“Doesn’t have to be,” he said, touched that she remembered. “Whatever you want. Name it.”
“Well, we were talking small and unfancy, plus delicious, and I thought of Ernie’s Neptune Fish Grotto on Irving Street.”
“Tally-ho.” He started the car.
As they wound downward, losing the galaxy and the wind that roared above it, she turned pensive. “Manse?”
“Yes?”
“When I called you in New York, some music was playing in the background. I suppose you were having yourself a concert.” She smiled. “I can see you, shoes off, feet up, pipe in one hand and beer mug in the other. What was it? Something Baroque, sounded like, and I imagined I knew Baroque, sort of, but this was strange to me and … and beautiful, and I’d like to get a copy of that cassette.”
He harked back. “Not exactly a cassette. I use equipment from uptime when I’m alone. But, sure, I’ll be glad to transcribe for you. It’s Bach. The St. Mark Passion.”
“What? Wait a minute!”
Everard nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t exist today, apart from a few fragments. Never published. But on Good Friday, 1731, a time traveler brought disguised recording gear to the cathedral in Leipzig.”
She shivered. “That makes goose bumps.”
“Uh-huh. Another value of chronokinesis, and another perk of being in the Patrol.”
She turned her head and considered him. “You aren’t the simple Garrison Keillor farm boy you claim to be, are you?” she murmured. “No, not at all.”
He shrugged. “Why can’t a farm boy enjoy Bach along with his meat and potatoes?”
209 B.C.
About four miles northeast of Bactra, a spring rose in a grove of poplars, halfway up a low hill. It had long been sacred to the god of underground waters. Folk brought offerings there in hopes of protection from earthquake, drought, and murrain on their livestock. When Theonis endowed remodeling of the shrine and rededication to Poseidon, with a regular priest coming out of the city from time to time to conduct rites, no one objected. They simply identified this deity with theirs, continued using the old name if they wished, and felt they might well have gained some special benefits for their horses.
Approaching, Everard saw the trees first. Their leaves shivered silvery in the morning airs. They surrounded a low earthen wall with an entry but no gate. It simply defined the temenos, the holy ground. Uncounted generations of feet had beaten hard the path toward it.
Elsewhere stretched trampled fields where some farmsteads stood intact but abandoned; others had become smoldering ash and blackened adobe. The invaders hadn’t begun systematically plundering, nor had they ventured against the settlements close to the city. That would soon happen.
Their camp stood two miles south, thence reaching in ordered ranks of tents within a ditch and embankment. The royal pavilion lifted gaudily hued above the plain leather that housed the grunts. Pennons fluttered and standards gleamed. Metal flashed too, on men at their posts. Smoke drifted from fires. A muted surf of noise came to Everard, tramping, shouting, neighing, clangor. Afar, several parties of mounted scouts raised dust clouds as they cantered about.
Nobody had molested him, but he had bided his time, watchful, till none were near his route. Else he might have gotten killed on general principles; he didn’t think the Syrians were ready yet to take captives for the slave market. Nor were they prepared to hazard Poseidon’s wrath—especially after the king’s aide Polydorus issued orders to that effect. It was a relief to enter the grove. The shade against the rising heat of the day was like a benison itself.
It scarcely eased the grimness within him.
The temple occupied most of its unpaved court although it was not much bigger now than when it had been just a shrine. Three steps led to a portico supported by four Corinthian columns, before a windowless building. The pillars were stone, perhaps veneer, and the roof ruddy tile. Everything else was whitewashed mud brick. Nothing fancier was expected at such a minor halidom, and of course to Raor it would have served its entire purpose when it had been the scene of two or three meetings between Draganizu and Buleni.
Two women squatted in a corner of the temenos. The young one held a baby to her breast. The old one clutched a half-eaten round of chapatti that, with a clay water jug, must be the entire rations they had. Their peasant gowns were torn and dirtied. When Everard appeared, they huddled back against the wall and terror overrode the exhaustion in their faces.
A man emerged from the temple’s single entrance. He wore a plain but decent white tunic. Shuffling bent, almost toothless, squinting and blinking, he could be as old as sixty or as young as forty. Before scientific medicine, unless you were upper class you needed a lot of luck to reach middle age still in good health, if you reached it at all. Twentieth-century intellectuals call technofixes dehumanizing, Everard recollected.
The man wasn’t senile, however. “Rejoice, O stranger, if you come peacefully,” he said in Greek. “Know that this precinct is sacred, and though the Kings Antiochus and Euthydemus be at war, both have declared it sanctuary.”
Everard lifted his palm, saluting. “I am a pilgrim, reverend father,” he averred.
“Eh? Not me, not me. I’m no priest, only the caretaker here, Dolon, slave to the priest Nicomachus,” replied the other. Evidently he lived in a hut somewhere nearby and was present during the day. “Truly a pilgrim? How did you ever hear of our little naos? Are you sure you’ve not gone astray?” He drew close, stopped, peered dubiously. “Are you indeed a pilgrim? We can’t let anybody in for warlike purposes.”
“I am no soldier.” Everard’s cloak draped over his sword, not that a traveler could be blamed for going armed. “I’ve come a weary way to find the temple of Poseidon that stands outside the City of the Horse.”
Dolon shook his head. “Have you food along? I can offer nothing. Supplies are cut off. I’ve no idea when anything will get through to sustain me, let alone anybody else.” He glanced at the women. “I dreaded a pack of fugitives, but it seems most countryfolk got into town or elsewhere in time.”
Everard’s belly growled. He ignored it and the pang. A man in good shape and properly trained could go several days without eating before he weakened significantly. “I ask for no more than water.”
“Holy water, from the god’s own well, remember. What brings you here?” Suspicion sharpened. “How can you know about this temple when it’s only been Poseidon’s these past few months?”
Everard had his story prepared. “I am Androcles from Thrace,” he said. That half-barbarian region, its interior little known to Greeks, could plausibly have bred a man his size. “An oracle there told me last year that if I came to Bactria, I’d find a temple of the god outside the royal city, and help for my trouble. I mustn’t tell you about that trouble, except that I haven’t sinned, I’m not impure.”
“A prophecy, then, a foreseeing of the future,” Dolon breathed. He wasn’t awed into immediate acceptance. “Did you travel all that way alone? Hundreds of parasangs, wasn’t it?”
“No, no, I paid to accompany caravans and the like. I was in one such, bound for Bactra at last, when news came of a hostile army moving in. The caravan master turned back. I couldn’t bear to, but rode on, believing the god I seek would look after me. Yesterday a robber band—peasants made homeless and desperate, I think—waylaid me. They got my horse and baggage mule, but by the god’s grace I escaped, and continued afoot. So here I am.”
“You’ve suffered many woes indeed,” said Dolon, turning sympathetic. “What must you do now?”
“Wait till the god gives me, uh, further instructions. I suppose that will be in a dream.”
“Well, now—well—I don’t know. This is, is irregular. Ask the priest. He’s in the city, but they should let him come out to … see to things.”