He said, "With all due modesty, my dear Anaxagoras, I thinks I can improve on that. Have you something to draw with?"
Anaxagoras produced a piece of charcoal from the litter and said, "Draw on the wall, if you will."
Bulnes stared at the plaster (on which appeared the half-erased remains of other map sketches) for a few seconds while the picture of his native land formed in his mind. Then he drew rapidly, correcting by smudging out and redrawing once or twice, and adding the main courses of the Ebro, the Tajo, and the Guadalquivir. At the mouth of the last, in the lower left corner of Spain near where Cadiz should be, he drew a little circle.
"Tartessos," he said.
Anaxagoras whinnied with pleasure. "Many thanks! Many thanks! This is the greatest single addition to my map since I started work on it forty years ago. Know you any more of the coasts of the world's outer rim?"
Bulnes smiled and added the western and northern coasts of France. He said to Flin, "Suppose you put in the British Isles. You know them better than I." Then to Anaxagoras, "To you Hellenes of course it seem as though you lived at the center of the world and we at the outer rim, but to us it seem like we lived at the center and you at the far edge. It is all in point of view."
"You mean there are other lands beyond what we used to call the rim of the world?"
"Certainly. Whole continents unknown to you."
"By Hera! I work a lifetime on this map. I correct the blunders of Thales and Anaximandros and Hekataios, and just when I think it perfect, you fellows wander in from far places and blast my hopes with a single sentence. Such is life, I suppose. What is your friend drawing?"
Flin answered, "These are the Tin Islands, which you have perhaps heard of."
"Wonderful! Then the Western Ocean does in fact pass around to the North of Europe? Ha, would that Herodotos were in Athens! He doubts that such is the case. And how do you divide the continents of Europe and Asia?"
"Oh, we do not consider Europe a continent," said Flin, "but a mere peninsula on the continent of Asia — ouch! What are you kicking me for?"
The last sentence was in English to Bulnes, who replied with a suave smile, "Don't seem to know more than you plausibly could, or you'll give us away. Ah — my good Anaxagoras, it is the greatest pleasure to have helped a so distinguished savant as yourself — but I think I hear our host."
Meton beckoned them toward the door at the farther end of the court. Through this door they entered a large and barely furnished room with a floor of stone. In one far corner stood another altar; in the other, a great pile of manuscripts, work sheets, drawing instruments, and the like, which litter looked as though it had been hastily pushed aside to make room for the couches which the slaves were now setting out.
Bulnes sighed as he resigned himself to a discomfort he had so far escaped: that of eating gentleman-style, reclining on a sofa.
In briefing him on Athenian customs and manners, Flin had dilated on the glories of the Athenian dinner party with its contests of wit and song and its other formidable qualities. This one, however, proved much simpler. Meton seemed to have simply stretched his originally modest meal of fish, bread, and assorted greens.- He occupied the head couch with Sokrates, and instead of discussing questions of ponderous philosophic import, they chattered about sports and the high cost of living and the doings of their mutual acquaintances, while a pet marten climbed over them.
At the other side Flin, sprawled with Anaxagoras, argued the question of whether the moon was inhabited, leaving Bulnes to munch his celery in solitary silence. Bulnes did so, except when Anaxagoras became involved in an argument with a slave whom he accused of serving him wine of a grade inferior to that of the rest of the company. Then Bulnes spoke across to Flin,
"At last, my dear Wiyem, I've found a race who cook worse than the English!"
"Huh. At least they don't smother everything with pepper the way they do in Spain. When I got back from there, I thought I should have to have a new skin grafted to the inside of my mouth."
"And the lack of women makes it seem like living in an American YMCA ..."
"What is that?" said Meton.
Flin answered the astronomer in the latter's language, "A thousand pardons, my dear sir. We have been praising your splendid cuisine."
Meton snorted. "Nothing splendid about it. It is the Corinthians and barbarians who live for their bellies."
"Precisely," said Bulnes. "So heathfully modest in quantity and rugged in quality! None of your guests will ever stuff self till he becomes useless ball of fat."
Sokrates added sententiously, "Nothing in excess. Let us eat to live, not live to eat."
Meton shot a sharp look at Bulnes, then apparently decided to take the comment at its face value.
"Oh, well," he said, "if you put it that way, I am glad you appreciate it. However, since you have set us a task this evening, we will not waste time matching verses from the Poet or tossing dregs at a mark. As the stars will soon be out, we shall have one more pull at the wine, and then off to the roof."
Flin, catching the eye of Bulnes, flicked a thumb toward the big door that led to the rear of the house, through which the food had come,
"See that, Knut? For all we know Thalia might be back there. We have no way of finding out."
"The entrance to the seraglio, eh?"
Flin nodded. "It drives me mad when I think ..."
They reached the roof by a ladder. Bulnes was a little alarmed to see Anaxagoras struggling up behind the rest, but the ancient bag of bones reached the top without visible difficulty.
The roof itself was flat and made of some composition like adobe. From here Bulnes could appreciate the figure-eight plan of the house, with its two open interior courts and blank outer wall. He walked over to the corner where stood a group of primitive astronomical instruments: sighting devices more or less like the forestaffs and astrolabes of later centuries, with angles marked off in simple fractions of a circle.
Meton adjusted one of the instruments.
"Come here, Bouleus," he said. "Look along these sights. Now, see you that star, the tip of the tail of the Little Bear? And that one, the brightest star in the tail of the Dragon? And that one, the nearest one to it in the constellation Cepheus? Move your pointer about one-fifth from the first star to the second, and you will be very close to the point you seek. It is unfortunate that there is no bright star near the spot ..."
"Wiyem!" cried Bulnes in English. "It's still in its normal position!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean we're still in the twenty-seventh century, Anno Domini! If we were back in the fifth B.C., it would be — let's see — the other side of Alpha Ursae Minoris, over towards Alpha Draconis. If I had a good star map, I could show you exactly ..."
"No!" cried Flin.
"Look at it yourself."
"Oh, blast it, you know I'm ignorant about such matters. But this can't all be a fake. It's too good!"
"There's your evidence. At least it makes finding Thalia a bit more hopeful."
"What are you two saying?" asked Meton.
Bulnes answered gravely in Greek, "Know, O friends, we have found Athens is a few hundred stadia north from Tartessos. If Anaxagoras will put southern tip of Greece on the same latitude as our Phaiakian city, he shall be very close to the truth."
As they walked homeward with Sokrates, Bulnes said, "Ahem — ah — Sokrates, perhaps you can help us ..."
"In what way?"
"Like yourself, we often find that vulgar money matters interfere with the search for higher truths. To be frank, the stipend with which our city sent us forth is shrinking like the snows in spring, and — uh ..."
"Gentlemen," said Sokrates, "were I as rich as Kallias, I should be glad to help you, but as it is ..."