The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1)

by Paul Levinson

  "According to Plato, that's what Socrates thought."

  "It all goes back to Plato, doesn't it," Max said. "Any other reliable contemporary accounts of Socrates' death? I know Aristophanes has a Socrates character in The Clouds and some of his other comedies, but that's a far cry from Socrates' death."

  "Xenophon has a less dramatic, still mostly compatible recounting of the trial and death," Sierra said. "What Plato also has going is that no one subsequent to him, close to that time, contradicted his account. We're talking Aristotle, Plato's student, who disagreed with his mentor about lots of other things. Aristotle said nothing about the trial, one way or the other, but says a lot about Socrates, and likely would have mentioned, somewhere, any reliable accounts of the trial that contradicted Plato's. And, for that matter, there's Alexander the Great, who was Aristotle's student."

  "Would help if you had a look at the rest of the manuscript."

  Sierra nodded.

  "You think he's holding out on you?"

  Sierra considered. "Much as I admire him, I wouldn't rule that out completely." She thought more about Thomas. Why would he give her just a piece of a manuscript, if he had more? Didn't make sense. But, for that matter, none of this quite did.

  * * *

  By the end of the weekend, she had made a decision. Actually, she had already mostly made it when she had decided to come up to Cape Cod, with Max, to make the decision. Nothing like the sky and sea and shore of the Cape -- the north shore, the bay shore, at least, for her -- to help confirm the cosmic importance of things.

  And this fragment and its implications were cosmic -- at minimum, a lot more profound, if any part of the fragment was true, than anything she would be doing in her doctoral dissertation.

  She called Thomas when she got back to her apartment on Sunday evening. She doubted he would be in -- he hadn't been clear about exactly when he would be returning from Wilmington. There was no live voice, anywhere. She got the number of the hospital in Wilmington, and tried that. No way Thomas would be annoyed to hear from her.

  "Professor Thomas O'Leary?" the computer repeated the name Sierra had provided. "I'm sorry, but we have no patient under that name in our hospital."

  "Perhaps he already checked out?"

  "I'll check," the computer told her. "No, sorry, we have had no patient under that name for the past ten years. Should I check further back?"

  "No..." Sierra opted instead for a human operator. About 20 minutes later, a Ms. Dobbins called her back. She sounded more like a computer than the computer voice, but Sierra had no choice but to take her word for her humanity. "Sorry," Ms. Dobbins confirmed the computer's report, "I can verify that we have had no patient under the name of Professor Thomas O'Leary, Professor Tom O'Leary, and both names without the professor, here at the hospital for the past ten years."

  * * *

  So Thomas had lied to her about going to the hospital -- or, at very least, the hospital in Wilmington. Maybe he was at another hospital. Maybe he was in Wilmington, but not in a hospital -- what attractions did Wilmington have, other than its new hospital, its old theater district, and its superhub train station?

  Maybe Thomas was neither in Wilmington nor in a hospital anywhere. Why would he lie to her?

  What else had he lied about?

  The obvious thing was the manuscript. But why would he get her going on that, only to put its veracity in doubt by telling her an easily discoverable -- self-revealing, in fact -- lie about something else, like going to a hospital in Wilmington, Delaware?

  Perhaps something had happened to him, along the way. But she would have heard, had it been anything bad -- it would have made some sort of news.

  She pressed her head back into the sofa, and this time she didn't contest the sleep settings. She felt herself nodding off, and realized she was about as uncomfortable as she had ever felt in her life. Nothing like committing yourself to a course of action, only to have it pulled out from under you a few hours later.

  * * *

  She awoke the next morning, repeated her rounds of calls to Wilmington, the Old School, any place Thomas might have been. She got the same result. No sign of Thomas O'Leary, anywhere. She toyed with reporting him to Missing Persons. No, the most likely explanation was still that he had lied to her, and there was no point in calling the police about that...

  She looked again at the manuscript, as she fixed her first tea. Where had Thomas said this thing, or his copy of it, had been recently residing, brought there by whomever?

  The Millennium Club was on 49th Street, east of Fifth Avenue. These clubs were famous for being extraordinarily protective of their members -- an oasis of civility in an age of omni-accessibility, one of them had unfurled a new banner outside its entrance last year. This, of course, had drawn a round of media attention. Not the Millennium Club, but Sierra doubted that she, as a non-member, would be given more than the time of day there...

  She considered ... Hadn't Max said something about the Millennium Club a couple of days ago, when he had shown up at her door a day early? Yeah, one of his profs had taken him to lunch there -- that meant the professor was almost certainly a member. She called Max, told him about Thomas and her predicament. He was one of the few people she could just call cold, without a preliminary text.

  "Goldshine? Sure, I'll give him a call right now, and see what I can find out for you," Max told her.

  Her own phone rang a few minutes later. "Sierra Waters?" a jovial voice inquired. "I'm Samuel Goldshine. Maxwell Marcus said you'd like to talk to me about the Millennium Club?"

  "Yes--"

  "The best dissertation I read that year. He's a smart fellow."

  "Yes--"

  "You free for lunch today, at the Millennium Club, 1 pm?"

  "Yes."

  * * *

  "The food wasn't always so good here," Goldshine told Sierra, smacking his lips after tasting the blueberry-cherry souffle. "The Club finally relented and hired a new chef about six months ago -- I've heard nothing but compliments. Part of his secret is he's unafraid of using new genbrids. This blueberry-cherry is actually a single fruit, as you probably know."

  Sierra nodded, savoring her raw cloysters, also a new species.

  "Anyway, about your manuscript fragment, as Thomas O'Leary probably told you, the Club was founded in 1879. So, hell, Mark Twain could have smuggled it into the library -- he was a member, you know."

  Sierra washed down a tangy cloyster with ice cold ale. "That's why it would be great if we could speak with the Librarian, Mr--"

  "Charles, yes. His first name is Cyril, but I checked before you arrived, and I couldn't get a firm answer as to whether he'll be in today. Something about a sister, ill, in Baltimore-- Ah, Franklin, this is Ms. Waters, Thomas O'Leary's student."

  A well dressed man, about fifty, had approached their table. He bowed, slightly but graciously, in Sierra's direction. "I have definite word on Mr. Charles' whereabouts," he said to Goldshine.

  "Oh, good," Goldshine replied.

  "Well, I'm afraid it is not very good, for your purposes today, Professor. Mr. Charles is expected to be in Philadelphia, with a sick sister, for the rest of the day."

  "Philadelphia? I thought it was Baltimore."

  "Philadelphia is what I was just told, Sir."

  "Ok, well, thank you, Franklin."

  Franklin bowed again, slightly, to Sierra and Goldshine, and excused himself.

  Goldshine looked after Franklin, then back at Sierra. "Well, bad luck, but I can certainly show you the general place -- including the part of the Library where O'Leary says the fragment was found."

  * * *

  The Library was actually a series of libraries on the third and fourth floors - elegantly appointed, as Sierra imagined someone from the 19th century saying. The armchairs were burgundy, plush, and inviting. Maple tables of varying dimensions were overflowing with various newspapers, magazines, journals, some of which looked like they could have been on the tables since 1879. And
the books on the shelves were an autumn rainbow of rust, brown, green, and red bindings that put Sierra's home collection of Appleton editions of Darwin and Spencer to shame.

  But the nook of the Library that held Plato and his progeny was the prize. Sierra recalled an old engraving she had come across, as a child. It featured a man on a ladder against a library wall of shelves marked METAPHYSIK, his nose in the pages of an open book held in one hand, a second book in his other hand, a third between his knees, a fourth between his elbow and waist... Too many books, too little body ...

  Sierra felt that way now, although the only things she was clutching were her hands--

  "Can I be of assistance?" A deep voice inquired, with a trace of a British accent. It was not Goldshine's.

  Sierra turned. A short, stocky, bald man smiled first at her, then Goldshine.

  The professor gave no indication of knowing the man. "Well, yes ... Ms. Waters, a student of Thomas O'Leary -- a club member -- was wondering about a partial manuscript that apparently Mr. Charles located here."

  The man scrunched his face. "What sort of manuscript would that be?"

  "Oh, yes, sorry, it was a piece of a Platonic dialog, apparently unknown until now, and ... look, well, I know it sounds crazy--"

  "The dialog with Socrates and Andros, taking place, presumably, right after Crito has taken his leave--"

  "Yes!" Sierra burst out. "I mean, you know it?"

  "Of course I do. Mr. Charles indeed discovered it. We know it wasn't here during the last cleaning, that would have been nineteen years ago, in 2023. Mr. Charles knew just what to do with it -- he took it out for a proper scientific appraisal, which confirmed the authenticity of the ink, from the late Alexandrian era, about 400 AD, if memory serves .... Oh, my apologies, talking about memory, I forgot to introduce myself! I spend so much time in the back stacks that I forget how to behave among people. I'm Mr. Bertram. A Millennium Librarian, like Mr. Charles."

  "Professor Samuel Goldshine, member since 2026." Goldshine extended his hand. "A pleasure."

  Mr. Bertram took the hand, shook it, briefly.

  "Do you know anything more about the fragment," Sierra pressed, "how it got to be here, who else knows about it other than you, Mr. Charles, Thomas O'Leary?"

  "Oh, well any member could know about it, of course," Bertram answered. "We don't keep any of our holdings secret from the members."

  "Do you know who else Mr. Charles or you talked to about this, in addition to Mr. O'Leary?" Sierra tried a slightly different tack.

  But this drew disapproving looks from both Bertram and Goldshine. "Those who serve the Club would never reveal such details," Goldshine advised. "Why, at the beginning of the 21st century, the Club even stood up to a Federal subpoena once, and refused to divulge its members' reading habits!" he concluded, proudly.

  "I can show you the other piece," Bertram offered. "That is, I can show it to Professor Goldshine, and if he doesn't mind your reading over his shoulder--"

  "Yes, thank you--" Sierra said.

  "That would be grand, thank you," Goldshine said at the same time.

  "Do you know if Mr. O'Leary knows about this other--," Sierra began, but stopped as soon as she saw the beginning of the return of the stern looks. "Thank you," she simply said again, to both men. "This means a lot to me."

  * * *

  She sat next to Goldshine at a small, cherry maple desk. A green banker's light provided warm illumination. Sierra reckoned the lamp was the real thing, not a repro, likely from the 1920s.

  Bertram returned a few minutes later with a folder. He handed it to Goldshine, smiled slightly at him, then her, and left.

  Goldshine opened it. There were two groups of papers, each clipped together. Goldshine picked up the first, looked through it briefly, then handed it to Sierra.

  It was the same fragment which Thomas had provided. Sierra picked up the second. "Ok if I read this?" she asked Goldshine.

  "By all means," he said, and busied himself with the first.

  Sierra turned to the second. It was smaller than the first, and apparently did not begin where the first left off.

  Soc. The time is not sufficient. Even if I were inclined to agree with your proposition, which I am not, the ship from Delos with the priest of Apollo will be here in a day or two, after which I am bound to follow the wishes of the Athenians. And, surely, one or two days is not enough to grow a full-bodied likeness of a man.

  Andr. That is true, Socrates. Even with the special craft the people of my time and place possess -- the life-growing craft I have described to you -- one day would not be enough to grow a man. But believe me, Socrates, there exists a yet deeper craft, which makes that one day, any given amount of time, irrelevant for our purposes.

  Soc. What is this deeper craft?

  Andr. It is part of the craft through which I have arrived here, from a future world, a future time.

  Soc. Ah, the godly craft, the unknown craft, which you have yet to explain to me. Are you saying that this craft gives you the power, as it is claimed for some gods, to make time stand still for some events, but move forward for others?

  Andr. Yes, that is similar to what I am saying. But in my world, such power is reality, not myth.

  Soc. But you are in my world now, are you not?

  Andr. True. But by virtue of my being here, you are in my world too, are you not?

  Soc. Yes, I would agree. If indeed you come from another world. But, then, tell me, how in your world, or in the connection between your world and mine, could time stop in such a way as to allow a man to grow seventy years in a day?

  Andr. I will try. Let us say that, by the process of branching we were talking about earlier, a part of you could be moved to the future, and placed in a soil such that the branch could grow into a complete, living likeness of you. Now, whether that growth took one day or seventy years would not matter, as long as our two worlds remained connected, and as long as your part of the connection, your world, the place and time in which we are conversing, at this moment, was this very time.

  Soc. You are saying you could return to your world and time, and then return here, at this very time, before you left, and there would be two entities of you this instant in this room?

  Andr. Yes, that would be possible. Though I would try not to do that.

  Soc. And you could return with a living replica of me, which took even seventy years to grow, as long as at the conclusion of that seventy years, the path to this time and place, from that future world to this room, shortly after the break of this dawn, in which you and I now converse, at this very moment, remained open?

  Andr. Yes, that is what I am suggesting.

  Soc. And, if that were truly possible, all you would need to complete your plan would be a branch, as we have been describing it, of me.

  Andr. Yes.

  Soc. I could never allow that.

  Andr. What if I told you the branch had already been taken?

  Sierra realized her hands were shaking. This fragment of the dialog ended with Andros' words. Who the hell was he?

  She glanced at Goldshine, still engrossed in the first, longer fragment. She tried to calm herself. Reading this dialog in public was not a good idea, if she didn't want everyone to know how it was affecting her. Maybe that didn't matter.

  She looked around. No sign of Bertram. She needed to have a copy of this, but she doubted the Club's rules would allow it. Maybe she could prevail upon Goldshine to request a copy?

  She couldn't chance his saying no. She reached, quietly, for her phone. She placed it in her palm, set the rapid photo function, then moved her palm quickly over the pages in front of her. She'd study this on the screen back in her apartment. Thank you, Thomas, she thought, by dragging me into this, you've turned me into a goddamn spy. But she couldn't say she really regretted it, now, either. No, not at all.

  * * *

  She thanked Goldshine, profusely and truly, and walked home, down Fifth Avenue, with her thoughts. Goldshine had
seemed more amused than thrilled by the fragments, in the end. Well, he probably didn't believe they were real, even if carbon-14 said they had been copied in 400 CE. Time travel and cloning in the ancient world were a lot harder to believe than an error or fudging of carbon-14 dating in the present. Time travel was hard to believe in any world....

  Goldshine had said he'd return the fragments to Mr. Bertram. "And come to my lecture next week -- 'The Vulgate and the Vulgar'."

  She had looked for Mr. Bertram after she'd said goodbye to Goldshine. But he had receded into the stacks. She would have loved to question him further about what he knew about the fragments. He seemed like something of a fragment from another time and place himself...

  The stone lions on the steps of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street looked especially stoic today, as if they had the lost Library of Alexandria on their minds. Somehow that Library of Alexandria, burned by the Christians, burned by the Muslims, reputed to have a copy of every manuscript at the time, was a keystone in all of this. The Preface to the first fragment had said it was discovered in excavations near Alexandria in the first decade of the 21st century. What excavations? Exactly when?

  She thought about what Thomas had said about the Alexandrians in Egypt. A magnificent culture, one of the three Hellenistic pieces of the sprawling empire Alexander the Great had left to the world on his untimely death at 33.... Alexander the Great, who died a year before his mentor, Aristotle, in 323 BCE. Aristotle, student of Plato, student of Socrates....

  But the scholars of Alexandria were by and large not great philosophers. They were mathematicians, astronomers, like Ptolemy, whose calculations of the Moon's orbit would have been good enough to land a rocket there. They were tinkerers, like Heron of Alexandria, who invented the toy steam engines and persistence of vision devices Thomas had mentioned. Heron had invented lots of other things -- automatic doors, coin-operated machines.... Had he tinkered with a time machine, too?

  Not likely, from what Sierra understood of physics. Steam engines and motion pictures and automatic doors operated on Newtonian principles. Time machines, if they were real, would likely operate on a physics that made current quantum gravitics look like child's play.