"Yes," Jonah answered, firmly, "though you know I cannot prove it."
Alcibiades shook his head, but loosened his grip. "Will I see you again?"
Jonah smiled slightly, enigmatically. "Yes, though in circumstances you now cannot even imagine, and I dare not tell you more.... Except ... choose your paths carefully, at every step in this process."
Alcibiades sighed, smiled, let go of Jonah completely. "I do not believe in the gods, but may Hermes guide you."
* * *
Alcibiades changed his manner of living, slightly, in the months ahead. He risked contacting several close friends, whom he thought he could trust. His trust was well placed. He worked with them to bring down the hated Thirty.
He got the news one day near dusk, by a fruit stand in the market place. "Critias and Charminides are slain," his friend whispered, "democracy is restored in Athens!"
"If that is true, there is no need to whisper," Alcibiades said.
His friend laughed, then spat on the ground. "The despots are dead!" he shouted. Then he whispered again to Alcibiades. "Those two sent those Spartan killers after you. I do not know about the other assassins you mentioned. But at least those two tyrants are gone."
"The cousin and uncle of Plato," Alcibiades muttered.
"Who is Plato?"
"Just stay alive," Alcibiades responded, "and if my information is right, you will soon know a lot about Plato."
His friend nodded, and left.
Alcibiades bit into a sweet fig and examined the fading sky. So, he had succeeded in ridding Athens of the Thirty, and restoring democracy -- the very democracy, if he could believe Heron and Ampharete and Jonah, that would in several years sentence his mentor Socrates to death.
Hard to believe, but Alcibiades was beginning to believe it.
Yet he had much to consider. Should he seek out the leaders of Socrates' enemies, those in the democracy who rallied the forces against him, and kill them? That was his instinct -- stop the murderers in democratic guise right now. Crush them like worms in their tracks. But if he did that, would other enemies come forth to destroy Socrates, to insure that he met his appointed fate, whatever the efforts of Alcibiades or anyone else? But what was the truly intended fate of Socrates -- of Alcibiades, of any human being -- and who or what intended it? In a world in which travel through time could reverse death, fate seemed deprived of its very power. And if Alcibiades did crush those demagogues who would draw forth the enmity against Socrates, he might be removing the very reason Ampharete had come back here in the first place, the very reason Heron had saved him -- to help rescue Socrates, to convince him to accept Andros' offer, after Socrates had been convicted and sentenced to death. If there were no trial, there would be none of that ... no one to save Alcibiades from that first wave of killers.
It seemed he had no choice but let events take their course -- if not their natural course, the course that perhaps he had helped set into motion. He had always agreed with Pythagoras on the supremacy and independence of the human soul. But it seemed that the free soul met its match in the labyrinth of time travel.
* * *
The air was saltier than usual today, about six months after Jonah the traveler had taken his leave. Alcibiades breathed in deeply, as he walked towards the marketplace in Athens. It was not a good idea, he knew, to be in so public a place in full daylight -- even with the Thirty gone. He recalled his conversations with Heron, never far from his thoughts. Alcibiades was a dead man, as far as history knew. The dead were obliged to tread lightly in the sunlit world.
But Alcibiades wanted to be outdoors today, among people. He would try to stay anonymous in the crowd. The challenge excited him.
He closed his eyes as he walked, and enjoyed the air even more. He felt as if he were on the sea, or breathing in the scent of Aphrodite and Ampharete....
He arrived at the marketplace -- the agora of Athens. As always, the place was filled with people of all shapes and sizes. Alcibiades smiled. He always felt good here. Fortunately, there was no one who looked familiar.
He had a craving for figs, which he satisfied at a little stall. He bought four, with money he had retrieved from friends since his return to Athens. He walked off, a little to the side. He leaned against a wall, and bit into the sticky fruit. He explored the sweet pulp with his tongue, teased it with his teeth, then consumed the fig whole. He did this four times, with his eyes closed and the tangy air in his nostrils. He thought of her each time....
Alcibiades opened his eyes, and started leaving the market, in favor of one of his secret places on the road.
He spotted a pair of men slowly walking towards him in the distance. They were young men, not much older than boys.
Alcibiades squinted. When he was sure who they were, he turned around, so he could decide what to do without being seen.
One of those men was Plato.
* * *
Alcibiades' thoughts spun like foam in a sea squall. Here was Plato -- responsible for what the world would know of Socrates, according to Alcibiades' informants from the future. Accounts by Xenophon and Aristophanes would survive, but none of the others that Alcibiades knew. And that horse-fancier and that playwright would be minor contributors to the world's knowledge of Socrates. It would all be Plato, the sycophant.
Alcibiades could stop that, end that, right now. He could kill Plato, and most of his damnable dialogs would never be written...
He heard the hounds of paradox baying in some corner of his brain.... Without Plato as Socrates' Homer, who would know about Socrates in the future? Who would care enough about him to want to do anything to stop his death? Would Xenophon and Aristophanes be enough?
Would any of that be enough to get Heron on his way to Alcibiades' bed in the night in Phrygia?
Of course, there was another way of depriving Plato of the last word about Socrates. If Socrates lived, then Plato's accounts would play a different role.... Maybe Alcibiades could even prevail upon Socrates to commit some of his thoughts to writing. His mentor was not illiterate, after all, though Alcibiades had heard him say many times that he disliked writing, that it brought no good to the world....
As for Plato, murder was not the only way to control him. Indeed, it was a clumsy way, even with no paradoxes of time. There were better methods, which might even be able to turn this boy into an ally...
Alcibiades stepped into the shadows, so Plato could not see him. Plato and his friend passed by, oblivious to the near-death that stared at them from just a few feet away. Alcibiades shuddered, and marveled again at the shackles of time travel. Did he have any choice about anything at all now, or was he ineluctably funneled by Ampharete and Heron into the prison that held Socrates?
His one consolation, when he thought of Ampharete and Heron and Jonah, was that none of them seemed to have free choice in this, either.
* * *
Alcibiades put the months that followed to use. If he was to be be at Socrates' side at the time of his mentor's greatest need, he might as well fortify his hand. He could not rely on that mysterious Andros, any more than he could rely on the unseen Thomas, or even Jonah. Even if some force of the universe, partly of human creation, had obligated him to save Socrates, and perhaps Ampharete as well, Alcibiades would depend on himself and what he could bring to that prison.
He quietly began recruiting a small but deadly cohort. A slim majority of 500 had sentenced Socrates to death, according to Jonah, but far fewer would be guarding him. A dozen men, well armed and instructed, could carry Socrates to safety, regardless of what he wanted.
There were many, Alcibiades knew, who remained disaffected from the restored Athenian democracy -- a mob that ruled, even though it was preferable to the haughty Thirty. From those disaffected, Alcibiades -- once a general, always an inspiring leader -- raised his small, loyal cadre...
Of the house that contained the chair, Alcibiades saw less and less. The mechanics as well as the paradox of time travel receded, its headache mut
ed, as he focused on the practical matters at hand....
Until, one day, he saw Ampharete walking in the agora.
* * *
"I hesitated to smile at you," he said, after they had clasped hands, and set forth towards Piraeus. "I was afraid that perhaps we had not yet met, that you were a younger version of yourself..." He felt surprisingly awkward. It was this time travel...
"Do I look younger than the last time?" she asked.
"You only look beautiful."
Ampharete smiled. "Take me someplace private, and I will show you how well I remember our first meeting."
* * *
They stopped well before Piraeus, at an outcropping of stone, surrounded by soft, green grass. Alcibiades took her down by the sea. He had been here before, decades earlier. The sand looked like it had been trodden only by wind and water since.
He scooped her up in his arms, so she sat against his palms, and her legs wrapped around his waist. He saw the sky against the sea, the keen blue on blue, then he closed his eyes to that and everything except Ampharete...
"You were gone a long time," he said, hoarsely, later, as they lay spent, content, like shells in the ebb tide.
"It was not as long for me," Ampharete murmured.
Alcibiades rolled on to his back, and looked up at the uncluttered blue. "This time travel tests the very limits of my comprehension."
Ampharete put her head on his chest.
"I met your friend Jonah," Alcibiades said.
She lifted her head. "How is he?"
"You are in his deepest heart."
"I am glad he is well."
"Is he in yours?"
"I care for him."
Alcibiades ran his hand through her hair.
"Did you meet anyone else of interest back here while I was away?" Ampharete asked.
"I saw Plato," Alcibiades replied.
"Does he love you?"
Alcibiades laughed. "I doubt he loves anyone." He stopped laughing. "We did not speak. I merely watched him.... I almost killed him."
Ampharete sat up and looked into Alcibiades' eyes. "You must not do that -- ever."
Alcibiades pulled her close to him, turned her face to him and kissed her forehead. "Jonah told me that you will be put to death sometime in the future, in the throes of this Roman Empire, in a city called Alexandria, named after the student of the student of Plato. I would gladly kill him to prevent that."
She touched his chest. "Where will you be ... in this future, where I am killed?"
"He did not say."
Ampharete brushed her lips on Alcibiades' chest, cupped his face in her hand. "Everything is different, because of you. The moment you were saved, the instant we stopped those murderers in Phrygia, everything changed. We may not have seen it, at first. But every breath that you have taken since then has made the air just a little bit different ... every person who has seen you, even for an instant, is different. Before we saved you, history -- your future, my past -- was what it was. Now, nothing is certain, and everything is possible."
"You are not disturbed by what Jonah told me?"
"I am saying that something, anything, you might do in an hour, a year, from now could change that ... and without your killing anyone."
"Yet you and Heron saved me, knowing that it would unhinge history. Heron did it because he wanted my help with Socrates. Presumably he thought that benefit was worth the risk. And you..."
"I came back to Phrygia in search of Thomas," Ampharete said. "Jonah had told me that you were a key."
Alcibiades nodded. "He told you this in your land across the ocean?"
"Yes," Ampharete replied. "And I know Jonah was doing his mentor's bidding.... You were an experiment for Heron. I am somehow part of that. You and I are still an experiment for him."
"And if he is not happy with the results? He would kill us? Do you suppose a later version of Heron was somehow responsible for that second attack? That he sent back that second group of soldiers from the future to correct what his first guards had done ... and erase something I will do tomorrow, next year, or when Socrates is in prison?"
"Possibly," Ampharete replied. "But Heron did a good job of almost being slaughtered by that second group ... It did not feel to me that he was acting."
"Would his earlier self be in position to know that -- know that his later self had sent back a second group of assassins to undo what his earlier self was trying to accomplish?"
"No...," Ampharete conceded. "But his later self would have needed to have instructed those second assassins not to kill the earlier Heron, which would have erased the mission at the instant the younger Heron died, pitching the mission and everyone involved into paradox … It all happened very fast, but it did not seem to me as if those assassins were in any way shielding Heron."
"I suppose that is so. But since Heron in fact survived, does not that still leave open the possibility that his later self sent back the second group of killers?" Alcibiades shook his head in frustration and exhaled slowly. "It seems to me that this time travel can falsify anything, everything -- nothing is real, nothing is reliable, logic turns against itself in a world in which the causes of things can be pulled up like turnips and tossed away..."
* * *
The two were together for three days. Alcibiades woke on the fourth morning and found Ampharete pacing in the inner courtyard of their hiding place. A Molossian puppy was asleep in a corner.
Ampharete smiled at Alcibiades. "I bought him for you in the agora this morning."
"I used to have one."
"I know." She reached into her pocket, and withdrew a wafer-thin device. "And this I brought from my own time to help me translate my language into yours, and your a language into mine, so I could converse more effectively here .... It would work just as well for you."
She placed the wafer into Alcibiades' hand. "See? You press this little picture, and say a word, in your language. The device will say the word, in my language."
Alcibiades pressed the picture. He said the word "polis". The device spoke up: "city".
"And it works in reverse," Ampharete said. "To go from my language to your language, you just press this other little picture, here, and say a word in my language." She pressed the picture, and said "skill". The device responded: "techne". She pressed the device again. "And look at this -- when you become proficient in a new language, you can use this part to learn how to speak in regional tongues."
"You mean the way Greek is spoken slightly differently in cities far away?"
"Yes. So if someone comes back here and speaks a strange version of my language, you may be able to comprehend it."
Alcibiades looked at the device, then placed it against his chest. "Thank you. I will be very careful with this gift...." He caressed her face. "Do not go."
"I do not want to."
"But that is what you are planning. That is why you gave me this gift."
Ampharete was silent.
Alcibiades shook his head slowly.
Ampharete spoke. "I want to forget about Socrates, forget about Heron, forget about everyone other than you -- but they will not forget about us. Whoever sent that second group of killers on the other side of the Aegean can find us here. I do not want you to have cheated death, only to have death take you after all."
"I will not let that happen--"
"You cannot stop it. You can stop killers, but you cannot stop the cosmos from sending more killers. The only way forward for us now is to proceed with Heron's plan -- or whoever's plan it really is." Ampharete grasped Alcibiades' hand. "We will meet on the night of Socrates' presumed suicide--"
"No--"
"Listen to me," Ampharete said. "You have already changed history, are changing history, by being here -- that is dangerous enough. We cannot let emotions rule us!"
"Emotions have nothing to do with this."
Ampharete started to reply, and stopped.
"Logic is my guide in this," Alcibiades said. "The chariots of
our lives are running out of control -- I suspect it cannot be otherwise when the roads they traverse are made of minutes and centuries. We can be sure of almost nothing in that quickness. But we can know ourselves, and, if we stay close, we can know each other. We at least can rely on that."
Ampharete put up a hand to stop Alcibiades from talking and strode out of the dwelling.
Alcibiades was not sure if she knew how to get to the chair from this place--
Ampharete burst back into the room. Her face was slick with tears. She flung her arms around Alcibiades and kissed his lips, repeatedly.
"I will stay," she finally said. For now, she thought, shakily.
* * *
One day, Alcibiades realized it had been exactly one year; it was the anniversary of his "death". It was a cold day. There was ugly rain in the sky.
Ampharete was napping. Alcibiades looked at her, and thought, you are the brightest thing in the world today.
He trudged to the house with the chair. He felt drawn to it on this strange anniversary, really the birthday of his rescued life. The dwelling looked even more desolate than usual. Good, that was its best protection from intruders....
But as he approached the door, he sensed activity within.
He held back, quivering, waiting for the noise to stop. Someone was coming in the chair. Jonah, Heron, who?
He heard nothing. Only the throbbing in his ears.
That was helpful. No noise was good. It meant he could enter.
He opened the door.
Someone was in the chair.
Socrates--
Chapter Seven
[New York City, 2042 AD]
Thomas O'Leary walked up to William Henry Appleton in front of the Millennium Club in Manhattan. It was the middle of the twenty-first century, and it was pouring ice-cold April rain.
Thomas shook the water off of his partially wrecked, spider-strand umbrella.
Appleton chuckled. "One thing we'll never learn, regardless of how far we progress, is how to construct a workable umbrella ... Isn't that right, Thomas?"
Thomas grumbled agreement and pushed open the door.
Mr. Bertram, one of the Club's librarians, was just leaving through the vestibule. "Are you gentlemen here for lunch?" he inquired pleasantly.
The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1) Page 17