Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

The chariot rattled by that plateau, where several wooden temples stood, which would later be known as the Areopagus. It passed through a gateway in the city wall, whose roughly dressed stonework was inferior to the Mycenaen ruins Reid had once visited. (Now he wondered how long after Pamela’s day it would be before Seattle or Chicago lay tumbled, in silence broken only by crickets.) Beyond the “suburbs” the horses came onto a rutted road and Theseus let them trot.

Reid clung to the rail. He hoped his knees wouldn’t be jolted backward or the teeth shaken out of his jaws.

Theseus noticed. He drew his beasts to a walk. They shimmied impatiently but. obeyed. The prince looked around. “You’re not used to this, are you?” he asked.

“No, my lord. We ... travel otherwise in my country.”

“Riding?”

“Well, yes. And, uh, in wagons that have springs to absorb the shock:’ Reid was faintly surprised to learn, out of his knowledge, that the Achaeans had a word for springs. Checking more closely, he found he had said “metal bow-staves.”

“Hm,” Theseus grunted. “Such must be costly. And don’t they soon wear out?”

“We use iron, my lord. Iron’s both cheaper and stronger than bronze when you know how to obtain and work it. The ores are far more plentiful than those of copper or tin.”

“Yes, so Oleg told me yesterday when I examined his gear. Do you know the secret?”

“I fear not, my lord. It’s no secret in my country, but it doesn’t happen to be my work. I, well, plan buildings.”

“Might your companions know?”

“Perhaps.” Reid thought that, given a chance to experiment, he could probably reconstruct the process himself. The basic idea was to apply a mechanical blast to your furnace, thus making the fire sufficiently hot to reduce the element, and afterward to alloy and temper the product until it became steel. Oleg might well have dropped in on such an operation in his era and observed equipment he could easily imitate.

They drove unspeaking for a while. At this pace it wasn’t hard to keep balanced, though impacts still ran up the shinbones. The clatter of wheels was nearly lost in the noise of the wind, where it soughed among poplars lining the road. It cuffed with chilly hands and sent cloaks flapping. A flight of crows beat against it. The sun made their blackness looked polished, until a cloud swept past and for a moment brilliance went out of the landscape. Smoke streamed flat from the roof of a peasant’s clay house. Women stooped in his wheatfield, reaping it with sickles. The wind pressed their coarse brown gowns against their flanks. Two men followed them, shocking; as they moved along, they would pick up their spears and shift those too.

Theseus half turned, reins negligently in his right hand, so that his yellow eyes could rest on Reid. Your tale is more eldritch than any I ever thought to hear,” he said.

The American smiled wryly. “It is to me also.”

“Borne on a whirlwind across the world, from lands so distant we’ve gotten no whisper about them, by the car of a magician—do you truly believe that was sheer happen-stance? That there’s no destiny in you?”

“I ... don’t .. , think there is, my’ lord.”

“Diores tells me you four spoke oddly about having come out of time as well as space.” The deep voice was level but unrelenting; the free hand rested on a sword pommel. “What does that mean?”

Here it comes, Reid told himself. Though his tongue was somewhat dry, he got his rehearsed answer out steadily enough. “We’re not sure either, my lord. Imagine how bewildered we were and are. And we’re confused as to reckoning. That’s natural, isn’t it? Our countries have no common reign or event to count from. I wondered if perhaps the wizard’s wagon had crossed both miles and years. It was only a wondering and I don’t really know.”

He dared not make an outright denial. Too many hints had been dropped or might be dropped. Theseus and Diores were no more ignorant of the nature of time than Reid; everywhere and everywhen, mystery has the same size. The concept of chronokinesis should not be unthink-able to them, who were used to oracles, prophets, and stories about predestined dooms.

Then why not tell them the whole truth? Because of Erissa.

Theseus’ tone roughened: “I’d be less worried if that Cretan didn’t share your bed.”

“My lord,” Reid protested, “she was swept along like the rest of us, by meaningless chance.”

“Will you set her aside, then?”

“No,” Reid said. “I can’t,” and wondered if that was not the bedrock fact. He added in haste, “Our sufferings have made a bond between us. Surely you, my lord, wouldn’t forsake a comrade. And aren’t you at peace with Crete?”

“In a way,” Theseus answered. “For a while.”

He stood motionless, drawn into himself, until suddenly:

“Hear me, my guest Duncan. I say nothing to your dishonor, but an outlander such as, you is easily hoodwinked. Let me tell you how things really are.

“The reality is that Crete sits at this end of the Midworid Sea like a spider in its web, and the Hellenic tribes grow weary of being flies trapped and bloodsucked. Every realm of us in reach of a coastline must bend the knee, pay the tribute, send the, hostages, keep no more ships than the Minos allows nor carry out any venture the Minos disallows. We want our freedom.”

“Forgive this outlander, my lord,” Reid dared say, “but doesn’t the tribute—timber, grain, goods that set the Cretans free to do other things than produce them, I suppose—doesn’t it buy you protection from piracy, and so help rather than hinder you?”

Theseus snorted. “‘Piracy’ is what the Minos says it is. Why should our young men not be let blood themselves, and win their fortunes off a Levantine tin ship or a Hittite town? Because it would inconvenience the Cretans in their trade relationships with those places, that’s why.” He paused. “More to the point, maybe, why should my father or I not be allowed to unite Attica? Why should other Achaean kings not bring their own kinfolk together in like wise? It wouldn’t take much warring. But no, the Minos prevents it by a net of treaties—to keep the ‘barbarians’ divided and therefore weak,” he fleered. The word he used had the connotation of the English “backward natives.”

“A balance of power—” Reid attempted.

“And the Minos holding the scales! Listen. Northward and eastward, in the mountains, are the real barbarians. They prowl the marches like wolves. If we Achaeans cannot be brought together, in the end we’ll be invaded and overrun. What then of ‘preserving civilization,’ when the scrolls burn with the cities?

“Civilization,” Theseus continued after a moment. “Are we such oafs born that we can’t take our fair part in it? They were Argives who decided the old priestly script of Crete was too cumbersome and devised a new one, so much better that now probably half the clerks in Knossos are Argives.”

There was the answer to the riddle of Linear A and Linear B, Reid thought faintly. No conquest by Homeric Greeks—not yet—simply adoption of a desirable foreign invention, like Europe taking numerals from the Arabs or wallpaper from the Chinese or kayaks from the Eskimos—or he himself, bound for Japan. Evidently quite a few Achaeans were resident in Knossos, and no doubt in other Cretan towns. Scribes expert in Linear B would naturally be hired from among them, and the scribes would naturally prefer to use their own language, which the script best fitted.

A potential fifth column?

“Not that I personally believe that’s any great thing,” Theseus said. “Punching marks on day tablets or scribbling on papyrus is no fit work for a man.”