Time Travelers Never Die

by Jack McDevitt

  Two or three letters took issue with her conclusions, and one quibbled with the dates of two of Aeschylus’s plays. As if it mattered.

  Penguin Group wanted a blurb for a Margaret Seaborn book on Archimedes. That would be an easy assignment: Seaborn was always reliable. And the University of Kansas wanted her to speak at their graduation next year.

  Eventually, she worked her way back to the manila envelope, which was sealed with tape. It wasn’t too heavy. Not book-length, at least. She couldn’t find her letter opener—Aspasia was not good at putting things back where they belonged—and eventually she had to get a knife from the kitchen.

  The envelope did indeed contain a manuscript, but it was in Greek. Classical Greek. And the title startled her: Achilles. By Sophocles.

  Someone’s idea of a joke.

  There was an accompanying note. Hand-printed.

  Jan 26, 2019

  Dear Dr. Kephalas:

  We have other ancient manuscripts as well. If you’d like to see more, post an English translation of this one at your Web site. If there’s no response within thirty days, we’ll take what we have elsewhere.

  No signature.

  There was nothing else.

  It was, of course, a hoax. And what a pity. Tempting her with one of the lost plays. If only—

  She looked at the list of characters. There were five: Achilles, the priest Trainor, Polyxena, Paris, and Apollo. And, naturally, a chorus.

  She dropped the note and the manuscript into the trash.

  ASPASIA had an afternoon class. It would require some preparation, and she also had to meet with one of her graduate students. A stack of essays waited in a bookcase.

  She sighed, retrieved them, and started on the first one. It was an analysis of The Odyssey. The student was trying to show it had been created by a woman. And, in any case, by someone other than the author of The Iliad. Nothing new there.

  The second was a commentary on the development of the epic. Its Bronze Age beginnings. Its popularity in the preliterate world. A third essay listed the author’s suggestions for six additional epics to complete the Trojan cycle. Paris makes off with Helen. Agamemnon rallies the troops but has to sacrifice his daughter. And so on.

  She wondered if the lost epics had been as powerful as the two that had survived. Most experts thought not. If they’d been lost, the reasoning went, it was because they deserved to be lost.

  Nonsense.

  How nice it would be to find one of the other works in the cycle. Perhaps stashed in a trunk in an attic in Athens. Or maybe it would come in the mail.

  Like Sophocles.

  The trash can stood beside the computer table. She looked at it. Allowed her irritation free rein. That someone would play this kind of joke.

  She fished the manuscript out.

  By Sophocles.

  Scene one was set in the chapel of Apollo.

  The chapel would have been located outside the walls of Troy so that soldiers from both sides could worship there. One version of the story maintained that Achilles had violated the chapel by killing the young Troilus within its walls.

  In the play, it is early evening, and Achilles stands with the Greek priest Trainor just outside the chapel door, reluctant to enter because of his crime, wishing there were a way to appease the god, when he sees the beautiful Polyxena. “Who is she?” he asks Trainor.

  “The daughter of Priam,” he replies. “She comes here every evening now. To pray for an end to the conflict.”

  Achilles remarks that those prayers are probably in vain. But, in the manner of classical drama, he is hopelessly in love with Polyxena from the first moment. When he approaches her, however, she asks, “Are you not Achilles, destroyer of my people?”

  It’s not a good start for a romance. But the hero is smitten with her. And of course no one could accuse Achilles of being shy. In a moving scene on the edge of the Trojan plain, he wins her love.

  Polyxena sees an opportunity to use her influence with him to stop the war. But she blunders by taking her brother Paris into her confidence. And Paris sees an opportunity to take Achilles out of play. “I must talk with him,” says Paris. “Can you have him meet me in the chapel?”

  Polyxena assures him she can manage it. When she exits, Paris looks out at the audience. “I would not betray my sister. Nor strike from the dark, which is a coward’s way. Yet it is the only way to bring him down. The Acheans without Achilles would be hawks without talons. They would still bite, but they would draw no blood.” It is a heartbreaking decision.

  Aspasia’s heart was picking up. It might not be Sophocles, but it was surprisingly good.

  Achilles is also weary of the unending war. But he does not trust Paris. “It is the will of the gods,” says Trainor, who shares the general impatience with the fighting. “They have provided a path whereby you might win back the favor of Apollo.”

  Ultimately, Achilles accedes to the rendezvous and enters the chapel. Paris is waiting in the shadows with his bow. And Apollo guides the arrow. Polyxena collapses over the dying Achilles, rages against her brother’s betrayal, and brandishes a dagger. She cradles her lover’s now-lifeless body and raises the weapon. “Let us go together from this dark place,” she tells him.

  Paris, seeing what she is about to do, pleads with her, but she cannot be appeased. She plunges the dagger into her breast and, within moments, Paris follows her lead.

  The narrative, and the staging of the action, is very much in Sophocles’ mode. And the language is classical Greek. Aspasia doubted there were three or four people in the United States who could have gotten the details right. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble.

  SHE called Miles Greenberg, who taught programming. He was an easygoing guy, recently divorced, lonely, but glad to be out of a marriage that had never worked. “Got a problem, Miles.”

  “What do you need, Aspasia?”

  “I have a copy of a play that someone claims was written by Sophocles. Is there some software that can do an analysis?”

  “Of Sophocles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s making the claim?”

  “Don’t know. It’s anonymous.”

  “And you want to do what? Determine whether it might be authentic?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t tell by reading it?”

  “No. It’s not an obvious forgery.”

  “Aspasia, it has to be a fake, doesn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “So it’s in Greek, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “A number of years ago, when they were trying to decide who really wrote Shakespeare, somebody developed a package.”

  “For Shakespeare.”

  “Yes. I don’t know what it looked like. But it would have analyzed the way he used various word combinations. And it would have looked at sentence lengths. And probably the way he punctuated. And other kinds of patterns. Like how many clauses did he use? And under what circumstances? I could track down the package, probably. But then we’d have to adapt it for Greek. Then let it do an analysis of how Sophocles writes.”

  “Okay.”

  “How many of his plays do we have?”

  “Seven.”

  “All right. Maybe it’ll be enough. I’ll get back to you.”

  She was due at school and reluctantly decided to put the issue aside until evening. It is, she told herself, a fake. Don’t get your hopes up. If it weren’t, why on earth would they have sent it anonymously?

  At the end of the day, she got tied up in a faculty meeting. Consequently, it was almost dark before she got home. She came in the door, the place lit up, and she dropped her bag on the nearest chair. She had a message waiting from Miles: “Aspasia, I have the software. Call me when you can.”

  IT was Miles’s busy season, so it was almost a week before they could get together. For Aspasia, it was a difficult time. She read and reread the Achilles. And yes, it did have the power of Sophoclean drama, the c
lassic confrontation in which the moral course is unclear, and any decision might easily prove lethal.

  She wanted this to be what it pretended to be. If she actually held in her hands one of the lost plays, it would give her life a level of meaning for which she could never have hoped. And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.

  The reality was that she could probably have produced a play of this calibre herself. All that was needed was a command of the language and a familiarity with classical dramatic technique. One could not read a work of literature and safely assign greatness to it. That was something that came only with time. With the approbation of generations. All she knew at this point was that the play touched her, that it struck her sensibilities as Antigone had, and Oedipus at Colonus.

  She told herself to relax and tried to forget the manuscript. She made no effort to do an English translation. That would mean she was taking it seriously, and only an idiot would do that.

  Still, emotionally, she moved into that nondescript chapel outside the Trojan wall. She saw it as it would have been, had it existed at all: a modest stone structure with a statue of Apollo near the altar, the whole illuminated by a series of flickering candles or oil lamps. A handful of worshippers would be kneeling before the god, heads bent, praying that they might return from the endless conflict to their families. And in back, hidden among the shadows, would be Paris, waiting with that notched arrow.

  Finally, Miles showed up with the software. It was called Reading the Syntax. It wasn’t the original Shakespearean program, but something more recent that was being used in classrooms in an effort to help students become creative writers. It analyzed their work. “But,” he said, “I can’t see that it won’t be just as effective. And we can adjust it for classical Greek.”

  Miles was in his thirties, with dark hair and good features. His eyebrows were always raised, giving him a permanently surprised look. He was endlessly enthusiastic about computers, and, given the least encouragement, would talk endlessly about the latest technological achievement.

  Aspasia had already scanned the seven extant plays into the computer. Miles sat down and loaded the software. Then he asked some questions about Greek verbs and sentence structure and relative pronouns and so on. He entered her responses, directed it to compare the Achilles to the other seven, and to establish a degree of likelihood that all eight came from the same author. He looked up at her, said “Good luck,” and clicked on START. “Shouldn’t take long,” he said.

  The system hummed and beeped for a minute or so. Then it provided a few bars of Rachmaninoff, signifying that the process was complete.

  PROBABILITY ONE AUTHOR: 87%

  “There you go,” said Miles.

  Oh God, let it be so. “But, if I were trying to imitate Sophocles, I bet I could produce a strong similarity, too.”

  “Maybe,” said Miles. “I don’t know. Not my area of expertise.”

  Yeah. How do you measure genius?

  She looked again at the letter that had accompanied the manuscript: If you’d like to see more . . .

  What else did they have?

  After Miles left, she began translating Achilles into English.

  FOUR days after she’d posted the translation, another package arrived. Again, with no return address. This one mailed from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She had the letter opener ready this time.

  LEONIDAS

  by

  Sophocles

  Again, it was accompanied by an unsigned note:

  February 11

  Dear Dr. Kephalas:

  Are you convinced?

  She turned the manuscript over to Reading the Syntax, which produced almost the same result. PROBABILITY ONE AUTHOR: 86%.

  She went to her Web site. Up front, page one: Leonidas received. Who are you?

  She sat over the computer until well into the evening. She skipped dinner, read the play, which was not about the battle of Thermopylae, but about the Spartan negligence and delay that had preceded it. That had made it necessary to sacrifice three hundred Spartans and their Thespian and Theban allies.

  Sparta had known for a long time that Persia constituted a major threat. But their rulers had not taken it seriously. They’d ignored all evidence that disagreed with their conviction that Xerxes was a coward. That he would not dare attack. Leonidas, despite his exalted position, was unable to move the bureaucrats who effectively ran the country. Even when the threat finally materialized, when the Athenians brought their warnings that the Persians were marching, a religious festival was going on, and they could not react. Dared not offend the gods. Ultimately, the decision was made to send the small force to hold the pass at Thermopylae. Just hold on until the celebration is over.

  The climax depicts an outraged Leonidas buckling on his sword and inviting his colleagues to share in the bloodletting their indolence was about to cause. Nobody makes a move.

  SEVERAL hours after she’d posted her question at the Web site, an answer of sorts was returned:

  We have seven more Sophoclean plays.

  Who are you?

  If we gave you access to the plays, what would you do with them?

  Give them to the world, of course. Make them available to any who want them.

  Do you want them?

  Of course. Do you really have seven more?

  Yes.

  Where did you get them?

  That’s of no consequence.

  How can you say that? It’s essential information.

  It’s of no consequence.

  What’s in it for you?

  You ask a lot of questions. We’ll start by sending you two more. After we see what happens, we’ll decide what to do next.

  THE Homeric Society, consisting of approximately four hundred classical scholars, was concentrated across the Western world. But it had a scattering of members in Japan and China, in Africa, and in the Middle East. Two days after Aspasia’s conversation with her mysterious benefactors, each member received, as an e-mail attachment, copies of the Achilles and the Leonidas.

  A claim has been advanced for the validity of these plays, Aspasia’s note read. I am interested in your opinion.

  Dave was among the scholars receiving the documents. He showed the package to Shel, who glanced over it approvingly. “I guess you were right about her,” he said.

  “I’ve known Aspasia a long time, Shel. She’s cautious, but she’s very good.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Do not think of life as a matter of consequence. Rather, look at the vast voids of the years to come and the years that are past, and recall that your hours are few.

  —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS

  “SO he went to Alexandria,” said Shel.

  “Who knows,” said Dave, “how many places he might have gone to that night?” He was trying to be encouraging. Maybe, somewhere, they could still find him.

  Shel could think of other sites, events, people that would have interested his father. The elder Shelborne had read Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln while Shel was in high school, and had left the volume in conspicuous places around the house to encourage his son to pick it up. Shel had, and he’d read pieces of it, but Lincoln was too far away, and it was too much for him at a time when his primary interests were girls and baseball.

  But it suggested a strategy. It was, in any case, all he had. He and Dave subsequently began showing up at the Lincoln-Douglas debates. They attended the first one, in Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, and each of the other six, which concluded in Alton, October 15, of that same year. Douglas pleaded for an America that would be “the north star that shall guide the friends of freedom,” and that it would do this by maintaining slavery within its borders.

  “I’d love to ask the son of a bitch a few questions,” said Dave.

  “I’m sure you would,” Shel said. “But I thought Mr. Lincoln managed a reasonable response.”

  In the end, of course, the
voters elected Douglas. And if Shel’s father showed up, they never saw him.

  AFTER Lincoln-Douglas, they needed something light, something that came with a party. Consequently, they went to New York on August 15, 1945, V-J Day, where they joined the end-of-war celebration. (Shel had suggested they don military uniforms for the event, but Dave refused. “No. That’s more or less what we did at Selma.” Shel was offended, but he gave in.)

  Unsure how to continue the search, they drifted. They went to concerts by the Kingston Trio. They attended festivals in classical Athens, enthusiastically celebrating the rites of spring, watching the annual petition to Athena, and attending performances of plays not seen in two thousand years.

  They were giddy times.

  And there were more serious moments. On January 10, 49 B.C., when Caesar and his army crossed the Rubicon, Shel and Dave sat in a boat, apparently fishing in the middle of the river. “He never came,” said Dave, as the army ferried itself across.