The Glory That Was

Chapter Fifteen

The sun was high when the flies and the noise of Athens at work finally awoke Knut Bulnes. He opened an eye. Then, at the realization that he was late for his lecture, he leaped to his feet, feeling light-headed from lack of food. He would not even have time to feed poor Wiyem Flin if he did not want to jeopardize the chances of his getting the bail money from Kritias.

One thing about the Athenian way of life, there was no tedious routine of washing and shaving and hunting for a clean pair of socks in the morning. He already had on his chiton, and looked around for his himation. Then he remembered discarding it in the Theseion last night when invading the tunnels.

Bulnes had picked up enough Athenian cultural attitudes to know that he could not pass for a philosopher without a cloak, and would therefore have to procure one even if he went without breakfast. He got the address of a weaver from Podokles (there was no such thing as a tailor in Athens) and half an hour later was hurrying toward the house of Kallaischros with another two-by-four-meter rectangle of cloth swathing his lanky figure.

Kritias said, "Where have you been? We have waited half the morning. What sort of teacher are you?"

Bulnes made his apologies, adding the lie that he had had to feed his poor friend Philon, rotting away in the Oikema.

"Speaking of which, my dear sirs," he continued, "I believe it was agreed yesterday that the noble Kritias should put up the money to bail out my colleague?"

Kritias looked blank. "I remember nought of the sort. True, you mentioned some such matter, but we explained that neither of us was in a position to help you. Is that not so, Demokritos?"

"It is not! Indeed, Kritias, you definitely promised Bouleus the money. No, do not wink. As this man has dealt justly with me, I intend to see him dealt justly with by others."

Bulnes could have hugged Demokritos, except that in Classical Greece such a gesture would be misconstrued. Kritias, grumbling, went out and presently came back with a bag that clinked.

"Hold out your hands," he said, and began counting out silver coins, most of them massy dekadrachma as big around as an Imperial silver kraun and a good deal heavier.

"Four hundred seventy, four hundred eighty, four hundred eighty-four, four hundred eighty-eight, four hundred eighty-nine, four hundred ninety, five hundred drachma," he said. "By the Dog, have you not brought a bag?"

Bulnes stood with fingers spread, a great pile of coins filling his cupped hands and a lot more scattered on the ground at his feet. He had not before thought of the disadvantages of the lack of paper money and checks for large sums.

"I shall manage," he said. He laid the money down and did as he had seen Athenians do: pulled his belt tighter and stowed the silver inside the breast of his chiton, the belt retaining it from falling through. The total mass, weighing nearly five pounds, was cold against his midriff.

Three hours later, Bulnes and the Polemarchos came to the Oikema and found the jailer. The Polemarchos said, "Release the prisoner Philon. This man has gone bail for him."

The jailer led them around to the side of the building where Flin was confined. The prisoner glared silently at them as the jailer unlocked the fetter on his leg, then stood up, flicked an insect from his clothes, and followed them out of the cell.

The Polemarchos said, "I was going to schedule your trial for the seventeenth, but since your friend here says Euripides has promised to withdraw his complaint, I will put it off to the twenty-fifth. By then we should have heard him."

"Thanks you, dear sir," said Bulnes, and turned to Flin. "I suppose you're hungry enough to ..."

"Hungry!" howled Flin. "Have you been trying to starve me to death? Here I've missed three meals, and the bugs ate me alive, and not a word from you! I see you've got a new himation. Been having a gay time chasing the women, I suppose?"

"Shut up," said Bulnes.

"What? What's that?"

"I said shut up! Calle su! Must I make it plainer?" Bulnes cocked a fist. "If you'll come along to the Agora like an adult, we'll buy some food for Podokles to cook, because I haven't had a bite in the last twenty-four hours either."

Flin subsided, muttering. As they walked through the marketplace, Bulnes told of his adventures. When he came to the place where Thalia, alias Melite, admitted him to the house of Euripides, Flin burst out, "How did she look? What did she say? Did she show any signs of knowing me?"

Bulnes went on with his story, censoring the part where the woman had made an obvious pass at him.

Flin said, "When can I see her again?"

"You can't, my dear comrade."

"What d'you mean, I can't? We can use that manuscript as an excuse for calling on Euripides, can't we?"

"I mean several things. For one, you've already got yourself in bad with them by your outburst at the play. For another, it was just luck that I happened to see her. These Athenians normally keep their women shut up like a lot of medieval hidalgos, as you well know. Sometimes I think it's a good idea, too. And for another, it's a fifteen-kilometer hike down to Peiraieus and back, which I don't care to face again soon."

"But — but — dash it all ..."

"Take it easy. It would only upset you without accomplishing anything, as she wouldn't know you. We'd best leave the Euripideses alone while we figure out our next move."

Bulnes went on to tell of his nocturnal experiences in the tunnels and on the Akropolis.

"... so I went home," he concluded, "and I should have got up earlier this morning except — what's the matter, my dear Wiyem?"

Flin's mouth was puckered up and tears ran down his plump cheeks. "I — I can't help it. You've destroyed my last hope that this could be the real thing," he blubbered. "Now I know it's a stage show. Never mind me — I'm just a useless old pedant. Sorry I flared up just now, old thing."

Bulnes was reminded of a puppy that, surprised in some misdemeanor, lies on its back and waves all four paws in an effort to propitiate its gods. You can't very well kick the beast no matter how angry you are. He said, "The silver plate in Dik-sen's head must be the reason the broadcast wave doesn't affect him."

Flin had recovered his composure. "What's this idea of yours?"

"If we could get a message to Perikles, telling him to appear at the Cave of Apollo, we might get into that priest hole back of the cave and interview him. If he were tipped off to the nature of this act that's going on, this historical pageant, he might do something about it."

"Would he believe you?" asked Flin.

"That's why we should pose as Apollo."

"Mm. The real Perikles was a skeptical sort of blighter. And what'd you mean by 'we'? You don't think I'll risk my neck on any such stunt, do you?"

"Yes, I do. If we can convince him that he and all the other pseudo-Greeks are being used as puppets in a game, maybe he'll dig into the tunnels and break up the show."

"That part's all right, but why must I be in on it? You're a venturesome sort of chap, but I'm no ruddy good at playing Red Indian, you know."

"The language, my dear fellow," said Bulnes with elaborate patience. "How impressed d'you think he'd be by an Apollo who talked broken Greek with a Spanish-English accent?"

"Well I'm not going," said Flin, tightening his lips.

"Why not?"

"If you must know, I'm terrified."

"No es verdad?" said Bulnes with an ominous tilt to his eyebrows. "I think you will. Unless you prefer to go back to the Oikema, while I return the bail money to Kritias ..."

"Oy! You wouldn't!"

"Wouldn't I? Try me and see."

"Oh, damn and blast!" Flin stamped his foot. "Why do you always get the better of me? A dashed tyrant, that's what you are. A sneering, haughty, cold-blooded autocrat.

"Thank you, dear comrade. Let's finish up here. You'll have to write that letter for me."

"When were you thinking of staging this interview?"

"Tonight, if possible. I don't wish to give Perikles time to devise a trap for us."

Two hours later, much improved by a meal, Bulnes and Flin got to work upon their letter. Using the manuscript of Euripides as a guide to penmanship, Flin wrote:

Phoibos of Apollon to Perikles Xanthippou of Cholargos, Strategos Dekatos Autos of the City of Athenai:

If you will present yourself alone at the Cave of Apollo tonight, the tenth of Elaphebolion, two hours after sunset, having taken measures to insure that our conversation shall not be interrupted, you shall hear matters of grave import to yourself and to the state.

Flin said, "I can't guarantee that'll fetch him. It looks like an attempt to get him alone for abduction or murder."

"Oh, he'll have friends or slaves within call. Now let's get Diksen and case the joint, as they say in America."

Diksen, once awakened, was full of enthusiasm for the scheme. He walked them along the base of the Akropolis, below the statues of the Tribal Hermes, and pointed out significant features.

"That split in the rock runs back to another cave — see that dark spot? — they call the Aglaurion after some dame in their cockeyed religion. There's two stairs going up from the bottom of the split to the top, and one at the Aglaurion end and one in the middle. And see that path going up to the wall? Where the old guy is sitting with the goats?"

He pointed ahead to the eastern part of the north side of the hill. "There's a hole in the angle of the wall and another stair going up to the top. These stairs ain't really secret — I went through 'em all when my beat was up there — but the priests try to keep the common people out."

The next task was the delivery of the letter. They hiked over to the house of Perikles. Bulnes made friends with a little girl playing in the filth of the street and bribed her with a copper to deliver it. He and Flin watched from around the nearest corner until they saw the letter handed to the porter.

They ate early and went up to the Akropolis before sunset, wearing chitons only, when the main crowds were beginning to come down. They turned left as they issued from the Propylaia and walked to the enclosures along the north side. To Bulnes the area looked quite different by daylight, so that it took him some time to identify the route he had followed the night before.

When he finally found it, they waited until nobody seemed to be looking and hid among the shrubbery. It proved easy — too easy, Bulnes feared. After the sun had set, a couple of Scythians went by shooing the remaining visitors off the Akropolis. However, they made no effort to beat the bushes for lurkers.

With nothing to do, Bulnes found his mind wandering to Dagmar. Should he ask her to marry him on his return — assuming he ever returned to twenty-seventh-century London? After all, he was pushing forty. Yes, he resolved, he'd ask her at the first chance.

The evening hush came over the area. A pair of priests went by, talking in low tones about money.

"Follow me," said Bulnes. He led the way, crouching, to the head of the stair down into the cleft.

Although the sky overhead was still light, the cleft was so dark that Bulnes had to feel his way again. At the bottom of the stair, he led Flin along the rough mass of stones and earth that filled the bottom of the cleft, until they reached the Cave of Pan.

"Here we wait," said Bulnes.

"Dash it, I wish I had a cigarette. Why do you think of these wild schemes, Knut?"

"Mixed ancestry, no doubt. Keep your voice down."

As the light dimmed, footsteps sounded in the adjacent Cave of Apollo, and the voice of a priest, "No, my son, the god will not present himself tonight. Come back tomorrow with your questions." Then, as the footsteps of the inquirer receded along the ledge, the same voice spoke again, "It is plain robbery and oppression that Perikles should ask exclusive use of the shrine tonight. Why can he not take his turn like any other citizen? That is your so-called democracy!"

"Will the god give him a message?" said another voice.

"After he has cost us two or three mnai in fees? Not this embodiment of the god!"

"We might give him something short and ambiguous, as they do at Delphi. You remember when Kroisos, the Lydian king, asked whether he should ..."

"Ea! Since he has had so little consideration for us, he can stand there all night without answer for all of me. 'Message of importance to the state,' forsooth!"

The conversation wandered off into the love lives of the two priests. It was punctuated by a sharp tapping which Bulnes identified as the impact of a flint against a piece of steel or pyrites. Presently there was the faint crackling of the altar fire and the smell of incense.

At last there came more footsteps along the ledge, and the priests' voices, "Rejoice, my dear Perikles!"

"Rejoice," said a new voice. ' "This is an honor. It has been years since you visited our shrine. The Ruler of the Seasons will be pleased."

"I daresay. But since the Bright One specifically asked me to present myself alone, would you gentlemen mind ..."

Bulnes was sure he had heard that voice before. It was a staccato voice, speaking in short phrases and biting off the ends of its sentences with a snap. Bulnes remarked, "That jerky voice doesn't. sound to me like a great orator."

"That's Perikles," whispered Flin. "He was really a curt, taciturn sort of chap, and Aspasia wrote his speeches."

"Come on." They crept toward the secret entrance to the priest hole. He thrust the curtain aside and they slunk into the tunnel until they reached the opening behind the altar.

The head priest was saying, "... but my dear, dear Perikles, it would be against all precedent. The Health-Giver would be offended if we absented ourselves ..."

There was a crackle of papyrus and the voice of Perikles, "There you are. I know not what this means, but I intend to find out. Will you go, or must I call for help in removing you?"

"Oh, we go, we go. But say not that we failed to warn you."

"Not that way. This way. I do not care to be deceived by human voices issuing from holes in this rabbit warren."

Bulnes looked through the funnel-shaped hole into the Cave of Apollo. Beyond the altar stood the two priests, their backs more or less to Bulnes. Beyond them stood Perikles. All Bulnes could see through the smoke of the altar fire was a neatly trimmed gray beard and a himation. The priests went out and turned left along the ledge. Perikles came forward toward the altar. "Phoibos Apollon, if it indeed be you, I have come as you requested. Have you a message for me?"

"Go ahead," whispered Bulnes, pushing Flin into the place behind the speaking hole.

Flin said, "O Perikles, it is indeed the God of the Silver Bow. You and all your people have been subjected to a monstrous deception, and it is time this imposture were unmasked."

"How so, O god?"

"You are not Perikles Xanthippou, nor are the other Hellenes the persons they think they are. The true Perikles lived three thousand years ago. You are a man who has been seized by the world rulers, and by their science caused to believe that you are indeed this ancient Perikles, and the other Hellenes have been subjected to the same deception."

"Indeed?" Perikles took the news, Bulnes thought, with unwonted calm.

"Just so. If you wish proof, order your people to dig down into the floor of the Parthenon chamber of the New Hekatompedon, and below the altar of Theseus in the Theseion, to discover the tunnels which the servants of the world rulers use for ..."

Flin broke off and jerked back from the orifice. Bulnes took a quick look through the hole, to see the man called Perikles coming around the altar and drawing a pistol from his draperies. In that second the altar fire blazed up. By its light, Bulnes recognized the face he had manipulated scores of times in making up the dummy for the next issue of Trends: Vasil Hohnsol-Romano, ninth of the name, and Emperor of the Earth.

Bulnes tumbled back in his turn. As he did so, the piercing crack of a shot smote his ears and fragments of rock stung his face. Again and again came the crack of the shot mingling with the crash of the explosive bullet. A hit from one of those little pellets would blow a man to pieces.

He crawled after Flin toward the curtained entrance and collided with him. "Caray! What the hell?"

"He's coming around this way," quavered Flin. "Look!"

"What?" Bulnes craned his neck backwards. The shooting had stopped and the heavier dust particles were settling. By the fugitive light of the altar fire, through the now-enlarged orifice, Bulnes observed that the explosions had broken away a concealed door at the rear of the priest hole.

Bulnes thought he heard footsteps in the Cave of Pan from which they had come. Wherever it led, the newly revealed door seemed to offer more safety than a cave containing an armed and homicidal emperor. Bulnes scurried back into the hole. The explosions had smashed the bracing that held the lock, so that a good heave opened the door. Bulnes scooted through, Flin after him.

"Close it!" hissed Bulnes.

As the door closed, they were again plunged into darkness. Not complete, however. As his pupils dilated, Bulnes became aware of a row of tiny spots of softly glowing light along the roof of the tunnel in which they found themselves. These were ordinary radioactive night lights. Gradually his vision sharpened until he could dimly see the floor and walls.

He proceeded, crouching, until the tunnel ended in a T intersection. The new tunnel, at right angles to the old, was somewhat higher and carried a mass of cables along its roof.

Bulnes turned left at hazard and followed the lights of this tunnel. It dipped down and did a couple of dog legs, then ended with a door that reminded him of the pressure doors through watertight bulkheads on large ships.

On the wall beside the door was a push button. Below it was a legend, illuminated by a brighter night light, which, in English, instructed the wayfarer to push the button to summon a guard to open the door and admit him to the tunnel system,

Bulnes said, "I don't think we'd better do that. Let's try the other direction."

They retraced their steps to the tunnel leading to the Cave of Apollo, but continued straight on instead of turning. Bulnes, puffing up the slope, said, "We know a couple of things now: Not only is Perikles really Vasil the Ninth, but he's an unconditioned man like us and like Diksen."

"How d'you know that?"

"Would he be shooting a pistol otherwise? Of course he doesn't believe in Apollo, and as soon as he heard your voice he guessed another unconditioned man was talking to him from hid-mg.

"Do you suppose he's putting on this whole Greek thing as a sort of grandiose charade to satisfy his vanity?"

Bulnes shrugged in the gloom. They had come to the end of the tunnel. There were no outlets except straight up. The cables overhead led up, and so did a ladder, into a dimly lit cavernousness above.

Bulnes craned his neck, peering up, then started to climb. He soon found himself squirming through a jungle of struts and crossbraces, lit by a whole constellation of night lights. Around him rose an irregular structure of dark greenish metal.

Flin said: "By Gad, Knut, I know where we are!"

"Where?"

"Inside Athene Promachos!"

"Really? Let's hope we don't give the dear lady indigestion. This reminds me of the Statue of Liberty in America. Where do those cables go? Wish I had a flashlight ..."

Bulnes finally reached a point that he judged to be somewhere on a level with the solar plexus of the goddess. From there, looking up, he could see where the cables ended in a forest of metal antennas, something like radar antennas: clusters of rods and plates arranged in patterns.

"There they are," he said.

"There are what? Oh, those things." Flin fell silent. After puckering his mouth with thought for some seconds he said, "Of course I don't know a ruddy thing about electricity, Knut, but I thought radio and radar antenna had to be out in the open — that a lot of metal around them would smother the rays or whatever it is they send out."

"That's true on the electromagnetic spectrum, but not on the gravito-magnetic. You know those things the World Government scientists were playing with a couple of decades ago?"

"No."

"Well, I'm not a scientist myself, but the magazine has a tickler file on gravito-magnetics, and once every few years we try to find something out about it. There was a lot of activity, with prophecies of the wonderful things it would do for us, and then it dropped out of sight. As far as Trends knows, not a single scientist is interested in it any more."

"So you think they've been developing this secretly?"

"It looks that way."

"Why?" asked Flin.

"I'm just guessing, but I suspect it's what keeps all our pseudo-Greeks under control."

Flin looked speculatively at the cables. "If we could cut through those, we'd queer the whole pitch at once."

Bulnes shook his head. "Probably electrocute ourselves in the process, and they're armored, so it would take days even with a modern hacksaw. It would be more to the point to find the master switch that turns off the power. Let's see. There ought to be a door in the lady's skirts at street level ... Here we are. Get ready to slip out quietly ..."

Presently Bulnes and Flin emerged from the colossus and hurried toward the northeast corner of the Akropolis, in search of the stairway that led to the base of the wall and the path down the hillside that Diksen had shown them that afternoon.