Attalos gave an audible gasp. “What else?”
“Well—ah—we also have a powerful navy, you know, which controls the lower Ganges and the adjacent ocean. Our ships move by machinery, without oars or sails.”
“Do the other Indians have these marvels too?”
“Some, but none is so advanced as the Pataliputrans. When we are outnumbered on the sea, we have a force of tame Tritons who swim under the enemy’s ships and bore holes in their bottoms.”
Attalos frowned. “Tell me, barbarian, how it is that, with such mighty instruments of war, the Palalal—the Patapata—the people of your city have not conquered the whole world?”
I gave a shout of drunken laughter and slapped Attalos on the back. “We have, old boy, we have! You Macedonians have just not yet found out that you are our subjects!”
Attalos digested this, then scowled blackly. “You temple-thief! I think you have been making a fool of me! Of me! By Herakles, I ought—”
He rose and swung a fist back to clout me. I jerked an arm up to guard my face.
There came a roar of “Attalos!” from the head of the table. King Philip had been watching us.
Attalos dropped his fist, muttered something like “Flying chariots and tame Tritons, forsooth!” and stumbled back to his own crowd.
This man, I remembered, did not have a happy future in store. He was destined to marry his niece to Philip, whose first wife Olympias would have the girl and her baby killed after Philip’s assassination. Soon afterwards, Attalos would be murdered by Alexander’s orders. It was on the tip of my tongue to give him a veiled warning, but I forebore. I had attracted enough hostile attention already.
Later, when the drinking got heavy, Aristotle came over and shooed his boys off to bed. He said to me: “Let uth walk outside to clear our heads, Zandras, and then go to bed, too. These Makedones drink like sponges. I cannot keep up with them.”
Outside, he said: “The Attalos thinks you are a Persian thpy.”
“A spy? Me? In Hera’s name, why?” Silently I cursed my folly in making an enemy without any need. Would I never learn to deal with this damned human species?
Aristotle said: “He thays nobody could pass through a country and remain as ignorant of it as you theem to be. Ergo, you know more of the Persian Empire than you pretend, but wish us to think you have nothing to do with it. And why should you do that, unleth you are yourself a Persian? And being a Persian, why should you hide the fact unleth you are on some hostile mission?”
“A Persian might fear anti-Persian prejudice among the Hellenes. Not that I am one,” I hastily added.
“He need not. Many Persians live in Hellas without molestation. Take Artabazos and his sons, who live in Pella, refugees from their own king.”
Then the obvious alibi came to me, long after it should have. “The fact is I went even farther north than I said. I went around the northern ends of the Caspian and Euxine seas and so did not cross the Great King’s domains save through the Bactrian deserts.”
“You did? Then why did you not thay tho? If that is true, you have settled one of our hottest geographical disputes: whether the Caspian is a closed thea or a bay of the Northern Ocean.”
“I feared nobody would believe me.”
“I am not sure what to believe, Zandras. You are a strange man. I do not think you are a Persian, for no Persian was ever a philothopher. It is good for you that you are not.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate Persia!” he hissed.
“You do?”
“Yeth. I could list the wrongs done by the Great Kings, but it is enough that they seized my beloved father-in-law by treachery and tortured and crucified him. People like Isokrates talk of uniting the Hellenes to conquer Persia, and Philippos may try it if he lives. I hope he does. However,” he went on in a different tone, “I hope he does it without dragging the cities of Hellas into it, for the repositories of civilization have no busineth getting into a brawl between tyrants.”
“In India,” said I sententiously, “we are taught that a man’s nationality means nothing and his personal qualities everything. Men of all nations come good, bad, and indifferent.”
Aristotle shrugged. “I have known virtuouth Persians too, but that monstrouth, bloated empire… No state can be truly civilized with more than a few thousand citizens.”
There was no use telling him that large states, however monstrous and bloated he thought them, would be a permanent feature of the landscape from then on. I was trying to reform, not Aristotle’s narrow view of international affairs, but his scientific methodology.
Next morning King Philip and his men and Aristotle’s six pupils galloped off toward Pella, followed by a train of baggage mules and the boys’ personal slaves. Aristotle said:
“Let us hope no chance sling-thtone dashes out Alexandras’ brains before he has a chance to show his mettle. The boy has talent and may go far, though managing him is like trying to plow with a wild bull. Now, let us take up the question of atoms again, my dear Zandras, about which you have been talking thuch utter rubbish. First, you must admit that if a thing exists, parts of it must also exist. Therefore there is no thuch thing as an indivisible particle…”
Three days later, while we were still hammering at the question of atoms, we looked up at the clatter of hooves. Here came Attalos and a whole troop of horsemen. Beside Attalos rode a tall swarthy man with a long gray beard. This man’s appearance startled me into thinking he must be another time traveler from my own time, for he wore a hat, coat, and pants. The mere sight of these familiar garments filled me with homesickness for my own world, however much I hated it when I lived in it.
Actually, the man’s garb was not that of one from my world. The hat was a cylindrical felt cap with ear flaps. The coat was a brown knee-length garment, embroidered with faded red and blue flowers, with trousers to match. The whole outfit looked old and threadbare, with patches showing. He was a big craggy-looking fellow, with a great hooked nose, wide cheekbones, and deep-set eyes under bushy, beetling brows.
They all dismounted, and a couple of grooms went around collecting the bridles to keep the horses from running off. The soldiers leaned on their spears in a circle around us.
Attalos said: “I should like to ask your guest some more philosophical questions, O Aristoteles.”
“Ask away.”
Attalos turned, not to me, but to the tall graybeard. He said something I did not catch, and then the man in trousers spoke to me in a language I did not know.
“I do not understand,” I said.
The graybeard spoke again, in what sounded like a different tongue. He did this several times, using a different-sounding speech each time, but each time I had to confess ignorance.
“Now you see,” said Attalos. “He pretends not to know Persian, Median, Armenian, or Aramaic. He could not have traversed the Great King’s dominions from east to west without learning at least one of these.”
“Who are you, my dear sir?” I asked Graybeard.
The old man gave me a small dignified smile and spoke in Attic with a guttural accent. “I am Artavazda, or Artabazos as the Hellenes say, once governor of Phrygia but now a poor pensioner of King Philippos.”
This, then, was the eminent Persian refugee of whom Aristotle had spoken.
“I warrant he does not even speak Indian,” said Attalos.
“Certainly,” I said, and started off in English: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth—”
“What would you call that?” Attalos asked Artavazda.
The Persian spread his hands. “I have never heard the like. But then, India is a vast country of many tongues.”