Worlds That Weren't Read online

  But the Athenian tossed his head. “It’s not the polluted Syracusans,” he answered. “It’s the Salaminia. She’s just come into the harbor here.”

  “The Salaminia?” Alkibiades and Nikias spoke together, and in identical astonishment. The Salaminia was Athens’ official state trireme, and wouldn’t venture far from home except on most important business. Sure enough, peering toward the harbor, Alkibiades could see her crew dragging her out of the sea and up onto the yellow sand of the beach. “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

  Nikias eyed him with an expression compounded of equal parts loathing and gloating. “I’ll bet I know,” the older man said. “I’ll bet they found someone who told the citizens of Athens the real story, the true story, of how the herms all through the polis were profaned.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Alkibiades said. He’d said the same thing ever since the mutilations happened. “And besides,” he added, “just about as many of the citizens of Athens are here in Sicily as are back at the polis.”

  “You can’t evade like that,” Nikias said. “You remind me of your dear teacher Sokrates, using bad logic to beat down good.”

  Alkibiades stared at him as if he’d found him squashed on the sole of his sandal. “What you say about Sokrates would be a lie even if you’d thought of it yourself. But it comes from Aristophanes’ Clouds, and you croak it out like a raven trained to speak but without the wit to understand its words.”

  Nikias’ cheeks flamed red as hot iron beaten on the anvil. Alkibiades would have liked to beat him. Instead, he contemptuously turned his back. But that pointed his gaze toward the Salaminia again. Athenians down there on the shore were pointing up to the high ground on which he stood. A pair of men whose gold wreaths declared they were on official business made their way toward him.

  He hurried to meet them. That was always his style. He wanted to make things happen, not have them happen to him. Nikias followed. “Hail, friends!” Alkibiades called, tasting the lie. “Are you looking for me? I am here.”

  “Alkibiades son of Kleinias?” one of the newcomers asked formally.

  “You know who I am, Herakleides,” Alkibiades said. “What do you want?”

  “I think, son of Kleinias, that you know what I want,” Herakleides replied. “You are ordered by the people of Athens to return to the polis to defend yourself against serious charges that have been raised against you.”

  More and more hoplites and rowers gathered around Alkibiades and the men newly come from Athens. This was an armed camp, not a peaceful city; many of them carried spears or wore swords on their hips. Alkibiades smiled to see them, for he knew they were well inclined toward him. In a loud voice, he asked, “Am I under arrest?”

  Herakleides and his wreathed comrade licked their lips. The mere word made soldiers growl and heft their spears; several of them drew their swords. Gathering himself, Herakleides answered, “No, you are not under arrest. But you are summoned to defend yourself, as I said. How can a man with such charges hanging over his head hope to hold an important position of public trust?”

  “Yes—how indeed?” Nikias murmured.

  Again, Alkibiades gave him a look full of withering scorn. Then he forgot about him. Herakleides and his friend were more important at the moment. So were the soldiers and sailors—much more important. With a smile and a mocking bow, Alkibiades said, “How can any man hope to hold an important position of public trust when a lying fool can trump up such charges and hang them over his head?”

  “That’s the truth,” a hoplite growled, right in Herakleides’ ear. He was a big, burly fellow with a thick black beard—a man built like a wrestler or a pankratiast. Alkibiades wouldn’t have wanted a man like that growling in his ear and clenching a spearshaft till his knuckles whitened.

  By the involuntary step back Herakleides took, he didn’t care for it, either. His voice quavered as he said, “You deny the charges, then?”

  “Of course I do,” Alkibiades answered. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Sokrates pushing through the crowd toward the front. A lot of men were pushing forward, but somehow Sokrates, despite his years, made more progress than most. Maybe the avid curiosity on his face helped propel him forward. Or maybe not; he almost always seemed that curious. But Sokrates would have to wait now, too. Alkibiades went on, “I say they’re nothing but a pack of lies put forward by scavenger dogs who, unable to do anything great themselves, want to pull down those who can.”

  Snarls of agreement rose from the soldiers and sailors. Herakleides licked his lips again. He must have known recalling Alkibiades wouldn’t be easy before the Salaminia sailed. Had he known it would be this hard? Alkibiades had his doubts. With something like a sigh, Herakleides said, “At the motion of Thettalos son of Kimon, it has seemed good to the people of Athens to summon you home. Will you obey the democratic will of the Assembly, or will you not?”

  Alkibiades grimaced. He had no use for the democracy of Athens, and had never bothered hiding that. As a result, the demagogues who loved to hear themselves talk in the Assembly hated him. He said, “I have no hope of getting a fair hearing in Athens. My enemies have poisoned the people of the polis against me.”

  Herakleides frowned portentously. “Would you refuse the Assembly’s summons?”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do right now.” Alkibiades clenched his fists. What he wanted to do was pound the smugness out of the plump, prosperous fool in front of him. But no. It would not do. Here, though, even he, normally so quick and decisive, had trouble figuring out what would do. “Let me have time to think, O marvelous one,” he said, and watched Herakleides redden at the sarcasm. “I will give you my answer tomorrow.”

  “Do you want to be declared a rebel against the people of Athens?” Herakleides’ frown got deeper and darker.

  “No, but I don’t care to go home and be ordered to guzzle hemlock no matter what I say or do, either,” Alkibiades answered. “Were it your life, Herakleides, such as that is, would you not want time to plan out what to do?”

  That such as that is made the man just come from Athens redden again. But soldiers and sailors jostled forward, getting louder by the minute in support of their general. Herakleides yielded with such grace as he could: “Let it be as you say, most noble one.” He turned the title of respect into one of reproach. “I will hear your answer tomorrow. For now…hail.” He turned and walked back toward the Salaminia. The sun glinted dazzlingly off his gold wreath.

  Sokrates stood in line to get his evening rations. Talk of Alkibiades and the herms and the profanation of the sacred mysteries was on everyone’s lips. Some men thought he’d done what he was accused of doing. Others insisted the charges against him were invented to discredit him.

  “Wait,” Sokrates told a man who’d been talking about unholy deeds and how the gods despised them. “Say that again, Euthyphron, if you please. I don’t follow your thought, which is surely much too wise for a simple fellow like me.”

  “I’d be glad to, Sokrates,” the other hoplite said, and he did.

  “I’m sorry, best one. I really must be dense,” Sokrates said when he’d finished. “I still do not quite see. Do you say deeds are unholy because the gods hate them, or do you say the gods hate them because they are unholy?”

  “I certainly do,” Euthyphron answered.

  “No, wait. I see what Sokrates means,” another soldier broke in. “You can’t have that both ways. It’s one or the other. Which do you say it is?”

  Euthyphron tried to have it both ways. Sokrates’ questions wouldn’t let him. Some of the other Athenians jeered at him. Others showed more sympathy for him, even in his confusion, than they did for Sokrates. “Do you have to be a gadfly all the time?” a hoplite asked him after Euthyphron, very red in the face, bolted out of the line without getting his supper.

  “I can only be what I am,” Sokrates answered. “Am I wrong for trying to find the truth in everything I do?”

  The other man shru
gged. “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong. What I do know is, you’re cursed annoying.”

  When Sokrates blinked his big round eyes in surprise, he looked uncommonly like a frog. “Why should the search for truth be annoying? Would you not think preventing that search to be a greater annoyance for mankind?”

  But the hoplite threw up his hands. “Oh, no, you don’t. I won’t play. You’re not going to twist me up in knots, the way you did with poor Euthyphron.”

  “Euthyphron’s thinking was not straight before I ever said a word to him. All I did was show him his inconsistencies. Now maybe he will try to root them out.”

  The other soldier tossed his head. But he still refused to argue. Sighing, Sokrates snaked forward with the rest of the line. A bored-looking cook handed him a small loaf of dark bread, a chunk of cheese, and an onion. The man filled his cup with watered wine and poured olive oil for the bread into a little cruet he held out.

  “I thank you,” Sokrates said. The cook looked surprised. Soldiers and sailors were likelier to grumble about the fare than thank him for it.

  Men clustered in little knots of friends to eat and to go on hashing over the coming of the Salaminia and what it was liable to mean. Sokrates had no usual group to join. Part of the reason there was that he was at least twenty years older than most of the other Athenians who’d traveled west to Sicily. But his age was only part of the reason, and he knew it. He sighed. He didn’t want to make people uncomfortable. He didn’t want to, but he’d never been able to avoid it.

  He walked back to his tent to eat his supper. When he was done, he went outside and stared up at Mount Aetna. Why, he wondered, did it stay cold enough for snow to linger on the mountain’s upper slopes even on this sweltering midsummer evening?

  He was no closer to finding the answer when someone called his name. He got the idea this wasn’t the first time the man had called. Sure enough, when he turned, there stood Alkibiades with a sardonic grin on his face. “Hail, O wisest of all,” the younger man said. “Good to see you with us again.”

  “If I am wisest—which I doubt, no matter what the gods may say—it is because I know how ignorant I am, where other men are ignorant even of that,” Sokrates replied.

  Alkibiades’ grin grew impudent. “Other men don’t know how ignorant you are?” he suggested slyly. Sokrates laughed. But Alkibiades’ grin slipped. “Ignorant or not, will you walk with me?”

  “If you like,” Sokrates said. “You know I never could resist your beauty.” He imitated the little lisp for which Alkibiades was famous, and sighed like a lover gazing upon his beloved.

  “Oh, go howl!” Alkibiades said. “Even when we slept under the same blanket, we only slept. You did your best to ruin my reputation.”

  “I cannot ruin your reputation.” Sokrates’ voice grew sharp. “Only you can do that.”

  Alkibiades made a face at him. “Come along, best one, if you’d be so kind.” They walked away from the Athenian encampment on a winding dirt track that led up toward Aetna. Alkibiades wore a chiton with purple edging and shoes with golden clasps. Sokrates’ tunic was threadbare and raggedy; he went barefoot the way he usually did, as if he were a sailor.

  The sight of the most and least elegant men in the Athenian expedition walking along together would have been plenty to draw eyes even if the Salaminia hadn’t just come to Katane. As things were, they had to tramp along for several stadia before shaking off the last of the curious. Sokrates ignored the men who followed hoping to eavesdrop. Alkibiades glowered at them till they finally gave up.

  “Vultures,” he muttered. “Now I know how Prometheus must have felt.” He put a hand over his liver.

  “Is that what you wanted to talk about?” Sokrates asked.

  “You know what I want to talk about. You were there when those idiots in gold wreaths summoned me back to Athens,” Alkibiades answered. Sokrates looked over at him, his face showing nothing but gentle interest. Alkibiades snorted. “And don’t pretend you don’t, either, if you please. I haven’t the time for it.”

  “I am only the most ignorant of men—” Sokrates began. Alkibiades cursed him, as vilely as he knew how. Sokrates gave back a mild smile in return. That made Alkibiades curse harder yet. Sokrates went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “So you will have to tell me what it is you want, I fear.”

  “All right. All right.” Alkibiades kicked at a pebble. It spun into the brush by the track. “I’ll play your polluted game. What am I supposed to do about the Salaminia and the summons?”

  “Why, that which is best, of course.”

  “Thank you so much, O most noble one,” Alkibiades snarled. He kicked another pebble, a bigger one this time. “Oimoi! That hurt!” He hopped a couple of times before hurrying to catch up with Sokrates, who’d never slowed.

  Sokrates eyed him with honest perplexity. “What else can a man who knows what the good is do but that which is best?”

  “What is the good here?” Alkibiades demanded.

  “Why ask me, when I am so ignorant?” Sokrates replied. Alkibiades started to kick yet another pebble, thought better of it, and cursed again instead. Sokrates waited till he’d finished, then inquired, “What do you think the good is here?”

  “Games,” Alkibiades muttered. He breathed heavily, mastering himself. Then he laughed, and seemed to take himself by surprise. “I’ll pretend I’m an ephebe again, eighteen years old and curious as a puppy. By the gods, I wish I were. The good here is that which is best for me and that which is best for Athens.”

  He paused, waiting to see what Sokrates would say to that. Sokrates, as was his way, asked another question: “And what will happen if you return to Athens on the Salaminia?”

  “My enemies there will murder me under form of law,” Alkibiades answered. After another couple of strides, he seemed to remember he was supposed to think of Athens, too. “And Nikias will find some way to botch this expedition. For one thing, he’s a fool. For another, he doesn’t want to be here in the first place. He doesn’t think we can win. With him in command, he’s likely right.”

  “Is this best for you and best for Athens, then?” Sokrates asked.

  Alkibiades gave him a mocking bow. “It would seem not, O best one,” he answered, as if he were chopping logic in front of Simon the shoemaker’s.

  “All right, then. What other possibilities exist?” Sokrates asked.

  “I could make as if to go back to Athens, then escape somewhere and live my own life,” Alkibiades said. “That’s what I’m thinking of doing now, to tell you the truth.”

  “I see,” Sokrates said. “And is this best for you?”

  A wild wolf would have envied Alkibiades’ smile. “I think so. It would give me the chance to avenge myself on all my enemies. And I would, too. Oh, wouldn’t I just?”

  “I believe you,” Sokrates said, and he did. Alkibiades was a great many things, but no one had ever reckoned him less than able. “Now, what of Athens if you do this?”

  “As for the expedition, the same as in the first case. As for the polis, to the crows with it,” Alkibiades said savagely. “It is my enemy, and I its.”

  “And is this that which is best for Athens, which you said you sought?” Sokrates asked. Yes, Alkibiades would make a formidable enemy.

  “A man should do his friends good and his enemies harm,” he said now. “If the city made me flee her, she would be my enemy, not my friend. Up till now, I have done her as much good as I could. I would do the same in respect to harm.”

  A wall lizard stared at Sokrates from a boulder sticking up out of the scrubby brush by the side of the track. He took one step closer to it. It scrambled off the boulder and away. For a moment, he could hear it skittering through dry weeds. Then it must have found a hole, for silence returned. He wondered how it knew to run when something that might be danger approached. But that riddle would have to wait for another time. He gave his attention back to Alkibiades, who was watching him with an expression of wry amusement,
and asked, “If you go back with the Salaminia to Athens, then, you say, you will suffer?”

  “That is what I say, yes.” Alkibiades dipped his head in agreement.

  “And if you do not accompany the Salaminia all the way back to Athens, you say that the polis will be the one to suffer?”

  “Certainly. I say that also,” Alkibiades replied with a wry chuckle. “See how much I sound like any of the other poor fools you question?”

  Sokrates waved away the gibe. “Do you say that either of these things is best for you and best for Athens?”

  Now Alkibiades tossed his head. “It would seem not, O best one. But what else can I do? The Assembly is back at the city. It voted what it voted. I don’t see how I could change its mind unless….” His voice trailed away. He suddenly laughed out loud, laughed out loud and sprang forward to kiss Sokrates on the mouth. “Thank you, my dear! You have given me the answer.”

  “Nonsense!” Sokrates pushed him away hard enough to make him stumble back a couple of paces; those stonecutter’s shoulders still held a good deal of strength. “I only ask questions. If you found an answer, it came from inside you.”

  “Your questions shone light on it.”

  “But it was there all along, or I could not have illuminated it. And as for the kiss, if you lured me out into this barren land to seduce me, I am afraid you will find yourself disappointed despite your beauty.”

  “Ah, Sokrates, if you hadn’t put in that last I think you would have broken my heart forever.” Alkibiades made as if to kiss the older man again. Sokrates made as if to pick up a rock and clout him with it. Laughing, they turned and walked back toward the Athenians’ encampment.

  Herakleides threw up shocked hands. “This is illegal!” he exclaimed.

  Nikias wagged a finger in Alkibiades’ face. “This is unprecedented!” he cried. By the way he said it, that was worse than anything merely illegal could ever be.