I tried to find a workable compromise between what I knew science could do on one hand and the limits of Aristotle’s credulity on the other. Therefore I said nothing about flying machines, guns, buildings a thousand feet high, and other technical wonders of my world. Nevertheless, I caught Aristotle looking at me sharply out of those small black eyes one day.
“Do you doubt me, Aristoteles?” I said.
“N-no, no,” he said thoughtfully. “But it does theem to me that, were your Indian inventors as wonderful as you make out, they would have fabricated you wings like those of Daidalos in the legend. Then you could have flown to Makedonia directly, without the trials of crossing Persia by camel.”
“That has been tried, but men’s muscles do not have enough strength in proportion to their weight.”
“Ahem. Did you bring anything from India to show the skills of your people?”
I grinned, for I had been hoping for such a question. “I did fetch a few small devices,” said I, reaching into my tunic and bringing out the magnifying glass. I demonstrated its use.
Aristotle shook his head. “Why did you not show me this before? It would have quieted my doubts.”
“People have met with misfortune by trying too suddenly to change the ideas of those around them. Like your teacher’s teacher, Sokrates.”
“That is true, true. What other devices did you bring?”
I had intended to show my devices at intervals, gradually, but Aristotle was so insistent on seeing them all that I gave into him before he got angry. The little telescope was not powerful enough to show the moons of Jupiter or the rings of Saturn, but it showed enough to convince Aristotle of its power. If he could not see these astronomical phenomena himself, he was almost willing to take my word that they could be seen with the larger telescopes we had in India.
One day a light-armed soldier galloped up to us in the midst of our discussions in the Precinct of Nymphs. Ignoring the rest of us, the fellow said to Alexander: “Hail, O Prince! The king, your father, will be here before sunset.”
Everybody rushed around cleaning up the place. We were all lined up in front of the big house when King Philip and his entourage arrived on horseback with a jingle and a clatter, in crested helmets and flowing mantles. I knew Philip by his one eye. He was a big powerful man, much scarred, with a thick curly black beard going gray. He dismounted, embraced his son, gave Aristotle a brief greeting, and said to Alexander:
“How would you like to attend a siege?”
Alexander whooped.
“Thrace is subdued,” said the king, “but Byzantion and Perinthos have declared against me, thanks to Athenian intrigue. I shall give the Perintheans something to think about besides the bribes of the Great King. It is time you smelled blood, youngster; would you like to come?”
“Yes, yes! Can my friends come too?”
“If they like and their fathers let them.”
“O King!” said Aristotle.
“What is it, spindle-shanks?”
“I trust thith is not the end of the prince’s education. He has much yet to learn.”
“No, no; I will send him back when the town falls. But he nears the age when he must learn by doing, not merely by listening to your rarefied wisdom. Who is this?” Philip turned his one eye on me.
“Zandras of India, a barbarian philothopher.”
Philip grinned in a friendly way and clapped me on the shoulder. “Rejoice! Come to Pella and tell my generals about India. Who knows? A Macedonian foot may tread there yet.”
“It would be more to the point to find out about Persia,” said one of Philip’s officers, a handsome fellow with a reddish-brown beard. “This man must have just come through there. How about it, man? Is the bloody Artaxerxes still solid on his throne?”
“I know little of such matters,” I said, my heart beginning to pound at the threat of exposure. “I skirted the northernmost parts of the Great King’s dominions and saw little of the big cities. I know nothing of their politics.”
“Is that so?” said Redbeard, giving me a queer look. “We must talk of this again.”
They all trooped into the big house, where the cook and the serving wenches were scurrying about. During dinner I found myself between Nearchos, Alexander’s little Cretan friend, and a man-at-arms who spoke no Attic. So I did not get much conversation, nor could I follow much of the chatter that went on among the group at the head of the tables. I gathered that they were discussing politics. I asked Nearchos who the generals were.
“The big one at the king’s right is the Parmenion,” he said, “and the one with the red beard is the Attalos.”
When the food was taken away and the drinking had begun, Attalos came over to me. The man-at-arms gave him his place. Attalos had drunk a lot of wine already; but, if it made him a little unsteady, it did not divert him.
“How did you come through the Great King’s domain?” he asked. “What route did you follow?”
“I told you, to the north,” I said.
“Then you must have gone through Orchoe.”
“I -” I began, then stopped. Attalos might be laying a trap for me. What if I said yes and Orchoe was really in the south? Or suppose he had been there and knew all about the place? Many Greeks and Macedonians served the Great King as mercenaries.
“I passed through many places whose names I never got straight,” I said. “I do not remember if Orchoe was among them.”
Attalos gave me a sinister smile through his beard. “Your journey will profit you little, if you cannot remember where you have been. Come, tell me if you heard of unrest among the northern provinces.”
I evaded the question, taking a long pull on my wine to cover my hesitation. I did this again and again until Attalos said: “Very well, perhaps you are really as ignorant of Persia as you profess. Then tell me about India.”
“What about it?” I hiccupped; the wine was beginning to affect me, too.
“As a soldier, I should like to know of the Indian art of war. What is this about training elephants to fight?”
“Oh, we do much better than that.”
“How so?”
“We have found that the flesh-and-blood elephant, despite its size, is an untrustworthy war beast because it often takes fright and stampedes back through its own troops. So, the philosophers of Pataliputra make artificial elephants of steel with rapid-fire catapults on their backs.”
I was thinking in a confused way of the armored war vehicles of my own world. I do not know what made me tell Attalos such ridiculous lies. Partly, I suppose, it was to keep him off the subject of Persia.
Partly it was a natural antipathy between us. According to history, Attalos was not a bad man, though at times a reckless and foolish one. But it annoyed me that he thought lie could pump me by subtle questions, when he was about as subtle as a ton of bricks. His voice and manner said as plainly as words: I am a shrewd, sharp fellow; watch out for me, everybody. He was the kind of man who, if told to spy on the enemy, would don an obviously false beard, wrap himself in a long black cloak, and go slinking about the enemy’s places in broad daylight, leering and winking and attracting as much attention as possible. No doubt, too, he had prejudiced me against him by his alarming curiosity about my past.
But the main cause for my rash behavior was the strong wine I had drunk. In my own world, I drank very little and so was not used to these carousals.
Attalos was all eyes and ears at my tale of mechanical elephants. “You do not say!”
“Yes, and we do even better than that. If the enemy’s ground forces resist the charge of our iron elephants, we send flying chariots, drawn by gryphons, to drop darts on the foe from above.” It seemed to me that never had my imagination been so brilliant.