Death in Vesunna
by Elaine O’Byrne and Harry Turtledove
Lou Muller and his partner-in-crime Mark Alvarez (a.k.a. Lucius and Marcus) travel back
from AD 2059 to obtain Sophocles’ lost play Aleadai, but when the owner of the
rare manuscript won’t part with it, they kill him and take it, counting on the
obscurity of the backwater second-century town to stop the Time Patrol from discovering
their foul deed. That may indeed happen, but they didn’t count on Gaius Tero, one of
the second century’s finest, and the sharp-tongued physician Kleandros.
Whatever. And as for the Time Patrol, why are we here in the boondocks instead of at the
library of Alexandria? Why do we insist on so much privacy when we make our deals? Just
so they won’t run across us. And they won’t.
“Death in Vesunna” by Elaine O’Byrne and Harry Turtledove, in Asimov’s Science
Fiction, 19 January 1981.