There is no mocking placard nailed upon the cross. There is no crown of thorns. There are no other crosses, bearing thieves, to flank the single cross.
There is no sign of glory.
And yet—and yet—and yet … Stefan filmed a moment out of Marathon, snatched for posterity the significance of that far-gone Christmas day, proving that indeed he had a keen sense of the historical as it might be interpreted by the culture of the present. The present, not the future. If he had been so right about the other two, could he have been wrong about the third? There had been, of course, many crucifixions, the punishment reserved for slaves, for thieves, for the contemptibles. But of all of them, in the context of history, only one stands out. Could Stefan have missed that one? Much as I might like to think so, I do not believe he did.
The thing that saddens me, that leaves in me a feeling of chilling emptiness, is that nothing of importance seems to be transpiring. There is the sense of shoddy death (if death can be shoddy, and I think it often is).
Here the soldiers wait for the dying to be done, so they can be off to better things. The others simply wait, with resignation on their faces; there is nothing one can do against the power of Rome.
And yet, I tell myself, if this is the way it really was, this is the way it should have stayed, this is the way the event should have been transmitted to us. Out of this sad and empty happening, Christianity might have built a greater strength than it has from all the trappings of imagined glory.
The head of the victim on the cross had fallen forward, with the chin resting on the chest. Turn the cube as I may, I cannot see the face.
If I could look upon the face, I think I would know. Not by recognizing the face, for we do not know the face—all we have is the imaginings of long-dead artists, not all of them agreeing. But from some expression on the face, from something in the eyes.
I wonder about the saddle. Could it somehow be fixed? Could it be made to function once again? Could I figure out, from scratch, how to operate it?
(Editor’s note: This manuscript was found in the briefcase of Andrew Thornton, along with the notes for a book he had been writing, after Thornton’s disappearance. Police theorize he may have wandered off and been killed by a bear in some densely wooded and remote area where there would be little hope of finding his body. The possibility he may have wandered off is supported by his distraught frame of mind, which the manuscript reveals. Thornton’s disappearance was reported by his close friend, Neville Piper, upon his return from Greece. The saddle mentioned in the manuscript has not been found; there is some question it existed.
Neither have the cubes been found. Dr. Piper, who presently is engaged in writing a book on the Battle of Marathon, setting forth some new findings, disclaims any knowledge of the so-called Marathon Photograph.)
About the Author
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK, during his fifty-five-year career, produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time. Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
About the Editor
DAVID W. WIXON was a close friend of Clifford D. Simak’s. As Simak’s health declined, Wixon, already familiar with science fiction publishing, began more and more to handle such things as his friend’s business correspondence and contract matters. Named literary executor of the estate after Simak’s death, Wixon began a long-term project to secure the rights to all of Simak’s stories and find a way to make them available to readers who, given the fifty-five-year span of Simak’s writing career, might never have gotten the chance to enjoy all of his short fiction. Along the way, Wixon also read the author’s surviving journals and rejected manuscripts, which made him uniquely able to provide Simak’s readers with interesting and thought-provoking commentary that sheds new light on the work and thought of a great writer.