Gary Corby - Death Ex Machina

I myself had once drilled with the Scythians, at the insistence of my future father-in-law, so that he could teach me how to stay alive in a street fight. The memory of Pythax’s brutal training still haunted my nightmares, but I had never forgotten his lessons, and I hadn’t been killed yet either.

“Come with me,” I said. “We’ll have to check every tiny thing backstage, to make sure nothing’s been tampered with. And when the stage manager arrives, he’ll have to check it all again , because he might spot something that we’d miss.”

We did that, the two guards and Diotima and me. We picked up every prop and every mask. Not only the ones for Sisyphus , but the props and masks for the comedies and the other tragedies. I had to stop Euboulides and Pheidestratos from playing with the pig’s bladders that the comedians used. They made a farting noise that the guardsmen thought was hilarious. I thought it was funny too, but Diotima didn’t. Nor did I want the guards to be caught playing with the props when the actors and crew arrived, which would be at any moment.

I crawled across every part of the backstage floor in search of booby traps. There were none.

I stood up and dusted off my hands and knees.

“All right, that’s about it. You two can think yourselves lucky nothing went wrong.”

“What about that thing, sir?” Euboulides pointed at the machine.

We all stared at the mechanism, but none of us had any idea how it worked. There was a chock between two of the cogs, but it was easily visible and for all I knew it was supposed to be there.

“It looks all right to me,” I said hesitantly. “We’ll have to have Kiron check it before anyone uses it.”

Socrates said, “Nico, the machine’s not in rest position.”

“What?” I said, startled. “That’s impossible. Nobody’s holding it.”

Socrates pointed to the machine’s arm. “It should rest level. But the arm’s up and over the skene.”

So it was.

I walked over to the mechanism. It looked the same as always. Yet the short end was pressed down as far as it could go.

I found the answer at the hinge. Someone had pressed down the short end lever and then pushed a chock into the hinge. I’d seen Melpon the doctor do the same thing, when he wanted to lock his healing machine in place. I understood what had happened here. The arm was up because it couldn’t descend.

I turned to the guards. “How was it set last night?” I asked. Maybe the arm had been left this way by the actors.

The guards looked at each other, both waiting for the other to speak.

“The arm was level?” Euboulides guessed.

I sighed. “We’ll check the stage.”

We walked around the skene onto the stage and looked up. The arm of the god machine poked thoroughly over the skene and high above us.

Hanging from the arm was a man. Or rather, a god. Because whoever was up there was dressed as Thanatos, the god of death, slumped over exactly as he appeared when he made his entrance during the play.

Romanos, I thought, must be practicing his part. He had worked like a slave over the last two days to get everything right. I’d come to appreciate what a stickler Romanos was for getting things right.

I called up, “Are you practicing early, Romanos?”

Then I realized what a stupid question that was. There’d been no one working the machine when we walked in. It was impossible for Romanos to be up there.

At that moment the first of the actors and crew arrived to begin their day. They walked in from the audience end. Aeschylus and Sophocles walked in, and a gaggle of men followed. One of the men pointed and screamed. The body slowly rotated in the air.

“Get him down!”

A voice roared across the theater. It was Aeschylus.

“Get him down now!” Aeschylus shouted again.

Aeschylus had seen what I already knew: that Thanatos, the god of death, was dead.

Some fool shouted, “Is he still alive?”

Whoever was up there obviously wasn’t, but there was the slimmest chance and we had to act on it.

I turned to Euboulides and Pheidestratos. “You two,” I said. “Get back there, pull the chock and let him down. Socrates, show them how.”

Both guards sprinted backstage as if their lives depended on it. Which they might well. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so angry at anyone. Their lax work had led to this death. Worse, the safety of the theater had been my responsibility. Pericles was going to blame me for this disaster.

A brief moment passed. From behind the wall I heard Socrates issuing instructions-a daunting prospect at any time-followed by swearing that was the guards. Then the arm above me made rapid up and down movements. The body jerked in the air like a dying fish as they tried to control the machine. I guessed one of them was pulling on the arm while the other tried to dislodge the chock. I spread my arms, ready to collect the body as it descended.

I heard a yell of triumph, followed by some anxious swearing and then a voice yelled, “Look out!”

The distraught call made me look their way. But nothing was happening there.

When I looked up again it was to see the underside of Romanos’s feet, approaching rapidly.

The dead man fell on me.

“Are you all right, Nico?” Diotima asked.

“Never been better,” I said. I’d fallen backward onto the hard stage. Now I found myself staring into the dead eyes of Romanos. He stared back. His eyes bulged slightly. His tongue poked between his teeth, disturbingly close to my face. His lips were blue. There was a stream of dried saliva coated on his chin.

“It’s a good thing you broke his fall,” Diotima said. “He might have been hurt.”

I decided not to point out the illogic of that. Instead I rolled the corpse off me, then knelt. I wanted to apologize to Romanos, but it was too late for that.

I turned over the body. I looked at the noose tight about his neck. Romanos had been hanged, and now he was dead. There was no doubt about it.

I was struck-as I always was in these circumstances-by how still were the dead. The slight movements of the living were entirely absent, the chest as it breathes, the small involuntary twitches, things that go unnoticed until they’re gone. Romanos was as flaccid and unremarkable as any corpse.

“I don’t suppose it could be suicide?” Aeschylus said hopefully. “Men have hanged themselves before now.”

“Not unless you know of a way to raise the lever at one end, chock the hinge in the middle, and get the noose around your neck at the other end.”

“It does seem unlikely.” Aeschylus rubbed his chin.

Diotima, Sophocles, Aeschylus and I stared down at the body.

“If it wasn’t suicide, what happened here?” Sophocles demanded angrily. “Nicolaos, I thought you had guards posted. You said nothing could happen while they watched.”

He was right. I had indeed said that. I had promised him the theater would be safe. I had said there would be no more “accidents.” I had failed.

“Sophocles, I will see this put right,” I said.

“Young man, my actor is dead. The play is in ruins. The Great Dionysia is probably at a halt. We are shamed before the whole world who have come to watch this debacle. Which of those things do you think you can put right ?”

“We’ll start with finding out how this happened,” I said. I grabbed Euboulides and Pheidestratos by the arms and dragged them away from the others. Diotima joined us.

“All right, now tell me how you both managed to be sleeping on the job while one of the men we’re supposed to be protecting was murdered.”