Robert Sheckley - Agamemnon's Run

Agamemnon walked over to them and announced who he was. A woman said, "We know who you are. We were expecting you, since your trip here was mentioned in several of the books that were lost when the great library at Alexandria burned. In honor of your arrival, several of us have written philosophical speeches entitled 'Agamemnon's Lament.' These speeches are about the sort of things we thought we would hear from you."

"Since you knew I was coming, why didn't you wait and hear what I actually did say?"

"Because, Agamemnon, what we did is the philosophical way, and the way of action. We wrote your speech ourselves, instead of passively waiting for you to write it, if you ever would. And, since you are not a philosopher yourself, we thought you were unlikely to cast your thoughts into a presentation sufficiently rigorous for an intelligent and disinterested observer. Nor were you a dramatist, so your thoughts were unlikely to have either the rigor or beauty of a philosophical dramatist such as Aeschylus or Sophocles. Since words once said cannot be unsaid, as conversation permits no time for reflection and revision, we took the liberty of putting what we thought you would be likely to say into proper grammatical form, carefully revised, and with a plethora of footnotes to make the meaning of your life and opinions clear to even the meanest understanding."

''Very good of you, I'm sure," said Agamemnon, who, although deficient in philosophy, had a small but useful talent for irony.

"We don't expect our work will represent you, Agamemnon, the man," another philosopher said. "But we hope we've done justly by you, Agamemnon the position."

"This is all very interesting," Agamemnon said. "But could you tell me now how I might find Tiresias?"

The philosophers conferred briefly. Then one of them said, "We do not recognize Tiresias as a philosopher. He is a mere shaman."

"Is that bad?" Agamemnon asked.

"Shamans may know some true things, but they are not to be relied upon because they do not know why or how they know. Lacking this—"

"Hey," Agamemnon said, "The critique of shamanism is unnecessary. I just want to talk to the guy."

"He's usually in the little grove behind Achilles' palace. Come back if you want a copy of our book of your opinions."

"I'll do that," Agamemnon said, and walked away in the direction indicated.

Agamemnon passed through a little wood. He noticed it was brighter here than in the other parts of Hades he had visited. Although no sun was visible, there was a brightness and sparkle to the air. He figured he was in one of the better parts of the underworld. He was not entirely surprised when he saw, ahead of him, a table loaded with food and drink, and a masked man in a long cloak sitting at it, with an empty chair beside him.

The man waved. "Agamemnon? I heard you were looking for me, so I've made it easy by setting myself in your path. Come have a chair, and let me give you some refreshment."

Agamemnon walked over and sat down. "You are Tiresias?

"I am. Would you like some wine?"

"A glass of wine would be nice." He waited while Tiresias poured, then said, "May I ask why you are masked?"

"A whim," Tiresias said. "And something more. I am a magician, or shaman, to use a term popular in your time. Upon occasion I go traveling, not just here in ancient Greece, but elsewhere in space and time."

"And you don't want to be recognized?"

"It can be convenient, to be not too well known. But that's not the real reason. You see, Agamemnon, knowing someone's face can give you a measure of power over him. So Merlin discovered when he consorted with the witch Nimue, and she was able to enchant him. I do not give anyone power over me if I can help it."

"I can't imagine anyone having power over you."

"I could have said the same for Merlin, and one or two others. Caution is never out of place. Now tell me why you seek me out. I know, of course. But I want to hear it from your own lips."

"It's no secret," Agamemnon said. "My wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, have sworn to kill me. I come to you to ask if there is some way out of this Greek trap I am in."

"You are supposed to be slain for having sacrificed your daughter Iphigenia, so your fleet could sail to Troy."

"Now wait a minute!" Agamemnon said. "There's another version in which I did not kill Iphigenia. She's alive now in Aulis!"

"Don't try to deceive me with tricky words," Tiresias said. "Both versions of your story are true. You both killed and did not kill your daughter. But you are guilty in either version, or both. Have you ever heard of Schrodinger's cat? It was a scientific fable popular in your day and age."

"I've heard of it," Agamemnon said. "I can't pretend I ever really understood it."

"The man who concocted the fable is condemned, though no cat was ever slain. And this is true in the two worlds."

Agamemnon was silent for a while. He had been watching Tiresias' mask, which at times seemed made of beaten gold, at other times of golden cloth that billowed when he spoke.

After a while, Agamemnon asked, "What two worlds are you speaking of?"

"The world of Earth with its various time lines, and the world of the lottery."

"So there's no escape?"

"My dear fellow, I never said that. I only wanted to point out that you're in a far more complicated and devious game than you had imagined."

"Why have the people of the lottery done this to us?"

"For the simplest and most obvious of reasons. Because it seemed a good idea to them at the time. Here was Earth, a perfect test case for those who could manipulate the time lines. Here were the stories of the Greeks, which the human world is not finished with yet. It seemed to the makers of the lottery that here was a perfect test case. They decided to live it through again, and again, to see if the moral equations would come out the same."

"And have they?"

The tall figure of Tiresias shrugged, and Agamemnon had the momentary impression that it was not a man's form beneath the cloak.

"As I said, it seemed a good idea at the time. But that was then, and yesterday's good idea doesn't look so good today."

"Can you tell me how to get out of here?"

Tiresias nodded. "You'll have to travel on the River of Time."

"I never heard of it."

"It's a metaphor. But the underworld is a place where metaphors become realities."

"Metaphor or not, I don't see any river around here," Agamemnon said.

"I'll show you how to get to it. There's a direct connection, a tunnel from here to Scylla and Charybdis, both of which border the ocean. You'll go through the tunnel which will lead you there."

"Isn't there some other way to get there?"

Tiresias continued, "This is the only way. Once past Scylla and Charybdis, you'll see a line of white breakers. Cross them. You will be crossing the river in the ocean that goes into the past. You don't want that one. You'll see another line of breakers. Cross these and you will be in the river that will carry you from the past into the future."

"The past . . . but where in the future?"

"To a place you will know, Agamemnon. Wait no longer. Do this now."

Agamemnon got up and walked in the direction Tiresias had indicated. When he looked back, the magician was gone. Had he been there in the first place? Agamemnon wasn't sure. The indirections of the lottery were bad enough. But when you added magic . . .

He saw something light-colored, almost hidden beneath shrubbery. It was the entrance to a tube burrowing down into the earth. Wide enough so he could get into it. A tube of some light-colored metal, aluminum, perhaps, and probably built by the lottery people, since aluminum hadn't been used in the ancient world.

Was he really supposed to climb through it? He hesitated, and then saw that there was a woman standing close to the tube. From the look of her, he knew it could only be one woman. "Helen!"