“The epithet carved in the stone at Thermopylae,” I whispered back.
“What? Why?”
“It’s the only thing from that time period I have memorized, all right?” Of course, I had no idea if this fellow was from that time period. I wasn’t such an expert on the clothing and weapons that I could do more than pin him to about a four-hundred-year range.
“What’s it mean?” Simon asked.
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure he’ll find that comforting.”
“Sh, it’s a beautiful example of an elegiac couplet from Ancient Greece.” Beautiful example or not, Simon was right. My statement had been out of context and would mean nothing to the Spartan. “I can do better with pen and paper,” I told Eleriss. “It’s like Latin—nobody has spoken it for a long time.”
Simon shrugged off his backpack and unzipped it.
“You have pen and paper?” I asked. He was the last person I expected to have something so archaic.
“Better.” He smiled and held up his tablet, then pulled up the notes app.
I pointed at the digital keyboard. “The English alphabet isn’t going to be a big help here.”
“Oh, right.” He switched to a drawing app. “How’s this?”
While I was fussing with the program, wondering how someone who had yet to leave something legible on an electronic signature pad was going to draw Ancient Greek letters with her finger, Jakatra said something that sounded derogatory and strode toward the hoplite with his sword. The Spartan dropped back into his fighting crouch and angled the spear toward Jakatra’s chest. Jakatra stopped and spewed out a line of indecipherable words. The Spartan’s face never changed expression.
“Let us wait to approach him until we are certain he understands,” Eleriss said.
“He understands,” Jakatra said. “He must. He is only pretending otherwise.”
“We cannot be certain.”
Jakatra pointed at the control panel. “What does his record say? How long was he with our people?”
Eleriss tapped a few spots on the wall. “Four years. That is long enough that one would expect him to have grasped the language. But we do not know how he was used. Perhaps a deliberate choice was made not to educate him.”
While they were talking, I was writing, but I was listening too. “Why was he taken?” I asked, still trying to figure out what all these people were doing down here.
Without answering, Jakatra walked over and stared down at the tablet. “Tell him we need him to hold this sword to see if it responds to him.”
“I thought I’d start with his name,” I said.#p#分页标题#e#
“Woman, the jibtab hunts us. There is no time for pleasantries.”
If Jakatra wasn’t going to answer my questions, I saw no reason to chat with him. Tablet in hand, I headed for the Spartan.
“Careful, Del,” Simon said, trailing at my heels. “Don’t get too close.”
I waved him back. “He won’t see a woman as a threat.”
Of course, if he was truly a criminal, he might not care whether I was a threat or not. I could feel my heart thudding in my chest as I approached. The Spartan noticed me, but his attention remained on Jakatra. I waved him back too. He didn’t move until Eleriss said a word. Jakatra stalked back to the tunnel entrance. It’d been a while since we’d seen the creature; I hoped it had been significantly injured in the battle and had fled back to wherever it had come from. Somehow I doubted we’d be that lucky.
Finally, with Jakatra across the chamber and Eleriss without a visible weapon, the Spartan lowered his spear and faced me. He kept the shield up.
I stopped a couple of paces away and held up the tablet. I read the words aloud, though I was hoping he could read, because I was more certain of my writing than my pronunciation. “My name is Delia. My grandmother was born in Athens. We are thousands of miles from there. I do not know how you came to be here; these people will explain nothing to me. They want something from you. Do you understand? What is your name?”
He listened to my full speech and followed along on the tablet—I had to turn to a new “page” three times—though I couldn’t tell what he understood, if anything. Finally he responded.
“Alektryon.”
I grinned at this communication, however basic. For all I knew, he’d only understood the last question, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The word laconic came from the old word for Sparta—Lacedaemon.
He—Alektryon—asked something then. I only caught a word of it. “Time.”