AGAMEMNON'S RUN

Robert Sheckley

AGAMEMNON was desperate. Aegisthus and his men had trapped him in Clytemnestra's bedroom. He could hear them stamping through the hallways. He had climbed out a window and made his way down the wall clinging by his fingernails to the tiny chiseled marks the stonecutters had left in the stone. Once in the street, he thought he'd be all right, steal a horse, get the hell out of Mycenae. It was late afternoon when he made his descent from the bedroom window. The sun was low in the west, and the narrow streets were half in shadow.

He thought he had got away free and clear. But no: Aegisthus had posted a man in the street, and he called out as soon as Agamemnon was on the pavement.

"He's here! Agamemnon's here! Bring help!"

The man was a beefy Spartan, clad in armor and helmet, with a sword and shield. Agamemnon had no armor, nothing but his sword and knife. But he was ready to tackle the man anyhow, because his rage was up, and although Homer hadn't mentioned it, Agamemnon was a fighter to beware of when his rage was up.

The soldier must have thought so. He retreated, darting into a doorway, still crying the alarm. Agamemnon decided to get out of there.

A little disoriented, he looked up and down the street. Mycenae was his own city, but he'd been away in Troy for ten years. If he turned to his left, would the street take him to the Lion Gate? And would Aegisthus have guards there?

Just that morning he had ridden into the city in triumph. It was hateful, how quickly things could fall apart.

He had entered Mycenae with Cassandra beside him in the chariot. Her hands were bound for form's sake, since she was technically a captive. But they had been bedmates for some weeks, ever since he had bought her from Ajax after they sacked Troy. Agamemnon thought she liked him, even though Greek soldiers had killed her parents and family. But that had been while their blood rage was still high; their rage at so many of their companions killed, and for the ten long wasted years camped outside Troy's walls, until Odysseus and his big wooden horse had done the trick. Then they'd opened the city gates from the inside and given the place over to rage, rape, and ruin.

None of them were very proud of what they'd done. But Agamemnon thought Cassandra understood it hadn't been personal. It wasn't that he was expecting forgiveness from her. But he thought she understood that the important ones—Agamemnon himself, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus—were not bound by the rules of common men.

They were special people, and it was easy to forget that he was not the original Agamemnon, not the first. The lottery had put them into this position, the damnable lottery which the aliens had set over them, with its crazed purpose of replaying events of the ancient world, only this time with the possibility of changing the outcomes.

He was Chris Johnson, but he had been Agamemnon for so long that he had nearly forgotten his life before the lottery chose him for this role.

And then there had been all the trouble of getting to Troy, the unfortunate matter of Iphigenia, the ten years waiting in front of the city, the quarrel with Achilles, and finally, Odysseus' wooden horse and the capture and destruction of Troy and nearly all its inhabitants, and then the long journey home over the wine-dark sea; his return to Mycenae, and now this.

And before that? He remembered a dusty, small town not far from the Mexican border. Amos' water tower had been the tallest building on the prairie for 200 miles in any direction. Ma's Pancake House had been the only restaurant. When he made his lucky draw in the lottery, he remembered thinking it would be worth life itself just to get out of here, just to live a little.

It had never been easy to get out of Mycenae. The city's heart was a maze of narrow streets and alleys. The district he was in, close to the palace, had an Oriental look—tiny shops on twisting streets. Many of the shopkeepers wore turbans. Agamemnon had never researched the life of the ancient Greeks, but he supposed this was accurate. The creators of the lottery did what they did for a reason.

The street Agamemnon was on came out on a broad boulevard lined with marble statues. Among them, Agamemnon recognized Perseus and Achilles, Athena and Artemis. The statues had been painted in bright colors. He was surprised to see a statue to himself. It didn't look much like him, but it had his name on it. In English letters, not Greek. It was a concession the lottery had made to modern times: everyone in this Greece spoke English. He wondered if the statue represented the first Agamemnon. He knew that the lottery was always repeating the classical roles. Had there ever been a first Agamemnon? With myths and legends, you could never be quite sure.

He saw that a procession was coming down the boulevard. There were musicians playing clarinet and trumpet. Timpani players. Even a piano, on a little cart, drawn by a donkey.

That was obviously not legitimate. But he reminded himself that the lottery was staging this, and they could make it any way they wanted it. He didn't even know where their Greece was. Behind the musicians there were dancing girls, in scanty tunics, with wreaths around their heads and flowers in their hair. They looked drunk. He realized that these must be maenads, the crazed followers of Dionysus, and behind them came Dionysus himself. As he came closer, Agamemnon recognized him. It was Ed Carter from Centerville, Illinois. They had met in one of the lottery staging rooms, where they had gone for their first assignments.

"Dionysus!" Agamemnon called out.

"Hello, Agamemnon, long time no see. You're looking good." Dionysus was obviously drunk. There were wine stains on his mouth and his tunic. He didn't seem able to pause in his dancing march, so Agamemnon walked along beside him.

'Going to join me?" Dionysus asked. "We're having a feast later, and then we're going to tear apart King Pentheus."

"Is that strictly necessary?"

Dionysus nodded. "I was given specific orders. Pentheus gets it. Unless he can figure something out. But I doubt this one's up to it."

Agamemnon asked, a bit formally, "How is it going with you, Dionysus?"

Dionysus said, "Pretty well, Agamemnon. I'm getting into this. Though it was no fun being killed last week. A real bummer."

"I didn't hear about that."

"I didn't anticipate it myself," Dionysus said. "But they jump you around in time, you know, to make sure you cover all the salient points of your character's life. No sooner had I been married to Ariadne—did you ever meet her? Lovely girl. Abandoned by Theseus on the isle of Naxos, you know—and then I came along and married her. A bit sudden on both our parts, but what a time we had! Naxos is a lovely place—I recommend it for a holiday—anyhow, immediately after that, I found myself newborn in the Dictean cave. I think it was the Dictean. And these guys, these Titans with white faces were coming at me, obviously intending murder. I put up a hell of a struggle. I changed into a bird, a fish, a tree. I could have pulled it off, but the contest was rigged against me. I had to die in order to be reborn. They seized me at last and tore me apart, as my maenads will do for Pentheus. But Apollo gathered my bits, and Zeus took me into himself, and in due course I was reborn. And here I am, leading my procession of crazy ladies down the main street of Mycenae. Not bad for a kid from Centerville, Illinois, huh? And what about you, Agamemnon?"

"I've got some trouble," Agamemnon said. "Remember my wife, Clytemnestra? Well, she's sore as hell at me because she thinks I sacrificed our daughter Iphigenia."

"Why did you do that?"

"To call up a wind so the fleet could get to Troy. But I didn't really do it! I made it look like a sacrifice, but then I arranged for Artemis to carry Iphigenia away to Aulis, where she has a nice job as high priestess."

"Everyone thinks you had your daughter killed," Dionysus said.

"They're wrong! There's that version of the story that says I didn't. That's the one I'm going with. But that bitch Clytemnestra and her sleazy boyfriend Aegisthus won't buy it. They've got guards out all over the city with orders to kill me on sight."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I need a way out of this! Can you help me? Isn't there some way I can get out of this whole mess?"

"Maybe there is," Dionysus said. "But you'd have to ask Tiresias for specifics."

"Tiresias? He's dead, isn't he?"

"What does that matter? He was the supreme magician of the ancient world. He'd be glad to talk to you. He likes talking to live ones."

"But how do I get to the underworld?"

"You must kill someone, then intercept the Charon-function when it comes to carry off the shade, and accompany them across the Styx."

"I don't want to kill anyone. I've had enough of that."

"Then find someone on the point of death and it'll still work."

"But who?"

"What about Cassandra?"

"No, not Cassandra."

"She's doomed anyway."

"We think we've figured an out for her. Anyhow, I won't kill her."

"Suit yourself. Actually, anybody will do."

"I'm not going to just grab some person off the street and kill him!"

"Agamemnon, it's really not a time to be finicky. . . . What about a plague victim? One not quite dead, but on the way?"

"Where would I find a plague victim?"

"Follow a plague doctor."

"How will I know Charon when he comes? His appearance is always invisible to any but the dead."

Dionysus frowned for a moment, then his brow cleared. He reached inside his tunic and took out a purple stone on a chain.

"They gave me this in Egypt. It's an Egyptian psychopomp stone. Some kind of amethyst, I believe. Take it. There's a doctor over there! Good luck, Agamemnon! I really must go now."

And with a wave of his hand, Dionysus danced off after his maenads.

Agamemnon saw the person Dionysus had been referring to: a tall, middle-aged man in a long black cloak, carrying an ivory

cane, and wearing a conical felt cap on which was the symbol of Asclepius.

Agamemnon hurried over to him. "Are you a doctor?"

"I am. Strepsiades of Cos. But I can't stop and chat with you. I am on my way to a call."

"To a plague victim?"

"Yes, as it happens. A terminal case, I fear. The family waited too long to send for me. Still, I'll do what I can."

"I want to go with you!"

"Are you a doctor? Or a relative?"

"Neither. I am—a reporter!" Agamemnon said in a burst of inspiration.

"How can that be? You have no newspapers here in Mycenae. I've heard that Argive Press managed to run for a while, but the price of copper went through the ceiling, and Egypt stopped exporting papyrus . . ."

"It's a new venture!"

The doctor made no comment when Agamemnon fell into step beside him. Agammemnon could tell the man wasn't pleased. But there was nothing he could do about it. He might even have been furious; but Agamemnon wore a sword, and the doctor appeared to be unarmed.

After several blocks, Agamemnon saw they were going into one of the slum areas of the city. Great, he thought. What am I getting myself into?

They went down a narrow alley, to a small hut at the end of it. Strepsiades pushed open the door and they entered. Within, visible by the gray light from a narrow overhead window and a single flickering oil lamp on the floor, a man lay on a tattered blanket on the ground. He appeared to be very old, and very wasted. Strepsiades knelt to examine him, then shook his head and stood up again.

"How long does he have?" Agamemnon asked.

"Not long, poor fellow. He's approaching the final crisis. You can tell by the skin color. Sometimes these cases linger on for a few hours more, half a day, even a day. But no longer."

"Let me look at him," Agamemnon said and knelt down beside the sick man. The man's skin was bluish gray. His lips were parched and cracked. Thin lines of blood oozed from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. The turgid blood was the only sign of life in the man.

Agamemnon was acutely aware that he had little time in which to make his escape from Mycenae. But the man was still alive. How long did he have to wait until he died? A minute? An hour? How long before Aegisthus' soldiers found him? He had to get it over with. He tried to make up his mind whether to smother or strangle the man.

He started to reach toward the man's throat. The man opened his eyes. With the man suddenly staring at him with bloodshot blue eyes, Agamemnon hesitated—

"King Agamemnon!" the sick man whispered. "Can it be you? I am Pyliades. I was a hoplite in the first rank of the Argolis Phalanx. I served under you in the Trojan War. What are you doing here, sir?"

Agamemnon heard himself say, "I heard of your plight, Pyliades, and came to wish you well."

"Very good of you, sire. But then, you always were a good man and a benevolent commander. I'm surprised you remember me. I was only a common soldier. My parents had to sell the farm in order to purchase my panoply, so I could march with the others and avenge Greece for the unfair abduction of our Helen."

"I remembered you, Pyliades, and came to say farewell. Our war is won. The might of Greece has prevailed. Of course, we had Achilles. But what good would Achilles have been if it weren't for men in the ranks like you?"

"I remember Prince Achilles well, and the burial fires we lit for him when he was killed. I hope to see him again, in Hades. They say—"

The sick man's meandering discourse was broken as the door to his room was suddenly slammed open. Two armed soldiers Pushed their way in. They hesitated, seeing the doctor in his long robe. Then they spotted Agamemnon.

The leading soldier, a burly red-bearded man, said, "Kill them all. Aegisthus wants no witnesses. I'll take care of Agamemnon myself."

The second soldier was the one who had spotted Agamemnon coming out of the palace window, and had run from him. He advanced now on the doctor, who raised his ivory cane to protect himself, saying, "There's no need for this. I am a neutral, a physician from Cos, here only to treat the sick and injured. Let me go, I'll never say a word about what's going on here."

The soldier glanced at the red-bearded man, evidently his officer, who muttered, "No witnesses!" Then he turned back to Agamemnon.

Agamemnon saw the doctor suddenly lift his staff and bring it down on the soldier's head. The rod broke. Growling, sword poised, the soldier advanced on the doctor.

Agamemnon could see no more, because the red-bearded man was coming at him. Agamemnon had his sword out, but without armor, he knew he stood little chance against an experienced hop-lite. He circled around the sick man on his blanket, and the red-bearded soldier pursued, cautiously but relentlessly.

Agamemnon heard a scream. The doctor had been wounded, but was still fighting, trying to stab his assailant with the stub of his ivory cane. Agamemnon continued circling, winding his cloak around his left arm, but he knew it was hopeless, utterly hopeless. . . .

And then, in an instant, everything changed.

Pyliades, with the last vestige of his strength, reached out and clutched the red-bearded soldier around the legs. The soldier staggered and cut viciously at the sick man. That moment offered Agamemnon's only chance, and he took it. With a hoarse cry he threw himself against the soldier, overbalancing him. The weight of the man's armor did the rest. He fell heavily over Pyliades' body, his sword caught in the sick man's chest, trapped between two ribs.

Agamemnon was on top of him. Releasing his own sword, Agamemnon pulled the knife from his belt and tried to stab the man in the face. The knife bounced off the metal nose guard, breaking at the tip. Agamemnon took better aim and pushed the knife through an opening in the helmet, past a missing cheek guard, into the man's cheek, up into his eye socket, and then, with a twist, into his brain.

Pyliades was croaking, "Good for you, Commander. We'll show these Trojan swine a thing or two . . ."

Agamemnon was already rolling to his feet, just in time to see the other soldier thrust his sword deep into the doctor's belly. The soldier's helmet had come off in the fight. Agamemnon seized him from behind, bent back his head, and cut his throat. There was silence in the house of the sick man.

There were four corpses on the floor. The doctor had just passed away. Pyliades was dead, but with a grin on his face. Agamemnon hoped it was a grin of triumph rather than the sardonic grin of the plague victim.

The soldier whose throat he'd cut lay in a pool of his own blood. Steam was rising from it. The red-bearded soldier, with the knife in his brain, wasn't bleeding much. But he was as dead as the others. Agamemnon himself was uninjured. He could scarcely believe it. He shook himself to make sure.

He was fine. Now, to find Charon.

He reached inside his tunic, pulled out the amethyst that Dionysus had given him. He looked around the room through it.

The room was a dark violet. The proportions weren't as he remembered them. The amethyst seemed to have distorting properties. Agamemnon experienced a wave of dizziness. He sat down on the floor. Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself with an effort of will and looked around the room again.

He saw what looked like a wisp of smoke taking shape. Was it from the oil lamp? No, that had been broken during the fight—a wonder it hadn't set the place on fire.

At the same time he felt the walls of the hovel changing, expanding, dissolving.

Agamemnon blinked. The room was transforming fast. He was disoriented. He could no longer see the walls. He was outside. He lowered the amethyst to reorient himself.

He was indeed outside. Not even in Mycenae. He was sitting on a boulder on a low, marshy shore. There was a river in front of him. Its waters were black, sleek, oily. It appeared to be twilight or early evening. The sun was nowhere in sight, although it had been afternoon when all this began. There were no stars in the darkness, no light anywhere. Yet he could see. Some distance ahead of him, on a low ridge of rock poking out of the mud, there were four figures. Agamemnon thought he knew who they were. In the gloom he could also make out a sort of dock on the shore beyond the four figures. A long, low boat was tied to one of its pillars, and a man was standing in it.

The man was gesturing, and his voice came through clearly. "Come on, you guys! You know the drill. Come to the boat. The boat's not going to come to you."

The four rose and began walking to the dock. Their steps were the slow, unhurried footsteps of the dead. Agamemnon got up and hurried to join them.

He reached the dock at the same time they did. He recognized the doctor, Pyliades, and the two soldiers.

The man in the boat was urging them to move along, get aboard, get on with it.

"Come on," he said, "1 have no time to waste. Do you think you're the only dead awaiting transportation? Move along now, get aboard . . . You there," he said to Agamemnon, "you've got no business here. You're still living."

Agamemnon held up the amethyst. "I need to come aboard. You're Charon, aren't you?"

"His son," the man said. "One of his sons. We're all called Charon. Too much work for the old man alone. Too much for us now, too! But we do what we can. You've got the psychopomp stone, so I guess you can come aboard." He turned to the others. Did you bring any money for the passage?"

They shook their heads. "It was all too sudden," the doctor said.

"I will stand surety for them," Agamemnon said. "And for myself as well. I'll deposit the money wherever you want upon my return. You have the word of Agamemnon, king of kings."

"Make sure you don't forget, or when your time comes, your shade will be left here on the shore."

"How much do you want?" Agamemnon asked. "The fee is one obol per dead man, but five obols for you because you're alive and weigh more. Go to any Thomas Cook, have them convert your currency into the obol, and deposit it in the Infernal Account."

"Thomas Cook has an infernal account."

"Didn't know that, did you?"

Agamemnon and the others got on Charon's boat. It was narrow, with two rows of built-in benches facing each other. Agamemnon and Pyliades sat on one side, the two soldiers on the other, and the doctor, after a moment's hesitation, sat on a little bench in front of a shelter cabin, at right angles to the benches. Charon untied the mooring line and pushed the boat away from the dock. Once free, he set a steering oar in place, and stood on the decked stern and began to gently scull the boat.

They sat in silence for a while as the boat glided over the dark waters.

At last Agamemnon said, "Is this going to take long?"

"It'll take as long as it takes," Charon said. "Why? You in a rush?"

"Not exactly," Agamemnon said. "Just curious. And interested in getting to the bottom of these mysteries."

"Give your curiosity a rest," Charon said. "Here in the land of the dead, just as in the land of the living, no sooner do you understand one mystery than another comes up to replace it. There's no satisfying curiosity. I remember when Heracles came through here. He was in a tearing hurry, couldn't wait to wrestle with Cerberus and bring him up to the world of the living."

"They say he succeeded," Agamemnon said.

"Sure. But what good did it do him? When he got back, King Eurystheus just had another job for him. There's no end of things to do when you're alive."

The red-bearded soldier abruptly said, "I just want you to know, Agamemnon, that I bear you no ill will for having killed me."

"That's good of you," Agamemnon said. "After you tried so hard to kill me."

"There was nothing personal about it," the red-beard said. "I am Sallices, commander of Aegithus' bodyguard in Mycenae. I was ordered to kill you. I follow orders."

"And look where they have brought you!" Agamemnon said.

"Where else would I be going but here? If not this year, then the next, or the one after that."

"I didn't expect to be killed," the other soldier said. "I am Creonides. My time in Aegisthus' service was over at the end of the week. I was going back to my little farm outside Argos. Returning to my wife and baby daughter."

"I can't believe this self-pitying nonsense," the doctor said. "My name is Strepsiades. I am a respected doctor of Cos, an island famous for its healers. I came to Mycenae for purely humanitarian reasons, to give what help I could to victims of the plague that you fellows carried back from Asia. And how am I rewarded? A villainous soldier kills me so there should be no witnesses to the illegal and immoral execution of his lord."

"But I was just following orders," Creonides said. "My immediate commander, Sallices here, ordered me to do it." "And I," Sallices said, "was following the orders of my commander, the noble Aegisthus."

"But those were immoral orders!" Pyliades said, sitting up and speaking now for the first time in a firm deep voice, with no signs of plague on him. "Any man can see that!"

"Do you really think so?" Sallices asked. "And what if the orders were immoral? What is a soldier supposed to do, question and decide on each order given to him by his superiors? I've heard that you fellows did a few things you weren't so proud of during the Trojan War. Killing the whole population of Troy, and burning the city."

"We were avenging ourselve for the theft of Helen!" Plyiades declared hotly.

"And what was Helen to you?" Sallices asked. "Your wife or daughter? Not a bit of it! The wife of a king not even of your own country, since you are Argives, not Spartans. And anyhow, according to all accounts, the lady left Menelaus and went away with Paris willingly. So what were you avenging?"

"Our slain companions," Pyliades said. "Achilles, our beloved leader."

"Now that is really a laugh," Sallices said. "Your companions were there for the booty, and Achilles was there for the glory. Furthermore, he made his choice. It was prophesied he'd die gloriously at Troy, or lead a long inglorious life if he stayed home.

No one had to die for poor Achilles! He made his choice to die for himself."

There was silence for a while. Then Doctor Strepsiades said, "It must all have seemed different at the time. Men's choices are not presented to them in a reflective space. They come in the clamor and fury of the moment, when a choice must be made at once, for better or worse."

"Is it the same with you, Doctor?" Agamemnon asked. "Or are you alone blameless among us?"

Dr. Strepsiades was silent for a long while. At last he said, "My motives were not entirely humanitarian. I might as well confess this to you, since I will have to tell it to the Judges of the Dead. Queen Clytemnestra sent a herald to our school of physicians on Cos, imploring us for help with the plague, and offering a recompense. I was able to buy a nice little house in the city for my wife and children before I embarked."

"Clytemnestra!" Agamemnon said. "That murderous bitch!"

"She was trying to look out for her people," Strepsiades said. "And besides, she had her reasons. We have it on good authority that you sacrificed your daughter Iphigenia to call up a breeze to carry you and your men to Troy."

"Now wait a minute," Agamemnon said. "There's another version of the story in which the goddess Artemis took Iphigenia to Aulis, to be high priestess to the Taurians."

"I don't care about your face-saving version," Strepsiades said. "It was probably inspired by political reasons. In your heart you know you sacrificed your daughter."

Agamemnon sighed and did not answer.

"And not only did you do that, but you also involved your son, Orestes, in matricide, from which came his agony and his madness."

"None of that could be predicted at the time," Agamemnon said. "Charon, what do you think?"

Charon said, "We have been doing this ferrying for a long time, my father, my brothers, and I, and we share all the information we pick up. We have some questions, too, first and foremost about ourselves."

Charon took a drink of wine from a leather flask lying in the bottom of the boat, and continued.

"What are we here for? Why is there a Charon, or a Charon-function? Are we anything apart from our function? Just as you might ask, Agamemnon, whether you are anything apart from the morally ambiguous story of your life? A story which, for all intents and purposes, has no end and no beginning, and which in one guise or another is always contemporaneous, always happening. Do you ever get any time off from being the Agamemnon-function, do you ever have a chance for some good meaningless fun? Or do you always have to operate your character? Can you do anything without your act proposing a moral question, a dilemma for the ages, ethically unanswerable by its very nature?"

"What about the rest of us?" Strepsiades asked. "Are our lives negligible just because they don't pose a great moral question like Agamemnon's?"

"You and Agamemnon alike are equally negligible," Charon said. "You are merely the actors of old stories, which have more or less significance as the fashions of the times dictate. You are human beings, and you cannot be said to be with or without significance. But one like you, Agamemnon is a symbol and a question mark to the human race, just as the human race is to all intelligent life in the Kosmos."

A chilling thought crossed Agamemnon's mind. "And you, Charon? What are you? Are you human? Are you one of those who brought us the lottery?"

"We are living beings of some sort," Charon said. "There are more questions than answers in this matter of living. And now, gentlemen, I hope this conversation has diverted you, because we are at our destination."

Looking over the side of the boat, Agamemnon could see a dark shoreline coining up. It was low, like the one they had left, but this one had a bright fringe of sandy beach.

The boat made a soft grating sound as Charon ran it onto the sand.

"You are here," Charon said, and then to Agamemnon: "Don't forget you owe me payment."

"Farewell, Commander," said Pyliades. "I hope for a favorable judgment, and to see you again in the palace of Achilles, where they say he lives with Helen, the most beautiful woman who ever was or ever will be. They say the two of them feast the heroes of the Trojan War, and declaim the verses of Homer in pure Greek. I was not a hero, nor do I even speak Greek; but Achilles and Helen may welcome people like me—I have a cheery face now that death has removed the plague from me—and can be counted upon to applaud the great heroes of our Trojan enterprise."

"I hope it turns out so," Agamemnon said. It may be a while before I come there myself, since I am still alive."

The others said their farewells to Agamemnon, and assured him they bore him no ill will for their deaths. Then the four walked in the direction of the Judges' seats, which were visible on a rise of land. But Agamemnon followed a sign that read, "This way to the Orchards of Elysium and the Islands of the Blest." For these were the regions where he expected to find Tiresias.

He walked through pleasant meadowlands, with cattle grazing in the distance. These, he had been told, were part of Helios' herd, which were always straying into this part of Hades, where the grass was greener.

After a while he came to a valley. In the middle of the valley was a small lake. A man stood in the middle of the lake with water up to his mouth. There were trees growing along the lakeshore, fruit trees, and their branches hung over the man in the water, and ripe fruit drooped low over his head. But when he reached up to pick a banana or an apple—both grew on the same tree—the fruit shrank back out of his reach.

Agamemnon thought he knew who this was, so he walked to the shore of the lake and called out, "Hello, Tantalus!" The man in the water said, "Why, if it isn't Agamemnon, ruler of men! Have you come to rule here in hell, Agamemnon?"

"Certainly not," Agamemnon said. "I'm just here for a visit. I've come to talk with Tiresias. Would you happen to know where I might find him?"

"Tirisias keeps a suite in Hades' palace. It's just to your left, over that rise. You can't miss it."

"Thanks very much, Tantalus. Is it very onerous, this punishment the gods have decreed for you? Is there anything I can do?"

"Good of you to ask," Tantalus said. "But there's nothing you could do for me. Besides, this punishment is not as terrible as it might seem. The gods are relentless in decreeing punishment, but they don't much care who actually does it. So a couple of us swap punishments, and thus get some relief from the same thing over and over."

"Who do you trade with, if you don't mind my asking?"

"By no means. A bit of conversation is a welcome diversion. Sisyphus, Prometheus, and I from time to time take over one another's punishments. The exercise of pushing Sisyphus' boulder does me good—otherwise I might get fat—I tend to gorge when I get the chance."

"But to have your liver torn out by a vulture when you take over for Prometheus—that can't be much fun."

"You'd be surprised. The vulture often misses the liver, chews at a kidney instead, much less hurtful. Especially when you consider that here in hell, sensation is difficult to come by. Even King Achilles and Queen Helen, each blessed with the unsurpassed beauty of the other, have a bit of trouble feeling desire without bodies. Pain is a welcome change to feeling nothing."

Agamemnon set out again in the direction Tantalus had indicated. He went across a high upland path, and saw below a pleasant grove of pine trees. There were a dozen or so men and women in white robes, strolling around and engaging in animated conversation.

Agamemnon walked over to them and announced who he was. A woman said, "We know who you are. We were expecting you, since your trip here was mentioned in several of the books that were lost when the great library at Alexandria burned. In honor of your arrival, several of us have written philosophical speeches entitled 'Agamemnon's Lament.' These speeches are about the sort of things we thought we would hear from you."

"Since you knew I was coming, why didn't you wait and hear what I actually did say?"

"Because, Agamemnon, what we did is the philosophical way, and the way of action. We wrote your speech ourselves, instead of passively waiting for you to write it, if you ever would. And, since you are not a philosopher yourself, we thought you were unlikely to cast your thoughts into a presentation sufficiently rigorous for an intelligent and disinterested observer. Nor were you a dramatist, so your thoughts were unlikely to have either the rigor or beauty of a philosophical dramatist such as Aeschylus or Sophocles. Since words once said cannot be unsaid, as conversation permits no time for reflection and revision, we took the liberty of putting what we thought you would be likely to say into proper grammatical form, carefully revised, and with a plethora of footnotes to make the meaning of your life and opinions clear to even the meanest understanding."

''Very good of you, I'm sure," said Agamemnon, who, although deficient in philosophy, had a small but useful talent for irony.

"We don't expect our work will represent you, Agamemnon, the man," another philosopher said. "But we hope we've done justly by you, Agamemnon the position."

"This is all very interesting," Agamemnon said. "But could you tell me now how I might find Tiresias?"

The philosophers conferred briefly. Then one of them said, "We do not recognize Tiresias as a philosopher. He is a mere shaman."

"Is that bad?" Agamemnon asked.

"Shamans may know some true things, but they are not to be relied upon because they do not know why or how they know. Lacking this—"

"Hey," Agamemnon said, "The critique of shamanism is unnecessary. I just want to talk to the guy."

"He's usually in the little grove behind Achilles' palace. Come back if you want a copy of our book of your opinions."

"I'll do that," Agamemnon said, and walked away in the direction indicated.

Agamemnon passed through a little wood. He noticed it was brighter here than in the other parts of Hades he had visited. Although no sun was visible, there was a brightness and sparkle to the air. He figured he was in one of the better parts of the underworld. He was not entirely surprised when he saw, ahead of him, a table loaded with food and drink, and a masked man in a long cloak sitting at it, with an empty chair beside him.

The man waved. "Agamemnon? I heard you were looking for me, so I've made it easy by setting myself in your path. Come have a chair, and let me give you some refreshment."

Agamemnon walked over and sat down. "You are Tiresias?

"I am. Would you like some wine?"

"A glass of wine would be nice." He waited while Tiresias poured, then said, "May I ask why you are masked?"

"A whim," Tiresias said. "And something more. I am a magician, or shaman, to use a term popular in your time. Upon occasion I go traveling, not just here in ancient Greece, but elsewhere in space and time."

"And you don't want to be recognized?"

"It can be convenient, to be not too well known. But that's not the real reason. You see, Agamemnon, knowing someone's face can give you a measure of power over him. So Merlin discovered when he consorted with the witch Nimue, and she was able to enchant him. I do not give anyone power over me if I can help it."

"I can't imagine anyone having power over you."

"I could have said the same for Merlin, and one or two others. Caution is never out of place. Now tell me why you seek me out. I know, of course. But I want to hear it from your own lips."

"It's no secret," Agamemnon said. "My wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, have sworn to kill me. I come to you to ask if there is some way out of this Greek trap I am in."

"You are supposed to be slain for having sacrificed your daughter Iphigenia, so your fleet could sail to Troy."

"Now wait a minute!" Agamemnon said. "There's another version in which I did not kill Iphigenia. She's alive now in Aulis!"

"Don't try to deceive me with tricky words," Tiresias said. "Both versions of your story are true. You both killed and did not kill your daughter. But you are guilty in either version, or both. Have you ever heard of Schrodinger's cat? It was a scientific fable popular in your day and age."

"I've heard of it," Agamemnon said. "I can't pretend I ever really understood it."

"The man who concocted the fable is condemned, though no cat was ever slain. And this is true in the two worlds."

Agamemnon was silent for a while. He had been watching Tiresias' mask, which at times seemed made of beaten gold, at other times of golden cloth that billowed when he spoke.

After a while, Agamemnon asked, "What two worlds are you speaking of?"

"The world of Earth with its various time lines, and the world of the lottery."

"So there's no escape?"

"My dear fellow, I never said that. I only wanted to point out that you're in a far more complicated and devious game than you had imagined."

"Why have the people of the lottery done this to us?"

"For the simplest and most obvious of reasons. Because it seemed a good idea to them at the time. Here was Earth, a perfect test case for those who could manipulate the time lines. Here were the stories of the Greeks, which the human world is not finished with yet. It seemed to the makers of the lottery that here was a perfect test case. They decided to live it through again, and again, to see if the moral equations would come out the same."

"And have they?"

The tall figure of Tiresias shrugged, and Agamemnon had the momentary impression that it was not a man's form beneath the cloak.

"As I said, it seemed a good idea at the time. But that was then, and yesterday's good idea doesn't look so good today."

"Can you tell me how to get out of here?"

Tiresias nodded. "You'll have to travel on the River of Time."

"I never heard of it."

"It's a metaphor. But the underworld is a place where metaphors become realities."

"Metaphor or not, I don't see any river around here," Agamemnon said.

"I'll show you how to get to it. There's a direct connection, a tunnel from here to Scylla and Charybdis, both of which border the ocean. You'll go through the tunnel which will lead you there."

"Isn't there some other way to get there?"

Tiresias continued, "This is the only way. Once past Scylla and Charybdis, you'll see a line of white breakers. Cross them. You will be crossing the river in the ocean that goes into the past. You don't want that one. You'll see another line of breakers. Cross these and you will be in the river that will carry you from the past into the future."

"The past . . . but where in the future?"

"To a place you will know, Agamemnon. Wait no longer. Do this now."

Agamemnon got up and walked in the direction Tiresias had indicated. When he looked back, the magician was gone. Had he been there in the first place? Agamemnon wasn't sure. The indirections of the lottery were bad enough. But when you added magic . . .

He saw something light-colored, almost hidden beneath shrubbery. It was the entrance to a tube burrowing down into the earth. Wide enough so he could get into it. A tube of some light-colored metal, aluminum, perhaps, and probably built by the lottery people, since aluminum hadn't been used in the ancient world.

Was he really supposed to climb through it? He hesitated, and then saw that there was a woman standing close to the tube. From the look of her, he knew it could only be one woman. "Helen!"

"Hello, Agamemnon. I don't believe we ever got to meet properly before. I have come to thank you for sending me home to Menelaus. And to offer you my hospitality here in the Elysian Fields."

"You are too kind, Queen Helen. But I must go home now." "Must you?"

Agamemnon hesitated. Never had he been so sorely tempted. The woman was the epitome of all his dreams. There could be nothing as wonderful as to be loved by Helen. "But your new husband, Achilles—"

"Achilles has a great reputation, but he is dead, Agamemnon, just as 1 am. A dead hero does not even compare to a live dog. You are alive. Alive and in hell! Such a wonderful circumstance is rare. When Heracles and Theseus were here, they were only passing through. Besides, I was not here then. Things might have been different if I had been!"

"I am alive, yes," Agamemnon said. "But I will not be allowed to stay here."

"I'll talk Hades into it. He likes me—especially with his wife Persephone gone for half a year at a time."

Agamemnon could glimpse the future. It thrilled him and frightened him. But he knew what he wanted. To stay here with Helen—as much of Helen as he could get. . . .

She held out her hand. He reached toward her—

And heard voices in the distance.

And then he saw shapes in the sky. One was a tall, handsome, thickset middle-aged woman, with long loose dark hair. The other was young, tall, slim, with fair hair piled up on her head and bound with silver ornaments.

The women seemed to be walking down the sky toward him, and they were in vehement discussion.

"You must tell him to his face what he did!" the older woman was saying.

"Mummy, there's no reason to make a scene."

"But he had you killed, can't you understand that? Your throat cut on the altar! You must tell him so to his face."

"Mummy, I don't want to accuse Daddy of so gross a crime. Anyhow, there's another version that says that Artemis rescued me and carried me to the Taurians, where I served as high priestess."

"Agamemnon killed you! If not literally, then figuratively, no matter which version of the story you're following. He's guilty in either version."

"Mummy, calm down, I don't want to accuse him."

"You little idiot, you'll do as I tell you. Look, we're here. There he is, the great killer. Ho, Agamemnon!"

Agamemnon could listen no longer. Letting go of Helen's hand, aware that he was forsaking the good things of death for the pain and uncertainty of life, he plunged into the underbrush and hurled himself into the white metal tube.

Agamemnon had been prepared for a precipitous passage downward, but not for the circling movement he underwent as the tube spiraled in its descent. It was dark, and he could see no light from either end. He was moving rapidly, and there seemed nothing he could do to hasten or slow his progress. He was carried along by gravity, and his fear was that his wife and daughter would enter the tube in pursuit of him. He thought that would be more than he could bear.

He continued to fall through the darkness, scraping against the sides of the tube. The ride came to an abrupt end when he suddenly fell through the end of it. He had a heart-stopping moment in the air, then he was in the water.

The shock of that cold water was so great that he found himself paralyzed, unable to make a move.

And he came out on a corner of a small south Texas town. There was lose, standing beside the pickup parked in front of the general store. Jose gasped when he saw Chris. For a moment he was frozen. Then he hurried over to him. "Senor Chrees! Is it you?" There were hugs, embraces. When he'd left for the lottery and distant places, he'd left them to run the ranch. Make what they could out of it. But it was still his ranch, and he was home. Maria said, "I make your favorite, turkey mole tonight!" And then she talked about their cousins in Mexico, some of whom he'd known as a boy.

There was more shopping, and then they were drivmg down the familiar dirt road with its cardboard stretches, to the ranch, Josй drove them to the ranch in his old pickup. The ranch looked a little rundown, but very good. Chris lounged around in the kitchen. Chris dozed on the big old sofa, and dreamed of Greece and Troy. And then dinner was served.

After dinner, Chris went into the front room and lay down on the old horsehair sofa. It was deliciously comfortable, and the smells were familiar and soothing. He drifted into sleep, and knew that he was sleeping. He also knew when the dream began: it was when he saw the tall, robed figure of Tiresias.

Tiresias nodded to him and sat down on the end of the couch. It crossed Chris' mind that he might be in danger from a dream-figure, but there was nothing he could do about it.

"I came here to make sure you got home all right. When you enter the River of Time, you can never be too sure."

Yes, 1 am back where I ought to be. Tell me, Tiresias, is there a danger of Clytemnestra finding me here?"

"She will not find you here. But punishment will. It is inescapable."

"What am I to be punished for? 1 didn't do anything!"

"When you were Agamemnon, you killed your daughter. For that deed, you owe Necessity a death."

"But the version I'm going by—"

"Forget such puerile nonsense. A young woman has been killed. In Homer, whose rules we're going by, there is no guilt. But there is punishment. Punishment is symbolic of the need for guilt, which still hadn't been invented in Homer's time. We learn through guilt. Thus we return to innocence."

"I thought, if I came home, I'd be free of all that. And anyhow, Artemis—"

"Forget such specious nonsense. It shows why Plato hated sophists. No one learns anything by making the worse case the better. The Agamemnon situation is a curse, and it goes on and on, gathering energy through expiation and repetition. The Greeks had a predilection for creating these situations—Oedipus, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Prometheus, the list is endless. One character after another falls into a situation that must be solved unfairly. The case is never clear, but punishment always follows."

"Does it end here?"

"The expiation for mythic conditions never ends. Opening into the unknowable is the essence of humanity."

Then Chris dreamed that he sat up on his couch, opened his shirt, and said, "Very well, then—strike!"

"A truly Agamemnon-like gesture, Chris. But I am not going to kill you."

"You're not? Why are you here then?"

"At these times, a magician is always present to draw the moral."

"Which is?"

"It is an exciting thing to be a human being."

"You're here to tell me that? So Clytemnestra gets her revenge!"

"And is killed in turn by Orestes. Nobody wins in these dreams, Chris."

"So that's what you came here to tell me."

"That, and to take care of some loose ends. Good-bye, Chris. See you in hell."

And with that, Tiresias was gone.

Chris woke up with a start. The dream of Tiresias had been very real. But it was over now, and he was back at his Texas ranch. He sat up. It was evening. It had turned cold after the sun went down. He got up. Hearing his footsteps, Maria came running in from the kitchen. She was carrying his old suede jacket.

"You put this on, Mr. Chris," she said, and threw the jacket around his shoulders.

The jacket was curiously constricting. Chris couldn't move his arms. And then Jose was there, and somehow they were bending his head back.

"What are you doing?" Chris asked, but he really didn't have to be told when he caught the flash of steel in Jose's hand.

"How could you?" he asked.

"Hey, Mr. Chris, we join the lottery, me and Maria!" Jose said. "I'm going to be the new Agamemnon, she's Clytemnestra, but we take care of the trouble before it begins. We kill the old Agamemnon, so it doesn't have to happen again!"

Chris thought it was just like Jose to get things mixed up, to try to solve a myth before it began. He wondered if Cassandra had hinted at this outcome, and if he had ignored her, since that was her curse. He sank to the floor. The pain was sharp and brief, and he had the feeling that there was something he had left undone, though he couldn't remember what it was. . . .

He couldn't know it, not at that time, that a man in a yellow buffalo-hide coat had gone to the local branch of Thomas Cook and put in a payment. He had it directed to the Infernal Account. The clerk had never heard of that account, but when he checked with the manager, there it was.

The payment ensured that Chris wouldn't be left for eternity on the wrong shore of Styx, and that the other four were paid for, too.

It was a little nicety on the part of Tiresias. He hadn't had to do it, but he did it anyhow. Those old magicians had class. And anyhow, that's what a good magician does—he ties up loose ends.

Content

AGAMEMNON'S RUN
Robert Sheckley