. "You have been talking with Ampharete. With all of her intelligence, she is nonetheless a novice in time traveling. There are ways you can influence history without being known."

  "The complexities of this time travel are supremely fascinating," Alcibiades mused, "worthy of Zeno and his paradoxes. You have apparently saved me from my Spartan executioners. Although some may think I died last evening, in fact I did not die. And, given my predilection for causing trouble, that presumably means I will play some role in our ongoing history. But if that is the case, and you come from the future, how did you ever come to know that I died in the first place -- how did you get the idea to come back and rescue a man who in fact had not been killed?"

  Heron smiled, thinly. "One solution to this paradox, of course, is that even though we rescued you, other killers will soon dispatch you, before you have a chance to play your new role. But I will do my utmost to see that we are not extricated so easily from the jaws of this paradox."

  "I am in your debt," Alcibiades said, tartly but truly.

  "These paradoxes, by the way, are far more profound than Zeno's," Heron said. "You can walk, unhindered, from one place to another, even though there is always a half of a half of your distance left, because when those halves get very small, they no longer matter in the real world. In other words, the mere real act of walking punctures Zeno's paradox. With time travel, probably any activity -- certainly any real transgression across time -- forces the paradoxes into existence. To sit in that chair, to use it -- you feel as if your arms are resting on the very oars of the universe...."

  Alcibiades considered, for a long few moments. He sighed. "Here is a more practical question: You arrived from the future in one of your chairs?"

  "Yes."

  "And the guards? Two fought bravely and died. We have two more with us now. That makes four who arrived in their chairs?"

  "No, the guards come from this time. I trained them at a secret school in Sicily."

  "You trained them?"

  "Yes, over a period of time. And I had help from a few more experts that I brought back here -- or a little before now -- from various times in the future."

  "You--"

  "But it is better that we do not talk about that -- I would not want you to go searching for that school."

  Alcibiades nodded. "Let us return, then, to the question of the chairs. There is one chair, your chair, that is waiting, presumably, in a house not far from here. Ampharete presumably came in another chair. How, with those two chairs, can the three of us expect to go forward in time five years? Can two people sit in one chair?"

  "No," Heron replied. "Only one living being can travel in a chair."

  "How then--"

  Ampharete appeared, as if on cue.

  "An excellent question," Heron replied again, softly, "the answer to which has yet to be determined."

  * * *

  The three walked forward, a guard in front and a guard to the rear, near what was left of one of the long walls that had protected the road from Piraeus to Athens, until the Spartans brought the walls down.

  "This will all be rebuilt and bustling in decades and centuries to come," Heron remarked. "The path will be teeming with people and commerce."

  "And in millennia to come this will all be bright as daylight." Ampharete pointed to the last of the dark in the sky. "We will have lights that exceed the stars and the moon."

  "How?" Alcibiades asked.

  "By harnessing the power of lightning," Ampharete replied.

  "Babylon electrified," Heron said.

  Ampharete smiled. She thought she recognized the reference. Her grandfather had had an old nineteenth-century book, bound in green cloth and lettered gold with something like that title, on his shelves. That perhaps was where she had first discovered her love for those old books and their bindings. And somewhere along the way in this strange journey she had somehow come to know one of their editors, Mr. Appleton.... Which was more crazy -- that she had met the editor, or had just heard the title spoken by an inventor who had been dead for two millennia? Both occurrences were insane, beyond any semblance of reason.... And yet here she was, looking at the ancient Athenian sky, and it seemed as normal as any dawn....

  "Did those speakers of Latin discover that power?" Alcibiades asked.

  "Not that I know of," Heron replied. "I have helped them, brought them to the edge of their future, with some techniques, based on nature, that I brought to the past from my time. I did that with the power of heated water -- steam. But I have not yet tried electricity."

  "Did the citizens of Roma change the world with your steam?" Alcibiades asked.

  "No, that was not my plan."

  "Then why--?"

  "I believe that in order for discoveries and new principles of knowledge to be well implemented, they have to be first introduced to people long before," Heron explained. "In that way, generations upon generations have time to become gradually accustomed to the new device. People accept a new invention because they already expect it, even though they may not be aware of that. Two-and-a-half millennia from now, the world is finally becoming comfortable with ideas that were generated right now, in your time, not only by me, but by others who were born in this time-- Ah, here we are. There is our house, with the chairs inside."

  * * *

  The guards entered the house first, took about five minutes, exited, and pronounced it safe.

  "Are you sure?" Alcibiades pressed Heron, after he had translated. "We were surprised on the other side of the Aegean. We never discussed who that second group of killers were -- they were obviously far more effective than the first. Are you certain they will not surprise us here again?"

  "There are no guarantees," Heron replied. "But would you not agree we only increase our vulnerability by standing here and talking? If the house is being watched, word may have gone out, already, that we have arrived."

  Alcibiades acknowledged the point.

  Ampharete spoke up, uncomfortably. "There is something else. The guard told Heron that there are only two chairs in the house."

  Alcibiades lifted a questioning eyebrow towards Heron.

  "True," Heron replied. "You have to be in one of those chairs," he said to Alcibiades.

  "I will stay back," Ampharete said.

  "I prefer you come with me," Alcibiades said. "Heron can protect himself back here far more easily than you."

  "That is not the point," Ampharete said. "Heron knows more about the workings of the chairs and the pitfalls of time travel than I do. If something goes wro
ng five years from now, you will be better served with him beside you."

  Alcibiades smiled. "I would still prefer your company."

  Heron whispered to the guards.

  Alcibiades braced, expecting the guards to try to take him by force into the house.

  "No--" Ampharete reacted to something else.

  One of the guards suddenly drew his sword, and turned on his companion--

  Only the other guard's swift reflex saved him. The two grappled with blades and fists.

  "One of them is a traitor," Heron shouted.

  "Yes. But which one?" Alcibiades shouted in return. He drew his weapon. "I will kill them both, to be sure."

  "No." Heron grabbed his arm. "They are lethal fighters. You could be killed."

  "He is right." Ampharete took Alcibiades' other arm. "We should go inside. If the traitor wins, you can surprise him in the dwelling with your knife."

  Alcibiades looked at the battling guards. He stood his ground. "I have never seen men fight like this. Where did you say they received their training?" he asked Heron.

  "What did you say to them?" Ampharete demanded of the inventor.

  He ignored her, and spoke to Alcibiades. "As I told you, they were trained with methods of the future.... Please. Let us leave this field to them. Do not jeopardize all that we accomplished in the past day."

  Alcibiades thought for another second, and then went, reluctantly, with Ampharete and Heron. He thought that the good guard had a fifty/fifty chance of besting the bad one, whichever each one was, whatever good and bad meant in this situation. But Ampharete was right that he could stand by the door inside and gain the advantage. He certainly had no intention of leaving in any chair before this situation with the guards was resolved. "What if the traitor triumphs?" Alcibiades asked Heron, anyway, to gauge his reaction, as they entered the house.

  "Two of us, at least, will be long gone from here," Heron replied.

  * * *

  Two chairs stood mute sentry by the hearth inside.

  Heron talked to Alcibiades. "The essential result is that you go forward in time now. May I suggest that you sit in the chair? It will take you away, and then Ampharete and I can discuss which of us will follow."

  Ampharete slowly nodded her agreement.

  Alcibiades did not. "Why is my going the essential outcome?" he demanded. "This is my home, in time as well as place. I can live here five years far more easily than either of you."

  "True," Heron replied. "But your living here now, after we rescued you from death, could have unforeseen consequences. In the current time sequence, as history has reported it, you were murdered last night, as you know. My plan is to have you appear immediately before the death of Socrates, to help convince him to accept an offer to escape, an offer far better than Crito's. If Socrates believes that you were not really killed last night -- if he learns in the days or weeks or months ahead that you live -- then that would deprive your sudden appearance in his prison five years from now of its major impact. You would just be another beloved disciple pleading with him to escape."

  Alcibiades looked at the chairs, then the door, and did not move. "You said I perhaps had a role to play here, in the restored democracy."

  "Yes," Heron replied, "after you play your role in saving Socrates."

  Alcibiades said nothing and considered.

  "Let me be more clear," Heron continued. "Socrates aside, it is not advisable for you to be here for the next five years. No one has done any analysis about how your presence here -- how the smile you give a pretty woman in the market place, how the coin you put in a beggar's hand, how the slightest inflection of your behavior -- can infect and distort history."

  "Have you devoted such thought to your plan to rescue Socrates?" Alcibiades replied. "If he utters a word to anyone after the death you say he will encounter, will not that distort history too? And did you not tell me earlier that you had taken into account any possible distortions in history due to my unexpected survival? And did you not--"

  "Forgive me," Heron interrupted, "but I am afraid we cannot afford any further luxury of discussion. If you will not get in the chair voluntarily, I am prepared to exercise force--"

  Alcibiades laughed in his face.

  Ampharete started to speak--

  The two guards burst in, very much intact and with weapons in hand.

  Alcibiades coolly stepped between Ampharete and the guards, his own weapon in hand.

  Heron walked to one of the chairs, and sat. He barked orders to the guards, incomprehensible to Alcibiades.

  "He told them to take you to the other chair, and be careful not to hurt you," Ampharete translated. "And now we know what he said to them outside," she added. "Feign a fight to throw us off-guard."

  The guards approached, carefully.

  Ampharete withdrew a small knife from her robe.

  "Stay behind me," Alcibiades said. "If they are afraid to hurt me, I am your shield."

  The guards moved suddenly, and tackled Alcibiades.

  Ampharete was half pinned. But her hand with the knife was free. The neck of one of the guards was within reach. She stabbed, repeatedly.

  The other guard cursed in Latin, and drove the tip of his weapon toward's Ampharete's face--

  Alcibiades intercepted it. The point sliced Ampharete's shoulder. Alcibiades sank his own short sword into the guard, before he could do more damage.

  "Are you hurt?" Alcibiades asked Ampharete.

  She shook her head no.

  He looked at her shoulder. "I disagree," he said. "You have to take that other chair."

  "No," Ampharete replied. "Heron is right about that."

  "You would not survive back here, alone," Alcibiades said. "Especially with that wound. I assume you have better medicine in your future."

  "I may not have to stay too long. I have ... friends in the future. They will come back with another chair."

  "To trade places with you? I doubt that...." Alcibiades shook his head. "And another guard is likely to come through that door sooner than one of your friends in a chair."

  Ampharete sighed and looked at the chairs.

  Alcibiades looked at Heron in the chair. The bubble was already in place, and the whole chair seemed to shimmer slightly. "Is he already ... underway?" Alcibiades asked.

  "No, that is the 'ready-to-leave' state," Ampharete explained.

  "Why is he waiting?"

  "It is not safe for us to be so close to the Chairs when they make their departures and arrivals. He will not move until you are in the other chair--"

  "Or away from here? Is that true, too?"

  "I guess so," Ampharete acknowledged. "But maybe the best solution is neither of us goes. I could stay here with you and--"

  "It is not safe for you here even with me," Alcibiades said. "I might not be able to protect you -- I have barely managed, even now ...." He took her hand. "You will be safer in the future, the far far future, your time.... Go there now, if you can, if the chair permits it." He put his arm around her, and moved her, so she was in front of him and his back was to Heron. He leaned down, picked up Ampharete's knife, and gave it her. "He will not expect you to have this knife. Use it to make your escape in the future, if need be. Acquaint yourself with Heron's plan. Then return to the time of the death of Socrates. I will be there.... If I understand these processes of time travel correctly, it will not seem like a very long time for you. And I will be nurtured here by the knowledge that you will at least be safer than you are, here, with these dogs from Hades on the loose." He looked at the dead guards. His lips curled.

  Ampharete kissed Alcibiades, tearfully. She pulled a thin scroll from inside her garment, placed it in his hand, and walked reluctantly to the vacant chair.

  He watched as the bubble emerged and the chair shimmered.

  Then he walked out into the new Athenian morning. He looked at the sky, and heard a sound like wine quickly filling an empty vessel. He could not tell whether the sound came from the house o
r his heart.

  Chapter Six

  Andr. Are you aware of what happens to the body when hemlock is consumed?

  Soc. It kills the body. I know this, as do you. It is the reason we are having this conversation. We perhaps differ on what hemlock, or any poison, does to the soul. I believe, though I admit I am not certain of this, that the soul can survive any agent of physical death.

  Andr. I would like to consider with you what hemlock does to the physical body.

  Soc. What purpose would there be in such a consideration?

  Andr. You are aware, I assume, that the death brought on by hemlock is a very painful and lengthy one? Three days of convulsions. Your body riddled with agony. Your face so contorted that your closest students would not recognize you, long before you reached the point of death.

  Soc. Yes, I am aware of that.

  Andr. And it does not disturb you? Forgive me for parading such details before your eyes, Socrates. I do not wish to be cruel, to cause you pain, now -- except that I wish to help you avoid much greater, unnecessary pain, later.

  Soc. I do not welcome pain. Having decided to accept the wrong decision of the untutored masses, I did not wish to see that decision rendered in a way that would bring me such pain. And neither did I, nor do I now, welcome death. But I accept it, for the reasons I have explained. And if it comes wrapped in undue pain, and the only way I could escape that pain was to escape the death, then, alas, I must accept the pain, too, though I would imagine no one is unhappier about that than I.

  Andr. You would be surprised how many people will be unhappy about your death, Socrates. People who will not be persuaded by your reasoning. People who, like Crito before me this past night, will walk the rest of their days with weeping hearts and angry souls. Angry at the Athenians for putting you to death. Fury and contempt for those whose decision you say you must respect and want to be respected. School boys, young men who pride themselves on their mastery of ethics, old men sitting under trees, all will join in this condemnation.

  Soc. No doubt the young men will be more severe in this condemnation than the old. You look to be less than half my age.