Visitor. You were indeed asleep when I arrived.
Socrates. You have come to take me to my destiny? I am ready. But I thought I would be allowed another day or two.
Visitor. I am here to take you to your destiny. If indeed you are ready.
Socrates. I just said that I was. I may criticize the city, but I do not presume to place myself above it.
Visitor. The destiny I am here to offer you may be different from the one you suppose.
Socrates. Different? I would never accept a life that prevented me from praising good and denouncing evil. And placing myself above the city would put me in just such a compromised position.
Visitor. Yet you accept death, and via hands you know are unjust.
Socrates. Ah, so you are indeed here to try to talk against death to me. This is the destiny you wish me to avoid?
Visitor. Yes.
Socrates. You are not the first man to make that offer.
"It's not the same," Sierra said the obvious. "I mean, more than just 'Visitor' instead of 'Andros'.... and Socrates said 'suitor' in the original dialog .... But which is the original?"
"Exactly ... And there indeed are many differences throughout, though most are minor," Alcibiades said. "Although I suppose it is not so minor to see 'man' instead of 'suitor' -- at least that tells us Andros is not you."
"I always knew that," Sierra said. "I would have talked differently to Socrates in that prison."
"I am sure you would." Alcibiades stroked her back. "But that could well have been lost by the time the dialog was written."
Sierra examined the scroll. "It feels newly written -- though you are more familiar with ink and papyrus than I am..."
"I agree. It looks to me as if it was written in the past few months. It has a new smell."
"Who do you suppose wrote it? Did you?"
Alcibiades laughed. "A reasonable guess. But, no."
"Plato?"
"The logically preeminent choice," Alcibiades said, "given what you told me about his extraordinary future. But if Plato wrote this, that would mean he has knowledge of this plot. I did not tell him about it, I assume you did not -- so, who did? Heron?"
Sierra shook her head. "Heron barely talks about Plato now ... I suppose that could be deliberate.... Do you think the same person wrote both versions?"
"Another good question," Alcibiades said. "I am not sure .... This one does seem, perhaps, as if it was written before the one that we know."
"An earlier draft?"
Alcibiades nodded. "Maybe ... 'Visitor' is more general than 'Andros' -- as if the author at first was not sure whether to reveal the Visitor's name...."
"Or perhaps 'Andros' was first, and the author decided to disguise it," Ampharete said.
"Perhaps," Alcibiades allowed. "But the choice of words in the 'Visitor' version also seems a little more common, more general, than in our version. Not only 'man' instead of 'suitor,' but also 'sleep' instead of 'doze,' 'ready' instead of 'willing' …. The differences are very slight ... But with this kind of scroll in existence, and its knowledge of the trial of Socrates, we have to tread carefully. Much as I would enjoy killing Anytus …" Alcibiades returned to their previous topic. "He-"
"He was Socrates' harshest accuser," Sierra said. "He stirred everyone else up."
"Yes, but by killing him, we might make things worse -- encourage others to crawl out from under their rocks," Alcibiades said. "This scroll shows that someone else knows what is going to happen.... At least in our current circumstance, we know exactly when Socrates will die, so we can rescue him... If we kill Anytus, who knows what might happen instead."
Sierra put the scroll down, and nodded. She knew he was right about not attempting to prevent the trial by killing people. A person killed could make just as many unpredictable ripples as a person saved.... She had told him that herself the last time they had been together....
* * *
They were awakened the next morning by birds, sunlight, and a messenger.
"There are strangers in the agora," he told them, his eyes averted as Alcibiades and Sierra hurriedly dressed.
"Do you know who?" Alcibiades asked.
"No."
"Wait for us outside. We will join you in a few minutes."
The messenger bowed his head, slightly, and left.
"This might not be important," Alcibiades told Sierra.
"Or they could be Heron's men," she replied.
"We still need Heron to get the sleeping double into the prison -- and for who knows what else." Alcibiades shuddered.
Sierra looked at him.
"The double that came back, a little before Appleton ... I told you about him," Alcibiades explained. "It had already been invested with hemlock ... I could not bear to look at it, even though I knew it was beyond feeling pain. It was only there for that one morning -- Appleton took it back with him. But I grieve for it -- I grieve for Socrates."
Sierra took his hand.
Alcibiades pulled her hand to his lips.... "I suppose I had better see who is in our agora," he said.
"You cannot go. You are supposed to be dead, remember?"
"I will be careful. I will wear a hood."
"I will go," Sierra said. "I do not need a hood. No one in Athens knows me--"
They heard the hound outside. It barked savagely and suddenly stopped.
Alcibiades grabbed his weapon. "Please, stay inside here."
Sierra thought for a moment, then moved towards the door. She looked for a weapon--
It didn't matter.
The door flew open. One of the Roman mercenaries was on top of Alcibiades. Sierra pounced upon the mercenary, and pummeled the back of his neck with her fists. Alcibiades got out from under, and stabbed the mercenary in the front of his neck, swiftly and repeatedly, with his small knife...
Alcibiades stood up, breathed heavily, and smiled at Sierra. "Let me look outside."
Sierra took the mercenary's knife, and walked quickly to the door.
The messenger, three of Alcibiades' guards, and just one other Roman mercenary were sprawled dead in the dirt. The hound was sliced in two.
* * *
Alcibiades and Sierra walked for twenty minutes to a new hiding place. Plato and several of Alcibiades' men were already there. They looked like they had spent the night in the house.
Alcibiades told them what had happened. Plato looked at Sierra several times with cool, appraising eyes. The other men went outside to keep guard.
Alcibiades caught Plato's last look. "She is not responsible," he said to Plato, disapprovingly.
Plato looked again at Sierra, then Alcibiades. "Is it possible your logic is clouded by your feelings?"
Alcibiades started to say something angry--
"I may have been followed," Sierra interrupted. "Saying I am responsible does not mean I wanted this."
Alcibiades took the point.
Plato, apparently choosing not to be insulted, resumed his scrutiny of Sierra. "Yes, that is what I was thinking ... Who knows about the two of you?"
Sierra, not sure what exactly Plato knew, did not answer.
Alcibiades did. "The people who helped me escape my fate in Phrygia."
Plato nodded. "Perhaps they changed their minds ... It may not be safe for you anywhere near Athens. The best place for you -- and Ampharete -- is away from here. At least for a few days, maybe longer."
"I agree," Sierra said.
"I know you do," Alcibiades snapped--
Plato watched with interest--
"--I am sorry," Alcibiades softened. "I just do not believe in solving problems by running away from them..."
"Socrates says the same," Plato murmured, deferentially. "But--"
"Surely a few days, even a few weeks, cannot make much difference." Sierra stood her ground, and looked at Alcibiades. They both knew that what was at stake would not happen for six months...
"She is right," Plato said, quietly.
Alcibiades smiled, d
espite his finding little humor in the situation. "So you prefer a woman's counsel to Socrates'?"
Plato thought for moment before he responded. "The advice of Socrates holds in general terms. Ampharete's pertains to this specific occasion. No general advice devised by man -- even Socrates -- can be expected to hold all of the time."
Alcibiades looked at him.
Sierra knew what he was thinking: Alcibiades was beginning to see what the future saw in Plato. That still did not mean, of course, that Plato could be trusted...
"We will leave, for a little while," Alcibiades finally acceded.
Plato nodded. "I and the others will escort you to the Piraeus. You need not tell us where you will be sailing. That way, if one of us is a spy, your new location will not be compromised."
* * *
Plato and three other men walked ahead and out of earshot of Alcibiades and Sierra.
"How would Heron know you are here?" Alcibiades asked.
"There must be something in the chairs that sends him a signal," Sierra replied. "Sends him a ... scent, across time, the way a hunter tracks a prey."
Alcibiades struggled to make sense of that. He decided to grant the magic -- after all, it was no less incredible than people traveling across time. "We do not know with any certainty that he is hunting us."
"I know of no one else who commands such mercenaries," Sierra responded. "But there could be others from Heron's time with similar resources."
Alcibiades nodded. "But I remain suspicious of that second, savage attack in Phrygia. The Romans appeared to have had Heron in harm's way, true. But he survived, nonetheless."
Sierra started to reply-- but she and Alcibiades were distracted by Plato and his party, who were heatedly discussing something with two men who had appeared on the road before them.
"I do not like the looks of those two," Sierra said.
"They look like Romans dressed like Athenians," Alcibiades growled and put his hand on the hilt of his weapon.
"At least they are just talking..."
"Stay back here," Alcibiades said, sharply. He hurried forward, weapon drawn.
The two Romans drew their weapons -- whether because of Alcibiades, or something Plato or the other men said, or because they would have drawn them, anyway, at this point in the conversation, Sierra did not know. She did know she had no intention of hanging back, and passively observing what could be Alcibiades' death -- and young Plato's, too. She withdrew the knife she had acquired at the last house, and ran forward--
The Romans were already upon Plato and the three men. Alcibiades reached them with shouts and sword. He thrust it into the exposed side of one of the Romans, who was wheeling around after dispatching two of Alcibiades' elite force, and was wearing less than full armor.
The other Roman was encountering better resistance from Plato's party. The philosopher was armed, but his comrade was doing an heroic job of keeping the Roman's sword on him and not Plato...
The valiant fighter finally succumbed as Sierra arrived. Alcibiades jumped on his killer, but the Roman shrugged him off, stunned him with a knee to the groin and a fist to the solar plexus, and went for Plato. Even forewarned and forearmed, the young philosopher was at a distinct disadvantage....
The Roman threw Plato to the ground. Plato put up a feeble defense with his sword...
Sierra helped Alcibiades to his feet. He was still wobbly...
She looked at Plato. The Roman's weapon was raised high, held by both hands, about to land a grievous blow--
Sierra shrieked and rushed forward, lunging with her knife--
The Roman was momentarily distracted--
Plato rolled on the ground--
The Roman's weapon slashed after him, but missed by an inch, and plunged deep into the soil. He raised it again--
And Sierra got lucky. Her blade went clean through the Roman's left eye, straight into his brain.
He gasped and died.
Sierra felt something she had never known before. I just saved the future, she thought. That one lunge had safeguarded Plato and his role in human history -- as far as she knew. It was a heady, astonishing moment. She looked at the sky, and thought she saw the birds freeze in place against the clouds and the sun...
* * *
Alcibiades, Sierra, and Plato walked as best they could the rest of the way to Piraeus. Only Sierra was not limping.
"That mercenary was more determined to kill you than me," Alcibiades said to Plato.
"Perhaps," Plato said. "But why?"
Alcibiades shook his head. "I do not know."
Sierra said nothing. Heron presumably would be apoplectic to know his mercenary had almost killed Plato. Among the consequences for history, no Plato would mean no one of his literary genius to tell the story of Socrates.... Could that be what Heron wanted? She shook her head.... She at least agreed with Alcibiades that, even in view of what had just happened, it still did not make sense to tell Plato much more, and risk history even further.
"Sometimes when these killers get enraged, they vent their murderous attention on anyone in front of them, whether or not they are the intended target," Plato said.
"Perhaps," Alcibiades said. "But my advice is that you should leave Athens, too .... And, since we know that I was the target, at least earlier this morning at my first house, you would probably be safer away from me, and Ampharete, as well..."
Plato considered ... and agreed. "I could not leave right away, however. I would need to inform the others in our group of the danger. No one other than the three of us knows what happened here today."
Alcibiades nodded.
"And what do I tell our mentor? Is he in danger, too?"
Alcibiades and Sierra knew that Plato had to know that there was more afoot here than they would want to tell him. But they stuck to their script of silence about Socrates, anyway. To utter anything aloud was to make it more vulnerable...
"Socrates is not in any immediate danger," was all that Alcibiades said.
* * *
Alcibiades and Sierra looked back at the harbor, as their hastily chartered small boat slipped into the Aegean. The day had turned chilly, and they hugged each other for comfort of many kinds.
"My history says that Plato was present in Athens during the trial of Socrates but left before he took the hemlock," Sierra remarked. "That was the start of his extensive travels, about twelves years, as far away as Egypt."
"I guess we sent him on his way, then, eventually," Alcibiades said.
Sierra pulled Alcibiades closer.
"We will not have the luxury of sailing for twelve years," he said. "We will need to get back here as soon as possible."
Sailing to Byzantium, but only for a little while, Sierra thought. "It is still difficult to figure Plato's role in all of this," she said.
"I trust him a little more, now," Alcibiades said. "I cannot fathom him being in league with our adversaries, with the tip of that sword so close to his chest."
"His dance with death impressed you more than Heron's?"
"Plato seemed far less at ease with arms than Heron, despite his broad shoulders and young age."
"If Heron was trying to kill Plato back there, he is playing far more dangerously with history than secretly rescuing Socrates and leaving his double to die of hemlock," Sierra said. She shook her head. "I am beginning to think that Heron may not be our only adversary."
"Who else?"
"Unfortunately, I have no idea."
Alcibiades frowned. "Whoever else may be opposing us, I believe Heron has determined to stop anyone who could interfere with his plans for Socrates -- including me, including Plato," Alcibiades said. "But given what you have told me about the impact of Plato's future writings, I grant that killing him would leave a gaping hole in history...." Alcibiades sighed. "But I also think it very unlikely that Plato was the author of that alternate dialog. Unless he is a superb actor, if Plato knew what the author of that dialog knew, he would have blurted out something during
that peril on the road to Piraeus..."
Sierra shivered through Alcibiades' arms. "If Plato did not write it, who did?"
Alcibiades pressed his face against her hair. He was nearly shivering himself. "The answer to that question would explain many things."
Chapter Nine
[Athens, 399 BC]
The trial of Socrates was now just weeks away.
If the prosecution and death of Socrates could be blamed on any one man, he would be Anytus. Sierra had learned what she could about him since she and Alcibiades had returned to Athens.
A popular if ineffective general in the Peloponnesian War, a middle-class opponent of the hated Thirty, Anytus was something of a hero in Athens, 399 BC. Among the many reins Anytus sought to grasp in his calloused hands were those of the revived Athenian democracy. And he hated Socrates.
"Fathers frequently are angry at Socrates because he seeks to help their sons lead better lives," Alciabades once told Sierra. "Anytus the tanner was furious when Socrates said to him that he should not limit his son's education to horses and hides."
Sierra decided she needed to talk to Anytus, though Alcibiades was against it. She knew he would be very unhappy that she was going against his wishes. She would deal with that later, after she had made this attempt. If she could deflect Anytus from his historical course, that would save Socrates without risking the life of Alcibiades.
* * *
The home of the tanner was not hard to find. "I am here to see your master," Sierra told the female who came to the door. "I apologize for not having an appointment."
The woman nodded, went back into the house, and returned a few minutes later with a middle-aged man. "I am Anytus," the man said.
"My name is Ampharete. Could we talk for a few minutes? Perhaps take a walk? The air is cool and appealing this morning."
"What would you wish to talk about?"
"A thorn in many of our sides," Sierra answered. "Socrates."
* * *
Sierra found Anytus not only congenial but surprisingly confident -- only a man secure in his public position would be so forthcoming about his political views with a stranger. The two walked along quiet lanes, muddied from a heavy rain that had fallen the day before.
"He was close friends with some of the Thirty," Anytus said about Socrates. "When others fled this city -- either in protest or to protect their lives -- Socrates remained happily behind, practicing his craft on any who would listen."
The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1) Page 22
