Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [97]
IN a sense, the genie was out of the box. After visiting the Library and the Alexandria Lighthouse and the Temple of Zeus, seeing them at their zenith, there was no way they could avoid dropping by to see the Colossus of Rhodes.
They arrived next day, just after sunrise. The Colossus was another majestic giant, this one dominating the harbor in the manner of the Statue of Liberty.
Dave couldn’t take his eyes from it. “Apollo?” he asked.
Shel shook his head. “Helios. The sun god.”
Ships were tied up around the port, and a frigate was just entering the harbor. At least Dave thought it was a frigate. He saw what looked like weapon racks on deck.
They found a café with a view of the waterfront and went inside. Dave had problems reading the menu, and they never did figure out what they’d ordered. There was scorched meat, and eggs—but not from chickens—and a reddish vegetable. It was served with a hot drink that had a lime taste. In all, not something to get excited about, but it didn’t matter. They were in an extravagant mood by then, and anything would have tasted good.
DURING the next month, they visited the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Hanging Gardens, and returned to Rhodes for the Temple of Artemis. They were in the cheering crowds at Athens when Pheidippides arrived after a twenty-four-mile run, with news that the Athenians had beaten the Persians at Marathon, and driven them into the sea.
They couldn’t hear what Pheidippides said to those who’d hurried out to greet him, to catch him as he collapsed. But they knew the content. The danger was not over. The army was returning, but the city should prepare against the possibility of a new attack.
Pheidippides was carried away. If he in fact died, as the histories all say, he must have done it later. Because he was still breathing, and still talking, as he and his rescuers disappeared into the crowds.
On October 31, 1517, they were outside the castle church at Wit tenberg, waiting for Martin Luther to show up and nail The Ninety-Five Theses to the door. They were there more than two fruitless hours before Dave suggested they travel through to the morning to determine whether he’d actually performed the deed. They did, and he hadn’t.
“The date was never certain,” said Shel. “Should have thought of that earlier.” They tried the next day, though this time they checked the morning results first. Again, there was nothing.
It happened on the evening of November 3, at a little past nine o’clock in the evening. Dave and Shel were sheltered by a group of trees about fifty feet away from the church door when Luther arrived, a coat pulled around him to protect against the cold. They took pictures and resisted the inclination to shake his hand. “I like rebels,” said Dave.
THEY spent two hours with Aristotle, pretending to be scholars from Rhodes (Shel’s idea of a joke), asking questions about the movement of the stars and listening sadly while he talked of the ether and stars and planets orbiting the Earth in a complex system of fifty-five spheres, which, remarkably, usually gave the right answers regarding what would be in the sky at any given time. And he knew the Earth was round. Although he thought it was permanent and unchanging.
Afterward, Shel shook his head: “I’ve never seen anyone so obviously brilliant who has everything so wrong.”
“It’s a time without science,” Dave said. “Nobody knows anything. I felt sorry for him. Trying to make sense of orbital mechanics with no telescope. That was what, 330 B.C.?”
“331.”
“I think we should cut him a break.”
“Yeah. I was dying to tell him the sun is a star. That he’s thinking small.”
“That might be one more reason we shouldn’t be doing this. But you’re right. I was sitting there the whole time with one of the most famous guys in history. And I kept thinking, You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
WHERE else would they like to go? Some of the more interesting