Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [131]
He had dark eyes and was in his thirties. He brimmed with confidence, as did his men. There was no sense here of a doomed force.
Leonidas knew about the road that circled behind the pass, the one that would eventually allow the Persians to get to his rear. But he’d already dispatched troops to cover it. “The Phocians,” said Shel, when he and Dave were alone. “They’ll run at the first onset.”
Leonidas invited them to share a meal. They talked about Sparta’s system of balancing executive power by crowning two kings. And whether democracy could really work in the long run. The Spartan hero thought not. “Athens cannot hope to survive indefinitely,” he said. “They have no discipline, and their philosophers encourage them to put themselves before their country. God help us if the poison ever spreads to us.” Later, over wine, he asked where they were from, explaining that he could not place the accent.
“America,” said Dave.
He shook his head. “It must be far away. Or very small.”
They each posed with him and took pictures, explaining that it was a ritual that would allow them to share his courage. Sparks crackled up from the campfires, and the soldiers talked about home and the future. Later, Dave traded a gold coin to one of the Thespian archers for an arrow. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Shel said in English. “He may need the arrow before he’s done.”
But they both knew better. One arrow more or less would make no difference. When the crunch came, the Thespians would refuse to leave their Spartan allies. They would die, too. All fifteen hundred of them.
But history would remember only the Spartans.
CHAPTER 39
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, “ULYSSES”
THE sensible thing to do would have been simply to leave it alone. Let Shel go. If he wants to wander through the ages, let him. But Dave knew that, if he did that, Shel would, in some manner, come back, or be carried back, to the town house on that Thursday night in mid-September. Before it burned.
He needed Helen. If it was at all possible to find a way to bring him home and sidestep the cardiac principle, he had to have her help.
The house had burned September 13. He pulled up the newscasts. Here was the town house, a charred ruin. And excerpts from a police statement that there’d been one fatality, a Dr. Adrian Shelborne. Then, two days later, another statement that the victim in the town-house fire had been bludgeoned to death.
One of Shel’s cousins had posted pictures at her Web site, photos of Shel as a boy, Shel at ten in a rowboat with a fishing pole, Shel with his father feeding a camel in the shadow of the Great Pyramid. And here was Shel in a high-school cap and gown. And with his prom date, whose name Dave had once known but had long since forgotten.
Shel at Princeton. Shel getting his doctorate. Shel sitting in a tree. Shel showing off his Toyota to a girlfriend.
And, finally, pictures of the funeral. The preacher. The coffin, supported above the open grave. The mourners. Helen was visible. And Jerry. But not Dave.
The drive home afterward was seared into his mind. He remembered the intersections, the people on the streets, people living as though nothing had happened. He’d kept the radio on, to put a voice in the car. Peace talks had broken down somewhere. Domestic assaults were up or down. Couldn’t remember which.
And there’d been that strange story out of California. The pileup on one of the freeways.
And two people stealing a body out of the wreckage.
Incredible.
At first, the aid workers had assumed they’d been trying to help. Panicked people doing what they could. Had to be. What other explanation was possible?
There was one.
DAVE called Helen at home—it was a Saturday—and left a message. An hour later, she called back.
“Are you free this afternoon?” he asked. “I have something to show you.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Dress casually.”
When he got to her place, instead of escorting her to his car, he suggested