by Anthology
I turned away from him, and he thought I was going to travel out. “Don’t,” he said. “Dave, try to understand. I’m scared of this.”
“I know,” I said.
“Good. I need you to know.”
We passed ourselves off as traveling law-givers. We moved among the Hellenic troops, wishing them well, assuring them that Hellas would never forget them. We first glimpsed Leonidas sitting with his captains around a campfire.
People accustomed to modern security precautions would be amazed at how easy it was to approach him. He accepted our good wishes and observed that, considering our physical size, we would both have made excellent soldiers had we chosen that line of work. In fact, both Shel and I towered over him.
He had dark eyes and was only in his thirties. He brimmed with confidence, as did his men. There was no sense here of a doomed force.
He knew about the road that circled behind the pass, and he had already dispatched troops to cover it. The Phoecians, as I recalled. Who would run at the first onset.
He invited us to share a meal. This was the third day of the standoff, before any blood had yet been spilt. We talked with him about Sparta’s system of balancing the executive by crowning two kings. And whether democracy would really work in the long run. He thought not. “Athens cannot stay the course,” he said. “They have no discipline, and their philosophers encourage them to put themselves before their country. God help us if the poison ever spreads to us.” Later, over wine, he asked where we were from, explaining that he could not place the accent.
“America,” I said.
He shook his head. “It must be far to the north. Or very small.”
We each posed with Leonidas, and took pictures, explaining that it was a ritual that would allow us to share his courage. Sparks crackled up from the campfires, and the soldiers talked about home and the future.
Later, I traded a gold coin to one of the Thespian archers for an arrow. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Shel said. “He may need the arrow before he’s done.”
I knew better. “One arrow more or less will make no difference. When the crunch comes, the Thespians will refuse to leave their Spartan allies. They’ll die, too. All fifteen hundred of them.”
And history will remember only the Spartans.
We watched them, exercising and playing games in full view of their Persian enemies. Shel turned to me, and his face was cold and hard. “You know, David,” he said, “you are a monster.”
5
Saturday, November 26, Mid-afternoon.
“This is not just heavy fog,” she said. “It’s midnight out there.” Helen bit down on a grape.
I sat staring at the window, wondering what lay across Carmichael Drive.
She was lovely in the candlelight. “My guess is that a volcano erupted somewhere,” she said. “I know that sounds crazy in South Jersey, but it’s all I can think of.” She was close to me. Warm and vulnerable and open. I reached out and touched her hair. Stroked it. She did not draw away. “I’m glad I was here when it happened, Dave. Whatever it is that’s happened.”
“So am I,” I said.
She smiled appreciatively. And after a moment: “So what do you think?”
I took a deep breath. “I think I know what it is.”
“I’m listening.”
“Helen, there’s a lot about Shel you don’t know. To put it mildly.” Her eyes widened. “Not other women,” I added hurriedly. “Or anything like that.”
That’s not the kind of statement, I suppose, that gets any kind of reaction. Helen just froze in place. “I mean it,” I said. “He has a working time machine.” I was speaking of him in the present tense. With Shel it gets sort of confused.
“I could almost believe it,” she said after a moment.
I’d been debating whether to destroy my own unit. It would have been the rational thing to do, and the day after Shel’s death I’d even gone down to the river with it. But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to throw it into the water. Next week, I’d thought. There’s plenty of time. “Here,” I said. “I’ll show you one.” I took it out of the desk and handed it to her. It looks like an oversized watch. “You just strap it on, connect it to the power pack, here. Set the destination, and punch the stem.”
She looked at it curiously. “What is it really, Dave? A notebook TV?”
“Hell with this,” I said. I have to keep my weight down. Three miles a day, every day. Other people walk around the block, or go down to a park. I like Ambrose, Ohio, near the beginning of the century. It’s a pleasant little town with tree-lined streets and white picket fences, where straw hats are in vogue for the men, and bright ribbons for the ladies. Down at the barber’s shop, the talk is mostly about the canal they’re going to build through Panama.
I pulled Helen close, brought up Ambrose’s coordinates, and told her to brace herself. “The sensation’s a little odd at first. But it only lasts a few seconds. And I’ll be with you.”
The living room froze. She stiffened.
The walls and furniture faded to a green landscape with broad lawns and shingled houses and gas street lamps.
When we came out of it, she backed into me. “What happened?” she asked, looking wildly around.
“We’ve just gone upstream. Into the past. It’s 1905. Theodore Roosevelt is President.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Birds sang, and in the distance we could hear the clean bang of church bells. We were standing outside a general store. About a block away there was a railroad siding.
The wind blew against us.
Her breathing had gone somewhat irregular. “It’s okay,” I said. “It just takes a little getting used to.”
It was late September. People were working in yards, talking over back fences. “We’re really here, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “We are.”
“My God.” She took a long, deep breath. The air smelled of burning leaves. I saw hurt come into her eyes. “Why didn’t he ever say anything?”
“He kept it a secret for twenty years, Helen. It was habitual with him. He wanted to tell you, and he would have got around to it in his own good time.” I shrugged. “Anyway, no one else knows. And no one should. I’ll deny this whole thing if anyone ever asks.”
She nodded. “Is this,” lifting a hand in the general direction of the town, “connected with the problem at home? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“I think so.” Cabbage was cooking somewhere. I told her about Shel, how he had died but was still alive. Her color changed and she moved closer to me. When I’d finished, she only stared straight ahead.
“He’s still alive,” she said at last.
In a way, he’ll always be alive. “Yes,” I said. “He’s still out there.” I explained about the funeral, and how he had reacted.
I could see her struggling to grasp the idea, and to control her anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know how,” I said numbly.
“You can take us back, right?”
“Home? Yes.”
“And where else?”
“Anywhere. Well there are range limits, but nothing you’d care about.”
A couple of kids with baseball gloves hurried past. “What you’re saying,” she said, “is that Shel should go back and walk into that fire. And if he doesn’t, the black fog will not go away. Right? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s what I think. Yes, Helen, that’s what he should do.”
“But he’s said he would do that? Right? And by the crazy logic of this business, it shouldn’t matter when.”
“But something’s wrong. I think he never did go back. Never will go back. And I think that’s the problem.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she said.
“I know.” I watched a man with a handcart moving along the street, selling pickles and relishes. “I don’t either. But there’s a continuity. A track. Time flows along
the track.” I squeezed her hand. “We’ve torn out a piece of it.”
“And—?”
“I think the locomotive went into the river.”
She tried to digest that. “Okay,” she said. “Grant the time machine. Dave, what you’re asking him to do is unreasonable. I wouldn’t go back either to get hit in the head and thrown into a fire. Would you?”
I got up. “Helen, what you or I would do doesn’t matter much. I know this sounds cold, but I think we have to find a way to get Shel where he belongs.”
She stood up, and looked west out of town. The fields were brown, dried out from the summer heat. “You know where to find him?”
“Yes.”
“Will you take me to him?”
“Yes.” And, after a pause: “Will you help me?”
She stared at the quiet little buildings. White clapboard houses. A carriage pulled by two horses just coming around a corner. “Nineteen-five,” she said. “Shaw’s just getting started.”
I didn’t push. I probably didn’t need her to plead with him. Maybe just seeing her would jar something loose. And I knew where I wanted to confront him. At the one event in all of human history that might flay his conscience. “Let’s go home,” I said. “We need to do some sewing.”
“Why?”
“You’re going to need a costume.”
She looked at me and her eyes were hooded. “Why don’t we just shoot him?” she said. “And drag him back?”
“It seems that what you are really asking, Simmias, is whether death annihilates the soul?” Socrates looked from one to another of his friends.
The one who had put the question was, like most of the others, young and clear-eyed, but subdued in the shadow of the prison house. “It is an important matter,” he said. “There is none of more importance. But we were reluctant—” He hesitated, his voice caught, and he could go no farther.
“I understand,” said Socrates. “You fear this is an indelicate moment to raise such an issue. But if you would discuss it with me, we cannot very well postpone it, can we?”
“No, Socrates,” said a thin young man with red hair. “Unfortunately, we cannot.” This, I knew, was Crito.
Despite Plato’s account, the final conversation between Socrates and his disciples did not take place in his cell. It might well have begun there, but they were in a wide, utilitarian meeting room when Helen and I arrived. Several women were present. Socrates, then seventy years old, sat at ease on a wooden chair, while the rest of us gathered around him in a half-circle. To my surprise and disappointment, I did not see Shel.
Socrates was, on first glance, a man of mundane appearance. He was of average height, for the time. He was clean-shaven, and he wore a dull red robe. Only his eyes were extraordinary, conveying the impression that they were lit from within. When they fell curiously on me, as they did from time to time, I imagined that he knew where I had come from, and why I was there.
Beside me, Helen writhed under the impact of conflicting emotions.
She had been ecstatic at the chance to see Shel again, although I knew she had not yet accepted the idea that he was alive. When he did not arrive, she looked at me as if to say she had told me so, and settled back to watch history unfold. She was, I thought, initially disappointed, in that the event seemed to be nothing more than a few people sitting around talking in an uncomfortable room in a prison. As if the scene should somehow be scored and choreographed and played to muffled drums. She had read Plato’s account before we left. I tried to translate for her, but we gave it up. I was just getting in the way of the body language and the voices, which, she said, had a meaning and drama all their own.
“When?” she whispered, after we’d been there almost an hour. “When does it happen?”
“Sunset, I think,” I said.
She made a noise deep in her throat.
“Why do men fear death?” Socrates asked.
“Because,” said Crito, “they believe that it is the end of existence.”
There were almost twenty people present. Most were young, but there was a sprinkling of middle-aged and elderly persons. The most venerable of these looked like Moses, a tall man with a white beard and expressive white eyebrows and a fierce countenance. He gazed intently at Socrates throughout, and periodically nodded when the philosopher hammered home a particularly salient point.
“And do all men fear death?” asked Socrates.
“Most assuredly, Socrates,” said a boy, who could have been no more than eighteen.
Socrates addressed the boy. “Do even the brave fear death, Cebes?”
Cebes thought it over. “I have to think so, Socrates.”
“Why then do the valiant dare death? Is it perhaps because they fear something else even more?”
“The loss of their honor,” said Crito with conviction.
“Thus we are faced with the paradox that even the brave are driven by fear. Can we find no one who can face death with equanimity who is not driven by fear?”
Moses was staring at Helen. I moved protectively closer to her.
“Of all men,” said Crito, “only you seem to show no concern at its approach.”
Socrates smiled. “Of all men,” he said, “only a philosopher can truly face down death. Because he knows quite certainly that the soul will proceed to a better existence. Provided he has maintained a lifelong pursuit of knowledge and virtue, and has not allowed his soul, which is his divine essence, to become entangled in concerns of the body. For when this happens, the soul takes on corporeal characteristics. And when death comes, it cannot escape. This is why cemeteries are restless at night.”
“How can we be sure,” asked a man in a blue toga who had not previously spoken, “that the soul, even if it succeeds in surviving the trauma of death, is not scattered by the first strong wind?”
It was not intended as a serious question, but Socrates saw that it affected the others. So he answered lightly, observing that it would be prudent to die on a calm day, and then undertook a serious response. He asked questions that elicited admissions that the soul was not physical and therefore could not be a composite object. “I think we need not fear that it will come apart,” he said, with a touch of amusement.
One of the jailers lingered in the doorway throughout the long discussion. He seemed worried, and at one point cautioned Socrates against speaking so much, or getting excited. “If you get the heat up,” he said, “the poison will not work well.”
“We would not wish that,” Socrates replied. But he saw the pained expression on the jailer’s face, and I thought he immediately regretted the remark.
Women arrived with lunch, and several stayed, so that the room became more and more crowded. In fact, no doors were locked, and no guards, other than the reluctant jailer, were in evidence. Phaedo, who is the narrator of Plato’s account, was beside me. He told me that the authorities had hoped profoundly that Socrates would run off. “They did everything they could to avoid this,” he said. “There is even a rumor that last night they offered him money and transportation if he would leave.”
Socrates saw us conversing, and he said, “Is there something in my reasoning that disturbs you?”
I’d lost the train of the discussion, but Phaedo said, “Yes, Socrates. However, I hesitate to put my objection to you.”
Socrates turned a skeptical gaze on him. “Truth is what it is. Tell me what concerns you, Phaedo.”
He swallowed to make sure of his voice. “Then let me ask,” he said in a carefully neutral tone, “whether you are being truly objective on this matter. The sun is not far from the horizon and, although it grieves me to say it, were I in your position, I also would argue in favor of immortality.”
“Were you in his position,” said Crito, with a smile, “you would have taken the first ship to Syracuse.” The company laughed, Socrates as heartily as any, and the strain seemed relieved for the moment.
“You are of course correct in asking, Phaedo. Am I seeking truth?
Or trying to convince myself? I can only respond that, if my arguments are valid, then that is good. If they are false, and death does indeed mean annihilation, they nevertheless arm me to withstand its approach. And that too is good.” He looked utterly composed. “If I’m wrong, it’s an error that won’t survive the sunset.”
Simmias was seated immediately to the right of Moses. “I for one am convinced,” he said. “Your arguments do not admit of refutation. And it is a comfort to me to believe that we have it in our power to draw this company together again in some place of the gods’ choosing.”
“Yes,” said Crito. “I agree. And, Socrates, we are fortunate to have you here to explain it to us.”
“Anyone who has thought about these issues, should be able to reach, if not truth, at least a high degree of probability.”
Moses seemed weighed down with the infirmities of age, and with the distress of the present calamity. Still, he continued to glance periodically at Helen. Now, for the first time, he spoke: “I very much fear, Socrates, that within a few hours there will be no one left anywhere in Hellas, or anywhere else for that matter, who will be able to make these matters plain.”
“That’s Shel’s voice,” Helen gasped, straining forward to see better. The light was not good, and he was turned away from us now, his face hidden in the folds of his hood.
Then he turned and looked openly at us. He smiled sadly at her. And his lips formed the English words hello, Helen.
She was getting to her feet.
At that moment, the jailer appeared with the poisoned cup, and the sight of him, and the silver vessel, froze everyone in the chamber. “I hope you understand, Socrates,” he said, “this is not my doing.”
“I know that, Thereus,” said Socrates. “I am not angry with you.”
“They always want to blame me,” Thereus said.
Silence flowed through the chamber.
The jailer laid the cup on the table before him. “It is time,” he said.
The rest of the company, following Helen’s example, got one by one to their feet.