"I getcha. Don't seem to me as how that'd work, though. Too many people all yacking away at once."
"Right. Don't be surprised if you hear the inspections of the other tribes have been called off."
They picked up Flin at the house of Kallaischros and wended their way to the Agora to buy their lunch. Flin, eating an omelet wrapped in leaves, listened to the account. "He's determined to uncover the unconditioned men at all costs," he commented. "We'd jolly well better do something."
Diksen said, "I wonder they don't just run through their card files to see who Philon and Bouleus are, and when they find there ain't no such people, they'd know you guys is it."
Bulnes said, "Remember, they've probably got two or three million people in Greece. That's too many to keep close track of without modern police methods, and you couldn't apply such methods without giving the game away."
"Another thing," said Flin. "The fact that the Greeks had no real surnames would make it harder to keep track of them. You might have several hundred men named Leon, and one of them might sometimes speak of himself as Leon son-of-Lykos, another time as Leon of Phaleron, and still another as Leon the Short or Leon the Stonecutter. You can see the difficulty of keeping an eye on each of your Leons. There might be scores of Bouleuses, and how are they to tell there's an extra one and expose him except by turning off the ruddy machina?
"By the way." continued Flin, "Kritias says a couple of his friends want to join our course."
"Splendid, my dear fellow," said Bulnes. "We shall be successful in spite of ourselves."
"There's one catch, though. The crowd's getting too large for the house of Kallaischros. We shall have to move out."
"The Agora's too noisy for my taste," said
Bulnes, glancing over to where Sokrates was arguing: "... but my dear Antiphon, if everyone takes the view that morality is simply a matter of who can think up the cleverest arguments to support his interests, what becomes of public virtue? How long will such a state endure?"
Bulnes added, "How about one of the gymnasia?"
"It would have to be the Kynosarges," said Flin, "since the others don't admit noncitizens. But what shall we do about the Emp? I have no doubt they can locate us eventually." Flin turned to Diksen. "Any chance of fomenting an insurrection among your fellow-gendarmes?" .
"Huh?"
"He means," said Bulnes, "could you stir up the rest of the Scythians to revolt?"
"Dunno. Doubt it. The Scythian cops got a good deal. They can keep women on the side and when they get too old for work, the commissioners turn 'em loose. Usually they've grafted enough by that time to set 'emselves up in business or go back home." He yawned prodigiously. " 'Scuse me, fellas, I gotta get back to barracks to catch some sleep. You forget I'm up all night."
He left.
Flin said, "Speaking of this and that, hadn't we better see if Euripides has sent his letter to the Polemarchos yet?"
Bulnes shrugged. "Considering that Euripides is the original absent-minded professor, we shall probably have to remind him a couple of times before he'll do it."
To his surprise, however, Bulnes learned that the letter had been delivered to the Polemarchos that very morning.
"Kephisophon must have remembered to remind him," said Bulnes. "My dear sir, is my friend now a free man again?"
"Yes," said the magistrate. "If you will wait, I will send a slave to the treasury to fetch your bail money. Have you two found a patron yet?"
"No," said Bulnes. "We approached the good Sokrates, but he — uh — could not see his way clear."
"That subversive agitator, always unsettling our young men by questioning the wisdom of our ancestors! It is just as well for you that he refused. However, be advised to find a patron soon, as you will be entered upon the tax rolls in any case and you might as well have the legal standing of a registered metoikos."
The money came, and Bulnes and Flin departed to return it to Kritias. Bulnes said, "I'm sorry we weren't there when the slave arrived. We could have sent Euripides' manuscript back by him. In this world it always takes ten times as much fumbling around to accomplish a simple thing like that as in our own."
Flin nodded. "I miss jolly old London myself, fogs and all."
Chapter Seventeen
Late that afternoon, they were sitting in the inn of Podokles and working up the next few days' lectures, when Dromon the slave came in.
"Sirs," he said, "a message from my master Sokrates. Perikles is giving a dinner and symposium tonight at his house, whither he has invited all the philosophers of Athens. He asked my master to round up any he, Perikles, might be unacquainted with, wherefore Sokrates sent me to seek you men of Tartessos."
Bulnes exchanged looks with Flin, asking, "What's this?"
Flin said, "That's out of character. The real Perikles wasn't a very sociable chap — seldom entertained and seldom appeared in public except on state business. D'you think he'll try to smoke us out the way he did the militia this morning?"
"It wouldn't surprise me. But, being forewarned, we sould be able to cope with it."
"You mean when the others go off their rails, we do likewise?"
"Precisely."
"Dash it all, it seems like taking a frightful risk. Why don't you go and leave me?"
"What did you say?" said Bulnes, glowering.
"But — I mean — you could say I had a headache ..."
"It'd be an even worse risk to refuse. You're going. Dromon, what do we do now?"
"Follow me. My master will lead you to the house of Perikles."
Sokrates greeted them cordially at the Agora. He evidently could not stay angry long with anybody who looked like a promising antagonist in an argument. Bulnes had tactfully worked the philosopher around to the subject of becoming their prostates when they arrived at the house of Perikles.
The Strategos greeted them with grave cordiality inside the door. Bulnes took a sharp look at the Athenian statesman. There was no doubt that the man was the Emperor. Meanwhile, Perikles-Vasil was looking just as keenly at Bulnes. He said, in the manner of one making polite conversation, "It is interesting to meet one of the fabled Tartessians. Are you of the race of the Keltoi, said to inhabit the westernmost parts of Europe?"
"No, Perikles."
Flin spoke up. "We are the autochthones of Iberia, and cultivated the arts and sciences there centuries before the coming of the barbarous Kelts."
"Your name is Philon, my dear sir?" said Perikles.
As Perikles turned his head, Bulnes noticed the remarkable length of his skull, which projected backward to a conspicuous degree. Had he made a mistake? Vasil IX had no such bulge.
Within the andronitis, Bulnes found all the philosophers he had already met — Protagoras, Demokritos, Anaxagoras, and Meton — and several others he did not know. Nobody bothered with introductions; all were too busy with converse. Meton, for instance, was explaining his proposed calendar reform to somebody and railing at the stupidity of the masses who insisted on using an obsolete and irrational system of time reckoning from sheer force of habit. Flin said, "That one with the squint is Diogenes."
"The fellow who lived in a barrel?"
"No, you're thinking of the Cynic philosopher, who wouldn't be born yet. This is a scientist. And that's Prodikos, the one with the theories about the nature of myth, just back from Italy ..."
Prodikos was telling Protagoras: "... and I stopped at Thourioi and saw Herodotos."
"How is the old fellow?"