Bulnes picked up the man's pistol, handed it to the nearest Greek, and led his men down the slope to the entrance beneath the Theseion. The man at the desk looked up open-mouthed as Bulnes thrust his pistol into his face and said, "Give me the key to the machine-gun rack, quickly, if you please."
Bulnes unlocked the rack and passed out the guns. In fifteen minutes he and his men had a hundred-odd employees of the project rounded up. All the switches had been pulled, including that which controlled the force walls surrounding Greece.
Bulnes told the Greeks, "Take them out and chain them up in the Oikema until we decide what to do with them. Here, you, my good man, where is there an outside telephone?"
When he found the phone, he dialed long distance, then England, then Trafalgar 9-0672.
"Are you there?" he said. "Is this Trends Magazine? Good. Put me through to Mr. Ritçi, please. Robert? Knut Bulnes speaking. I have a story for you. Put the recorder on ..."
When he had given his editor-in-chief an account of the Periklean Project and his part in the recent events, he rang off and dialed Dagmar Mekrei's apartment.
"Why Knut darling!" she exclaimed when he had identified himself. "What on earth happened to you? You disappeared off the face of the earth last month ..."
"You'll read all about it in tomorrow's papers, darling. I'm in Athens ..."
"But you can't be! That's reserved territory!"
"Not any more, mariposa. Travel should be reestablished in a few days."
"Then you'll be coming back to London?"
"Not quite yet. Ritçi was so pleased with the story I gave him that he told me to take as long as I liked. Now it happens that my little ship is at the bottom of the harbor ..."
"Oh, how dreadful!"
"... and it'll take weeks to raise her, since there's no modern salvage apparatus here, thought you might like to fly down here as soon as the airlines are running again, stay here sightseeing while I get the ship up, and sail back to England with me."
"Oh — Knut ..."
"Yes?"
"I'm dreadfully sorry but — I'm married."
"You what?"
''Married. Remember Kaal Beiker? He's been asking me a long time, and when you disappeared — well ..."
"When was this?"
"Four days ago. He moved in with me, and I expect him home from work any time now."
Bulnes gulped, feeling the blood rush to his face, then leave it. "Well — uh — thanks for telling me. I hope — I hope — Oh, hell! Good-bye, Dagmar."
An hour later Bulnes arrived, in dungarees and yachting cap, in front of the house of Euripides in the Peiraieus. He parked the motor scooter and then knocked on the door.
Euripides himself opened it. When Bulnes explained who he was, Euripides said, "Come in, come in, o Kirie Bulnes."
"Efcharisto," said Bulnes, complying.
"I'm really Kostis Vutiras," continued the long-beard, "formerly a reporter for the Athenian Herald. Your friend Flin is here. He has been telling me that for seven or eight years I've been living the life of Euripides, the ancient poet. I should find it hard to believe, except for this ..."
He tugged the beard and led the way in.
"It is a little embarrassing," he continued in a lower voice. "I have a wife somewhere, too, and God knows what she's up to:"
Flin sat on an eating couch with Thalia, who greeted Bulnes without any sign of remembering his previous visit. He said, "Here are your modern clothes, my dear Wiyem. The gods save me from riding a motor scooter over these roads again!"
Flin said, "Thanks. It'll be jolly having pockets once more."
Thalia asked, "Have you been in touch with London yet, Knut?"
"Yes. I phoned the story in and spoke to Dag-mar."
"How is dear Dagmar after all these years?"
"She's somebody else's dear Dagmar now. She married that fellow Beiker a few days ago."
Thalia said; "Oh, Knut, I'm sorry!"
Flin, after a futile effort to control his features, burst into a guffaw.
"You find it amusing?" said Bulnes ominously.
"I'm s-sorry, Knut, really. But you go round all these years saying you won't be tied down by marriage, and no ruddy woman is worth it, and all that rot. Then, when you get stood up, you put on a face a meter long."
"It serves him right," said Thalia, "the way he kept the poor girl dangling so long. No wonder ..."
Flin, who had been going through his clothes, brought out a radio no bigger than a cigarette case. He snapped it on. Presently it hummed and gave forth music.
"Where'd you get that?" asked Bulnes.
"Had it all the time. Didn't work inside the force field."
The radio said: "We interrupt this program to bring another special bulletin. News of the unmasking of the late Emperor's Periklean Project has reached the World Parliament in New York and has caused tremendous excitement. A number of Populist supporters of Prime Minister Rudolf Lenz have deserted him and gone over to the Diffusionists. It now appears certain that the government will fall, and that the twelve-year strong-arm rule of the Lenz Ministry is at an end. The coronation of fourteen-year-old Crown Prince Seril will take place ..."
Flin said, "Wonder what they'll do with all these magnificent reproductions of ancient buildings? Tear 'em down and set up the authentic ruins again? I should think they could salvage ..."
Something gurgled; Euripides-Vutiras was pouring wine.
Bulnes said, "At least we can now drink our wine straight without being thought barbarians."
"What are your immediate plans, Knut?" asked Flin.
"To raise my boat. I don't suppose you'd be interested ..."
"Oh, no! We're rushing back to England as soon as there's transportation. Why don't you ask Diksen to go with you? He's a handy young chap, even if no intellectual."
"Not a bad idea," sighed Bulnes, feeling old and unloved.
Thalia said, "Cheer up, my old Knut. If you have changed your mind about women and are persuing honorable intentions ... Wiyem, are there any of my young cousins still unmarried?"
Flin pondered. "There's Ero, the one with the blue eyes."
"Splendid! I will arrange everything ..."
Bulnes said, "Excuse me! I shall be glad to meet the young lady, but beyond that I prefer to do my own arranging. I know you of old, my dear Thalia. Hereafter I will do as I like, eat what I like, and not what some megalomaniac emperor thinks I ought ..."
"Indeed?" said Vutiras. "Has it occurred to you that, even in your so-called normal, modern, twenty-seventh-century world, you may be merely somebody's puppet, as Mrs. Flin and I were in this one — only you haven't been clever enough to penetrate backstage?"
Bulnes and Flin exchanged an appalled glance. The latter burst out, "Oh, what a perfectly beastly idea!"
The End
Book information
ANCIENT GREECE?
OR FUTURE HOAX ...
"You think the Emp has some sort of time machine that works inside his force wail, so he can run history over like a film?"
"Something like that."
"Won't work, comrade."
"Why not?"
"The acts we commit in ancient Greece would affect all subsequent history. Therefore, when our own century comes round, we shall never be born as and when we were, so we shan't exist to go back to ancient Greece to commit those acts."
Bulnes refrained from snorting. "I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. Just because we find a section of Piriefs put back into its Periklean condition, and see a few characters flitting about in bedspreads, we shouldn't conclude that all Greece has been likewise transformed." Bulnes yawned. "In the morning we can go out and ask anybody if he's seen Aristotle."