Time Travelers Never Die (34 page)

 

 

 

 

ASPASIA
routinely turned her phone off during social events. She arrived home from a party, and had just gotten drinks for herself and her date, when she saw a missed call from Harvey Barnard. She and Harvey had gotten their doctorates together and had remained friends. He was currently on the faculty of the classics department at Wesleyan.

It was after midnight, so she let it go until morning. By then she’d forgotten about it. He called again while she was walking out to get into the car.

“I might have. Don’t recall, Harv.”

“Okay. It doesn’t matter. He runs the Riverside Theater in Princeton. I’d shown him the plays you sent. He wants to know whether they can do the
Achilles
. I checked to see whether anybody holds a copyright. Just in case.”

Aspasia had already looked into the possibility.

“I do, too, Harv. But let me look into it, and I’ll try to get back to you in a couple of days. Okay?”

 

 

SHE
put the request on her Web site: AMATEUR THEATER GROUP WANTS TO PERFORM
ACHILLES
. DO YOU HAVE OBJECTION? PLEASE REPLY FROM LAST POST OFFICE.

That had been the main post office in Philadelphia, and, since she didn’t know whom she was dealing with, it would serve as confirmation.

The response came by overnight mail.

 

 

 

The letter, like the earlier correspondence, had no return address. And, of course, with no signature, wasn’t worth much. “But I’d be willing to bet,” she told Harvey later that day, “that whoever’s doing this will show up at one of the performances.”

“You have any way of recognizing him?”
said Harv.

“Zip. Maybe, though, he, or she, will do something that would give him away.”

“Not a chance.”

 

 

DAVE’S
cabin in the Poconos had been in the family as long as he could remember. He loved the view, loved the mountains, loved the isolation.

He would have given a lot to be independently wealthy, so he could live in a place like that without having to worry about finances. For him, the ideal outcome would be to live up there with Helen and simply while away his life watching TV, reading, hiking, and hanging out on the deck in the moonlight. But the money part of it was never going to happen. He’d tried investing shortly after he’d begun his teaching career, hoping to ride some small company into big money. But he knew now that, no matter how the market went, twenty shares in a small electronics company wasn’t going to take him to glory.

He hadn’t entirely given up on Helen. There was a good chance that Shel would walk away from her, and if that happened, he might be able to turn the situation to his advantage. But his odds would be much better if he had something to offer.

Helen had admitted she was tired of her career track. The world, she’d told him several times, was full of hypochondriacs, people who craved attention and could find no way to get it other than by either pretending to be sick, or convincing themselves that they
were
sick. She’d begun talking about going into teaching. Get herself a position at a medical school. The odd thing about such pronouncements was that she always made them when Shel was out of earshot.

Dave had told her on occasion about his dream of moving into the cabin, and she’d encouraged him. Told him it sounded like a good way to live. That didn’t mean she’d necessarily find it appealing, but there was a chance.

He never ceased regretting that he hadn’t challenged Shel for her from the beginning. He could have been more persistent with her. Moved on her like a Marine landing party, the way Katie had suggested. But he’d let it go, constantly put it off, hoping that, in some idiotic way, his chances would improve if he remained aloof.

Aloof.

He’d paid a price for that.

Talking with Tom Paine, and Galileo, and Aristarchus, had shown him how shallow and dreary his own life was. Not the time-travel part, of course. But his
real
life. He and Shel had visited Rome in the glory days of the Republic, and he’d come home to bored students who had no appreciation for, nor interest in, the power of living languages. Or the instability of democratic forms of government.

Maybe it was time to stop playing by Shel’s rules.

ON
the impulse, without waiting to think it out, knowing that if he did, he’d back away, he set the converter for the same location, his living room, at 10:00 A.M. five days later, and punched the button.

The living room faded and came back. The only thing that had changed was that the books and a newspaper on the coffee table had moved around. It was Monday, April 28, and the future Dave Dryden was, of course, at school. He didn’t want to start appearing in the house when he was already there. That was too much of a mind bender.

He listened to the faint whir of an air vent. Why did his own house feel so strange? “You’re not here anywhere, are you, Dave?”

Nothing.

Good. He sat down at the computer and checked out the weekend race results.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

 

 

 

 

FOR
Shel and Dave, life had become a lark. Though neither spoke the language, they navigated through a Russian week, visiting Moscow in 1913 to attend a concert performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s
The Bells
. The next evening, they traveled to St. Petersburg, December 23, 1888, to listen to Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade
. They took two nights off so Dave could grade some papers, then returned to the Bolshoi, March 5, 1877, for Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake
.

They sat down one evening at Lenny Pound’s and put together a to-do list: Dave thought they should find a way to spend an evening with Marcus Aurelius. Shel didn’t know who he was, but when Dave explained, he said okay.

Shel wanted to meet Michelangelo. “Preferably, we should catch him early, before he becomes famous. Maybe get to him at about the time he arrives in Rome.”

Check.

What else?

Dave inspected his beer. “I’d like to ride downriver on Mark Twain’s steamboat.”

“Okay,” said Shel. He was making notes. “I’d like to see the comet of 1811.”

“Big one, was it?”

“Enormous. Double tail.”

“Put it down.”

“I’ll tell you what else I’d like to do.”

“What’s that, Shel?”

“Socrates. I’d like to be there for the last dialogue.”

“You mean when he drank the hemlock?”

“Yes.”

“I thought we wanted to avoid killings and stuff.”

“This is different. He talked about life and death during those last hours. It would be painful, and my Greek is still not that good, but—”

“Okay.”

Shel made the entry and looked up. “What else?”

Dave took a healthy swig of his beer. “Ride with Kit Carson.”

“You? I’ve seen you on a horse.”

“I’ll learn.”

“Okay.” He wrote it down.

Shel thought he’d enjoy spending an evening with Charles Darwin.

Dave wanted to meet Lord Byron.

“Speaking of meeting people,” said Shel, “I’ll tell you the guy I’d particularly like to meet.”

“Who’s that?”

“Leonidas. I’d like to run into him on the way to Thermopylae.”

And so it went. They recorded ideas and wrote down names, and eventually they got to Ben Franklin.

Dave pushed his empty glass aside. “Yes,” he said. “I’d enjoy that. But how do we get in to see him?”

“Shouldn’t be hard. How’d we get to see Tom Paine? Make something up.”

 

 

THE
first step was to travel to London in October 1726 to pick up a copy of
Gulliver’s Travels
, then just published. They stopped at Carleton’s Book Store, off Regent’s Park. The salesclerk, who was also apparently the owner, told them they’d been lucky, that he couldn’t keep the book in stock. “Only got one left,” he said. “I’ll confess, I don’t understand the thing myself. But it’s getting a lot of attention.” He was about sixty, congenial, with enormous eyebrows.

Except it wasn’t there, on the center shelf of the fiction section, where he’d expected. He had to change glasses to go looking for it. Shel helped out, and they hunted through the romance shelves. “I was sure,” the clerk said, “I put it here.”

It was prominently displayed, in two volumes, in the front of the store. He changed glasses, took them down from the shelf, and handed them to Shel.

“Needs bifocals,” said Dave.

“Pardon?” asked the clerk.

“Nothing important,” said Dave.

Franklin, of course, was only at the beginning of his career. But help was on the way.

The volumes were bound in velvet. The book had been published anonymously.

“What don’t you understand about it?” Dave asked the dealer.

“What all the fuss is about. It’s got tiny people. Giants. Horses that talk. It’s a book for children.” He went back to his original spectacles. “No wonder the author’s keeping his name quiet. I would, too.”

 

 

IN
1727, Franklin had founded the Junto, a group of twelve friends who met in Philadelphia at the Indian King Tavern on Friday evenings to discuss philosophy, politics, ethics, and whatever other subject seemed worthwhile. The meetings, as far as Shel could determine, were closed to nonmembers. But they took place in a bar. How difficult could it be?

They arrived down the street from the tavern on Friday evening, January 19, 1728, at a quarter to seven. Shel carried the copy of
Gulliver’s Travels
, wrapped in a paper bag.

It was cold. They could
hear
the tavern before they saw it. There was music from a stringed instrument, and raucous laughter, and a strong aroma of hops. Candles glittered happily in the windows. It occurred to Shel as they approached the place that he’d almost become accustomed to a world without electricity. And that the guy who was going to change that world forever would be here tonight.

Two young men were coming from the opposite direction. They’d started their drinking early, and they had to help each other into the tavern.

Shel and Dave followed them inside. The interior was filled with tobacco smoke. The clientele was all male, and most seemed reasonably well-to-do. Some were seated at tables, eating dinner. Others had collected at a bar. The music was being provided by a middle-aged guy with a guitar.

They ordered a couple of beers and were just starting on them when four more men came in, passed directly through the room, and mounted a set of stairs in back. “That should be them,” said Shel.

“I don’t see anybody who looks like Franklin.”

“He might be up there already.”

Dave eased out of his chair. “Shall we go?”

“Let’s wait till seven. We don’t want to get there before
he
does.”

The beer was good. More visitors entered and headed for the second floor. “How long do these meetings last?” asked Dave.

“About an hour. Hold on.”

One of the newcomers, a young man, stopped at a table to talk and exchange handshakes. Shel had no idea what Franklin had looked like at twenty-one. But this might be him. He was a little taller than average, with brown hair and alert eyes. He finished the conversation and started for the stairs.

Shel waited until he was gone. Then he wandered over to the table. The two men were in their early twenties, one white, one Hispanic. Both looked prosperous. “Pardon me,” he said, “but I’m trying to find a Mr. Franklin—”

“Ben?” asked the Hispanic.

“Yes.”

“That was him a minute ago. He just went upstairs.”