The Dancer from Atlantis

by Poul Anderson

  Decisive as any man he had known, she finished: ‘You will stay on this isle, where sacredness holds bane at bay and where you can readily be summoned for further talks. There are ample guest quarters in the wing reserved for visiting male votaries.’

  ‘But my lady,’ he protested, ‘my friends in Athens—’

  ‘Let them bide where they are, at least until we’ve learned more. Be not afraid for them. Winter months or no, I’ll find occasions to send messengers there, who’ll observe and report.’

  The Ariadne imitated a smile. ‘You are not a prisoner, man from afar,’ she continued. ‘You may walk freely about the main island too, when not needed here. I do want you always under guidance…. Let me think…. A dancer should suffice, a lay sister, young and merry to brighten your moods.’

  Reid thought it odd how calmly she took his news. Had Diores ferreted out sufficient hints to give her forewarning, or was she inhumanly self-controlled? Her voice snapped the thread of his wondering:

  ‘I have in mind particularly a sister of excellent family whose name may be an omen. For it’s the same as that of your woman companion I was told about. Erissa.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The bull lowered his head, pawed, and charged. As he came down the paddock he gathered speed, until earth shook and drummed with the red-and-white mass of him.

  Poised, the girl waited. She was clad like a boy for this, in nothing more than belt, kilt, and soft boots. Dark hair fell down her back in a ponytail lest a stray lock blind her. Reid’s nails dug into his palms.

  Sunlight out of a wan sky flashed off tridents borne by the men on guard. In an emergency, they were supposed to rescue the dancers. They stood at ease just outside the rail fence. Reid couldn’t. Through the cool breeze, the hay and marjoram odors of Atlantis’ high meadows, he sensed his own sweat trickling, stinking, catching in his mustache and making his lips taste salty when he wet them.

  That was Erissa waiting for those horns.

  But she won’t be hurt, he told himself frantically. Not yet.

  At his back the hills rolled downward, yellow grass, green bush, here and there a copse of gnarly trees, to a remote glimmer off the sea. Before him was the training field, and beyond that a slope more abrupt, and at its foot the city, the bay, the sacred isle, and that other isle which, rising black from scintillant blueness, was the volcano. Above the crater stood a column of smoke so thick that the wind hardly bent its first thousand feet. Higher up it was scattered and blown south toward unseen Knossos.

  The bull was almost upon the girl. Behind her a half-dozen companions wove a quick-footed pattern of dance.

  Erissa sprang. Either hand seized a horn. The muscles played beneath her skin. Incredibly to Reid, she lifted herself, waved legs aloft, before she let go – and somersaulted down the great backbone, reached ground in an exuberant flip, and pranced her way back into the group. Another slender form was already on the horns.

  ‘She’s good, that ’un.’ A guard nodded at Erissa, winked at Reid. ‘But she’ll take no priestess vows, I’ll bet. The man who beds her ’ull have as much as he can handle— Hoy!’ He leaped onto a rail, ready to jump the fence with his fellows. The bull had bellowed and tossed his head, flinging a girl aside.

  Erissa ran to the beast, tugged an ear, and pirouetted off. He swerved toward her. She repeated her vault over him. The dance resumed, the guards relaxed.

  ‘Thought for a bit there he was turning mean,’ said the man who had earlier spoken. ‘But he just got excited. Happens.’

  Reid let out a breath. His knees were about to give way. ‘Do … you lose… many people?’ he whispered.

  ‘No, very seldom, and those who’re gored often recover. That’s here on Atlantis, I mean. The boys train on Crete, and I’m told no few of them get hurt. Boys’re too reckless. They’re more interested in making a good show, winning glory for themselves, than in honoring the gods. Girls, now, girls want the rite to go perfect for Her, so they pay close attention and follow the rules.’

  The bull, which had been rushing at each one who separated herself from the group, slowed to a walk, then stopped. His flanks gleamed damp and his breath was loud. ‘That’ll do,’ the ringmaster decided, waved his trident and shouted, ‘Everybody out!’ To Reid he explained, ‘The nasty incidents are usually when the beast’s gotten tired. He doesn’t want to play any more, and if you force him, he’s apt to lose his temper. Or he may simply forget what he’s supposed to do.’

  The girls scampered over the fence. The bull snorted. ‘Leave him a while to cool off before you open the gate,’ the ringmaster said. He cast a glance more appraising than appreciative over the bare young breasts and limbs, wet as the animal’s. ‘Enough for today, youngsters. Put your cloaks on so you don’t catch cold and go to the boat.’

  They obeyed and departed, chattering and giggling like any lot of twelve-and thirteen-year-olds. They were no more than that, new recruits learning the art. The bull, however, was a veteran. You didn’t exercise together humans and beasts when neither knew what to expect.

  And that, Reid thought, is the secret of the Minoan corrida. Nobody in my era, that I read about anyway, could figure out how it was possible. The answer looks obvious, now. You breed your cattle, not for slowness as Mary Renault suggested, but for intelligence; and you train them from calfhood.

  Nonetheless it’s dangerous. A misstep, a flareup … They don’t accept every kid who wants fame and prizes and influence. No; bloodshed’s a bad omen. (Except the blood of the best animal, when he’s sacrificed after the games.) That must be the reason – beneath every religious rationalization – why the maidens aren’t allowed to dance when they’re having a period and why they have to stay maidens. Morning sickness would raise hell with an agility and coordination that would earn them black belts in any judo school at home, wouldn’t it? And there, in turn, we must have the reason why they train here, the youths on Crete. Put together a mixed lot of young, good-looking, physically perfect human beings—

  Erissa neared. ‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘did you enjoy watching?’

  ‘It was, was unique in my life,’ he stammered.

  She halted before him. So far she had only flung her cloak across an arm. The ringmaster’s orders did not touch her, who, with long experience, had been the instructress. ‘I don’t want to go back to the isle right away,’ she said. ‘The men can take the girls. You and I can borrow a shallop later.’ She drew the crow’s-wing queue off her bosom where it had gotten tossed. ‘After all, the Ariadne told me to show you about.’

  ‘You are too kind.’

  ‘No, you are interesting.’ He could not draw his eyes from her. Erissa – seventeen years old, colt-slim, unscarred by time or grief, loosening her hair…. Her smile faded. A slow flush descended from cheeks to breasts. She flung the wool cloak over her shoulders and pulled it around her. ‘Why do you stare?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Reid mumbled. ‘You’re, uh, the first real bull dancer I’ve met.’

  ‘Oh.’ She relaxed. ‘I’m nothing remarkable. Wait till we go to Knossos in spring and you see the festival.’ She pinned her mantle at the throat. ‘Shall we walk?’

  He fell into step beside her. ‘Do you live here throughout every winter?’ he asked, knowing the answer from her older self but feeling a need of staving off silence.

  ‘Yes, to help train novices, and beasts, and myself after a summer’s ease. That’s spent in Knossos, mostly, or in a country villa we have. Sometimes we go elsewhere, though. My father’s a wealthy man, he owns several ships, and he’ll give us, his children, passage when a voyage is to a pleasant place.’

  ‘M-m, how did he feel when you wanted to become a dancer?’

  ‘I had to wheedle him a little. Mother made the real fuss. Not that parents can stop you from trying out. But I didn’t want to hurt them. I hadn’t gotten a real call, like the one that came to Ariadne Lydra. It just seemed exciting, glamorous – am I shocking you? Please don’t think I’m not happy
to serve Our Lady and Asterion. But I wouldn’t want to become a priestess. I want lots of children. And, you know, a dancer meets practically every eligible bachelor in the Thalassocracy. With the honor she’ll bring to his house, she can pretty well choose any of them. Maybe this spring will be my last festival to dance in—’ Her trilling stopped. She caught his hand. ‘Why, Duncan, your mouth is all twisted up. You look ready to weep. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said harshly. ‘I remembered an old hurt.’

  She continued hand in hand with him. No man on Atlantis would dare take advantage of her, he thought. The paddock was lost to view as their trail wound downward over the hills. Grass and brush stirred, trees soughed in the wind. He could smell her flesh, still warm from exertion, warm as the sunlight on his back or the fingers that curled around his.

  ‘Tell me of yourself,’ she urged presently. ‘You must be very important for the Ariadne to keep you.’

  Lydra had commanded strict silence about his prediction of catastrophe. He had to admit that, for the time being, it made sense; public hysteria would help nothing. She’d wanted to suppress the entire story of his magical arrival in Egypt, but he pointed out that that was impossible. The word had spread through Athens and Diores’ sailors must have passed it around Atlantean taverns and bawdyhouses before returning home.

  ‘I don’t know that I myself count for much,’ Reid said to the girl. ‘But I’ve come a far and a weird way and am hoping the high priestess can counsel me.’

  He gave her simply his public narrative, no hint about time travel but much about America. She listened wide-eyed. As he talked, he tried to recall Pamela’s face. But he couldn’t, really, for Erissa’s – young Erissa’s.

  Lydra said: ‘You will remain here until I release you.’

  ‘I tell you, the Minos must be warned,’ Reid protested.

  ‘Will my word carry less weight with him than yours?’ she retorted coldly. ‘I am still not satisfied you speak truth, exile.’

  No, he thought, I don’t imagine any rational person is ever ready to believe in the end of his world.

  They stood on the temple roof in a chilly dusk. The lagoon glimmered faintly metallic; land and city were swallowed by murk, in this age before outdoor lighting. But fire was in the sky, a sullen red flicker reflected off the smoke that rolled out of the volcano. Now and then sparks showered from its throat and there went an underground rumbling.

  He gestured. ‘Does that not bear witness for me?’

  ‘It has spoken before,’ she answered. ‘Sometimes it spews forth stones and cinders and melted rock, and the voice of Asterion roars. But a procession to the heights, prayers, sacrifices cast in, have always quieted him. Would he destroy the sanctuary of his Mother, his Bride, and his Mourner?’

  Reid threw her a glance. Beneath a cowl, her profile showed vague against darkling heaven; but he made out that she was staring at the mountain more intently than her calm tone suggested. ‘You can smooth the people’s unease,’ he said, ‘till the last day. What about your own, though?’

  ‘I am praying for guidance.’

  ‘What harm in sending me to Knossos?’

  ‘What good, thus far? Hear me, outlander. I reign over holy things, not over men. But this does not mean I’m ignorant of temporal affairs. I could hardly be that and serve Our Lady’s interests. So I understand, perhaps better than you if you are honest about your origin – I understand how grave a matter it would be to follow your advice.

  ‘Cities emptied, left deserted … for weeks? Think of moving that many people, feeding and sheltering them, keeping them from blind panic at the awful thing threatened, losing them by hundreds or thousands when sickness breaks out in their camps, as it surely will. And meanwhile the navy is far at sea, widely scattered for fear ships will be dashed together, therefore helpless. But boats would speedily carry news to the mainland. The risk that the Achaeans would revolt again, make alliance and fall on our coasts, is not small. And then, if your prophecy proved false – what anger throughout the realm, what mockery of temple and throne and the very gods – what rebellion, even, shaking the already cracked foundations of the state! No, that which you urge is not lightly to be undertaken.’

  Reid grimaced. She spoke with reason. ‘That’s why plans have to be laid soon,’ he begged. ‘What can I do to prove myself to you?’

  ‘Have you a suggestion?’

  ‘Well—’ The idea had come to him already in Athens. He and Oleg had discussed it at length. ‘Yes. If you, my lady, can persuade the temporal governor – wh-wh-which you surely can—’

  The mountain growled again.

  Sarpedon, master of Atlantis’ one small shipyard, ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. ‘I’m doubtful,’ he said. ‘We’re not set up here like at Knossos or Tiryns, you know. We mainly do repair and maintenance work. Don’t actually build anything larger than a boat.’ He stared down at the papyrus Reid had spread on a table. A finger traced the drawing. ‘Still – but no. Too much material needed.’

  ‘The governor will release timber, bronze, cordage, everything, from the royal warehouse,’ Reid pressed him. ‘He only asks for your agreement on feasibility. And it is feasible. I’ve seen craft like this in action.’

  That wasn’t true, unless you counted movies. (A world of moving pictures, light at the flick of a switch, motors, skyscrapers, spacecraft, antibiotics, radio links, an hour’s hop through the air between Crete and Athens … unreal, fantastic, a fading dream. Reality was this cluttered room, this man who wore a loincloth and worshiped a bull that was also the sun, the creak of wooden wheels and the clop-clop of unshod donkey hoofs from a street outside, a street in lost Atlantis; reality was the girl who held his arm and waited breathlessly for him to unfold his next marvel.) But he had read books; and, while he was not a marine designer, as an architect he was necessarily enough of an engineer for this work.

  ‘Um-m. Um-m.’ Sarpedon tugged his chin. ‘Fascinating notion, I must say.’

  ‘I don’t understand what difference it will make,’ Erissa ventured shyly. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t.’

  ‘At present,’ Reid explained, ‘a ship is nothing but a means for getting from here to there.’

  She blinked. Her lashes were longer and thicker, her eyes even more luminous, than they would be when she was forty and fading. ‘Oh, but ships are beautiful!’ she said. ‘And sacred to Our Lady of the Deeps.’ The second sentence was dutiful; the first shone from her.

  ‘Well, in war, then.’ Reid sighed. ‘Consider. Except for sling-stones, arrows, and javelins, you can’t have a real battle at sea before you’ve grappled fast to your enemy. And then it’s a matter of boarding, hand-to-hand combat, no different from a fight on land except that quarters are cramped and footing uncertain.’

  He returned his glance to Sarpedon, reluctantly. ‘I admit that a vessel such as I propose will use more stuff than a regular galley,’ he told the yardmaster. ‘In particular, it’ll tie up a great deal of bronze in its beak. However, the strength of Crete has always lain in keels rather than spears, right? Whatever makes a more effective navy will repay the Thalassocrat ten times over.

  ‘Now.’ He tapped his drawing. ‘The ram alone is irresistible. You know how fragile hulls are. This prow is reinforced. Striking, it’ll send any opponent to the bottom. Soldiers aren’t needed, just sailors. Think of the saving in manpower. And because this vessel can destroy one after another in a full-dress naval engagement, fewer of its type are needed than galleys. So the size of the navy can be reduced. You get a large net saving in materials too.’

  Erissa looked distressed. ‘But we have no enemies left,’ she said.

  The hell you don’t, Reid didn’t say. Instead: ‘Well, you mount guard against possible preparation for hostilities. And you maintain patrols to suppress piracy. And those same patrols give aid to distressed vessels, which is good for commerce and so for your prosperity. And there are no few voyages to waters where the Minos does not rul
e and the natives might get greedy. True?

  ‘Very well. This longer hull gives greater speed. And this strange-looking rudder and rig make it possible to sail against any but the foulest winds, crisscrossing them. Oarsmen tire and need rest oftener than airs drop to a dead calm. What we have here is a ship that’s not only invincible but can out-travel anything you’ve ever imagined. Therefore, again, fewer are required for any given purpose. The savings can go into making the realm stronger and wealthier.

  ‘The governor is most interested,’ Reid finished pointedly, ‘and likewise the Ariadne.’

  ‘Well, I’m interested too,’ Sarpedon replied. ‘I’d like to try it. By Asterion’s tail, I would—! Um, beg pardon, Sister. … But I dare not pledge it’ll succeed. The work’d go slowly at best. Not only because we’ve no large facilities here. You wouldn’t believe how conservative shipwrights, carpenters, sailmakers, the whole lot of them are. We’d have to stand over them with cudgels, I swear, to make them turn out work as peculiar as this.’ Shrewdly: ‘And no doubt we’ll have many a botch, many a detail nobody had thought of. And sailors are at least as hidebound as craftsmen. You’ll not get them to learn a whole new way of seafaring. Better you recruit among young fellows itchy for adventure. The town’ll have ample of those, now when winter’s closing down the trade lanes. However, training them up will take time also.’

  ‘I have time,’ Reid snapped.

  Lydra was not about to let him go. And she might well be right, that some such proof of his bona fides as this was needful. Though she’d been strangely hesitant to endorse the scheme—

  He added: The governor doesn’t want your promise that this ship will perform as well as I claim, Sarpedon. Only that it won’t be a total loss – that it won’t sink when launched, for instance, or that it can be reconverted to something more conventional if necessary. You can judge that for yourself, can’t you?’