“You are the one called Orion?” he asked, in a voice that was surprisingly deep and strong.
“I am Orion,” I said.
“Son of?”
I could only shrug.
He smiled, showing ragged yellow teeth. “Pardon me, young man. That was a trick. Four times before I have seen men who have lost their memory. Sometimes an innocent question brings an answer before they can think about it and the memory returns. Or at least part of it.”
He sat me on a stool next to his worktable and examined my head in the afternoon light streaming through the long windows.
“No scars,” he muttered. “No sign of a head wound.”
“I heal very quickly,” I said.
He fixed me with those burning eyes. “You remember that?”
“No,” I replied truthfully. “I know it. Just as I know that my name is Orion.”
“You remember nothing that happened to you beyond a few days ago?”
“It is as if I were born as an adult. The first thing I remember is marching with the mercenaries of Diopeithes on the plain of Perinthos, little more than a week ago.”
“Born fully-formed, with shield and spear in hand,” he said, half smiling. “Like Athena.”
“Athena? You know her?”
“I know of all the gods, Orion.”
“I dream of them.”
“Do you?”
I hesitated, wondering how much I could tell him. Would he consider me insane? Would he consider it treason against Philip to dream that Olympias, the queen, was also Hera the goddess? And that she intended that I should slay the king?
“What does Athena look like?” I asked.
He blinked several times. “Usually she is portrayed in armor and helmet. Phydias’ great statue of her shows her bearing shield and spear. Often she has an owl with her, the symbol of her wisdom.”
“But her face,” I insisted. “Her form. What does she look like?”
Aristotle’s eyes widened at my question. “She is a goddess, Orion. No one has seen her features.”
“I have.”
“In your dreams?”
I had blurted enough, I decided. So I merely replied, “Yes, in my dreams.”
Aristotle considered this a moment, his large dome of a head tilted slightly to one side on his frail shoulders. “Is she beautiful?” he asked at length.
“Extremely beautiful. Her eyes are silver-gray, her hair as black as the midnight sky. Her face…” I could not find the words to describe her.
“Do you love her?” he asked.
I nodded.
“And she loves you? In your dreams?”
She loved me in the barren snowy wastes of the Ice Age, I knew. She loved me in the green forests of Paradise. We had loved each other through a hundred million years: in the dusty camps of the Great Khan, in the electric cities of the industrial world, on the shores of the methane sea of ringed Saturn’s largest moon.
All this I kept to myself. He would think me a raving madman if I told him a hundredth of it. So I answered merely:
“Yes. In my dreams we love each other.”
He must have sensed that there was much I was holding back from him. We talked until the sunlight faded from the windows and slaves entered the room softly to light the oil lamps. The balding major-domo who had admitted me to the house came and whispered in his master’s ear.
“You are wanted back at your barracks, Orion,” said Aristotle to me.
I got up from the stool, surprised that we had been talking for so long that my joints popped when I stood up.
“Thank you for your time,” I said.
“I hope I have been helpful.”
“Yes. A little.”
“Come see me again. I am almost always here and I will be happy to see you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He walked with me around the long table toward the door to the room. “I think that perhaps the key to your memory lies in those dreams you described. Often men dream of things that they do not think of when they are awake.”
“The gods use dreams to give us messages,” I suggested.
He smiled and reached up to pat my shoulder. “The gods have other fish to fry, Orion, if they actually take any interest in human affairs at all. They are far too busy to meddle in our dreams, I fear.”