“There is another acropolis near Rhodes Town,” Darling said. “But it was damaged in the earthquake and never regained its former glory.”
Speedy gave a deep yawn and lifted his head from where he had lain slumped against Mike’s chest. “Might be worth checking out,” he said. “Posidonius was a teacher, and the Odeion at Rhodes survived the quake.”
“The Odeion is…”
“A big stage,” he said, as he rested his head on his paws again. “Built so a performer’s voice could be heard by anyone in the audience, even in the back rows. Teachers used it for their lectures.”
“Good enough,” I said, and we headed back towards the donkeys.
Yes, I said donkeys. The touristy way to travel to the Acropolis at Lindos is on a donkey. It was a nifty slice of the city—I would have loved to explore if we had had more time.
On the ride down the hill, Atlas nudged his donkey so it fell into step beside mine. He pointed out fancy nouns as we rode, native birds and plants and whatever, before he finally got to the real reason he was small-talking.
“I could be of better help to you if you let me know why we came to Rhodes,” he said. “I feel that I have not earned my pay on this trip.”
“I’m intentionally keeping you in the dark,” I said. “Since everything I do goes straight back to Senator Hanlon.”
Pause. Blink. Token protests.
If we had been walking, I would have stopped and gotten in his face for effect, but no, we were bumping downward on donkeys. The best I could do was not to fall off during the angry handwavey parts.
“Atlas? Do me a favor,” I said. “Think about who I am. Think about who my husband is. Then ask yourself if you’ve been in contact with Hanlon recently, and don’t bother to lie.
“Thus far, you’ve done jack shit for me,” I added, intentionally ignoring Helen’s beads on their new cord around my neck. “Your cousin’s been a lot more useful. So, start earning your keep—tell me what’s special about this other acropolis.”
I saw his knuckles turn white as he gripped his donkey’s saddle, and then relax as he brought himself down. Good.
“The Acropolis at Rhodes Town is not as well studied as those in other locations,” he finally said. “It is a large, sprawling site, and much of what once existed has been reconstructed. Excavations, however, have been limited.”
“Why?” I asked, but I thought the chunked-up mess of Lindos was a good enough answer: archaeologists thought the exciting stuff was happening right here.
He proved me wrong. “The site is restrictive,” he replied. “It is built on a hill, and the temples situated on terraces. There is no mystery to the land; the people of Rhodes shaped it to their purpose.
“For the last fifty years, it has been the Monte Smith Park,” he said. “Not many tourists visit it, but the locals go there for recreation. I do not know what you expect to find there.”
Neither did I, and that worried me. If we didn’t find Archimedes, we’d have to ask Helen to set up another meeting, and second chances didn’t seem to be her bag.
It was another hour to Rhodes Town, and thirty minutes after that we were at the new acropolis. Sorry—the second acropolis. Like the one at Lindos, the Acropolis at Rhodes Town was ancient, and situated on top of a hill with a view of the sea.
Really pleasant, though. Lindos was a tourist trap, but this one was all open spaces and trees. We hiked up to the top of the hill, where three tall stone columns held up the barest remnant of a temple.
Atlas started playing tour guide. He got about two sentences into describing the acropolis when my ghost sense twitched.
“Hey, you know? This looks like a nice spot,” I said. “Take five, guys. I’m going walkabout.”
I took off before Atlas or Darling could stop me. Behind me, I heard Mike tell the cousins to hang back, followed by the unmistakable plop of a koala hitting the ground.
I paused so Speedy could climb up onto my shoulders (not a courtesy for him, mind, just that a walking koala doesn’t dig in his claws like a running koala), and the two of us headed towards the less prettified areas of the acropolis.
“Where are we?” I asked him.
“Temple of Apollo,” he replied. “Head south.”
“What’s south?”
“Fewer people.”
“Fair enough.”
We wandered to the southern part of the acropolis, making our way around giant rocks that were suspiciously reminiscent of broken buildings. If I had thought Athens was arid, it was only because we hadn’t hit Rhodes first. I thought the island’s air would be sweet and tropical. No. It was hot and dry. The sounds of unfamiliar insects chittered at us from the trees, pausing as we got too close, then screaming at us as we walked away.
Unlike the acropolis(es?) at Athens and Lindos, the preservation efforts at Rhodes were sort of meh. The further Speedy and I got from the Temple, the more haphazard the reconstruction. Nature had been allowed to get a firmer foothold, and whole groves of trees were scattered in and around the ruins.
We found a nice shady spot under an old myrtle tree. I traced the fading edges of a frieze on a worn slab of rock before lying down. Speedy darted up the tree, and I heard a happy sigh as he curled up on a branch just over my head.
“Better?”
“It’s no eucalyptus, but it’ll do. Check for ghosts.”
“I don’t have to,” I said, as I let my mind wander. “They’re already here.”
The feeling was really strong. Whoever was nearby wasn’t a random soldier, bound to the site where he died. No, this was a ghost with a good amount of fame fueling it.
And I still couldn’t see it.
“Start translating,” I said, and I began talking to the empty air.
I wasn’t about to assume that this ghost was Archimedes, so I told the ghost who we were, and why we were here. What OACET was (As if they didn’t know. According to Ben, the entire Afterlife is fascinated by the idea of cyborgs!), and why the Antikythera Mechanism might be a Big Deal.
“We’re here to learn if something is wrong,” I finished, as the koala chattered overhead. “And if so, we want to try and put it right. But we don’t know where to look. If you can help us…”
I paused—I’m never sure about the etiquette of gift-giving for the dead—before I tugged my pack towards me and removed the small travel bottles of ouzo that had been clinking around in the side pocket. Hopefully, whoever was watching us would think I was keeping to custom instead of trying to pay them off.
“…we would be grateful.”
I lined the three bottles up on the rock, and waited.
Then, with tiny pops of air, all three bottles disappeared.
And I still couldn’t see it!
“Oh, come on!” I shouted, and flopped back onto the rock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Let me tell you my thoughts about ghosts and culture.
These are my thoughts, mind. They aren’t informed by anyone else, except for this crazy koala who I sometimes bounce ideas off of. These are just my opinions based on what I’ve experienced, so take that as you will.
After I graduated from college, I wanted to get my shit together. I had been away from home all of a month before Ben showed up, and I thought it best to see if I could get rid of this persistent four-year LSD hallucination before I jumped into the real world. By that time, Ben and I had started day-trading and I had a comfortable nest egg, so I bid him a teary goodbye [17] and went to India.
I didn’t see a single ghost while I was there, and I went to Significant Places. Temples. Battlefields. Old ruins. Places where ghosts tend to congregate in the living world.
I don’t think they spend much time in places like those, mind, but they do like to check in and see how the old home is doing. Ghosts are nostalgic, maybe, or maybe they use those sites help to ground them. I think those sites function as touchstones between the dead and the living worlds, much in the same way a church or temple functions a
s a site that brings you closer to your god. You don’t need it, but maybe it helps to put you in the right mindset to cross over.
My point is this: I love to travel. I’ve bounced all over a whole bunch of countries. And I have never, ever seen a ghost outside of the United States.
Helen is the proof I needed to conclude that the strength of the ghost doesn’t affect whether or not I can see them. She’s freakin’ Helen of Troy Sparta! She’s like King Arthur or Moses—nearly everybody in Western civilization has heard of her, and she’s riding the energy of two thousand years of legendary fame.
Her personality is also proof that she’s actually Helen, and not the idea of Helen, if you get me. The Helen of poems and movies and whatever is a meek lovestruck beauty; the Helen I’ve met was cutting hired mercenaries to pieces at the age of fourteen, and age and death haven’t mellowed her out. If Helen were a myth running around in ghost form, it stands to reason she would have manifested as that timid little creature from the stories, not a sword-wielding death maiden.
I know Helen’s real, and not a myth come to life. I’m a ridiculously powerful ectomancer in my own right. There’s only one reason I shouldn’t be able to talk to her directly, and that’s if we don’t occupy the same realities.
Bear with me. I’m going somewhere with this.
Put the specialized physics lingo on the shelf, and accept it at face value when I tell you that ghosts are beings of energy. They can manifest however they want, whether as a tiny blue pixy or a photorealistic spectral image of their former selves, or anything in between. Regardless of how they appear, when ghosts cross over into our world, they are aligning themselves with a very specific reality.
I don’t think they get it a hundred percent right.
I think they’re slightly out of synch with the living.
This isn’t their fault. Not consciously, at least. I think that when they appear in the living world, they manifest on a specific energy frequency. The more (oh God, I need to use airquotes) “in tune” a psychic is to that specific frequency? The more likely it is that psychic can communicate with the ghost.
Psychics don’t hit puberty and bam! Ghosts! No. Not all psychics have the ability to see ghosts, and for those who can, it still takes ages of practice to (*sigh*) “tune” a psychic’s brain. I was friends with Ben for years before I started seeing other ghosts, weaker ones who didn’t put off as strong a signal as Benjamin Franklin. The more I associated with the strong ghosts, the easier it was for me to (again, *sigh*) “tune” myself to the weaker ones.
I’m still working on it. Hence, my continued attempts with the bottles of ouzo.
So.
Here we have a strong ghost, a strong psychic, and a successful attempt at offering a tuning agent.
Still nothing.
What’s missing from this equation?
A shared cultural identity.
Culture is a funny thing. It shapes every aspect of our lives. How we experience the world is defined by how we perceive ourselves in relation to it. How we relate to others is shaped by our similarities and our differences.
I’m now damned sure that cultural identity is the biggest tuning fork in existence.
Strong ghost. Strong psychic. Successful application of ouzo. Absolutely nothing else in common.
No connection. We’re so far out of synch that we might as well be in different realities. Hell, for all I know, we are—we might exist in two different planes, intersecting through bottles and beads.
I know, I know, you’re asking how I fell in with Benjamin Franklin, since the guy’s been dead for a hell of a long time and his culture was so vastly different than ours, right? Well, when it comes down to notable figures in American history, Ben’s at the tippy-top of that list. As an American—an American who’s always been a huge history buff!—I’ve accepted Ben as a part of my own cultural identity since I first learned about him in grade school.
Also, Ben isn’t as far removed from modern culture as you might think. He, uh… Hmm. I’d like to say he lives for new discoveries, but that’s not quite right. Instead, let’s say that he’s decided to stay grounded in our world for the novelty of it. He loves experiments, science, change… He’s immersed in technology and politics, and is enormously entertained by the ongoing evolution of American society. As far as dead people go, he’s quite flexible.
He’s never stopped inventing, for one thing.
He’s made gizmos and gadgets you wouldn’t believe. A man of his genius, with functional immortality and access to information from all over the planet? It’s freakin’ paradise!
Ben says he’s got a secret laboratory somewhere in Nevada, where he pokes at various scientific problems.
He claims he’s cracked cold fusion.
Fun fact: when he was alive, the majority of Ben’s experiments weren’t scientific, but social. The man was always pressing buttons to see what would happen, and this hasn’t changed. He loves dicking around with politicians and scientists, testing this and that and the other thing. He’s about as active today as he was when he was alive, and if you know Ben from the historical record, that’s actually pretty scary.
Anyhow. Where was I?
Right.
Culture.
Culture has to be the determining factor. It can’t be personality—in terms of traits, I have a lot in common with Helen of Sparta. Sure, I’ve never torn the lifeblood from an animal’s throat with my teeth, but I can relate to someone who trains with swords for a zillion hours straight and is then obligated to dress up for fancy dinners. If I couldn’t make direct contact with Helen, there’s no chance I’d be able to make contact with a socially-shy scientist.
Or whoever this new ghost was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I’ve got an idea,” Speedy said, as he dropped out of the myrtle tree. “You got those beads on you?”
“Of course.” I tugged them free of the neckline of my shirt to show him.
“Great,” he said, as he headbutted me to get me to stand up. “Take them out and let them hang free.”
I looped the cord around my right hand as he chittered away in ancient Greek to the empty air.
“Hope that did it,” he said, as he climbed up to my shoulders and perched his forepaws on top of my head. “Start walking.”
“What are we—”
“Just hold out your arm and walk,” he said. “If this works, you’ll know.”
I did.
The beads moved to the east.
Note that when I say the “beads moved,” I don’t mean they swayed when I walked. I mean they floated freakin’ sideways to point due east.
“I’m on a leash,” I muttered to myself, because muttering is always the preferred option when your choices are either that or to run screaming for the nearest ghost-proof bomb shelter, which isn’t a real thing anyhow so your options are basically just muttering or running around while screaming. “You’ve leashed me to a ghost. A ghost who we know nothing about. I see absolutely no way how this could end badly.”
“Suck it up,” Speedy said, as he thumped his forepaws on my head to get me to start moving again. “If he takes you down, I’m going down with you.”
Which was a comforting thought, actually. Speedy’s not a coward, but he is a prey animal. Risk-taking doesn’t benefit prey animals the same way it does predators, so they’re hardwired to avoid risks whenever possible. If he thought we weren’t going to be led into a flaming snake pit? Well…
Follow the beads.
We went slowly. The dead person on the other end of the beads was very considerate, and would have let me walk at a turtle’s crawl if I had wanted that. I got the feeling that the ghost was treating Speedy and me like breakable objects.
Which, you know, we were. Technically.
It was a short walk. The ghost took us through another grove of trees and across a road. We stopped in an open, dusty field. The ubiquitous chunks of buildings surrounded us, but there was little left
standing.
The beads pointed straight down.
“Houston? Problem,” I said.
“On it,” Speedy said, and began speaking in ancient Greek again.
The tension on the beads vanished, as if the invisible someone on the other end had dropped them. I glanced around to take our bearings: once we had left the cover of the trees, Speedy and I went on stage again, and a few tourists had spotted us.
“C’mon Speedy, we’ve got about five minutes before this turns into a selfie feeding frenzy.”
“I know, I know,” he snapped.
The beads moved again, but this time they tugged gently on my arm, pointing at the ground beneath our feet.
“Please remind the nice dead person that we can’t move through solid matter,” I said.
“Already did. Want to call Pat? He can scan the ground.”
I added and subtracted time zones in my head. “No, he’s probably still in that meeting with the President. Let’s see if we can handle this ourselves.”
Stalemate.
Leaving me and a koala standing around in the middle of a field.
“Is this when we learn that old Greek ghosts have lost all meaning of time and have no sense of urgency?” I asked. “American ghosts are usually impatient dicks.”
“So are Americans who aren’t dead yet. I think he’s working. Give him time.”
Across the field, I spotted our biggest problem: the Petrakis cousins, coming towards us at a fast walk, with Mike trailing a few feet behind them.
“We might have to sneak back here tonight,” I said, just as the beads began to move again. They pointed left, and Speedy resumed pounding on my head as if I were one of the dumber horses in the stable.
I put my body between the cousins and the magic floating beads, and let them lead us a little further east. They stopped moving at the edge of a square crater cut in the earth.
Greek Key Page 17
