He thought: I have to tell her the truth, whatever the risk. Therels no choice left.
“My lady,” he said slowly, “I never lied to you, but I did hold back certain matters. Please remember, I’m a complete stranger here. I had to find out what the situation is, the rights and wrongs, the ins and outs. Including whether you would believe the whole story. I don’t yet know that. But will you listen?”
She nodded.
“The mason I can prophesy,” he said, “is that I come from the future.”
“The what?” She frowned, trying to understand. The Keftiu language didn’t lend itself well to such a concept.
But she caught the idea faster than he had hoped. And apart from signing herself and kissing her talisman, she was curiously little shaken. He wondered if she, living in a world of myth and mystery, looked on this as only another miracle.
“Yes,” she murmured, “that explains a great deal?’
And later: “Knossos will indeed fall? The Thalassocracy will be less than a legend?’ She turned about and stared long at the portrait of the Judge. “Well,” she said low, “all things are mortal?’
Reid went on, describing what he could of the basic problem. His chief omission was the fact that the two Erissas were identical. He feared the possible consequences to the girl. It seemed merely needful to be vague about the date from which the woman came. The name was not uncommon and Lydra was being given a monstrous lot else to think about. He also skipped the tradition that she, traitress to the Minos, would herself be betrayed. It looked too insulting, thus too dangerous.
“What you tell me,” ahe said, flat-voiced, “is that the gods, decree Theseus shall overthrow the sea empire.”
“No, my lady. The single thing I’m certain of is that the volcano will wipe out Atlantis within months, the. Cretans will be conquered, and a story will tell how a Theseus killed a monster in Knossos. The facts need not bang together very closely. The tale could be quite false. I know already it’s wrong in several ways at least. No one Minotaur ever existed, half human and half brute, just a series of sacrificial bulls. The youths and maidens from Athens are not slain but well treated. Ariadne is not the kingh daughter. The Labyrinth is not a maze imprisoning the Minotaur, simply the chief palace of your priest-king, the House of the Double Ax. I could go on. But you must understand my meaning. Why should the Thalassocracy not survive the foundering of this island, perhaps for many generations?”
“If its holy of holies is destroyed by divine will, then the wrath of the gods is upon the people of the Minos,” Lydra said quietly.
“They could lose heart on that account,” Reid agreed. “But I swear, my lady, the causes will be as natural as ... as a rock happening to fall on a man’s head.”
“Is that man not fated to die by that rock?”
Reid warned himself: You’re dealing with an alien world-view. Don’t stop to argue.
He said, “We can’t be sure what’s ordained for Crete. Asterion wills men to strive bravely to the end. Evacuating your folk to safety can be our way of striving.”
Lydra sat still; she might have been carved from the same marble as her throne, and in the dull uneasy light she had scarcely more color.
“The mainlanders could use the chance to seize your cities,” Reid plodded on. “If they do, they might regret it when the destruction comes. But we ought to plan against that event too. Everything, both the old story I read and what I have seen and heard in this age, everything makes me doubt Theseus.” He paused. “And that’s why I asked what message he has sent you, my lady:”
Lydra remained moveless, expressionless. Reid had started wondering if something was wrong with her when she said: “I’m sworn to secrecy. The Ariadne cannot violate her oath. However, you may have guessed that he is ... interested in the idea of closer relationships with the Labyrinth ... and would naturally see if I might be persuaded to help.”
“Diores told me that much, my lady. Uh, uh, could you keep him in play? Prolong negotiations, immobilize him till the crisis is past?”
“You have been heard, Duncan. But the Ariadne must decide. I will not receive you soon again.”
And suddenly, strangely, Lydra’s shoulders bowed. She passed a hand across her eyes and whispered, “It is no easy thing being the Ariadne. I thought .. I believed, when the vision came to me in that hallowed place ... I believed priestesshood would be unending happiness and surely the high priestess lived in the eternal radiance of Asterion. Instead—endless rites, endlessly the same—drab squabbles and intrigues—whisker-chinned crones who abide and abide, while the maidens come and serve and go home to be brides—” She straightened. “Enough. You are dismissed. Speak no word of what has passed between us.”
They sought their cove on another day. “Let’s swim,” Erissa said and was unclad and in the water before he could answer. Her hair floated black on its clarity, her limbs white below. “Nyah, afraid of cold?” she shouted, and splashed at him.
What the hell, he decided, and joined her. The water was in truth chilly. He churned it to keep warm. Erissa dove, grabbed his ankle and pulled him under. It ended in a laughing, gasping wrestling match.
When they went ashore the breeze made them shiver again. “I know a cure for this,” Erissa said, and came into his embrace. They lay down on a blanket. Presently she grinned. “You’ve stronger medicine in mind, haven’t you?”
“I, I can’t help it. 0 gods, but you’re beautiful!”
She said, gravely and trustingly, “You can have me whenever you want, Duncan.”
He thought: I’m forty and she’s seventeen. I’m American and she’s Minoan. I’m of the Atomic Age and she’s of the Bronze Age. I’m married, I have children, and she’s a virgin. I’m an old idiot and she’s the springtime that never was in my life before she came.
“That wouldn’t be good for you, would it?” he managed to ask.
“What better?” She pressed against him.
“No, hold off, seriously, you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?”
“Well—I am half consecrated while I’m here as a dancer—But I don’t care, I don’t care!”
“I do. I must. We’d better put our clothes on.”
He thought: We have to survive. Until what? Until we know if her country will. Afterward—if it does, will I stay here? If it doesn’t, will I bring her home with me? Can I do either? May I?
His tunic and her skirt resumed, they sat back down. She, snuggled. Her fingers ruffled his beard. “You’re always sorrowful, down underneath, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I have some knowledge of what is to be,” he replied, though he dared not get specific, “and it does hurt.”
“Poor darling god! I do think you’re a god, even if you won’t admit it. Must you live every unhappiness twice? Why not every happiness, then? Look, the sky’s blue and the water’s green and the sand’s soaked full of sunshine and here’s a beaker of wine „ no, let me hold it to your lips, I want your arm around my waist and your other hand right here—”
* * *
A good many compromises had had to be made as work progressed on the ship, some with Keftiu prejudices and requirements, some with the limitations of local technology, some with aspects of hydrodynamics that Reid discovered he had not known about. The end result was smaller, less handy, and less conspicuously extratemporal than he had hoped.
However, it was a considerable achievement. About eighty feet long, the slender hull was built outward and upward from a great dugout. Down the center ran a raised and bulwarked deck, beneath which passed thwarts for the rowers. The ram was a beak projecting at the waterline, bronze-sheathed, backed by heavy timbers. The twenty oars on either side were interrupted at the middle by lee-boards which had turned out to be more practical, on the whole, than a false keel or centerboard. Steering was by a true rudder. Two masts bore fore-and-aft rigs. Because. Sarpedon insisted—probably rightly, in view of the low free-board, the scanty ballasting, and the impacts sustained in battle—that they be readily unstepped, the masts were short. Reid gained sail area by using gaffs, and he had available both a genoa jib and a spinnaker; but the Minoan cloth, loosely woven, inclined to stretch and sag and absorb water, did not give the performance of canvas or dacron.