The Dancer from Atlantis

IX

Aegeus, King of the Athenians, had been a strong man. Age whitened his hair and beard, shrank the muscles around the big bones, dimmed his eyes, knotted his fingers with arthritis. But still he sat his throne in dignity; and when he handled the twin hemispheres of the mentator, he showed no fear.

The slave who had learned, Keftiu from it groveled on the rush-strewn clay floor. He could not speak his new language clearly, his mouth being torn and puffed from the blow of a spearbutt that overcame his first struggling, screaming terror. The warriors—Aegeus’ guards and chance visitors, about fifty altogether—stood firm; but many a tongue was moistening lips, many an eyeball rolled beneath a sweaty brow. Servants and women cowered back against the walls. The dogs, giant mastiffs and wolfhounds, sensed fear and growled.

“This is a mighty gift,” the king said

“We hope it will be of service, my lord,” Reid answered.

“It will. But the power in it is more: a guardian, an omen. Let these helmets be kept in the Python shrine. Ten days hence, let there be a sacrifice of dedication, and three days of feasting and games. As for these four who have brought the gift, know every man that they are royal guests. Let them be given suitable quarters, raiment, comely women, and whatever else they may lack. Let all pay them honor.”

Aegeus leaned forward on the lionskin that covered his marble throne. Peering to see the newcomers better, he finished less solemnly. “You must be wearied. Would you not like to be shown your rooms, be washed, take refreshment and rest? This evening we shall dine with you and hear your stories in fullness.”

His son Theseus, who occupied a lower seat on his right, nodded. “So be it,” he ordered. Otherwise the prince’s countenance remained unmoving, his gaze wary.

A slave chamberlain took over. As his party was led from the hall, Reid had a chance to look around more closely than hitherto. Athens, smaller, poorer, further from civilization, did not boast the stone architecture of a Mycenae or Tiryns. The royal palace on the heights of the Acropolis was wood. But those were enormous timbers, in this age before the deforestation of Greece. Massive columns upheld beams and rafters down a length of easily a hundred feet. Windows, their shutters now open, admitted some daylight from a clerestory, as did the smokehole in the shake roof. But it was gloomy in here; shields and weapons hung behind the benches already threw back the glimmer of stone lamps. Yet furs, tapestries, gold and silver vessels made a rude magnificence.

Three wings ran from the hall. One was for utility and servitors’ quarters, one for the royal family and its permanent freeborn attendants, one for guests. The rooms, fronting on a corridor, were cubicles, their doorways closed merely by drapes. However, those drapes were thick and lavishly patterned; the plaster walls were ornamented with more tapestries; the bedsteads were heaped with sheep-skins and furs above the straw; next to rhytons stood generous containers of wine as well as water; and in each compartment a girl made timid obeisance.

Oleg clapped his hand. “Oh, ho!” he chortled. “I like this place!”

“If we never get back,” Uldin agreed, “we could do far worse than become Aegeus’ men.”

The chamberlain indicated a room for Erissa. “Uh, she and I are together,” Reid said. “One servant will be ample.”

The other man leered. “You get one apiece, master. So ‘twas commanded. They can share the extra room. We’ve not much company, what with harvest season ashore and fall weather afloat.” He was a bald-headed Illyrian with the perkiness of any old retainer.—No, Reid thought suddenly. He’s a slave.

He behaves like a lifer who’s at last become a trusty in his prison.

The girls said they would fetch the promised garments. Was food desired? Did our lord and lady wish to be taken to the bathhouse, scrubbed, massaged, and rubbed with olive oil by their humble attendants?

“Later,” Erissa said. “In time to have us ready for the king’s feast—and the queen’s,” she added, for Achaean women did not dine formally with men. “First we would rest.”

When she and Reid were alone, she laid arms around him, cheek against his shoulder, and whispered forlornly, “What can we do?”

“I don’t know,” he replied into the sunny odor of her hair. “So far we’ve had scant choice, haven’t we? We may end our days here. As our friends said, there are worse fates.”

Her clasp tightened till the nails dug into his back. “You can’t mean that. These are the folk who burned—who will burn Knossos and end the peace of the Minos so they can be free to go pirating!”

He didn’t answer directly, for he was thinking: That’s how she looks at it. Me, I don’t know. They’re rough, the Achaeans, but aren’t they open and upright in their fashion? And what about those human victims for the Minotaur?

Aloud he said, “Well, if nothing else, I can arrange your passage to Keftiu territory.”

“Without you?” She drew apart from him. Strangeness rose in her voice. Her look caught his and would not let go. “It will not be, Duncan. You will fare to Atlantis, and love me, and in Knossos you will beget our son. Afterward—”

“Hush!” Alarmed, he laid a hand across her mouth. Diores, at least, was probably quite capable of planting spies on the king’s mysterious visitors, the more so when one of them was a Cretan of rank. And the door drape wasn’t soundproof. Too late, Reid regretted not using the mentator to give his party a language unknown here. Hunnish or Old Russian would have done quite well.

But in the desert they’d been too distracted to foresee a need; and maybe Diores would have forbidden magic on his ship; yes, doubtless he would have, if only to prevent those whom he was suspicious of from gaining that advantage.

“These are, uh, matters too sacred to speak of here,” Reid said. “Let’s seek a private place later.”

Erissa nodded. “Yes. I understand. Soon.” Her lips writhed. She blinked hard. “Too soon. However long our fate will be in taking us, it will be too soon." Drawing him toward the bed: “You are not overwearied, are you? This while that we have together?”

The slave who brought them breakfast in the morning, leftovers from last night’s roast ox, announced, “Prince Theseus asks the pleasure of my lord’s company. My lady is invited to spend the day with the queen and her girls:’ She had an accent; what homeland did she yearn for?

Erissa wrinkled her nose at Reid. She was in for a dull time, even if the girls were from noble families, learning housewifery as attendants on Aegeus’ consort. (She was his fourth in succession but would doubtless outlive him, he being too old to bring her to her grave of a dozen children beginning when she was fifteen.) Reid signed her to accept. Why give needless offense to touchy hosts?

The tunic, cloak, sandals, and Phrygian cap he donned were presents from Theseus’ wardrobe. Tall though the Achaeans were, few reached the six feet common in Reid’s well-nourished milieu. The prince actually topped the American by a couple of inches. The latter had been surprised at the degree of surprise this caused him, till he tracked down the reason: Mary Renault’s fine novels; which described Theseus as a short—man. Well, she’d made—would make—a logical interpretation of the legend; but how much of the legend would reflect truth? For that matter, had this Aegeus and Theseus any identity with the father and son of the tradition?

They must, Reid thought hopelessly. Their names are associated with the fall of Knossos and the conquest of Crete. And Knossos will fall. Crete will be overrun, in our very near future, when Atlantis goes down.

The bronze sword he hung at his waist was from Aegeus, leaf-shaped, well-balanced, lovely and deadly. He could not fault the royal pair for stinginess.

He found Theseus waiting in the hall. Except for slaves tidying up, it, felt cavernously empty and still after last evening’s carousal. (Torch-flare; fire roaring on a central hearthstone less loudly than the chants, footstampings, lyres and syrinxes and drums, shouts and brags that filled the smoky air; dogs snapping after bones flung them off trestle tables; servants scurrying to keep the winecups filled; and through it all, Theseus seated impassive, quietly questioning the strangers.) “Rejoice, my lord,” Reid greeted.

“Rejoice.” The prince lifted a muscle-corded arm. “I thought you might like to be shown our countryside”

“You are most kind, my lord. Ah ... my friends—?”

“My captain Diores is taking the warriors Uldin and Oleg to his estate. He’s promised them horses, and they in turn have promised to show the use of that saddle with footrests which Uldin brought.”

And he’ll pump them, Reid reflected, and he’ll try to split them off from Erissa and me.... Stirrups weren’t invented till millennia after this, were they? I read that somewhere. They were what made heavy cavalry possible. Suppose they catch on, here and now—what then?

Can time be changed? Does Erissa’s Thalassocracy have to die? Must I really leave her, in an eerie kind of incest, for her younger self?

If not ... will the future grow into a different shape from what I knew? Will my Pamela ever be born? Will I?

He tried to summon his wife’s image and found that harder to do than it should have, been, these few days after he was lost from her.

Theseus said, “Come,” and led the way outside. He was broad in proportion to his height, but he walked lightly. Fair-skinned, tawny of hair and beard, his blunt-nosed, full-lipped features were handsome. The eyes were remarkable, set well apart and of an amber hue, leonine eyes. For the outing he had exchanged his gaudily embroidered festive garments for plain gray wool. He kept his golden head-band, though, the golden brooch at his throat and bracelet on his thick wrist.

While the wind was brisk outdoors, it was not yet an autumn gale, and the clouds it sent scudding were white. Their shadows swept over a huge landscape, mountains to north and northwest, the Saronic Gulf to the south and west. Across those few miles, against blue-green white-caps, Reid made out a cluster he could recognize as boat-houses and beached ships at the Piraeus. A dirt road from there to here cut a brown streak through stubblefields and dusty-green olive orchards. The whole Attic plain was similarly dappled with agriculture. At a distance he noticed two large houses and their outbuildings that must belong to wealthy men, and numerous smallholder cottages. Groves of oak or poplar usually surrounded them. The mountains were densely forested. This was not his Greece.

He noticed how full of birds the sky was. Most he couldn’t name except in general terms, different kinds of thrush, dove, duck, heron, hawk, swan, crow. Thus far men hadn’t ruined nature. Sparrows hopped among the: courtyard cobblestones. Besides dogs, the animals were absent that would have wandered around a farm, swine, donkeys, sheep, goats, cows, chickens, geese. But workers bustled among the buildings which defined the enclosure. A household this big required plenty of labor, cleaning, cooking, milling, baking, brewing, spinning, weaving, endlessly. Most of the staff were women, and most had young children near their bare feet or clinging to their worn shifts: the next generation of slaves. However, several industries were carried on by men. Through open shed doors, Reid glimpsed in action a smithy, a ropewalk, a tannery, a potter’s wheel, a carpenter shop.

“Are these all slaves, my lord?” he asked.

“Not all,” Theseus said. “Particularly, it’s not wise to keep many unfree males about. We hire them, mostly Athenians, a few skilled foreigners?’ He grinned, his grin that never seemed to reach deeper than his teeth. “They’re encouraged to breed brats on our bondwomen. Thus everyone’s happy.”

Except maybe the bondwomen, Reid thought, the more so when their boys are sold away.

Theseus scowled. “We have to keep a Cretan clerk. No need; we’ve men who can write, aye, men whose forebears taught the Cretans to write! But the Minos requires it of us.”

To keep track of income and outgo, Reid deduced, partly for purposes of assessing tribute, partly for indications of what the Athenians may be up to. Say, what’s this about the Achaeans being literate before the Minoans were? That doesn’t make sense.

Theseus halted his complaint before he should grow in-discreet. “I thought we’d drive out to my own farmstead,” he suggested. “You can see a good bit on the way, and for myself I want to make sure the threshing and storing are well in hand.”

“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. Note 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 Longtail 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 clung 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 bow-staves.”

“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 looked 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 happen-stance? 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 unthink-able 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 Midworid 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 wallpaper 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 day 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 underking, 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?

“What are your plans, my lord?” he felt he might ask.

Heavy shoulders rose and fell beneath the tossing cloak. “To do what seems best. I’ll tell you this, Duncan: I’m not ignorant of what goes on in the Thalassocracy. I’ve been there. And not only as a royal visitor, fed buttered words and shown what the courtiers want me to see. No, I’ve fared under different names as trader or deckhand. I’ve looked, listened, met people, learned.”

Again Theseus turned to regard Reid with those disturb—_ ing eyes. “Mind you,” he said, “I’ve spoken no dangerous word today. They know in Knossos we’re restless on the mainland. They know, too, as long as their warships outnumber those that they let all the Achaeans together keep, they’re safe. So they don’t mind if we grumble. They’ll even throw us a bone now and then, since we do provide them trade and tribute and a buffer against the mountaineers. I’ve told you nothing that the Cretan resident and his clerk in the palace haven’t often heard—nothing I didn’t say to the Minos’ own first minister, that time I paid my official visit to Knossos.”

“I’d not denounce you, surely, my lord,” Reid answered, wishing he were more of a diplomat.

“You’re something new in the game,” Theseus growled. “Your powers, your knowledge, whatever destiny hovers above you—who knows? At least I want you to have the truth.”

The truth as you see it, Reid thought. Which is not the truth Erissa sees. Me, I’m still a blind man.

“I fret over what your Cretan leman may whisper to you,” Theseus said. “Or do to you by her arts. Diores warns me she’s a weird creature, closer than most to the All-Mother.”

“I ... did not know ... you worshipped her Goddess, my lord.”

Like sundown in a desert, the hardheaded statecraft dropped from Theseus, primitive dread fell upon him, and he whispered, “She is very mighty, very old. Could I but find an oracle to tell me She’s only the wife of Father Zeus—Hoy!” he yelled to his horses, and cracked the whip across them. “Get going there!” The chariot rocked.