The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1)

by Paul Levinson

  "You are one-hundred percent certain, then, that time travel is impossible?" Thomas asked.

  "Yes." Appleton furrowed his brows. "Though perhaps ninety-nine and ninety-nine hundredths percent would be more accurate.... I admit I am leery of pronouncing anything absolutely impossible these days, given that August Comte once said that knowing the chemical composition of stars was impossible, shortly before the science of spectroscopy was discovered."

  Thomas nodded. "Precisely. I once heard someone describe that iron-clad attitude as 'never dogmatism'."

  Appleton grunted appreciation. "But time travel is a different matter."

  "Is it? Are the years of our past more difficult to touch than the stars of our sky? We certainly have much more information about the past than we do about the universe beyond our planet."

  "I suspect the mechanisms of travel are very different -- and difficult -- for time," Appleton said. "They would require more than the bump on the head received by Mr. Twain's Yankee!"

  "Did you enjoy that novel?"

  "Yes, I did," Appleton replied. "A very clever fantasy."

  "You published Lewis Carroll," Thomas said. "Appleton and Company is no stranger to fantasy."

  "That was my son's idea -- I wasn't in favor of it," Appleton said. "And we knew it was fantasy when we published it.... Are you proposing that we publish this dialog as fiction? The Royal College of Science did publish a delightful tale about locomotion through time just last year...."

  Thomas smiled. "'The Chronic Argonauts' by H. G. Wells. I expect we will be seeing a lot more from him.... But, look, as for my dialog, I am just hoping you will publish it, whatever its label."

  Appleton nodded. "Nonetheless ... we need to know whether the events it describes have any elements of truth, whether the manuscript itself is genuine or a forgery, before we can contemplate any kind of publication.... How did you come to get a hold of it in the first place? Most of the Platonic inventory came to Europe when the Turks sacked Constantinople, and Byzantine scholars fled to the West, isn't that so?"

  "Yes," Thomas replied. "This Andros manuscript came to me a different way ... which, I am afraid to say, may have entailed some travel through time, somewhere along the way..."

  Appleton shook his head, grunted again. "All right, I'll admit that I am a little interested -- getting a jump on Houghton in Boston would be sweet. They turned this project down, right?"

  "Laughed me right out of the office."

  "Well, believe you me, I would love to be the one who had the last laugh on this, at Houghton's expense and short-sightedness especially.... All right, then, will you stay for dinner? Fill me in, if you will, on this time travel business? It could appeal, even as a form of fiction."

  * * *

  Dinner was succulent venison and plum. "The family is all off on vacation, on Cape Cod," Appleton said. "I'm on vacation up here on Wave Hill, from our Bond Street offices, and the family's all on vacation from me!"

  Thomas nodded, sympathetically. He was actually glad Appleton's family had temporarily deserted him for New England. Otherwise, he and Appleton might not have been able to have this crucial conversation. Thomas had found himself in this Riverdale neighborhood on a lucky day, indeed.

  The butler excused himself, and Thomas resumed his explication -- such as it was -- of time travel.

  "You see, I, personally, have no idea how the devices actually work. All I know is that they obviously do work, because I have used them, to get from here to the future, and to the past. I am pretty sure they were invented in the far future -- though, as incredible as it sounds, I also have some reason to believe they may also have originated in the past."

  "Originated in the past, or perhaps just arrived there?" Appleton asked.

  "Well, that is indeed the question ... Are you familiar with an Alexandrian mathematician and inventor, who went by the name of Heron?"

  Appleton shook his head no.

  "Not surprising -- most of his work has been lost. But, apparently, he was a very prolific inventor -- a Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison all rolled into one, even a Leonardo da Vinci of sorts. He invented all kinds of things -- water-organs, gas-organs, automated doors -- years, millennia, ahead of everyone else! And the really peculiar thing about him is, no one is really sure exactly when he lived. Estimates pop up all over -- from 200 BC to nearly 300 AD--"

  "Not that remarkable in itself -- after all, we know so little about those golden ages," Appleton said, wistfully. "But you think this fellow Heron was hopping around in time, and had something to do with that absconding of Socrates? Assuming the events in your dialog are true?" Appleton shook his head, disbelievingly.

  "Yes," Thomas said, "I think Heron may indeed be a part of it."

  Appleton wiped his mouth with a lacy napkin. The butler reappeared. "Coffee for me," Appleton said, and looked at Thomas.

  "The same, thank you," Thomas said.

  The butler receded. "So what, precisely, would you like from me at this point," Appleton asked Thomas, "other than an expression of possible interest in publishing the manuscript, which I am afraid is all I am willing to give you on that matter now?"

  Thomas grew icy serious. "I intend to be traveling -- through time -- I want you to bear witness to what I have just told you, and be prepared to perhaps publish something about that, as well, should I not be able to return."

  "You do have a flair for the dramatic, Thomas."

  The butler came with the coffee. The two men sipped.

  "And if you, and the manuscript, turn out to be a fraud, you are prepared for me to bear witness to that, too?" Appleton asked. "Speaking, of course, only hypothetically."

  Thomas looked at Appleton. "Yes."

  "Do you intend to do this ... traveling ... all on your own?" Appleton asked. "Would more people make it more dangerous?"

  "Yes, but it's dangerous enough with just one, dangerous in many ways," Thomas replied. "I do have at least one ... colleague ... in mind..."

  "May I inquire who?"

  "She is a student of mine ... in another ... time. She is bright and very poised."

  Appleton sipped some more. "When would you initiate your trip?"

  "If you agree to lend your support, very soon."

  Appleton scratched his head. "I probably asked you this already, and you probably answered, but: why, exactly, have you now approached me with this proposition?"

  "You are the American publisher of Charles Darwin, who is the most important thinker of our century. You have a powerful sense, both of what is right to publish, and how to make a profit from it. This escape of Socrates would fit right in with your inventory."

  Appleton smiled. "If it really happened, it would easily exceed in importance anything else in my inventory." Appleton closed his eyes, and grew even more serious than Thomas. "May I have until tomorrow evening to provide a response?"

  * * *

  Appleton put aside his voluminous correspondence with Huxley, the next morning, as well as a provocative manuscript by the German, Ernest Haeckel, and picked up the small sheaf Thomas O'Leary had left with him. Appleton considered. The formal rules of the Millennium Club prohibited any business from being enacted on its premises, but some of his best acquisitions had come from connections made at the Club.

  The question regarding this bizarre dialog was whether it would be such an acquisition. As everyone in publishing knew, the woodwork was crawling with Platonic forgeries, some quite old -- such as the Epistles, which, as Mr. Jowett had rightly noted, was constructed of passages plagiarized from Plato....

  Well, there was no doubt, at least, that the dialog in front of Appleton had not been plagiarized from anything known of Plato. Not from anyone else, either, as far as Appleton could tell. It evoked a lot of Socrates, to be sure, but Appleton had never come across anything even remotely resembling this strange story....

  Appleton applied himself to the pages. His Greek was actually better than he let on...


  Soc. Have you considered the effect of drama, the theatrical reenactment, on human affairs?

  Andr. I have, Socrates. But likely not in the way you would consider it.

  Soc. I consider such retellings to be disfiguring of the truth. Certainly they are not as legitimate as the conversation you and I are now conducting, in which all points of view can be expressed.

  Andr. Does theater deliberately distort the truth?

  Soc. Yes, and it does so much in the same way as writing. The drama, written histories, are not just mirrors of what actually occurred. Rather, they are selected from the life-story, the truth of life. The writer plucks the petals, the points or examples he wishes us to see, and leaves the rest in darkness.

  Andr. But are dramas and written accounts nonetheless not still worthy because of the truths that they do convey, even in part? Do not the comedies of your friend Aristophanes have barbs of value, in as much as some of the barbs hit the truth, or close to it, even as others may miss it?

  Soc. Yes, I suppose that is so. But would you also not agree that a lie that is close to the truth can do more harm than a lie that is so obviously incorrect that no one could mistake it for truth?

  Andr. Yes, I would agree.

  Soc. So would that not be another problem with the proposition for escape that you offer me? You are trying to substitute a happy ending, dramatically satisfying, for the truth of my death.

  Andr. No, I would not agree, Socrates. For three reasons.

  Soc. What are the three reasons?

  Andr. First, who is to say what the truth actually is or was meant to be in this matter. Perhaps you were supposed to evade death, all along, and your dying is the result of some other tampering with the living flow of history. Second, I am not at all sure that escaping would be more dramatically satisfying -- better for the story -- than your dying. Self-sacrifice on behalf on a greater good has great dramatic appeal. That is in part why, in the plan I am proposing, your double would also die of the hemlock here, even as you escape. Third, if the choice were simply between dying now, and living, would not the living be, obviously and irrefutably, closer to a life story than death? Does not the distorting eye of drama inevitably follow death -- indeed, excel in death -- with life unable to continue to tell its own story?

  Soc. Those are indeed good reasons, Andros, and you present them well. I could offer arguments against each of them, but they would not sweep aside the essential grains of truth that your reasons possess. Still, your plan is futile.

  Andr. Why? Are saying that, even though you are perhaps persuaded by my arguments, you are nonetheless not going to follow their logical conclusions? That does not sound like the Socrates I know!

  Soc. Perhaps, then, you do not really know me as well as you suppose.

  Andr. I know you from--

  Soc. Dramas, written accounts, forms less than life, yes. It does not matter. It will make no difference, to the present or future of the world, if I die here or escape with you.

  Andr. Why not?

  Soc. You do not know the real, deepest reason I have agreed to die here.

  Andr. The reasons you have given have me -- and Crito -- are not true?

  Soc. They are true. But there is a deeper truth, below--

  Appleton's reading was interrupted by a knock at the door. His man poked his head and his hand in. "Telegram from England, Mr. Appleton--"

  "Haven't I told you about Coleridge, Geoffreys? How a knock on his door shattered his concentration, his vision, and so all he was able to produce of his beautiful dream was the glistening fragment, 'Kubla Khan'?"

  "Yes, you certainly have, Sir. But you said you wanted to know the instant a reply arrived."

  "True."

  "And your door was already partially open."

  "True, as well."

  "And you were reading not writing, Sir."

  "Yes."

  "And I don't believe you are in an opium trance -- Coleridge was in such a state when the knock on the door broke his spell, is that not so?"

  "All right, all right -- let me have the telegram."

  Geoffreys walked in and placed the telegram on Appleton's desk. "And would you care for some tea, Sir?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "Very good, Sir." Geoffreys inclined his head, slightly, and left.

  Appleton scooped up the telegram. It was from B. Jowett, Oxford. Appleton had sent him a telegram early in the morning New York time, almost noon in England. Appleton's query was lengthy and costly, but he figured the pursuit of truth and profit deserved no less.

  "Unable to undertake the project you describe," Jowett's reply read. "Health failing. Aristotle taxing. Authenticity uncertain."

  Appleton drummed his fingers on the table and read the telegram several times.

  Geoffreys appeared with the tea.

  "Never mind that," Appleton snapped. "I'm taking the train into the city."

  * * *

  "I thought I might find you here," Appleton said genially. He shook hands with Thomas, who was lingering over a bourbon at the Millennium Club's bar. "Should we retire to the library and a bit more privacy?" Appleton asked.

  Thomas nodded, and took his bourbon.

  "Anything for you, Sir?" the bartender asked Appleton.

  "No thanks, Franklin. Not at the moment."

  Appleton and Thomas made their way to a quiet, out-of-the-way table. "Here's something you may find of interest." Appleton handed the telegram to Thomas. He looked at it, nodded, and returned it.

  "Not surprising," Thomas said, a bit wearily.

  "In what way?" Appleton asked.

  "Jowett's skepticism was to be expected. Easy to be skeptical, when you do not have the evidence at hand."

  "You mean the manuscript?"

  Thomas nodded. "I don't suppose you telegraphed him that."

  "No, but I did cable a few choice excerpts," Appleton replied.

  Thomas raised an eyebrow.

  Appleton smiled. "If all I cared about was money, I could certainly make more in a carriage or haberdashery business.... But, Thomas, I actually find Jowett's response quite heartening."

  Thomas raised an eyebrow further.

  "A scholar such as Jowett does not use words casually," Appleton explained. "His health is not good, he is busy with a new Aristotle translation, and yet he is able to say, even in these circumstances, that the authenticity of your Platonic dialog is 'uncertain' -- he just as easily could have said the dialog was rubbish!"

  "You may have a point," Thomas allowed. "What excerpts, exactly, did you cable him?"

  "About half a page from the beginning, when Andros first appears, and then several from the middle, when he talks with Socrates about drama."

  "Hmmm...."

  "Frankly, Thomas, I am surprised you are not happier about Jowett's response -- I do find it encouraging. What's the matter--"

  Thomas batted the question away. "I agree, it could be encouraging. You are probably right about that. It's just ... something else."

  Appleton scrunched his face, a telegram of attentiveness. "Yes?"

  "One of my colleagues -- the young woman I was telling you about -- seems to have gone missing. She did not appear when and where she was expected. You have no idea how ... difficult, destructive that could be."

  "To the girl?"

  "To everyone."

  Appleton absorbed that. "Of course," he said, after a few long moments. "If someone could travel in time -- and, mind you, that is still a pretty big 'if' in my book -- but if someone who was traveling in time went missing in time ... that could well knock some little thing out of kilter, like the horse that lost its footing in the Roman cavalry, causing that rider to fall, losing that battle ... causing the Empire to fall."

  "Yes."

  Appleton nodded -- to himself, to Thomas, to unseen people that he imagined might be traveling through time, right by him, at the very instant.... "I should very much like to see the machinery -- is that the right word? -- for this time tra
vel, if it exists. Is that possible?"

  "It is not very far."

  * * *

  Thomas led and Appleton followed up a very narrow, spiraling ladder -- set, appropriately enough, against Jowett and other translations of Plato, Aristotle, and the Greeks. Appleton noticed Xenophon's Memorabilia and Libanius' Apology of Socrates.

  "He was a Byzantine," Thomas called down, as Appleton examined the Libanius. "That dates from about 350 AD -- minor work, nothing there that we don't have in Plato and Xenophon."

  Appleton nodded, and returned the volume to the shelf. "I was just picturing a slim edition of your new dialog here," Appleton said.

  Thomas smiled to himself. "A nice picture." He pushed on a trap door that opened upward. He entered and Appleton followed.

  "Just like my neighbor's attic--," Appleton started to say, then stopped. "No, this resembles no attic I have ever visited."

  The large room, lit with multiple skylights, contained a sleek, metallic chair in the center. Appleton approached. "Why do I feel like a moth to a flame.... May I?" He put his hand near the chair.

  "Yes, please do. Touching will do it no harm."

  Appleton touched it. "Not cold, like metal. Almost warm, like wood."

  "It is some kind of composite -- neither metal nor wood," Thomas said.

  "Gutta percha? Some kind of rubber, perhaps?"

  "Perhaps," Thomas replied.

  Appleton ran his palm over the chair, then whirled around to Thomas. "I still do not believe this time travel business -- I surely do not understand it. How can someone be missing? How can someone be late, traveling in time? A late time traveler -- isn't that an oxymoron? Let's say your friend was delayed in the past or the future -- could she not just set her machine, this chair, to return to this time, her appointed time, in any case?"

  "Yes," Thomas said, "assuming she was still--"

  "Ah yes, I see -- assuming she was still alive! Sorry -- I know you are discomforted by this. I didn't mean to be so blunt."

  "That's all right," Thomas said. "Death is not the only reason someone might be missing in time. She might have decided not to return."