The dinner party, with the elegant though aging Labia, Arlene, Menander and Aristotle, reclining upon their couches eating olives, cheese and barley cakes had been dreadful on two accounts: she was a meat and potatoes Michigan girl and had come to loathe the ancient Hellenic diet; and Menander kept the conversation on point, always about Aristotle’s link to Alexander and Arlene. It had been easy enough to keep her cover intact with truthful and seemingly fantastic tales of her American homeland.
She did manage to negotiate the minefield of Menander’s ambition by tenaciously sticking to the story that her masters had foretold the death of Alexander and the peril of Aristotle, and had sent her to guide the philosopher to Delphi. No matter how the distrustful Spartan pried she would not admit to having any further purpose other than returning to her homeland after hearing the prophecy of the Delphic Oracle concerning Aristotle.
Finally, she was granted a reprieve. At the strum of Labia’s lyre the dining plates were cleared and a different quartet of slaves—all young boys—appeared with vessels for the mixing of wine and water. As the wine flowed, Labia, having correctly judged Menander’s taste in women, summoned a curvaceous dark-skinned Arabian girl to keep the hard man company.
The man idly stroked and groped the girl as he turned his attention to conversation with Aristotle, who he apparently wished to serve as his tutor on political matters. The man clearly had high ambitions. At this turn of events Labia announced that she would retreat to her personal chamber with Arlene to instruct her in the playing of the lyre.
Thank God I’ve gotten away from him. His eyes look right through me, and there is nothing in them.
She admired Labia’s sumptuous chamber, which was equipped with but one couch and a bed. Numerous paintings, including one of Alexander pardoning her older sister, decorated the walls. The single window was the first glass-paneled aperture she had seen since coming to ancient Greece. Labia was about forty, with a smooth slightly curvy figure and no breasts to speak of, but endowed with incredibly curly long black hair, slightly streaked with gray. She smiled easily and her eyes sparkled. “My barbarian sister, this could be your chamber some day. If you learn the lyre and round out your verse and those thighs, you could be the Companion of the House, and me your doting aunt.”
“Really?”
“You have maintained the attention of that old Stagirite philanderer through thick and thin and he is smitten. He spared not so much as a glance for me and the little porne I just leant to his captor. You, with your flame hair and height, could be the most sought after companion in Hellas.”
She just said that you are an ancient supermodel.
I’ll have to have her sign a testimonial to take back to Kalamazoo.
She stood numb for a moment trying to imagine life as the companion to generals, philosophers and politicians—that wouldn’t be much different than getting drunk in Cancun with those lobbyists.
Labia kissed her shoulder and motioned for her to sit on the fleece covered stool before her couch as she took up her lyre. “If you choose to return by this road after the journey to Delphi, we will speak of it. For now, the lyre…”
Labia had a good voice and used Arlene’s own strange harp-like string instrument that had been reconstructed and fabricated by Tina, the 24th Century international geisha/assassin, to give her lesson. The point she pressed home continuously was that the instrument just provided the backdrop for the lyrics.
“Imagine dear, standing before a waterfall and reciting Hesiod for some landowner. The lyre is your waterfall.”
For hours she was instructed by the compassionate old call-girl. Then came a wanting smile and she knew she had to pay in kind. “Arlene, show me something of your art. I do not travel. I rely on travelers to bring the world to me, and they are mostly brutes and fools who remember nothing worthwhile that they see.”
Should I wow her?
Why not?
Arlene rose from the stool and slid the capacitator out of the silk sleeve that was used to cover it and lace it to her wrist. Old Augulus fancied himself a shaman. After seeing the activated capacitator she feared it might be stolen by the Agrianian, so she wore it on her wrist always. She handed the platinum hoop to Labia who caressed it in wonder. “It is not gold, finer somehow. What is it?”
“The hoop is my divining oracle,” and in a whisper, “and my means of travel. You don’t think these skinny legs brought me all the way from Ultima Thule and beyond do you?”
Labia was flushed with wonder under her powdery white cosmetics. “Please, show me the art!”
Arlene took the hoop, set it on ‘idle’ as they called the activation mode, held it out at arm’s length, and let it drop, and of course, with a low whooping sound, it did not.
Labia waxed ecstatic, “By Helios, it is the eye of The Shinning One himself! And those philosophers say the gods have left us to our own devices!”
Come on girl learn how to work this, like you own the thing, like it is your lyre.
Arlene used her finger to turn the hovering hoop perpendicular to the floor. It gently sought to right itself and return to its parallel orientation. But with gentle nudges from the middle joint of her index finger she managed to keep it upright, so that Labia could see the sun-fire yellow and sky-blue pattern of ‘mist’ that formed an energy field within the hoop.
Labia gathered herself and returned to her elegant demeanor. Hefting her instrument and reclining in the classical posture on her couch, she whispered, “I would sing for The Shining One. How long will his eye remain open?”
This is easy. “Sing as long as you’d like Labia.”
While enjoying the woman’s art she was distracted by her own scheming mind.
I have to be able to use this somehow as a distress beacon. They never covered that in orientation. But these things sense each other.
Yeah, but who will hear?
They could be help, or they could be hunters. Those killers from the 24th Century that Tina and Mister Shuei are so terrified of might come and retrieve you and Ari for some depraved experiment.
I’ve got to try—her voice is beautiful. What perfect Ionian. It’s a shame Ari isn’t here.
He’s running interference dumb
dumb—listen.
“…So the Heliads wept
Turned to trees in their woe
Their tears congealed to amber,
Washed down the River Po;
Tears for the Sun,
The sorrow of the Sisters of The Shining One…”
As Labia finished the verse she looked at Arlene for approval. She wanted to clap but that could have been disastrous. “That was beautiful Labia, elegantly so.”
Labia then flashed a smile of defiance and smirked. “Now something for us girls, just to remind The Shining One of our plight; my own adaptation of Antigone, as I composed it in my youth,
“Ismene, sister dear…”
Arlene forgot her scheming, her plans, her worries, and just wondered at the woman’s art, the art of a man they say failed to save his wife from Death’s House with his song.
A song may be no match for Death.
Menander, I think, is another matter.
