Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [142]
Moses seemed weighed down with the distress of the present calamity. Still, he continued to glance periodically at Helen. Now, for the first time, he spoke: “I very much fear, Socrates, that within a few hours there will be no one left anywhere in Hellas, or anywhere else, for that matter, who will be able to make these matters plain.”
“That’s Shel’s voice,” Helen gasped, straining forward to see better. The light was not good, and he was facing away from Helen and David, his features hidden in the folds of his hood. Then he turned and looked openly at Helen, and smiled sadly. His lips formed the English words Hello, Helen.
She was getting to her feet.
At that moment, the jailer appeared with the poisoned cup, and the sight of him, and the silver vessel, froze everyone in the chamber. “I hope you understand, Socrates,” he said, “this is not my doing.”
“I know that, Thereus,” said Socrates. “I am not angry with you.”
“They always want to blame me,” Thereus said.
No one spoke.
He set the cup on the table. “It is time,” he said.
The rest of the company, reluctantly, one by one, following Helen’s example, got to their feet.
Socrates gave a coin to the jailer, squeezed his hand, thanked him, and turned to look at his friends. “The world is very bright,” he said. “But much of it is illusion. If we stare at it too long, in the way we look at the sun during an eclipse, it blinds us. Look at it only with the mind.” He picked up the cup. Several in the assemblage started forward, but were restrained by their companions. Someone in back sobbed.
“Stay,” a woman’s voice said sternly. “You have respected him all your life. Do so now.”
He lifted the cup to his lips, and his hand trembled. It was the only time the mask slipped. Then he drank it down and set the cup back on the table. “l am sure Simmias is right,” he said. “We shall gather again one day, as old friends should, in a far different chamber.”
SHEL swallowed Helen with his eyes. “I did not expect to see you again,” he said.
She shivered. Peered intently at him. “Shel.”
A smile flickered across his lips. “It’s good to see you, Helen.” He stood silhouetted against the moon and the harbor. Behind them, the waterfront buildings of the Piraeus were illuminated by occasional oil lamps.
“Where have you been?”
“To more places than you might easily imagine. But if you’re asking where I live, I’m in Center City, Philadelphia.”
“Why didn’t you contact us?” demanded Dave.
“Not your Philadelphia. A more distant one.” He still looked like a man in pain. “Dave, you seem to have become my dark angel.”
Dave stared back at him. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
A gull wheeled overhead. “Socrates dies for a philosophical nicety,” said Shel. “And Shelborne continues to run from his assigned fate. Right?”
Helen was trembling. “I’d do the same thing,” she said.
“As would we all. Isn’t that right, Dave?”
“Shel.” They shook hands. Embraced. While Helen kept her distance. “I suspect we would. But you don’t have to run any longer.”
Shel managed a smile. If only it were so.
“It’s true,” said Helen.
“What do you mean?”
“The grave has been filled, Shel. It wasn’t you.”
CHAPTER 44
A friend is a second self.
—CICERO
DAVE’S first act, when he got back, was to return the converter Helen had used to the sock drawer.
He came back without her. Shel invited her to go home with him. He didn’t say where home was. But she’d gone. He had a new, improved model of the converter, and it had carried them both off. A few days later, Dave heard that Helen had canceled her membership in the Devil’s Disciples. That same afternoon, word came that she’d closed her medical practice.
When he tried to call her, a recorded voice informed him that the number was no longer in service. She’d moved out of her condo, which had gone up for sale. There was no forwarding address.
Then one afternoon in November he came home to find a