The Glory That Was

Chapter Sixteen

A sound awakened Knut Bulnes. As he opened his eyes the first thing he saw was a pair of Scythian trousers, surmounted by a Scythian jacket and, above that, the broad face of Roi Diksen.

"Hey, Mr. Bulnes, how'd it go off, huh? I was scared ..."

"Ssst!" said Bulnes, indicating the other sleepers.

"Aw, those dopes don't understand English ..."

"Shut up, O barbarian!" groaned one of Podokles's other guests. "I am fain to sleep."

"We'd better go out," said Bulnes, and shook Flin awake.

They wrapped their himations about them and issued into the street. The sky was pale in the east, though the sun had not yet risen. Bulnes shivered a little in the predawn cold.

Diksen said, "Now what the hell happened? I'm patrolling my beat in the Kerameikos, see, and hear a racket from the Akropolis, and this morning the boys is talking about how the big shot went to the Cave of Apollo and the god shot off a couple of thunderbolts to show he was the real McCoy. I was expecting maybe as how you guys had gotten plugged."

Bulnes told their story.

"The Emp!" exclaimed Diksen. "You know what? He's up to something, I bet."

"Your gift for understatement," said Bulnes, "is magnificent, my dear Roi."

"Oh, but that ain't all! Perikles passed out an order to begin arms inspection for the militia, a tribe at a time. So the whole Erechtheis tribe is gonna parade outside the Dipylon Gate this a.m., two hours after sunrise. He'd have made it earlier only there wouldn't be time to pass the word. Then tomorrow it's the turn of Aigeis."

"Can we watch?" asked Bulnes.

"I dunno why not. Looky, let me catch a little sleep, and I'll meet you out here two hours from now."

"But your lecture appointment!" said Flin.

"You, my dear friend," said Bulnes, "will take care of that."

"But really ... I ought not to take it on impromptu ..."

"Carajo! You helped me prepare the lecture, and you can have the fun of trying to remember the subjunctive aorist of 'to be' for a change."

"Oh, very well," grumbled Flin.

At the appointed time, Bulnes headed for the Dipylon Gate. As he slopped through the dirt he became aware of great numbers of Athenians making in the same direction, armed for battle. Every one of them carried a round shield, of wood and leather with a thin bronze facing, with a big A painted upon it. Each bore a light six-foot pike and wore a crested helmet. Most also wore a cuirass of bronze or of studded leather, a kilt of studded leather straps, and bronze greaves. As the throng tunneled toward the gate, remarks flew:

"Oil Stop pushing!" "Hurry up, Andokides, or I will prick your ..." "What is the meaning of ..." "... so I said, give me a hetaira like Theodote ..." "Where have you been, O Strymon?" "...1 am sure he stole it from the people, but you know juries ..." "Eia, come along ..." "Maybe there will be war after all ..." "... I told him, if you think you can cheat Hegias and get away with my tooth has been driving me ..."

Outside the Dipylon Gate, men were falling into ranks. Scythians were directing spectators to one end of the formation, and Bulnes let himself be shooed along with the rest. From there he could look down the front rank — a somewhat serpentine and irregular one, but brave in bronze and iron. In front of the militiamen stood a small clump of men among whom Bulnes could make out the handsomely bearded figure of Perikles-Vasil with a Corinthian helmet pushed back on his head so that his face showed.

It took the hoplites an interminable time to get squared away, for this force seemed weak in officer organization, and every soldier argued all the time at the top of his lungs. At last they shook down into hundred-man companies. Perikles called, "Attention! Men of the tribe of Erechtheis, stand upright. We will pass among you to see that all weapons and defenses are in good condition."

He began moving slowly toward where Bulnes stood. Bulnes experienced a moment of panic before he remembered that, happily, Perikles had not gotten a good look at his face the night before.

Perikles, followed by the other men of his group, arrived at the hither end of the front rank of the hoplitai. He stood there for a long time, looking down the line and sometimes exchanging a word with the other officials: "Behold those potbellies! We must needs institute some special exercise to reduce them ..."

His manner was that of one who has all the time in the world; or, Bulnes thought, one who was deliberately killing time.

"Let us go, Perikles," said one of the officials at last. "We cannot keep them standing in the sun all morning."

Slowly, perhaps reluctantly, Perikles moved down the line, stopping for a long close look at each militiaman. Bulnes heard him say to the second man in the line, "That cracked old shield will never save you from the spears of the enemy. See that you have a new one at the next muster ..."

"Hey, Mr. Bulnes!" came a stage whisper, and there stood Diksen. "Sorry, but I guess I kinda overslept. How's it going?"

"At this rate, the inspection will take all day."

They watched as the figures of Perikles and his colleagues dwindled with distance and their voices became inaudible.

Then, suddenly, it happened.

Every soldier gave a jerk, a start, or a shudder. Spears toppled right and left as their holders let go of them to turn and stare in amaze at those around them. There was a clatter of shields; men felt their beards, patted their cuirasses. From the armed mass came arising murmur. Bulnes, listening, caught sentences in modern Greek, and some in other languages.

"Pu ime?"

"Christe! Ti ine afto?"

"What's this thing on my head? A cuspidor?"

"I don't get it. I'm punching the cash register in my restaurant, and next minute I'm out here with a manhole cover on my arm ..."

"What am I, a Papal Guard?"

A few, taken by panic, ran off across the plain. The rest babbled questions, louder and louder until the din became deafening. Perikles stepped back from the line and shouted, "All those who understand me, step this way!"

The confusion, however, became more chaotic with each second. A number of men did step toward Perikles, but not, apparently, because they understood his Attic. Instead, they menaced him with their spears and yelled demands for an explanation.

Now the crowd around Bulnes reacted, too. There were murmurs of: "Madness!" "Witchcraft!" "The gods have smitten us!" "They speak in strange tongues!" "Flee for your lives!"

Then, when it looked as though anything might happen, the hoplitai started again and stared around wildly as they had done at the beginning. They began wandering back to their places in line and picking up their discarded equipment, asking each other, "What happened?" "What happened?" '

"Get back in formation!" cried Perikles. "We will carry on the inspection."

And, his companions still following him, he walked back to where he had been at the moment of the outburst and continued down the line. Now, however, he walked rapidly, giving each man scarcely a glance. In a few minutes it was all over. The citizens, dismissed, were streaming back to the city, still asking questions of each other and of passers-by.

"Well," said Diksen, "what do you think of that?"

Bulnes frowned. "It looks to me as though those antennas inside Athene Promachos must control each of these Greeks individually. Each is on a different wave length, as it were. I suppose his people underground have a card file of all the Greeks, and he told them to check off all the male citizens of the tribe of Erechtheis, and then at a predetermined time to throw the switches that controlled them. He must have hoped to catch one or more unconditioned men by watching to see who didn't start capering and asking where he was."

"I getcha. Don't seem to me as how that'd work, though. Too many people all yacking away at once."

"Right. Don't be surprised if you hear the inspections of the other tribes have been called off."

They picked up Flin at the house of Kallaischros and wended their way to the Agora to buy their lunch. Flin, eating an omelet wrapped in leaves, listened to the account. "He's determined to uncover the unconditioned men at all costs," he commented. "We'd jolly well better do something."

Diksen said, "I wonder they don't just run through their card files to see who Philon and Bouleus are, and when they find there ain't no such people, they'd know you guys is it."

Bulnes said, "Remember, they've probably got two or three million people in Greece. That's too many to keep close track of without modern police methods, and you couldn't apply such methods without giving the game away."

"Another thing," said Flin. "The fact that the Greeks had no real surnames would make it harder to keep track of them. You might have several hundred men named Leon, and one of them might sometimes speak of himself as Leon son-of-Lykos, another time as Leon of Phaleron, and still another as Leon the Short or Leon the Stonecutter. You can see the difficulty of keeping an eye on each of your Leons. There might be scores of Bouleuses, and how are they to tell there's an extra one and expose him except by turning off the ruddy machina?

"By the way." continued Flin, "Kritias says a couple of his friends want to join our course."

"Splendid, my dear fellow," said Bulnes. "We shall be successful in spite of ourselves."

"There's one catch, though. The crowd's getting too large for the house of Kallaischros. We shall have to move out."

"The Agora's too noisy for my taste," said

Bulnes, glancing over to where Sokrates was arguing: "... but my dear Antiphon, if everyone takes the view that morality is simply a matter of who can think up the cleverest arguments to support his interests, what becomes of public virtue? How long will such a state endure?"

Bulnes added, "How about one of the gymnasia?"

"It would have to be the Kynosarges," said Flin, "since the others don't admit noncitizens. But what shall we do about the Emp? I have no doubt they can locate us eventually." Flin turned to Diksen. "Any chance of fomenting an insurrection among your fellow-gendarmes?" .

"Huh?"

"He means," said Bulnes, "could you stir up the rest of the Scythians to revolt?"

"Dunno. Doubt it. The Scythian cops got a good deal. They can keep women on the side and when they get too old for work, the commissioners turn 'em loose. Usually they've grafted enough by that time to set 'emselves up in business or go back home." He yawned prodigiously. " 'Scuse me, fellas, I gotta get back to barracks to catch some sleep. You forget I'm up all night."

He left.

Flin said, "Speaking of this and that, hadn't we better see if Euripides has sent his letter to the Polemarchos yet?"

Bulnes shrugged. "Considering that Euripides is the original absent-minded professor, we shall probably have to remind him a couple of times before he'll do it."

To his surprise, however, Bulnes learned that the letter had been delivered to the Polemarchos that very morning.

"Kephisophon must have remembered to remind him," said Bulnes. "My dear sir, is my friend now a free man again?"

"Yes," said the magistrate. "If you will wait, I will send a slave to the treasury to fetch your bail money. Have you two found a patron yet?"

"No," said Bulnes. "We approached the good Sokrates, but he — uh — could not see his way clear."

"That subversive agitator, always unsettling our young men by questioning the wisdom of our ancestors! It is just as well for you that he refused. However, be advised to find a patron soon, as you will be entered upon the tax rolls in any case and you might as well have the legal standing of a registered metoikos."

The money came, and Bulnes and Flin departed to return it to Kritias. Bulnes said, "I'm sorry we weren't there when the slave arrived. We could have sent Euripides' manuscript back by him. In this world it always takes ten times as much fumbling around to accomplish a simple thing like that as in our own."

Flin nodded. "I miss jolly old London myself, fogs and all."