"Oho!" said Flin. "Now we're getting our period narrowed down. There isn't any war with Sparta right now?"
"No. There was some talk about it, but that died down."
"Then we must be before the Peloponnesian War. How old does Perikles look?"
"Hard to say, on account of people got old so much faster in the old days. If he was a modern man, I'd say he was around a hundred or a hundred and ten, but if he's a real ancient Grick, I say sixty maybe."
"When does that date us, Wiyem?" asked Bulnes.
"In the 430's — perhaps as close as 435 to 432 b.c. The Peloponnesian War should be just about to break out. Wish I could remember the details of the opening of the war."
Diksen gulped. "You mean we got a war on our hands, too?"
"If history follows the same course it did the first time. That was the war that ruined Classical Greece. If I'd known what I was getting into, I'd have brought a copy of Thucydides."
"How ja know this ain't the first time, Mr. Flin?"
Bulnes said, "That, my dear friends, is what we're trying to find out. Could we check by geography?"
"How?" inquired Flin.
"Let's say by changes in the coast line, or the degree of erosion of the hills."
"I don't see how. We have no very exact information on the state of such matters in Classical times. Even if we did, we have no precise maps or other data to guide us."
"Well, for example," persisted Bulnes, "is the Corinthian Canal in existence? It is in our times but not, I believe, in the fifth century B.C."
"It ain't," said Diksen. "Least, they got a boat-hauling service there for pulling ships on rollers over the isthmus. One of the boys on the force was telling me."
"That should settle it," said Flin.
Bulnes said, "My dear Wiyem, you're determined to make this phenomenon real at all costs. But if the Emp could restore all of Classical Greece down to the last temple, he could fill in the Corinthian Canal."
"Well then," said Flin, "how about animal life? Mr. Diksen said something about lions, but there haven't been any wild lions in Europe since Classical times."
"They got 'em in Thessalia and Makedonia," said Diksen.
Bulnes said, "That wouldn't do either. Vasil could stock the country with lions from some African game preserve."
"I have another idea," said Flin. "How about some form of life now extinct? Like the aurochs? How about that, Mr. Diksen?"
"What's an auroc?"
"The aurochs was the wild ox that used to roam the forests of Europe."
"You mean that big black wild bull with the long horns? Yeah, they got them too. We got the skull of one on the wall of the barracks."
"There you are!" cried Flin. "Not even Vasil's resources can bring an extinct species back to life. Hence this must be the real Periklean Age."
"Wrong again, I'm sorry to say," said Bulnes. "The aurochs was brought back to life by some zoologist back in the twentieth century. Forget the man's name."
"How in the name of heaven did he do that?"
"He crossbred various strains of domestic cattle partly descended from the aurochs and kept picking those most like the ancestral aurochs until he re-established the original stock. There's been a small herd in existence ever since. You can see some at the London Zoo."
"I never knew that," said Flin. "Too bad there isn't some species like the mammoth that would really settle the question."
"How about language?" asked Bulnes. "Do the pronunciation and syntax of these Greeks match those of the real ancient ones?"
Flin spread his hands. "How can I tell? Nobody made phonographic recordings of the speech of the time of Perikles, so we have to guess at their pronunciation, more or less. It sounds all right to me, but there's no way of checking it."
"I got an idea," said Diksen. "I once read about how the position of the stars keeps changing, so after a coupla thousand years the Big Dipper'll look like a frying pan."
"That's it!" exclaimed Flin. "You know astronomy from your navigating experiences, Knut. How about it?"
"Won't do," said Bulnes. "The change wouldn't be enough to settle the question. But you do give me an idea."
"What?" said the other two at once.
"The North Celestial Pole."
"What's that?" said Diksen. "The place right overhead?"
"No, the point in the sky around which the stars turn. It changes its position continually, making a complete circle in — I forget exactly — something like twenty-five thousand years. If I could find an astronomer with some simple instruments, I could determine whether the Pole is now near Alpha Ursae Minoris or Alpha Draconis, or what. Not even Vasil the Ninth could change the inclination of the earth's axis for purposes of historical research. Who's an astronomer, Wiyem?"
"Oh dear me. I'm supposed to be a Greek scholar and all that rot, but without my reference book; I don't know the ruddy subject as well as I thought. Anaxagoras might still be alive, and let's see — there was some other chap trying to reforn the calendar. Can't think of his name. Not Myron that's the sculptor, but something like that. Could you look into it, Mr. Diksen?"
"You want I should find an astronomer with a name something like Myron, huh?"
"That's it."
"Meanwhile, my dear friends," said Bulnes "there's the little matter of making our livings, because this Athenian silver won't last forever."
"In the stories," said Flin, "the chappie who's tossed back in time makes his fortune by teaching the natives to add or inventing the airplane."
"I wouldn't try that," said Diksen. "These Gricks ain't got no idea of the usefulness of machinery so long as they got a lot of poor shmos to work as slaves. When my beat was on the Akropolis, I thought I'd save 'em trouble and get in with the right guys by suggesting wheelbarrows to haul their loads. What thanks do I get? 'Barbarian, you keep your goddam nose out of what don't concern you. We Gricks is the only people can think, and we don't need no advice from no low-down slave. Now get going.' Boy, I coulda wrapped my bow around that guy's neck. Bigshot architect, name of Iktinos."
"We seem to have a complete cast of characters in any event," said Flin. "D'you know Aspasia?"
"Yeah, sure — that is, I know who she is."
"Sokrates?"
"The funny-looking bald guy, always picking arguments in the Agora? Yeah."
"Protagoras?"
"Nope."
"Kleon the Tanner?"
"Maybe I heard of him. Not sure."
"Pheidias?"
"Nope."
After Flin had gone through several more names, most of which Diksen did not know, Bulnes said, "The question of making a living remains unsettled, but I think Mr. Diksen is right, that we should get nowhere trying to invent ourselves into affluence. I certainly couldn't invent the airplane. I have neither the engineering training nor the tools nor the materials."
"I don't think it's important," said Flin. "If I find Thalia, I'll jolly well set out for the nearest frontier and take my chances on getting through."
"Until we get some personal security I don't see how we can hunt effectively for your wife, even assuming she's in this time stream or whatever you call it. Don't they keep the women shut up in harems here?"
"Yeah, they do," said Diksen. "Like they used to do in them Oriental countries."
"What's your suggestion, then?" said Flin.
Bulnes said, "If need be, we shouldn't be afraid of manual labor."
"Slave competition would keep wages down to the starvation level. However, if you become reasonably fluent in Classical Greek, why shouldn't we set up as sophists?"
"You mean those guys that lecture?" said Diksen.
"Absolutely. They were big business at the time, and were laying the foundations for higher education as we know it. We could give the people the Copernican system ..."
"It seems to me," said Bulnes, "they used to feed hemlock poison to sophists who taught radical new ideas."