Time Travel Omnibus, page 783
“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.
Socrates gave a coin to the jailer, squeezed his hand, thanked him, and turned to look at his friends one last time. “The world is very bright,” he said. “But much of it is illusion. If we stare at it too long, in the way we look at the sun during an eclipse, it blinds us. Look at it only with the mind.” He picked up the hemlock. Several in the assemblage started forward, but were restrained by their companions. Someone in back sobbed.
“Stay,” a voice said sternly. “You have respected him all your life. Do so now.”
He lifted the cup to his lips, and his hand trembled. It was the only time the mask slipped. Then he drank the hemlock down and laid the cup on the table. “I am sure Simmias is right,” he said. “We shall gather again one day, as old friends should, in a far different chamber.”
■ ■ ■
Shel clasped Helen a long time in his big arms. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. Tears ran down his cheeks.
She shivered. “What happened to you?” she asked.
A smile flickered across his lips. “I’ve been traveling a long time.” He stood silhouetted against the moon and the harbor. Behind us, the waterfront buildings of the Piraeus were illuminated by occasional lamps. He turned toward me. “David, you seem to have become my dark angel.”
I was emotionally drained. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. A gull wheeled overhead. “Socrates dies for a philosophical nicety. And Shelborne continues to run when all the world is at stake. Right?”
“That’s right,” I said.
Helen was still trembling. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. His lips twitched, and he ran his hand over the long white whiskers. He looked haunted. “I haven’t seen you for forty years,” he said. “You have no idea how many times I’ve gone to sleep dreaming of you. And you are even lovelier than I remember.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. Steadied her. “He’s been out here a long time.”
Her eyes blazed. “What happened to my Shel? What did you do with him?”
“He’s been living his allotted years,” he said. “Making them count for as much as he can as long as he can. Before my conscience here—” lifting his eyes and targeting me, “before my conscience succeeds in driving me into my grave.”
She couldn’t hold back any longer. Her tears flowed freely, and the water lapped against the piers. In that moment, I hated him.
“I’ve tried to go back,” he said. “God help me, I’ve tried. But I could not bring myself to lie in that bed.” Anger surfaced. I could not tell where it was directed. “Did you know that my skull was crushed?”
We knew.
He looked very old. And broken. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. The robes had no pockets. But he needed some kind of defensive gestures, so he folded his arms and turned to face the harbor. “I am not Socrates, Dave,” he said. “I will not drink from his cup.” His eyes locked on mine, and I could see him come to a decision. He drew us together, within the field of his Watch, and punched in a set of coordinates. “But I will settle the issue for you.”
Helen shook her head no. No more surprises. And everything began to slow down. The harbor winked out, a ship’s deck materialized underfoot, and the sky filled with fire.
■ ■ ■
We were on a Roman galley. The air was thick with powder and cinders, and the sails were down. We were pitching and rolling. The ocean broke across the deck, and men scrambled and swore at their stations. Below us, long oars dipped rhythmically into the waves. It was daylight, but we could not see more than twenty feet.
“How did you manage that?” I screamed at Shel over the hurricane of noise. The Watches had never possessed the precision to land people on a ship at sea.
“It’s been a lot of years,” he said. “Technology’s better than it used to be.”
“Where are we?” demanded Helen, barely able to make herself heard.
Shel was hanging onto a ladder. His clothes were drenched. “A.D. 79,” he said. “Just west of Pompeii.”
His eyes were afire. His silver hair was already streaked with black ash, and I began to suspect he had lost whatever anchor he might have had to reality. Time had become perhaps too slippery for him at last.
The ship rolled to starboard, and would have dumped Helen into the sea had the old man not grabbed her, and hung on, pushing me aside. “Isn’t this glorious?” he asked.
“Why are we here?” Helen demanded, wiping her eyes.
The sea and the wind roared, and the dust was blinding.
“I will pick the time of my death,” he cried. “And its manner.”
I was trying to scramble toward him, but I could do no more than hang on.
“I am uniquely qualified—”
We went down into a trough, and I thought the sea was going to bury us.
“—To make that choice,” he continued, ignoring the ocean. “My death will be an appropriate finale to the symphony of my life.”
A fireball roared overhead, and plowed into the water.
“Don’t do it,” I cried.
“Have no fear, David. I’m not ready yet. But when I am, this will be the way of it.” He smiled at me and touched the Watch. “What better end for a time traveler than sailing with Pliny the Elder?” And he was gone.
“What was that all about?” called Helen. We dipped again and salt water poured across the deck. “Maybe we ought to get out of here too.”
