DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 10

"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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 probablybuilt 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!"

"h.e.l.lo, Agamemnon. I don't believe we ever got to meet properly before. I have come to thank you for sending me home to Menelaus. And to offer you my hospitality here in the Elysian Fields."

"You are too kind, Queen Helen. But I must go home now." "Must you?"

Agamemnon hesitated. Never had he been so sorely tempted. The woman was the epitome of all his dreams. There could be nothing as wonderful as to be loved by Helen. "But your new husband, Achilles-"

"Achilles has a great reputation, but he is dead, Agamemnon, just as 1 am.

A dead hero does not even compare to a live dog. You are alive. Alive and in h.e.l.l! Such a wonderful circ.u.mstance is rare. When Heracles and Theseus were here, they were only pa.s.sing through. Besides, I was not here then. Things might have been different if I had been!"

"I am alive, yes," Agamemnon said. "But I will not be allowed to stay here."

"I'll talk Hades into it. He likes me-especially with his wife Persephone gone for half a year at a time."

Agamemnon could glimpse the future. It thrilled him and frightened him. But he knew what he wanted. To stay here with Helen-as much of Helen as he could get. . . .

She held out her hand. He reached toward her- And heard voices in the distance.

And then he saw shapes in the sky. One was a tall, handsome, thickset middle-aged woman, with long loose dark hair. The other was young, tall, slim, with fair hair piled up on her head and bound with silver ornaments.

The women seemed to be walking down the sky toward him, and they were in vehement discussion.

"You must tell him to his face what he did!" the older woman was saying.

"Mummy, there's no reason to make a scene."

"But he had you killed, can't you understand that? Your throat cut on the altar! You must tell him so to his face."

"Mummy, I don't want to accuse Daddy of so gross a crime. Anyhow, there's another version that says that Artemis rescued me and carried me to the Taurians, where I served as high priestess."

"Agamemnon killed you! If not literally, then figuratively, no matter which version of the story you're following. He's guilty in either version."

"Mummy, calm down, I don't want to accuse him."

"You little idiot, you'll do as I tell you. Look, we're here. There he is, the great killer. Ho, Agamemnon!"Agamemnon could listen no longer. Letting go of Helen's hand, aware that he was forsaking the good things of death for the pain and uncertainty of life, he plunged into the underbrush and hurled himself into the white metal tube.

Agamemnon had been prepared for a precipitous pa.s.sage downward, but not for the circling movement he underwent as the tube spiraled in its descent. It was dark, and he could see no light from either end. He was moving rapidly, and there seemed nothing he could do to hasten or slow his progress. He was carried along by gravity, and his fear was that his wife and daughter would enter the tube in pursuit of him. He thought that would be more than he could bear.

He continued to fall through the darkness, sc.r.a.ping against the sides of the tube. The ride came to an abrupt end when he suddenly fell through the end of it.

He had a heart-stopping moment in the air, then he was in the water.

The shock of that cold water was so great that he found himself paralyzed, unable to make a move.

And he came out on a corner of a small south Texas town. There was lose, standing beside the pickup parked in front of the general store. Jose gasped when he saw Chris. For a moment he was frozen. Then he hurried over to him.

"Senor Chrees! Is it you?" There were hugs, embraces. When he'd left for the lottery and distant places, he'd left them to run the ranch. Make what they could out of it. But it was still his ranch, and he was home. Maria said, "I make your favorite, turkey mole tonight!" And then she talked about their cousins in Mexico, some of whom he'd known as a boy.

There was more shopping, and then they were drivmg down the familiar dirt road with its cardboard stretches, to the ranch, Jose drove them to the ranch in his old pickup. The ranch looked a little rundown, but very good. Chris lounged around in the kitchen. Chris dozed on the big old sofa, and dreamed of Greece and Troy. And then dinner was served.

After dinner, Chris went into the front room and lay down on the old horsehair sofa. It was deliciously comfortable, and the smells were familiar and soothing. He drifted into sleep, and knew that he was sleeping. He also knew when the dream began: it was when he saw the tall, robed figure of Tiresias.

Tiresias nodded to him and sat down on the end of the couch. It crossed Chris' mind that he might be in danger from a dream-figure, but there was nothing he could do about it.

"I came here to make sure you got home all right. When you enter the River of Time, you can never be too sure."

Yes, 1 am back where I ought to be. Tell me, Tiresias, is there a danger of Clytemnestra finding me here?"

"She will not find you here. But punishment will. It is inescapable."

"What am I to be punished for? 1 didn't do anything!""When you were Agamemnon, you killed your daughter. For that deed, you owe Necessity a death."

"But the version I'm going by-"

"Forget such puerile nonsense. A young woman has been killed. In Homer, whose rules we're going by, there is no guilt. But there is punishment.

Punishment is symbolic of the need for guilt, which still hadn't been invented in Homer's time. We learn through guilt. Thus we return to innocence."

"I thought, if I came home, I'd be free of all that. And anyhow, Artemis-"

"Forget such specious nonsense. It shows why Plato hated sophists. No one learns anything by making the worse case the better. The Agamemnon situation is a curse, and it goes on and on, gathering energy through expiation and repet.i.tion. The Greeks had a predilection for creating these situations-Oedipus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Prometheus, the list is endless. One character after another falls into a situation that must be solved unfairly. The case is never clear, but punishment always follows."

"Does it end here?"

"The expiation for mythic conditions never ends. Opening into the unknowable is the essence of humanity."

Then Chris dreamed that he sat up on his couch, opened his s.h.i.+rt, and said, "Very well, then-strike!"

"A truly Agamemnon-like gesture, Chris. But I am not going to kill you."

"You're not? Why are you here then?"

"At these times, a magician is always present to draw the moral."

"Which is?"

"It is an exciting thing to be a human being."

"You're here to tell me that? So Clytemnestra gets her revenge!"

"And is killed in turn by Orestes. n.o.body wins in these dreams, Chris."

"So that's what you came here to tell me."

"That, and to take care of some loose ends. Good-bye, Chris. See you in h.e.l.l."

And with that, Tiresias was gone.

Chris woke up with a start. The dream of Tiresias had been very real. But it was over now, and he was back at his Texas ranch. He sat up. It was evening. It had turned cold after the sun went down. He got up. Hearing his footsteps, Maria came running in from the kitchen. She was carrying his old suede jacket.

"You put this on, Mr. Chris," she said, and threw the jacket around his shoulders.

The jacket was curiously constricting. Chris couldn't move his arms. And then Jose was there, and somehow they were bending his head back.

"What are you doing?" Chris asked, but he really didn't have to be told when he caught the flash of steel in Jose's hand.

"How could you?" he asked."Hey, Mr. Chris, we join the lottery, me and Maria!" Jose said. "I'm going to be the new Agamemnon, she's Clytemnestra, but we take care of the trouble before it begins. We kill the old Agamemnon, so it doesn't have to happen again!"

Chris thought it was just like Jose to get things mixed up, to try to solve a myth before it began. He wondered if Ca.s.sandra had hinted at this outcome, and if he had ignored her, since that was her curse. He sank to the floor. The pain was sharp and brief, and he had the feeling that there was something he had left undone, though he couldn't remember what it was. . . .

He couldn't know it, not at that time, that a man in a yellow buffalo-hide coat had gone to the local branch of Thomas Cook and put in a payment. He had it directed to the Infernal Account. The clerk had never heard of that account, but when he checked with the manager, there it was.

The payment ensured that Chris wouldn't be left for eternity on the wrong sh.o.r.e of Styx, and that the other four were paid for, too.