TRANSLATIONS FROM THE COLOSIAN

Jack McDevitt

During the years when the first starships were crawling out from Earth, I sat one night in an open-air theater under strange constellations, watching a performance of Antigone.

The title was different, of course. And the characters had different names. I didn't understand the language, the playwright was somebody named Tyr, and Creon had fangs. For that matter, so did Antigone, and the guy sitting immediately to my right. But you can't miss the stark cadence of that desperate drama. I'd have known it in Swahili. The old passions don't change: even there, on that far world, where the Milky Way is only a faint point of light visible on clear nights; even there, reflected on the faces of a species that would have sent those early Hellenic audiences screaming into the woods, I knew them. Inexorably, while Harvey Klein and I watched through the narrow slits of our masks, the tragedy played itself out. And if I'd had any doubts about the nature of the creatures among whom I was spending the evening, they dissipated during the performance. The spectators held their breath in the right places, and gasped and trembled on cue. When it was over, they filed out thoroughly subdued, some surreptitiously wiping their eyes. They had been a damned good audience, and I admired them, fangs, fur, snouts, and all.

I think quite often about that evening, and wonder how something that began so well could have gone so wrong. It's more than twenty years now: but I remember the theater as though it were only last weekend. Basically, it was a brick platform with wings, balconies, and oil lamps. After the show, we climbed a hill behind it, and stood in the flicker of summer lightning, watching workers draw large squares of canvas over the stage. Klein looked around to be sure we were alone, coughed consumptively, pulled back his hood, and removed his mask. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Well," he asked, "was I right?"

I nodded, and realized he couldn't see the gesture. "Yes." I took off my own headpiece. The horns glinted in the light of an enormous green and yellow disk that rose out of the eastern horizon. "Yes, it is Sophocles."

"You'll be interested in knowing," said Klein, "that the thing we watched tonight was written over two thousand years ago, our time, during this world's political and literary golden age." "Not possible," I said. My sandals hurt. The best footwear that Klein had been able to come up with on short notice was Japanese. I was wearing false fur on my insteps, and the thong ran up between my second and third toes, rubbing the furpiece into my flesh.

It was a long ride from Glen Ellyn to that pleasant park, two million light years or so. But I felt at home among its deep glades and flat-bladed ferns that smelled vaguely of mint. The grass was freshly cut, and neatly trimmed hedges bordered gravel walks.

Klein looked puzzled. "You don't seem surprised, George," he said. "I would have thought that seeing a Greek play out here would come as something of a shock."

That was a laugh. A few hours earlier I'd walked with Klein through the windowless, crooked storeroom nailed to the back of his two-story frame house. We'd entered from the kitchen, and we'd come here.

"Where, precisely, are we?"

"I'm not too sure," he said. "Somewhere in M32, which is one of the local group of galaxies. The inhabitants call the place Melchior." A cool breeze blew across the brow of the hill. Klein looked unwell in the torpid light of the monster moon. He'd had a long history of high blood presssure and diabetes, and he occasionally mixed his insulin with rum. "How do you account for it?" he asked. "How does it happen that these people are watching Sophoclean drama?"

How would I know? "One thing at a time. How did we get here? What's the point of building starships that take years to go to places like this if we can simply walk across?"

"Oh," he smiled, "no starship will ever come here."

"Why not?"

"We're much too far." He pulled his robe up around his knees and lowered himself awkwardly into the ocher-colored grass. "How much physics do you know?"

"Not much."

Klein glanced tolerantly toward the dark forest pressing on the far side of the park. "George, it's all a matter of perception. We live in a strange universe. It's both physical and conceptual. Stone and shadow." He picked up a dry branch and examined it. "The hill we're sitting on is really here, but our perception holds it in place. Imposes order, as Brooking might say. Or Emerson. That branch is only partly wood. It's also an idea.

"Space is subject to the same laws. It's influenced by the observer."

"How does that connect your back door with this place?"

"Distance is a function of the mind," he said, as if that explained it.

I looked at him. Was he amusing himself at my expense? "Are you trying to say there's no such thing as space? That it doesn't really exist?"

"Of course not, George. What I am saying is that the intelligent observer has a much larger role in ordering things than we ever realized. We used to think of ourselves as standing outside somewhere inspecting a huge machine. Now we know that we're part of the machine. No: more than that, we're part of the fuel." He glanced at the sky. Most of the stars had begun to fade in the growing light of the rising disk. "It's distance that is an illusion, a convention, a linear measurement of a quality whose reality we establish. Listen, I know that'll bend your mind. I don't really understand it either. Nobody does. But it works. We're here."

"Yes, we're here. But where? In a place where they perform classical drama? What kind of sense does that make?"

"I don't know. I wanted you to tell me."

Well, I damned sure had no idea, and I told him so. Having settled that, I got up to go, but he wasn't anxious to leave. It occurred to me that he was ill, and trying to conceal the fact. Curious: Klein could stroll between the galaxies, but he couldn't do a thing about his high blood pressure.

"Can you go anywhere?" I asked.

"Hell, I can't even go into Chicago." He laughed. "It's true. I have to take the train down to the Institute. I'm jammed in three mornings a week with all those commuters." His chin had sunk onto his knees, and he seemed to be losing substance inside the robe. "The truth is, I can only come out here. I have access to about a dozen star systems, all in this neighborhood. I don't know why that should be."

We sat awhile. Here and there, below us, lights moved through the gloom. He slapped at a flying insect. We were on a long diamond-shaped island at the confluence of two broad rivers, one of which was far too rough for navigation. A half-dozen shallow draft vessels were anchored in a small wharf-lined harbor. Several barges floated alongside short piers, piled high with casks and crates. Away from the waterfront area were clusters of small homes of a distinctly Bavarian flavor. These were interspersed with illuminated shops and wide courtyards. "Maybe," I said, "the way you get around explains this. Antigone, I mean."

"How's that?"

"Maybe this playwright, what's his name, Tyr, understood about traveling the way you do. Maybe he took his vacations in Athens. You know, go to the theater, see the Olympics. Could he have had the technology? Do you have to have a store room in Glen Ellyn?"

Klein grinned. "Not a store room. Just something to use as a funnel." He pulled his robe tightly around himself as protection against the gathering chill. "Aulis Tyr," he continued, "lived in a place called Colosia. It's halfway round the planet and, if my sources are correct, it's only ruins now. But it was the seedbed of this world's ideas about art, ethics, government, philosophy. They had no real technology in the sense that we understand the term. Oh, some primitive stuff, maybe: they had the harrow, and some timepieces. They understood about pendulums. And they had the printing press. In fact, I don't think Melchior has much more than that now. But no technology is needed to travel. All that's necessary is a grasp of the true nature of matter, energy, and timespace." His eyes drifted shut and he shook his head slightly. "But it's difficult to see how anyone, operating without the insights provided by quantum mechanics, could get behind the misperceptions our senses force on us, and arrive at the truth. But how else could it have happened? Of course," he said doubtfully, "the chances of a traveler from ancient Colosia finding Earth would be remote. To say the least."

I watched a lamplighter working his way through the waterfront area. "Not necessarily," I said. "He might have had the same sort of limitation you do: you come here; he goes there." But no: that made no sense either. "If somebody had developed that kind of technique, these people wouldn't be living in little pre-Industrial Revolution villages."

"Help me up," said Klein. He stretched out a hand. A thin sheen of perspiration dampened his neck, despite the coolness of the evening. "How do you lose the secret of the ages?" he asked rhetorically. "The answer is that anyone smart enough to figure it out knows too much about human nature --or the nature of intelligent creatures-- to let them get their hands on it. Or even to let them know it's there."

"But you have."

"I've told no one but you, George. And you don't know enough to make it work."

Now, he was at no risk trusting me, but he had issued a challenge. I made a mental note to have him take me through again, and watch closely how he did it. "Why do you think this technique would be so dangerous?"

"Why?" His jaw tightened. "Don't you read anything except poetry?" He held the devil's mask in one hand and rotated it. "Because," he grinned, "the bedrooms of the universe would lie open. Have you considered what you and I could do were we a pair of thugs? There'd be no defense, anywhere, against any who possessed the knowledge. And while we're on the subject, has it occurred to you that we may not be the first visitors from Earth? Maybe one of your Greeks figured it all out, showed up here, and left some of his reading material in Colosia when he went home."

The huge satellite flooded the park with somber light.

"What the hell kind of moon is that?" I asked. It was banded, like Jupiter. A pale blue disk floated just above its horizon. It looked like an eye.

"That's Encubis," said Klein. "We're the moon." We started down the hill. "It's a gas giant. I don't know how big it is, but we're a little too close. This world has the highest tides you've ever seen, and the heaviest weather." He squinted at the thing. "The blue spot is a storm, like the one on Jupiter. Been there as long as people can remember. It's a wonder everyone here isn't a religious fanatic."

Two of the creatures approached along the base of the hill. Young couple, I thought, judging by the fluidity of their movements, and the proximity they kept. We could smell the river in the night air.

We strolled down toward the trees without saying much, and after a time he looked at me curiously. "What's so funny?"

I hadn't realized my feelings showed. "We have an immortal with feet of clay."

"You're thinking of Aulis Tyr?"

I nodded. He withdrew into a pensive mood until we were back in the store room. Then he closed the storm door and smiled. "The plagiarist," he said, "could just as easily be Sophocles."

Klein provided me with a local copy of the Antigone, which is to say that it was a translation from the ancient Colosian into the language currently spoken in that part of Melchior which we'd visited. It was contained in a collection of eight plays by three major dramatists of the period. He added a dictionary and a grammar, and I set myself to acquiring some degree of facility, and did so within a few weeks.

There were substantial differences between Tyr's Antigone and Sophocles' masterpiece, which, naturally, I had read in the original Greek. Nevertheless, tone and nuance, character and plot, were similar beyond any possibility of coincidence.

Two other plays in the collection were credited to Tyr. They were works of subtle power, both comparable with the Antigone. The hero of one is a young warrior at the head of a besieging army, who falls in love with the daughter of the enemy king. In an effort to stop the war, he allows himself to be lured into a chapel rendezvous during which he is ambushed and murdered by the woman's archer brother.

In the second drama, an old king apparently given to habitual dissembling meets a long-lost son. Neither recognizes the other, and their natural propensity for deceit (the son is not unlike the father) exacerbates the misunderstanding until, ultimately, they meet in combat by the sea. And the son is triumphant:

He found on the shore

The spine of a sea beast

And turned to face the hero....

Death from the sea, and a warrior stricken in a chapel. Odysseus on the beach, and Achilles. Only seven of Sophocles' plays have survived, of more than a hundred known to have existed. Did I possess two more?

I read through each again and again, absorbed in the thrust and delicacy of the language. I was at the time working on an analysis of irregular verbs in Middle English, and the contrast between Tyr's iambs, drenched in sunlight and desire, and my own heavyfooted prose, was painfully evident. It is a terrible thing to have just enough talent to recognize one's mediocrity.

I had then, as I have now, a quarter-million word novel packed away in three stationery boxes pushed onto a back shelf in the walk-in closet in my bedroom. It's tattered, the edges frayed by frequent mailings, the paper brittle and dry. My father lives in those pages, smoldering, silent, alcoholic; and Charlotte Endicott, whose bright green eyes have not yet faded from my nights. And Kip Williams, who played third base with ferocity, rescued two children from a fire, and died in the war.

A quarter-million words, filled with the passions, and braced with the sensibilities, of a young lifetime. I called it The Trees of Avignon. And I knew it was deadly dull.

All the years of writing commentary on Byron and Mark Twain, on Virgil and Yeats, had left me with too exquisite a taste not to recognize my own work for what it was. What would I not have given to possess the genius of the creator of Oedipus?

And that, I knew, was precisely the temptation to which Aulis Tyr had succumbed. "There's just no question," I told Harvey. "Somehow there was a connection, he saw his opportunity. And he took it. He lifted the Antigone."

Klein stared into a rum and coke. We were seated before a wide fireplace in his richly paneled study. Yes: a creature from a world with a taste for literature had recognized a chance to be Sophocles. And had made it count. "Maybe," mused Klein. "But I think we should withhold our opinion as to who stole what until all the evidence is in."

I drained my glass. "Are you suggesting we go back?"

"We have a mystery, George." The fire was dying, and he stared solemnly into the embers. "Would you like," he asked, "to meet my contact on Melchior?"

"Your contact? You mean you've talked to one of them?"

"Where do you think I get my information? Of course I talked to one of them." He angled his watch to read it. "It's getting dark there now. Sun's down, and it'll be a little while before Encubus comes up."

We put on our robes and masks and strolled into the store room, past stacks of paneling and trim. He was, at the time, repairing his porch. He opened a gray fuse box, extracted a tattered notebook from a shelf lined with garden implements, and punched a few buttons. Satisfied, he closed the cabinet, and opened the back door. I still wouldn't have known how to do it.

The glade was gone. We were looking at an avenue filled with shops. Benches and twisted white trees and dark green lamp posts lined a blue shale walkway. It was dark, and candles glittered in the streetlamps and in the store windows. Three or four of the creatures were lounging around a bench and an outdoor table across the street. They looked at us curiously, but continued their conversation. The night sky was overcast: it would remain gloomy even after the 'moon' rose.

Klein took a moment to get his bearings, and started off briskly. "Try not to let anyone get a good look at you," he said. "Where are we going?"

"To a book dealer."

"A book dealer?"

"His name's Chaser."

"Does he know what you really look like?"

"Oh, yes. There was no way I could keep it from him."

"How did he react?" I knew what would have happened if one of these horned monstrosities had shown up in the Loop.

The shells crunched underfoot. "I wanted history books, and a couple of general reference works. I saw some likely prospects in the window of his shop, and tried to appropriate them. He caught me.

"It was a bad moment, George. He grabbed me by the shoulder. I jumped a foot, my mask fell off, and Chaser shrieked. He backed into a stand of books, and everything went over in a pile." Klein chuckled. "I mean, what you have is a full-size devil, horns, cloven hoofs, and sharp white teeth, scared as hell, getting conked by a bookcase. I broke up: I couldn't help myself. I mean, if Old Nick has anything, it's supposed to be dignity.

"But he was between me and the door. I'd gone down too, and I was looking at his fangs and ruby eyes through a crosshatch of table legs and struts."

"What did you do?"

"I said hello. Then he laughed. It started slow, and it was part snort and part belch, but I know a belly laugh when I hear one."

We'd veered off the walkway, pushed through some ferns, and entered a cul-de-sac. It was a circular courtyard, overgrown with heavy foliage, and ringed with cheerful lamps. The bookstore lay directly opposite the entrance to the courtyard: it was a modest wood frame building, with volumes stacked against a half-dozen windows on two floors. Outside, more books were bunched on tables, under neat handlettered signs identifying their category. "The bargain basement," Harvey remarked.

When the shop had emptied, we went inside. I was too nervous to examine the packed shelves, despite my curiosity. We passed into an interior room, and came face to face with one of the creatures.

It did indeed resemble Old Nick.

The thing sat, or crouched, at a polished stone desk. One horn was broken, its fur was drab, and it wore heavy steel-rimmed glasses. Its eyes were not quite as Klein had described them; rather, they were of a red-flecked gray hue, yet not at all menacing. They rested on us momentarily; its lips rolled back slowly to reveal more of those prominent white fangs. "Klein," it said, rising, "you shouldn't go walking about like that. The mask wouldn't fool my mother."

Its almost debonair acceptance of our presence startled me. Harvey laughed. "It's good to see you again, Chaser." He removed his disguise, and they shook hands warmly.

"What's wrong with the mask?" I asked, worried that I might be exposed in the street.

"Chaser thinks it has an idiot expression."

I took a good look at mine. It would fool nobody in decent light, up close. But it didn't seem bad. Off the face and away from the eyes, it had no expression at all. "He must mean you, Harvey; not the mask."

Chaser nodded approval, clapped my shoulder, gave us both another look at his dental work. Then he got up, and left the room. I heard bolts being thrown.

"Where did he learn to speak English?"

"We've spent a lot of time together," said Harvey. "And he seems to have a knack for languages."

He returned with a decanter and three glasses.

The drink was alcoholic, a warm wine that suggested macadamia nuts. Chaser raised the glass that Harvey had filled for him, and studied Klein with a Mephistophelian intensity that might have been genuine affection. "It's been a while, Harvey," he said. "I was beginning to think you'd abandoned us." He tended to stretch vowels, and to roll across consonants with guttural vigor.

Klein introduced me. Chaser grunted his pleasure, and clasped my wrist, old-Roman style, with a large claw. The talons clicked as they were retracted. He had six digits, including an opposable thumb. His skin was leathery and hairless. I had expected it to feel reptilian, but it was as warm as a human hand.

"I was unsure whether to believe Harvey," he said, "when he told me there were others like himself." He held his glass in my direction. "To humans," he said, and downed his drink.

"We saw Antigone several weeks ago," said Klein, giving it its Colosian title.

"And did you like it?"

"Yes," I said. "It was a brilliant production."

"I saw it myself on closing night." Chaser grew thoughtful. "The staging was a bit wooden for my taste. And I'm not particularly impressed by these modern adaptations--."

While he talked, I was struck by the familiarity of his gestures, and his opinions. I frowned at Klein: an alien culture is supposed to be alien, different values, incomprehensible logic, and all that. Chaser emphasized points by jabbing the air with his index finger, cupped his chin in one palm while he pondered questions of literary merit, and sighed helplessly in the face of views which he considered irredeemably wrongheaded.

Klein joined in with energy. They took issue with one another, agreed with enthusiasm, and altogether drank too much wine. During a lull, he raised an eyebrow, and said, "I have yet to find anyone who would not have appreciated Antigone."

Chaser rumbled his agreement.

"Chaser," Klein continued, "tell me about Aulis Tyr."

The bookdealer's eyes flashed. "He is the first of playwrights, George. His work has been equaled by one or two, but never surpassed. Even now, after so many centuries, he remains extremely popular. The summer theaters here and at Qas Anaba each do one of his plays every year. People come from quite far away to see the performances."

"Your theater group," I said, "is quite accomplished."

"Thank you."

"Of course they would have to be to handle drama at that level."

"I agree," he said. "Tyr demands much of an actor. And a director. But the result, when it is done properly, is very moving."

From a shelf in an adjoining room, he produced two large leather volumes. "Unfortunately, we've lost most of his work. Two centuries after his death, the Colosians were overrun by barbarians. The idiots burned everything...." He passed me the books and turned to Klein: "Do you have a dramatist of similar stature?"

Harvey needed no thought for that one. "Shakespeare," he said, almost offhandedly. That's what happens when you ask a physicist a significant question.

"Shakespeare." Chaser tasted the name, and shrugged. Then he turned to me. "George, you may keep the books."

I was overwhelmed. "Thank you," I said.

"And whatever else you can carry." His eyes narrowed. "But I know you will wish to repay me in kind."

"How?"

"I would like very much to read your Shakespeare. And I know you would find considerable pleasure in giving so fine a gift."

"Deal," I said. And, when he did not appear to understand, I told him I would consider it a pleasure. "Maybe I'll throw in Neil Simon while I'm at it."

Chaser became interested. "Who is Neil Simon? Another Shakespeare?"

"Oh, yes," said Klein. I couldn't tell whether he was serious.

"Excellent." Chaser rubbed his hands; his tongue flicked across his lips. It was forked.

We went through several bottles while Chaser, with our encouragement, talked about the Colosians. We drank to Aulis Tyr and Will Shakespeare and Neil Simon. And, along toward midnight, the bookseller's eyes misted. "Let us," he said, "raise a glass to Alika."

We drank. "Who," I asked, "is Alika?"

Chaser looked at me with barely concealed astonishment. "I wouldn't have believed, George, that any country could be so remote--. But maybe I've drunk too much. It's not likely you would know her, if you did not know Tyr. She was also a Colosian, a contemporary of his, and, according to tradition, his lover."

"As good a reason as any to remember the young lady," muttered Klein, who had become entangled in his robe.

"No," said Chaser, "you do not understand. Alika was the first to use prose as an art form. She invented the personal essay."

"I'm confused," I said. "I was under the impression that Colosia was one of your early cultures."

"That is correct."

"Interesting. At home, prose developed quite late. We may have to rethink a few things."

"These are people who love books," observed Klein. He was wearing a satisfied, but vacuous, grin. "They have a passion for all the literary forms. Maybe it explains why their sciences never got off the ground."

Chaser sniffed, but otherwise ignored the remark. "That was also the age," he said with cool condescension, "of Sesily Endine--." He paused to allow us to respond. When we did not, he added, significantly, " --the first, and arguably our finest, novelist."

The two Tyr volumes were expensive editions, bound in tooled leather, with several woodcuts in each. Chase argued good-naturedly with Klein about the state of Melchior's science while I paged through them. There was a portrait of the great dramatist himself, in three-quarter profile. It was difficult to distinguish among these creatures: one looked pretty much like another. Consequently I could detect no trace of extraordinary ability in that vaguely demonic visage.

There was also a schema for a Colosian theater, which was more or less in the round, and not at all like the one in the park; some lines of original text; and a broken column with an inscription. Everything was in the original language, which of course I could not read.

"His memorial," Chaser said, when I asked about the column. "It's still there, but so are the barbarians. You would need an armed party to visit it."

"What does the inscription say?" I asked.

The bookseller lifted himself into a worn leather chair. "The Colosians," he said, "were alone in a world of savages: slave empires north and south, fierce mounted tribesmen on their flank. They were under constant military pressure, and had been defending their borders for three generations when, for a time, their enemies finally succeeded in resolving their own quarrels, and combined forces. The barbarians attacked by sea, landing a substantial army in the heart of Colosian territory, and struck toward the capital. The defenders fought a series of brilliant delaying actions, climaxed by a magnificent effort at Ananai known as the Battle on the Beach." Chaser paused for dramatic effect. "For six hours the issue was in doubt. But in the end, the Colosian navy sealed the area off, and the invaders were pushed into the sea. It brought security for almost a century. Tyr was a foot soldier in that battle."

"Wait," I said, suddenly chilled. "The inscription: it's Tyr's gravestone."

"Why, yes, that's correct."

"And it says nothing of his reputation as a dramatist. It says only that he fought at Ananai, with the Colosians."

Chaser stared at me. "You've heard the story before? They felt it was the highest honor they could bestow."

"Yes," I said. "I've heard the story before."

When we were back in the store room, Klein asked me to explain. Each of us was wobbly by then, and I led the way into the kitchen, and pointed to the coffee pot. While he heated up a fresh batch, I asked him to be patient while I sat down with our references, and did some arithmetic. We were on the second pot before I felt sure of my facts.

"Aeschylus," I said. "His tomb carries the same kind of inscription: 'He fought at Marathon with the Athenians.'"

Klein shook his head. "Coincidence. Or maybe more plagiarism. But we still don't really know who's guilty."

"Yes, we do. On a world full of booklovers, the historians should be fairly accurate. If so, Aeschylus died about the time Tyr was born. Tyr is the plagiarist."

"Well," said Klein, "I'm glad your faith has been rewarded. I would have to tell you, though, that I find Tyr by far more admirable."

"You do? Why? He steals other people's work."

"So he has a minor character flaw. He also figured out how to travel between galaxies. I'd say that's a bit more impressive than writing a few plays. Wouldn't you?"

I said goodnight and hurried home through a light rainfall. But I couldn't sleep, and ended the evening on my front porch, listening to the house groan under the force of the wind. Water rattled through the drains.

I wondered whether Tyr had uncovered the secret himself? Or whether he'd stolen that too? I wondered if he'd envied Alika in the way that I envied Klein? Living next door to a genius can be painful. However it had happened, he'd learned to travel, and had visited Athens, probably during the time of Pericles. He'd seen Sophocles performed. Somehow. Maybe he'd worn a disguise, as we had. Maybe he'd hidden in a tree. Hell, if he could cross intergalactic space, maybe he could make himself invisible. The details didn't matter.

What did matter was that he'd returned to Colosia with a collection of plays (and an admiration for Aeschylus' tomb), selected one, and released it as his own. And of course, he would have been present on the night of the first performance. My God, how he must have savored that evening. I wondered which it had been. Oedipus? Electra? Do you start with a blockbuster? Or work up to it? I tried to imagine how it would feel to sit in the audience, as the living creator of a masterpiece, watching it play the first time, and knowing, really knowing, the significance of the moment.

I returned with Klein to Melchior one more time, to deliver an Oxford Shakespeare, a Webster's Unabridged, and my own translation of Lear into Chaser's language. The bookdealer could not conceal his joy. He pounded my back, pumped my hand, poured wine, and gave me three of Endine's novels, some poetry, and a collection of the surviving essays of Alika. We talked and drank, and late in the evening Klein grew thoughtful, and rotated his wine in the light. "In their essence," he said, "rational cultures are going to turn out to be very much alike. There will be trivial differences in ceremonies, in the way they conduct business, or in their views on clothing and entertainment. But in the qualities that define civilization, they will agree. The proprietors of secondhand bookstores," and his eyes locked with Chaser's, "will be found to be everywhere the same."

Two months later, Klein was dead. He was stricken in the middle of the night, and died in an ambulance. I was, at the time, lecturing on Horace at the University of North Dakota. No one informed me.

When I got home, ten days later, the store room had been taken down. I offered my condolences to his daughter, and inquired as diplomatically as I could what care had been taken to preserve his papers. At her father's direction, she said, they'd been gathered and burned the day after the funeral. She was mystified at the request, and also at his direction that the store room be demolished. She cried a little, and I thought about the bedrooms of the universe, and walked around to the rear of Klein's house and looked at the pile of debris, which had not yet been hauled away. After making the discovery of the ages, he'd elected to let the credit slide, and had gone silently to his grave.

And I? I was left with some newly-discovered Sophoclean tragedies, and some alien masterpieces, none of which I could account for.

I tried to lose myself in my work, but my classes were tedious, and I grew weary of the long struggles with semiliterate undergraduates.

I read extensively from Chaser's books: Endine's dark novels were Dostoievskian in scope and character. They left me drained, and depressed me even more.

I was glad to retreat from those bleak narratives to Alika. She must have lived near a coastline: the roar of the tide is somehow present throughout her work. One has a sense of the author alone among rocks and breakers and stranded sea creatures. But her vitality and her laughter infect the reader: it is impossible to read her and not suspect that she is somewhere still alive. She reduces the cosmos to a human scale: it is a thing like an old shell found on a beach, that she turns and examines in her hands.

Her essays are filled with a spirited wit, and an unbending optimism, a sense that if everything ends in oblivion, there is meantime starlight, good wine, good books, good friends.

No wonder Tyr loved her.

And there came, finally, a snowswept evening when I confronted my obligation to share her with the world. But how to do it? What explanation could I possibly give?

I don't argue that the course I eventually took was the correct one, but I did not know of an alternative, nor can I conceive of one now. I translated one of her more ethereal efforts, a treatise on a neglected architectural design, which shaded subtly into an unbearably poignant rumination on the nature of time.

And I put my own name on it.

It appeared in the April issue of Greenstreet's. I felt guilty about it. There was a delicate moral problem involved. But I felt that compromising myself was not too great a sacrifice to give these magnificent essays to the world. There was, of course, litte immediate response. But the editors were pleased, and my colleagues offered their congratulations. Best thing you've done, George. I didn't miss the envy in some of their kudos.

And I: I knew that, on the strength of that single essay, George Thorne's name would one day live with those of Montaigne and Lamb and Mark Twain. It was exhilarating.

My second effort was 'Sea Star,' which has since become one of the most loved of the entire series. It was the first of the 'Coastal' pieces.

I rationed the essays carefully, publishing only three or four annually. They gradually drew favorable critical attention. The Washington Post described me as a new Loren Eiseley. The New York Times thought the work brilliant. Not wishing to push my luck, I claimed writer's block and took a two-year hiatus. But I'd pretty well worked my way through Alika, and I'd begun wondering whether I didn't owe the world a few great novels too.

At about the same time, the Venture came back from Lalande 8760, with the electrifying news that it had found aliens. It carried a cargo of photos, artifacts, and tapes, detailed studies of the inhabitants, copies of their histories and literary and phlosophical works. Lalande is only eight light-years from Earth. In the neighborhood, as Klein would have said.

Maybe I should not have been surprised. But it had not occurred to me that Athens might have been only a single stop in Tyr's itinerary. Or that he might not have traveled alone.

The Venture brought back three novels that, in translation, I recognized as the work of Sesily Endine. On that score, there could be no doubt. At first I was puzzled how such a thing could be. But I think I know: Tyr and Endine traveled together. They went to Athens, and to Lalande, and probably to everywhere else they could reach. And if Tyr yearned to be a playwright, Endine was interested in the novel.

Fortunately, the Lalande misson came back before I'd used any of the novels myself. Now I have a good idea why Chaser was so anxious to have the Shakespearean collection. Chaser's Hamlet: it should play well in the theater in the park, and eventually around his world.

But that's not what worries me. Sometimes, in the deepest hours of the night, I think about Alika, and I cannot make myself believe that the two men would not have taken her along.

I wonder who actually wrote the elegant essays that now bear my name? Four more expeditions are due back over the next three years, and I expect I will soon have the exact coordinates of the immortal seacoast from which the great essayist stood toe to toe with the universe. And smiled.